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Collection: Books and Periodicals

Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)

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THE PLAINS, 107 Senger upon every available spot of every waggon, There was no trouble about luggage—that is an article not much known in California. Some stray individuals might have had a small carpet-bae—almost every man had his blankets—and the western men were further encumbered with their long rifles, the barrels poking into everybody’s eyes, and the buts in the way of everybody’s toes, At last the solid mass of four-horse coaches began to dissolve. The drivers gathered up their reins and settled themselves down in their seats, cracked their whips, and swore at their horses ;_the grooms cleared out the best way they could; the passengers shouted and hurraed ; the teams in front set off at a gallop ; the rest followed them as soon as they got room to start, and chevied them up the street, all in a body, for about half a mile, when, as soon as we got out of town, we spread out in all directions to every point of a semicircle, and in a few minutes I found myself one of a small isolated community, with which four splendid horses were galloping over the plains like mad. No hedges, no ditches, no houses, no road in fact—it was all a vast open plain, as smooth as a calm ocean. We might have been steering by compass, and it was like going to sea; for we emerged from the city as from a landlocked harbour, and followed our own course over the wide wide world. The transition from the confinement of the city to the vastness of space was instantaneous; and our late neighbours, rapidly diminishing around us, and getting hull down on the horizon, might have been