Round the World | Page 3

from all I can gather it seems doubtful whether the experiment of exporting cattle alive will succeed.
We saw numerous herds of antelope to-day, but they graze among the cattle, and are altogether too finely civilized to meet our idea of "chasing the antelope over the plain;" one might as well chase a sheep. As night approaches we get higher and higher up the far-famed Rocky Mountains, and before dark reach the most elevated point, at Sherman, eight thousand feet above tide. But our preconceived notions of the Rocky Mountains, derived from pictures of Fremont _à la_ Napoleon crossing the Alps, have received a rude shock; we only climb high plains--not a tree, nor a peak, nor a ravine; when at the top we are but on level ground--a brown prairie, "only this, and nothing more."
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TUESDAY, October 22.
Desolation! In the great desert! It extends southward to Mexico and northward to British Columbia, and is five hundred miles in width. Rivers traverse it only to lose themselves in its sands, there being no known outlet for the waters of this vast basin. What caverns must exist below capable of receiving them! and whither do they finally go?
At the station we begin to meet a mixture of Chinese and Indians--Shoshones, Piutes, and Winnemuccas. The Chinamen are at work on the line, and appear to be very expert. At Ogden we get some honey grapes--the sweetest I ever tasted. It is midnight before we are out of the desert.
We are up early to see the Sierras. My first glimpse was of a ravine resembling very much the Alleghany Gap below Bennington--going to bed in a desert and awaking to such a view was a delightful surprise indeed. We are now running down the western slope two hundred and twenty-five miles from San Francisco, with mines on both sides, and numerous flumes which tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch Flat. Shades of Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast! A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet. His reputation in Europe proved his originality. The fact is, American poets have been only English "with a difference." Tennyson might have written the "Psalm of Life," Browning "Thanatopsis," but who could have written "Her Letter," or "Flynn of Virginia," or "Jim," or "Chiquita"? An American, flesh and bone, and none other. If the East would only discard him, as Edinburgh society did his greater prototype, he might be forced to return to his "native heath" in poverty, and rise again as the first truly American poet. But poets, and indeed great artists as a class, seem to yield their best only under pressure. The grape must be crushed if we would have wine. Give a poet "society" at his feet and he sings no more, or sings as Tennyson has been singing of late years--fit strains to prepare us for the disgrace he has brought upon the poet's calling. Poor, weak, silly old man! Forgive him, however, for what he has done when truly the poet. He was noble then and didn't know it; now he is a sham noble and knows it. Punishment enough that he stands no more upon the mountain heights o'ertopping the petty ambitions of English life,
"With his garlands And his singing robes about him."
His poet's robes, alas! are gone. Room, now, for the masquerader disguised as a British peer! Place, next the last great vulgar brewer or unprincipled political trimmer in that motley assembly, the House of Lords!
The weather is superb, the sky cloudless; the train stops to allow us to see the celebrated Cape Horn; the railroad skirts the edge of the mountain, and we stand upon a precipice two thousand feet high, smaller mountains enclosing the plain below, and the American River running at our feet. It is very fine, indeed, but the grandeur between Pack Saddle and San Francisco, with the exception of the entrance to Weber Ca?on and a few miles in the vicinity, is all here; as a whole, the scenery on the Pacific Railroad is disappointing to one familiar with the Alleghanies.
At Colfax, two hundred miles from San Francisco, we stop for breakfast and have our first experience of fresh California grapes and salmon; the former black Hamburgs not to be excelled by the best hot-house grapes of England; and what a bagful for a quarter! We tried the native white wine at dinner, and found it a fair Sauterne. With such grapes and climate, it must surely