26. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Directly fronting the Golden Gate, on a gently sloping foothill of the Contra Costa Hills, there are located the State University of California and the smart town of Berkeley. Of the faculty, libraries, and the general apparatus for sliding the freshman into a scholarship, it is said there are few if any places in the great West equal to the Berkeley University. San Francisco has some bone-sawyers and fine lawyers who went "through this mill"; and once in awhile one of them escaped, and may now be found cultivating 1,000-acre farms on truly scientific grounds; but wherever they are found they are proud of their Alma Mater, and generally the admiration is mutual.
11 & 27. RESTING ON THE GRADE. (On the Shasta Route.)
This
is a view of the old-time transportation days, when Wells, Fargo & Co.'s
messenger carried a gun, the passenger carried a black bottle, and the driver
carried everything ahead of him. The country, over which the traveler now skims
in ease and elegance in a day, then took, under the most favorable circumstances,
nearly a week with the very best horseflesh in the country; and in the winter,
it took—until you got there. Yet it had its joys, that long stage ride.
The traveler had time to enjoy the thousand and one charming views along the
(3)
way, the fresh, invigorating mountain air gave him an appetite that enabled him
to do justice to the excellent dinners at the old taverns, and it gave him a
much clearer notion of the vast extent of the country.