I yesterday received your note from Litchfield of 17th October. It grieves me that you are so flurried and bewildered. I hope the next time you will have got your “under clothes made.”

I long for the children & you here. I sent Martin to San Francisco this week and having got a chafe-sore in my mountain journey which festers & bothers & keeps me close, I have time to reflect how lonely it is. Pieper at dinner is a relief but even he is not very exhilerating and I actually see nobody else day in & day out, except Charles and miners who come with orders for pay and whom I pay in checks. The arrival of the stage every day from one side or the other, and a dog-baiting in the street supply the only extra-office matters of daily interest. It [is] only on Sundays that we have a horse-race. The China-men have frequent holidays, when they put on clean clothes and fire crackers but they are in a quarter by themselves, one of the environs.

I had a highly interesting journey in the mountains—exploring the South Fork. We passed through the Big Tree Grove. The big trees are in a dense forest of other trees, a few standing free. They don’t strike you as monsters at all but simply as the grandest tall trees you ever saw, although among others as tall or nearly so. You recognize them as soon as your eye falls on them, far away, not merely from the unusual size of [137]the trunk but its remarkable color—a cinnamon color, very elegant. You feel that they are distinguished strangers [who] have come down to us from another world,—but the whole forest is wonderful. I never saw and I don’t think you ever did any trees to compare with the pines, cedars (arbor vitae) and firs—generally 200 to 250 ft high and as thrifty and dense, & bright in foliage as saplings. Trunks of 4 feet are ordinary, of 6 ft not uncommon. The scenery otherwise is fine and at some points grand—terrible. One or two annual trips into it are the highest gratifications peculiar to the country that you have to look forward to. It is all horse-back & packing and the trail is rather difficult, sometimes. We went a few miles beyond the trails, which made it worse for us. We got our water measurement, the chief object of the trip—just in time. A severe storm commenced while we were at it. I rode back 40 miles in a day—which I found was too much for me—down the steep hill trails—but I am well again now. The dust is quite laid, the mountain surfaces are green, (not the trees but the grass) & we have the fine autumn weather again.