{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_44764/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_44764","id":"gutenberg_44764","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44764","summary":null,"tags":["California -- Description and travel","Category: Environmental Issues","Category: History - Other","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Nature/Gardening/Animals","Category: Travel Writing"],"text":"Transcriber's Note:\n\n  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have\n  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.\n\n  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.\n\n  On page 18, \"arroya\" should possibly be \"arroyo.\"\n\n  On page 53, \"gaumet\" should possibly be \"gamut.\"\n\n  On page 134, the text is \"Noriegas'.\"  The Index shows \"Noriega's.\"\n\n  \"Tamalpias\" should possibly be \"Tamalpais.\"\n\n\n\n\n  [Illustration: THE THREE BROTHERS, YOSEMITE VALLEY]\n\n\n\n\nCALIFORNIA\n\n\n\n\n     _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_\n\n     THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN\n     A WOMAN OF GENIUS\n     THE LOVELY LADY\n     ETC.\n\n\n     AGENTS\n\n     America           The Macmillan Company\n                         64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York\n\n     Australasia       The Oxford University Press\n                         205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne\n\n     Canada            The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd.\n                         St. Martin's House, 70 Bond Street,\n     Toronto\n\n     India             Macmillan & Company, Ltd.\n                         Macmillan Building, Bombay\n                         309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta\n\n\n\n\n     CALIFORNIA\n\n     THE LAND OF THE SUN\n\n     PAINTED BY\n     SUTTON PALMER\n\n     DESCRIBED BY\n     MARY AUSTIN\n\n\n     ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK\n     4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.\n\n\n\n\n     _Published Autumn 1914_\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                            PAGE\n  I. The Sparrow Hawk's Own                                    1\n  II. Mothering Mountains                                     25\n  III. The Coasts of Adventure                                45\n  IV. The Port of Monterey                                    61\n  V. Old Spanish Gardens                                      85\n  VI. The Land of the Little Duck                            105\n  VII. The Twin Valleys                                      125\n  VIII. The High Sierras and the Sage-brush Country          147\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n\n  1. The Three Brothers, Yosemite Valley             _Frontispiece_\n                                                        FACING PAGE\n  2. San Diego, looking across the Bay toward Point Loma          9\n  3. Redlands, looking toward San Bernardino Range               16\n  4. A Eucalyptus Grove                                          33\n  5. Glendale, Valley of the San Gabriel                         40\n  6. A Ca\u00f1on in the Sierra Madre                                 49\n  7. The Cemetery, Santa Barbara Mission                         56\n  8. Sycamores, a Coast Range Ca\u00f1on                              59\n  9. Tall Chaparral, Santa Cruz                                  62\n  10. Looking down on Monterey and the Bay                       65\n  11. Pescadero, a Chinese Fishing Village, Monterey Bay         72\n  12. Cypress Point, near Carmel                                 75\n  13. Santa Cruz Mountains, the Coast Range                      78\n  14. The Patio, Old Spanish Residence                           88\n  15. The Golden Gate and Black Point, from Hyde Street,\n      San Francisco. (Site of the Panama Exposition,\n      1915)                                                     107\n  16. Tamalpias                                                 110\n  17. Mill Valley, and Backwater of San Francisco Bay           113\n  18. Waiting for Duck--Los Ba\u00f1os                               120\n  19. Mirror Lake, Yosemite                                     129\n  20. Among the Redwoods of the Great Twin Valleys              131\n  21. Clear Lake, Lake County                                   134\n  22. Castle Crag, Rattlesnake Ca\u00f1on                            136\n  23. McCloud River, Upper Sacramento Valley                    139\n  24. Donner Lake, on the old Emigrant Trail                    142\n  25. Laurel Lake, Upper Sacramento                             145\n  26. Yosemite Falls                                            152\n  27. Blue Lake, Lake County                                    155\n  28. Lake Tahoe, the High Sierras                              158\n  29. Mount Shasta--Sierra Glow                                 161\n  30. Valley of the Yosemite                                    163\n  31. The Half Dome, Yosemite                                   166\n  32. Shasta--Snow Clouds                                       168\n     _Sketch Map at end of Volume._\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE SPARROW-HAWK'S OWN\n\n\nFor a graphic and memorable report of the contours of any country, see\nalways the aboriginal account of its making. That will give you the lie\nof the land as no geographer could sketch it forth for you. California\nwas made by Padahoon the Sparrow-Hawk and the Little Duck, who brooded\non the face of the waters in the Beginning of Things.\n\nThere is no knowing where the tale comes from, for Winnenap the\nMedicine-Man who told it to me, was eclectic in his faiths as in his\npractice. Winnenap was a Shoshone, one of the group who had been forced\nsouthward into Death Valley when the great Pah Ute nation had split\ntheir tribes like a wedge. In the last of their wars he had been taken\nas a hostage by the Paiutes and brought up by them. He might have\nremembered the story, or his wife might have told him. She was a tall\nbrown woman out of Tejon, and _her_ mother was of that band of captives\ntaken from San Gabriel by the Mojaves, Mission-bred. Wherever it came\nfrom, the tale has its roots deep in the land it explains.\n\nPadahoon, being wearied of going to and fro under the heavens, said\nto the Little Duck that it was time there should be mountains; so the\nLittle Duck dived and brought up the primordial mud of which even the\ngeographers are agreed mountains are made.\n\nAs he brought it the Sparrow-Hawk built a round beautiful ring of\nmountains enclosing a quiet space of sea. Said the Little Duck, \"I\nchoose this side,\" coming up with his bill full of mud toward the west.\nWhereupon the Sparrow-Hawk built the other side higher. When it was all\ndone and the Little Duck surveyed it, he observed, as people will to\nthis day, the discrepancy between the low western hills and the high\nSierras, and he thought the builder had not played him fair. \"Very\nwell, then,\" said the Sparrow-Hawk, \"since you are resolved to be so\ngreedy,\" and he bit out pieces of the Sierras with his bill, and threw\nthem over his shoulder.\n\nYou can see the bites still deep and sharp about Mt. Whitney.\n\nBut the Little Duck would not be satisfied; he took hold by the great\nbulk of Shasta and began to pull, and Padahoon pulled on his side until\nthe beautiful ring was pulled out in a long oval and began to break on\nthe west where the bay of San Francisco comes in. So they were forced\nto divide the mountain range north and south and make what they could\nof it. But the Sparrow-Hawk, remembering the pieces he had thrown over\nhis shoulder, chose the south, where you can still see him sailing any\nclear day about four in the afternoon, over all his stolen territory.\n\nThere you have the bones of the land as neatly laid out for you as they\ncould do it in Kensington Museum: the long oval, breaking seaward, the\nhigh, bitten, westward peaks, and the Sparrow-Hawk's Own, tailing south\nlike the quirk of an attenuated Q.\n\nThey serve, these fragmentary ranges, for the outposts of habitableness\nbetween the sea wind and the forces of pure desertness. Always there\nis skirmish and assault going on about them. Showers rush up the slope\nof San Jacinto, all their shining spears a-tilt. Great gusts of wind\nroar through the Pass of San Gorgiono, the old Puerto de San Carlos.\nSeasonally they are beleaguered by stealthy rushes of the fogs that\nfrom the Gulf hear the peaks about Whitney calling, or by the yellow\nmurk of sand-storms on which the whole face of the desert is lifted up\nas it travels toward its destiny in orchard row and vineyard. Always\nthe edge of the wind is against the stone. They shine, the frontlets of\nthe sentinel saints, in that keen polish, as the faces of saints must\nwith benignity.\n\nJust beyond the pil\u00e6 of the broken mountains--the Pillars of Hercules\nof the West--the desert winds about the eastern bases of the range in\ndeep indented bays, white-rimmed with the wave marks of its ancient\nsea. Out a very little way, where the shuddering heat-waves trick the\nimagination, it seems about to be retaken by the ghost of tumbling\nbillows. Nothing else moves in it; nothing sounds. Plantations of\ngrowing things near the Pass lean all a little toward it, edging,\npeering--the wild, spiny, thorny things of the desert to enter the\nrain-fed paradise, the full-leafed offspring of the sea wind plotting\nto take the unfriended sandy spaces. They creep a little forward or\nback as the years run wet or dry. The green things stand up, they\nmarch along the cliffs, they balance on the edge of precipices, but\ndesperation is in every contorted stem of _mesquite_ and _palo verde_.\nAnd with all this struggle, so still! East on the desert rim the\nColorado ramps like a stallion between its walls, westward the Pacific\nrings the low foreshore with thunder; but the land never cries out,\nquartz mountains disintegrate but they do not murmur.\n\nIt is odd here in a land rife with the naked struggle of great pagan\nforces, to find the promontories so lend themselves to the gentle\nnames of saints. Perhaps the Padres were not so far from nature as one\nthinks; in the southerly range which, with San Bernardino on the north,\nsentinels the Pass by which the iron-rimmed Emigrant trail enters the\ncoast valleys, they rendered for once the pagan touch. San Jacinto--St.\nHyacinth--was he ever anything but a Christianised memory of a Grecian\nmyth, or does it matter at all so long as there are men to see, in\nthe deep purple light that dies along the heights, the colour of blood\nthat is shed for love? Perhaps the best thing beauty can say to Greek\nor Christian is that there are still things worth dying for. No doubt\nthe veins of Padre Jayme Bravo were as rich in martyr passion as the\nstained air of the mountain is in purples, paling to rose at morning,\nthinning at noon to pure aerial blues.\n\nSeen from the coast the range has a finny contour as of some huge\ncreature risen from the sea, with low hills about it like dolphins\nplaying; but the prevailing note of the landscape is always blue,\nrepeating the tints of the wild brodi\u00e6a that may be found on the lomas\nearly in April, sending up its clustered heads between two slender\ncurving spears.\n\nNear at hand the masking growth is seen to be green, the dark\nolivaceous green of the chamisal. Nowhere does one get the force of\nthe Spanish termination _al_--the place where--as in that word. The\nchamisal is the place of the chamise: miles and miles of it, with\nscarcely another shrub allowed, spread over the mesa and well up\ninto laps and bays of the hills. It grows breast high, man high in\nthe favoured regions; but even where under the influence of drouth\nand altitude it creeps to the knees, it abates nothing of its social\ncharacter. Its ever-green foliage has a dull shining from the resinous\ncoating which protects it from evaporation, and a slight sticky feel,\ncharacteristics that no doubt won it the name of \"greasewood\" from the\nemigrants who valued it chiefly because it could be burned green. The\nspring winds blowing up from the bay whip all its fretted surface to\na froth of panicled white bloom, that, stirring a little as the wind\nshifts, full of bee-murmur, touches the imagination with the continual\nreminder of the sea. Higher up the thick lacy chaparral flecks and\nripples, showing the light underside of leaves, and tosses up great\nfountain sprays of ceanothus, sea-blue and lilac-scented.\n\n  [Illustration: SAN DIEGO, LOOKING ACROSS THE BAY TOWARD POINT LOMA]\n\nAll the human interest of this region centres about the city on the bay\nof San Diego, a low locked harbour with a long spit of sand breaking\nthe mild Pacific swell, as it bides its time for the shipping of the\nsouth-western world. It has already waited longer than most people\nsuppose. Just fifty years after the landing of Columbus on the Bahamas,\nCabrillo discovered it; Sir Francis Drake, romping up that coast with\nhis buccaneers, must have seen it though he left no note of any visit,\nand in 1602 Sebastian Viscaino anchored there and gave it its present\nname. Just about the time the mixed Dutch and English on the Atlantic\ncoast were beginning to think of themselves as Americans and to act\naccordingly, the Franciscan _Frailes_ settled on San Diego bay. Nobody\nwill know why it was reserved for the brown-skirted brothers of St.\nFrancis to undertake the subjugation of Alta California, until it is\nknown why the King of Spain quarrelled with the Jesuits. They were\naccused of plotting against His Majesty, but in those days it was\npossible to accuse the Jesuits of almost anything without going very\nfar wrong in the popular estimate. I have my own opinion about it,\nwhich is that a great land, like a great lady, has her way with men.\nAnd no land has called its own as has California:--poet or painter\nor pioneer, the world's rim under. No better patron could be found\nfor this blossoming West than Francis of Assisi, who preached to his\nlittle brothers of the air and would have made a convert of the coyote.\nPerhaps the first settlers of a country leave their stripe on all the\nland's later offspring: if it was a way the West took to breed fervour\nand faith and the spirit of prophecy in the young generation, who shall\nsay she has not succeeded?\n\nIn January of 1769 two expeditions by land and sea set forth in the\nname of God and the King of Spain, under the patronage of Se\u00f1or San\nJose, indubitable patron of all journeys since the flight into Egypt.\nIn April the ship _San Antonio_ anchored in the placid bay, there to\nawait the live stock driven up from Velicat\u00e1. So the old world came to\nthe new with a whole collocation of sainted personages flocking like\ndoves to her banners.\n\nBut it was not saints that the land wanted so much as the stuff that\ngoes to make them. The expedition starved, sickened; their eyes were\nholden. Governor Portola, with the greater part of the expedition, made\na long _pasear_ on foot to find the lost port of Monterey, and came\nback, with armour rust on his doublet sleeves and nothing much gained\nbeside, to declare the expedition a failure. But Padre Serra--Junipero\nSerra, father president of Missions, juniper of God's own planting,\nsapling of that stock of which the founder of the order had wished\nfor a whole forest full--Padre Serra claimed a churchman's privilege.\nHe demanded time for a _novena_, a nine days' cycle of prayer to the\npatron who was so unaccountably hiding the relief ship in the fogs\nand indecisions of the uncharted coast. It is my belief that the Padre\nchose the _novena_ simply because it was the longest possible time he\ncould hope to delay the return of the expedition. Nine days they drew\nin their belts and told their beads, and on the last hour of the last\nday, far on the sea rim, behold the white wings of succour!\n\nThe Patron, who could never be at a loss for an expedient, contrived\nthat the ship should lose an anchor which compelled it to put in at San\nDiego, where they had no expectation of finding any of the party. It\nwas so that the land tried them out and approved, for from that day the\nfounding went forward steadily.\n\nThere is a fine growing city now on the site of the early landing,\nregularly stratified through all the architectural periods of\nCalifornia, from the low thick-walled adobe of the Spanish occupation\nto the newest shingle-stained bungalow of the latest one-lunged\nmillionaire; but the land has not lost, in a century and a half, one\nmark by which the brown-skirted _Frailes_ found their way about in\nit. It has its distinctive mark, the Sparrow-Hawk's land, the seal of\na private and peculiar affection. Here about the mouth of one of its\nswift seasonal rivers, and touching as with a finger-tip the opposing\nshore of the island of Santa Rosa, is the habitat of the Torrey pine.\nJapanesque, unrelated, drinking the sea air, never spreading inland,\nit hugs the sea-worn edges of La Jolla, as though, as some botanists\nbelieve, the species came to life there out of the jewel-tinted water\nand the spirit of the desert dust.\n\nIt is also possible to think of it as a relict of the land of which\nthe broken Channel Islands were made, but in any case it is a pity that\nscience could not have retained for this lonely, restricted species the\nname the _Frailes_ gave to its fostering waters, Soledad--the solitary.\nBehind the town the mesa rises abruptly, knife-cut by the gullies of\nintermittent streams; and far back where the mountains break down into\nfoothills, and these into the lomas--little low mounds of detritus--the\nsea air collects all the blue rays of the diffused light and holds\nthem there all day in the hollows, in memory of the sea from which they\nrose.\n\nIn April of the year of the Occupation the white panicles of the\nchamise would be tossing here and there, and the yellow violets run\nthin lines as of fire among the grasses. You would not believe there\nwere so many yellow violets in the world as a day's riding will still\nshow you. At this season, _islay_, the wild cherry, will be shaking out\nits fine white spray of bloom, the button willow begins, the sycamore,\nthe buckthorn, _cascara sagrada_; the great berried manzanita, which\nshed its waxen bells as early as December, will be reddening its\napples. Here also the chia, the true sage, the honey-maker, bread of\nthe wild tribes, makes itself known by the penetrating pungent odour\nof its unfolding foliage. Binding all the leafy thickets, runs the\nsucculent starry bloom of the megarrhiza that, from its hidden root,\nas large as a man's body, sends up smothering tendrils so sensitive\nto their opportunity that you have only to sit down beside them on\none of these long growing afternoons, to find all their tips curling\nin your direction and the stems moving sensibly across the grass in\nthe direction of support. As early as February the foot-long vines\ncan be seen locating the nearest shrub or the ca\u00f1on wall, farther\naway than you could detect it by any tactile sense. And how quickly,\nonce the objective is sensed, the questing Force is withdrawn from\nthe unsuccessful members! Perhaps this one to the right may keep on\nin the direction in which it has caught the invisible communicating\nthread from the nearest buckthorn, but the other three or four green\ntentacles, finding no invitation from any quarter, not only stop\ngrowing but seem to shrink and dwindle in the interests of the climbing\nbrother. Sometimes in a particularly lusty growth, all the young vines\nwill be drawn toward some conspicuous support, so that by the third\nday those that lay out starlike, with inquiring tips raised a little,\ndelicately feeling, will swing through all their points to the one\nhopeful direction. These warm sensuous days toward the end of April,\njust after rain, when the very earth is full of a subtle intoxication,\none has but to thrust a finger among the bourgeoning tips and tendrils\nof the megarrhiza to see them stir with live response. One must\nsuppose, since the megarrhiza is of no discoverable use to anybody,\nthat the Force uses it to its own ends, an ascending, uprearing Force,\nrehearsing itself for a more serviceable instrument.