California Life Illustrated

l hundred yards, seeming as desirous to look at us as we were to look at them. On the sharp crack of a rifle in the hands of one of our passengers they changed their course, and gave us a wider berth, and soon disappeared in their own wild woods. A buck elk, with a head of full-grown horns, leaping over the hills, is a majestic looking animal. Arriving in Sacramento City at 7 o'clock P. M., I was conducted by a stranger through one vast mud-hole of nearly half a mile to the house of Dr. Grove W. Deal. I had known the doctor well in Baltimore, and loved him much; saw him about a year before embark for California in the schooner Sovereign, via Panama, and often, during a tedious voyage round Cape Horn, comforted myself with SACRAMENTO OITT. the anticipated joy of meeting him on my arrival in San Francisco. This, however, was the first sight I had got of him in California. The doctor, I had learned, had done a great deal of faithful preaching "under the oak" in Sacramento City; and prior to Brother Owen's arrival, exercised a shepherd's care over the "few sheep in the wilderness." He had also succeeded well in his practice as a physician, besides some good trading " strikes," so that I did not find him in a tent, nearly up to his knees in mud, like most of his neighbors, but occupying one of the best houses in the city. It was a small, two-story frame-house, rough boards outside, and canvas lining inside. The first floor was occupied as a store, owned by the...