A Ladys Life in the Rocky Mountains | Page 9

salient point for the speaker's
next sally, I was relieved when the landlady, a ladylike Englishwoman,
asked me to join herself and her family in the bar-room, where we had
much talk about the neighborhood and its wild beasts, especially bears.
The forest is full of them, but they seem never to attack people unless
when wounded, or much aggravated by dogs, or a shebear thinks you
are going to molest her young. I dreamt of bears so vividly that I woke
with a furry death hug at my throat, but feeling quite refreshed. When I
mounted my horse after breakfast the sun was high and the air so keen
and intoxicating that, giving the animal his head, I galloped up and
down hill, feeling completely tireless. Truly, that air is the elixir of life.
I had a glorious ride back to Truckee. The road was not as solitary as
the day before. In a deep part of the forest the horse snorted and reared,
and I saw a cinnamon-colored bear with two cubs cross the track ahead
of me. I tried to keep the horse quiet that the mother might acquit me of
any designs upon her lolloping children, but I was glad when the
ungainly, long-haired party crossed the river. Then I met a team, the
driver of which stopped and said he was glad that I had not gone to
Cornelian Bay, it was such a bad trail, and hoped I had enjoyed Tahoe.
The driver of another team stopped and asked if I had seen any bears.
Then a man heavily armed, a hunter probably, asked me if I were the
English tourist who had "happened on" a "Grizzly" yesterday. Then I
saw a lumberer taking his dinner on a rock in the river, who "touched
his hat" and brought me a draught of ice-cold water, which I could
hardly drink owing to the fractiousness of the horse, and gathered me
some mountain pinks, which I admired. I mention these little incidents
to indicate the habit of respectful courtesy to women which prevails in
that region. These men might have been excused for speaking in a
somewhat free-and-easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in an
unwonted fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women are
the salt of society in this wild West.
My horse was so excitable that I avoided the center of Truckee, and
skulked through a collection of Chinamen's shanties to the stable,
where a prodigious roan horse, standing seventeen hands high, was

produced for my ride to the Donner Lake. I asked the owner, who was
as interested in my enjoying myself as a West Highlander might have
been, if there were not ruffians about who might make an evening ride
dangerous. A story was current of a man having ridden through
Truckee two evenings before with a chopped-up human body in a sack
behind the saddle, and hosts of stories of ruffianism are located there,
rightly or wrongly. This man said, "There's a bad breed of ruffians, but
the ugliest among them all won't touch you. There's nothing Western
folk admire so much as pluck in a woman." I had to get on a barrel
before I could reach the stirrup, and when I was mounted my feet only
came half-way down the horse's sides. I felt like a fly on him. The road
at first lay through a valley without a river, but some swampishness
nourished some rank swamp grass, the first GREEN grass I have seen
in America; and the pines, with their red stems, looked beautiful rising
out of it. I hurried along, and came upon the Donner Lake quite
suddenly, to be completely smitten by its beauty. It is only about three
miles long by one and a half broad, and lies hidden away among
mountains, with no dwellings on its shores but some deserted
lumberers' cabins.[5] Its loneliness pleased me well. I did not see man,
beast, or bird from the time I left Truckee till I returned. The mountains,
which rise abruptly from the margin, are covered with dense pine
forests, through which, here and there, strange forms of bare grey rock,
castellated, or needle-like, protrude themselves. On the opposite side, at
a height of about 6,000 feet, a grey, ascending line, from which
rumbling, incoherent sounds occasionally proceeded, is seen through
the pines. This is one of the snow-sheds of the Pacific Railroad, which
shuts out from travelers all that I was seeing. The lake is called after Mr.
Donner, who, with his family, arrived at the Truckee River in the fall of
the year, in company with a party of emigrants bound for California.
Being encumbered with many cattle, he let the company pass on, and,
with his own party of sixteen