VIEW ON THE AMERICAN RIVER--THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST FOUND 180 THE BRIDAL VEIL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY } 228 EL CAPITAN, YOSEMITE VALLEY } MAPS. ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC RAILROAD 78 LEAVENWORTH TO SALT LAKE CITY 92 SALT LAKE CITY TO SAN FRANCISCO 158 NEW ZEALAND 278 VOLUME II. THE OLD AND THE NEW: BUSH SCENERY--COLLINS STREET EAST, MELBOURNE 24 GOVERNOR DAVEY‘S PROCLAMATION 86 MAPS. AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA 16 OVERLAND ROUTES 290 PART I. AMERICA. GREATER BRITAIN. CHAPTER I. VIRGINIA. From the bows of the steamer _Saratoga_, on the 20th June, 1866, I caught sight of the low works of Fort Monroe, as, threading her way between the sand-banks of Capes Charles and Henry, the ship pressed on, under sail and steam, to enter Chesapeake Bay. Our sudden arrival amid shoals of sharks and kingfish, the keeping watch for flocks of canvas-back ducks, gave us enough and to spare of idle work till we fully sighted the Yorktown peninsula, overgrown with ancient memories--ancient for America. Three towns of lost grandeur, or their ruins, stand there still. Williamsburg, the former capital, graced even to our time by the palaces where once the royal governors held more than regal state; Yorktown, where Cornwallis surrendered to the continental troops; Jamestown, the earliest settlement, founded in 1607, thirteen years before old Governor Winthrop fixed the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts. A bump against the pier of Fort Monroe soon roused us from our musings, and we found ourselves invaded by a swarm of stalwart negro troopers, clothed in the cavalry uniform of the United States, who boarded us for the mails. Not a white man save those we brought was to be seen upon the pier, and the blazing sun made me thankful that I had declined an offered letter to Jeff. Davis. Pushing off again into the stream, we ran the gantlet of the Rip-Raps passage, and made for Norfolk, having on our left the many exits of the Dismal Swamp Canal. Crossing Hampton Roads--a grand bay with pleasant grassy shores, destined one day to become the best known, as by nature it is the noblest, of Atlantic ports--we nearly ran upon the wrecks of the Federal frigates _Cumberland_ and _Congress_, sunk by the rebel ram _Merrimac_ in the first great naval action of the war; but soon after, by a sort of poetic justice, we almost drifted into the black hull of the _Merrimac_ herself. Great gangs of negroes were laboring laughingly at the removal, by blasting, of the sunken ships.