The thought, however, that this old race is passing away like the fading leaf before the "pale face," is saddening.

Soon we arrive in the El Dorado State, we are at last on California soil, and the train with panting engines climbs the dizzy heights of the Sierras, through beautiful forests, along the slopes of hills, through tunnels, beneath long snow sheds.

These sheds are a striking feature, and are, with broken intervals, forty miles long.
The scenery is remarkable, entirely different from that of the Rocky Mountains; and Donner Lake, into whose clear depths we look from lofty heights, recalls the terrible story of hardship, isolation, suffering and death, here in the winter of 1846 and 1847, when snow-fall on snow-fall cut the elder Donners and several members of this party off from the outside world, and they perished from cold and starvation.
Oh, what a tragic, harrowing history it is! At Summit Station, the loftiest point of the pass over the Sierras, in the path of our railway, engines are changed, and while the train halts passengers amuse themselves by making snowballs.

Then we begin the descent along the slopes of the mountains into the great valleys of California.

Already we have passed from the region of perpetual snows to a milder clime.