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diff --git a/old/silvs10h.htm b/old/silvs10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d91d250 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/silvs10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3375 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>The Silverado Squatters</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Silverado Squatters, by Robert Louis Stevenson</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Silverado Squatters, by Robert Louis Stevenson +(#23 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Silverado Squatters + +Author: Robert Louis Stevenson + +Release Date: May, 1996 [EBook #516] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on March 12, 1996] +[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1906 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There are, +indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. It is +no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who +lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of interest. +It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Californian Coast Range, +none of its near neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It +looks down on much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time +many splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an excellent +lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais +on the one hand and Monte Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty +miles away, the open ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick +tule swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific railroad +begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and northward, for what I +know, the white head of Shasta looking down on Oregon. Three counties, +Napa County, Lake County, and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy +shoulders. Its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred +feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the soil, +where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar.<br> +<br> +Life in its shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks, and bears, +and rattle-snakes, and former mining operations, are the staple of men’s +talk. Agriculture has only begun to mount above the valley. +And though in a few years from now the whole district may be smiling +with farms, passing trains shaking the mountain to the heart, many-windowed +hotels lighting up the night like factories, and a prosperous city occupying +the site of sleepy Calistoga; yet in the mean time, around the foot +of that mountain the silence of nature reigns in a great measure unbroken, +and the people of hill and valley go sauntering about their business +as in the days before the flood.<br> +<br> +To reach Mount Saint Helena from San Francisco, the traveller has twice +to cross the bay: once by the busy Oakland Ferry, and again, after an +hour or so of the railway, from Vallejo junction to Vallejo. Thence +he takes rail once more to mount the long green strath of Napa Valley.<br> +<br> +In all the contractions and expansions of that inland sea, the Bay of +San Francisco, there can be few drearier scenes than the Vallejo Ferry. +Bald shores and a low, bald islet inclose the sea; through the narrows +the tide bubbles, muddy like a river. When we made the passage +(bound, although yet we knew it not, for Silverado) the steamer jumped, +and the black buoys were dancing in the jabble; the ocean breeze blew +killing chill; and, although the upper sky was still unflecked with +vapour, the sea fogs were pouring in from seaward, over the hilltops +of Marin county, in one great, shapeless, silver cloud.<br> +<br> +South Vallejo is typical of many Californian towns. It was a blunder; +the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still such a young +place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for +its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a number +of drinking saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy pools where the +frogs keep up their croaking, and even at high noon the entire absence +of any human face or voice - these are the marks of South Vallejo. +Yet there was a tall building beside the pier, labelled the <i>Star</i> +<i>Flour</i> <i>Mills</i>; and sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close +along shore, waiting for their cargo. Soon these would be plunging +round the Horn, soon the flour from the <i>Star Flour Mills</i> would +be landed on the wharves of Liverpool. For that, too, is one of +England’s outposts; thither, to this gaunt mill, across the Atlantic +and Pacific deeps and round about the icy Horn, this crowd of great, +three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing nothing, and return with +bread.<br> +<br> +The Frisby House, for that was the name of the hotel, was a place of +fallen fortunes, like the town. It was now given up to labourers, +and partly ruinous. At dinner there was the ordinary display of +what is called in the west a <i>two-bit house</i>: the tablecloth checked +red and white, the plague of flies, the wire hencoops over the dishes, +the great variety and invariable vileness of the food and the rough +coatless men devoting it in silence. In our bedroom, the stove +would not burn, though it would smoke; and while one window would not +open, the other would not shut. There was a view on a bit of empty +road, a few dark houses, a donkey wandering with its shadow on a slope, +and a blink of sea, with a tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. +All about that dreary inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus.<br> +<br> +Early the next morning we mounted the hill along a wooden footway, bridging +one marish spot after another. Here and there, as we ascended, +we passed a house embowered in white roses. More of the bay became +apparent, and soon the blue peak of Tamalpais rose above the green level +of the island opposite. It told us we were still but a little +way from the city of the Golden Gates, already, at that hour, beginning +to awake among the sand-hills. It called to us over the waters +as with the voice of a bird. Its stately head, blue as a sapphire +on the paler azure of the sky, spoke to us of wider outlooks and the +bright Pacific. For Tamalpais stands sentry, like a lighthouse, +over the Golden Gates, between the bay and the open ocean, and looks +down indifferently on both. Even as we saw and hailed it from +Vallejo, seamen, far out at sea, were scanning it with shaded eyes; +and, as if to answer to the thought, one of the great ships below began +silently to clothe herself with white sails, homeward bound for England.<br> +<br> +For some way beyond Vallejo the railway led us through bald green pastures. +On the west the rough highlands of Marin shut off the ocean; in the +midst, in long, straggling, gleaming arms, the bay died out among the +grass; there were few trees and few enclosures; the sun shone wide over +open uplands, the displumed hills stood clear against the sky. +But by-and-by these hills began to draw nearer on either hand, and first +thicket and then wood began to clothe their sides; and soon we were +away from all signs of the sea’s neighbourhood, mounting an inland, +irrigated valley. A great variety of oaks stood, now severally, +now in a becoming grove, among the fields and vineyards. The towns +were compact, in about equal proportions, of bright, new wooden houses +and great and growing forest trees; and the chapel bell on the engine +sounded most festally that sunny Sunday, as we drew up at one green +town after another, with the townsfolk trooping in their Sunday’s +best to see the strangers, with the sun sparkling on the clean houses, +and great domes of foliage humming overhead in the breeze.<br> +<br> +This pleasant Napa Valley is, at its north end, blockaded by our mountain. +There, at Calistoga, the railroad ceases, and the traveller who intends +faring farther, to the Geysers or to the springs in Lake County, must +cross the spurs of the mountain by stage. Thus, Mount Saint Helena +is not only a summit, but a frontier; and, up to the time of writing, +it has stayed the progress of the iron horse.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PART I - IN THE VALLEY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I - CALISTOGA<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +It is difficult for a European to imagine Calistoga, the whole place +is so new, and of such an accidental pattern; the very name, I hear, +was invented at a supper-party by the man who found the springs.<br> +<br> +The railroad and the highway come up the valley about parallel to one +another. The street of Calistoga joins the perpendicular to both +- a wide street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there a verandah +over the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and there lounging +townsfolk. Other streets are marked out, and most likely named; +for these towns in the New World begin with a firm resolve to grow larger, +Washington and Broadway, and then First and Second, and so forth, being +boldly plotted out as soon as the community indulges in a plan. +But, in the meanwhile, all the life and most of the houses of Calistoga +are concentrated upon that street between the railway station and the +road. I never heard it called by any name, but I will hazard a +guess that it is either Washington or Broadway. Here are the blacksmith’s, +the chemist’s, the general merchant’s, and Kong Sam Kee, +the Chinese laundryman’s; here, probably, is the office of the +local paper (for the place has a paper - they all have papers); and +here certainly is one of the hotels, Cheeseborough’s, whence the +daring Foss, a man dear to legend, starts his horses for the Geysers.<br> +<br> +It must be remembered that we are here in a land of stage-drivers and +highwaymen: a land, in that sense, like England a hundred years ago. +The highway robber - road-agent, he is quaintly called - is still busy +in these parts. The fame of Vasquez is still young. Only +a few years go, the Lakeport stage was robbed a mile or two from Calistoga. +In 1879, the dentist of Mendocino City, fifty miles away upon the coast, +suddenly threw off the garments of his trade, like Grindoff, in <i>The +Miller and his Men</i>, and flamed forth in his second dress as a captain +of banditti. A great robbery was followed by a long chase, a chase +of days if not of weeks, among the intricate hill-country; and the chase +was followed by much desultory fighting, in which several - and the +dentist, I believe, amongst the number - bit the dust. The grass +was springing for the first time, nourished upon their blood, when I +arrived in Calistoga. I am reminded of another highwayman of that +same year. “He had been unwell,” so ran his humorous +defence, “and the doctor told him to take something, so he took +the express-box.”<br> +<br> +The cultus of the stage-coachman always flourishes highest where there +are thieves on the road, and where the guard travels armed, and the +stage is not only a link between country and city, and the vehicle of +news, but has a faint warfaring aroma, like a man who should be brother +to a soldier. California boasts her famous stage-drivers, and +among the famous Foss is not forgotten. Along the unfenced, abominable +mountain roads, he launches his team with small regard to human life +or the doctrine of probabilities. Flinching travellers, who behold +themselves coasting eternity at every corner, look with natural admiration +at their driver’s huge, impassive, fleshy countenance. He +has the very face for the driver in Sam Weller’s anecdote, who +upset the election party at the required point. Wonderful tales +are current of his readiness and skill. One in particular, of +how one of his horses fell at a ticklish passage of the road, and how +Foss let slip the reins, and, driving over the fallen animal, arrived +at the next stage with only three. This I relate as I heard it, +without guarantee.<br> +<br> +I only saw Foss once, though, strange as it may sound, I have twice +talked with him. He lives out of Calistoga, at a ranche called +Fossville. One evening, after he was long gone home, I dropped +into Cheeseborough’s, and was asked if I should like to speak +with Mr. Foss. Supposing that the interview was impossible, and +that I was merely called upon to subscribe the general sentiment, I +boldly answered “Yes.” Next moment, I had one instrument +at my ear, another at my mouth and found myself, with nothing in the +world to say, conversing with a man several miles off among desolate +hills. Foss rapidly and somewhat plaintively brought the conversation +to an end; and he returned to his night’s grog at Fossville, while +I strolled forth again on Calistoga high street. But it was an +odd thing that here, on what we are accustomed to consider the very +skirts of civilization, I should have used the telephone for the first +time in my civilized career. So it goes in these young countries; +telephones, and telegraphs, and newspapers, and advertisements running +far ahead among the Indians and the grizzly bears.<br> +<br> +Alone, on the other side of the railway, stands the Springs Hotel, with +its attendant cottages. The floor of the valley is extremely level +to the very roots of the hills; only here and there a hillock, crowned +with pines, rises like the barrow of some chieftain famed in war; and +right against one of these hillocks is the Springs Hotel - is or was; +for since I was there the place has been destroyed by fire, and has +risen again from its ashes. A lawn runs about the house, and the +lawn is in its turn surrounded by a system of little five-roomed cottages, +each with a verandah and a weedy palm before the door. Some of +the cottages are let to residents, and these are wreathed in flowers. +The rest are occupied by ordinary visitors to the Hotel; and a very +pleasant way this is, by which you have a little country cottage of +your own, without domestic burthens, and by the day or week.<br> +<br> +The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena is full of sulphur and +of boiling springs. The Geysers are famous; they were the great +health resort of the Indians before the coming of the whites. +Lake County is dotted with spas; Hot Springs and White Sulphur Springs +are the names of two stations on the Napa Valley railroad; and Calistoga +itself seems to repose on a mere film above a boiling, subterranean +lake. At one end of the hotel enclosure are the springs from which +it takes its name, hot enough to scald a child seriously while I was +there. At the other end, the tenant of a cottage sank a well, +and there also the water came up boiling. It keeps this end of +the valley as warm as a toast. I have gone across to the hotel +a little after five in the morning, when a sea fog from the Pacific +was hanging thick and gray, and dark and dirty overhead, and found the +thermometer had been up before me, and had already climbed among the +nineties; and in the stress of the day it was sometimes too hot to move +about.<br> +<br> +But in spite of this heat from above and below, doing one on both sides, +Calistoga was a pleasant place to dwell in; beautifully green, for it +was then that favoured moment in the Californian year, when the rains +are over and the dusty summer has not yet set in; often visited by fresh +airs, now from the mountain, now across Sonoma from the sea; very quiet, +very idle, very silent but for the breezes and the cattle bells afield. +And there was something satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain +that enclosed us to the north: whether it stood, robed in sunshine, +quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the +day; or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing, +trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue.<br> +<br> +The tangled, woody, and almost trackless foot-hills that enclose the +valley, shutting it off from Sonoma on the west, and from Yolo on the +east - rough as they were in outline, dug out by winter streams, crowned +by cliffy bluffs and nodding pine trees - wore dwarfed into satellites +by the bulk and bearing of Mount Saint Helena. She over-towered +them by two-thirds of her own stature. She excelled them by the +boldness of her profile. Her great bald summit, clear of trees +and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected kinship with the +dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser hill-tops.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II - THE PETRIFIED FOREST<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +We drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in the afternoon. +The sun warmed me to the heart. A broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly +down the valley, laden with perfume. Up at the top stood Mount +Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed spurs, +and radiating warmth. Once we saw it framed in a grove of tall +and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line and colour a finished composition. +We passed a cow stretched by the roadside, her bell slowly beating time +to the movement of her ruminating jaws, her big red face crawled over +by half a dozen flies, a monument of content.<br> +<br> +A little farther, and we struck to the left up a mountain road, and +for two hours threaded one valley after another, green, tangled, full +of noble timber, giving us every now and again a sight of Mount Saint +Helena and the blue hilly distance, and crossed by many streams, through +which we splashed to the carriage-step. To the right or the left, +there was scarce any trace of man but the road we followed; I think +we passed but one ranchero’s house in the whole distance, and +that was closed and smokeless. But we had the society of these +bright streams - dazzlingly clear, as is their wont, splashing from +the wheels in diamonds, and striking a lively coolness through the sunshine. +And what with the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of foliage +tossing in the breeze, the glimpses of distance, the descents into seemingly +impenetrable thickets, the continual dodging of the road which made +haste to plunge again into the covert, we had a fine sense of woods, +and spring-time, and the open air.<br> +<br> +Our driver gave me a lecture by the way on Californian trees - a thing +I was much in need of, having fallen among painters who know the name +of nothing, and Mexicans who know the name of nothing in English. +He taught me the madrona, the manzanita, the buck-eye, the maple; he +showed me the crested mountain quail; he showed me where some young +redwoods were already spiring heavenwards from the ruins of the old; +for in this district all had already perished: redwoods and redskins, +the two noblest indigenous living things, alike condemned.<br> +<br> +At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign +upon it like an inn. “The Petrified Forest. Proprietor: +C. Evans,” ran the legend. Within, on a knoll of sward, +was the house of the proprietor, and another smaller house hard by to +serve as a museum, where photographs and petrifactions were retailed. +It was a pure little isle of touristry among these solitary hills.<br> +<br> +The proprietor was a brave old white-faced Swede. He had wandered +this way, Heaven knows how, and taken up his acres - I forget how many +years ago - all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits +in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, useless years +of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick. +Without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good +from that; without doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life +of Jack ashore. But at the end of these adventures, here he came; +and, the place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make a new life of +it, far from crimps and the salt sea. And the very sight of his +ranche had done him good. It was “the handsomest spot in +the Californy mountains.” “Isn’t it handsome, +now?” he said. Every penny he makes goes into that ranche +to make it handsomer. Then the climate, with the sea-breeze every +afternoon in the hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the sciatica; +and his sister and niece were now domesticated with him for company +- or, rather, the niece came only once in the two days, teaching music +the meanwhile in the valley. And then, for a last piece of luck, +“the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains” had produced +a petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest figure of +half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital when he first came +there with an axe and a sciatica.<br> +<br> +This tardy favourite of fortune - hobbling a little, I think, as if +in memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I can remember +of the sea - thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to escort +us up the hill behind his house.<br> +<br> +“Who first found the forest?” asked my wife.<br> +<br> +“The first? I was that man,” said he. “I +was cleaning up the pasture for my beasts, when I found <i>this</i>” +- kicking a great redwood seven feet in diameter, that lay there on +its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark, all changed into gray +stone, with veins of quartz between what had been the layers of the +wood.<br> +<br> +“Were you surprised?”<br> +<br> +“Surprised? No! What would I be surprised about? +What did I know about petrifactions - following the sea? Petrifaction! +There was no such word in my language! I knew about putrifaction, +though! I thought it was a stone; so would you, if you was cleaning +up pasture.”<br> +<br> +And now he had a theory of his own, which I did not quite grasp, except +that the trees had not “grewed” there. But he mentioned, +with evident pride, that he differed from all the scientific people +who had visited the spot; and he flung about such words as “tufa” +and “scilica” with careless freedom.<br> +<br> +When I mentioned I was from Scotland, “My old country,” +he said; “my old country” - with a smiling look and a tone +of real affection in his voice. I was mightily surprised, for +he was obviously Scandinavian, and begged him to explain. It seemed +he had learned his English and done nearly all his sailing in Scotch +ships. “Out of Glasgow,” said he, “or Greenock; +but that’s all the same - they all hail from Glasgow.” And +he was so pleased with me for being a Scotsman, and his adopted compatriot, +that he made me a present of a very beautiful piece of petrifaction +- I believe the most beautiful and portable he had.