any man's back. In passing out from Lake Tenaya, a perpendicular cliff hundreds of feet in height on the northern shore left no trail on land and forced us to wade for half a mile through water from one to four feet in depth; but this rain was worse, for it drenched us from crown to sole. Behind us, on the mountain we had left, the snowstorm raged unabated, while before us lay another mountain on which raged a similar storm. Up this mountain and into the region of snow before us we must go, all drowned in rain as we were.

It was not long after we left the valley before the snow was two feet deep; then as we reached a greater elevation, nearly three. Only the old men, Uncle Bob and Old Dave, remained mounted-all others were on foot. Sometimes the strongest among the animals were driven ahead, and sometimes men took the lead.

Α

Having on my right foot Zeb's old cutdown boot, I was not well equipped. shoe could have been laced to keep out the snow, but the old piece of boot so stood open that it filled again at the first step after being cleared.

After some hours' travel in the deep snow the old men began to tremble, and became so exhausted that they could hardly keep their saddles. Halting, a fire was built and two or three pots of very strong tea made. Enough molasses was put into the tea to make of it a kind of "black-strap." It was found to be very refreshing and strengthening. Thereafter about every three hours we halted and made a fresh supply of the "black-strap."

On the tops of the ridges, the snow was from three and a half to four feet in depth. As we were nearing a place called Crow Flat, a donkey belonging to the Grass Valley men dropped dead in its tracks. Soon after passing the old camping ground known. as Hazel Green, night overtook us. Men on foot were then obliged to go ahead and look up the trail. For hours we wallowed VOL. IX.-21

A camping place called Deer Flat was finally reached, about one o'clock in the morning. All had kept together thus far. Here it was determined that the strongest among us should go ahead to Alex Black's station. Those left behind were instructed to follow our trail and keep moving. The trail was all the way down hill, along a small creek, and the snow would constantly decrease in depth. From Black's, relief parties were to be sent back in case those left behind failed to reach the station in due season.

Black's place was reached about three o'clock in the morning. All the people about the place were aroused. Some were set to cooking, and others went out to look for those of our party left behind. They were found in motion on the trail, and all were safely brought in. The old men were given the only spare bed at the station, while the rest of us lay on the floor in our wet clothes till morning; but as we were near a hot stove this was considered no hardship.

At Black's was kept a small stock of certain kinds of goods. We were able to get a small supply of provisions, and I got a pair of new boots. Here we parted from our traveling companions, Uncle Bob taking with him the big Newfoundland dog, which he said had more sense than half the men who went into the mountains. At parting, Zeb whispered: "I dink Pete vill be goot mid me if I don't told about de cut-off."

After we reached Big Oak Flat, men were being brought in off the mountain trails for three or four days. Two or three had hands or feet so badly frozen that am

putation was found necessary, and two men were found in the snow frozen to death on a trail that led into the mountains to the northward of Alex Black's.

We afterwards heard from the men to whom the Newfoundland dog belonged and who passed our camp above Yosemite Valley. They encamped the evening they passed us in a deep valley at the foot of the mountain. In the morning they attempted to continue their journey, but were forced back by the great depth of snow they encountered. They then tried to ascend the mountain to where they had found us encamped, but again were obliged to return to

their little valley. They then built a log pen in which they stored their goods, roofing it over with logs, and felling trees across it to keep out the bears: then shot all their animals, and on foot made their escape by climbing down over the rocks into Yosemite Valley.

Ours was the last party that crossed that section of the Sierras that winter. All oldtimers will distinctly recollect the hard winter of 1859-60. Many hardships were suffered in the mountains, and many lives lost in the various passes north of that through which our party crossed. Dan De Quille.

A Step Aside, Roland Blake, Agnes Surriage, and In The Clouds are all intelligent and conscientious pieces of work, none of them, perhaps, of any notably high literary excellence, but all of considerable merit. They form a group of stories of higher grade than any thus far noticed, except Miss Ingelow's and Miss Yonge's. They are all free from defects in taste, written in excellent English, and interesting to read; but it is not likely that any one who was not at all restricted in access to books would read either of them a third time, or even a second.

A Step Aside is by a comparatively new writer, Charlotte Dunning. It is a love story, with the old-fashioned theme of love versus luxury. We can hardly agree with the morality of Miss Dunning's conclusion,

A Step Aside. By Charlotte Dunning. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

Roland Blake. By S. Weir Mitchell. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

3 Agnes Surriage. By Edwin Lasseter Bynner. Boston: Ticknor & Co. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

In the Clouds. By Charles Egbert Craddock. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

that a man should marry his sweetheart before he sees his way clear to support her, lest a richer may steal her meanwhile; but the lesson within reasonable limits-that is, that with youth and health, love and a very simple householding should be enough for honest hearts, and desire for luxury should never stand in the way-is undoubtedly a sound one. A Step Aside has through all its first part quite an idyllic touch, with the fine old French father, the pretty Pauline, and the excellent Hugh. After the father's death it darkens to a threat of the tragic, in which the writer evidently feels uncomfortable herself, though she does not allow her hand to tremble till she has carried the lovers safe through to a somewhat shorn and tempered "happiness ever after."