--This, however,\nis a digression; probably the Padres found no time for philosophising\nabout anything, much less so useless a specimen as the wild cucumber.\n\nWhat the Franciscans saw first in Alta California was what all pioneers\nlook for in new lands--the witness of their faith. They saw the\nwaxberry bush from which they were to gather the thin coating of the\nberries into candles for their improvised altars, saw the crepitant,\naromatic _yerba buena_, and the shrubby, glutinous-leaved herb of the\nSaints, given to them for healing.\n\nMore than all else they must have seen in the month of the Virgin\nMother, high on the altar slopes of San Jacinto and San Bernardino, the\nwhite thyrses of the yucca, called The Candles of Our Lord. Back where\nthe green exclusiveness of the chamise gives place to the chaparral,\nthe tall shafts arise. They grow in blossoming, the bells climbing\nwith the aspiring stalk until as many as six thousand of them may hang\npure and stiff along the lance-like stem between the bayonet-bristling\nleaves. Long after the white flame has burnt out, the stalks remain,\nrank on rank, as though battalions of Spanish spearmen had fallen\nthere, holding each his spear aloft in his dead hand.\n\nIt is only back there where the yuccas begin, that the small, swift\nlife of the mesa goes on, very much as it did in the days of the\nSpanish _Frailes_. The doves begin it, voicing the mesa dawn in notes\nof a cool blueness; then the sleek and stately quail, moving down in\ntwittering droves to the infrequent water-holes. The rhythm of a flock\nin motion is like the ripple of muscles in the sides of a great snake.\nAfter them the road runner, _corredor del camino_, the cock of the\nchaparral, crest down, rudder aslant, swifter than a horse, incarnate\nspirit of the hopeful dust through which he flirts and flits. Then\nthe blueness is folded up, it lies packed in the ca\u00f1ons, the mountains\nflatten; high in his airy haunts the Sparrow-Hawk sails, and the furry,\nfrisk-tailed folk begin the day's affairs.\n\n  [Illustration: REDLANDS, LOOKING TOWARD SAN BERNARDINO RANGE]\n\nThe secret of learning the mesa life is to sit still, to sit still and\nto keep on sitting still. The only other secret is to be learned in the\nwattled huts stuck like the heaps of the house-building rats in the\ndry washes, inwoven with the boughs of buckthorn and _islay_, except\nfor size scarcely distinguishable from them. For the Indian has gone\nthrough all that green woof with the thread of kinship and found it an\nordered world. He is choke-full as is the chamisal of wild life, of\nthe tag ends of instincts and understandings left over from the days\nwhen he was brother to the beast--those sleek-bellied rats, stealing to\nlay another foot-long, dried stick to the characterless heap of their\ndwelling,--bad Indians to him, trying to remember their ways when they\nwere men; that brown feathered bunch, in and out of the chia bush,--she\nwas present at the making of man. Your aboriginal has the true sense of\nproportion: not size but vitality. You can cover the sage wren with the\nhollow of your hand, but you cannot hop so far for your size nor be so\nbrave about it.\n\nVery different from the spring flutter and fullness, must have been the\nlook of the land in the year of the martyrdom of Padre Jayme Bravo,\nwhich was the year of Bunker Hill and the Republic. The green of the\nchamisal was overlaid then by the brown tones of its seeding. _Islay_\nhad shed its crimson drupes; the cactus fires had died down to the dull\npurples of the fruiting prickly pear; the sycamores by the dwindling\nwaters of the arroya had scarcely a palsied leaf to wag. The Mission\nhad been moved, for what reasons must be guessed by whoever has had\noccasion to observe the effect of a standing army on the subjugated\npeoples, back from the sea marsh to a little valley of what is known\nnow as Mission River. Sixty converts had come down out of the hills\nto receive the Medicine of the Soft-Hearted God. That is the way they\nmust have looked at it--rood and cup and sprinkling water, and the\nbells louder than the medicine drums. Back in the dry gullies the\ndrums would have been going night and day where the _tingaivashes_, the\nMedicine-Men, lashed themselves into a fury over this apostasy. Certain\nof the renegades heard them between their orisons; they fled back to\nthe muttering roll and the pound of the dancing feet. In the night\nafter that, eight hundred of the Dieguenos, clothed in frantic fervour\nand very little else, came down to make an end of the \"long gowns.\" How\nthe soul of Padre Jayme must have leaped up as he heard them yelling\noutside his unguarded hut: the appetite for martyrdom is deeper than\nall our dreaming. He ran toward them with arms extended. \"Love God, my\nchildren!\" he cried, and received their arrows. When it was reported\nto the Padre President at Monterey, \"Thank God,\" he said; \"now the\nsoil is watered.\" It did indeed repay them such a crop of souls as any\nwatering produces in that soil; but at San Juan Capistrano, where a new\nfoundation was in progress, they buried the bells and returned to the\npresidio.\n\nFew people understand why Californians so love their Missions, the\nmeagre ruins of them, scant as a last year's nest. But two priests, a\ncorporal, and three men in the unmapped land with eight hundred angry\nsavages--it is the mark of the Western breed to love odds such as that!\nIt is not to the campanile at Pala nor the ruined arches of San Luis\nRey that men made pilgrimages but to the spirit of enterprise that\nbuilt the West.\n\nAll about the upper mesa there are traces, scarcely more evident to the\neye than the Missions, that the inhabitants of it have been dreamers,\ndreaming greatly. I do not now refer to the court of San Luis Rey,\nfrom the roofs of which a joyous populace once cheered a governor\nof California in the part of toreador, in a neighbourhood where\nRaphael-eyed muchachitos who have never heard of the Five Little Pigs\nthat Went to Market can still repeat you the rhyme that begins\n\n     Up in Heaven there is a bull fight,\n     The bull has horns of silver and a tail of gold.\n\nHeaven enough under those conditions to the children of the Occupation!\nNor am I thinking of a road on which, when there is a light wind\nmoving from the sea, you can still hear at midnight the pounding feet\nof the Indian riders galloping down to the bay, only to see their\nbeloved Padre blessing them from the ship's side in departing. I do\nnot think even--because I make a practice of thinking as little as\npossible of a matter so discreditable to us as our Indian policy--of\nthe procession of the evicted _Palatingwas_, even though the whole\nregion of Warner's ranch is still full of the shame of it and the\nrending cry. The struggle of men with men is at best a sick and squalid\naffair for one of the parties; but men contriving against the gods\nfor possession of the earth is your true epic. The brave little towns\nwhich start up there with their too early florescence of avenue and\npublic square, the courageous acres which the vineyardist clears in the\nchamisal and the chamise takes again! All along the upper mesa, Pan\nand the homesteader keep up the ancient fight. And with what unequal\nweapons! The wild gourd, the bindweed, the megarrhiza, at the mere\nrumour of a cleared space, come beckoning and joining hands. Though\nhe goes gunning all day without finding one young rabbit for his pot,\nthe bark of the homesteader's orchard trees will be gnawed by them at\nthe precise sappy moment. At dawn the quail may be heard with soft\ncontented noises between the rows of bearing vines, plunging their\nbeaks in the ripest berries. Then the mule-deer will spend the night\nin the carefully fenced enclosure, ruining the largest bunches with\nselective bites; after which the homesteader, if he is wise, will know\nthat he is beaten. The mule-deer can go over any fence, though usually\nhe prefers to go between the wires, which he can do without altering\nhis stride. Detected, even at its most leafless, the antlered chaparral\nmakes cover for him until, after hours of following, he is glimpsed\nat last, scaling at his stiff bounding gait some inaccessible rocky\nstair from which nothing comes back but the bullet's deflected whine.\nNow and then some pot-hunter who remembers when the mule-deer could be\nheard barking to the does in any deep gully, when the moon rose hot on\nthe flushed trail of the October day, will tell you that there are no\nmore of his kind on San Jacinto. But so long as there are homesteaders\nto be fended from the hill borders, the mule-deer will come back. And\nwhen the mule-deer is gone there will still be drouth. Let the coast\ncurrents swing out a few degrees, or the Gulf winds blow contrarily for\nconsecutive seasons, and the stoutest homesteader fails. After a few\nyears you can guess where he has been by finding the chamise growing\ntaller in the ploughed places.\n\nIncurable wild hills and wild sufficing sea, and the little strip\nbetween which they give to one another--Indian giving!--conceded by the\nyears of rain and demanded back by drouth; shoals that the tide piles\nand the sea eats again! It lies like a many-coloured dancer's scarf,\nand hearts are still caught in its folds as in the days of the Spanish\nOccupation.\n\nThere's a stripe of aquamarine turning to chrysoprase, that's for\nthe sea; amber then for the hollow cliffs of La Jolla and San Juan,\nsmugglers' cliffs eaten well under the shore; a stripe of scarlet,\nspangled with viscid diamond dew, that's for the mesembryanthemums\ncrowding the foreshore; pale green of the lupins with a white thread\nthrough it of the highway, green again for the chamisal, and blue of\nthe mountains' unassailable sea thought.\n\nNature is a great symbolist; what she makes out of her own materials is\nbut the shadow of what man in any country will make finally of his. San\nDiego by the sea dreams of a great sea empery. What by all the signs\nshe is bound to produce, is a poet. There in the scarf-coloured, low\nshore is the vocal forecast of him in the night-singing mocking-bird.\nEspecially in the fringing island of Coronado out of the waxberry bush\nhe can be heard gurgling like a full fountain with jets and rushes\nof pure crystal sound. From moonrise on until dawn he scatters from a\ntireless throat, music like light and laughter. It is as impossible to\nclose the eyes under it as in the glare of the sun. And if the moon,\nthe measurer, be gone on a journey to the other side of the world,\nstill he sings, all his notes muffled by the dark; he sways and sings,\ndozes and sings, dreaming and wakes to sing. So it should be with poets\nwhether anybody wishes them to or not. \"The lands of the sun expand the\nsoul,\" says the proverb.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nMOTHERING MOUNTAINS\n\n\nIt is all part of that subtle relation between the observer and the\nlandscape of the west, which goes by the name of \"atmosphere,\" that\none returns again and again to the reality of Christian feeling in the\nFranciscan Pioneers, as witnessed by the names they left us--one of the\nmost charming proofs, if proof were wanted, of the power of religion\nto illuminate the mind to a degree often denied to generations of art\nand culture. How many book-fed tourists rounding the blue ranks of San\nJacinto to face the noble front of the Coast Range as it swings back\nfrom the San Gabriel valley, would have found for it a name at once so\nabsolute, so understanding as Sierra Madre, Mother Mountain?\n\nThere you have it all in one comprehensive sweep: the brooding,\nsnow-touched, virginal peaks, visited and encompassed by the sacred\nspirit of the sea, and below it the fertile valley, the little\nhuddling, skirting hills fed from her breast. The very lights that\ndie along the heights, the airs that play there, the swelling fecund\nslopes, have in them something so richly maternal; the virtue of\nthe land is the virtue that we love most in the mothers of men. And\nif you want facts under the poetry, see how the Sierra receives the\nrain and sends it down laden with the rich substance of her granite\nbosses, making herself lean to fatten the valleys. The great gorges\nand swift angles of the hills which fade and show in the evening\nglow, are wrought there by the ceaseless contribution of the mountain\nto the tillable land. And what a land it has become! There have been\nnotable kingdoms of the past of fewer and less productive acres. Yet\neven in the great avenues of palms that flick the light a thousand\nways from their wind-stirred, serrate edges, is a reminder of the\nhost of bristling, spiny growth the land once entertained. It is as if\nthe sinister forces of the desert lurked somewhere not far under the\nsurface, ready at any moment to retake all this wonder of fertility,\nshould the beneficence of the Mother Mountain fail. The Padre pioneers\nmust have felt these two contending forces many a time when they lay\ndown at night under the majestic Sierra, for they named the first\nspot where they made an abiding place, in honour of the protecting\ninfluence, _Nuestro Se\u00f1ora, Reina de Los Angeles_, Our Lady the Queen\nof the Angels. There she hovered, snow-whitened amid tall candles of\nthe stars, while south and west the coyote barked the menace of the\nunwatered lands. Now this is remarkable, and one of the things that go\nto show we are vastly more susceptible to influences of nature than\nsome hard-headed members of society suppose, that in this group of\nlow hills and shallow valleys between the Sierra Madre and the sea,\nthe most conspicuous human achievement has been a new form of domestic\narchitecture.\n\nThis is the thing that most strikes the attention of the traveller:\nnot the orchards and the gardens, which are not appreciably different\nin kind from those of the Riviera and some favoured parts of Italy,\nbut the homes, the number of them, their extraordinary adaptability to\nthe purposes of gracious living. The Angelenos call them bungalows,\nin respect to the type from which the later form developed, but they\ndeserve a name as distinctive as they have in character become. These\nlittle thin-walled dwellings, all of desert-tinted native woods and\nstones, are as indigenous to the soil as if they had grown up out of\nit, as charming in line and the perfection of utility as some of those\nwild growths which show a delicate airy florescence above ground, but\nunder it have deep, man-shaped, resistant roots. With their low and\nflat-pitched roofs they present a certain likeness to the aboriginal\ndwellings which the Franciscans found scattered like wasps' nests among\nthe chaparral along the river,--which is only another way of saying\nthat the spirit of the land shapes the art that is produced there.\n\nOne must pause a little by the dry wash of this river, so long ago\nturned into an irrigating ditch that it is only in seasons of unusual\nflood it remembers its ancient banks, and finds them, in spite of\nall that real estate agencies have done to obliterate such natural\nboundaries. This river of Los Angeles betrays the streak of original\ndesertness in the country by flowing bottom-side up, for which it\nreceives the name of _arroya_, and even _arroya seca_ as against the\n_rio_ of the full-flowing Sacramento and San Juan. A _rio_ is chiefly\nwater, but an _arroya_, and especially that one which travels farthest\nfrom the Mothering Mountains toward the sea, is at most seasons of\nthe year a small trickle of water among stones in a wide, deep wash,\novergrown with button willow and sycamores that click their gossiping\nleaves in every breath of wind or in no wind at all. Tiny gold and\nsilver backed ferns climb down the banks to drink, and as soon as the\nspring freshet has gone by, brodi\u00e6as and blazing stars come up between\nthe boulders worn as smooth as if by hand.\n\nFarther up, where the stream narrows, it is overgrown by willows,\nalders, and rock maples, and leaps white-footed into brown pools for\ntrout. Deer drink at the shallows, and it is not so long ago that\ncinnamon bear and grizzlies tracked the wet clay of its borders. This\nis the guarantee that this woman-country is in no danger of too much\nmothering. No climate which is acceptable to trout and grizzlies is in\nthe least likely to prove enervating; men and beasts, they run pretty\nmuch to the same vital, sporting qualities.\n\nAll that country which extends from the foot of the Sierra Madre to the\nsea, is so cunningly patterned off with ranks of low hills and lomas\nthat its vastness is disguised, or rather revealed by subtle change and\nswift surprises as a discreet woman reveals her charms. This renders it\none of the most delightful of motoring countries. The car swings over a\nperfect road into snug little orchard nooks as safe and secret seeming\nas a nest, climbs a round-breasted hill to greet the wide horizon of\nthe sea, or a mesa stretching away into blue and amber desertness,\nwhich when adventured upon, discloses in unsuspected hollows white,\npeaceful towns girt by great acres of orange groves, or the orderly\narray of vines trimmed low and balancing like small, wide-skirted\nfigures in a minuet. And then the ground opens suddenly to deep, dry\ngullies where little handfuls of the grey soil gather themselves up and\nscuttle mysteriously under the cactus bushes, and dried seeds of the\nmegarrhiza rattle with a muffled sound as the pods blow about. Here one\nmeets occasionally the last survivors of the old way of life before men\nfound it: _neotoma_, the house-building rat, with his conical heap of\nrubbish; or a road runner, tilting his tail and practising his short,\nsharp runs in the powdery sand under the rabbit brush; here, too, the\nlurking desert shows its spiny tips like a creature half-buried in the\nsand, not dead, but drowsing.\n\n  [Illustration: A EUCALYPTUS GROVE]\n\nAs artists know colour, and poets know it, this is the most colourful\ncorner of the world. The blue and silver tones of the Sparrow-Hawk's\nland give place to airy violets, fawns, and rich ambers. It is curious,\nthat obstinate preference which a locality has for colour schemes\nof its own adoption; man can break up and re-form them, but he can\nnever quite overcome the original key. Here the bright, instant note\nof the geraniums that shore up the bungalows, even the insult of the\nmagenta-coloured Bougainvillea is subdued by the aerial softness\nthat lies along the hills like the bloom on fruit. The sheets of\nEschscholtzia gold that once spread over miles of the San Gabriel\nvalley, and still linger in torn fragments about Altadena, have been\nsheared by the plough, to vanish and reappear again in the solid globes\nof orange, distilled from the saps and juices of the soil.\n\nOne of the most interesting of the instruments by which the cultivated\nlandscape has gathered up and fixed the evanescent greens that spread\nthinly yet over the uncropped hills in spring, is the eucalyptus.