A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.
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The stream holds out well, and has not perceptibly diminished in a linear ascent of the mountain-side of nearly three miles. A never-failing reservoir, at an altitude of perhaps twenty-three hundred feet, creates the main branch; while lower down there is a constant augmentation from runnels, up some of which the trout find their way. It is best not to slight these little branches; for occasionally the water sinks, running underground for awhile, and then reappearing, so that a succession of pools is formed, which arrest the fish; and, having nothing to eat, they prey upon each other, until rarely more than two or three remain, and sometimes a solitary fish is left – he having ate up all his poor relations, and thus supplied their wants and his own. There is nothing very strange in this piscatory economy, after all. That bald-headed man, who lost his balance, and slid down a shelving rock nearly twenty feet into the pool, and went out on the other side, with a solitary fish dangling at his hook, and a most unearthly yell, is playing the same game in a business pool. There are more in it than can possibly succeed. One by one, he will eat up the others and become a millionaire. If a bigger fish in the pool eats him, it is only a slight variation of chances, which the commercial ethics of the times will just as heartily approve. You have made that pool desolate; but it is not necessary to yell so as to disturb the universe over a half-pound trout. If ever, O friend, you should have the luck to be drawn out of a pool thus, will there be no yelling in the subterranean caverns?
There is no heroism in jerking every fish out of the stream, just because they have keen mountain appetites. Moreover, as the rays of the sun become vertical, light is thrown into the pools and eddies, and the bites are languid and less frequent. An hour before sunset they will be as brisk as ever. But a hundred trout are enough for one morning, and too many, since no one is willing to carry them down the mountain. A year ago, an enthusiastic friend found the headwaters of the Butano, just over the ridge, toward the coast. Having cut his way out of the San Lorenzo Valley, making his own trail for seven miles or more, he cast in his hook where, he stoutly affirmed, no fisherman had ever preceded him. The falls in several places have formed deep basins in the soft, white sandstone. There this enthusiastic fisherman found his heaven for two hours, until night began to close in upon him. Did he go into a tree-top for the night, and pull his two hundred trout up after him? No; but he left them in a heap, and crept down the mountain at dusk, his pace quickened a little by the sight of a fresh bear-track. I do not think an honest bear, made fully acquainted with such sacrilegious conduct, would eat a man, or so much as smell of him.
All day long the perspective has been growing broader and richer, until these diminutive little fish, destined to be swallowed with a single snap of the jaws – even as they sought to snap the wriggling worm – have become a minor incident in the crowding events of the day. For an hour after dawn the only outlook was into the Santa Clara Valley. But the morning was cold; the thin gray smoke went up silently into the heavens from here and there a farm-house; across the valley a low column of mist clung to the foothills and rolled sullenly away. The rank vegetation of early spring, broken occasionally by the plowed fields, had all the abruptness of contrast seen in the patchwork of a bedquilt; and in the chill of the dawn was not a whit more pleasing to the eyes. But an hour later the sunlight filled all the valley; the harsher tints of the morning were melted into the more subdued glory of the spring, and one could fancy that the scent of almond blossoms came up the mountain, mingled with the grosser incense of the mold and tilth of many fields. Even the solitary stunted pine far up the mountain was dropping down its leafy spicula, like javelins cast aslant, and the last year's cones fell with a rattle, like hand grenades cast from some overhanging battlement. Life was crowding death even here, and the pine was freshening its foliage, as certain of spring time as the alder just shaking out its tassels by the river bank. Away to the southwest the Bay of Monterey, with its breadth of twenty miles, was reduced to a little patch of blue water; and wide off there was a faint trail of smoke along the horizon – the sign that a steamer was going down the coast for puncheons of wine and fleeces of wool.