Roland Blake shows an improvement in lightness and constructive skill over Dr. Mitchell's previous novel, "In War Time," but it has not as serious a motive, nor as much studied material. Part of this one, too, lies in war-time--it covers the close of

the war and the spring and summer following; and as the first act in the development of the story goes to the front, Dr. Mitchell shows here better than in the previous book his real knowledge of the scenes of war. A few touches give a peculiarly vivid impression of some of its aspects that one may fail to realize after much reading of military articles and correspondents' descriptions. We feel, somehow, that the incident of the scout reluctantly murdering a too-faithful watch-dog who would not be silenced, and rejoining his party with a remorseful, "Darn it! I always did like dogs," gives a more piercing sense of the cruelty of war than accounts of battle-fields piled with the slain. Captain Blake himself is intended for a type of the best New England character, in which the union of the meditative with the practical is so marked a trait; but the author has a trifle overdone the meditative side, and makes the young fellow discourse a little too much like a new-school Concord philosopher for a man of his simple sincerity and his social breeding. Nor in view of the same breeding is it probable that he could. have looked up from a book at a boardinghouse table and addressed a young lady, there met for the second time, with, “Did you ever notice how some people stumble over themselves?" In spite of this criticism, and one or two similar ones, the characters of the story are defined with an attractive clearness and a real knowledge of human nature; the story, though slight, is pleasant, and there is an agreeable atmosphere of goodwill and gentlemanliness in the whole. It is one of the books that puts the author in a good light.

Agnes Surriage is more ambitious. It is a story of the Massachusetts Colony in the last days of the colonial régime—the story of Collector Frankland and Agnes Surriage, of which the historic outlines are merely filled out with fiction. As in Miss Yonge's little story, the most surprising incidents of this romance are mere matters of record,

and the novelist needs only to weave in details and to supply his theory of the character and motive that led to the occurrences. But Mr. Bynner has not been as considerate as Miss Yonge in telling us exactly how much is real and how much invented; so that while the main outline of the strange history of Frankland and Agnes Surriage is to be found in any encyclopedia, no one but a historian can tell how far to believe in the minor incidents. The author has, indeed, made so careful a study of the episode for the purposes of this book that it is quite possible no one at all but himself knows exactly where the line between fact and fancy comes. That Frankland, afterward Sir Harry Frankland, then royal collector at the port of Boston, and a very aristocratic and distinguished gentleman, a descendant of the Protector, but in nowise of the Protector's principles, took Agnes Surriage, the young servant-maid of the country tavern at Marblehead, to Boston, educated her, made her his mistress, left Boston to avoid the indignation of that godly city over this relation, and installed her as the lady of the beautiful country home he built for her at Hopkinton; and years later, when he was ambassador to Portugal, married her in gratitude for his deliverance from the Lisbon earthquake-these things are easily known as historic facts. But Mr. Bynner has corresponded with a member of the Frankland family, studied the baronet's autograph diary, now in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, investigated colonial records for all attainable further data. His care and spirit of accuracy are shown by the fact that he has even made investigation in order to reconstruct correctly the Marblehead dialect of that date; and the result bears upon its face this probability of correctness, that in breadth and incomprehensibility it is ahout half-way between what writers give us as the present Marblehead dialect, and that of the English districts from which it must have sprung. Regarded

as a story, Agnes Surriage is certainly interesting; but perhaps the author has not made all that another might have made of his opportunities. The facts indicate either a bargain of mercenary ambition and indifference to her character on the part of the beautiful rustic, or else a drama of passion; and Mr. Bynner chooses-probably with sufficient data for certainty-the latter interpretation. But his quiet and unemotional manner is not fitted to render this effectively; and with good judgment and good taste, recognizing this himself, he has not tried to do so, sometimes evading the account of a scene, sometimes escaping one by virtue of the reticence as to her feelings, however inwardly torn, which he makes a trait of Agnes's character. For all the dramatic attractiveness of the story, it is not one easily handled with due regard to social morals and yet due sympathy for the leading characters; and while the writer has done his best to fulfill both these requirements, one cannot but think regretfully of the treatment of the same situation in "Anna Karénina," as a hint of how real greatness deals with such things.