\nAll the tints are there, from the olive greens of the chaparral to\nthe sombre darkness of the evergreen oak; young shoots of it have the\nsilvery finish of the artemisia which once gave the note of the mesas\nabout Riverside and San Bernardino. No other imported tree has quite\nto such a degree the air of the _habitu\u00e9_; one wonders indeed if it\ncould have been half so much at home in Australia, from whence it has\nreturned like some wandering heir to the ancestral acre.\n\nIt proves its blood royal by its facile adaptiveness to the prevailing\nlines of the landscape, taking the rounded, leaning outline of the live\noaks on the wind-driven hills, or in sheltered ravines springing upward\nstraight as the silver firs. Perhaps its most charming possibilities\nare revealed in the middle distance where, lifted high on columnar\nstems, its leaf crowns take on the blunt, flowing contours of the\nhills. At all times it has a beautiful resilience to the wind, bowing\nwith a certain courtliness without compulsion, and recovering as if\nby conscious harmonious movement. The pepper tree, however, most\nmagnificent specimens of which may be found lining the avenues of\nPasadena, or in some unexpected corner of the hills marking the site of\nsome old Spanish hacienda, is always an alien. It is like the Spaniards\nwho brought it, perhaps, in its drooping grace, in the careless\nprodigality with which it sheds its fragile crimson fruits. Something\nof old-worldliness persists in its spicy odours, and in the stir of its\nlacy shadows; when the moon comes over the mountain wall and the wind\nis moving, there is the touch of mystery one associates with lovely\nse\u00f1oritas leaning out of balconies. One fancies that the pepper tree\nwill last so long as the dying race of Dons and Do\u00f1as, and with them\nwill cease to be a feature of local interest.\n\nThere is hardly more than a trace in the modern city of Los Angeles of\n_Nuestra Se\u00f1ora, Reina de los Angeles_. The last time I passed through\nthe old plaza, the streets of offence encroached upon it from the east,\nand a corner of the sacred precinct had been sacrificed to the trolley.\nThe Church of Our Lady, over whose door may still be traced the fading\ninscription from which the city takes its name, was never a mission,\nbut one of the six chapels or _asistencias_ centred about the Mission\nSan Gabriel. It was here the first expedition passed northward looking\nfor the port of Monterey, on the day of the feast of Our Lady in the\nyear when the Atlantic Colonies were making up their minds to fight the\nEnglish. It was close to this spot and along Downey Street were enacted\nthe most pitiful of all the tragic incidents which marked the recession\nof the aboriginal races. Bereft of their lands and the protection of\ntheir Church, they became a prey to the greed of the dominant peoples,\nand used regularly to be incited to drunkenness upon their wages on\nSunday, arrested while in that condition, and sold each Monday morning\nfor the amount of their fines to the neighbouring ranchers. Things\nlike this lurking under the surface of commercial enterprise, as the\ndesert lies in wait in sandy stretches, advise us that much of our\ninsistence on democracy grows out of our inability to trust ourselves\nto deal equitably with our fellows under any other conditions. We can\nkeep to the rules of the game we have set up more easily than to the\nunfenced humanities. Here in the old plaza full of sleepy light, which\nstill retains the indefinable stamp of the people to whom to-morrow was\nalways a better day for doing things, one sighs for the short-sighted\nself-interest which so wasted the native children of the soil.\n\nBut after all the land couldn't have loved them as it does the race\nfor which it brings forth its miraculous harvests. Not that there\nweren't miracles in those days; in fact they began here, or rather at\nSan Gabriel, six miles or so beyond the river which in those days was\ncalled Porcincula, a name that linked the old world with the new by\nway of the little chapel in Italy in which the beloved Francis received\nsuch heavenly favours. The miracle of San Gabriel relates to a display\nof a canvas presentiment of Our Lady, at the mere sight of which the\nwild tribes experienced exceeding grace. Looking up suddenly at the\nMother Mountain brooding above the plain, it is easy to understand\nhow the symbol of aloof but solicitous care came home to the primitive\nmind, always peculiarly open to suggestions of humaneness in nature.\n\nThe heads of the Sierra Madre are rounded, the contours of great\ndignity. The appeal it makes to the eye is of mass and line. Its\ncharms, and it has many, of forested slope, leaping waters, and lilied\nmeadows, do not offer themselves to the casual glance, but must be\nsought after with great pains. The bulk of the range is of warm,\ngrey granite, clothed with atmospheric colour as with a garment. It\nborrows more from the sky than the sea, taking on at times an aerial\ntransparency, the soul of the mountain about to pass trembling into\nlight. Pinkish tones are discoverable in even the bluest shadows,\nand at times the peaks are touched with the rich, roseate orange of\nthe Alpine-glow. But the variations of temperature and atmospheric\nconditions are not sufficiently pronounced to present themselves to\nthe sense as the source of its aspects of tenderness, of majesty,\nof virginal aloofness. Rather such changes seem to be occasioned by\npalpitations of the Mountain Spirit, remote in sacred meditation,\nglowing, dimming, defining itself from within.\n\nIt may be that the immense vitality of the land, its abundance, the\nbursting orchards, the rich variety of native growth, somehow dwarfs\nthe earliest impression of the Sierra Madre, since few, if any, gather\nat first an adequate idea of the actual mass and height it represents.\nIt is only after appreciation of the really amazing activities of the\nAngelenos is a little dulled by familiarity, at early morning when\nthe groves are sleeping and the bright plantations of the gardens lack\nthe sun to flash their brilliance on the sight, or at evening when a\nsea mist covers the teeming land, one is prepared to hear that many of\nthese peaks are higher than the Simplon, and that it would be possible\nto wander for months in the intricacies of its ca\u00f1ons without having\ntime to grow familiar with a single one of them.\n\nSometimes the mere mechanics of the land, the pull of the wind up the\nnarrow gorges as you pass, advises the open mind of power and immensity\nresiding in the thinly forested bulks. Passing what appears a mere\nshadowy gulf in the mountain wall, you are aware of a murmurous sound\nas of the sea in a shell, and feel suddenly the push of the draught\non your windshield like a great steady hand. In places above San\nBernardino, the steady pouring of invisible wind rivers has swept the\nsoil for miles and defied three generations of artificial plantations.\nAnd sometimes the mountain speaks directly to the soul. I recall such\nan occasion one late spring. We had been skirting the range toward\nRiverside all afternoon, having the fall of the land seaward always\nin view, noting how, in spite of the absurd predilection of men for\nsquare fields and gridiron arrangements, the main lines of cultivation\nwere being pulled into beauty by the sheer necessity of humouring\nthe harvest. It was that lagging hour between the noon splendour and\nthe gathering of the light for its dramatic passage into night. The\norange orchards lay dead green in the hollows, unplanted ridges showed\nscarcely a trace of atmospheric blueness; unlaced, unbuskined, the\nland rested. And all in the falling of a leaf, in the scuttle of a\nhorned toad in the dust of the roadway, it lifted into eerie life. It\nbared its teeth; the veil of the mountain was rent. Nothing changed,\nnothing stirred or glimmered, but the land had spoken. As if it had\ntaken a step forward, as if a hand were raised, the mountain stood\nover us. And then it sank again. While the chill was still on us, the\ngrip of terror, there lay the easy land, the comfortable crops, the red\ngeraniums about the bungalows. But never again for me would the Sierra\nMadre be a mere geographical item, a feature of the landscape; it was\nPower, immanent and inescapable. Shall not the mother of the land do\nwhat she will with it?\n\nEntering the ca\u00f1ons of the San Gabriel, one is struck with the\nendearing quality of their charm. In a country which disdains every\nsort of prettiness, and dares even to use monotony as an element of\nbeauty, as California does, it is surprising to find, cut in the solid\ngranite wall, little dells all laced with fern and saxifrage, and\nwind swung, frail, flowery bells. Little streams come dashing down the\nrunways with an elfin movement, with here and there a miniature fall\n\"singing like a bird,\" as Muir described it, between moss-encrusted\nbanks.\n\n  [Illustration: GLENDALE, VALLEY OF THE SAN GABRIEL]\n\nInto the open mouths of such ca\u00f1ons have retreated the hosts of\nwildflowers that once in the wet seasons overran all that country from\nSan Bernardino to the sea,--the white sage, most honeyful of all the\nsages, the poppies, gilias, cream cups, nemophilias which twenty-five\nyears ago were as common as meadow grass, as thick as the planted\nfields of alfalfa which have usurped them. Settlers who came into\nthis country when the trail over the San Gorgiono had not yet hardened\nbetween iron rails, tell of riding belly deep for miles in wild oats\nand waving bloom, and where the trail goes out over the San Fernando,\ntoward Camulas, the yellow mustard reached its scriptural height, and\nthe birds of the air built their nests in it. Now and then in very\nwet years a faint yellow tinge, high up under the bases of the hills,\nis all that is left of the seed which, by report, the Padres sowed\nalong the coastwise trails, to mark where they trod the circuit of the\nMissions.\n\nEverywhere within the ca\u00f1ons, honeyful flowers abound, and up from the\nrocky floors the slopes are stiff with chaparral. This characteristic\ngrowth, which, seen from the open valley flooded by dry sun, appears as\na mere scurf, a roughened lichen on the mountain wall, is in reality a\nriot of manzanita, mahogany, ceanothus, cherry and black sage, from ten\nto fifteen feet high, all but impassable. Elsewhere in the ranges to\nthe north, the chaparral is loose enough to admit fern and herbaceous\nplants, carpeting the earth, but here the rigid, spiny stems contend\nfor three or four feet, thick as the carving in old cathedral choirs,\nbefore they attain light and air enough to put forth leaf or twig. On\nthe seaward side of the mountains, miles and miles of this dense growth\nflow over the ranges, parted here and there by knife-edge ridges, or\nby huge bosses of country rock, affording a great sweep to the eye,\nreaching far to seaward. From here the lower country shrinks to its\nproper proportion--a toy landscape planted with Noah's Ark trees--and\nthe noise of men is overlaid by the great swells of the Pacific which\ncome thundering in, lifting far and faint reverberations along the\nranges.\n\nOn either side of these vast conning towers it is still possible to\ntrace the indefinite tracks which wild creatures make, running clear\nand well defined for short distances and then melting unaccountably\ninto the scrub again. Occasionally still they discover traces of the\nwild life in which the Sierra Madre once abounded. Deer are known to\ntake advantage of such natural outlooks in protecting themselves from\ntheir natural enemies, and from the evidence of frequent visits here,\nbears and foxes and bobcats must have made much the same use of them.\nFrom such high escarpments the Indians would have seen Cabrillo's\nwinged boats go by, and from them, all up the coast, ascended the\npillars of smoke that attended the galleon of Francis Drake.\n\nOnce within the portals of the range, the granite walls sheer away\nfrom sequestered parks of oak, madro\u00f1o, and Douglas spruce. The trees\nare not thickly set here as in the north, but admit of sunny space\nand murmurous bee pasture between their gracefully contrasting boles,\nand to a thousand bright-feathered and scaled things unknown to the\nall-pine or all-redwood forests. Such parks or basins vary from a few\nyards to an acre or two in extent, threaded like beads upon a single\nstream. One thinks indeed of the old-fashioned \"charm string\" in which\neach meadow space has its peculiar virtue:--open sunny shallows, arrowy\ncascades, troops of lilies standing high as a man's head, forested\nfern, columbine, delphinum, and scarlet mimulus along the water\nborders.\n\nThey grow slighter as the trail ascends--it is possible now to make\nnearly the whole distance in gravity cars for that purpose provided,\nbut I recommend a sure-footed mule for the true mountain-lover--until\nabove the source of the streams, from dips and saddles of the range,\nabove the summer-shrunken glaciers, where the trees are bowed and the\nchaparral creeps as if awed and dizzy, it is possible to have a glimpse\nof the still unconquered and unconquerable \"sage brush county.\" All\nalong the back of the Sierra Madre wall the desert laps like a slow\ntide, rolling up and receding with the drouths and rains. The eye takes\nit in no less slowly than the imagination. It stretches, in fact, to\nthe Colorado, but a haze of heat obscures its eastern border; long\nwhitened lines of alkali, like wave marks, set the seasonal limit of\nits encroachments. Here and there shows the dark checkering of fertile\npatches, spilled over from the rich west-lying valleys; trending east\nby south lies the Sierra Madre like an arm, guarding the favoured\nregion.\n\nAnd yet in her very favour the Mother Mountain is impartial, for\nequally as she saves the south from desertness, she has denied to us\nthe one instrument by which the desert could be mastered. Mighty as\nman is in transforming the face of the earth, he is nothing without the\nRains.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE COASTS OF ADVENTURE\n\n\nOld trails, older than the memory of man, go out from the southern\ncountry by way of Cahuenga, by Eagle Rock, toward that part of the\nshelving coast where the Padre's mustard gold lingered longest, as if\nto mark the locality where the gold they missed was first uncovered.\nBut suppose, on that day of the year '41, Francisco Lopez, _major-domo_\nof the Mission San Fernando, had not had an appetite for onions? Who\nknows how history would have made itself?\n\nThe speculation is idle; anybody named Lopez has always a\ntaste for onions because they are the nearest thing to garlic.\nSe\u00f1or Francisco,--I suppose one may grant him the title at this\ndistance--rested under an oak and dug up the wild root with his\nknife, and the tide of the world's emigration set toward the Coasts\nof Adventure. I have, holding my papers as I write, an Indian basket\nreputed to be one of those in which, in those days, placer gold was\nwashed out of the sandy loam; it was given me by one who had it from\nDon Antonio Coronel, and has a pattern about it of the low serried\nhills of the coast district. Where it breaks, as all patterns of Indian\nbaskets do, to give egress to the spirit resident in things dedicated\nto human use, there are two figures of men with arms outstretched, but\ndivided as the pioneers who carried the cross into that country were\nfrom those who followed the lure of gold. The basket wears with time,\nbut the pattern holds, inwoven with its texture as Romance is woven\nwith the history of all that region lying between San Francisco on the\nnorth and Cahuenga where, after a bloodless battle, was consummated the\ncession of California from Mexico.\n\n  [Illustration: A CA\u00d1ON IN THE SIERRA MADRES]\n\nFrom the white landmark of San Juan Capistrano to a point opposite\nSanta Inez, saints thick as sea-birds, standing seaward, break the\nlong Pacific swell: San Clemente, Santa Catalina, Santa Rosa--their\ndeep-scored cliffs searched by the light, revealing their kinship\nwith the parallel mainland ranges. But there are hints here, in the\nplant and animal life and in the climate, milder even than that of\nthe opposing channel ports, hints which not even the Driest-Dustiness\ndare despise, of those mellower times than ours from which all fables\nof Blessed Islands are sprung. Islands \"very near the terrestrial\nparadise\" the old Spanish romancer described them. Often as not the\nimagination sees more truly than the eye. I myself am ready to affirm\nthat something of man's early Eden drifted thither on the Kuro-Siwa,\nthat warm current deflected to our coast, which, for all we know of it,\nmight well be one of the four great rivers that went about the Garden\nand watered it. Great golden sun-fish doze upon the island tides,\nflying-fish go by in purple and silver streaks, and under the flat\nbays, which take at times colour that rivals the lagoons of Venice,\nforests of kelp, a-crawl with rainbow-coloured life, sleep and sway\nupon tides unfelt of men. There are days at Catalina so steeped with\nharmonies of sea and sun that the singing of the birds excites the\nsoothed sense no more than if the lucent air had that moment dripped in\nsound. These are the days when the accounts that Cabrillo left of his\nfindings there, of a civil and religious development superior to the\ntribes of the mainland, beguile the imagination.\n\nOne thinks of the watery highway between the west coast and the\nchannel islands as another _Camino Real_ of the sea, where in place\nof mule trains and pacing Padres, went balsas, skin canoes, galleons,\nfar-blown Chinese junks, Russian traders, slipping under the cliffs\nof San Juan for untaxed hides and tallow, Atlantic whalers, packets\nrounding the Horn, sunk past the load line with Argonauts of '49,\nopium smugglers dropping a contraband cask or an equally prohibited\ncoolie under the very wing of San Clemente. So many things could have\nhappened--Odysseys, \u00c6neids--that it is with a sigh one resigns the\npeaks of the submerged range, paling and purpling on the west, to the\nstudent of sea-birds and sea-nourished plants.\n\nLooking from the islands landward, the locked shores have still for\nlong stretches the aspect of undiscovered country. Hills break abruptly\nin the surf or run into narrow moon-shaped belts of sand where a\nmountain arm curves out or the sea eats inward. And yet for nearly four\ncenturies the secret of the land was blazoned to all the ships that\npassed, in the great fields of poppy gold that every wet season flamed\nfifty miles or more to seaward.\n\nOne must have seen the Eschscholtzia so, smouldering under the mists\nof spring, to understand the thrill that comes of finding them later\nscattered as they are, throughout the gardens of the world. I recall\nhow at Rome, coming up suddenly out of the catacombs--we had gone down\nby another entrance and had been wandering for hours in the mortuary\ngloom--memory leaped up to find a great bed of golden poppies tended\nby brown, bearded Franciscans. They couldn't say--Fray Filippo, whom I\nquestioned, had no notion--whence the sun-bright cups had come, except\nthat they were common in the gardens of his order. It seemed a natural\nsort of thing for some Mission Padre, seeking a memento of himself to\nsend back to his Brothers of St. Francis half a world away, to have\nchosen these shining offsprings of the sun. There was confirmation in\nthe fact that Fray Filippo knew them not by the unspellable botanical\nname, but by the endearing Castilian \"dormidera,\" sleepy-eyed, in\nreference to their habit of unfolding only to the light; but the\nconnecting thread was lost. Channel fishermen still, in spite of the\nobliterating crops, can trace the blue lines of lupins between faint\nstreaks of poppy fires, and catch above the reek of their boats, when\nthe land wind begins, blown scents of _islay_ and ceanothus.