The ride down to Cloverdale, seventeen miles, was greatly enjoyed, for the grade was just steep enough to coast, but not to make dangerous riding, and there certainly was something very novel about gliding safely along in the wheel track close to a ledge of rocks, with a yawning precipice within a foot of the other wheel track, and the road winding around projecting points of rocks, and in and out along the side of the mountain, and yet with a grade so gentle that the wheel kept on quietly without the use of a brake. The mountains were so bare of trees that the fine views were unobstructed, and one could look down the winding valley and see points in the road that he would eventually reach in that quiet, easy manner, always without the use of any power either to accelerate or retard the speed of the wheel. Yes, a trip to the geysers on a bicycle is well worth taking, but it is the riding and sight-seeing on the way that pays, and not the geysers. With a barrel of water, a few barrels of lime, and a little coloring matter, one could almost discount the geysers in their present activity. The ride down the Sonoma valley, and to the point where wheelmen are obliged to take the train and ferry over to San Francisco, was through a level country and over excellent roads, and an average speed of six miles an hour was maintained throughout nearly the whole of the ninety miles of the return trip. California is over twenty-five times as large as Connecticut, and I have only seen a small portion of it, but to say, as most Californians insist, that what I have seen is a beautiful country, is certainly drawing upon the imagination to a great extent. The roads are dry and terribly dusty, the grass is dead, the streams all dried up, and the only green objects to be seen, as you look across the country, are the trees and grape-vines and occasionally a few acres of shriveled-up corn. And these are covered so thickly with dust that the color underneath is hardly discernible. To one accustomed to the refreshing showers of the Eastern States during the summer, which render the verdure so luxuriant, the dry, dead, dusty appearance of almost everything from the tops of the mountain peaks to the rocky bottoms of the dry creeks and rivers, is anything but beautiful. It looks as if the face of nature needed washing. But let one imagine the hills and mountains covered with rich, green grass and bright-colored wild flowers, as they were only a few months ago, and think of the streams and rivers brimming full, or imagine the hundreds of acres of grape-vines I have seen, loaded down with their dark, rich fruit, and he can easily see that California has been and will soon be again, a most beautiful country through which to travel. We see California at its worst in August.