When You Urge Him For Perhaps The Twentieth Time, To Essay A Tramp With You, He Will Say He Would Like To Very Much, But Unfortunately So-And-So Renders It Impossible.

And then looking you in the eye, he will tell you how much he enjoyed tramps he took, of twenty or thirty miles - but that was before you knew him!

As if a Walker with a big "W," as Thoreau writes the word, would remain satisfied with the memory of walks of twenty years ago!

I had heard of the "Marysville Buttes," as one has heard of Madagascar, but their actual appearance on the landscape came as the greatest surprise of the trip. As I first caught sight of them when within a few miles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill. I could hardly believe my eyes and thought of mirages; for those pointed, isolated peaks rise precipitously from the floor of the Sacramento valley; in fact, their bases are only a mile or two from the river. They have every indication, even to the unscientific eye, of having been upheaved by volcanic action. Perhaps that accounts for the uncanny impression they impart.

A walk of twenty-one or two miles without food, in any kind of weather, is apt to produce an aching void. My first efforts on reaching Marysville were therefore directed to finding the sort of place where I could eat in comfort. The emphasis which Robert Louis Stevenson employs when upon this most important quest would be amusing were it not also a vital problem in your own case.

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