Houseboat owners who have any ideas about the management of sails could easily and with perfect safety make use of small sail to accelerate the motion of their floating houses. Usually a houseboat that is constructed for the purpose may be assumed to have, as shown in the illustration, a promenade deck covered with an awning or some similar contrivance. By the exercise of a little ingenuity, this awning may be made in square sections, each of which can be utilized as a sail in running before the wind as occasion may suggest.

Every houseboat owner will naturally provide some kind of a small boat for purposes of general utility. If a sailboat or a self-propelling launch of some kind, so much the better; but if nothing but a mere rowing skiff or canoe, it is indisper.sable for comfortable life upon the water. There is published herewith a photograph of what may be distinctively called a "cruising houseboat." It is little more than a floating cabin with sleeping accommodations for four people, but it is comparatively seaworthy, has enough sail power to enable it to work to windward, and make a still better record when the wind is abaft the beam. It can freely be run upon any beach or sand-bank that may offer a convenient resting-place for the night, and it affords in very compact shape quarters and conveniences that would seem luxurious indeed to many a camping party on shore. There is a good-sized cabin, a forecastle which may be used as a galley, and a large “stand ing room" aft, which would be the usual place for working ship, and for the ordinary pastimes of the day.

The newspapers are full of the land

T

schemes of speculators offering building lots for sale on partial payments with titles guaranteed, and all the necessary legal complications to which the householder is subjected under our common law. The houseboat owner need go to no such trouble. All the navigable waters of the American continent are open to him as building lots; he needs no title-deeds; he is exempt from the land tax; all that he has to do is to provide himself with some kind of a float, erect thereon a shelter adequate to his needs, be they simple or luxurious, and then he may moor his floating homestead in any waters that are not too much exposed to the winds of heaven to imperil the safety of himself and his household gods.

That Americans are ready to adopt the houseboat idea, and improve upon it, is proven by hundreds of letters of inquiry that have been addressed to various publications seeking information on the subject. Some of them are from people who have tried houseboating on English waters, and some are from pioneers who have made practical experiments on the St. Lawrence in summer and on Southern waters in the winter. One and all are firm believers in the houseboat as destined to achieve boundless popularity when once its advantages are fully understood. Our smaller lakes and rivers offer countless havens where, without asking leave, a houseboat may be securely moored within easy reach of markets; and it only remains for a few lovers of nature to set the fashion and we shall soon make our own an English idea that ought long since to have obtained a footing-or an anchorage-among our most popular phases of outing life.

10 stand in the Yosemite is to feel that man's cathedral-building gift is inherited from an earlier Architect, who has built for His own glory in many a wilderness; and, looking at Cathedral Rock and the Domes, known to man for only half a century, one cannot be thankful enough that the art of photography is the ally of the

modern traveler who would impart his visions and emotions to others.

In spots like these it is we prize

Our memory, feel that she hath eyes, but the camera is a better exporter of the appeal of scenery than pen or tongue.

It is the purpose of this article only to show how any one who is as far toward

the Yosemite as San Francisco can enjoy, at slight expense, a feast of tabernacles in this world-renowned reservation. The movement of modern church methods is toward free pews, and it were iniquitous if the prohibitive prices of customary modes of reaching the Yosemite should prevent the thousands who will journey to California this summer, in connection with the Christian Endeavor Convention, from worshiping in the sanctuary of the Sierras. Camping out is the cheapest, most comfortable, most refreshing way of reaching this worshipful wonderland.

It was in 1888 when the writer and another hired in Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco, a single stout horse and a light, strong buckboard, and, with a Dio Lewis tent, cooking utensils, some canned foods, a shot-gun and a rifle, drove at dusk on board the night boat sailing from San Francisco to Stockton. The horse and buckboard were secured at one dollar and twenty-five cents per day, and were to replace, from Stockton onward, the train and stage-coach, which charge for the return trip from the Yosemite nearly fifty dollars per traveler. To take a little extra time on this journey, against the proverb, was to save money. The tent, the cooking utensils, and the

ammunition were also for economic advan tage.

The distance from Stockton to the Valley is about one hundred and forty miles, and it is only on the last two days of the journey that a single horse has any difficulty in doing forty.