<br> +<br> +Here was a man, at least, who was a Swede, a Scot, and an American, +acknowledging some kind allegiance to three lands. Mr. Wallace’s +Scoto-Circassian will not fail to come before the reader. I have +myself met and spoken with a Fifeshire German, whose combination of +abominable accents struck me dumb. But, indeed, I think we all +belong to many countries. And perhaps this habit of much travel, +and the engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia +of ancient nations.<br> +<br> +And the forest itself? Well, on a tangled, briery hillside - for +the pasture would bear a little further cleaning up, to my eyes - there +lie scattered thickly various lengths of petrified trunk, such as the +one already mentioned. It is very curious, of course, and ancient +enough, if that were all. Doubtless, the heart of the geologist +beats quicker at the sight; but, for my part, I was mightily unmoved. +Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment.<br> +<br> +<br> +“There’s nothing under heaven so blue,<br> +That’s fairly worth the travelling to.”<br> +<br> +<br> +But, fortunately, Heaven rewards us with many agreeable prospects and +adventures by the way; and sometimes, when we go out to see a petrified +forest, prepares a far more delightful curiosity, in the form of Mr. +Evans, whom may all prosperity attend throughout a long and green old +age.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III - NAPA WINE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I was interested in Californian wine. Indeed, I am interested +in all wines, and have been all my life, from the raisin wine that a +schoolfellow kept secreted in his play-box up to my last discovery, +those notable Valtellines, that once shone upon the board of Caesar.<br> +<br> +Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch with dread the shadows falling on +the age: how the unconquerable worm invades the sunny terraces of France, +and Bordeaux is no more, and the Rhone a mere Arabia Petraea. +Château Neuf is dead, and I have never tasted it; Hermitage - +a hermitage indeed from all life’s sorrows - lies expiring by +the river. And in the place of these imperial elixirs, beautiful +to every sense, gem-hued, flower-scented, dream-compellers:- behold +upon the quays at Cette the chemicals arrayed; behold the analyst at +Marseilles, raising hands in obsecration, attesting god Lyoeus, and +the vats staved in, and the dishonest wines poured forth among the sea. +It is not Pan only; Bacchus, too, is dead.<br> +<br> +If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white +dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing +their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences - for a bottle +of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect - if wine +is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions, +and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where +the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the +schoolboy “took his whack,” like liquorice water. +And at the same time, we look timidly forward, with a spark of hope, +to where the new lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green +with vineyards. A nice point in human history falls to be decided +by Californian and Australian wines.<br> +<br> +Wine in California is still in the experimental stage; and when you +taste a vintage, grave economical questions are involved. The +beginning of vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the precious +metals: the wine-grower also “Prospects.” One corner of +land after another is tried with one kind of grape after another. +This is a failure; that is better; a third best. So, bit by bit, +they grope about for their Clos Vougeot and Lafite. Those lodes +and pockets of earth, more precious than the precious ores, that yield +inimitable fragrance and soft fire; those virtuous Bonanzas, where the +soil has sublimated under sun and stars to something finer, and the +wine is bottled poetry: these still lie undiscovered; chaparral conceals, +thicket embowers them; the miner chips the rock and wanders farther, +and the grizzly muses undisturbed. But there they bide their hour, +awaiting their Columbus; and nature nurses and prepares them. +The smack of Californian earth shall linger on the palate of your grandson.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine; the best that I have tasted +better than a Beaujolais, and not unlike. But the trade is poor; +it lives from hand to mouth, putting its all into experiments, and forced +to sell its vintages. To find one properly matured, and bearing +its own name, is to be fortune’s favourite.<br> +<br> +Bearing its own name, I say, and dwell upon the innuendo.<br> +<br> +“You want to know why California wine is not drunk in the States?” +a San Francisco wine merchant said to me, after he had shown me through +his premises. “Well, here’s the reason.”<br> +<br> +And opening a large cupboard, fitted with many little drawers, he proceeded +to shower me all over with a great variety of gorgeously tinted labels, +blue, red, or yellow, stamped with crown or coronet, and hailing from +such a profusion of <i>clos</i> and <i>chateaux</i>, that a single department +could scarce have furnished forth the names. But it was strange +that all looked unfamiliar.<br> +<br> +“Chateau X-?” said I. “I never heard of that.”<br> +<br> +“I dare say not,” said he. “I had been reading +one of X-‘s novels.”<br> +<br> +They were all castles in Spain! But that sure enough is the reason +why California wine is not drunk in the States.<br> +<br> +Napa valley has been long a seat of the wine-growing industry. +It did not here begin, as it does too often, in the low valley lands +along the river, but took at once to the rough foot-hills, where alone +it can expect to prosper. A basking inclination, and stones, to +be a reservoir of the day’s heat, seem necessary to the soil for +wine; the grossness of the earth must be evaporated, its marrow daily +melted and refined for ages; until at length these clods that break +below our footing, and to the eye appear but common earth, are truly +and to the perceiving mind, a masterpiece of nature. The dust +of Richebourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis of the +dust! Not man himself can seem a stranger child of that brown, +friable powder, than the blood and sun in that old flask behind the +faggots.<br> +<br> +A Californian vineyard, one of man’s outposts in the wilderness, +has features of its own. There is nothing here to remind you of +the Rhine or Rhone, of the low <i>côte d’or</i>, or the +infamous and scabby deserts of Champagne; but all is green, solitary, +covert. We visited two of them, Mr. Schram’s and Mr. M’Eckron’s, +sharing the same glen.<br> +<br> +Some way down the valley below Calistoga, we turned sharply to the south +and plunged into the thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly mounting; +a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough perhaps after +the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead and on all sides +a bower of green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still flower-bespangled +by the early season, where thimble-berry played the part of our English +hawthorn, and the buck-eyes were putting forth their twisted horns of +blossom: through all this, we struggled toughly upwards, canted to and +fro by the roughness of the trail, and continually switched across the +face by sprays of leaf or blossom. The last is no great inconvenience +at home; but here in California it is a matter of some moment. +For in all woods and by every wayside there prospers an abominable shrub +or weed, called poison-oak, whose very neighbourhood is venomous to +some, and whose actual touch is avoided by the most impervious.<br> +<br> +The two houses, with their vineyards, stood each in a green niche of +its own in this steep and narrow forest dell. Though they were +so near, there was already a good difference in level; and Mr. M’Eckron’s +head must be a long way under the feet of Mr. Schram. No more +had been cleared than was necessary for cultivation; close around each +oasis ran the tangled wood; the glen enfolds them; there they lie basking +in sun and silence, concealed from all but the clouds and the mountain +birds.<br> +<br> +Mr. M’Eckron’s is a bachelor establishment; a little bit +of a wooden house, a small cellar hard by in the hillside, and a patch +of vines planted and tended single-handed by himself. He had but +recently began; his vines were young, his business young also; but I +thought he had the look of the man who succeeds. He hailed from +Greenock: he remembered his father putting him inside Mons Meg, and +that touched me home; and we exchanged a word or two of Scotch, which +pleased me more than you would fancy.<br> +<br> +Mr. Schram’s, on the other hand, is the oldest vineyard in the +valley, eighteen years old, I think; yet he began a penniless barber, +and even after he had broken ground up here with his black malvoisies, +continued for long to tramp the valley with his razor. Now, his +place is the picture of prosperity: stuffed birds in the verandah, cellars +far dug into the hillside, and resting on pillars like a bandit’s +cave:- all trimness, varnish, flowers, and sunshine, among the tangled +wildwood. Stout, smiling Mrs. Schram, who has been to Europe and +apparently all about the States for pleasure, entertained Fanny in the +verandah, while I was tasting wines in the cellar. To Mr. Schram +this was a solemn office; his serious gusto warmed my heart; prosperity +had not yet wholly banished a certain neophite and girlish trepidation, +and he followed every sip and read my face with proud anxiety. +I tasted all. I tasted every variety and shade of Schramberger, +red and white Schramberger, Burgundy Schramberger, Schramberger Hock, +Schramberger Golden Chasselas, the latter with a notable bouquet, and +I fear to think how many more. Much of it goes to London - most, +I think; and Mr. Schram has a great notion of the English taste.<br> +<br> +In this wild spot, I did not feel the sacredness of ancient cultivation. +It was still raw, it was no Marathon, and no Johannisberg; yet the stirring +sunlight, and the growing vines, and the vats and bottles in the cavern, +made a pleasant music for the mind. Here, also, earth’s +cream was being skimmed and garnered; and the London customers can taste, +such as it is, the tang of the earth in this green valley. So +local, so quintessential is a wine, that it seems the very birds in +the verandah might communicate a flavour, and that romantic cellar influence +the bottle next to be uncorked in Pimlico, and the smile of jolly Mr. +Schram might mantle in the glass.<br> +<br> +But these are but experiments. All things in this new land are +moving farther on: the wine-vats and the miner’s blasting tools +but picket for a night, like Bedouin pavillions; and to-morrow, to fresh +woods! This stir of change and these perpetual echoes of the moving +footfall, haunt the land. Men move eternally, still chasing Fortune; +and, fortune found, still wander. As we drove back to Calistoga, +the road lay empty of mere passengers, but its green side was dotted +with the camps of travelling families: one cumbered with a great waggonful +of household stuff, settlers going to occupy a ranche they had taken +up in Mendocino, or perhaps Tehama County; another, a party in dust +coats, men and women, whom we found camped in a grove on the roadside, +all on pleasure bent, with a Chinaman to cook for them, and who waved +their hands to us as we drove by.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV - THE SCOT ABROAD<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A few pages back, I wrote that a man belonged, in these days, to a variety +of countries; but the old land is still the true love, the others are +but pleasant infidelities. Scotland is indefinable; it has no +unity except upon the map. Two languages, many dialects, innumerable +forms of piety, and countless local patriotisms and prejudices, part +us among ourselves more widely than the extreme east and west of that +great continent of America. When I am at home, I feel a man from +Glasgow to be something like a rival, a man from Barra to be more than +half a foreigner. Yet let us meet in some far country, and, whether +we hail from the braes of Manor or the braes of Mar, some ready-made +affection joins us on the instant. It is not race. Look +at us. One is Norse, one Celtic, and another Saxon. It is +not community of tongue. We have it not among ourselves; and we +have it almost to perfection, with English, or Irish, or American. +It is no tie of faith, for we detest each other’s errors. +And yet somewhere, deep down in the heart of each one of us, something +yearns for the old land, and the old kindly people.<br> +<br> +Of all mysteries of the human heart, this is perhaps the most inscrutable. +There is no special loveliness in that gray country, with its rainy, +sea-beat archipelago; its fields of dark mountains; its unsightly places, +black with coal; its treeless, sour, unfriendly looking corn-lands; +its quaint, gray, castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and +the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat. I do not +even know if I desire to live there; but let me hear, in some far land, +a kindred voice sing out, “Oh, why left I my hame?” and +it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and no society +of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my country. +And though I think I would rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of +hearts I long to be buried among good Scots clods. I will say +it fairly, it grows on me with every year: there are no stars so lovely +as Edinburgh street-lamps. When I forget thee, auld Reekie, may +my right hand forget its cunning!<br> +<br> +The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotchman. You must +pay for it in many ways, as for all other advantages on earth. +You have to learn the paraphrases and the shorter catechism; you generally +take to drink; your youth, as far as I can find out, is a time of louder +war against society, of more outcry and tears and turmoil, than if you +had been born, for instance, in England. But somehow life is warmer +and closer; the hearth burns more redly; the lights of home shine softer +on the rainy street; the very names, endeared in verse and music, cling +nearer round our hearts. An Englishman may meet an Englishman +to-morrow, upon Chimborazo, and neither of them care; but when the Scotch +wine-grower told me of Mons Meg, it was like magic.<br> +<br> +<br> +“From the dim shieling on the misty island<br> +Mountains divide us, and a world of seas;<br> +Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,<br> +And we, in dreams, behold the Hebrides.”<br> +<br> +<br> +And, Highland and Lowland, all our hearts are Scotch.<br> +<br> +Only a few days after I had seen M’Eckron, a message reached me +in my cottage. It was a Scotchman who had come down a long way +from the hills to market. He had heard there was a countryman +in Calistoga, and came round to the hotel to see him. We said +a few words to each other; we had not much to say - should never have +seen each other had we stayed at home, separated alike in space and +in society; and then we shook hands, and he went his way again to his +ranche among the hills, and that was all.<br> +<br> +Another Scotchman there was, a resident, who for the more love of the +common country, douce, serious, religious man, drove me all about the +valley, and took as much interest in me as if I had been his son: more, +perhaps; for the son has faults too keenly felt, while the abstract +countryman is perfect - like a whiff of peats.<br> +<br> +And there was yet another. Upon him I came suddenly, as he was +calmly entering my cottage, his mind quite evidently bent on plunder: +a man of about fifty, filthy, ragged, roguish, with a chimney-pot hat +and a tail coat, and a pursing of his mouth that might have been envied +by an elder of the kirk. He had just such a face as I have seen +a dozen times behind the plate.<br> +<br> +“Hullo, sir!” I cried. “Where are you going?”<br> +<br> +He turned round without a quiver.<br> +<br> +“You’re a Scotchman, sir?” he said gravely. +“So am I; I come from Aberdeen. This is my card,” +presenting me with a piece of pasteboard which he had raked out of some +gutter in the period of the rains. “I was just examining +this palm,” he continued, indicating the misbegotten plant before +our door, “which is the largest sp<i>a</i>cimen I have yet observed +in Califoarnia.”<br> +<br> +There were four or five larger within sight. But where was the +use of argument? He produced a tape-line, made me help him to +measure the tree at the level of the ground, and entered the figures +in a large and filthy pocket-book, all with the gravity of Solomon. +He then thanked me profusely, remarking that such little services were +due between countrymen; shook hands with me, “for add lang syne,” +as he said; and took himself solemnly away, radiating dirt and humbug +as he went.<br> +<br> +A month or two after this encounter of mine, there came a Scot to Sacramento +- perhaps from Aberdeen. Anyway, there never was any one more +Scotch in this wide world. He could sing and dance, and drink, +I presume; and he played the pipes with vigour and success. All +the Scotch in Sacramento became infatuated with him, and spent their +spare time and money, driving him about in an open cab, between drinks, +while he blew himself scarlet at the pipes. This is a very sad +story. After he had borrowed money from every one, he and his +pipes suddenly disappeared from Sacramento, and when I last heard, the +police were looking for him.<br> +<br> +I cannot say how this story amused me, when I felt myself so thoroughly +ripe on both sides to be duped in the same way.<br> +<br> +It is at least a curious thing, to conclude, that the races which wander +widest, Jews and Scotch, should be the most clannish in the world. +But perhaps these two are cause and effect: “For ye were strangers +in the land of Egypt.”<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +PART II - WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I. - TO INTRODUCE MR. KELMAR<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +One thing in this new country very particularly strikes a stranger, +and that is the number of antiquities. Already there have been +many cycles of population succeeding each other, and passing away and +leaving behind them relics. These, standing on into changed times, +strike the imagination as forcibly as any pyramid or feudal tower. +The towns, like the vineyards, are experimentally founded: they grow +great and prosper by passing occasions; and when the lode comes to an +end, and the miners move elsewhere, the town remains behind them, like +Palmyra in the desert. I suppose there are, in no country in the +world, so many deserted towns as here in California.<br> +<br> +The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena, now so quiet and sylvan, +was once alive with mining camps and villages. Here there would +be two thousand souls under canvas; there one thousand or fifteen hundred +ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of comfortable houses. But +the luck had failed, the mines petered out; and the army of miners had +departed, and left this quarter of the world to the rattlesnakes and +deer and grizzlies, and to the slower but steadier advance of husbandry.<br> +<br> +It was with an eye on one of these deserted places, Pine Flat, on the +Geysers road, that we had come first to Calistoga. There is something +singularly enticing in the idea of going, rent-free, into a ready-made +house. And to the British merchant, sitting at home at ease, it +may appear that, with such a roof over your head and a spring of clear +water hard by, the whole problem of the squatter’s existence would +be solved. Food, however, has yet to be considered, I will go +as far as most people on tinned meats; some of the brightest moments +of my life were passed over tinned mulli-gatawney in the cabin of a +sixteen-ton schooner, storm-stayed in Portree Bay; but after suitable +experiments, I pronounce authoritatively that man cannot live by tins +alone. Fresh meat must be had on an occasion. It is true +that the great Foss, driving by along the Geysers road, wooden-faced, +but glorified with legend, might have been induced to bring us meat, +but the great Foss could hardly bring us milk. To take a cow would +have involved taking a field of grass and a milkmaid; after which it +would have been hardly worth while to pause, and we might have added +to our colony a flock of sheep and an experienced butcher.<br> +<br> +It is really very disheartening how we depend on other people in this +life. “Mihi est propositum,” as you may see by the +motto, “id quod regibus;” and behold it cannot be carried +out, unless I find a neighbour rolling in cattle.<br> +<br> +Now, my principal adviser in this matter was one whom I will call Kelmar. +That was not what he called himself, but as soon as I set eyes on him, +I knew it was or ought to be his name; I am sure it will be his name +among the angels. Kelmar was the store-keeper, a Russian Jew, +good-natured, in a very thriving way of business, and, on equal terms, +one of the most serviceable of men. He also had something of the +expression of a Scotch country elder, who, by some peculiarity, should +chance to be a Hebrew. He had a projecting under lip, with which +he continually smiled, or rather smirked. Mrs. Kelmar was a singularly +kind woman; and the oldest son had quite a dark and romantic bearing, +and might be heard on summer evenings playing sentimental airs on the +violin.<br> +<br> +I had no idea, at the time I made his acquaintance, what an important +person Kelmar was. But the Jew store-keepers of California, profiting +at once by the needs and habits of the people, have made themselves +in too many cases the tyrants of the rural population. Credit +is offered, is pressed on the new customer, and when once he is beyond +his depth, the tune changes, and he is from thenceforth a white slave. +I believe, even from the little I saw, that Kelmar, if he choose to +put on the screw, could send half the settlers packing in a radius of +seven or eight miles round Calistoga. These are continually paying +him, but are never suffered to get out of debt. He palms dull +goods upon them, for they dare not refuse to buy; he goes and dines +with them when he is on an outing, and no man is loudlier welcomed; +he is their family friend, the director of their business, and, to a +degree elsewhere unknown in modern days, their king.