upper terminus, we smile, and think the worst is over.  It is true, we see awaiting us another innocent looking electric car by which we are to go still higher; but we are confident that nothing very terrible can be experienced in a trolley.  This confidence is quickly shattered.  I doubt if there is anything in the world more “hair lifting” than the road over which that car conveys its startled occupants.  Its very simplicity makes it the more horrifying; for, since the vehicle is light, no massive supports are deemed essential; and, as the car is open, the passengers seem to be traveling in a flying machine.  I never realized what it was to be a bird, till I was lightly swung around a curve beneath which yawned a precipice twenty-five hundred feet in depth, or crossed a chasm by a bridge which looked in the distance like a thread of gossamer, or saw that I was riding on a scaffolding, built out from the mountain into space.  For five appalling miles of alternating happiness and horror, ecstasy and dread, we twisted round the well-nigh perpendicular cliffs, until, at last the agony over, we walked into the mountain tavern near the summit, and, seating ourselves before an open fire blazing in the hall, requested some restorative nerve-food.  Yet this aerial inn is only one hundred and eighty minutes from Los Angeles; and it is said that men have snow-balled one another at this tavern, picked oranges at the base of the mountain, and bathed in the bay of Santa Monica, thirty miles distant, all in a single afternoon.  It certainly is possible to do this, but it should be remembered that stories are almost the only things in California which do not need irrigation to grow luxuriantly.  I was told that although this mountain railway earns its running expenses it pays no interest on its enormous cost.  This can readily be believed; and one marvels, not only that it was ever built, but that it was not necessary to go to a lunatic asylum for the first passenger.  Nevertheless, it is a wonderfully daring experiment, and accomplishes perfectly what it was designed to do; while in proportion as one’s nervousness wears away, the experience is delightful.

[Illustration:  The circular bridge.]

[Illustration:  Imitating A bird.]

[Illustration:  Swinging round A curve.]

[Illustration:  The innocent trolley.]

Living proofs of the progress made in California are the patient burros, which, previous to the construction of this railroad, formed the principal means of transportation up Mount Lowe.  Why has the donkey never found a eulogist?  The horse is universally admired.  The Arab poet sings of the beauties of his camel.  The bull, the cow, the dog, and even the cat have all been praised in prose or verse; but the poor donkey still remains an ass, the butt of ridicule, the symbol of stupidity, the object of abuse.  Yet if there be another and a better world for animals, and if