As we drove through it, the San Joaquin Valley was golden and glorious with the grain of the August harvest, and it was delightful to have the leisure, denied to any one who rushes to the Yosemite by train and stage-coach, to study the California ranches and their expansive and inexpensive methods. I have not yet recovered from the astonishment of seeing a reaper, drawn by twenty mules, cutting, threshing, and bagging an eighteen-foot swath of wheat. It illustrated some of our recent economic changes, and was persuasive of the possibility of the statement that the labor of one farmer is now "equal to the production of 5,500 bushels of grain." Hearts that assent to the witness, in fruitful seasons, of a Giver of all good gifts, can find Him most vividly in the alluvial valleys at the foot of the Sierras. The man who has not leisurely driven through California's wheat regions misses much of the ministry of nature.

The ranchers of the San Joaquin Valley

are most hospitable to campers-out. The corrals are at their service, and if they want to leave their tent in the wagon and sleep in haystacks, they may deposit their smoking implements-no other price and do so.

There is no part of the journey to the valley where butter, eggs, and home made bread cannot be bought most reasonably; but a horse's food is cheaper in San Francisco than on some parts of the way. A beginner at hunting has no difficulty in supplying fresh meat-rabbits, gray squirrels, and quail in quantity. All of these we shot from our moving wagon. We camped the first night on the bank of the Stanislaus River, above Oak Dale, but slept but little, excited to wakefulness by the splendor of another epiphany. Our tent was not used-so dry is the ground that it is not necessary -and, with the skies for our canopy, we were at once aware that the August meteor showers are not a myth. The blue sky of a cloudless night was brilliant with them-star-dust as thick almost as the clouds of earth-dust following our wagon during the day. Our very horse began to be occupied with astronomical observations, and proved herself in sympathy with medieval views by snorting her alarm. A swim in the river in the morning, a rabbit-steak, with grapes grown in the gravel of the hillsides, and, attaching to our front axle a chain terminated by a "shoe," on which a hind wheel might rest, as an effective brake on steep descents, we began to scale the mountains. Our route lay past Chinese Camp, riotous in the fifties with the excesses of easily gained, swiftly spent gold, and repeating in the heavily barred windows of its brick buildings the story of the Robinhood idea of property in primitive communities; past the "runways" in which the placer-miners of the mountains made gravel more fortune-productive than clay and loam to the ranchers; past patient Chinamen silting the yellow sands deserted by more covetous white men, and down a precipitous hill, till we were in the valley of the Tuolumne River. There we camped, and the next night, having scaled the long Rattlesnake Hill at Priest's, its dust zigzagged everywhere with the sharp spear-points of countless quails' feet, and puffed into mounds, in one place, by the great footprints of a bear, our bed was

among the redwoods of the upper hills. During much of that day the road was sinuous, yielding to the obstacles of gigantic forest growths; but once, heading for the heart of a dead sequoia, we found a tunnel through it wide enough to admit our wagon, and, as we looked backward at it, we wondered whether it had been christened in reverence or in jest " Gesu."

Nothing can exceed the enjoyment of a drive through the solemn Sierra forests; and at noonday to rest one's back against a tree which was a twig or a seed when Charlemagne was a lad, awakens a meditation as healthful to the spirit as is the wood's aroma to the body.

The next night we were in the Yosemite Valley. A dozen times during the day, so prodigal is nature in these hills, we had thought we detected the cleft we sought; but there was no room for doubt that we had reached our goal when the shafts pointed downward toward the gleam of the Merced issuing from the valley, and El Capitan's precipitous front of 3,000 feet rose higher and higher above our heads.

On the floor of the valley we found, well toward its upper end, a generous reservation set aside for campers. Immediately adjoining it is a large corral for horses, in charge of the official farmer; and here our faithful Peggy was set at liberty for ten days. Meantime the tent, pitched but a few feet from the banks of the river, was our home. Water as pure as water can possibly be flowed past our door; a market, half an hour's walk away, supplied us with every needed fresh food; near by was Tenayah Lake, quicksilvered by the Creator to mirror the wonderful South Dome, a granite monolith rising 5,000 feet above the valley floor, and split by some great outburst of nature's energy, in early æons, from summit to base; Glacier Rock, opposite and almost as high, echoed back our voices when, note by note, doxology or song was flung against its stony sound-board; in sight were the two leaps of the Nevada Falls; and far down in the direction of our entry to the valley the cathedral-like mass called Cathedral Rock impelled us to bow our heads and worship. The Royal Arches, immediately behind our tent, formed by the sipping down of great plates of granite, and retreating from the remainder of