<br> +<br> +For some reason, Kelmar always shook his head at the mention of Pine +Flat, and for some days I thought he disapproved of the whole scheme +and was proportionately sad. One fine morning, however, he met +me, wreathed in smiles. He had found the very place for me - Silverado, +another old mining town, right up the mountain. Rufe Hanson, the +hunter, could take care of us - fine people the Hansons; we should be +close to the Toll House, where the Lakeport stage called daily; it was +the best place for my health, besides. Rufe had been consumptive, +and was now quite a strong man, ain’t it? In short, the +place and all its accompaniments seemed made for us on purpose.<br> +<br> +He took me to his back door, whence, as from every point of Calistoga, +Mount Saint Helena could be seen towering in the air. There, in +the nick, just where the eastern foothills joined the mountain, and +she herself began to rise above the zone of forest - there was Silverado. +The name had already pleased me; the high station pleased me still more. +I began to inquire with some eagerness. It was but a little while +ago that Silverado was a great place. The mine - a silver mine, +of course - had promised great things. There was quite a lively +population, with several hotels and boarding-houses; and Kelmar himself +had opened a branch store, and done extremely well - “Ain’t +it?” he said, appealing to his wife. And she said, “Yes; +extremely well.” Now there was no one living in the town but Rufe +the hunter; and once more I heard Rufe’s praises by the yard, +and this time sung in chorus.<br> +<br> +I could not help perceiving at the time that there was something underneath; +that no unmixed desire to have us comfortably settled had inspired the +Kelmars with this flow of words. But I was impatient to be gone, +to be about my kingly project; and when we were offered seats in Kelmar’s +waggon, I accepted on the spot. The plan of their next Sunday’s +outing took them, by good fortune, over the border into Lake County. +They would carry us so far, drop us at the Toll House, present us to +the Hansons, and call for us again on Monday morning early.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II - FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +We were to leave by six precisely; that was solemnly pledged on both +sides; and a messenger came to us the last thing at night, to remind +us of the hour. But it was eight before we got clear of Calistoga: +Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, a friend of theirs whom we named Abramina, her +little daughter, my wife, myself, and, stowed away behind us, a cluster +of ship’s coffee-kettles. These last were highly ornamental +in the sheen of their bright tin, but I could invent no reason for their +presence. Our carriageful reckoned up, as near as we could get +at it, some three hundred years to the six of us. Four of the +six, besides, were Hebrews. But I never, in all my life, was conscious +of so strong an atmosphere of holiday. No word was spoken but +of pleasure; and even when we drove in silence, nods and smiles went +round the party like refreshments.<br> +<br> +The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Close at the zenith rode +the belated moon, still clearly visible, and, along one margin, even +bright. The wind blew a gale from the north; the trees roared; +the corn and the deep grass in the valley fled in whitening surges; +the dust towered into the air along the road and dispersed like the +smoke of battle. It was clear in our teeth from the first, and +for all the windings of the road it managed to keep clear in our teeth +until the end.<br> +<br> +For some two miles we rattled through the valley, skirting the eastern +foothills; then we struck off to the right, through haugh-land, and +presently, crossing a dry water-course, entered the Toll road, or, to +be more local, entered on “the grade.” The road mounts +the near shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, bound northward into Lake County. +In one place it skirts along the edge of a narrow and deep canyon, filled +with trees, and I was glad, indeed, not to be driven at this point by +the dashing Foss. Kelmar, with his unvarying smile, jogging to +the motion of the trap, drove for all the world like a good, plain, +country clergyman at home; and I profess I blessed him unawares for +his timidity.<br> +<br> +Vineyards and deep meadows, islanded and framed with thicket, gave place +more and more as we ascended to woods of oak and madrona, dotted with +enormous pines. It was these pines, as they shot above the lower +wood, that produced that pencilling of single trees I had so often remarked +from the valley. Thence, looking up and from however far, each +fir stands separate against the sky no bigger than an eyelash; and all +together lend a quaint, fringed aspect to the hills. The oak is +no baby; even the madrona, upon these spurs of Mount Saint Helena, comes +to a fine bulk and ranks with forest trees - but the pines look down +upon the rest for underwood. As Mount Saint Helena among her foothills, +so these dark giants out-top their fellow-vegetables. Alas! if +they had left the redwoods, the pines, in turn, would have been dwarfed. +But the redwoods, fallen from their high estate, are serving as family +bedsteads, or yet more humbly as field fences, along all Napa Valley.<br> +<br> +A rough smack of resin was in the air, and a crystal mountain purity. +It came pouring over these green slopes by the oceanful. The woods +sang aloud, and gave largely of their healthful breath. Gladness +seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indifference behind +us in the valley. “I to the hills lift mine eyes!” +There are days in a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands, seems +like scaling heaven.<br> +<br> +As we continued to ascend, the wind fell upon us with increasing strength. +It was a wonder how the two stout horses managed to pull us up that +steep incline and still face the athletic opposition of the wind, or +how their great eyes were able to endure the dust. Ten minutes +after we went by, a tree fell, blocking the road; and even before us +leaves were thickly strewn, and boughs had fallen, large enough to make +the passage difficult. But now we were hard by the summit. +The road crosses the ridge, just in the nick that Kelmar showed me from +below, and then, without pause, plunges down a deep, thickly wooded +glen on the farther side. At the highest point a trail strikes +up the main hill to the leftward; and that leads to Silverado. +A hundred yards beyond, and in a kind of elbow of the glen, stands the +Toll House Hotel. We came up the one side, were caught upon the +summit by the whole weight of the wind as it poured over into Napa Valley, +and a minute after had drawn up in shelter, but all buffetted and breathless, +at the Toll House door.<br> +<br> +A water-tank, and stables, and a gray house of two stories, with gable +ends and a verandah, are jammed hard against the hillside, just where +a stream has cut for itself a narrow canyon, filled with pines. +The pines go right up overhead; a little more and the stream might have +played, like a fire-hose, on the Toll House roof. In front the +ground drops as sharply as it rises behind. There is just room +for the road and a sort of promontory of croquet ground, and then you +can lean over the edge and look deep below you through the wood. +I said croquet <i>ground</i>, not <i>green</i>; for the surface was +of brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only other +note of originality: a long beam, turning on a post, and kept slightly +horizontal by a counterweight of stones. Regularly about sundown +this rude barrier was swung, like a derrick, across the road and made +fast, I think, to a tree upon the farther side.<br> +<br> +On our arrival there followed a gay scene in the bar. I was presented +to Mr. Corwin, the landlord; to Mr. Jennings, the engineer, who lives +there for his health; to Mr. Hoddy, a most pleasant little gentleman, +once a member of the Ohio legislature, again the editor of a local paper, +and now, with undiminished dignity, keeping the Toll House bar. +I had a number of drinks and cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed a famous +opportunity of seeing Kelmar in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling, +steadily edging one of the ship’s kettles on the reluctant Corwin.<br> +<br> +Corwin, plainly aghast, resisted gallantly, and for that bout victory +crowned his arms.<br> +<br> +At last we set forth for Silverado on foot. Kelmar and his jolly +Jew girls were full of the sentiment of Sunday outings, breathed geniality +and vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the hotel to lead +them here and there about the woods. For three people all so old, +so bulky in body, and belonging to a race so venerable, they could not +but surprise us by their extreme and almost imbecile youthfulness of +spirit. They were only going to stay ten minutes at the Toll House; +had they not twenty long miles of road before them on the other side? +Stay to dinner? Not they! Put up the horses? Never. +Let us attach them to the verandah by a wisp of straw rope, such as +would not have held a person’s hat on that blustering day. +And with all these protestations of hurry, they proved irresponsible +like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian Jew, with a +smirk that seemed just to have concluded a bargain to its satisfaction, +intrusted himself and us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was +patently fallacious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, +raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his own pleasure, +nothing else; and Kelmar followed him to his ruin, with the same shrewd +smirk. If the boy said there was “a hole there in the hill” +- a hole, pure and simple, neither more nor less - Kelmar and his Jew +girls would follow him a hundred yards to look complacently down that +hole. For two hours we looked for houses; and for two hours they +followed us, smelling trees, picking flowers, foisting false botany +on the unwary. Had we taken five, with that vile lad to head them +off on idle divagations, for five they would have smiled and stumbled +through the woods.<br> +<br> +However, we came forth at length, and as by accident, upon a lawn, sparse +planted like an orchard, but with forest instead of fruit trees. +That was the site of Silverado mining town. A piece of ground +was levelled up, where Kelmar’s store had been; and facing that +we saw Rufe Hanson’s house, still bearing on its front the legend +<i>Silverado Hotel</i>. Not another sign of habitation. +Silverado town had all been carted from the scene; one of the houses +was now the school-house far down the road; one was gone here, one there, +but all were gone away.<br> +<br> +It was now a sylvan solitude, and the silence was unbroken but by the +great, vague voice of the wind. Some days before our visit, a +grizzly bear had been sporting round the Hansons’ chicken-house.<br> +<br> +Mrs. Hanson was at home alone, we found. Rufe had been out after +a “bar,” had risen late, and was now gone, it did not clearly +appear whither. Perhaps he had had wind of Kelmar’s coming, +and was now ensconced among the underwood, or watching us from the shoulder +of the mountain. We, hearing there were no houses to be had, were +for immediately giving up all hopes of Silverado. But this, somehow, +was not to Kelmar’s fancy. He first proposed that we should +“camp someveres around, ain’t it?” waving his hand +cheerily as though to weave a spell; and when that was firmly rejected, +he decided that we must take up house with the Hansons. Mrs. Hanson +had been, from the first, flustered, subdued, and a little pale; but +from this proposition she recoiled with haggard indignation. So +did we, who would have preferred, in a manner of speaking, death. +But Kelmar was not to be put by. He edged Mrs. Hanson into a corner, +where for a long time he threatened her with his forefinger, like a +character in Dickens; and the poor woman, driven to her entrenchments, +at last remembered with a shriek that there were still some houses at +the tunnel.<br> +<br> +Thither we went; the Jews, who should already have been miles into Lake +County, still cheerily accompanying us. For about a furlong we +followed a good road alone, the hillside through the forest, until suddenly +that road widened out and came abruptly to an end. A canyon, woody +below, red, rocky, and naked overhead, was here walled across by a dump +of rolling stones, dangerously steep, and from twenty to thirty feet +in height. A rusty iron chute on wooden legs came flying, like +a monstrous gargoyle, across the parapet. It was down this that +they poured the precious ore; and below here the carts stood to wait +their lading, and carry it mill-ward down the mountain.<br> +<br> +The whole canyon was so entirely blocked, as if by some rude guerilla +fortification, that we could only mount by lengths of wooden ladder, +fixed in the hillside. These led us round the farther corner of +the dump; and when they were at an end, we still persevered over loose +rubble and wading deep in poison oak, till we struck a triangular platform, +filling up the whole glen, and shut in on either hand by bold projections +of the mountain. Only in front the place was open like the proscenium +of a theatre, and we looked forth into a great realm of air, and down +upon treetops and hilltops, and far and near on wild and varied country. +The place still stood as on the day it was deserted: a line of iron +rails with a bifurcation; a truck in working order; a world of lumber, +old wood, old iron; a blacksmith’s forge on one side, half buried +in the leaves of dwarf madronas; and on the other, an old brown wooden +house.<br> +<br> +Fanny and I dashed at the house. It consisted of three rooms, +and was so plastered against the hill, that one room was right atop +of another, that the upper floor was more than twice as large as the +lower, and that all three apartments must be entered from a different +side and level. Not a window-sash remained.<br> +<br> +The door of the lower room was smashed, and one panel hung in splinters. +We entered that, and found a fair amount of rubbish: sand and gravel +that had been sifted in there by the mountain winds; straw, sticks, +and stones; a table, a barrel; a plate-rack on the wall; two home-made +bootjacks, signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of papers pinned +on the boarding, headed respectively “Funnel No. 1,” and +“Funnel No. 2,” but with the tails torn away. The +window, sashless of course, was choked with the green and sweetly smelling +foliage of a bay; and through a chink in the floor, a spray of poison +oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in the interior. +It was my first care to cut away that poison oak, Fanny standing by +at a respectful distance. That was our first improvement by which +we took possession.<br> +<br> +The room immediately above could only be entered by a plank propped +against the threshold, along which the intruder must foot it gingerly, +clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of +the country. Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, +where miners had once lain; and the other gable was pierced by a sashless +window and a doorless doorway opening on the air of heaven, five feet +above the ground. As for the third room, which entered squarely +from the ground level, but higher up the hill and farther up the canyon, +it contained only rubbish and the uprights for another triple tier of +beds.<br> +<br> +The whole building was overhung by a bold, lion-like, red rock. Poison +oak, sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and chaparral, grew freely +but sparsely all about it. In front, in the strong sunshine, the platform +lay overstrewn with busy litter, as though the labours of the mine might +begin again to-morrow in the morning.<br> +<br> +Following back into the canyon, among the mass of rotting plant and +through the flowering bushes, we came to a great crazy staging, with +a wry windless on the top; and clambering up, we could look into an +open shaft, leading edgeways down into the bowels of the mountain, trickling +with water, and lit by some stray sun-gleams, whence I know not. +In that quiet place the still, far-away tinkle of the water-drops was +loudly audible. Close by, another shaft led edgeways up into the +superincumbent shoulder of the hill. It lay partly open; and sixty +or a hundred feet above our head, we could see the strata propped apart +by solid wooden wedges, and a pine, half undermined, precariously nodding +on the verge. Here also a rugged, horizontal tunnel ran straight +into the unsunned bowels of the rock. This secure angle in the +mountain’s flank was, even on this wild day, as still as my lady’s +chamber. But in the tunnel a cold, wet draught tempestuously blew. +Nor have I ever known that place otherwise than cold and windy.<br> +<br> +Such was our fist prospect of Juan Silverado. I own I had looked +for something different: a clique of neighbourly houses on a village +green, we shall say, all empty to be sure, but swept and varnished; +a trout stream brawling by; great elms or chestnuts, humming with bees +and nested in by song-birds; and the mountains standing round about, +as at Jerusalem. Here, mountain and house and the old tools of +industry were all alike rusty and downfalling. The hill was here +wedged up, and there poured forth its bowels in a spout of broken mineral; +man with his picks and powder, and nature with her own great blasting +tools of sun and rain, labouring together at the ruin of that proud +mountain. The view up the canyon was a glimpse of devastation; +dry red minerals sliding together, here and there a crag, here and there +dwarf thicket clinging in the general glissade, and over all a broken +outline trenching on the blue of heaven. Downwards indeed, from +our rock eyrie, we behold the greener side of nature; and the bearing +of the pines and the sweet smell of bays and nutmegs commanded themselves +gratefully to our senses. One way and another, now the die was +cast. Silverado be it!<br> +<br> +After we had got back to the Toll House, the Jews were not long of striking +forward. But I observed that one of the Hanson lads came down, +before their departure, and returned with a ship’s kettle. +Happy Hansons! Nor was it until after Kelmar was gone, if I remember +rightly, that Rufe put in an appearance to arrange the details of our +installation.<br> +<br> +The latter part of the day, Fanny and I sat in the verandah of the Toll +House, utterly stunned by the uproar of the wind among the trees on +the other side of the valley. Sometimes, we would have it it was +like a sea, but it was not various enough for that; and again, we thought +it like the roar of a cataract, but it was too changeful for the cataract; +and then we would decide, speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be +compared with nothing but itself. My mind was entirely preoccupied +by the noise. I hearkened to it by the hour, gapingly hearkened, +and let my cigarette go out. Sometimes the wind would make a sally +nearer hand, and send a shrill, whistling crash among the foliage on +our side of the glen; and sometimes a back-draught would strike into +the elbow where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves into our +faces. But for the most part, this great, streaming gale passed +unweariedly by us into Napa Valley, not two hundred yards away, visible +by the tossing boughs, stunningly audible, and yet not moving a hair +upon our heads. So it blew all night long while I was writing +up my journal, and after we were in bed, under a cloudless, starset +heaven; and so it was blowing still next morning when we rose.<br> +<br> +It was a laughable thought to us, what had become of our cheerful, wandering +Hebrews. We could not suppose they had reached a destination. +The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a gopher-hole. +Boys, we felt to be their special danger; none others were of that exact +pitch of cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their +minds: but before the attractions of a boy their most settled resolutions +would be war. We thought we could follow in fancy these three +aged Hebrew truants wandering in and out on hilltop and in thicket, +a demon boy trotting far ahead, their will-o’-the-wisp conductor; +and at last about midnight, the wind still roaring in the darkness, +we had a vision of all three on their knees upon a mountain-top around +a glow-worm.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III. THE RETURN<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Next morning we were up by half-past five, according to agreement, and +it was ten by the clock before our Jew boys returned to pick us up. +Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, and Abramina, all smiling from ear to ear, and +full of tales of the hospitality they had found on the other side. +It had not gone unrewarded; for I observed with interest that the ship’s +kettles, all but one, had been “placed.” Three Lake +County families, at least, endowed for life with a ship’s kettle. +Come, this was no misspent Sunday. The absence of the kettles +told its own story: our Jews said nothing about them; but, on the other +hand, they said many kind and comely things about the people they had +met. The two women, in particular, had been charmed out of themselves +by the sight of a young girl surrounded by her admirers; all evening, +it appeared, they had been triumphing together in the girl’s innocent +successes, and to this natural and unselfish joy they gave expression +in language that was beautiful by its simplicity and truth.