\n\nNo rivers of water of notable size pour down this west coast, but\nrivers of green flood the shallow ca\u00f1ons. Here and there from the crest\nof the range one catches an arrowy glimpse of a seasonal stream, but\nfrom the sea-view the furred chaparral is unbroken except for bare\nridges, wind-swept even of the round-headed oaks. This coast country is\na favourite browsing place for deer; they can be seen there still in\nearly summer, feeding on the acorns of the scrub oaks, and especially\non the tender twigs of wind-fallen trees, or herding at noon in the\ndeep fern which closes like cleft waters over their heads. Until\nwithin a few years it was no unlikely thing to hear little black bears\nsnorting and snuffing under the manzanita, of the berries of which\nthey are inordinately fond. This lovely shrub with its twisty, satiny\nstems of wine-red, suffusing brown, its pale conventionalised leaves\nand flat little umbels of berries, suggests somehow the carving on old\nGothic choirs, as though it borrowed its characteristic touch from an\nexternal shaping hand; as if with its predetermined habit of growth it\nhad a secret affinity for man, and waited but to be transplanted into\ngardens. It needs, however, no garden facilities, but shapes itself\nto the most inhospitable conditions. About the time it begins to put\nforth its thousand waxy bells, in December or January, the toyon, the\nnative holly, is at its handsomest. This is a late summer flowering\nshrub that in mid-winter loses a little of its glossy green, and above\nits yellowing foliage bears berries in great scarlet clusters. Between\nthese two overlapping ends, the gaumet of the chaparral is run in blues\nof wild lilac, reds and purples of rhus and buckthorn and the wide,\nwhite umbels of the alder, which here becomes a tree fifty to sixty\nfeet in height. It is the only one of the tall chaparral which has\nedible fruit, for though bears and Indians make a meal of manzanita,\nit does not commend itself to cultivated taste. More humble species,\nhuckleberry, thimble, and blackberry, crowd the open spaces under the\noak-madro\u00f1o forests, or, as if they knew their particular usefulness\nto man, come hurrying to clearings of the axe, and may be seen holding\nhands as they climb to cover the track of careless fires. In June whole\nhill-slopes, under the pine and madro\u00f1os, burn crimson with sweet, wild\nstrawberries. The wild currant and the fuchsia-flowered gooseberry are\nnot edible, but they are under no such obligation; they \"make good\"\nwith long wands of jewel-red, drooping blossoms, and in the case of\nthe currant, with delicate pink racemes, thrown out almost before\nthe leaves while the earth still smells of winter dampness. Though\nnobody seems to know how it travelled so far, the \"incense shrub\" is\na favourite of English gardens where, before the primroses begin, it\nserves the same purpose as in the west coast ca\u00f1ons, quickening the\nsense into anticipations of beauty on every side.\n\nInland the close, round-backed hills draw into ranks and ranges, making\nway for chains of fertile valleys which also fill out the Californian's\ncalendar of saints. But, in fact, your true Californian prays to his\nland as much as ever the early Roman did, and pours on it libations\nof water and continuous incense of praise. Every one of these longish,\nnorth-trending basins is superlatively good for something,--olives or\nwheat, perhaps; Pajaro produces apples and Santa Clara has become the\npatroness of prunes.\n\nNothing could be more ethereally lovely than the spring aspect of the\norchard country. It begins with the yellowing of the meadow lark's\nbreast, and then of early mornings, with the appearance, as if flecks\nof the sky had fallen, of great flocks of bluebirds that blow about\nin the ploughed lands and are dissolved in rain. Then the poppies\nspring up like torchmen in the winter wheat, and along the tips of\nthe apricots, petals begin to show, crumpled as the pink lips of\nchildren shut upon mischievous secrets; a day or two of this and then\nthe blossoms swarm as bees, white fire breaks out among the prunes,\nit scatters along the foothills like the surf. Toward the end of the\nblooming season all the country roads are defined by thin lines of\npetal drift, and any wind that blows is alive with whiteness. After\nwhich, thick leafage covers the ripening fruit and the valley dozes\nthrough the summer heat with the farms outlined in firm green, like a\npatchwork quilt drawn up across the mountains' knees.\n\nThe tree that gives the memorable touch to the landscape of the coast\nvalleys is the oak, both the roble and encinas varieties. There are\nothers with greater claims to distinction, the sequoia, the \"big\ntree,\" lurking in the Santa Cruz mountains, the madro\u00f1o, red-breeched,\ngreen-coated, a very Robin Hood of trees, sequestered in cool ca\u00f1ons,\nand the redwood, the _palo colorado_, discovered by the first Governor,\nDon Gaspar de Portola, on his search for the lost port of Monte Rey.\nAll these keep well back from the main lines of travel. The most that\nthe rail tourist sees of them is a line of redwoods, perhaps, climbing\nup from the sea-fronting ca\u00f1ons to peer and whisper on the ridges above\nthe fruiting orchards. But the oaks go on, keeping well in the laps\nof the hills, avoiding the wind rivers, marching steadily across the\nalluvial basins on into the hot interior. They are more susceptible to\nwind influence than almost any other, and mark the prevailing direction\nof the seasonal air currents with their three-hundred-year-old trunks\nas readily as reeds under a freshet. You can see them hugging the\nlee side of any ca\u00f1on, leaning as far as they may out of the sea-born\ndraughts, but standing apart, true aristocrats among trees, disdaining\nalike one another and the whole race of orchard inmates. When in full\nleaf, for the _roble_ is deciduous, they are both of them distinctly\npaintable, particularly when in summer the trunks, grey and aslant,\nupbearing cloud-shaped masses of dark green, make an agreeable\nnote against the fawn-coloured hills. The _roble_ is a noble tree,\nhigh-crowned, with a great sweep of branches, but seen in winter\nstripped of its thick, small leafage, it loses interest. Its method of\nbranching is fussy, too finely divided, and without grace.\n\n  [Illustration: THE CEMETERY, SANTA BARBARA MISSION]\n\nAround Santa Margarita and Paso Robles filmy moss spreads a veil over\nthe _robles_ as of Druid meditation; one fancies them aloof from the\nstir of present-day life as they were from the bears that used to\nfeed on the mast under them. A hundred years or so ago the Franciscans\ndrove out the bears by an incantation--I mean by the exorcism of the\nChurch enforced with holy water and a procession with banners around\nthe Mission precinct: \"I adjure you, O Bears, by the true God, by the\nHoly God ... to leave the fields to our flocks, not to molest them nor\ncome near them.\" But bears or _homo sapiens_, it is all one to the oaks\nof San Antonio; indeed, if legend is to be credited, the four-footed\nbrothers would have been equally as acceptable to the patron of the\nMission where this interesting ceremony took place. I can testify,\nhowever, that after all this lapse of time the exorcism is still in\nforce, for though I have been up and down that country many times I\nhave seen no bears in it.\n\nThings more pestiferous than bears are driven out, humours of the\nblood, stiffness of the joints, by the medicinal waters that bubble\nand seep along certain ancient fissures of the country rock. This has\nalways seemed to me the very insolence of superfluity. Who wishes, when\nall the air is censed with the fragrance of wild vines, to have his\nnose assaulted with fumes of sulphur, even though it is known to be\ngood for a number of things? But there are some people who could never\nbe got to observe the noble proportions of five-hundred-year-old oaks\nwith the wild grapes going from tree to tree like a tent, except as a\nby-process incident to the drinking of nasty waters. So the land has\nits way even with our weaknesses.\n\n  [Illustration: SYCAMORES, A COAST RANGE CA\u00d1ON]\n\nBesides these excursions inland, which bring us in almost every case to\none of the ancient Franciscan foundations, there are two or three ports\nof call on the sea front worth lingering at for more things than the\npleasant air and the radiant wild bloom. One of these is Santa Barbara\nwhich Santa Inez holds in its lap, curving like a scimitar opposite\nthe most northerly of the channel islands. Understand, however, that\nno good comes of thinking of Santa Barbara as a place on the map. It\nis a Sargossa of Romance, a haven of last things, the last Mission in\nthe hands of the Franciscans, the last splendour of the Occupation, the\nlast place where mantillas were worn and they danced the _fandango_ and\n_la jota_; an eddy into which have drifted remnants of every delightful\nthing that has passed on the highways of land and sea, which here hail\none another across the curving moon-white beach. Summer has settled\nthere, California summer which never swelters, never scorches. Frost\ndescends at times from Santa Inez to the roofs, but lays no finger on\nthe fuchsias, poinsettias, and the heliotropes climbing to second-story\nwindows. The wild thickets which connect the territory with the town,\nare vocal with night-singing mocking-birds; along the foreshore white\npelicans divide the mountain-shadowed waters. The waters, taking all\nthe sky's changes, race to the fairy islands, the chaparral runs back\nto the flanks of Santa Inez showing yellowly through the distant blue\nof pines; overhead a sky clouded with light. This is not a paradox but\nan attempt to express the misty luminosity of a heaven filled with\nrefractions of the summer-tinted slope, the glaucous leafage of the\nchaparral, the white sand and sapphire-glinting water. The sky _beyond_\nthe enclosing mountains has the cambric blueness of the superheated\ninterior, but directly overhead it has depth and immensity of colour\nunequalled except along the Mediterranean.\n\nSanta Barbara is a port of distinguished visitors; more, and more\nvarieties, of sea-birds put in there on the long flight from the Arctic\nto the Isthmus than is easily believable. In the Estero--_esteril_,\nsterile--an ill-smelling tide pool lying behind the town, may be found\nat one season or another, all the western species that delight the\nornithologist. The black brant, going by night, and wild swans, as\nmany as a score of them together, have been noted in its backwaters,\nand scarcely any stroll along the receding surf but is enlivened by\nthe resonant, sweet whistle of the plover. In hollows of the sands\nthousands of beach-haunting birds may be seen camping for the night,\nlooking like some sea-coloured, strange vegetation, and early mornings\nwhen the channel racing by, leaves the bay placid, tens of thousands\nof shearwaters sleep in shouldering ranks that sway with the incoming\nswell as the kelp sways, without being scattered by it. One can see\nthe same sight, augmented as to numbers, around Monterey, a long day's\njourney to the north as the car goes, long enough and lovely enough to\ndeserve another chapter.\n\n\n\n\n  [Illustration: TALL CHAPARRAL, SANTA CRUZ]\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE PORT OF MONTEREY\n\n\nWithout doubt history is made quite as much by the mistakes of men\nas by their utmost certainties. The persistent belief of the ancient\ngeographers in the existence of the Straits of Anian, the traditional\nNorth-West Passage, led to some romancing, and to the exploration of\nthe California coast a century or so before it was of any particular\nuse to anybody. It led also to the bluest bay. Viscaino took possession\nof it for Philip of Spain as early as 1602, nearly two hundred years\nbefore the Franciscans planted a cross there under Viscaino's very\ntree. During all that time the same oaks staggered up the slope\naway from the wind, and the scimitar curve of the beach kept back\nthe brilliant waters. There is a figure of immensity in this more\nterrifying than the mere lapse of years. Not how many times but with\nwhat sureness for every day the sapphire deep shudders into chrysoprase\nalong the white line of the breakers. We struggle so to achieve a\nlittle brief moment of beauty, but every hour at Monterey it is given\naway.\n\nThe bay lies squarely fronting the Pacific swell, about a hundred\nmiles south of the Golden Gate, between the horns of two of the little\ntumbled coast ranges, cutting back to receive the waters of the Pajaro\nand the Salinas. From the south the hill juts out sharply, taking\nthe town and the harbour between its knees, but the north shore is\nblunted by the mountains of Santa Cruz. The beach is narrow, and all\nalong its inner curve blown up into dunes contested every season by\nthe wind and by the quick, bright growth of sand verbena, lupins, and\nmesembryanthemums. The waters of the rivers are set back by the tides,\nthey are choked with bars and sluiced out by winter floods. For miles\nback into the valleys of Pajaro and Salinas, blue and yellow lupins\ncontinue the colour of the sand and the pools of tide water. They climb\nup the landward slope of the high dunes and set the shore a little\nseaward against the diminished surf. Then the equinoctial tide rises\nagainst the land that the lupins have taken and smooths out their\nlovely gardens with a swift, white hand, to leave the beach smooth\nagain for the building of pale, wind-pointed cones.\n\n  [Illustration: LOOKING DOWN ON MONTEREY AND THE BAY]\n\nThe valley of the Salinas, which has its only natural outlet on the\nbay, is of the type of coast valleys, long, narrow and shallow, given\nover to farming and to memories of Our Lady of Solitude lying now as\na heap of ruins in a barley field. It is a place set apart, where any\nmorning you might wake to find the sea has entered between the little,\nbrooding hills to rest.\n\nGulls follow the plough there, and pines avoid the river basin as\nthough each of them knew very well their respective rights in it. One\nhas, however, to make a point of such discoveries, for the entrance to\nthe valley is obscured by its very candour, lying all open as it does\nto drifting dune and variable sea marshes.\n\nIt is even more worth while to follow the flat-bordered Pajaro into the\nshut valley where dozes the little town of San Juan Bautista, taking\non its well-sunned mesa, those placid lapses of self-forgetfulness\nwhich are to the aged as a foretaste of the long sleep. Here it was\nthat the magic muse of Music came into the country. It came in a\nlittle tin-piped, wooden hand-organ, built by one Benjamin Dobson of\n22 Swan Street, London, in the year 1735, but of all its history until\nit was unpacked from mule-back by Padre Lausan in 1797, there is not\na word current. Our acquaintance with it begins on the day that the\nPadre set it up in the hills and played, \"The Siren's Waltz,\" \"Lady\nCampbell's Reel,\" and all its repertoire of favourite London airs, of\nwhich the least appropriate to its present mission must have been the\none called \"Go to the Devil.\" Which only goes to prove that the spirit\nof the Franciscans was often superior to their means, for what the\nsimple savages did do as soon as they had overcome their superstitious\nfear of the noise box, was to come to Mass to hear it as often as\npossible. There remain three old volumes of music written later for\nthe Mission which came true to its founding and excelled in all sweet\nsounds, but none, it is said, pleased the Indians so much or so raised\ntheir spirits as \"The Siren's Waltz.\" No doubt its inspiriting strains\nadded something to the warlike spirit which led here to the only\nlocal resistance opposed to the American invasion, for it was on the\nGavilan heights above the little town that Fr\u00e9mont, on the tallest\ntree that he could find, raised the Stars and Stripes, gallantly if\nsomewhat prematurely. It was from San Juan that Castro's men marched\nto the final capitulation of Cahuenga, and finally from here the last\nremnant of the old life drains away. One hears the echo of it faint as\nthe sea sounds that on rare days come trembling up the valley on the\ntranslucent air.\n\nReturning to the bay, one finds all interest centering about the Point\nof Pines, a very ancient, rocky termination of the most westerly of\nthe coast barriers. The Point, which is really a peninsula, is one\nof the most notable landmarks between Point Conception on the south\nand Fort Point at San Francisco. Its lighthouse stands well out on a\nrocky finger, ringed with incessant, clanging buoys; between it and\nSanta Cruz light is a roadstead for an empire. A windy bay at best,\ndeep tides, and squally surfaces, the waters of Monterey have other\nvalues than the colourist finds in them. Sardines, salmon, cod, tuna,\nyellow tail run with its tides. At most seasons of the year whales\nmay be seen spouting there, or are cast upon its shoals. At one time\nthe port enjoyed a certain prosperity as a whaling station, of which\nsmall trace remains beside the bleaching vertebr\u00e6 that border certain\nof the old gardens and the persistent whalebone souvenirs of the curio\ndealer. Lateen-rigged fisher fleets flock in and out of the harbour,\nbutterfly winged; and all about the rock beaches creep the square-toed\nboats of the Japanese and Chinese abalone gatherers. Thousands of\npurple sea-urchins, squid, hundred-fingered star-fish, and all manner\nof slimy sea delicacies, these slant-eyed Orientals draw up out of\nthe rainbow rock pools and the deeps below the receding surf. They go\ncreeping and peering about the ebb, their guttural hunting cries borne\ninshore on the quiet air, seeming as much a native sea speech as the\ngabble of the gulls. So in their skin canoes and balsas the Indians\nmust have crept about the inlets for as long as it requires to lay a\nyard or two of mould over the ancient middens of the tribe, as long as\nit takes to build a barrier of silver dunes half a mile seaward. Even\nat that distance the plough turns up the soil evenly sprinkled with\ncrumbling shell which holds to the last a shred of its old iridescence.\nFar inland, past the Sierra Wall even to the country of Lost Borders,\nI have found amulets of this loveliest of the pearl shells, traded for\nand treasured by a people to whom the \"Big Water\" is a half-credited\ntraveller's tale.