Nothing in the way of riding is more disagreeable than going down a very sharp mountain-side on a pony not, for all you know, very sure-footed, and so instead of riding, I resolved to walk, now and then taking a short cut, to the great discomfiture of feet and boots, although it is three thousand feet to the bottom, and make the best of my way and the most of the road, which is very fair, down the zig zags. I reached the plain thoroughly hot and tired, and bathed in perspiration, in fifty-seven minutes. The horsekeeper, who came down with the rest of the party, seemed to have been affected by the rarity of the atmosphere or something else up at the mountain hostelry, for he insisted on it that I had ridden down, and demanded his horse. "What the thunder, Russell, have you done with my horse?" he asked again and again. Satisfied for the time by my assurances that I had not ridden at all, he went off, and then, thinking over the matter, came back again to repeat his question, till I told him I would not answer it any more. He was an amusing fellow in his way, and affable. He called the Duke "Sutherland," now and then putting Mr. before it. As he was watering his horses, he said: "Here, Mister Sutherland, lay hold of the bucket, will you, whilst I take a turn at this one." And the Duke did so with alacrity. It was a day of incessant activity. No sooner had the mountain party come down than they were off again to drive through the Valley. The rest of our party had already executed masterly investigations at the foot of all the waterfalls; admired the Bridal Veil and the Widow's Tear, as one cascade is satirically termed, "because," says the guide, "it dries up in six months;" had driven and ridden everywhere and seen everything, and we had to do the same; but it would need a week of conscientious work to exploit the Valley thoroughly. At half-past 7, the dinner hour, the little inn was swarming with people; the stage had arrived with fresh contingents. Every place was full, and what with the clatter of knives and forks, the clamour of waiters, the tumult of voices laughing and talking, it was scarcely possible to conceive that a few short years ago this valley was in the exclusive possession of the Indian and the wild beast. There is now, however, a great conflict of interests, and Mammon is holding his revels in the Valley. The State has voted a certain sum of money, twenty-five thousand dollars, I think, to buy up the interests of the trail-makers; that is, those who struck out and made paths to the various objects of attraction; but no success has yet been attained in the negotiations, and, indeed, I should think it a very bad investment for most of them to accept their share of such a sum. Macaulay, for example, who made the path up to the point from which we descended to-day, must make many hundreds of dollars in the height of the season, as he charges so much a visitor, and, besides, has a restaurant where they take their meals at the top.