<br> +<br> +Take them for all in all, few people have done my heart more good; they +seemed so thoroughly entitled to happiness, and to enjoy it in so large +a measure and so free from after-thought; almost they persuaded me to +be a Jew. There was, indeed, a chink of money in their talk. +They particularly commanded people who were well to do. “<i>He</i> +don’t care - ain’t it?” was their highest word of +commendation to an individual fate; and here I seem to grasp the root +of their philosophy - it was to be free from care, to be free to make +these Sunday wanderings, that they so eagerly pursued after wealth; +and all this carefulness was to be careless. The fine, good humour +of all three seemed to declare they had attained their end. Yet +there was the other side to it; and the recipients of kettles perhaps +cared greatly.<br> +<br> +No sooner had they returned, than the scene of yesterday began again. +The horses were not even tied with a straw rope this time - it was not +worth while; and Kelmar disappeared into the bar, leaving them under +a tree on the other side of the road. I had to devote myself. +I stood under the shadow of that tree for, I suppose, hard upon an hour, +and had not the heart to be angry. Once some one remembered me, +and brought me out half a tumblerful of the playful, innocuous American +cocktail. I drank it, and lo! veins of living fire ran down my +leg; and then a focus of conflagration remained seated in my stomach, +not unpleasantly, for quarter of an hour. I love these sweet, +fiery pangs, but I will not court them. The bulk of the time I +spent in repeating as much French poetry as I could remember to the +horses, who seemed to enjoy it hugely. And now it went -<br> +<br> +<br> +“O ma vieille Font-georges<br> +Où volent les rouges-gorges:”<br> +<br> +<br> +and again, to a more trampling measure -<br> +<br> +<br> +“Et tout tremble, Irun, Coïmbre,<br> +Sautander, Almodovar,<br> +Sitôt qu’on entend le timbre<br> +Des cymbales do Bivar.”<br> +<br> +<br> +The redbreasts and the brooks of Europe, in that dry and songless land; +brave old names and wars, strong cities, cymbals, and bright armour, +in that nook of the mountain, sacred only to the Indian and the bear! +This is still the strangest thing in all man’s travelling, that +he should carry about with him incongruous memories. There is +no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and +again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.<br> +<br> +But while I was thus wandering in my fancy, great feats had been transacted +in the bar. Corwin the bold had fallen, Kelmar was again crowned +with laurels, and the last of the ship’s kettles had changed hands. +If I had ever doubted the purity of Kelmar’s motives, if I had +ever suspected him of a single eye to business in his eternal dallyings, +now at least, when the last kettle was disposed of, my suspicions must +have been allayed. I dare not guess how much more time was wasted; +nor how often we drove off, merely to drive back again and renew interrupted +conversations about nothing, before the Toll House was fairly left behind. +Alas! and not a mile down the grade there stands a ranche in a sunny +vineyard, and here we must all dismount again and enter.<br> +<br> +Only the old lady was at home, Mrs. Guele, a brown old Swiss dame, the +picture of honesty; and with her we drank a bottle of wine and had an +age-long conversation, which would have been highly delightful if Fanny +and I had not been faint with hunger. The ladies each narrated +the story of her marriage, our two Hebrews with the prettiest combination +of sentiment and financial bathos. Abramina, specially, endeared +herself with every word. She was as simple, natural, and engaging +as a kid that should have been brought up to the business of a money-changer. +One touch was so resplendently Hebraic that I cannot pass it over. +When her “old man” wrote home for her from America, her +old man’s family would not intrust her with the money for the +passage, till she had bound herself by an oath - on her knees, I think +she said - not to employ it otherwise.<br> +<br> +This had tickled Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled me fully more.<br> +<br> +Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness up here in the long winters; of +her honest, country-woman troubles and alarms upon the journey; how +in the bank at Frankfort she had feared lest the banker, after having +taken her cheque, should deny all knowledge of it - a fear I have myself +every time I go to a bank; and how crossing the Luneburger Heath, an +old lady, witnessing her trouble and finding whither she was bound, +had given her “the blessing of a person eighty years old, which +would be sure to bring her safely to the States. And the first +thing I did,” added Mrs. Guele, “was to fall downstairs.”<br> +<br> +At length we got out of the house, and some of us into the trap, when +- judgment of Heaven! - here came Mr. Guele from his vineyard. +So another quarter of an hour went by; till at length, at our earnest +pleading, we set forth again in earnest, Fanny and I white-faced and +silent, but the Jews still smiling. The heart fails me. +There was yet another stoppage! And we drove at last into Calistoga +past two in the afternoon, Fanny and I having breakfasted at six in +the morning, eight mortal hours before. We were a pallid couple; +but still the Jews were smiling.<br> +<br> +So ended our excursion with the village usurers; and, now that it was +done, we had no more idea of the nature of the business, nor of the +part we had been playing in it, than the child unborn. That all +the people we had met were the slaves of Kelmar, though in various degrees +of servitude; that we ourselves had been sent up the mountain in the +interests of none but Kelmar; that the money we laid out, dollar by +dollar, cent by cent, and through the hands of various intermediaries, +should all hop ultimately into Kelmar’s till; - these were facts +that we only grew to recognize in the course of time and by the accumulation +of evidence. At length all doubt was quieted, when one of the +kettle-holders confessed. Stopping his trap in the moonlight, +a little way out of Calistoga, he told me, in so many words, that he +dare not show face therewith an empty pocket. “You see, +I don’t mind if it was only five dollars, Mr. Stevens,” +he said, “but I must give Mr. Kelmar <i>something</i>.”<br> +<br> +Even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me, I cannot find it in +my heart to be as angry as perhaps I should be with the Hebrew tyrant. +The whole game of business is beggar my neighbour; and though perhaps +that game looks uglier when played at such close quarters and on so +small a scale, it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. +The village usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress +as the millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss of thousands, +and yet declaiming from the platform against the greed and dishonesty +of landlords. If it were fair for Cobden to buy up land from owners +whom he thought unconscious of its proper value, it was fair enough +for my Russian Jew to give credit to his farmers. Kelmar, if he +was unconscious of the beam in his own eye, was at least silent in the +matter of his brother’s mote.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE ACT OF SQUATTING<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There were four of us squatters - myself and my wife, the King and Queen +of Silverado; Sam, the Crown Prince; and Chuchu, the Grand Duke. +Chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough +life. He had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; +his heart was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook +necessary of existence. Though about the size of a sheep, he loved +to sit in ladies’ laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless +days; and if he had seen a flute, I am sure he could have played upon +it by nature. It may seem hard to say it of a dog, but Chuchu +was a tame cat.<br> +<br> +The king and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of cold provender for +immediate use, set forth from Calistoga in a double buggy; the crown +prince, on horseback, led the way like an outrider. Bags and boxes +and a second-hand stove were to follow close upon our heels by Hanson’s +team.<br> +<br> +It was a beautiful still day; the sky was one field of azure. +Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. Only from the +summit of the mountain one little snowy wisp of cloud after another +kept detaching itself, like smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward +in some high stream of air: Mount Saint Helena still at her interminable +task, making the weather, like a Lapland witch.<br> +<br> +By noon we had come in sight of the mill: a great brown building, half-way +up the hill, big as a factory, two stories high, and with tanks and +ladders along the roof; which, as a pendicle of Silverado mine, we held +to be an outlying province of our own. Thither, then, we went, +crossing the valley by a grassy trail; and there lunched out of the +basket, sitting in a kind of portico, and wondering, while we ate, at +this great bulk of useless building. Through a chink we could +look far down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in the dust +and striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty machinery. It +cost six thousand dollars, twelve hundred English sovereigns; and now, +here it stands deserted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the +busy millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were there, +mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the mountain-side, +which is very open and green, was tenanted by no living creature but +ourselves and the insects; and nothing stirred but the cloud manufactory +upon the mountain summit. It was odd to compare this with the +former days, when the engine was in fall blast, the mill palpitating +to its strokes, and the carts came rattling down from Silverado, charged +with ore.<br> +<br> +By two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy was gone again, and +we were left to our own reflections and the basket of cold provender, +until Hanson should arrive. Hot as it was by the sun, there was +something chill in such a home-coming, in that world of wreck and rust, +splinter and rolling gravel, where for so many years no fire had smoked.<br> +<br> +Silverado platform filled the whole width of the canyon. Above, +as I have said, this was a wild, red, stony gully in the mountains; +but below it was a wooded dingle. And through this, I was told, +there had gone a path between the mine and the Toll House - our natural +north-west passage to civilization. I found and followed it, clearing +my way as I went through fallen branches and dead trees. It went +straight down that steep canyon, till it brought you out abruptly over +the roofs of the hotel. There was nowhere any break in the descent. +It almost seemed as if, were you to drop a stone down the old iron chute +at our platform, it would never rest until it hopped upon the Toll House +shingles. Signs were not wanting of the ancient greatness of Silverado. +The footpath was well marked, and had been well trodden in the old clays +by thirsty miners. And far down, buried in foliage, deep out of +sight of Silverado, I came on a last outpost of the mine - a mound of +gravel, some wreck of wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, like +a treasure grotto in a fairy story. A stream of water, fed by +the invisible leakage from our shaft, and dyed red with cinnabar or +iron, ran trippingly forth out of the bowels of the cave; and, looking +far under the arch, I could see something like an iron lantern fastened +on the rocky wall. It was a promising spot for the imagination. +No boy could have left it unexplored.<br> +<br> +The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of the dingle, and made, +for that dry land, a pleasant warbling in the leaves. Once, I +suppose, it ran splashing down the whole length of the canyon, but now +its head waters had been tapped by the shaft at Silverado, and for a +great part of its course it wandered sunless among the joints of the +mountain. No wonder that it should better its pace when it sees, +far before it, daylight whitening in the arch, or that it should come +trotting forth into the sunlight with a song.<br> +<br> +The two stages had gone by when I got down, and the Toll House stood, +dozing in sun and dust and silence, like a place enchanted. My +mission was after hay for bedding, and that I was readily promised. +But when I mentioned that we were waiting for Rufe, the people shook +their heads. Rufe was not a regular man any way, it seemed; and +if he got playing poker - Well, poker was too many for Rufe. I +had not yet heard them bracketted together; but it seemed a natural +conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my fears; and as soon as +I returned to Silverado and had told my story, we practically gave Hanson +up, and set ourselves to do what we could find do-able in our desert-island +state.<br> +<br> +The lower room had been the assayer’s office. The floor +was thick with <i>débris</i> - part human, from the former occupants; +part natural, sifted in by mountain winds. In a sea of red dust +there swam or floated sticks, boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper; +ancient newspapers, above all - for the newspaper, especially when torn, +soon becomes an antiquity - and bills of the Silverado boarding-house, +some dated Silverado, some Calistoga Mine. Here is one, verbatim; +and if any one can calculate the scale of charges, he has my envious +admiration.<br> +<br> +<br> +<pre>Calistoga Mine, May 3rd, 1875. +John Stanley +To S. Chapman, Cr. +To board from April 1st, to April 30 $25 75 + “ “ “ May lst, to 3rd ... 2 00 + 27 75 + + +</pre><p>Where is John Stanley mining now? Where is S. Chapman, within +whose hospitable walls we were to lodge? The date was but five +years old, but in that time the world had changed for Silverado; like +Palmyra in the desert, it had outlived its people and its purpose; we +camped, like Layard, amid ruins, and these names spoke to us of prehistoric +time. A boot-jack, a pair of boots, a dog-hutch, and these bills +of Mr. Chapman’s were the only speaking relics that we disinterred +from all that vast Silverado rubbish-heap; but what would I not have +given to unearth a letter, a pocket-book, a diary, only a ledger, or +a roll of names, to take me back, in a more personal manner, to the +past? It pleases me, besides, to fancy that Stanley or Chapman, +or one of their companions, may light upon this chronicle, and be struck +by the name, and read some news of their anterior home, coming, as it +were, out of a subsequent epoch of history in that quarter of the world.<br> +<br> +As we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the floor, kicking it with +our feet, and groping for these written evidences of the past, Sam, +with a somewhat whitened face, produced a paper bag. “What’s +this?” said he. It contained a granulated powder, something +the colour of Gregory’s Mixture, but rosier; and as there were +several of the bags, and each more or less broken, the powder was spread +widely on the floor. Had any of us ever seen giant powder? +No, nobody had; and instantly there grew up in my mind a shadowy belief, +verging with every moment nearer to certitude, that I had somewhere +heard somebody describe it as just such a powder as the one around us. +I have learnt since that it is a substance not unlike tallow, and is +made up in rolls for all the world like tallow candles.<br> +<br> +Fanny, to add to our happiness, told us a story of a gentleman who had +camped one night, like ourselves, by a deserted mine. He was a +handy, thrifty fellow, and looked right and left for plunder, but all +he could lay his hands on was a can of oil. After dark he had +to see to the horses with a lantern; and not to miss an opportunity, +filled up his lamp from the oil can. Thus equipped, he set forth +into the forest. A little while after, his friends heard a loud +explosion; the mountain echoes bellowed, and then all was still. +On examination, the can proved to contain oil, with the trifling addition +of nitro-glycerine; but no research disclosed a trace of either man +or lantern.<br> +<br> +It was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see us sweeping out the +giant powder. It seemed never to be far enough away. And, +after all, it was only some rock pounded for assay.<br> +<br> +So much for the lower room. We scraped some of the rougher dirt +off the floor, and left it. That was our sitting-room and kitchen, +though there was nothing to sit upon but the table, and no provision +for a fire except a hole in the roof of the room above, which had once +contained the chimney of a stove.<br> +<br> +To that upper room we now proceeded. There were the eighteen bunks +in a double tier, nine on either hand, where from eighteen to thirty-six +miners had once snored together all night long, John Stanley, perhaps, +snoring loudest. There was the roof, with a hole in it through +which the sun now shot an arrow. There was the floor, in much +the same state as the one below, though, perhaps, there was more hay, +and certainly there was the added ingredient of broken glass, the man +who stole the window-frames having apparently made a miscarriage with +this one. Without a broom, without hay or bedding, we could but +look about us with a beginning of despair. The one bright arrow +of day, in that gaunt and shattered barrack, made the rest look dirtier +and darker, and the sight drove us at last into the open.<br> +<br> +Here, also, the handiwork of man lay ruined: but the plants were all +alive and thriving; the view below was fresh with the colours of nature; +and we had exchanged a dim, human garret for a corner, even although +it were untidy, of the blue hall of heaven. Not a bird, not a +beast, not a reptile. There was no noise in that part of the world, +save when we passed beside the staging, and heard the water musically +falling in the shaft.<br> +<br> +We wandered to and fro. We searched among that drift of lumber-wood +and iron, nails and rails, and sleepers and the wheels of tracks. +We gazed up the cleft into the bosom of the mountain. We sat by +the margin of the dump and saw, far below us, the green treetops standing +still in the clear air. Beautiful perfumes, breaths of bay, resin, +and nutmeg, came to us more often and grew sweeter and sharper as the +afternoon declined. But still there was no word of Hanson.<br> +<br> +I set to with pick and shovel, and deepened the pool behind the shaft, +till we were sure of sufficient water for the morning; and by the time +I had finished, the sun had begun to go down behind the mountain shoulder, +the platform was plunged in quiet shadow, and a chill descended from +the sky. Night began early in our cleft. Before us, over +the margin of the dump, we could see the sun still striking aslant into +the wooded nick below, and on the battlemented, pine-bescattered ridges +on the farther side.<br> +<br> +There was no stove, of course, and no hearth in our lodging, so we betook +ourselves to the blacksmith’s forge across the platform. +If the platform be taken as a stage, and the out-curving margin of the +dump to represent the line of the foot-lights, then our house would +be the first wing on the actor’s left, and this blacksmith’s +forge, although no match for it in size, the foremost on the right. +It was a low, brown cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung +by the foliage and peeling boughs of a madrona thicket. Within +it was full of dead leaves and mountain dust, and rubbish from the mine. +But we soon had a good fire brightly blazing, and sat close about it +on impromptu seats. Chuchu, the slave of sofa-cushions, whimpered +for a softer bed; but the rest of us were greatly revived and comforted +by that good creature-fire, which gives us warmth and light and companionable +sounds, and colours up the emptiest building with better than frescoes. +For a while it was even pleasant in the forge, with the blaze in the +midst, and a look over our shoulders on the woods and mountains where +the day was dying like a dolphin.<br> +<br> +It was between seven and eight before Hanson arrived, with a waggonful +of our effects and two of his wife’s relatives to lend him a hand. +The elder showed surprising strength. He would pick up a huge +packing-case, full of books of all things, swing it on his shoulder, +and away up the two crazy ladders and the breakneck spout of rolling +mineral, familiarly termed a path, that led from the cart-track to our +house. Even for a man unburthened, the ascent was toilsome and +precarious; but Irvine sealed it with a light foot, carrying box after +box, as the hero whisks the stage child up the practicable footway beside +the waterfall of the fifth act. With so strong a helper, the business +was speedily transacted. Soon the assayer’s office was thronged +with our belongings, piled higgledy-piggledy, and upside down, about +the floor. There were our boxes, indeed, but my wife had left +her keys in Calistoga. There was the stove, but, alas! our carriers +had forgot the chimney, and lost one of the plates along the road. +The Silverado problem was scarce solved.<br> +<br> +Rufe himself was grave and good-natured over his share of blame; he +even, if I remember right, expressed regret. But his crew, to +my astonishment and anger, grinned from ear to ear, and laughed aloud +at our distress. They thought it “real funny” about +the stove-pipe they had forgotten; “real funny” that they +should have lost a plate. As for hay, the whole party refused +to bring us any till they should have supped. See how late they +were! Never had there been such a job as coming up that grade! +Nor often, I suspect, such a game of poker as that before they started. +But about nine, as a particular favour, we should have some hay.<br> +<br> +So they took their departure, leaving me still staring, and we resigned +ourselves to wait for their return. The fire in the forge had +been suffered to go out, and we were one and all too weary to kindle +another. We dined, or, not to take that word in vain, we ate after +a fashion, in the nightmare disorder of the assayer’s office, +perched among boxes. A single candle lighted us. It could +scarce be called a housewarming; for there was, of course, no fire, +and with the two open doors and the open window gaping on the night, +like breaches in a fortress, it began to grow rapidly chill. Talk +ceased; nobody moved but the unhappy Chuchu, still in quest of sofa-cushions, +who tumbled complainingly among the trunks. It required a certain +happiness of disposition to look forward hopefully, from so dismal a +beginning, across the brief hours of night, to the warm shining of to-morrow’s +sun.