They think that the kodak is "the evil
eye." There was an old squaw here with whom I conversed, who had a
remarkable face on account of its wrinkled condition. She said her
name was Marie Martile, and at first she said she was one hundred
years old, and later that she was one hundred and fifty. At Reno I saw
more Indians with papooses. 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.
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