You see that inland yachting is not child’s play, nor are these inland yachts without their romantic records.  The flag of the San Francisco yacht club has floated among the South Sea Islands; one of its boats has beaten the German and English types in their own waters; one has been as far as the Australian seas; one is a pearl fisher in the Gulf of California, and another is coquetting with the doldrums along the Mexican coast.  They are staunch little beauties all, and it would be neither courteous nor healthful to think otherwise in the presence of inland yachtsmen.

[Illustration:  Telegraph Hill, 1855]

IN YOSEMITE SHADOWS

“Yosemite, Sept.—­:  Come at once—­the year wanes; would you see the wondrous transformation, the embalming of the dead Summer in windings of purple and gold and bronze—­come quickly, before the white pall covers it—­delay no longer.  The waters are low and fordable, the snows threaten, but the hours are yet propitious; and such a welcome waits you as Solomon in all his glory could not have lavished on Sheba’s approaching queen. * * ”

There was much more of the same sort of high-toned epistolary rhetoric, written and sent by a dear hand, whose fanciful pen seemed touched by the ambrosial tints of Autumn.  So the year was going out in a gorgeous carnival, before the Lent-like solemnity of Winter was assumed.

I had only two things to consider now:  First, was it already too late to hasten thither, and enjoy the splendid spectacle so freely offered and so alluring; secondly, could I, if yet in time, venture so boldly upon the edge of Winter, and risk the possibility—­nay, probability—­of being snow-bound for four or six months, 30 miles from any human habitation?

I did not long consider.  I felt every moment that the soul of Summer was passing.  I scented the ascending incense of smoking and crackling boughs.  What a requiem was being chanted by all the tremulous and broken voices of Nature!  Would I, could I, longer forbear to join the passionate and tumultuous miserere?  It seemed that I could not, for gathering about me the voluminous furs of Siberia, I bade adieu to friends, not without some forebodings awakened by the admonitions of my elders, then, dropping all the folly of the world, like a monk I went silently and alone into the monastery of a Sierran solitude, resigned, trusting, prayerful.

What an entering it was!  With slow, devotional steps I approached the valley.  There was a thin veil of snow over the upper trail.  It was smooth and unbroken as I came upon it, following the blazed trees in my way.  Footprints of bear and fox, squirrel and coyote, were traceable.  The owl hooted at me, and the jay shot past me like a blue flash of light, uttering her prolonged, shrill cry.  As for the owl, I could not see him, but I heard him at startling intervals give the challenge, “Who are you?” so I advanced and gave the countersign.  I don’t believe it was for his grave face alone that the owl was chosen symbol of Wisdom.