<br> +<br> +But the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with our last spark of courage, +to the bedroom. We had improved the entrance, but it was still +a kind of rope-walking; and it would have been droll to see us mounting, +one after another, by candle-light, under the open stars.<br> +<br> +The western door - that which looked up the canyon, and through which +we entered by our bridge of flying plank - was still entire, a handsome, +panelled door, the most finished piece of carpentry in Silverado. +And the two lowest bunks next to this we roughly filled with hay for +that night’s use. Through the opposite, or eastern-looking +gable, with its open door and window, a faint, disused starshine came +into the room like mist; and when we were once in bed, we lay, awaiting +sleep, in a haunted, incomplete obscurity. At first the silence +of the night was utter. Then a high wind began in the distance +among the tree-tops, and for hours continued to grow higher. It +seemed to me much such a wind as we had found on our visit; yet here +in our open chamber we were fanned only by gentle and refreshing draughts, +so deep was the canyon, so close our house was planted under the overhanging +rock.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE HUNTER’S FAMILY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +There is quite a large race or class of people in America, for whom +we scarcely seem to have a parallel in England. Of pure white +blood, they are unknown or unrecognizable in towns; inhabit the fringe +of settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious +to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically +ignorant, but with a touch of wood-lore and the dexterity of the savage. +Whence they came is a moot point. At the time of the war, they +poured north in crowds to escape the conscription; lived during summer +on fruits, wild animals, and petty theft; and at the approach of winter, +when these supplies failed, built great fires in the forest, and there +died stoically by starvation. They are widely scattered, however, +and easily recognized. Loutish, but not ill-looking, they will +sit all day, swinging their legs on a field fence, the mind seemingly +as devoid of all reflection as a Suffolk peasant’s, careless of +politics, for the most part incapable of reading, but with a rebellious +vanity and a strong sense of independence. Hunting is their most +congenial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little amateur detection. +In tracking a criminal, following a particular horse along a beaten +highway, and drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of those +somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity of body and +finesse of mind. By their names ye may know them, the women figuring +as Loveina, Larsenia, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to +Alvin, Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orrion, with the accent on the first. +Whether they are indeed a race, or whether this is the form of degeneracy +common to all back-woodsmen, they are at least known by a generic byword, +as Poor Whites or Low-downers.<br> +<br> +I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor White, because the name +savours of offence; but I may go as far as this - they were, in many +points, not unsimilar to the people usually so-cared. Rufe himself +combined two of the qualifications, for he was both a hunter and an +amateur detective. It was he who pursued Russel and Dollar, the +robbers of the Lake Port stage, and captured them the very morning after +the exploit, while they were still sleeping in a hayfield. Russel, +a drunken Scotch carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his own, and +he expressed much grave commiseration for his fate. In all that +he said and did, Rufe was grave. I never saw him hurried. +When he spoke, he took out his pipe with ceremonial deliberation, looked +east and west, and then, in quiet tones and few words, stated his business +or told his story. His gait was to match; it would never have +surprised you if, at any step, he had turned round and walked away again, +so warily and slowly, and with so much seeming hesitation did he go +about. He lay long in bed in the morning - rarely indeed, rose +before noon; he loved all games, from poker to clerical croquet; and +in the Toll House croquet ground I have seen him toiling at the latter +with the devotion of a curate. He took an interest in education, +was an active member of the local school-board, and when I was there, +he had recently lost the schoolhouse key. His waggon was broken, +but it never seemed to occur to him to mend it. Like all truly +idle people, he had an artistic eye. He chose the print stuff +for his wife’s dresses, and counselled her in the making of a +patchwork quilt, always, as she thought, wrongly, but to the more educated +eye, always with bizarre and admirable taste - the taste of an Indian. +With all this, he was a perfect, unoffending gentleman in word and act. +Take his clay pipe from him, and he was fit for any society but that +of fools. Quiet as he was, there burned a deep, permanent excitement +in his dark blue eyes; and when this grave man smiled, it was like sunshine +in a shady place.<br> +<br> +Mrs. Hanson (<i>née</i>, if you please, Lovelands) was more commonplace +than her lord. She was a comely woman, too, plump, fair-coloured, +with wonderful white teeth; and in her print dresses (chosen by Rufe) +and with a large sun-bonnet shading her valued complexion, made, I assure +you, a very agreeable figure. But she was on the surface, what +there was of her, out-spoken and loud-spoken. Her noisy laughter +had none of the charm of one of Hanson’s rare, slow-spreading +smiles; there was no reticence, no mystery, no manner about the woman: +she was a first-class dairymaid, but her husband was an unknown quantity +between the savage and the nobleman. She was often in and out +with us, merry, and healthy, and fair; he came far seldomer - only, +indeed, when there was business, or now and again, to pay a visit of +ceremony, brushed up for the occasion, with his wife on his arm, and +a clean clay pipe in his teeth. These visits, in our forest state, +had quite the air of an event, and turned our red canyon into a salon.<br> +<br> +Such was the pair who ruled in the old Silverado Hotel, among the windy +trees, on the mountain shoulder overlooking the whole length of Napa +Valley, as the man aloft looks down on the ship’s deck. +There they kept house, with sundry horses and fowls, and a family of +sons, Daniel Webster, and I think George Washington, among the number. +Nor did they want visitors. An old gentleman, of singular stolidity, +and called Breedlove - I think he had crossed the plains in the same +caravan with Rufe - housed with them for awhile during our stay; and +they had besides a permanent lodger, in the form of Mrs. Hanson’s +brother, Irvine Lovelands. I spell Irvine by guess; for I could +get no information on the subject, just as I could never find out, in +spite of many inquiries, whether or not Rufe was a contraction for Rufus. +They were all cheerfully at sea about their names in that generation. +And this is surely the more notable where the names are all so strange, +and even the family names appear to have been coined. At one time, +at least, the ancestors of all these Alvins and Alvas, Loveinas, Lovelands, +and Breedloves, must have taken serious council and found a certain +poetry in these denominations; that must have been, then, their form +of literature. But still times change; and their next descendants, +the George Washingtons and Daniel Websters, will at least be clear upon +the point. And anyway, and however his name should be spelt, this +Irvine Lovelands was the most unmitigated Caliban I ever knew.<br> +<br> +Our very first morning at Silverado, when we were full of business, +patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our +rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance +together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because +he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I forget how +much a day. The way that he set about cutting wood was characteristic. +We were at that moment patching up and unpacking in the kitchen. +Down he sat on one side, and down sat his sister on the other. +Both were chewing pine-tree gum, and he, to my annoyance, accompanied +that simple pleasure with profuse expectoration. She rattled away, +talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing her head, showing her +brilliant teeth. He looked on in silence, now spitting heavily +on the floor, now putting his head back and uttering a loud, discordant, +joyless laugh. He had a tangle of shock hair, the colour of wool; +his mouth was a grin; although as strong as a horse, he looked neither +heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, and in the road. But +it was plain he was in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying his visit; +and he laughed frankly whenever we failed to accomplish what we were +about. This was scarcely helpful: it was even, to amateur carpenters, +embarrassing; but it lasted until we knocked off work and began to get +dinner. Then Mrs. Hanson remembered she should have been gone +an hour ago; and the pair retired, and the lady’s laughter died +away among the nutmegs down the path. That was Irvine’s +first day’s work in my employment - the devil take him!<br> +<br> +The next morning he returned and, as he was this time alone, he bestowed +his conversation upon us with great liberality. He prided himself +on his intelligence; asked us if we knew the school ma’am. +<i>He</i> didn’t think much of her, anyway. He had tried +her, he had. He had put a question to her. If a tree a hundred +feet high were to fall a foot a day, how long would it take to fall +right down? She had not been able to solve the problem. +“She don’t know nothing,” he opined. He told +us how a friend of his kept a school with a revolver, and chuckled mightily +over that; his friend could teach school, he could. All the time +he kept chewing gum and spitting. He would stand a while looking +down; and then he would toss back his shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, +and spit, and bring forward a new subject. A man, he told us, +who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his dog. “That +was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn’t it? It wasn’t +like a man, that, nohow. But I got even with him: I pisoned <i>his</i> +dog.” His clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, +set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. I do not think +I ever appreciated the meaning of two words until I knew Irvine - the +verb, loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his portrait. +He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself against the wall, and +grin, and be more in everybody’s way than any other two people +that I ever set my eyes on. Nothing that he did became him; and +yet you were conscious that he was one of your own race, that his mind +was cumbrously at work, revolving the problem of existence like a quid +of gum, and in his own cloudy manner enjoying life, and passing judgment +on his fellows. Above all things, he was delighted with himself. +You would not have thought it, from his uneasy manners and troubled, +struggling utterance; but he loved himself to the marrow, and was happy +and proud like a peacock on a rail.<br> +<br> +His self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his harness. He +could be got to work, and even kept at work, by flattery. As long +as my wife stood over him, crying out how strong he was, so long exactly +he would stick to the matter in hand; and the moment she turned her +back, or ceased to praise him, he would stop. His physical strength +was wonderful; and to have a woman stand by and admire his achievements, +warmed his heart like sunshine. Yet he was as cowardly as he was +powerful, and felt no shame in owning to the weakness. Something +was once wanted from the crazy platform over the shaft, and he at once +refused to venture there - “did not like,” as he said, “foolen’ +round them kind o’ places,” and let my wife go instead of +him, looking on with a grin. Vanity, where it rules, is usually +more heroic: but Irvine steadily approved himself, and expected others +to approve him; rather looked down upon my wife, and decidedly expected +her to look up to him, on the strength of his superior prudence.<br> +<br> +Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was perhaps this, that Irvine +was as beautiful as a statue. His features were, in themselves, +perfect; it was only his cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that +disfigured them. So much strength residing in so spare a frame +was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He must have +been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack Sheppard; but the famous +housebreaker, we may be certain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary +powers of his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke +his strong prison with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles +to service. Irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and +spat, and grumbled curses. He had the soul of a fat sheep, but, +regarded as an artist’s model, the exterior of a Greek God. +It was a cruel thought to persons less favoured in their birth, that +this creature, endowed - to use the language of theatres - with extraordinary +“means,” should so manage to misemploy them that he looked +ugly and almost deformed. It was only by an effort of abstraction, +and after many days, that you discovered what he was.<br> +<br> +By playing on the oaf’s conceit, and standing closely over him, +we got a path made round the corner of the dump to our door, so that +we could come and go with decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, +for in that there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to be +uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display: but cutting wood +was a different matter. Anybody could cut wood; and, besides, +my wife was tired of supervising him, and had other things to attend +to. And, in short, days went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked +and lounged and spat; but the firewood remained intact as sleepers on +the platform or growing trees upon the mountainside. Irvine, as +a woodcutter, we could tolerate; but Irvine as a friend of the family, +at so much a day, was too bald an imposition, and at length, on the +afternoon of the fourth or fifth day of our connection, I explained +to him, as clearly as I could, the light in which I had grown to regard +his presence. I pointed out to him that I could not continue to +give him a salary for spitting on the floor; and this expression, which +came after a good many others, at last penetrated his obdurate wits. +He rose at once, and said if that was the way he was going to be spoke +to, he reckoned he would quit. And, no one interposing, he departed.<br> +<br> +So far, so good. But we had no firewood. The next afternoon, +I strolled down to Rufe’s and consulted him on the subject. +It was a very droll interview, in the large, bare north room of the +Silverado Hotel, Mrs. Hanson’s patchwork on a frame, and Rufe, +and his wife, and I, and the oaf himself, all more or less embarrassed. +Rufe announced there was nobody in the neighbourhood but Irvine who +could do a day’s work for anybody. Irvine, thereupon, refused +to have any more to do with my service; he “wouldn’t work +no more for a man as had spoke to him’s I had done.” +I found myself on the point of the last humiliation - driven to beseech +the creature whom I had just dismissed with insult: but I took the high +hand in despair, said there must be no talk of Irvine coming back unless +matters were to be differently managed; that I would rather chop firewood +for myself than be fooled; and, in short, the Hansons being eager for +the lad’s hire, I so imposed upon them with merely affected resolution, +that they ended by begging me to re-employ him again, on a solemn promise +that he should be more industrious. The promise, I am bound to +say, was kept. We soon had a fine pile of firewood at our door; +and if Caliban gave me the cold shoulder and spared me his conversation, +I thought none the worse of him for that, nor did I find my days much +longer for the deprivation.<br> +<br> +The leading spirit of the family was, I am inclined to fancy, Mrs. Hanson. +Her social brilliancy somewhat dazzled the others, and she had more +of the small change of sense. It was she who faced Kelmar, for +instance; and perhaps, if she had been alone, Kelmar would have had +no rule within her doors. Rufe, to be sure, had a fine, sober, +open-air attitude of mind, seeing the world without exaggeration - perhaps, +we may even say, without enough; for he lacked, along with the others, +that commercial idealism which puts so high a value on time and money. +Sanity itself is a kind of convention. Perhaps Rufe was wrong; +but, looking on life plainly, he was unable to perceive that croquet +or poker were in any way less important than, for instance, mending +his waggon. Even his own profession, hunting, was dear to him +mainly as a sort of play; even that he would have neglected, had it +not appealed to his imagination. His hunting-suit, for instance, +had cost I should be afraid to say how many bucks - the currency in +which he paid his way: it was all befringed, after the Indian fashion, +and it was dear to his heart. The pictorial side of his daily +business was never forgotten. He was even anxious to stand for +his picture in those buckskin hunting clothes; and I remember how he +once warmed almost into enthusiasm, his dark blue eyes growing perceptibly +larger, as he planned the composition in which he should appear, “with +the horns of some real big bucks, and dogs, and a camp on a crick” +(creek, stream).<br> +<br> +There was no trace in Irvine of this woodland poetry. He did not +care for hunting, nor yet for buckskin suits. He had never observed +scenery. The world, as it appeared to him, was almost obliterated +by his own great grinning figure in the foreground: Caliban Malvolio. +And it seems to me as if, in the persons of these brothers-in-law, we +had the two sides of rusticity fairly well represented: the hunter living +really in nature; the clodhopper living merely out of society: the one +bent up in every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at +least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly alive to all +that touches it; the other in the inert and bestial state, walking in +a faint dream, and taking so dim an impression of the myriad sides of +life that he is truly conscious of nothing but himself. It is +only in the fastnesses of nature, forests, mountains, and the back of +man’s beyond, that a creature endowed with five senses can grow +up into the perfection of this crass and earthy vanity. In towns +or the busier country sides, he is roughly reminded of other men’s +existence; and if he learns no more, he learns at least to fear contempt. +But Irvine had come scatheless through life, conscious only of himself, +of his great strength and intelligence; and in the silence of the universe, +to which he did not listen, dwelling with delight on the sound of his +own thoughts.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE SEA FOGS<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A change in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning. +By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, where +the boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as +stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to +marvel how the qualities could be combined. At an earlier hour, +the heavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured, but the shoulder +of the mountain which shuts in the canyon already glowed with sunlight +in a wonderful compound of gold and rose and green; and this too would +kindle, although more mildly and with rainbow tints, the fissures of +our crazy gable. If I were sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue +that struck me awake; if more lightly, then I would come to myself in +that earlier and fairier fight.<br> +<br> +One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness called me. +I rose and turned to the east, not for my devotions, but for air. +The night had been very still. The little private gale that blew +every evening in our canyon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of +an hour, had swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed not +a sigh of wind had shaken the treetops; and our barrack, for all its +breaches, was less fresh that morning than of wont. But I had +no sooner reached the window than I forgot all else in the sight that +met my eyes, and I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the +crazy plank to the platform.<br> +<br> +The sun was still concealed below the opposite hilltops, though it was +shining already, not twenty feet above my head, on our own mountain +slope. But the scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely +changed. Napa valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes +and woody foothills of the range; and in their place, not a thousand +feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. It was as though I +had gone to bed the night before, safe in a nook of inland mountains, +and had awakened in a bay upon the coast. I had seen these inundations +from below; at Calistoga I had risen and gone abroad in the early morning, +coughing and sneezing, under fathoms on fathoms of gray sea vapour, +like a cloudy sky - a dull sight for the artist, and a painful experience +for the invalid. But to sit aloft one’s self in the pure +air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down on the +submergence of the valley, was strangely different and even delightful +to the eyes. Far away were hilltops like little islands. +Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into +all the coves of these rough mountains. The colour of that fog +ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among +the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it on +the sea itself. But the white was not so opaline; nor was there, +what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal stillness +over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning +among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay +in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble +with a sound.