over the road, about four miles to the old town
of San José. Pueblo, San José, stands at the
entrance of a lovely valley. The town mainly
consists of a collection of adobe houses, a few
in the main street built of wood, painted white,
with brilliant green jalousies. The old houses
are scattered round an open plaza, double rows
of trees of greenest foliage shade one from the
burning sun, and everywhere spacious fruit and
flower gardens testify to the fertility of the soil.

Having a note from a friend in San Francisco
to the host of "The Amalden House," more
than ordinary civility was accorded me. By
some superhuman means a buggy could be got
ready, in about two hours, to take me to the
mines, during the preparation of which, a visit
to the Santa Clara Mission was strongly
advised. Crossing the Alameda, a grove of
willows and oaks, planted by the padres, leads
to the old crumbling walls of what was once a
very spacious mission, now rapidly falling to
decay. The Mission estate once boasted twenty-five
thousand head of cattle, and a great many
square leagues of land, but the padre in whose
charge it was placed leased the land, and sold
the stock, applying the proceeds to the sole
benefit of the church personal. The interior of
the old church is decorated with rude carvings
and paintings of the crucifixion, and frescoed
figures of saints and martyrs, clad in garments
of dazzling colours, just as they were a century
ago—one old shaven priest, with a particularly
dirty cassock, and a face so begrimed with
accumulated layers of filth as to be mosquito-
proof, was the only ecclesiastic visible.

Found the buggy waiting, my coachman, a
regular Yankee, puffing vigorously at an immense
cigar, was seated in readiness, his legs resting
on the splashboard. Without removing the cigar
from his mouth, he drawled out, "Say cap'en,
guess you'd better hurry up, if you mean
making the ranch before sundown—bet your
pants this child ain't gwine that road in the
dark, nohow." "What's to happen?" I mildly
inquired. "Happen, wal, maybe upset, maybe
chawed up by a grizzley, maybe cleaned slick out
by the greasers. You'd better believe, a man
has to keep his eye skinned in the daytime, so
hurry up, cap."

Without further parley I scrambled in, and
away we went.

Our road lay over broad plains and through
occasional belts of timber; deep gravelly
arroyos, in and out of which we dashed with a
plunging scramble, marked the course of the
floods. Everything was steaming hot. The baked
ground reflected back the scorching sun-rays,
until the atmosphere quivered as one sees it
over a lime-kiln; the mustangs in a fog of
perspiration; the Jehu, denuded of coat and vest,
continually yelled, "A git along," with a rein in
each hand steered rather than drove, was red
hot in body and temper. But this was nothing
to my state of caloric. Exposed to a temperature
that would have made one perspire sitting
in the shade, to be kept in a state of bodily
fear of instant upset, to undergo a continuous
exercise that would have been good training for
an acrobat, to avoid being shot out of the buggy,
like a shell from a mortar, would have set an
Icelander in a glow. The rapidity with which
we whirled along, and the eccentric performances
of the vehicle, destroyed, in a great measure, the
enjoyment of a scene quite new to me.

As we wound through the splendid valley of
Santa Clara, here and there a fertile ranch; on
either side, the wooded slopes, like lawns of
nature's own contriving; far on my left, the bay,
glimmering like a line of silver light, the ground
carpeted with flowers, brilliant escoltzia and
blue nemophlia growing conspicuously amidst a
natural harvest of wild oats and grass; and on
all sides from amongst the clumps of buck-eye
and the oak, cheery whistle and chirp of birds
rang pleasantly on the ear.

Reaching the half-way house (as a small
wooden building is named, midway betwixt San
José and the mine), we stopped to water the
mustangs and refresh the inward man, a respite
most acceptable.

A tall drink worked wonders on my hitherto
taciturn coachman, who, as we jogged along the
remaining half of the journey, related such
wonderful stories, that it seemed to me we had
hardly left the half-way house ere we rattled up
under a grove of trees completely shutting out
the fading light, and pulled up with a sudden
jerk that well-nigh shot me over the mustangs.

"Guess we've made it, cap'en; this here's the
manager's."

Giving my letters of introduction to Mr.
Young, a hospitable invitation to be his guest
was readily accepted. I cannot help devoting a
line to the praise of a house most enjoyable in
its minutest details, with a host and hostess
that it refreshes one's heart to remember.

The lower village of Almaden consists of a
long row of most tasteful cottages, the
residences of the workmen employed in smelting
the ore; each cottage completely buried with
honeysuckle and creeping roses; the garden in
front filled with flowers, and at the back with
fruit and vegetables. A small stream of water,
clear and cold, ripples past the frontage, brought
from a mountain-burn that dashes swiftly
behind, dividing the gardens from the surrounding
hills. An avenue of trees leads to the
spacious brick buildings used for smelting.

The discovery of these fabulously rich mines
of quicksilver is briefly told. Long ere gold
was known in California, the padres and early
settlers knew of a cave in the hill-side, about a
mile and a half from the village, deeming it a
natural fissure or cleft in the rock. Explorations
had been made by the more adventurous
as to its extent, which was about one hundred
feet, running into the mountain horizontally, no
one ever dreaming that it was an artificial
excavation of great antiquity. When the vaqueros
and old dons of the neighbourhood were
questioned by a new comer about the cave, a shrug
of the shoulders, and the usual reply, "Quein
sabe, sou cosus muy antiquos," was the sole
information obtainable.