Before starting again upon our travels, we made Sacramento our home, to which we could turn for rest in our wanderings.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

    “And this our life—­exempt from public haunt,
    Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
    Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

We next visited San Jose, one of the most romantically, beautiful towns in California, which would require the subtle gift of genius, a touch of poetic fire, and, above all, the fullness and richness of descriptive power, to enable me to give any adequate conception of its charms.  It was almost a fairy realm, with its fields of waving grain, then golden with the glow of the harvest season; trees laden with fruitage, and vineyards drooping with their ripe, purple clusters.

One of the prominent attractions of the place was the residence of General Negley, nestling in the centre of extended grounds, combining the richly, blending beauties of nature and art.  Groves and streams, rustic bridges and flowing fountains, shrubby labyrinths and flowery dells, were grouped in happiest harmony.  Received by the General with the genial hospitality which should characterize the presiding spirit of such an Eden, dispensing itself in so many pleasant ways, we were led from house to garden, and from vineyard to wine press, where all were temptingly lured to taste the freshly pressed grape juice.

It was a novel sight to those accustomed only to white or negro labor, to see the efficient corps of Chinese employees who had proven themselves such valuable servants.  It is with some degree of trepidation that I follow a desire which impels me to describe a bunch of grapes I saw in this vineyard.  I must beg my readers to free me from any taint of the spirit of the renowned Baron Munchausen, whose intensely magnifying vision threw its impress upon all objects, but, without the faintest degree of exaggeration, I can say, that while I am no Lilliputian in size, I stood, holding with great difficulty, the weight of a single bunch of grapes in my extended hand, while the other end of it rested upon the ground, nor would I dare to tell this grape story unless many of my readers were familiar with the mammoth fruits of California.

After this delightful visit we took the horse car to Santa Clara, and certainly the world cannot boast of a public route so redolent with beauty as this.  Both sides of the road are shaded with trees of almost a century’s growth; for this “Alameda” was planted by the Jesuit Fathers in 1799.  These left the vines and olives of their native Spain, and planted upon the soil of their new home this grove, which was, doubtless, intended as a sacred haunt, never dreaming that its sanctity would be invaded by the sacrilegious sounds of modern civilization, and, above all, by the rumble of the horse car.

All along this beauteous line of shade, musical with the melody of birds, are elegant villas, evidently the abodes of wealth and fashion.