The glass reveals the dome of a church at Santa Cruz, looking a little larger than a bird cage set down by the ocean. The famous picture on the ceiling of the old adobe church disappeared when the storms melted down the mud walls. If the perspective was faulty, the picture had a lively moral for bad Indians. But something better was found, not many years ago (so the village tradition runs), in one of the lofts in an old store-room near by. The Padre going up there with the village sign painter, to hunt for some half-forgotten thing, drew out of the lumber a lot of blurred and musty canvas, giving it to his friend. The latter hastened home and, unrolling his canvas, saw that upon one side there had once been a picture. But the pigment was now only powdered atoms, which a feather would sweep away. Oiling a new canvas, he laid it upon the back of the picture, and the oil striking through, the first process of restoration was safely accomplished. Then the surface of the picture was carefully cleaned. The sign painter quietly hung up his picture, satisfied that there was an infinite distance between it and a common daub. The Padre wanted the picture back after this sudden revelation of its wonderful beauty. But it never was transferred again to the old lumber room.
"What became of the Padre?"
"I think he went to heaven, where he found better pictures than were ever fished out of that old lumber room."
"And the sign painter?"
"Did you ever know a man who had a Murillo, or even thought he had one, who was in a hurry to leave this world?"
SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA
Whether in the Russian River Valley, Napa, or the smaller valleys of the Clear Lake country, St. Helena is in such friendly proximity that all sense of isolation is destroyed. Looking toward the south from its shoulder, there was an endless succession of stubblefields and vineyards; the faint clatter of threshing machines could be heard; sacks of wheat stood bolt upright in the fields, like millers in convention. A train of cars, diminished by the long perspective, was creeping with serpentine undulations up the valley, and trailing a thin vapor against the sky. Farther south was the bay; white sails of little schooners, outlined by the glass, appeared to split the salt meadows open, as they crept toward the little town of Napa. St. Helena was grandly lifted up on that autumnal morning, and all the little mountains seemed to be rendering homage to the king.
There is no country under the sun where a vineyard is more picturesque than here. If there were an interminable perspective of green clothing and coloring all the hillsides, there would be no fitting border for the picture. But when there is not a fresh blade of grass by the wayside, and the tawny hills touch the yellow stubble-fields, we have a broad golden frame for some picture which ought to be worthy of it. And what more so than a sixty-acre vineyard, set within this mitred framework of mountains? The border is a very generous one, certainly – five or six miles of slope on either side, and this square of emerald in the centre. It is all worked in with true artistic effect, except those straight lines of vines, crossing at right angles. A poet or a painter, setting this vineyard, would have curved the lines, or secured an orderly disorder – enough, at least, to have destroyed the association with a schoolboy's rule and plummet.
Observe that the vines are not tied to clumsy, stiff stakes; nor are the leaves plucked off in part, to prevent mildew. The runners reach out and interlace, resting gently on the ground. The leaves droop a little in the hot sun, making a complete canopy for the clusters, the largest of which rest on the ground. How much more fitting this growing revelation – this discovery, step by step, of hidden clusters – than to see all this wealth at once, as one might do if the vines were trained bolt upright, and held in bondage by stakes!
Another notable effect is produced by the twenty or more varieties, differing in the shape of the leaf and in the color and flavor of the grape. The Tokay blushes by the side of the blackest Malvoisie. The Muscatel is pale where the Victoria has as much color as a ruddy English girl. The Muscats have a tinge of gold, in fine contrast with the Rose of Peru, whose regal purple deepens with every midday sun.
Three months hence, this border of gold will all be changed to the rank and riotous green of pastures quickened by the vernal rains – this square setting, as of emerald, stripped of every leaf and every cluster, but the bronzed vines still interlacing and toning the landscape into a mellow ripeness. A month later, the merciless pruning-knife has left only the black stub, a foot above the ground, and two or three "eyes" for the new wood. This amputated vineyard, with its limbs burning by the wayside, suggests enough of prosy realism to neutralize all the sentiment which it can inspire on a hot September day.
