After crossing the American River the character of the country changes, and I enjoy a ten-mile ride over a fair road, through one of those splendid sheep-ranches that are only found in California, and which have long challenged the admiration of the world.  Sixty thousand acres, I am informed, is the extent of this pasture, all within one fence.  The soft, velvety greensward is half-shaded by the wide-spreading branches of evergreen oaks that singly and in small groups are scattered at irregular intervals from one end of the pasture to the other, giving it the appearance of one of the old ancestral parks of England.  As I bowl pleasantly along I involuntarily look about me, half expecting to see some grand, stately old mansion peeping from among some one of the splendid oak-groves; and when a jack-rabbit hops out and halts at twenty paces from my road, I half hesitate to fire at him, lest the noise of the report should bring out the vigilant and lynx-eyed game-keeper, and get me “summoned” for poaching.  I remember the pleasant ten-mile ride through this park-like pasture as one of the brightest spots of the whole journey across America.  But “every rose conceals a thorn,” and pleasant paths often load astray; when I emerge from the pasture I find myself several miles off the right road and have to make my unhappy way across lots, through numberless gates and small ranches, to the road again.

There seems to be quite a sprinkling of Spanish or Mexican rancheros through here, and after partaking of the welcome noon-tide hospitality of one of the ranches, I find myself, before I realize it, illustrating the bicycle and its uses, to a group of sombrero-decked rancheros and darked-eyed se¤oritas, by riding the machine round and round on their own ranch-lawn.  It is a novel position, to say the least; and often afterward, wending my solitary way across some dreary Nevada desert, with no company but my own uncanny shadow, sharply outlined on the white alkali by the glaring rays of the sun, my untrammelled thoughts would wander back to this scene, and I would grow “hot and cold by turns,” in my uncertainty as to whether the bewitching smiles of the se¤oritas were smiles of admiration, or whether they were simply “grinning” at the figure I cut.  While not conscious of having cut a sorrier figure than usual on that occasion, somehow I cannot rid myself of an unhappy, ban-owing suspicion, that the latter comes nearer the truth than the former.

The ground is gradually getting more broken; huge rocks intrude themselves upon the landscape.  At the town of Rocklin we are supposed to enter the foot-hill country proper.  Much of the road in these lower foot-hills is excellent, being of a hard, stony character, and proof against the winter rains.  Everybody who writes anything about the Golden State is expected to say something complimentary — or otherwise, as his experience may seem to dictate — about the “glorious climate of California;”