Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTEE III. ON AND FKOM THE PACIFIC. Around the World only a " Trip."—Snow on the Mountains and Alkali Plains.—Forty Miles of Snow-sheds.—Sudden Descent from Ice and Snow to Apricots and Strawberries.—Sacramento.—New Eailroad and Steamboat Boutes. San Fbancisco, June 1, 1871. I Am about leaving in the Pacific Mail Co.'s steamer, the Japan, for Yokohama, Teddo, Shanghai, Hankow, Hong Kong, Canton, and , which is about as far as my geography goes, just now. Hence, I must scribble in pencil as fast as I can. The Pacific Mail steamers, all of them, are first- class, more abounding in sea comforts, I think, than any thing we have on the Atlantic; and therefore Japan, only twenty-two days from here, is not much of " a trip," so it seems to me now, though Japan once did seem a great way off—as far off as was California from Boston in the days of my youth—that is, the jumping-off place of the world. If the tropics do not threaten to burn us up in July and August, I shall " trip " it around the world. Every thing, you know, in this country is a " trip," even a journey around the world. "We left the snowy mountain surroundings of the Salt Lake Valley after " meeting,"Jfei Sunday, May28, and in a short time reached Ogden, the end of the Union Pacific Railroad, owned mainly in Boston and New York, and the beginning of the Central Pacific Railroad, owned all in San Francisco and Sacramento. The sun was hot; but hot suns here are not like hot suns, East—the air is so dry and exhilarating. A long-troubling cough I brought with me from Washington is rapidly going, and when I reach the Alkali plains I am sure it will all be gone, This is the very land for consumption, bronchitis, or the like, if patients are not too far gone; though Brigham Toung told us, in his discourse, his...