Will the juice of these grapes enrich the blood, and add any essential quality to the tone and fibre of a race which is giving so many signs of physical decadence? This conglomerate which you call society is hanging out a great many flags of distress. It babbles incoherently of perfectibility, and goes straightway to the bad. Are these reformers going to save the world, who, either through intemperance of speech or drink, must needs be moderated by a padlock put upon their mouths? Nor is it safe, just now, to calculate the results of this feminine gospel of vituperation. The back of the body politic may be the better for having a political fly blister laid on; and it might, perhaps, as well be done by feminine hands as any other. But there are some evils too deep for surface remedies. If, for instance, vineyards are going to curse the people, as my moralizing friend insists, then humanity hereabout is in a bad way. Why, a little generous wine ought to enrich the blood and inspire nobility of thought. If it does more than this – if it becomes a demon to drive men and hogs into the sea – then it is evident that both were on too low a plane of existence for any safe exaltation. But shall the vineyards be rooted up, for all this? It is better to drown the swine, and let the grapes still grow purple upon the hillsides.
Some day these mountains will be wreathed and festooned with vines. One may see this culture now climbing to their tops. Oh, my friend, with thin and impoverished blood! do not pinch this question up in the vise of your morality. No doubt there was a vineyard in Eden, and there were ripe clusters close by the fig-leaves. You cannot prove to me that sinless hands have not plucked the grapes, and that millions will not do it again. What we need is not a greater company of wailing prophets, but men who will reveal to us the higher and nobler use of things. If one could not live comfortably in this Vale of Paradise and ripen from year to year, opening his soul to all enriching influences, without an everlasting protest, there would be small chance for his comfort in any more etherealized place.
Looking northward, or from the back side of St. Helena, is Lake County, the centre of which can be reached by the daylight of a summer day from San Francisco. It is a wild, isolated and mountainous region, containing a harmless population, who are much addicted to salt pork, and needing all the more, perhaps, the medicinal and renovating qualities of the various thermal springs which abound. A Pike, with the wilderness at his back, and civilization advancing in front, is sometimes a ridiculous, and oftener a pitiable, specimen of humanity. When the schoolhouse overtakes him, there is a crisis in his affairs. He must elect to hustle half a score of frowzy-headed children into his covered wagon, hang a few pots and kettles at the rear, and plunge farther into the wilderness, or let civilization go past him, closing in upon all sides, and, in spite of impotent protests, narrowing perhaps his own horizon, but making it broader and brighter for his children. If the horizon is too bright, this blinking Pike will turn his back to the light, and make a break for Egypt. So long as there is bacon and hominy, and free territory, with a modicum of whisky within easy reach, you cannot summon this stolid, retreating animal to a better condition. Nature has made a botch of him, else he would now be running on four feet, instead of two. A border man, running away from civilization, who cannot bark and burrow like a coyote, nor climb a tree like a gorilla, is wrestling with his fate at a terrible disadvantage.
If you have never seen Clear Lake, do not babble about Como and Geneva. Here are eighty square miles of water, lifted fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and encompassed by mountains whose flaming forges were put out but yesterday – if a thousand years may be taken as one day. One may see Clear Lake from the top of St. Helena, twenty miles distant, on a bright day. We saw it first from Lukonoma – an intervening mountain, about fifteen hundred feet high – a ribbon of blue water, stretching away between the hills, with a solitary white sail, recognized only by bringing a tree in the range. There was the droning of the pines in the mountain-tops in the afternoon trade-wind; a broad valley opening to the south, which swallowed up two or three mountain streams, and then opened its ugly adobe lips for more; smaller valleys toward the north, encircled with tall firs, and the slumberous dome of Uncle Sam, lifting itself up grandly three or four thousand feet hard by the lake.
Along this Lukonoma ridge there is a well-defined Indian trail for miles. The Clear Lake Indians were accustomed to exchange visits with a tribe in the Lukonoma Valley, ten miles below. The tops of the highest mountain ridges were selected for trails, rather than the valley. The Indian does not like to be surprised, even by his friends. Along these ridges he could look off on either side, and a long way ahead. If not molested, he might drop down to the hot springs just at the base of the mountain, take a mud bath to make his joints a little more supple, and if he found an ant's nest to add to his dietary stores, so much the better. You need not overhaul the Indian's cookbook. He ate the ants alive. No shrimp-eater ought to quarrel with him on that score.