<br> +<br> +As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to observe that this sea +was not so level as at first sight it appeared to be. Away in +the extreme south, a little hill of fog arose against the sky above +the general surface, and as it had already caught the sun, it shone +on the horizon like the topsails of some giant ship. There were +huge waves, stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a frozen sea; and +yet, as I looked again, I was not sure but they were moving after all, +with a slow and august advance. And while I was yet doubting, +a promontory of the some four or five miles away, conspicuous by a bouquet +of tall pines, was in a single instant overtaken and swallowed up. +It reappeared in a little, with its pines, but this time as an islet, +and only to be swallowed up once more and then for good. This +set me looking nearer, and I saw that in every cove along the line of +mountains the fog was being piled in higher and higher, as though by +some wind that was inaudible to me. I could trace its progress, +one pine tree first growing hazy and then disappearing after another; +although sometimes there was none of this fore-running haze, but the +whole opaque white ocean gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain +at a gulp. It was to flee these poisonous fogs that I had left +the seaboard, and climbed so high among the mountains. And now, +behold, here came the fog to besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and +yet came so beautifully that my first thought was of welcome.<br> +<br> +The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of the +hills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. An eagle, +or some other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over the +nearer pine-tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to +look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps with terror, +for the eyries of her comrades. Then, with a long cry, she disappeared +again towards Lake County and the clearer air. At length it seemed +to me as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old landmarks, +by whose disappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there +a brave pine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance +into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. +This was not Noah’s flood; it was but a morning spring, and would +now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily relieved, and +a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went into the house to light +the fire.<br> +<br> +I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more mounted the platform +to look abroad. The fog ocean had swelled up enormously since +last I saw it; and a few hundred feet below me, in the deep gap where +the Toll House stands and the road runs through into Lake County, it +had already topped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other +side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed along with it; and +though I was still in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below +me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where I stood.<br> +<br> +Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the ridge on the opposite +side of the gap, though a shoulder of the mountain still warded it out +of our canyon. Napa valley and its bounding hills were now utterly +blotted out. The fog, sunny white in the sunshine, was pouring +over into Lake County in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing treetops appearing +and disappearing in the spray. The air struck with a little chill, +and set me coughing. It smelt strong of the fog, like the smell +of a washing-house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt.<br> +<br> +Had it not been for two things - the sheltering spur which answered +as a dyke, and the great valley on the other side which rapidly engulfed +whatever mounted - our own little platform in the canyon must have been +already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. As it +was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied our minds. We +were set just out of the wind, and but just above the fog; we could +listen to the voice of the one as to music on the stage; we could plunge +our eyes down into the other, as into some flowing stream from over +the parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a strange, impetuous, +silent, shifting exhibition of the powers of nature, and saw the familiar +landscape changing from moment to moment like figures in a dream.<br> +<br> +The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had this been +indeed the deluge, I should have felt more strongly, but the emotion +would have been similar in kind. I played with the idea, as the +child flees in delighted terror from the creations of his fancy. +The look of the thing helped me. And when at last I began to flee +up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from the raw air that +kept me coughing, but it was also part in play.<br> +<br> +As I ascended the mountain-side, I came once more to overlook the upper +surface of the fog; but it wore a different appearance from what I had +beheld at daybreak. For, first, the sun now fell on it from high +overhead, and its surface shone and undulated like a great nor’land +moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. And next the +new level must have been a thousand or fifteen hundred feet higher than +the old, so that only five or six points of all the broken country below +me, still stood out. Napa valley was now one with Sonoma on the +west. On the hither side, only a thin scattered fringe of bluffs +was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the fog was pouring over, +like an ocean, into the blue clear sunny country on the east. +There it was soon lost; for it fell instantly into the bottom of the +valleys, following the water-shed; and the hilltops in that quarter +were still clear cut upon the eastern sky.<br> +<br> +Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges on the other side, +the deluge was immense. A spray of thin vapour was thrown high +above it, rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes. +The speed of its course was like a mountain torrent. Here and +there a few treetops were discovered and then whelmed again; and for +one second, the bough of a dead pine beckoned out of the spray like +the arm of a drowning man. But still the imagination was dissatisfied, +still the ear waited for something more. Had this indeed been +water (as it seemed so, to the eye), with what a plunge of reverberating +thunder would it have rolled upon its course, disembowelling mountains +and deracinating pines! And yet water it was, and sea-water at +that - true Pacific billows, only somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid +air among the hilltops.<br> +<br> +I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel and dwarf underwood +of Mount Saint Helena, until I could look right down upon Silverado, +and admire the favoured nook in which it lay. The sunny plain +of fog was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting spur a +gigantic accumulation of cottony vapour threatened, with every second, +to blow over and submerge our homestead; but the vortex setting past +the Toll House was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in +the arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine. +About eleven, however, thin spray came flying over the friendly buttress, +and I began to think the fog had hunted out its Jonah after all. +But it was the last effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, +and began to blow squally from the mountain summit; and by half-past +one, all that world of sea-fogs was utterly routed and flying here and +there into the south in little rags of cloud. And instead of a +lone sea-beach, we found ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountainside, +with the clear green country far below us, and the light smoke of Calistoga +blowing in the air.<br> +<br> +This was the great Russian campaign for that season. Now and then, +in the early morning, a little white lakelet of fog would be seen far +down in Napa Valley; but the heights were not again assailed, nor was +the surrounding world again shut off from Silverado.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE TOLL HOUSE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The Toll House, standing alone by the wayside under nodding pines, with +its streamlet and water-tank; its backwoods, toll-bar, and well trodden +croquet ground; the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw; +a glimpse of the Chinese cook in the back parts; and Mr. Hoddy in the +bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend or borrow +books; - dozed all day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep. +There were no neighbours, except the Hansons up the hill. The +traffic on the road was infinitesimal; only, at rare intervals, a couple +in a waggon, or a dusty farmer on a springboard, toiling over “the +grade” to that metropolitan hamlet, Calistoga; and, at the fixed +hours, the passage of the stages.<br> +<br> +The nearest building was the school-house, down the road; and the school-ma’am +boarded at the Toll House, walking thence in the morning to the little +brown shanty, where she taught the young ones of the district, and returning +thither pretty weary in the afternoon. She had chosen this outlying +situation, I understood, for her health. Mr. Corwin was consumptive; +so was Rufe; so was Mr. Jennings, the engineer. In short, the +place was a kind of small Davos: consumptive folk consorting on a hilltop +in the most unbroken idleness. Jennings never did anything that +I could see, except now and then to fish, and generally to sit about +in the bar and the verandah, waiting for something to happen. +Corwin and Rufe did as little as possible; and if the school-ma’am, +poor lady, had to work pretty hard all morning, she subsided when it +was over into much the same dazed beatitude as all the rest.<br> +<br> +Her special corner was the parlour - a very genteel room, with Bible +prints, a crayon portrait of Mrs. Corwin in the height of fashion, a +few years ago, another of her son (Mr. Corwin was not represented), +a mirror, and a selection of dried grasses. A large book was laid +religiously on the table - “From Palace to Hovel,” I believe, +its name - full of the raciest experiences in England. The author +had mingled freely with all classes, the nobility particularly meeting +him with open arms; and I must say that traveller had ill requited his +reception. His book, in short, was a capital instance of the Penny +Messalina school of literature; and there arose from it, in that cool +parlour, in that silent, wayside, mountain inn, a rank atmosphere of +gold and blood and “Jenkins,” and the “Mysteries of +London,” and sickening, inverted snobbery, fit to knock you down. +The mention of this book reminds me of another and far racier picture +of our island life. The latter parts of <i>Rocambole</i> are surely +too sparingly consulted in the country which they celebrate. No +man’s education can be said to be complete, nor can he pronounce +the world yet emptied of enjoyment, till he has made the acquaintance +of “the Reverend Patterson, director of the Evangelical Society.” +To follow the evolutions of that reverend gentleman, who goes through +scenes in which even Mr. Duffield would hesitate to place a bishop, +is to rise to new ideas. But, alas! there was no Patterson about +the Toll House. Only, alongside of “From Palace to Hovel,” +a sixpenny “Ouida” figured. So literature, you see, +was not unrepresented.<br> +<br> +The school-ma’am had friends to stay with her, other school-ma’ams +enjoying their holidays, quite a bevy of damsels. They seemed +never to go out, or not beyond the verandah, but sat close in the little +parlour, quietly talking or listening to the wind among the trees. +Sleep dwelt in the Toll House, like a fixture: summer sleep, shallow, +soft, and dreamless. A cuckoo-clock, a great rarity in such a +place, hooted at intervals about the echoing house; and Mr. Jenning +would open his eyes for a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf of a +newspaper, and the resting school-ma’ams in the parlour would +be recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. Busy Mrs. +Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be heard indeed, in the penetralia, +pounding dough or rattling dishes; or perhaps Rufe had called up some +of the sleepers for a game of croquet, and the hollow strokes of the +mallet sounded far away among the woods: but with these exceptions, +it was sleep and sunshine and dust, and the wind in the pine trees, +all day long.<br> +<br> +A little before stage time, that castle of indolence awoke. The +ostler threw his straw away and set to his preparations. Mr. Jennings +rubbed his eyes; happy Mr. Jennings, the something he had been waiting +for all day about to happen at last! The boarders gathered in +the verandah, silently giving ear, and gazing down the road with shaded +eyes. And as yet there was no sign for the senses, not a sound, +not a tremor of the mountain road. The birds, to whom the secret +of the hooting cuckoo is unknown, must have set down to instinct this +premonitory bustle.<br> +<br> +And then the first of the two stages swooped upon the Toll House with +a roar and in a cloud of dust; and the shock had not yet time to subside, +before the second was abreast of it. Huge concerns they were, +well-horsed and loaded, the men in their shirt-sleeves, the women swathed +in veils, the long whip cracking like a pistol; and as they charged +upon that slumbering hostelry, each shepherding a dust storm, the dead +place blossomed into life and talk and clatter. This the Toll +House? - with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity +of instant business in the bar? The mind would not receive it! +The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; the thrill of +the great shower of letters from the post-bag, the childish hope and +interest with which one gazed in all these strangers’ eyes. +They paused there but to pass: the blue-clad China-boy, the San Francisco +magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, the secret memoirs in tweed, +the ogling, well-shod lady with her troop of girls; they did but flash +and go; they were hull-down for us behind life’s ocean, and we +but hailed their topsails on the line. Yet, out of our great solitude +of four and twenty mountain hours, we thrilled to their momentary presence +gauged and divined them, loved and hated; and stood light-headed in +that storm of human electricity. Yes, like Piccadilly circus, +this is also one of life’s crossing-places. Here I beheld +one man, already famous or infamous, a centre of pistol-shots: and another +who, if not yet known to rumour, will fill a column of the Sunday paper +when he comes to hang - a burly, thick-set, powerful Chinese desperado, +six long bristles upon either lip; redolent of whiskey, playing cards, +and pistols; swaggering in the bar with the lowest assumption of the +lowest European manners; rapping out blackguard English oaths in his +canorous oriental voice; and combining in one person the depravities +of two races and two civilizations. For all his lust and vigour, +he seemed to look cold upon me from the valley of the shadow of the +gallows. He imagined a vain thing; and while he drained his cock-tail, +Holbein’s death was at his elbow. Once, too, I fell in talk +with another of these flitting strangers - like the rest, in his shirt-sleeves +and all begrimed with dust - and the next minute we were discussing +Paris and London, theatres and wines. To him, journeying from +one human place to another, this was a trifle; but to me! No, +Mr. Lillie, I have not forgotten it.<br> +<br> +And presently the city-tide was at its flood and began to ebb. +Life runs in Piccadilly Circus, say, from nine to one, and then, there +also, ebbs into the small hours of the echoing policeman and the lamps +and stars. But the Toll House is far up stream, and near its rural +springs; the bubble of the tide but touches it. Before you had +yet grasped your pleasure, the horses were put to, the loud whips volleyed, +and the tide was gone. North and south had the two stages vanished, +the towering dust subsided in the woods; but there was still an interval +before the flush had fallen on your cheeks, before the ear became once +more contented with the silence, or the seven sleepers of the Toll House +dozed back to their accustomed corners. Yet a little, and the +ostler would swing round the great barrier across the road; and in the +golden evening, that dreamy inn begin to trim its lamps and spread the +board for supper.<br> +<br> +As I recall the place - the green dell below; the spires of pine; the +sun-warm, scented air; that gray, gabled inn, with its faint stirrings +of life amid the slumber of the mountains - I slowly awake to a sense +of admiration, gratitude, and almost love. A fine place, after +all, for a wasted life to doze away in - the cuckoo clock hooting of +its far home country; the croquet mallets, eloquent of English lawns; +the stages daily bringing news of - the turbulent world away below there; +and perhaps once in the summer, a salt fog pouring overhead with its +tale of the Pacific.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A STARRY DRIVE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +In our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum. +The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick; and, as I +was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was +no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a cottage +on the green. By that time we had begun to realize the difficulties +of our position. We had found what an amount of labour it cost +to support life in our red canyon; and it was the dearest desire of +our hearts to get a China-boy to go along with us when we returned. +We could have given him a whole house to himself, self-contained, as +they say in the advertisements; and on the money question we were prepared +to go far. Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, was entrusted +with the affair; and from day to day it languished on, with protestations +on our part and mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee.<br> +<br> +At length, about half-past eight of our last evening, with the waggon +ready harnessed to convey us up the grade, the washerman, with a somewhat +sneering air, produced the boy. He was a handsome, gentlemanly +lad, attired in rich dark blue, and shod with snowy white; but, alas! +he had heard rumours of Silverado. He know it for a lone place +on the mountain-side, with no friendly wash-house near by, where he +might smoke a pipe of opium o’ nights with other China-boys, and +lose his little earnings at the game of tan; and he first backed out +for more money; and then, when that demand was satisfied, refused to +come point-blank. He was wedded to his wash-houses; he had no +taste for the rural life; and we must go to our mountain servantless. +It must have been near half an hour before we reached that conclusion, +standing in the midst of Calistoga high street under the stars, and +the China-boy and Kong Sam Kee singing their pigeon English in the sweetest +voices and with the most musical inflections.<br> +<br> +We were not, however, to return alone; for we brought with us Joe Strong, +the painter, a most good-natured comrade and a capital hand at an omelette. +I do not know in which capacity he was most valued - as a cook or a +companion; and he did excellently well in both.<br> +<br> +The Kong Sam Kee negotiation had delayed us unduly; it must have been +half-past nine before we left Calistoga, and night came fully ere we +struck the bottom of the grade. I have never seen such a night. +It seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of all the painters that ever +dabbled in starlight. The sky itself was of a ruddy, powerful, +nameless, changing colour, dark and glossy like a serpent’s back. +The stars, by innumerable millions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. +The milky way was bright, like a moonlit cloud; half heaven seemed milky +way. The greater luminaries shone each more clearly than a winter’s +moon. Their light was dyed in every sort of colour - red, like +fire; blue, like steel; green, like the tracks of sunset; and so sharply +did each stand forth in its own lustre that there was no appearance +of that flat, star-spangled arch we know so well in pictures, but all +the hollow of heaven was one chaos of contesting luminaries - a hurry-burly +of stars. Against this the hills and rugged treetops stood out +redly dark.<br> +<br> +As we continued to advance, the lesser lights and milky ways first grew +pale, and then vanished; the countless hosts of heaven dwindled in number +by successive millions; those that still shone had tempered their exceeding +brightness and fallen back into their customary wistful distance; and +the sky declined from its first bewildering splendour into the appearance +of a common night. Slowly this change proceeded, and still there +was no sign of any cause. Then a whiteness like mist was thrown +over the spurs of the mountain. Yet a while, and, as we turned +a corner, a great leap of silver light and net of forest shadows fell +across the road and upon our wondering waggonful; and, swimming low +among the trees, we beheld a strange, misshapen, waning moon, half-tilted +on her back.<br> +<br> +“Where are ye when the moon appears?” so the old poet sang, +half-taunting, to the stars, bent upon a courtly purpose.<br> +<br> +<br> +“As the sunlight round the dim earth’s midnight tower of +shadow pours,<br> +Streaming past the dim, wide portals,<br> +Viewless to the eyes of mortals,<br> +Till it floods the moon’s pale islet or the morning’s golden +shores.”