\n\nAbout five hundred yards outside the surf, from Laboratory Point,\ncircling the peninsula to Mission Point on the south, the submerged\nrocky ridge has grown a great, tawny mane of kelp. Every year it is\ncombed and cut by the equinoctial tides, and cast ashore in brown,\nsea-smelling wind-rows, and every year it grows again to be the\nfeeding-ground of a million water-haunting birds. Here the Ancient\nMurrelet fattens for the long flight to the Alaskan breeding-grounds,\nand in the wildest gales the little nocturnal auklets may be heard\ncalling to one another above the warring thunder of the surf, or\nwhen the nights are clear and the mists all banded low beneath the\nmoon, they startle the beach wanderer with their high keen notes and\nbeetle whirring wings. Long triangular flights of curlew drop down\nthese beaches against the westering sun, with wings extended straight\nabove their heads, furling like the little lateen sails come home from\nfishing. Sandpipers, sanderlings, all the ripple runners, the skimmers\nof the receding foam, all the scavengers of the tide, the gulls,\nglaucous-winged, ringbilled, and the species that take their name from\nthe locality, may be found here following the plough as robins do in\nthe spring. When the herring school in the bay nothing could exceed the\nmultitude and clamour of the herring gulls. They stretch out in close\norder, wing beating against wing, actually over square miles of the\nruffling water between Point Pinos and the anchorage. But any attempt\nto render an account of the wild, winged life that flashes about the\nbays of Carmel and Monterey would read like an ornithologist's record.\n\nAfter storms that divide the waters outside the bay into great toppling\nmountains, in the quiet strip between the kelp and the beaches,\nthousands of shearwaters may be seen sleeping in long, swaying,\nfeathered pontoons, shoulder to shoulder. The island rocks standing\nwithin the surf, from the Point of Pines all down the coast to Point\nSur, are famous rookeries of cormorant. Watchful and black against the\nguano-whitened rocks, they guard their ancestral nests, redecorated\neach season with gay weed, pulled from the painted gardens of the deep;\nturning their long necks this way and that like revolving turret-tops,\nthey beat off the gluttonous gulls with a devotion which would seem to\ndemand some better excuse than the naked, greasy, wide-mouthed young.\nWarm mornings these can be seen stretching black-stemmed, gaping bills\nfrom the nesting hollows, waving this way and that like the tips of\nvoracious sea anemones. Other rocks, white with salty rime, are given\nby mutual consent to rookeries of the yelping seals, the \"sea lions\" of\nthis coast. Moonlight nights they can be seen playing there, with the\nweird half-human suggestion as of some mythical sea creatures.\n\nOther and less fortunate adventurers on the waters of Monterey have\nleft strange traces on that coast; one stumbles on a signboard set up\namong the rocks to mark where such and such a vessel went to pieces in\na night of storm. Buried deep in the beach beyond the anchorage is the\nancient teakwood hull of the _Natala_, the ship that carried Napoleon\nto Elba. It brought secularisation to the Missions also, after which\nunfriendly service the wind woke in the night and broke it against the\nshore. Just off Point Lobos, the Japanese divers after abalones report\na strange, uncharted, sunken craft, a Chinese junk blown out of her\ncourse perhaps, or one of those unreported galleons that followed a\nphantom trail of gold all up the west coast of the New World. Strange\nmosses come ashore here, tide by tide, all lacy and scarf-coloured, and\nonce we found on the tiny strand below Pescadero, a log of sandal-wood\nwith faint waterworn traces of tool marks still upon it.\n\nMost mysterious of all the hints held by the farthest west--for\nbehold, when you have come to land again, sailing from this port, it is\neast!--of a time before our time, is the Monterey cypress.\n\nAcross the neck of the peninsula, a matter of six or eight miles,\ncuts in the little bay of Carmel, a blue jewel set in silver sand.\nTwo points divide it from the racing Pacific, the southern limb of\nPunta Pinos, and the deeply divided rocky ledge of Lobos--Lobos,\nthe wolf, with thin, raking, granite jaws. Now on these two points,\nand nowhere else in the world, are found natural plantations of the\ntrees that might have grown in Dante's Purgatorio, or in the imagined\nforests where walked the rapt, tormented soul of Blake. Blake, indeed,\nmight have had a hint of these from some transplanted seedling on an\nEnglish terrace, for the Monterey cypress is quick-growing for the\nfirst century or so and one of the most widely diffused of trees; but\nonly here on the Point and south to Pescadero ranch do they grow of\nGod's planting. With writhen trunks and stiff contorted limbs they\ntake the storm and flying scud as poppies take the sun. Incredibly\nold, even to the eye, they have no soil, nor seek none other than\nthe thousand-year litter of their scaly needles, the husk of their\nnut-shaped, woody cones--the Spirit of the Ancient Rocks come to life\nin a tree. Grown under friendly conditions the young trees spire as do\nother conifers, but here they take on strange enchanted shapes. Their\nflat, wind-depressed tops are resilient as springs; one may lie full\nlength along them, scarcely sunk in the minutely-feathered twigs, and\nwatch the coasting steamers trail by on seas polished by the heat, or\nthe winter surf bursting high in air. Or one could steal through their\nthick plantations unsuspected, from twisty trunk to trunk in the black\nshade, feeling the old earth-mood and man's primeval fear, the pricks\nand warnings of a world half made. The oldest of the cypresses are\nattacked by a red fungus rust, the colour of corroding time. It creeps\nalong the under side of boughs and eats away the green, but even then\nthe twisted heart wood will outlast most human things.\n\n  [Illustration: PESCADERO, A CHINESE FISHING VILLAGE, MONTEREY BAY]\n\nThe pines of Monterey, though characteristic enough of the locality\nto take on its identifying name, are thoroughly plebeian: prolific,\nquick-growing, branching like candelabra when young; but in a hundred\nyears or so their wide limbs, studded with persistent cones, take on\nsomething of the picturesque eccentricity that may be noticed among\nthe old in rural neighbourhoods. They grow freely back into the hills\ntill they are warned away from the ca\u00f1ons by the more sequestered _palo\ncolorado_. The Monterey pine is one of the long-needled varieties, but\nof a too open growth perhaps, or too flexile to have any voice but a\nfaint rustling echo of the ocean. The hill above Monterey, crowned with\nthem, is impressive enough; they look lofty and aloof and dark against\nthe sky, but growing in a wood they are seen to be too spindling and\nsparse-limbed to be interesting. The oaks do better by the landscape,\nall of the _encinas_ variety, bearing stiff clouds of evergreen foliage\nin lines simple enough to compose beautifully with the slow scimitar\nsweep of the bay and the round cloud-masses that, gathering from the\nsea, hang faintly pearled above the horizon. There are no redwoods\non the peninsula; straggling lines of them look down from Palo Corona\non Carmel Bay, walking one after another, with their odd tent-shaped\ntops and long branches all on the windward side, like a procession of\nfriars walking against the wind. On the Santa Cruz coast, and in small\ngroups near Carmel, grows the tan bark oak, not a true oak, but of the\ngenus _Pasania_, whose nearest surviving congeners are no nearer than\nSiam. How it came here, survivor of an earlier world, or drifting in on\nthe changing Japanese current, no one knows. Apparently no one cares,\nfor the only use the Santa Crucians have found for it is to tan shoe\nleather.\n\n  [Illustration: CYPRESS POINT, NEAR CARMEL]\n\nThree little towns have taken root on the Peninsula: two on the bay\nside, the old pueblo of Monterey with its white-washed adobes still\ncontriving to give character to the one wide street; Pacific Grove,\nutterly modern, on the surf side of Punta de Pinos, a town which\nbegan, I believe, as a resort for the churchly minded--a very clean\nand well-kept and proper town, absolutely exempt, as the deeds are\ndrawn to assure us, \"from anything having a tendency to lower the moral\natmosphere,\" a town where the lovely natural woods have given place to\nhouses every fifty feet or so, all nicely soldered together with lines\nof bright scarlet and clashing magentas and rosy pinks of geraniums and\npelargoniums in a kind of predetermined cheerfulness; in short, a town\nwhere nobody would think of living who wanted anything interesting to\nhappen to him. Above it on the hill, the Presidio commands the naked\nslope, fronting toward Santa Cruz, raking the open roadstead with its\nguns. It was under this hill on the harbour side, where a little creek\nstill runs a rill in the rainy season, that Viscaino heard the first\nmass in California, and nearly two hundred years later, Padre Serra set\nup the cross.\n\nOn June 30, 1770, that being the Holy Day of Pentecost, was founded\nhere the Mission of San Carlos Borromeo, afterward transplanted for\nsufficient reasons, over the hill six miles away, on Carmel River. The\ntown is full of reminders of the days of the Spanish Occupation, when\nit was the capital of Alta California. Old gardens here have still the\nhigh adobe walls, old houses the long galleries and little wrought-iron\nbalconies; times yet the tide rises in the streets of the town, and\nstill the speech is soft.\n\nIt is also possible to buy _tomales_ there and _enchiladas_ and _chile\nconcarne_ which will for the moment restore your faith in certain\nconceptions of a hereafter that of late have lost popularity.\n\nHalf a mile back from the beach, and divided from the town by the old\ncemetery, in a deep alluvial flat grown to great oaks and creeping\nsycamores, is situated one of the famous winter resorts of the world,\nH\u00f4tel Del Monte. I can recommend it with great freedom to those\ncuriously constituted people who have to have an excuse for being out\nof doors. The Del Monte drives and golf links are said by those who\nhave used them, to provide such excuse in its most compelling form.\nThose who suffer under no such necessity will do well to take the white\nroad climbing the hill out of old Monterey, and drop down the other\nside of it into Carmel.\n\nFrom the top of this hill the lovely curve of the bay, disappearing far\nto the north under a violet mist, is pure Greek in its power to affect\nthe imagination. Its blueness is the colour that lies upon the Gulf of\nDreams; the ivory rim of the dunes, the shadowed blue of the terraces\nset on a sudden all the tides of recollection back on Salonica,\nLepanto, the hill of Athens. You are reconciled for a moment to the\nchance of history which whelmed the colourful days of the Spanish\nOccupation. They could never have lived up to it.\n\nBut once on the Carmel side of the peninsula, regret comes back very\npoignantly. The bay is a miniature of the other, intensified, the\nconnoisseur's collection,--blue like the eye of a peacock's feather,\nfewer dunes but whiter, a more delicate tracery on them of the beach\nverbena, hills of softer contours, tawny, rippled like the coat of a\ngreat cat sleeping in the sun. Carmel Valley breaks upon the bay by\nway of the river which chokes and bars, runs dry in summer or carries\nthe yellow of its sands miles out in winter a winding track across the\npurple inlet. It is a little valley and devious, reaching far inland.\nAbove its source the peaks of Santa Lucia stand up; for its southern\nbulwark, Palo Corona. Willows, sycamores, elder, wild honeysuckle, and\ngreat heaps of blackberry vines hedge the path of its waters.\n\n  [Illustration: SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS, THE COAST RANGE]\n\nWhere the valley widens behind the low barrier that shuts out the sea,\nsits the Mission of San Carlos Borromeo, once the spiritual capital\nof Alta California. Here Junipero Serra, and after him the other Padre\nPresidentes, held the administration of Mission affairs, and from here\nhe wandered forth on foot, up and down this whole coast from San Diego\nto Solano, with pacification and the seeds of civilisation. Here on the\nwalls, faintly to be traced beneath the scorn of time, he blazoned with\nhis own hands the Burning Heart, the symbol of his own inward flame.\nHere, in his seventy-first year, he died and was buried on the gospel\nside of the altar. It is reported that his last act was to walk to the\ndoorway to look once, a long look, on the hills turning amber under\nthe August sun, on the heaven-blue water and the white hands of the\nsurf beating against the cliffs of Lobos; looked on the fields and the\norchard planted by his own hand, on the wattled huts of the neophytes\nredeemed, as he believed them, to all eternity, after which he lay down\nand slept. It is further reported in the annals of the Mission that\nit was necessary to place a guard about the wasted body in its shabby\nbrown gown, to defend it from the crowding mourners craving each a\nrelic of the blessed remains. Had I lived at that time I should have\nbeen among them, for he was a great soul, and have I not felt even at\nthis distance of the years the touch of his high fervours! San Carlos\nis one of the best-conditioned of these abandoned fortresses of the\nfaith: the ancient pear trees are still in bearing, the wild mustard\nyellows in the fields, its architecture still betrays the uncertain\nhand of the savage; back in unsearchable recesses of the hills linger\nstill some Indians whose garbled greeting is a memory of the _Ama Dios_\nwhich the padres taught them. Until a few years ago the prayer-post,\na rude slab with the triple-knotted cord of the Franciscans carved\naround it, still stood on the hill at the end of the path their devout\nfeet made, resorting to it for courage and consolation. These mementos\nfade, but year by year the impress of the great spirit of Serra grows\nplainer, like one of those trodden paths of long ago which show not at\nall if you seek them in the grass or near at hand, but from the vantage\nof Palo Corona are traceable far across the landscape.\n\nThe modern Carmel is a place of resort for painter and poet folk.\nBeauty is cheap there; it may be had in superlative quality for the\nmere labour of looking out of the window. It is the absolute setting\nfor romance. No shipping ever puts in at the singing beaches. The\nfreighting teams from the Sur with their bells a-jangle, go by on the\ncountry road, but great dreams have visited the inhabitants thereof.\nSpring visits it also with yellow violets all up the wooded hills,\nand great fountain sprays of sea-blue ceanothus. Summer reddens the\nberries of the manzanita and mellows the poppy-blazoned slopes to tawny\nsaffron. Strong tides arrive unheralded from some far-off deep-sea\ndisturbance and shake the beaches. Suddenly, on the quietest days, some\nflying squadron of the deep breaks high over Lobos and neighs in her\nnarrow caverns. Blown foam, whipped all across the Pacific, is cast\nup like weed along the sand and skims the wave-marks with a winged\nmotion. Whole flocks of these foam-birds may be seen scudding toward\nthe rock-corners of Mission Point after the equinoctial winds. Other\ntides the sea slips far out on new-made level reaches, and leaves the\nwet sand shining after the sun goes down like the rosy inside pearl of\nthe abalone.\n\nThe forests of Point Pinos are sanctuary. It is still possible to hear\nthere at long intervals the demoniac howl of the little grey dog of\nthe wilderness, \"Brother Coyote,\" the butt, the cat's-paw, the Jack\nDullard of Indian folklore, and sometimes in the open country below\nPoint Lobos to see one curious and agaze from brown, naked bosses of\nthe hills. Any warm afternoon, by lying very still a long time in the\n_encinal_, one may observe the country-coloured bobcat, tawny as the\ngrass in summer, slipping from shade to shade. Sometimes if startled\nhe will turn and face you with his blinking, yellow, half-hypnotic\nstare before he returns to his unguessed errand. Any morning you may\nfind about your bungalow innumerable prints as of baby palms pressed\ndownward in the dust, the tracks of the friendly little racoons who\nmay be heard bubbling in the shallow ca\u00f1ons any moonlight night. Often\nI have left a cut melon under my window for the sake of seeing, an\nhour after moonrise, two or three of them scooping out the pink heart,\nspatting one another for helpings out of turn, keeping, in spite\nof the little gluttons you know them to be, a great affectation of\ndaintiness. The night-cry of these little creatures is difficult to\ndistinguish from the love-call of the horned owl, who on the undark\nnights of summer skims the low foreshore for the sake of the field-mice\nand gophers that feed on the seeds of the beach grasses. Every sort of\nmigratory bird that passes up and down this coast lingers a while in\nthe neighbourhood of Monterey, and some species, like the Point Pinos\njuncos, take from it their distinctive name. But if, when you walk\nin the woods, the Stellar jay has first sight of you, you will find\nthem singularly empty, for these blue-jacketed policemen of the pines\npermit nothing to pass them unannounced. Of all the wood-folk, the wise\nquail alone ignores their strident warnings. The quail have learned not\nonly the certainty of safety but its absolute limit. I have seen whole\nflocks of them, scared by the gun, whirring out of the public lands to\na point not out of gunshot but within the forbidden ground, from which\nthey send back soft twitterings of defiance. It is not, however, their\nhabit to flush except in great danger, but to run to cover, moving with\na peculiar elusive rhythm, like the rippling of a snake. This plump\nlittle partridge, for it is only in the common speech that he becomes\na quail, is the apt spirit of the chaparral--cheerful, social, strong\nin the domestic virtues; his crest not floating backward in warrior\nfashion, but cocked forward over an eye, he has all the air of the\nmilitant bourgeois, who could fight of course, but finds that running\nmatches better with his inclinations. Just at the end of rains, before\nmating begins, hundreds of them may be seen feeding in the flock on\nopen hillsides, and the thickets of buckthorn and ceanothus ring with\ntheir soft Spanish _Cuidado!_--Have a care!\n\nThree roads go up out of the peninsula to entice the imagination--that\nwhich we have already taken to the hills of Salinas and the little\ntown of San Juan, the road to Carmel Valley, and the adventurous\ntrail which leads all down the well-bitten coast past Sur and Pieoras\nBlancos. The Valley road turns off at the top of the divide between\nCarmel and Monterey; it passes on the landward side of the Mission\ninto the river-bottom and skirts the narrow chain of farms, rising\nwith the rise of the thinly-forested hills toward Tasajara, the Place\nof Springs. Here it is lost in the intricacies of the \"back country.\"\nDeer-hunters go that way in the season, and those whose delight it is\nto lose themselves in the wilderness, to taste wild fruit and know no\nroof but the windy tent of stars. Years since there used to come out\nof that country shy-spoken, bearded men with bear-meat to sell and wild\nhoney in the honeycomb, rifled from hiving rocks and hollow trees; but\nI fancy they are all dead now, or translated into the tall moss-bearded\npines.\n\nThe coast road, after it leaves Point Lobos behind, goes south and\nsouth, between high trackless hills and the lineless Pacific floor.\nFrom the Point you can see it rise over bare, sea-breasting hills, and\ndisappear in narrow ca\u00f1ons down which, it is reported, immeasurable\nredwoods follow the white-footed creeks almost to the surf. Dim,\nviolet-tinted islands rise offshore to break the sea's assault. Now\nand then one ventures in that direction as far as Arbolado, to return\nprophesying. But the most of us are wiser, understanding that the best\nservice the road can render us is to remain a dramatic and unlimned\npossibility.