The remainder of our journey was horrible by Nature only, without the atrocious aid of man. But the past had done its work. We reached Washoe with our very marrows almost burnt out by sleeplessness, sickness, and agony of mind. The morning before we came to the silver-mining metropolis, Virginia City, a stout, young Illinois farmer, whom we had regarded as the stanchest of all our fellow-passengers, became delirious, and had to be held in the stage by main force. (A few weeks afterward, when the stage was changing horses near the Sink of Carson, another traveller became suddenly insane, and blew his brains out.) As for myself, the moment that I entered a warm bath, in Virginia City, I swooned entirely away, and was resuscitated with great difficulty after an hour and a half's unconsciousness. We stopped at Virginia for three days,--saw the California of '49 reenacted in a feverish, gambling, mining town,--descended to the bottom of the exhaustlessly rich "Ophir" shaft,--came up again, and resumed our way across the Sierra. By the mere act of crossing that ridge and stepping over the California line, we came into glorious forests of ever-living green, a rainbow-affluence of flowers, an air like a draught from windows left open in heaven. Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake Tahoe, (once "Bigler," till the ex-Governor of that name became a Copperhead, and the loyal Californians kicked him out of their geography, as he had already been thrust out of their politics,)--a crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, its granite bottom visible at the depth of a hundred feet, its banks a celestial garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long by ten wide, and nearly seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven. * * * * * ON PICKET DUTY. Within a green and shadowy wood, Circled with spring, alone I stood: The nook was peaceful, fair, and good. The wild-plum blossoms lured the bees, The birds sang madly in the trees, Magnolia-scents were on the breeze. All else was silent; but the ear Caught sounds of distant bugle clear, And heard the bullets whistle near,-- When from the winding river's shore The Rebel guns began to roar, And ours to answer, thundering o'er; And echoed from the wooded hill, Repeated and repeated still, Through all my soul they seemed to thrill. For, as their rattling storm awoke, And loud and fast the discord broke, In rude and trenchant _words_ they spoke.