<br> +<br> +<br> +So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a noble inspiration. And so had +the sunlight flooded that pale islet of the moon, and her lit face put +out, one after another, that galaxy of stars. The wonder of the +drive was over; but, by some nice conjunction of clearness in the air +and fit shadow in the valley where we travelled, we had seen for a little +while that brave display of the midnight heavens. It was gone, +but it had been; nor shall I ever again behold the stars with the same +mind. He who has seen the sea commoved with a great hurricane, +thinks of it very differently from him who has seen it only in a calm. +And the difference between a calm and a hurricane is not greatly more +striking than that between the ordinary face of night and the splendour +that shone upon us in that drive. Two in our waggon knew night +as she shines upon the tropics, but even that bore no comparison. +The nameless colour of the sky, the hues of the star-fire, and the incredible +projection of the stars themselves, starting from their orbits, so that +the eye seemed to distinguish their positions in the hollow of space +- these were things that we had never seen before and shall never see +again.<br> +<br> +Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our way among the +scents and silence of the forest, reached the top of the grade, wound +up by Hanson’s, and came at last to a stand under the flying gargoyle +of the chute. Sam, who had been lying back, fast asleep, with +the moon on his face, got down, with the remark that it was pleasant +“to be home.” The waggon turned and drove away, the +noise gently dying in the woods, and we clambered up the rough path, +Caliban’s great feat of engineering, and came home to Silverado.<br> +<br> +The moon shone in at the eastern doors and windows, and over the lumber +on the platform. The one tall pine beside. the ledge was steeped +in silver. Away up the canyon, a wild cat welcomed us with three +discordant squalls. But once we had lit a candle, and began to +review our improvements, homely in either sense, and count our stores, +it was wonderful what a feeling of possession and permanence grow up +in the hearts of the lords of Silverado. A bed had still to be +made up for Strong, and the morning’s water to be fetched, with +clinking pail; and as we set about these household duties, and showed +off our wealth and conveniences before the stranger, and had a glass +of wine, I think, in honour of our return, and trooped at length one +after another up the flying bridge of plank, and lay down to sleep in +our shattered, moon-pierced barrack, we were among the happiest sovereigns +in the world, and certainly ruled over the most contented people. +Yet, in our absence, the palace had been sacked. Wild cats, so +the Hansons said, had broken in and carried off a side of bacon, a hatchet, +and two knives.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +No one could live at Silverado and not be curious about the story of +the mine. We were surrounded by so many evidences of expense and +toil, we lived so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, like +mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the old din and bustle +haunted our repose. Our own house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, +the rails, the windlass, the mass of broken plant; the two tunnels, +one far below in the green dell, the other on the platform where we +kept our wine; the deep shaft, with the sun-glints and the water-drops; +above all, the ledge, that great gaping slice out of the mountain shoulder, +propped apart by wooden wedges, on whose immediate margin, high above +our heads, the one tall pine precariously nodded - these stood for its +greatness; while, the dog-hutch, boot-jacks, old boots, old tavern bills, +and the very beds that we inherited from bygone miners, put in human +touches and realized for us the story of the past.<br> +<br> +I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick madronas near the forge, +with just a look over the dump on the green world below, and seen the +sun lying broad among the wreck, and heard the silence broken only by +the tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the royal family about +the battered palace, and my mind has gone back to the epoch of the Stanleys +and the Chapmans, with a grand <i>tutti</i> of pick and drill, hammer +and anvil, echoing about the canyon; the assayer hard at it in our dining-room; +the carts below on the road, and their cargo of red mineral bounding +and thundering down the iron chute. And now all gone - all fallen +away into this sunny silence and desertion: a family of squatters dining +in the assayer’s office, making their beds in the big sleeping +room erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine in the tunnel that once +rang with picks.<br> +<br> +But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn into decay, was +once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other mines and other flitting +cities. Twenty years ago, away down the glen on the Lake County +side there was a place, Jonestown by name, with two thousand inhabitants +dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house for the sale of whiskey. +Round on the western side of Mount Saint Helena, there was at the same +date, a second large encampment, its name, if it ever had one, lost +for me. Both of these have perished, leaving not a stick and scarce +a memory behind them. Tide after tide of hopeful miners have thus +flowed and ebbed about the mountain, coming and going, now by lone prospectors, +now with a rush. Last, in order of time came Silverado, reared +the big mill, in the valley, founded the town which is now represented, +monumentally, by Hanson’s, pierced all these slaps and shafts +and tunnels, and in turn declined and died away.<br> +<br> +<br> +“Our noisy years seem moments in the wake<br> +Of the eternal silence.”<br> +<br> +<br> +As to the success of Silverado in its time of being, two reports were +current. According to the first, six hundred thousand dollars +were taken out of that great upright seam, that still hung open above +us on crazy wedges. Then the ledge pinched out, and there followed, +in quest of the remainder, a great drifting and tunnelling in all directions, +and a great consequent effusion of dollars, until, all parties being +sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and the town decamped. +According to the second version, told me with much secrecy of manner, +the whole affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one majestic swindle. +There had never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; there +was no silver to come. At midnight trains of packhorses might +have been observed winding by devious tracks about the shoulder of the +mountain. They came from far away, from Amador or Placer, laden +with silver in “old cigar boxes.” They discharged +their load at Silverado, in the hour of sleep; and before the morning +they were gone again with their mysterious drivers to their unknown +source. In this way, twenty thousand pounds’ worth of silver +was smuggled in under cover of night, in these old cigar boxes; mixed +with Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgated, +and refined, and despatched to the city as the proper product of the +mine. Stock-jobbing, if it can cover such expenses, must be a +profitable business in San Francisco.<br> +<br> +I give these two versions as I got them. But I place little reliance +on either, my belief in history having been greatly shaken. For +it chanced that I had come to dwell in Silverado at a critical hour; +great events in its history were about to happen - did happen, as I +am led to believe; nay, and it will be seen that I played a part in +that revolution myself. And yet from first to last I never had +a glimmer of an idea what was going on; and even now, after full reflection, +profess myself at sea. That there was some obscure intrigue of +the cigar-box order, and that I, in the character of a wooden puppet, +set pen to paper in the interest of somebody, so much, and no more, +is certain.<br> +<br> +Silverado, then under my immediate sway, belonged to one whom I will +call a Mr. Ronalds. I only knew him through the extraordinarily +distorting medium of local gossip, now as a momentous jobber; now as +a dupe to point an adage; and again, and much more probably, as an ordinary +Christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked +it for a while with better and worse fortune. So, through a defective +window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunchbacked giant +or dwindle into a potbellied dwarf.<br> +<br> +To Ronalds, at least, the mine belonged; but the notice by which he +held it would ran out upon the 30th of June - or rather, as I suppose, +it had run out already, and the month of grace would expire upon that +day, after which any American citizen might post a notice of his own, +and make Silverado his. This, with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe +told me at an early period of our acquaintance. There was no silver, +of course; the mine “wasn’t worth nothing, Mr. Stevens,” +but there was a deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain possession +of this old wood and iron, and get a right to the water, Rufe proposed, +if I had no objections, to “jump the claim.”<br> +<br> +Of course, I had no objection. But I was filled with wonder. +If all he wanted was the wood and iron, what, in the name of fortune, +was to prevent him taking them? “His right there was none +to dispute.” He might lay hands on all to-morrow, as the +wild cats had laid hands upon our knives and hatchet. Besides, +was this mass of heavy mining plant worth transportation? If it +was, why had not the rightful owners carted it away? If it was, +would they not preserve their title to these movables, even after they +had lost their title to the mine? And if it were not, what the +better was Rufe? Nothing would grow at Silverado; there was even +no wood to cut; beyond a sense of property, there was nothing to be +gained. Lastly, was it at all credible that Ronalds would forget +what Rufe remembered? The days of grace were not yet over: any +fine morning he might appear, paper in hand, and enter for another year +on his inheritance. However, it was none of my business; all seemed +legal; Rufe or Ronalds, all was one to me.<br> +<br> +On the morning of the 27th, Mrs. Hanson appeared with the milk as usual, +in her sun-bonnet. The time would be out on Tuesday, she reminded +us, and bade me be in readiness to play my part, though I had no idea +what it was to be. And suppose Ronalds came? we asked. She +received the idea with derision, laughing aloud with all her fine teeth. +He could not find the mine to save his life, it appeared, without Rufe +to guide him. Last year, when he came, they heard him “up +and down the road a hollerin’ and a raisin’ Cain.” +And at last he had to come to the Hansons in despair, and bid Rufe, +“Jump into your pants and shoes, and show me where this old mine +is, anyway!” Seeing that Ronalds had laid out so much money +in the spot, and that a beaten road led right up to the bottom of the +clump, I thought this a remarkable example. The sense of locality +must be singularly in abeyance in the case of Ronalds.<br> +<br> +That same evening, supper comfortably over, Joe Strong busy at work +on a drawing of the dump and the opposite hills, we were all out on +the platform together, sitting there, under the tented heavens, with +the same sense of privacy as if we had been cabined in a parlour, when +the sound of brisk footsteps came mounting up the path. We pricked +our ears at this, for the tread seemed lighter and firmer than was usual +with our country neighbours. And presently, sure enough, two town +gentlemen, with cigars and kid gloves, came debauching past the house. +They looked in that place like a blasphemy.<br> +<br> +“Good evening,” they said. For none of us had stirred; +we all sat stiff with wonder.<br> +<br> +“Good evening,” I returned; and then, to put them at their +ease, “A stiff climb,” I added.<br> +<br> +“Yes,” replied the leader; “but we have to thank you +for this path.”<br> +<br> +I did not like the man’s tone. None of us liked it. +He did not seem embarrassed by the meeting, but threw us his remarks +like favours, and strode magisterially by us towards the shaft and tunnel.<br> +<br> +Presently we heard his voice raised to his companion. “We +drifted every sort of way, but couldn’t strike the ledge.” +Then again: “It pinched out here.” And once more: +“Every minor that ever worked upon it says there’s bound +to be a ledge somewhere.”<br> +<br> +These were the snatches of his talk that reached us, and they had a +damning significance. We, the lords of Silverado, had come face +to face with our superior. It is the worst of all quaint and of +all cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the pinch of some +humiliation. I liked well enough to be a squatter when there was +none but Hanson by; before Ronalds, I will own, I somewhat quailed. +I hastened to do him fealty, said I gathered he was the Squattee, and +apologized. He threatened me with ejection, in a manner grimly +pleasant - more pleasant to him, I fancy, than to me; and then he passed +off into praises of the former state of Silverado. “It was +the busiest little mining town you ever saw:” a population of +between a thousand and fifteen hundred souls, the engine in full blast, +the mill newly erected; nothing going but champagne, and hope the order +of the day. Ninety thousand dollars came out; a hundred and forty +thousand were put in, making a net loss of fifty thousand. The +last days, I gathered, the days of John Stanley, were not so bright; +the champagne had ceased to flow, the population was already moving +elsewhere, and Silverado had begun to wither in the branch before it +was cut at the root. The last shot that was fired knocked over +the stove chimney, and made that hole in the roof of our barrack, through +which the sun was wont to visit slug-a-beds towards afternoon. +A noisy, last shot, to inaugurate the days of silence.<br> +<br> +Throughout this interview, my conscience was a good deal exercised; +and I was moved to throw myself on my knees and own the intended treachery. +But then I had Hanson to consider. I was in much the same position +as Old Rowley, that royal humourist, whom “the rogue had taken +into his confidence.” And again, here was Ronalds on the +spot. He must know the day of the month as well as Hanson and +I. If a broad hint were necessary, he had the broadest in the +world. For a large board had been nailed by the crown prince on +the very front of our house, between the door and window, painted in +cinnabar - the pigment of the country - with doggrel rhymes and contumelious +pictures, and announcing, in terms unnecessarily figurative, that the +trick was already played, the claim already jumped, and Master Sam the +legitimate successor of Mr. Ronalds. But no, nothing could save +that man; <i>quem</i> <i>deus vult perdere, prius dementat</i>. +As he came so he went, and left his rights depending.<br> +<br> +Late at night, by Silverado reckoning, and after we were all abed, Mrs. +Hanson returned to give us the newest of her news. It was like +a scene in a ship’s steerage: all of us abed in our different +tiers, the single candle struggling with the darkness, and this plump, +handsome woman, seated on an upturned valise beside the bunks, talking +and showing her fine teeth, and laughing till the rafters rang. +Any ship, to be sure, with a hundredth part as many holes in it as our +barrack, must long ago have gone to her last port. Up to that +time I had always imagined Mrs. Hanson’s loquacity to be mere +incontinence, that she said what was uppermost for the pleasure of speaking, +and laughed and laughed again as a kind of musical accompaniment. +But I now found there was an art in it, I found it less communicative +than silence itself. I wished to know why Ronalds had come; how +he had found his way without Rufe; and why, being on the spot, he had +not refreshed his title. She talked interminably on, but her replies +were never answers. She fled under a cloud of words; and when +I had made sure that she was purposely eluding me, I dropped the subject +in my turn, and let her rattle where she would.<br> +<br> +She had come to tell us that, instead of waiting for Tuesday, the claim +was to be jumped on the morrow. How? If the time were not +out, it was impossible. Why? If Ronalds had come and gone, +and done nothing, there was the less cause for hurry. But again +I could reach no satisfaction. The claim was to be jumped next +morning, that was all that she would condescend upon.<br> +<br> +And yet it was not jumped the next morning, nor yet the next, and a +whole week had come and gone before we heard more of this exploit. +That day week, however, a day of great heat, Hanson, with a little roll +of paper in his hand, and the eternal pipe alight; Breedlove, his large, +dull friend, to act, I suppose, as witness; Mrs. Hanson, in her Sunday +best; and all the children, from the oldest to the youngest; - arrived +in a procession, tailing one behind another up the path. Caliban +was absent, but he had been chary of his friendly visits since the row; +and with that exception, the whole family was gathered together as for +a marriage or a christening. Strong was sitting at work, in the +shade of the dwarf madronas near the forge; and they planted themselves +about him in a circle, one on a stone, another on the waggon rails, +a third on a piece of plank. Gradually the children stole away +up the canyon to where there was another chute, somewhat smaller than +the one across the dump; and down this chute, for the rest of the afternoon, +they poured one avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes +of the glen. Meantime we elders sat together on the platform, +Hanson and his friend smoking in silence like Indian sachems, Mrs. Hanson +rattling on as usual with an adroit volubility, saying nothing, but +keeping the party at their ease like a courtly hostess.<br> +<br> +Not a word occurred about the business of the day. Once, twice, +and thrice I tried to slide the subject in, but was discouraged by the +stoic apathy of Rufe, and beaten down before the pouring verbiage of +his wife. There is nothing of the Indian brave about me, and I +began to grill with impatience. At last, like a highway robber, +I cornered Hanson, and bade him stand and deliver his business. +Thereupon he gravely rose, as though to hint that this was not a proper +place, nor the subject one suitable for squaws, and I, following his +example, led him up the plank into our barrack. There he bestowed +himself on a box, and unrolled his papers with fastidious deliberation. +There were two sheets of note-paper, and an old mining notice, dated +May 30th, 1879, part print, part manuscript, and the latter much obliterated +by the rains. It was by this identical piece of paper that the +mine had been held last year. For thirteen months it had endured +the weather and the change of seasons on a cairn behind the shoulder +of the canyon; and it was now my business, spreading it before me on +the table, and sitting on a valise, to copy its terms, with some necessary +changes, twice over on the two sheets of note-paper. One was then +to be placed on the same cairn - a “mound of rocks” the +notice put it; and the other to be lodged for registration.<br> +<br> +Rufe watched me, silently smoking, till I came to the place for the +locator’s name at the end of the first copy; and when I proposed +that he should sign, I thought I saw a scare in his eye. “I +don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said slowly; +“just you write it down.” Perhaps this mighty hunter, +who was the most active member of the local school board, could not +write. There would be nothing strange in that. The constable +of Calistoga is, and has been for years, a bed-ridden man, and, if I +remember rightly, blind. He had more need of the emoluments than +another, it was explained; and it was easy for him to “depytize,” +with a strong accent on the last. So friendly and so free are +popular institutions.<br> +<br> +When I had done my scrivening, Hanson strolled out, and addressed Breedlove, +“Will you step up here a bit?” and after they had disappeared +a little while into the chaparral and madrona thicket, they came back +again, minus a notice, and the deed was done. The claim was jumped; +a tract of mountain-side, fifteen hundred feet long by six hundred wide, +with all the earth’s precious bowels, had passed from Ronalds +to Hanson, and, in the passage, changed its name from the “Mammoth” +to the “Calistoga.” I had tried to get Rufe to call +it after his wife, after himself, and after Garfield, the Republican +Presidential candidate of the hour - since then elected, and, alas! +dead - but all was in vain. The claim had once been called the +Calistoga before, and he seemed to feel safety in returning to that.<br> +<br> +And so the history of that mine became once more plunged in darkness, +lit only by some monster pyrotechnical displays of gossip. And +perhaps the most curious feature of the whole matter is this: that we +should have dwelt in this quiet corner of the mountains, with not a +dozen neighbours, and yet struggled all the while, like desperate swimmers, +in this sea of falsities and contradictions. Wherever a man is, +there will be a lie.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +TOILS AND PLEASURES<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +I must try to convey some notion of our life, of how the days passed +and what pleasure we took in them, of what there was to do and how we +set about doing it, in our mountain hermitage. The house, after +we had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in some of the +doors and windows with white cotton cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant +dwelling-place, always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor perfumes +of the glen. Within, it had the look of habitation, the human +look. You had only to go into the third room, which we did not +use, and see its stones, its sifting earth, its tumbled litter; and +then return to our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, +the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, +and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal, - and man’s +order, the little clean spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once +contrasted with the rich passivity of nature. And yet our house +was everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the air came and went so freely, +the sun found so many portholes, the golden outdoor glow shone in so +many open chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some of the comforts +of a roof and much of the gaiety and brightness of al fresco life. +A single shower of rain, to be sure, and we should have been drowned +out like mice. But ours was a Californian summer, and an earthquake +was a far likelier accident than a shower of rain.