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nOLD SPANISH GARDENS\n\n\nDona Ina Manuelita Echivarra had come to the time of life when waists\nwere not to be mentioned. It took all the evidence of her name to\nconvince you that her cheek had once known tints of the olive and\napricot. Tio Juan, who sunned himself daily in her patio, had achieved\nthe richness of weathered teak; his moustachios were whitened as with\nthe rime that collects on old adobes sometimes near the sea-shore.\nBut Dona Ina, who missed by a score of years his mark of the days of\n_ma\u00f1ana por la ma\u00f1ana_, was muddily dark, and her moustache--but one\ndoes not suggest such things of a lady, and that Dona Ina was a lady\ncould be proved by a foot so delicately arched and pointed, an ankle so\nneat that there was not another like it in your acquaintance save the\nmate to it.\n\nOnce you had seen it peeping forth from under the black skirt--have\nnot Castilian ladies worn black immemorially?--you did not require\nthe assurance of Tio Juan that there was no one in her day could have\ndanced _la jota_ with Dona Ina Manuelita.\n\nShe would clack the castanets for you occasionally still, just to\nshow how it was done, or with the guitar resting on the arm of her\nchair--laps were no more to be thought of than waists were--she would\nquaver a song, _La Golindrina_ for choice, or _La Noche esta Serena_.\nBut unquestionably Dona Ina's time had gone by for shining at anything\nbut conversation. She could talk, and never so fruitfully as when the\nsubject was her garden.\n\nA Spanish garden is a very intimate affair. It is the innermost\nunder-garment of the family life. Dona Ina's was walled away from the\nworld by six feet of adobe, around the top of which still lingered the\ncurved red tiles of Mission manufacture. It was not spoken of as the\ngarden at all, it was the patio, an integral part of the dwelling.\nThere was, in fact, a raw hide cot on the long gallery which gave\naccess to it, and Dona Ina's drawn-work chemises bleaching in the\nsun. The patio is a gift to us from Andalusia; it is more Greek than\nOriental, and the English porch has about as much relation to it as\nthe buttons on the back of a man's coat to the sword-belt they were\nonce supposed to accommodate. The patio is the original mud-walled\nenclosure of a people who preferred living in the open but were driven\nto protection; the rooms about three sides of it were an afterthought.\n\n  [Illustration: THE PATIO, OLD SPANISH RESIDENCE]\n\nThe Echivarra patio did not lack the indispensable features of the\nearly California establishment, the raised grill or cooking platform,\nand the ramada, the long vine-covered trellis where one took wine\nwith one's friends, or the ladies of the family sat sewing at their\ninterminable drawn work, _enramada_. The single vine which covered the\ntwenty-foot trellis was of Mission stock, and had been planted by Dona\nIna's father in the year the Pathfinder came over Tejon Pass into the\ngreat twin valleys. In Dona Ina's childhood a wine-press had stood in\nthe corner of the patio where now there was a row of artichokes, which\nhad been allowed to seed in order that their stiff silken tassels,\ndyed blue and crimson, might adorn the pair of china vases on either\nside the high altar. Dona Ina was nothing if not religious. In the\ncorner of the patio farthest from the gallery, a fig-tree--this also\nis indispensable--hung over the tiled wall like a cloud. There was a\nweeping willow in the midst of the garden, and just outside, on either\nside the door, two great pepper trees of the very stock of the parent\nof all pepper trees in Alta California, which a sea captain from South\nAmerica gave to the Padre at San Luis Rey. Along the east wall there\nwere pomegranates.\n\nA pomegranate is the one thing that makes me understand what a pretty\nwoman is to some men--the kind of prettiness that was Dona Ina's in the\ndays when she danced _la jota_. The flower of the pomegranate has the\ncrumpled scarlet of lips that find their excuse in simply being scarlet\nand folded like the petals of a flower; and then the fruit, warm from\nthe sunny wall, faintly odorous, dusky flushed! It is so tempting when\nbroken open--that sort opens of its own accord if you leave it long\nenough on the bush--the rich heart colour, and the pleasant uncloying,\nsweet, sub-acid taste. One tastes and tastes--but when all is said and\ndone there is nothing to a pomegranate except colour and flavour, and\nat least if it does not nourish neither does it give you indigestion.\nThat is what suggests the comparison; there are so many people who\nwould like to find a pretty woman in the same category. Always when\nwe sat together nibbling the rosy seeds, I could believe, even without\nthe evidence of the ankles, that Dona Ina had had her pomegranate days.\nOnly, of course, she would not have smelled so of musk and--there is\nno denying it--of garlic. Thick-walled old adobes of the period of the\nSpanish Occupation give off a faint reek of this compelling condiment\nat every pore, and as for the musk, it was always about the gallery in\nsaucers and broken flower-pots.\n\nAnd yet Dona Ina was sensitive to odours: she told me that she had had\nthe datura moved from the place where her mother had planted it, to the\nfar end of the patio, where after nightfall its heavy, slightly fetid\nperfume, unnoticeable by day, scented all the air. She added that she\nfelt convicted by this aversion of a want of sentiment toward a plant\nwhose wide, papery-white bells went by the name of \"Angels' trumpets.\"\n\nOn the day that she told me about the datura, which I had only\nrecognised by its resemblance to its offensive wayside congener, the\n\"jimson weed,\" the Se\u00f1ora Echivarra had been washing her hair with a\ntonic made of oil expressed from the seeds of the megharizza after a\nrecipe which her mother had had from _her_ mother, who had it from an\nIndian who used to peddle vegetables from the Mission, driving in every\nSaturday in an ancient caretta. I was interested to know if it were\nany more efficacious than the young shoots of the golden poppy fried\nin olive oil, which I had already tried. So we fell to talking of the\nvirtues of plants and their application.\n\nWe began with the blessed \"herb of the saints,\" dried bunches of which\nhung up under the rafters of the gallery as an unfailing resort in\naffections of the respiratory tract, and _yerba buena_, in which she\nwas careful to distinguish between the creeping, aromatic _del campo_\nof the woodlands and the _yerba buena del poso_, \"herb of the well,\"\nthe common mint of damp places. When she added that the buckskin bag on\nthe wall contained shavings of _cascara sagrada_, the sacred bark of\nthe native buckthorn, indispensable to all nurseries, I knew that she\nhad named two of the three most important contributions of the west to\nthe modern pharmacop\u0153ia. This particular bag of bark had been sent from\nSonoma County, for south of Monterey it grows too thin to be worth the\ngathering. The Grindelia, she told me, had come from the salt marshes\nabout the mouth of the Pajaro, where Don Gaspar de Portola must have\ncrossed going northward.\n\n\"And were you then at such pains to secure them?\"\n\n\"In the old days, yes,\" she assured me. In her mother's time there\nwas a regular traffic carried on by means of roving Indians in healing\nherbs and simples; things you could get now by no means whatever.\n\n\"As for instance----?\" I was curious.\n\nWell, there was creosote gum, which came from the desert beyond the\nSierra Wall, valuable for sores and for rheumatism. It took me a moment\nor two, however, to recognise in her appellation of it (_hideondo_,\nstinking) the shiny, shellac-covered _larrea_ of the arid regions.\nThere were roots also of the holly-leaved barberry, which came from wet\nmountains northward, and of the \"skunk cabbage,\" which were to be found\nonly in soggy mountain meadows, where any early spring, almost before\nthe frost was out of the ground, bears could be seen rooting it from\nthe sod, fairly burying themselves in the black, peaty loam.\n\nBut when it came to _yerba mansa_, Dona Ina averred, her mother would\ntrust nobody for its gathering. She would take an Indian or two and\nas many of her ten children as could not be trusted to be left at\nhome, and make long _pasears_ into the coast ranges for this succulent\ncure-all. I knew it well for one of the loveliest of meadow-haunting\nplants; wherever springs babbled, wherever a mountain stream lost\nitself under the roble oaks, the _yerba mansa_ lifted above its\nheart-shaped leaves of pale green, quaint, winged cones on pink,\npellucid stems. But I had never heard one half of the curative wonders\nwhich Dona Ina related of it. Efficacious in rheumatism, invaluable in\npulmonary complaints, its bruised leaves reduced swellings, the roots\nwere tonic and alterative.\n\nI spare you the whole list, for Dona Ina was directly of the line of\nthat lovely Se\u00f1orita who had disdainfully described the English as the\nrace who \"pay for everything,\" and to her mind it took a whole category\nof virtues to induce so much effort as a trip into the mountains\nwhich had not a _baile_ or a _fiesta_ at the end of it. Other things\nthat were sought for by the housewives of the Spanish Occupation were\n_amole_, or soap-root, the bulbs of a delicate, orchid-like lily which\ncomes up in the late summer among the stems of the chaparral, and the\nroots of the wild gourd, the _chili-cojote_, a powerful purgative.\nGreen fruit of this most common pest, said Dona Ina, pounded to a pulp,\ndid wonders in the way of removing stains from clothing.\n\nThen there was artemisia, romero, azalea, the blue-eyed grass of our\nmeadows, upon an infusion of which fever patients can subsist for days,\nand elder, potent against spells, and there was Virgin's bower, which\nbrought us back to the patio, for a great heap of it lay on the roof\nof the gallery, contesting the space there with the yellow banksia\nroses. I had supposed, until the Se\u00f1ora Echivarra mentioned it, that\nits purpose was purely ornamental, but I was to learn that it had come\ninto the garden as _yerba de chivato_ about the time the barbed-wire\nfences of the gringo began to make a remedy for cuts indispensable to\nthe ranchero who valued the appearance of his live stock. When the eye,\ntravelling along its twisty stems and twining leaf-stalks, came to a\nclump of yarrow growing at the root of it I began at once to suspect\nthe whole garden. Was not the virtue of yarrow known even to the\nGreeks?\n\nThere was thyme flowering in the damp corner beyond the dripping\nfaucet, and pot-marigold, lavender, rosemary, and lemon verbena, all\nplants that grow deep into the use and remembrance of man.\n\nNo friend of our race, not even the dog, has been more faithful. The\nstock of these had come overseas from Spain--were not the Ph\u0153nicians\ncredited with introducing the pomegranate into Hispaniola?--and thence\nby way of the Missions.\n\nAll the borders of Dona Ina's garden were edged with rosy thrift, a\nEuropean variety; and out on the headlands, a mile away, a paler,\nnative cousin of it bloomed gaily with beach asters and yellow\nsand verbenas, but there was no one who knew by what winds, what\ncommunicating rootlets, they had exchanged greetings.\n\nObservation, travelling by way of the borders, came to the datura,\nwhich was to set the conversation off again, this time not of plants\ncurative, but hurtful. We knew of the stupefying effects of the bruised\npods and roots of this species, and--this was my contribution--how\nthe Paiute Indians used to administer the commoner variety, called\n_main-oph-weep_, to their warriors to produce the proper battle frenzy,\nand especially to young women about to undergo the annual ordeal of the\n\"Dance of Marriageable Maidens.\"\n\nEvery year, at the spring gathering of the tribes, the maidens piled\ntheir dowries in a heap, and for three days, fasting, danced about it.\nIf they fell or fainted, it was a sure sign they were not yet equal to\nthe duties of housekeeping and childbearing; but I had had Paiute women\ntell me that they would never have endured the trial without a mild\ndecoction of _main-oph-weep_.\n\n\"It was different with us,\" insisted Dona Ina; \"many a time we have\ndanced the sun up over the mountain, and been ready to begin again the\nnext evening....\" But I wished to talk of the properties of plants, not\nof young ladies.\n\nThe mystery of poison plants oppressed me. One may understand how a\nscorpion stings in self-protection, but what profit has the \"poison\noak\" of its virulence? It is not oak at all, but _Rhus trilobata_, and\nin the spring whole hillsides are enlivened by the shining bronze of\nits young foliage, or made crimson in September. But the pollen that\nfloats from it in May in clouds, the sticky sap, or even the acrid\nsmoke from the clearing where it is being exterminated, is an active\npoison to the human skin, though I had not heard that any animal\nsuffered similarly. Dona Ina opined that there was never an evil plant\nlet loose in the gardens of the Lord but the remedy was set to grow\nbeside it. A wash of manzanita tea, Grindelia, or even buckthorn, she\ninsisted, was excellent for poison oak. Best of all was a paste of\npounded \"soap root.\" She knew a plant, too, which was corrective of\nthe form of madness induced by the \"loco\" weed, whose pale foliage and\ndelicately tinted, bladdery pods may be found always about the borders\nof the chaparral. For the convulsions caused by wild parsnip there was\nthe wonder-working _yerba del pasmo_. This she knew also as a specific\nfor snake-bite and tetanus. So greatly was it valued by mothers of\nfamilies in the time of the Spanish Occupation, that when a clearing\nwas made for a house and patio, in any country where it grew, a plant\nor two was always left standing. But it was not until I had looked for\nit, where she said I would find it between the oleander and the lemon\nverbena, that I recognised the common \"grease-wood,\" the chamise of the\nmesa country.\n\n\"But were there no plants, Dona Ina, which had another meaning, flowers\nof affection, corrective to the spirit?\"\n\n\"Angelica,\" she considered doubtfully. Young maids, on occasions of\nindecision, would pin a sprig of it across their bosoms, she said,\nand after they had been to church would find their doubts resolved;\nand there was yarrow, which kept your lover true, particularly if you\nplucked it with the proper ceremony from a young man's grave.\n\nDona Ina remembered a fascinating volume of her mother's time, the\n_Album Mexicana_, in which the sentimental properties of all flowers\nwere set forth. \"There was the camelia, a beautiful woman without\nvirtue, and the pomegranate----\"\n\n\"But the flowers of New Spain, Dona Ina, was there nothing of these?\"\nI insisted.\n\n\"Of a truth, yes, there was the cactus flower, not the opunta, the\nbroad-leaved spiny sort, of which hedges were built in the old days,\nbut the low, flamy-blossomed, prickly variety of hot sandy places. If\na young man wore such a one pinned upon his velvet jacket it signified,\n'I burn for you.'\"\n\n\"And if he wore no flower at all, how then?\"\n\nDona Ina laughed, \"_Si me quieros, no me quieros_\"; she referred to the\ncommon yellow composite which goes by the name of \"sunshine,\" or in the\nSan Joaquin, where miles of it mixed with blue phacelias brighten with\nthe spring, as \"fly-flower.\" \"In the old Spanish playing-cards,\" said\nDona Ina, \"the Jack of spades had such a one in his hand, but when I\nwas a girl no caballero would have been caught saying, 'Love me, love\nme not!' They left all that to the se\u00f1oritas.\"\n\nThere was a Castilian rose growing beside me. Now a Castilian rose\nis not in the least what you expect it to be. It is a thick, cabbagy\nflorescence, the petals short and not recurved, the pink hardly deeper\nthan that of the common wild rose, the leafage uninteresting. One has\nto remember that it distinguished itself long before the time of the\ntea and garden hybrids, and, I suspect, borrowed half its charm from\nthe faces it set off. For there was never but one way in the world for\na rose to be worn, and that is the way Castilian beauties discovered so\nlong ago that centuries have not made any improvement in it. Set just\nbehind the ear and discreetly veiled by the mantilla, it suggests the\neffulgent charm of Spain, tempered by mystery. The Se\u00f1ora Echivarra had\nfollowed my glance, and nodded acquiescence to my thought. \"In dressing\nfor a _baile_, one would have as soon left off the rose as one's fan.\nOne wore it even when the dress was wreathed with other flowers.\"\n\n\"And did you, then, go wreathed in flowers?\"\n\n\"Assuredly; from the garden if we had them, or from the field.\nI remember once I was all blue larkspurs, here and here ...\" she\nillustrated on her person, \"and long flat festoons of the _yerba buena_\nholding them together.\"\n\n\"It would have taken hoop skirts for that?\" I opined.\n\n\"That also. It was the time that the waltz had been learned from the\nofficers of the American ships, and we were quite wild about it. The\ngood Padre had threatened to excommunicate us all if we danced it\n... but we danced ... we danced....\" Dona Ina's pretty feet twitched\nreminiscently. The conversation wandered a long time in the past before\nit came back to the patio lying so still, divided from the street by\nthe high wall, the clouding fig, and the gnarly pear tree. Beyond the\nartichokes a low partition wall shut off the vegetable plot; strings\nof chili reddened against it. There was not a blade of grass in\nsight, only the flat, black adobe paths worn smooth by generations of\ntreading, house and enclosing walls all of one earth.\n\n\"But if so much came into the garden from the field, Se\u00f1ora, did\nnothing ever go out?\"\n\nAh, yes, yes--the land is gracious; there was mustard of course, and\npepper grass and horehound, blessed herb, which spread all over the\nwest with healing. The pimpernel, too, crept out of the enclosing\nwall, and the tree mallow which came from the Channel Islands by way\nof the gardens and has become a common hedge plant on the sandy lands\nabout the bay of San Francisco. Along streams which ran down from\nthe unfenced gardens of the _Americanos_, callas had domesticated\nthemselves and lifted their pure white spathes serenely amid a tangle\nof mint and wild blackberries and painted cup. The almond, the rude\nstock on which the tender sorts were grafted, if allowed to bear\nits worthless bitter nuts would take to hillsides naturally. It is\nnot, after all, walls which hold gardens but water. This is all that\nconstrains the commingling of wild and cultivated species; they care\nlittle for man, their benefactor. Give them water, said Dona Ina,\nand they come to your door like a fed dog, or if you like the figure\nbetter, like grateful children. They repay you with sweetness and\nhealing.\n\nA swift darted among the fig, marigolds, and portulacca of the\ninevitable rock-work which was the pride of the old Spanish gardens.\nGreat rockets of tritoma flamed against the wall, on the other side of\nwhich traffic went unnoted and unsuspecting.\n\n\"But we, Dona Ina, we Americans, when we make a garden, make it in the\nsight of all so that all may have pleasure in it.\"\n\n\"Eh, the _Americanos_ ...\" she shrugged; she moved to give a drink\nto the spotted musk, flowering in a chipped saucer; the subject did\nnot interest her; her thought, like her flowers, had grown up in an\nenclosure.