Much of the history of that country is written in the names. Here the soft Spanish locutions give place to harsher, but not less descriptive, Americanisms--Jimtown, Jackass Hill, Squaw Creek; the cañons become "gulches," the mesas "flats." Later both of these were overlaid by -villes and -tons, the plain rural names of Anglo-Saxon derivation, Coulterville, Farmington, Turlock. They smell of orchards. Prosperity is coming back on the surface of the fruitful waters, but the redwood forests have not come back. Centuries, nothing less, are required for the building of one of these towers of greenness, and it is barely forty years since all that district was one roaring blast of mining life, rioting, jostling, snatching each from each. In the language of the country, the Italian truck gardeners will "beat them to it." They have smoothed over the old "slickens" and comforted the land with crops. As one travels north, the bulk of the Sierra lessens, the pines climb higher, the oaks march well down into the middle valley to catch the wet coast winds, the character of the plantations change, there are more grain fields, more neat little farms. Finally the old Overland emigrant trail climbs down from Donner Lake and Emigrant Gap, and you find yourself deep in the Valley of the Sacramento. By an air-line from the meeting of the waters, its geographical frontier is passed in the neighbourhood of Sonora; perhaps the bridge over the Mokelumne is a better indicator, since that river joins the San Joaquin at the estuary, but it is not until the Overland road is crossed that the character of the country definitely betrays the upper valley. Ascending the river, the works of man are less and less, the forest and the mountains more. The rapid rise of the wooded slopes keeps the Sacramento troublous. Tributaries, not large but swift and of tremendous volume, pour into it. Occasionally from dark cañons is heard the steady pound of the quartz mill, working some ancient lead, or a smelter blocks out a whole forested slope with its poisonous exhalations; but for the most part the northern valley is given over to brooding quiet, to unending green, and streams as swift as adders. In Mendocino county, on the coast side, the Range begins to lift toward the snow-line; on the Sierra side the alpine crest shears away. From time to time the "logging" industry cuts a wide track down the redwood forest. One hears above the singing rivers, the clucking of the donkey-engine or the rip of a mill still going in the midst of its self-created, sawdust desert. The glutting of the lumber region has been accomplished as wastefully, as violently, as the search for gold. All up the valley tall prophets of the rain have been butchered to make a lumberman's fat purse. But, link by link, the forestry bureau is closing in the line of the reserves against the lumber "kings," the Ahabs of a grasping time.