<br> +<br> +Trustful in this fine weather, we kept the house for kitchen and bedroom, +and used the platform as our summer parlour. The sense of privacy, +as I have said already, was complete. We could look over the clump +on miles of forest and rough hilltop; our eyes commanded some of Napa +Valley, where the train ran, and the little country townships sat so +close together along the line of the rail. But here there was +no man to intrude. None but the Hansons were our visitors. +Even they came but at long intervals, or twice daily, at a stated hour, +with milk. So our days, as they were never interrupted, drew out +to the greater length; hour melted insensibly into hour; the household +duties, though they were many, and some of them laborious, dwindled +into mere islets of business in a sea of sunny day-time; and it appears +to me, looking back, as though the far greater part of our life at Silverado +had been passed, propped upon an elbow, or seated on a plank, listening +to the silence that there is among the hills.<br> +<br> +My work, it is true, was over early in the morning. I rose before +any one else, lit the stove, put on the water to boil, and strolled +forth upon the platform to wait till it was ready. Silverado would +then be still in shadow, the sun shining on the mountain higher up. +A clean smell of trees, a smell of the earth at morning, hung in the +air. Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, +but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was +cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, +nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; +it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a +perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with +me far on into the day.<br> +<br> +As soon as the kettle boiled, I made porridge and coffee; and that, +beyond the literal drawing of water, and the preparation of kindling, +which it would be hyperbolical to call the hewing of wood, ended my +domestic duties for the day. Thenceforth my wife laboured single-handed +in the palace, and I lay or wandered on the platform at my own sweet +will. The little corner near the forge, where we found a refuge +under the madronas from the unsparing early sun, is indeed connected +in my mind with some nightmare encounters over Euclid, and the Latin +Grammar. These were known as Sam’s lessons. He was +supposed to be the victim and the sufferer; but here there must have +been some misconception, for whereas I generally retired to bed after +one of these engagements, he was no sooner set free than he dashed up +to the Chinaman’s house, where he had installed a printing press, +that great element of civilization, and the sound of his labours would +be faintly audible about the canyon half the day.<br> +<br> +To walk at all was a laborious business; the foot sank and slid, the +boots were cut to pieces, among sharp, uneven, rolling stones. +When we crossed the platform in any direction, it was usual to lay a +course, following as much as possible the line of waggon rails. +Thus, if water were to be drawn, the water-carrier left the house along +some tilting planks that we had laid down, and not laid down very well. +These carried him to that great highroad, the railway; and the railway +served him as far as to the head of the shaft. But from thence +to the spring and back again he made the best of his unaided way, staggering +among the stones, and wading in low growth of the calcanthus, where +the rattlesnakes lay hissing at his passage. Yet I liked to draw +water. It was pleasant to dip the gray metal pail into the clean, +colourless, cool water; pleasant to carry it back, with the water ripping +at the edge, and a broken sunbeam quivering in the midst.<br> +<br> +But the extreme roughness of the walking confined us in common practice +to the platform, and indeed to those parts of it that were most easily +accessible along the line of rails. The rails came straight forward +from the shaft, here and there overgrown with little green bushes, but +still entire, and still carrying a truck, which it was Sam’s delight +to trundle to and fro by the hour with various ladings. About +midway down the platform, the railroad trended to the right, leaving +our house and coasting along the far side within a few yards of the +madronas and the forge, and not far of the latter, ended in a sort of +platform on the edge of the dump. There, in old days, the trucks +were tipped, and their load sent thundering down the chute. There, +besides, was the only spot where we could approach the margin of the +dump. Anywhere else, you took your life in your right hand when +you came within a yard and a half to peer over. For at any moment +the dump might begin to slide and carry you down and bury you below +its ruins. Indeed, the neighbourhood of an old mine is a place +beset with dangers. For as still as Silverado was, at any moment +the report of rotten wood might tell us that the platform had fallen +into the shaft; the dump might begin to pour into the road below; or +a wedge slip in the great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of mountain +bury the scene of our encampment.<br> +<br> +I have already compared the dump to a rampart, built certainly by some +rude people, and for prehistoric wars. It was likewise a frontier. +All below was green and woodland, the tall pines soaring one above another, +each with a firm outline and full spread of bough. All above was +arid, rocky, and bald. The great spout of broken mineral, that +had dammed the canyon up, was a creature of man’s handiwork, its +material dug out with a pick and powder, and spread by the service of +the tracks. But nature herself, in that upper district, seemed +to have had an eye to nothing besides mining; and even the natural hill-side +was all sliding gravel and precarious boulder. Close at the margin +of the well leaves would decay to skeletons and mummies, which at length +some stronger gust would carry clear of the canyon and scatter in the +subjacent woods. Even moisture and decaying vegetable matter could +not, with all nature’s alchemy, concoct enough soil to nourish +a few poor grasses. It is the same, they say, in the neighbourhood +of all silver mines; the nature of that precious rock being stubborn +with quartz and poisonous with cinnabar. Both were plenty in our +Silverado. The stones sparkled white in the sunshine with quartz; +they were all stained red with cinnabar. Here, doubtless, came +the Indians of yore to paint their faces for the war-path; and cinnabar, +if I remember rightly, was one of the few articles of Indian commerce. +Now, Sam had it in his undisturbed possession, to pound down and slake, +and paint his rude designs with. But to me it had always a fine +flavour of poetry, compounded out of Indian story and Hawthornden’s +allusion:<br> +<br> +<br> +“Desire, alas! I desire a Zeuxis new,<br> +From Indies borrowing gold, from Eastern skies<br> +Most bright cinoper . . .”<br> +<br> +<br> +Yet this is but half the picture; our Silverado platform has another +side to it. Though there was no soil, and scarce a blade of grass, +yet out of these tumbled gravel-heaps and broken boulders, a flower +garden bloomed as at home in a conservatory. Calcanthus crept, +like a hardy weed, all over our rough parlour, choking the railway, +and pushing forth its rusty, aromatic cones from between two blocks +of shattered mineral. Azaleas made a big snow-bed just above the +well. The shoulder of the hill waved white with Mediterranean +heath. In the crannies of the ledge and about the spurs of the +tall pine, a red flowering stone-plant hung in clusters. Even +the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like blossom. Close +at the foot of our path nutmegs prospered, delightful to the sight and +smell. At sunrise, and again late at night, the scent of the sweet +bay trees filled the canyon, and the down-blowing night wind must have +borne it hundreds of feet into the outer air.<br> +<br> +All this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. The madrona was +here no bigger than the manzanita; the bay was but a stripling shrub; +the very pines, with four or five exceptions in all our upper canyon, +were not so tall as myself, or but a little taller, and the most of +them came lower than my waist. For a prosperous forest tree, we +must look below, where the glen was crowded with green spires. +But for flowers and ravishing perfume, we had none to envy: our heap +of road-metal was thick with bloom, like a hawthorn in the front of +June; our red, baking angle in the mountain, a laboratory of poignant +scents. It was an endless wonder to my mind, as I dreamed about +the platform, following the progress of the shadows, where the madrona +with its leaves, the azalea and calcanthus with their blossoms, could +find moisture to support such thick, wet, waxy growths, or the bay tree +collect the ingredients of its perfume. But there they all grew +together, healthy, happy, and happy-making, as though rooted in a fathom +of black soil.<br> +<br> +Nor was it only vegetable life that prospered. We had, indeed, +few birds, and none that had much of a voice or anything worthy to be +called a song. My morning comrade had a thin chirp, unmusical +and monotonous, but friendly and pleasant to hear. He had but +one rival: a fellow with an ostentatious cry of near an octave descending, +not one note of which properly followed another. This is the only +bird I ever knew with a wrong ear; but there was something enthralling +about his performance. You listened and listened, thinking each +time he must surely get it right; but no, it was always wrong, and always +wrong the same way. Yet he seemed proud of his song, delivered +it with execution and a manner of his own, and was charming to his mate. +A very incorrect, incessant human whistler had thus a chance of knowing +how his own music pleased the world. Two great birds - eagles, +we thought - dwelt at the top of the canyon, among the crags that were +printed on the sky. Now and again, but very rarely, they wheeled +high over our heads in silence, or with a distant, dying scream; and +then, with a fresh impulse, winged fleetly forward, dipped over a hilltop, +and were gone. They seemed solemn and ancient things, sailing +the blue air: perhaps co-oeval with the mountain where they haunted, +perhaps emigrants from Rome, where the glad legions may have shouted +to behold them on the morn of battle.<br> +<br> +But if birds were rare, the place abounded with rattlesnakes - the rattlesnake’s +nest, it might have been named. Wherever we brushed among the +bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. One dwelt habitually +in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up +his small head between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. +The rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, and, +once heard, to stamp itself for ever in the memory. But the sound +is not at all alarming; the hum of many insects, and the buzz of the +wasp convince the ear of danger quite as readily. As a matter +of fact, we lived for weeks in Silverado, coming and going, with rattles +sprung on every side, and it never occurred to us to be afraid. +I used to take sun-baths and do calisthenics in a certain pleasant nook +among azalea and calcanthus, the rattles whizzing on every side like +spinning-wheels, and the combined hiss or buzz rising louder and angrier +at any sudden movement; but I was never in the least impressed, nor +ever attacked. It was only towards the end of our stay, that a +man down at Calistoga, who was expatiating on the terrifying nature +of the sound, gave me at last a very good imitation; and it burst on +me at once that we dwelt in the very metropolis of deadly snakes, and +that the rattle was simply the commonest noise in Silverado. Immediately +on our return, we attacked the Hansons on the subject. They had +formerly assured us that our canyon was favoured, like Ireland, with +an entire immunity from poisonous reptiles; but, with the perfect inconsequence +of the natural man, they were no sooner found out than they went off +at score in the contrary direction, and we were told that in no part +of the world did rattlesnakes attain to such a monstrous bigness as +among the warm, flower-dotted rocks of Silverado. This is a contribution +rather to the natural history of the Hansons, than to that of snakes.<br> +<br> +One person, however, better served by his instinct, had known the rattle +from the first; and that was Chuchu, the dog. No rational creature +has ever led an existence more poisoned by terror than that dog’s +at Silverado. Every whiz of the rattle made him bound. His +eyes rolled; he trembled; he would be often wet with sweat. One +of our great mysteries was his terror of the mountain. A little +away above our nook, the azaleas and almost all the vegetation ceased. +Dwarf pines not big enough to be Christmas trees, grew thinly among +loose stone and gravel scaurs. Here and there a big boulder sat +quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till the next rain in his +long slide down the mountain. There was here no ambuscade for +the snakes, you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the higher +I went, the more abject and appealing became Chuchu’s terror. +He was an excellent master of that composite language in which dogs +communicate with men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that there +was some peril on the mountain; appeal to me, by all that I held holy, +to turn back; and at length, finding all was in vain, and that I still +persisted, ignorantly foolhardy, he would suddenly whip round and make +a bee-line down the slope for Silverado, the gravel showering after +him. What was he afraid of? There were admittedly brown +bears and California lions on the mountain; and a grizzly visited Rufe’s +poultry yard not long before, to the unspeakable alarm of Caliban, who +dashed out to chastise the intruder, and found himself, by moonlight, +face to face with such a tartar. Something at least there must +have been: some hairy, dangerous brute lodged permanently among the +rocks a little to the north-west of Silverado, spending his summer thereabout, +with wife and family.<br> +<br> +And there was, or there had been, another animal. Once, under +the broad daylight, on that open stony hillside, where the baby pines +were growing, scarcely tall enough to be a badge for a MacGregor’s +bonnet, I came suddenly upon his innocent body, lying mummified by the +dry air and sun: a pigmy kangaroo. I am ingloriously ignorant +of these subjects; had never heard of such a beast; thought myself face +to face with some incomparable sport of nature; and began to cherish +hopes of immortality in science. Rarely have I been conscious +of a stranger thrill than when I raised that singular creature from +the stones, dry as a board, his innocent heart long quiet, and all warm +with sunshine. His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws +clutched upon his breast, as if to leap; his poor life cut short upon +that mountain by some unknown accident. But the kangaroo rat, +it proved, was no such unknown animal; and my discovery was nothing.<br> +<br> +Crickets were not wanting. I thought I could make out exactly +four of them, each with a corner of his own, who used to make night +musical at Silverado. In the matter of voice, they far excelled +the birds, and their ringing whistle sounded from rock to rock, calling +and replying the same thing, as in a meaningless opera. Thus, +children in full health and spirits shout together, to the dismay of +neighbours; and their idle, happy, deafening vociferations rise and +fall, like the song of the crickets. I used to sit at night on +the platform, and wonder why these creatures were so happy; and what +was wrong with man that he also did not wind up his days with an hour +or two of shouting; but I suspect that all long-lived animals are solemn. +The dogs alone are hardly used by nature; and it seems a manifest injustice +for poor Chuchu to die in his teens, after a life so shadowed and troubled, +continually shaken with alarm, and the tear of elegant sentiment permanently +in his eye.<br> +<br> +There was another neighbour of ours at Silverado, small but very active, +a destructive fellow. This was a black, ugly fly - a bore, the +Hansons called him - who lived by hundreds in the boarding of our house. +He entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a man could do +it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out +the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, +I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning for +a rest - we had no easy-chairs in Silverado - I would hear, hour after +hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and from time to time +a dainty shower of sawdust would fall upon the blankets. There +lives no more industrious creature than a bore.<br> +<br> +And now that I have named to the reader all our animals and insects +without exception - only I find I have forgotten the flies - he will +be able to appreciate the singular privacy and silence of our days. +It was not only man who was excluded: animals, the song of birds, the +lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, clouds even, and the variations +of the weather, were here also wanting; and as, day after day, the sky +was one dome of blue, and the pines below us stood motionless in the +still air, so the hours themselves were marked out from each other only +by the series of our own affairs, and the sun’s great period as +he ranged westward through the heavens. The two birds cackled +a while in the early morning; all day the water tinkled in the shaft, +the bores ground sawdust in the planking of our crazy palace - infinitesimal +sounds; and it was only with the return of night that any change would +fall on our surroundings, or the four crickets begin to flute together +in the dark.<br> +<br> +Indeed, it would be hard to exaggerate the pleasure that we took in +the approach of evening. Our day was not very long, but it was +very tiring. To trip along unsteady planks or wade among shifting +stones, to go to and fro for water, to clamber down the glen to the +Toll House after meat and letters, to cook, to make fires and beds, +were all exhausting to the body. Life out of doors, besides, under +the fierce eye of day, draws largely on the animal spirits. There +are certain hours in the afternoon when a man, unless he is in strong +health or enjoys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a cool corner +of a house and sit upon the chairs of civilization. About that +time, the sharp stones, the planks, the upturned boxes of Silverado, +began to grow irksome to my body; I set out on that hopeless, never-ending +quest for a more comfortable posture; I would be fevered and weary of +the staring sun; and just then he would begin courteously to withdraw +his countenance, the shadows lengthened, the aromatic airs awoke, and +an indescribable but happy change announced the coming of the night.<br> +<br> +The hours of evening, when we were once curtained in the friendly dark, +sped lightly. Even as with the crickets, night brought to us a +certain spirit of rejoicing. It was good to taste the air; good +to mark the dawning of the stars, as they increased their glittering +company; good, too, to gather stones, and send them crashing down the +chute, a wave of light. It seemed, in some way, the reward and +the fulfilment of the day. So it is when men dwell in the open +air; it is one of the simple pleasures that we lose by living cribbed +and covered in a house, that, though the coming of the day is still +the most inspiriting, yet day’s departure, also, and the return +of night refresh, renew, and quiet us; and in the pastures of the dusk +we stand, like cattle, exulting in the absence of the load.<br> +<br> +Our nights wore never cold, and they were always still, but for one +remarkable exception. Regularly, about nine o’clock, a warm +wind sprang up, and blew for ten minutes, or maybe a quarter of an hour, +right down the canyon, fanning it well out, airing it as a mother airs +the night nursery before the children sleep. As far as I could +judge, in the clear darkness of the night, this wind was purely local: +perhaps dependant on the configuration of the glen. At least, +it was very welcome to the hot and weary squatters; and if we were not +abed already, the springing up of this lilliputian valley-wind would +often be our signal to retire.<br> +<br> +I was the last to go to bed, as I was still the first to rise. +Many a night I have strolled about the platform, taking a bath of darkness +before I slept. The rest would be in bed, and even from the forge +I could hear them talking together from bunk to bunk. A single +candle in the neck of a pint bottle was their only illumination; and +yet the old cracked house seemed literally bursting with the light. +It shone keen as a knife through all the vertical chinks; it struck +upward through the broken shingles; and through the eastern door and +window, it fell in a great splash upon the thicket and the overhanging +rock. You would have said a conflagration, or at the least a roaring +forge; and behold, it was but a candle. Or perhaps it was yet +more strange to see the procession moving bedwards round the corner +of the house, and up the plank that brought us to the bedroom door; +under the immense spread of the starry heavens, down in a crevice of +the giant mountain these few human shapes, with their unshielded taper, +made so disproportionate a figure in the eye and mind. But the +more he is alone with nature, the greater man and his doings bulk in +the consideration of his fellow-men. Miles and miles away upon +the opposite hill-tops, if there were any hunter belated or any traveller +who had lost his way, he must have stood, and watched and wondered, +from the time the candle issued from the door of the assayer’s +office till it had mounted the plank and disappeared again into the +miners’ dormitory.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named silvs10h.htm or silvs10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, silvs11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, silvs10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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