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: THE GOLDEN GATE AND BLACK POINT, FROM HYDE STREET, SAN\n  FRANCISCO. (SITE OF THE PANAMA EXPOSITION, 1915)]\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE LAND OF THE LITTLE DUCK\n\n\nWhere the twin rivers set back the tides from the bay, the Land of the\nLittle Duck begins. The tides come head-on past the Golden Gate and the\nriver answers to their tremendous compulsion far inland, past the point\nwhere the Sacramento and San Joaquin flow together. On the lee side\nof the headland which makes the southern pilaster of the Gate, sits\nSan Francisco, making of the name she borrowed from the bay a new and\ndistinguished thing, as some women do with their husbands' titles. A\nbetter location for a city is Carquinez Strait; the Mexican comandante\nresident at Sonoma would have had it there, bearing the name of his\nwife, Francesca. Said he to the newly arrived American authorities,\n\"Do so, and I will furnish you the finest site in the world, with State\nhouse and Residence complete.\" But it appears the land has chosen its\nown name.\n\nAll the years after the Pope had divided the New World between Spain\nand the Portuguese, the harbour lay hidden. Cabrillo, Drake, Maldonado,\nJuan de Fuca, Viscaino passed it in the night or veiled in obscuring\nfogs. And then Saint Francis showed it clear and lovely to Don Gaspar\nPortola, having for that revelation led him with holden eyes past his\njourney's objective. Likewise, when the time was ripe, he put it into\nthe mind of the Yankee alcalde at Yerba Buena, a trading-post in the\nneighbourhood of Mission Dolores, that if the hamlet should be called\nSan Francisco it might catch by implication the vessels clearing all\nports of the world for San Francisco bay.\n\nO Chance, Chance! says the historian and turns another page. But it\nis my opinion that among the birds to which Saint Francis preached was\nincluded the Little Duck.\n\nThe piers of the city front east, they face the Berkeley Hills,\nthe Oaklands, the lands of the Sycamore, or, as the first settlers\nnamed them, the Alamedas. From thence vast settlements take their\nname, feeding the city as sea-birds do, from their own breasts.\nBack and forth between them the shuttling ferries weave thin webs of\nglistening wakes, duck-bodied tugs chugg and scuttle, busy still at\nworld-building. From the promontory which makes the northern barrier of\nthe Gate, Tamalpias swims out of atmospheric blueness. On its seaward\nslope, hardly out of reach of the siren's bellowing note, Muir Park\npreserves the ancient forest, rooted in the litter of a thousand years.\nAnd round about the foot of city and mountain the waters of the bay\nare blue, the hills are bluer. The hills melt down to greenness in the\nspring, the water runs to liquid emerald, flashing amber; the hills are\ntawny after rains, the waters tone to the turbid, clayey river-floods;\nland and sea they pursue one another as lovers through changing moods\nof colour; they have mists for mystery between revealing suns. Unless\nthese things count for something, San Francisco is the very worst\nsite in the world for a city. You take your heart in your mouth every\ntime you go out to afternoon tea in the tram-cars that dip and swing\nlike cockles at sea. They cut across streets so steep that grass grows\nbetween the cobbles where no traffic ever passes, to plunge down lanes\nof dwellings perched precariously as sea-birds' nests on the bare bones\nof hills that for true hilliness shame Rome's imperial seven. The bay\nside of the peninsula is mud, the Pacific side is sand. There great\nwasteful dunes blow up, they shift and pile, they take the contours of\nthe wind-lashed waters--the very worst site in the world for a great\ncity's pleasure-ground, and yet somehow it is there.\n\nFor this city is one of those which have souls; it is a spirit sitting\non a height, taking to itself form and the offices of civilisation.\nThis is a thing that we know, because we have seen the land shake it\nas a terrier shakes a rat, until the form of the city was broken; it\ndissolved in smoke and flame. And then as a polyp of the sea draws out\nof the fluent water form and perpetuity for itself, we saw our city\ndraw back its shapes of wood and stone, and statelier, more befitting\na spirit that has endured so much. Nobody knows really what a city is\nexcept that it is something more than a collocation of houses. From\nTelegraph Hill, where the old semaphore stood, which signalled the\nfar-between arrivals of ships around the Horn, you can see the trade\nof the world pass and repass the pillars of the Gate, the wall-sided\nwarships. But none of these things really explain how San Francisco\ncame to be clinging there to the leeward of a windy spit of land, like\na great, grey sea-bird with palpitating wings.\n\n  [Illustration: TAMALPIAS]\n\nTrue to her situation, San Francisco is nothing if not dramatic. One\nrecalls that the earliest foundation was dedicated to Our Lady of\nDolors, _Nuestro Se\u00f1ora de Dolores_; the Indians fought here as they\ndid nowhere else against Christian dominion. There were more burials\nthan baptisms, and in the old cemetery of Yerba Buena the dead were\nso abandoned of all grace that the sand refused to hold them. One who\nspent his boyhood in the shifting purlieus of the old Laguna told me\nhow in the hollows where the scrub oaks shrugged off the wind and the\nsand waved like water, the nameless coffins were covered and uncovered\nbetween a night and day. But if the dead could not hold their tenancy,\nthe living succeeded. They did it by the very force of that dramatic\ninstinct awakened by the plot and counterplot of natural forces.\n\nNo Greek tragedy moved to more relentless measures than the moral\nupheaval of '56, when the whole city, in solemn funeral train behind\nthe victim of one of those wild outbursts of lawlessness peculiar to\nthe \"gold rush,\" saw the lifeless bodies of the perpetrators hanging\nfrom the upper windows of the Vigilance Committee. Fifty years later\ncame a wilder rout, down streets searched out by fire, snatching\nat humour as they ran, as so many points of contact for the city's\nrebuilding.\n\nThe very worst location in the world, as I have remarked, is this windy\npromontory past which the grey tides race, but so long as a city can\ndramatise itself, one situation will do as well as another in which to\nrender itself immortal.\n\nThe bay of San Francisco with its contingencies is one of the most\ninteresting of inland yachting waters, full of adventurous weather. It\nis possible to sail in one general direction from Alviso to the city of\nSacramento, a hundred and fifty miles, and that without attempting the\nthousand miles of estuary and slough through which the waters slink and\nwind.\n\nAt this season of the year the river is pushed backward by the tide a\nmatter of ten miles or more above Sacramento City: on the San Joaquin\nit is felt as far as Crow's Landing. At Antioch it begins to be\nsaltish, and down through Suisun and Carquinez the river-water fights\nits way as far as San Pablo before its identity is wholly lost. At\nflood-times it may be traced, a yellowish, turgid streak, as far as\nAlcatraz. This is the islet of the albatross which lies south of the\ntide race, as Tiburon is on the north, fragments all of them of that\nsalt-rimed ledge outside the gate where hoarse sea-lions play, and\nbrother to the castellated cloud far along on the sea's horizon, the\nvery capital of the kingdom of the Little Duck.\n\n  [Illustration: MILL VALLEY, AND BACKWATER OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY]\n\nThe Faralone Light is the last dropped astern by the Island steamships\nsagging south to the equator; it is also the sea-birds' city of\nrefuge. This is the great murre rookery of the west coast, and formerly\nthousands of dozens of eggs were regularly taken from the Faralones\nto the San Francisco market; but since the islands became a Government\nstation the murres have no enemy but the pirates of the air. In clefts\nand ledges close against the wall-sided cliffs they defend their\nshallow nests against the sheering gulls, or, hard beset, will push\ntheir single, new-hatched nestling into the friendlier sea, darting to\nbreak its fall with incredible swiftness, for a swimming gait is one\nof the things that come out of the shell with the native-born at the\nFaralones. On the same shelving rocks puffins rear their ratty young in\nburrows or under sheltering boulders, and the ashy petrel, the \"little\nPeter\" of the sea, walking by night before the storm, comes ashore here\nto hide his seldom nest. On the south Faralone the fierce cormorant\nbuilds her house of painted weed, which often the gulls steal from her\nas fast as she brings it ashore, for the gulls are the grafters of the\nsea-birds' city. This particular variety, known as the western gull,\nneither fishes for himself nor forages for building material. He feeds\non the eggs and nestlings of his neighbours, or waits to snatch the\nday's catch from the beak that brought it up from the sea. He has the\nvirtue of all predatory classes, an exemplary domesticity. His nest is\nsoft and clean, his nestlings handsome. The western gull is often found\nmarauding far up the estuary of Sacramento, but it is his congener,\nthe herring gull, who follows the long white wake the ferries make\nploughing the windy bay; or, distinguished among the silent shore birds\nfor multitude and clamour, scavenges its reedy borders.\n\nExcept for the promontories north and south, and the bold front of the\nBerkeley Hills opposing the Gate, the inland borders of the bay are\nflat tide-lands and sea-smelling lagunas. Stilts, avocets, herons,\nall the waders that haunt this coast or visit it in their seasonal\nflights, may be seen stalking the shallows for minnows, or where the\nmarsh grass reddens, poised like some strange tide-land blossom, lifted\non two slender stems. Low over them any clear day may be seen the grey\nold marsh hawk sailing, or the \"duck hawk,\" the peregrine of falconry,\nfollowing fiercely in the wake of the migrating hordes of water-fowl.\nAll about Alviso the guttural cry of the black-crowned night-heron\nsounds eerily above the marshes, along with the peculiar \"pumping\"\nlove-song of the bittern.\n\nFor some reason the air of the marshes is friendly to the mistletoe\ninfesting the oaks and sycamores which stand back from the tide-line;\nbut the marshes themselves are treeless. They have their own sorts\nof growth, cane and cat-tails and tule, goosefoot, samphire, and the\ntasselled sedges. This samphire of Shakespeare, _l'herbe de Saint\nPierre_ of the Normandy Marshes, is the glory of the Franciscan\ntide-lands; miles of it, barely above the level of the slow-moving\nwater, spread a magic carpet of blending crimsons, purples, and\nbronzes. Under the creeping mists and subject to the changes of the\nwater, beaten to gold and copper under the sun, it redeems the flat\nlines of the landscape with a touch of Oriental splendour.\n\nFor it is a flat kingdom, that of the Little Duck--the hills hanging\nremotely on the horizon, the few trees and scattered hugging the low\nshore of the sloughs as the shipwrecked cling to their rafts, desperate\nof rescue. The rich web of the samphire, the shifting colour of the\nwater, faintly reminiscent of Venice, borrow another foreign touch\nfrom the names under which the borders recommended themselves to\nattention:--Sausalito, \"little willows,\" Tiburon, Corta Madero, San\nQuentin, San Raphael. Approached from the water, these names, with\nthe exception of San Quentin, do no more than stir the imagination.\nSan Quentin, on one of those courtesy islands newly rescued from the\nprimordial mud, shows itself uncompromisingly for what it is, one of\nthose places for the sequestration of public offenders, which is itself\nsuch an offence to our common humanity--to say nothing of our common\nsense. Free tides, free sails go by, and long, untrammelled lines of\nbirds; south above the blue bay and bluer shore, the ethereal blue\ndome of Diablo lifts into the free air. Across the upper end of San\nPablo Bay, which is really the north arm of the bay of San Francisco\nextending inland, Mare Island lies so low on the water that if it had\nnot been made a naval reserve station it is difficult to know to what\nother use it could be put. One expects to have the land dip and swing\nfrom under like the ship's deck. It is in line with the guns which lie\nbeside the Gate like watchful, muzzle-pointed dogs, and commands the\nwhole upper bay and the opposing bluffs of Contra Costa in a manner\nhighly commendable to those curious persons whose chief excitement\nlies in anticipating an Asiatic invasion. Nevertheless, along with\nthe bastions of San Quentin it strikes, somehow, the note of human\ndistrust amid all this charm of light and line and elusive colour,\nas if suddenly one should discover the tip of a barbed tail under the\nskirt of some seductive stranger.\n\nBetween San Quentin and the Straits, all about the curve of the bay,\nwinding, wide-mouthed sloughs give access to a land as fertile as\nEgypt. A slough is a mere wallow of unprofitable waters, waters unused\nby men and still reluctant of the sea. Pushed aside by the compelling\ntides, too undisciplined to make proper banks for themselves, they are\nneglected by all but a few fringing willows and shapeless sycamores in\nwhich the herons nest.\n\nOften at evening the white-faced ibis can be seen flying in long,\nvoiceless lines, just clearing the twilight-tinted water, to their\naccustomed night perches in the wind-beaten willows. They return there,\nif undisturbed, year after year, accompanied in few and far-between\nseasons by the egret and the snowy heron, grown man-shy, or if they\nbut knew the purpose for which their nuptial plumage is sacrificed,\nwoman-shy, and seldom seen even by the most wishful eyes.\n\nAt Napa a few bull-headed oaks come down almost to the tide-line, and\nin Sonoma a clump of alien blue gums huddles aloof and unregarded,\nbut from the water little is visible beside the stilted cabins of some\ngun club or the ramshackle resorts of the flat-nosed, slow craft that\nwind on mysterious errands between the sunken lands. Whole families\nof half-amphibious humans appear to live comfortably on these drifting\nscows, but one never by any chance catches them doing any distinctive\nthing.\n\nThe waters of the sloughs come down from the little inland valleys,\nwhere summer nests and broods in a blue haze along the redwood-serried\nhills. Whether it is white with cherry bloom at Napa, or purple with\nwiny clusters at Sonoma, there is always something interesting going\non there of the large process by which granite mountains are made food\nfor man. It is worth a visit if only to learn that a country which does\nthat sort of thing supremely well, finds it also worth while to do it\nbeautifully. Yachting off San Rafael, it is possible to catch at times\nthe scent of roses on an off-shore wind above the salt smell of the\nmarshes.\n\nThe last rip of the tide is through the Straits of Carquinez into the\nback-water of Suisun. From here on, it is a rhythmic heaving to and fro\nas of well-matched wrestlers, the river-water is set back to Crow's\nLanding on the San Joaquin, and miles above Sacramento it returns\nagain past Antioch and the Suisun islands. It is lost in a wilderness\nof tules, through which the sluggish currents blindly wind. Here we\nhave nothing to do with men, our business is all with the tribe of the\nLittle Duck: mallard, teal, tern, coot, heron, eared grebe, and awkward\nloon.\n\nThe tule is a round leafless reed. It springs up along the tide-lands\nor in the stagnant back-water of the rivers, or by any least dribble\nof a desert spring. No condition daunts it but absolute dearth of\nwater; far-called, it travels on the wind over mountain ranges, over\ngreat wastes of waterless plain to find the one absolute condition, a\npool--white rimmed with alkali or poisonous green with arsenic. I have\nseen it flourish by springs so charged with mineral that each slender\ncolumn is ringed with its stony deposit, but I do not recall any\nstanding water where tules are not. The stems are filled with papery\npith so light that the Indians of the San Joaquin made boats of bundles\nof them, faggoted together and tied upon a wooden frame.\n\nYear by year the tules reclaim the muddy confluence of the twin rivers.\nThey make an annual growth, die palely, and are beaten down by the\nwind; between their matted stems the young green comes up again. In the\nLand of the Little Duck, miles upon miles of them, and not one other\nthing, stand up on either side the winding water-lanes, man-high and\nimpenetrable.\n\nThe Tulare--the place of the tule--is the haunt not only of water-birds\nbut innumerable insect-catchers, and especially of the red-winged\nblackbirds. In the spring these betake themselves to the reed-fringed\nmarshes in hundreds, building their nests in such neighbourly proximity\nthat the young can hop from rim to rim of the tight-slung, grassy\nhammocks. Great clouds of the young birds can be seen, just before\nmating and after nesting in the fall, rising from the low islands\nof the river-junction. In the season also the male yellow-headed\nblackbird may be heard singing his sweet but noisy cheering-song to\nhis sombre mate as she weaves marsh grass and wet pond-weed together\nas a foundation for her home, always prudently completed some weeks in\nadvance of any need of it.\n\n  [Illustration: WAITING FOR DUCK--LOS BA\u00d1OS]\n\nWhere the tules thin out along the moving currents, numerous woven\nballs of marsh vegetation hang like some strange fruit safely above the\nsummer rise of the waters. These are the nests of the tule wren, built\nby the industrious male, with who knows what excess of parental care\nor what intention to deceive. All the while he is at work upon them,\nin one, the least conspicuous and apparently the least skilfully built,\nthe mother bird nurses the brown nestlings with which, suddenly at the\nend of July, all the whispering galleries of the tulares are alive.\n\nOne who has the courage to penetrate deeper within the tulares, past\nthe crazy wooden landings of nameless ports at which the flat scows\nput in, past the broken willows where the herons nest and the weedy\nback-waters lie all smoothly green with the deceptive duck-weed, will\nsee many wished-for sights. Just before dawn and after nightfall the\ninner marshes are vocal with the varied cries of coot and mallard\nand the complaining skirl of the mud-hen, the whistling redwing,\nthe bittern booming from his dingy pool, and all the windy beat of\nwings. But by day a stillness falls through which the clicking whisper\nof the reeds and the croon of the great rivers cradling to the sea\nreaches the sense almost with sound. The air is all alive with the\nmetallic glint of dragon-flies; now and then the plop of some shining\nturtle dropping into the smooth lagoon, or the frightened splash of a\nmarsh-nesting bird, flecks the silence with a flash of sound. Here one\nmight see all the duck kind leading forth their young broods, or the\neared grebe swimming with her day-old nestlings on her back. If the\nday is dark--black clouds with lightnings playing under--one may hear\nthe voice of the loon sliding through his sonorous scale to shaking,\nwitless laughter. Or perhaps the day's sight might be a flock of\npelicans on their way to their nesting-ground in Buena Vista, breasting\nthe shallows, and with beating wings driving a school of minnows into\nsome tiny inlet where they may be scooped up in the pouched bills, a\ndozen to a mouthful. Better still, some morning mist might rise for\nyou suddenly on a strip of sandy shore the cranes had chosen for their\nwild dances, from which the stately measures of the Greek are said to\nbe derived. Against the yellow sand, as on the background of a vase,\nthe dipping figures and white outstretched wing draperies make the\nconnection clear to you for the moment, along with some other things\nlong overlaid in the racial memory.