The distance from Sacramento to Atchison, Kansas, by the Overland stage route, is 2200 miles, but you can happily accomplish a part of the journey by railroad. The Pacific Railroad id completed twelve miles to Folsom, leaving only 2188 miles to go by stage. This breaks the monotony; but as it is midwinter and as there are well substantiated reports of the Piute savages being in one of their sprightly moods when they scalp people, I do not I may say that I do not leave the Capital of California in a light-hearted and joyous manner. But "leaves have their time to fall," and I have my time to leave, which is now. We ride all day and all night, and ascend and descend some of the most frightful hills I ever saw. We make Johnson's Pass, which is 6752 feet high, about two o'clock in the morning, and go down the great Kingsbury grade with locked wheels. The driver, with whom I sit outside, informs me, as we slowly roll down this fearful mountain road, which looks down on either side into an appalling ravine, that he has met accidents in his time, and cost the California Stage Company a great deal of money; "because," he says, "juries is agin us on principle, and every man who sues us is sure to recover. But it will never be so agin, not with ME, you bet." "How is that?" I said. It was frightfully dark. It was snowing withal, and notwithstanding the brakes were kept hard down, the coach slewed wildly, often fairly touching the brink of the black precipice. "How is that?" I said. "Why, you see," he replied, "that corpses never sue for damages, but maimed people do. And the next time I have a overturn I shall go round and keerfully examine the passengers. Them as is dead I shall let alone; but them as is mutilated I shall finish with the king-bolt! Dead folks don't sue. They ain't on it." Thus with anecdote did this driver cheer me up. 4.5. WASHOE. We reach Carson City about nine o'clock in the morning. It is the capital of the silver-producing territory of Nevada. They shoot folks here somewhat, and the law is rather partial than otherwise to first-class murderers. I visit the territorial Prison, and the Warden points out the prominent convicts to me thus: "This man's crime was horse-stealing. He is here for life." "This man is in for murder. He is here for three years." But shooting isn't as popular in Nevada as it once was. A few years since they used to have a dead man for breakfast every morning. A reformed desperado told my that he supposed he had killed men enough to stock a graveyard. "A feeling of remorse," he said, "sometimes comes over me! But I'm an altered man now. I hain't killed a man for over two weeks! What'll yer poison yourself with?" he added, dealing a resonant blow on the bar.