We shall have a nearer view of Lower Lake another day. It is better to have the first view of some old and famous city from the hill-tops. That revelation ripens into a picture which ever afterward we hasten to set over against the squalor and ugliness disclosed by a nearer view. One need not be wholly disgusted if in place of a trout, he has caught a mud-turtle from the lake which opened its sheen of waters to him first from the mountain summit.
The shadows had stretched nearly across the narrow valleys, when it occurred to us that, in climbing to the highest and baldest peak, the Indian trail had run out, and that the hot springs – the point of departure – were eight miles distant, and were shut out of view by an intervening spur. Either a short cut was to be made, trusting to luck to find a trail, or there was to be a night on the mountain. There were two intervening canyons to be crossed before there was any prospect of striking a trail. It is not pleasant to slide a horse on his haunches down into one of these chasms without knowing where one is to bring up. If the most obscure cattle trail can be found leading in, one may trust to the instincts of horse sense to find it, and also the one which will most certainly lead out on the other side. The tinkling of a cow-bell on the table-lands beyond was a welcome sound. The horses wound into the first canyon, and went out without much hesitation. The trail for the next, by good luck, had been found. But it was a suspicious circumstance that these ponies – accustomed to such defiles, and now heading for home – hesitated, snuffed, snorted and turned about. The rein was given to them, but, hungry as they were, they seemed disposed to turn back. The little Cayuse pony trembled, threw his ears forward, advanced and retreated, and blew out a column of vapor from each nostril as he kept up his aboriginal snort. Either two tired and hungry excursionists must make a night of it, shut in by a canyon in front and in the rear, or the second one must be crossed without delay.
A horse is generally willing to plant his feet where he sees a man do it in advance. But these horses were dragged into the chasm, sometimes dropping on their haunches, and at other times plowing along with the fore feet braced well ahead. Once at the bottom, a fresh cinch was taken with the greatest difficulty, as neither horse could be kept still for a second. A moment afterward the click of the pony's feet was heard, and the sparks thrown off by his shoes were distinct enough as he shot up the trail as though projected from a mortar. The old horse – stiff in the shoulders, and his legs like crowbars – was not a rod behind him.
"Did you see anything in that canyon?"
"No – yes. I saw the outline of a steer going down to drink."
"Nonsense! Do you think these tired horses, refusing first to come into the canyon, would have gone out on the other side as if Satan were after them, if they did not know that that particular steer had claws. If you had seen twenty mules break out of a yard and stampede when the foot of a cinnamon bear was thrown over, you would not blame these horses for blazing the trail with fire as they thundered up the rocks with the fresh scent of a live grizzly in their nostrils.
"Then, if you are willing to take the affidavits of these two horses as to the facts – and the jurat of eight steel-clad hoofs, striking fire on the rocks, was a very solemn one – you can settle the question in favor of the grizzly much more comfortably than he would have settled it for you. It is not necessary that one's scalp should be pulled over his eyes and his face set awry for life, in order to obtain a more convincing demonstration. I can refer you to a settler who has had these things done for him, whereat his satisfaction has in no whit increased."
An hour afterward two horses with drooping heads went into their stalls, and two jaded excursionists had each dropped into hot baths at Harbin's Springs. Nothing externally will neutralize the chill of a night ride among the mountains better than water which spouts from this hillside heated to 110 degrees. It is a notable caprice of Nature that, of three springs within the space of twenty feet, one is cold and has no mineral qualities; the other two are of about the same temperature, the waters of one strongly impregnated with iron and the other with sulphur. The waters of the two mineral springs combined are not only as hot as a strong man can bear, but they dissolve zinc bath-tubs, which was a satisfactory reason for the substitution of ugly wooden bathing-boxes. It is a pleasant nook, grandly encircled with mountains, with the wonderfully blue heavens by day, and lustrous stars by night.
