Chinese Camp, Merced County, Cal., June 20. 1883. Editors are supposed to know everything - and, indeed, if they are sharp, they may learn much, and get into fair habits of imparting what they know. I, as one of the fraternity, love to know as much as possible of what I am talking about, and hence I love to travel. We learn much from books - we all have to learn from books - but the editor should get his knowledge at first hands if possible. There are very few parts of this great country that I have not seen. It is my habit to take quiet runs, now and then, and say nothing about it. But I had never seen the Pacific coast; and though I had a pretty fair knowledge from reading, and could generally talk and write fairly about Pacific coast affairs, it never seemed that I could write as I ought till I had seen this fairy land for myself. So one evening in May I took my wife and a younger son and started on my long journey of, as we figured it out, eleven thousand miles. To-day is but the 20th of June, and we are not yet but half-way on our journey - but as I hope to be home before this letter gets into the reader's hands, I pen it; it is too cool where I write, alongside the Merced river, for the frisky mosquito to worry me much, as it has been doing all day.

I shall be pretty well on towards Behring Straits soon, and then it will be wholly too cool for these pests, I suppose; but I find every region has its own annoyances, and I suppose even there, where we lay ourselves down to sleep with the sun going round the horizon like as on a race course, instead of setting down below, as a sober sun should, some trouble or another will be found even there. People who stay at home have no idea of what the zealous traveler has to suffer. With my varied interests I have to be always on the go. I love to see nice farms, fine orchards and pretty gardens. I must make botanical collections, study the rocks and minerals, keep an eye on geology, watch for anthropological tit-bits, and keep an eye on choice bits of physical knowledge, as they happen to turn up. Forestry and tret-science generally has never to be forgotten - and then with my love of noting what men and women do and drawing lessons therefrom for use in public affairs, it will be seen that I have a fair share of the world's work to do. I am surely one of the weary travelers we hear tell of now and then - at least we should be weary if, with all our labors and discomforts, our experience was not ever new.

Today we are driving through dust so thick that we can scarcely breathe - to-morrow plodding over some dreary desert, with the alkaline winds drying our lips so that they crack and bleed whenever we smile. Now we are on the top of a snow-covered eminence, with the wind freezing us on one side, while the clear, bright sun warms us on the other; and again, we are going down along some uneven plain on the seats of a stage coach, tossing up and down and almost making the poor being wish he was an oyster, or anything but a creature with a backbone in him. One time he is among the rich and the great, with much of the fearful restrictions which ultra-fashionable life throws about him; and then again, as at this moment, trying to write an editorial by the flicker of a tallow candle, in an humble cabin, with his hands so swollen by mos-quito bites that they look like two griddle cakes, while his face in the small piece of looking-glass stuck in a crack over the door looks more like a rough, red raspberry than the handsome, smooth face he once called his own.

Sometimes with nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and thirsting for water to drink - at other times with so much of the good things of this world that your next friend is tempted to tell you that a "dose of podophyllin" will soon set you all right, and every fellow you meet tells you of a certain remedy, till you almost wish you may never have another good dinner in your life. Only a few days ago I was toiling up a mountain trail to get a view from "Glacier Point." I was favored by an "extra sure-footed pony" for the ascent. On and on we went for five hours or more. I was told to have faith in the animal - she knew more than to put herself in danger. It is a good thing to have faith. But somehow, when I turned my face aside to look at the fine trees or handsome flowers, or to glance at the glorious landscape thousands of feet below, my faith failed me, and I would have to look again at the animal's head and see how it behaved; and it was strange how it would behave. To go up a mountain trail we zigzag to and fro, and at every angle my pony would stop and look straight over, surveying the scene below as if she enjoyed it as we might, but to me looking as if she was going crazy and might at any time take a fancy for a flying leap over the precipice.

However, we had a glorious day in spite of all our little vexations, till, on returning down the mountain, we found the riderless horse of one of our botanical friends. He had chosen to ride on before, having a faster walking horse than us, and then he would dismount, collect plants and put them in his portfolio. But there was his plant press on the pommel of his saddle, but no botanist anywhere to be seen. We shouted " Doctor, Doctor," and "Yo ho! Yo ho!" till we were hoarse. Whether a bear had taken him, or an Indian had ran off with him, or he had fallen over a precipice, or some similar trouble had befallen him, was canvassed over and over again, but all this was set aside as untenable. The guide settled it all by declaring that the Doctor's "disappearance warmys-terious," and we could get no further. It tell to my lot to lead the Doctor's horse, with his plant press, down the mountain side, while my wife would every now and then ride to my side and wonder how she could meet the poor Doctor's wife when we got down to our rendezvous for the night. It spoiled all our pleasure for the rest of the day. But all was well in the end. In the dim twilight we saw our lost friend at the cabin door.

His horse had slid by him while he was gathering a plant, and no amount of " wo, John," would induce him to stop. If the Doctor walked fast, the horse walked faster, and when the Doctor ran, the horse ran too. At length the Doctor thought to head the creature off by cutting across one of the zigzag stretches, but it so happened on this occasion there was no stretch there, or he missed it among the underbrush, and there was nothing left for him to do but to work his way down the mountain side, among the rocks and around precipices, among deer brush, mountain mahogany and nutmeg bushes, which, by good luck, he accomplished with only torn pantaloons and a little scared. So there is always something to mar our pleasures some rattlesnake in every mountain, some serpent in every paradise. However, I fancy I shall have much to tell that will interest the readers of the Gardeners' Monthly before I get through. This letter is only written to let the publisher know that the Editor, so far, is still happy in plodding along on his marked out way.

T. M.