Of a very different order from this careful and well-judged work is Charles Egbert Craddock's In the Clouds. With its affluences, its occasional immoderateness, its endless monotony in types and endless variety in detail, this lady's writing not merely maintains its individuality, its striking difference from other writings of the day, but increases it. Limited she certainly is, and yet she develops. Perhaps the development will not be rapid enough nor go far enough to keep pace with the weariness that her monotony of theme is likely soon to awaken; but it is real. Her limitation is rather of subject and manner than of thought. The short stories with which she began were only new variations of the Bret Harte school, in which a simple, striking, and pathetic effect of picturesque devotion was sought, over and over. But her two novels have

The

left mere melodrama and gone deeper into serious study of the spiritual experiences of high-strung human natures. tragic mingling of faith and doubt in the prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, and the trust of Dorinda in her illusions, the insistent and troublesome conscientiousness of Alethea,-these are not only worthier themes but more individual and original than the dramatic arrangements of love and catastrophe in the author's early stories. There is, too, some toning down of overlavishness in description, some avoidance of too melodramatic incident; a genial humor becomes more and more apparent, relieving the solemnity that was sometimes altogether too dominant. Charles Egbert Craddock does not take herself as seriously as at first. Little children and dogs play a considerable part in this simple and natural humor, and her observations upon them are excellent. Leonidas-" a small boy of four, a plump little caricature of a man, in blue cotton trousers, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a laughably small pair of knitted suspenders "--and his experience with a piece of meat and Tige, are as good as possible. It may be that In the Clouds will not be as popular "as the author's previous books, for the very reason that she has toned down the melodramatic element; but we are disposed to think it the most satisfactory thing she has done, the one which has the most moderation and sense of proportion, without loss of any of her good qualities. It is to be said, however, that as far as "plot" goes, it is deficient and somewhat aimless-not more so, however, than life, which does not round out human experience to neatly shaped ends, either cheerful or mournful.

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is a second volume in the series of which "Constance of Acadia" was the first. No announcement has been made (so far as we have seen) as to whether this series is to be the work of a single author; but we should conjecture from the style of these two volumes that they at least are from the same hand; and would even farther venture the guess that it is one new to fiction. We did not think Constance Acadia" a success as a novel, admirable though it doubtless was as a history. Agatha and the Shadow has much more smoothness and connected narrative flow, and, we think, more human interest. Bernard Anselm and his wife are clearer and more real figures than Constanceperhaps for the very reason that they are more questionable historically; for if it was difficult in the former book to discriminate between fact and fiction, it is a simply hopeless endeavor in this. Everything reads as if transcribed and pieced together with painstaking historic research from the records. To all readers who are not merely novel-readers the historic facts count for much-often for most—in the interest of a historic novel; and such an one as this, pervaded as it is with evidence of most careful study and full knowledge, is very unsatisfactory unless it affords the reader means of knowing what these facts are. The author has so far met the desire for such means as to append a list of the authorities from whom his material was drawn--Winthrop, Massachusetts Historical Collections, Hanney's "Acadia," Drake's "Boston," Prince, Morton, Thacher, etc. This would be an even pleasanter way to give desirable information than Mrs. Craik's preface-for it interferes not at all with the verisimilitude of the story, and leads the reader in a small and easy way into a bit of research himselfwere the libraries in which the books in question can be found, accessible to most readers. Unfortunately, they are not. It occurs to us, in passing, to remark that just

now, when alumnae associations are urging work in local history upon the young women of New England who have graduated from colleges and are living at home in need. of some worthy scholarly work, novels of this sort would form an interesting variation upon the ordinary "local history" monograph. One such story as "Constance of Acadia," or Agatha and the Shadow, requires much more work than such a monograph (for there are all the details of incident and local frame work to be studied if the book is really to be consistent, besides the difficult "spirit of the time" to be sought after); and is much more widely read. Agatha and the Shadow perhaps interests more from its historic than its literary side, yet as a story it has much feeling, dignity, and intelligence.

In The Golden Justice and A Year in Eden, we are brought back to the nineteenth century. Mr. Bishop's story, The Golden Justice, is more properly a romance than a novel, not dissimilar in motive to the author's first romance, "Detmold;"--and now that one thinks of it, his three books, "Detmold," "The House of a Merchant Prince," and The Golden Justice, all have a curious similarity in plot. In each, there runs through the book as its key note the secret of crime, or grave suspicion thereof, affecting the fates of all of the characters, and especially threatening separation to lovers, but in the end serving as a closer bond, by the power of their high-minded affection. In "The House of a Merchant Prince," which alone of the three is properly a novel, and therefore the most realistic, this Hawthorne-like motive is not at all dominant; but in the two others it is. In the one, the children of partners in crime find in love a mutual release from their common burden of inheritance; in the other, love makes unconscious expiation The Golden Justice. By William Henry Bishop. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

* A Year in Eden. By Harriet Waters Preston. Boston: Roberts Bros. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.