Fifty or sixty moping invalids made up the assortment at the hotel. These taciturn and moody people did not wait for the angel to go down and trouble the waters, but each went in his own way and time, and troubled the waters mightily on his personal account. The fact may be assumed that the angel had been there in advance. For a thousand years, a great subterranean caldron had been heated, tempered and medicated, and its vapors had ascended as incense toward heaven.
This little sanitarium among the mountains, crowded with curious people – angular, petulant and capricious – was invested with a great peace and restfulness for brain-weary folk. When the sun went down, invalids, like children, went off to bed. There was nothing to do but to sleep through the long cool nights. All the conventionalities of a more artificial social life were reversed. The people who had fought Nature and common sense for years, and had been worsted in the conflict, came here to make their peace with her. They were up with the opening of the day. They drank medicated waters heroically; dropped into hot baths with a sensation akin to have fallen on the points of a million needles; plunged into pools, or were immersed with the vapors collected in close rooms. There were early breakfasts, when the boards were swept by invalids with ravenous appetites; dinners at midday, attended by the same hungry, silent, introspective people; supper, before sundown, when the same famishing people were eating away for dear life. A four-horse passenger wagon arrived just at nightfall, bringing the mail and an occasional guest. There was a glance at the newspapers, now and then a letter was read, and then night and a sweet stillness settled over this mountain dell. Time was of little consequence; people searched an old almanac for the day of the week or month; the sun rose above the crest of one mountain and went down behind another; there were the morning and evening shadows, the same flood of light in the valley at midday, the monotonous drone of the little rivulet in the canyon, and at long intervals the twitter of a solitary bird. Some sauntered along trails, counting the steps with a sort of mental vacuity; others tilted their chairs under porches, and slept with hats over their eyes. If a bustling, loud-voiced guest arrived, in a day or two he fell into the same peaceful and subdued ways. The repose of sky and mountain came down gently upon him, and a dreamy indolence shortened his steps and prolonged his afternoon naps.
There would have been an utter stagnation of life but for the advent of one of those characters who had been everywhere, seen everybody, and had become a sort of itinerating museum of odd conceits and grotesque incidents. There were many invalids who had separated themselves from business cares, only to brood over their infirmities. They wanted nothing so much as, in some way, to be led apart from their own morbid natures. The eccentric little man told his stories. They were not always fresh, nor always extremely witty. But, as the assortment never ran out, and the quality improved from day to day, the fact was alike creditable to his inventive powers and his benevolence. At first, the worst specimens of morbid anatomy listened from a distance, and muttered, "Foolish;" "Don't believe a word of it." The next day they hitched their chairs along a few feet nearer to this story-telling evangel. One could occasionally see that a crisis was coming; either these people must laugh, or be put on the list of hopeless incurables. Observing, on one occasion, a man on crutches who, after listening for a time with apparent contempt, suddenly withdrew and hobbled off around a turn of the narrow road, I ventured to ask him if stories were disagreeable to him.
"Oh, no, that is not it. You see I had not laughed in years. I was determined that old Hooker should not make me laugh, if I did not choose to. The fact is, I had either to holler or die. I wouldn't make a fool of myself, and so I went around the bend in the road, and turned off into the chaparral."
As this man dropped one crutch in a week from that time, and in ten days thereafter was walking with a cane, I have never doubted that he "hollered."
At nightfall generous wood fires glowed upon the hearth of the sitting room, and there was a more hopeful light in many faces. People lingered in the doorway, on the stairs, and leaned over the balustrade for one more story from the genial and eccentric man. A ripple of half-suppressed laughter went around the room, ran up the stair-way, and ended in gentle gurgles in the rooms with open doors at the end of the corridor. The man of anecdote and story had touched, with healing influences, maladies which no medicated waters could reach. He exorcised the demons so gently, that these brooding invalids hardly knew how they were rescued. New and marvelous virtues were thereafter found in the spring water; there was a softer sunlight in the dell; the man with the liver complaint became less sallow, and no longer talked spitefully about "Old Hooker"; and the woman who did not expect to live a week, no longer sent down petulant requests that the house might be still, but only wanted that last story repeated to her "just as he told it."