\n\nAlways at evening in the tulares the air is winnowed by the clanging\nhordes of geese and ducks. Triangular flights of teal wing by you,\nwhizzing like bullets, hazy with speed. Beach-nesting birds, paddlers\nin the foodful creeks, go seaward. Now and then some winged frigate of\nthe open sea, an albatross perhaps blown inland on a storm, will climb\nthe air to the sea-going wind. Low on the twilight-coloured waters the\ntule fog creeps in.\n\nYou emerge properly from the vast intricacies of the tulares--if you\nemerge at all, and are not completely mazed and lost in them--at\nSacramento, a city but barely rescued from the marsh, and still\nmarsh-coloured with the damp-loving lichens. _La Dame aux Camelias_, to\nthe eye, rich in that exotic blossom as no city in the world, but with\na past, oh, unmistakably, and a touch of hectic disorder. The Russians\npossessed her, and then the breed of Jack Hamlin, and then--but it\nis unfair to list the lovers of a lady of so much charm and such\nindubitable capacity for reformation. Sacramento is the State capital,\nthe geographical pivot of the great twin valleys; she divides with\nStockton on the San Joaquin the tribute of their waters. It was here\non her banks that the overland emigrant trains sat down to wait for\nthe subsidence of waters in the new world of the West, from here they\nscattered to all its hopeful quarters.\n\nIf the part the city has played in history has been that of a hostel, a\ndistributing station, at least she has played it to some purpose. There\nare few empires richer than the land the twin rivers drain.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nTHE TWIN VALLEYS\n\n\nIt is geographical courtesy merely, to treat of intramontane California\nas a valley; it is in reality a vast, rolling plain. Several little\nkingdoms of Europe could be tucked away in it. North and south it has\nno natural line of demarcation other than the rivers meeting for their\nsingle assault upon the sea, but its diversity deserves the double\nname. They make, the Sacramento rushing from the wooded north and the\nsluggish San Joaquin, one of the most interesting waterways of the\nworld. I should say they made, for of the San Joaquin one must be able\nto speak in the past also, to understand it. One must have seen it\nbefore man had tamed it and taught it, supine as a lioness in the sun.\n\nTo arrive at a proper feeling for the continuity of the great central\nplain, it must be approached from the south, by way of the old Tejon\nPass, up from San Fernando, or down the Tehachapi grade where the\nrailroad loops and winds through the confluence of the Coast Range with\nthe Sierra Nevada. Here the hills curve graciously about the vast oval\nof the lower San Joaquin. The downthrow of the mountain, stippled with\nsage-brush, gives way to tawny sand glistening here and there with\nwhite patches of alkali, mottled with dark blocks of irrigated land.\nIts immensity is obscured by the haze of heat.\n\nOne is reduced to the figures of the real estate \"booster\" for terms of\nproportion. That modest checkering of green, hours away to the left,\nis a forty-mile field of alfalfa; beyond it lie the vineyards that in\nless than a quarter of a century relegated Spain to a second place in\nthe raisin industry of the world. This is the San Joaquin of to-day\nand to-morrow. The white-tilted vans of the Argonauts saw it as one\nvast, overlapping field of radiant corollas, blue of lupins, phacelias,\nnemophilias, gold of a hundred packed species of composite. Wet years\nit is still possible for the settler in the unirrigated districts to\nwake some morning to blossomy lakes of sky-blueness in the hollows;\nfrom San Emigdio in the Temblors, I have seen, across the whole width of\nthe valley, the smouldering poppy fires along the bluffs of Kern River.\nOn the mesa below Tejon the moon-white gilia that the children call\n\"evening snow\" unfurls its musky-scented drifts mile after mile. But\nthe prevailing note of the San Joaquin is tawny russet; gold it will\nbe in the season, resplendent as those idols which the Incas overlaid\nyearly with fresh-beaten leaf, and in September the barrancas above\nBakersfield and Visalia as yellow as brass, but all up and down the\nhill-rimmed hollow is every lion-coloured tint contending still with\nthe thin belts of planted orchard.\n\n  [Illustration: MIRROR LAKE, YOSEMITE]\n\nTwenty-five years of cultivation have served to shift the lines of\ngreenness but not greatly to modify the desert key. Once it was all\nmassed in the tulares which fringed the series of lakes and connecting\nsloughs, continuing northward from the lowest point of the San Joaquin.\nKern, Kings, Kaweah, Tule, Merced, and Tuolumne, mighty rivers, and a\nhundred lesser singing streams fed it. Elk by thousands ramped in its\nreedy borders. It was a haven of nesting water-birds. Whole islands\nwere populated by pelicans, repairing there annually for the strange,\nsidling wing-dances that attend their mating. Blue herons nested in\nthe tulares; they could be seen trailing their long dangly legs for\nhours above the shallows. Indians paddled in their frail balsas, built\nof papery, dry reeds, down intricate water-lanes in which white men\nventuring, lost themselves and were mazed to madness. Malaria of a\nsurpassing virulence rode up and down that country on the \"tule fogs.\"\nEven yet it is the dread of the cities of the plain to find themselves\nbeleaguered by the thick, ghost-white mists that at long intervals roll\nalong the ground, retaking the ancient marshes.\n\nInto this potential opulence the cattleman precipitated himself.\nHe bought--it is more exact to say he acquired--vast acreage of\nSpanish grants; along the rim of the Coast Ranges, territory equal to\nprincipalities was given over to long-horned, lean herds. All about the\nold beach-line of the San Joaquin may still be seen the remnant of the\ncattle ranches, low formless houses with purlieus of pomegranate and\npampas grass and black figs, and the high, stockaded, acrid-smelling\ncorrals, to mark the receding waves of the cattle industry. On the\nSierra side the guttered mesas, the hoof-worn foothills advertise\nthe devastation of the wandering flocks. Early in the 'sixties these\nappeared, little, long-armed French and Basques, with hungry hordes\nof sheep at their heels, pasturing on the public lands. They ate into\nthe roots of the lush grass and left the quick rains to cut the soil.\nThe wool in the hand was always worth the next season's feed to the\nsheep-herder.\n\n  [Illustration: AMONG THE REDWOODS OF THE GREAT TWIN VALLEYS]\n\nNever was a land so planned for the uses of man, its shielding\nmountains, its deep alluvial terraces sloping gently to the sun. Men\nread it in the hieroglyphic the glistening waters spelled between the\ndark patches of the tulares, but it took some experimenting to read the\nmessage aright.\n\nAfter the cattle and the flocks came the wheat. Up from the meeting\nwaters the land billowed with grain. Owners buckled the ploughs\ntogether and drove them with engines by tens and twenties across the\nthousand-acre fields. But men and engines, they were alike driven\nby the drouth. In wet years the wheat rancher rode to view his\nshoulder-high harvest, but when the rains, going high and wide over\nthe valley to break along the saw-teeth of the Sierras, left the wheat\nunwatered, the same thing happened to the crops that had happened to\nthe cattle and the sheep. And at last, amid the rotting carcases and\nthe shrivelled acres, the message came clear--not the land, but the\nwater. So they shut up the rivers in the ca\u00f1ons and the day of the\norchardist began.\n\nGeographically it begins at Bakersfield, below the gap where the Kern\ncomes down from the giant sequoias and is constrained to the wide,\nwillow-planted canals, governed by head-gates and weirs. Such waters as\nfind again their ancient levels, do so by way of the loose sandy soil\nthrough which they are filtered in vineyard and orchard. The tulares\nhave been turned under; the elk are strictly preserved in the hope\nthat enough of them will breed to serve the purposes of curiosity.\nThe antelope bands that once flashed their white rumps from bench\nto bench of the tawny mesas were reduced, the last time I saw them,\nto a scant half-score roving the Tejon under the watchful eye of the\nsuperintendent. But with all this change, nowhere as at this diminished\nend, does one gather such an impression of the variety, the imperial\nextent of the San Joaquin. For at Bakersfield is one of the world's\nlargest petroleum fields. The gaunt derricks rear along the unwatered\nhills like half-formed prehistoric creatures come up out of the ground\nto see what men are about. Reservoirs, fed with the stinking juices\nof a time decayed, squat along the barrancas, considering with a slow\nleech-like intelligence the tank cars in the form of a Gargantuan\njoint-worm of the same period that produced the derricks, as they clank\nbetween the oil-fields and the town. One of the largest oil-fields in\nthe world--and yet the turn of the road drops it out of sight in the\nvalley's immensity!\n\nBakersfield is a heaven of roses. Doubtless there are other things by\nwhich the inhabitants would be glad to have it remembered, but this is\nthe item that the traveller in the season carries away with him. Roses\ndo not die there, they fall apart of their own sweetness, wafts of\nwhich envelop the town for miles out on the highway. After nightfall,\nwhen each particular attar distils upon the quiescent air, the\ntownspeople walk abroad in the streets and the moon comes up full-orbed\nacross the Temblors at about the level of the clock-tower. Overhead\nand beyond it the sky retains a deep velvety blueness until long past\nmidnight. Traces of colour can be seen sometimes in the zenith when the\nglimmer along the knife-edge of the Sierras announces the dawn.\n\nNorth of Bakersfield, as the valley widens, the Coast Range fades\nto a mere shadow mountain, the peaks of Kaweah stand out above the\nbanded haze, angel-white like the ranked Host. As the road swings in\nto the Sierra outposts, broad-headed oaks begin to appear; it skirts\nthe foot of the great Sierra fault close enough for the landscape to\nborrow something from the dark, impending pines. But for the most part\nwhat the observer has to consider is soil and water and the miraculous\nproduct of these two. One must learn to think of the land in terms of\nhuman achievement.\n\n  [Illustration: CLEAR LAKE, LAKE COUNTY]\n\nNorth from the delta of Kern River lies a hundred miles of country\nscarcely disputed with the flocks, far-called and few, which still\nat the set time of the year forgather in green swales behind the\ntown for the annual shearing, for the herders to play hand-ball at\nNoriegas', to grow riotously claret drunk and render an evanescent\nforeign touch to the brisk modern community. And every foot of that\nhundred miles is rife with the seeds of life, awaiting the touch of\nthe impregnating water. One holds to that conviction as to a friendly\nassuring hand. In the presence of that vast plain, palpitating with\nthe heat, the sluggish, untamed water lolling in the midst of it, the\nwhite-fanged Sierra combing the cloudless blue, beauty becomes a poor\nword: appreciation is shipwrecked and cast away. With relief one hails\nthe beginning of a stripe, dark green like a scarf, scalloping the\nfoothills--the citrus belt. From Portersville, Lindsay, Exeter it runs\nnorth past the meeting of the waters into the valley of the Sacramento,\nand for quality and early fruiting sets the figure of the world market.\nAs if its waters had some special virtue, wherever a river is poured\nout upon the plain some particular crop is favoured. About Fresno\nit is raisins, at Madera port wine, sherry, and mild muscatel. The\nMerced, which takes its rise in the valley of Yosemite, is partial to\nmelons and figs. But everywhere are prunes, peaches, apricots, almonds,\nsugar-beets, alfalfa, unmeasurable acreage of barley, beans, and\nasparagus. Anything is impressive if the scale be large enough, even a\nfield of onions. Here the league-long rows are as terrible as an army.\n\nUp and down this empire belt proceed two great companies, the hordes\nof \"fruit-hands\" and the army of the bees, following its successive\nwaves of fruit and bloom. Gangs of pruners, pickers, and packers\nare shifted and shunted as the crop demands. Interesting economic\nexperiments transact themselves under the worried producer's eye; alien\nrace contending with alien race. The jarring interests of men have by\nno means worked out the absolute solution, but the bees have long ago\nsettled their business. They kill the drones and gather the honey for\nthe gods who kindly provide them with hives--the more fortunate perhaps\nin knowing what their particular gods require.\n\nWherever along the belt the rivers fail, the pumps take up the work;\nstrenuous little Davids contending against the Goliaths of drouth. They\ncan be heard chugging away like the active pulse of the vineyards,\ncompleting the ribbon of greenness that spans from ridge to ridge of\nthe down-plunging hills.\n\nAnd then one must take account of the cities of the plain! Twenty-five\nyears ago they fringed the Sierra base, mere feeders to the mines, the\ncattle ranches, the sheep country. They had the manners of the frontier\nand the decaying, tawdry vices that filtered down from San Francisco,\nsluiced out by intermittent spasms of reform. They were \"wide open.\"\nHairy little herders with jabbering tongues knifed one another in the\nshearing season, vaqueros \"shot up the town\" occasionally; it is still\nwithin memory that prominent citizen \"packed a gun\" for prominent\ncitizen. Twenty years ago the last, most southerly, of the chain of\nsettlements was a very cesspool of the iniquities driven to a last\nstand by the influx of home-seekers. I who went through the years of\nchange with it could tell tales if I would--but, thank Heaven, nobody\nwould believe them! Now in those old places of unsavoury renown rise\nhandsome \"business blocks,\" the true mark of cities. Homes heaped\nwith roses spread on either side of miles of palm-fringed boulevard.\nOver it all flows the clear, inspiring current of Sierra-cooled air,\nsliding down from the ranked peaks that, whitened from flank to flank\nby perpetual snows, hover like phalanxes of protecting wings.\n\n  [Illustration: CASTLE CRAG, RATTLESNAKE CA\u00d1ON]\n\nInto the very thick of the cities drop down from the high Sierras\ntrails to all its places of delight, the sequoia groves, King's River\nca\u00f1on, and all the lordly peaks about Mt. Whitney and Yosemite; and\nsetting hillward from San Francisco the old Stockton-Sonora road\nalong which surged the undisciplined rout of the gold-seekers of\n'forty-nine. It leads, this earliest of valley highways, across the\nbasin of the Stanislaus, past places made famous by the red-shirted,\nlusty miners, the sleek-coated gamblers of Bret Harte. It passes the\ntwenty-eight Mile House where Jack Hamlin ran a poker game, and many a\nscene rendered memorable by the gay ladies of Poker Flat. It reaches,\nby way of a deep-rutted, ancient track, choked with the characteristic\nred dust of the country, Table Mountain, the home of Truthful James.\nTable Mountain, having consideration for the near-by Sierras, is a hill\nmerely, with a flat deposit of _malpais_, the \"black rock\" of regions\nfar north and east. Beyond Sonora lie the old placer \"diggings,\" every\nfoot of which has been combed and sifted for gold. The bones of the\nearth are laid bare; all the masking clay, tossed and tumbled, clogged\nwith rusty pipes and decaying sluices, lies in heaps and depressions\nwhere the gold-seekers cast it. The sense of violation is heightened by\nthe hue of the soil, redder than the hills of Devon, redder than a red\nheifer--but the river furnishes the more descriptive figure, the martyr\nhue of the Sacrament. In the flood season it carries the tint of its\nensanguined clays far down into the bay's blueness.\n\nThe remnant of that riotous life,--the abandoned cabins, the towns\nfalling into dissolution,--like the remaining specimens of the fir and\nredwood forests cut off to timber the Mother Lode, is left standing by\nunfitness. The best of it is a little nugget of remembrance of Francis\nBret Harte and Mark Twain.\n\n  [Illustration: McCLOUD RIVER, UPPER SACRAMENTO VALLEY]\n\nIt was at Angels in the foothills of Calaveras that Twain, to his\neverlasting fame, was so impressed with the performance of the Jumping\nFrog. But life at Angels and all up and down that placer country is\nas heavy with desuetude as the frog was after the bar-keeper had fed\nhim with buckshot. As well try to get a draught of that old time as a\ndrink at any of the dismantled bars, high, ornate, black walnut affairs\nacross which, in dust and nuggets, passed and repassed probably as much\ngold as would serve to buy the orange belt of the San Joaquin--and for\na figure of magnificence you would find nothing more acceptable to its\ninhabitants.\n\nMuch of the history of that country is written in the names. Here the\nsoft Spanish locutions give place to harsher, but not less descriptive,\nAmericanisms--Jimtown, Jackass Hill, Squaw Creek; the ca\u00f1ons become\n\"gulches,\" the mesas \"flats.\" Later both of these were overlaid by\n-villes and -tons, the plain rural names of Anglo-Saxon derivation,\nCoulterville, Farmington, Turlock. They smell of orchards. Prosperity\nis coming back on the surface of the fruitful waters, but the redwood\nforests have not come back. Centuries, nothing less, are required for\nthe building of one of these towers of greenness, and it is barely\nforty years since all that district was one roaring blast of mining\nlife, rioting, jostling, snatching each from each. In the language\nof the country, the Italian truck gardeners will \"beat them to it.\"\nThey have smoothed over the old \"slickens\" and comforted the land with\ncrops.\n\nAs one travels north, the bulk of the Sierra lessens, the pines climb\nhigher, the oaks march well down into the middle valley to catch the\nwet coast winds, the character of the plantations change, there are\nmore grain fields, more neat little farms. Finally the old Overland\nemigrant trail climbs down from Donner Lake and Emigrant Gap, and you\nfind yourself deep in the Valley of the Sacramento.\n\nBy an air-line from the meeting of the waters, its geographical\nfrontier is passed in the neighbourhood of Sonora; perhaps the bridge\nover the Mokelumne is a better indicator, since that river joins the\nSan Joaquin at the estuary, but it is not until the Overland road is\ncrossed that the character of the country definitely betrays the upper\nvalley.\n\nAscending the river, the works of man are less and less, the forest\nand the mountains more. The rapid rise of the wooded slopes keeps\nthe Sacramento troublous. Tributaries, not large but swift and of\ntremendous volume, pour into it. Occasionally from dark ca\u00f1ons is\nheard the steady pound of the quartz mill, working some ancient lead,\nor a smelter blocks out a whole forested slope with its poisonous\nexhalations; but for the most part the northern valley is given over to\nbrooding quiet, to unending green, and streams as swift as adders.\n\nIn Mendocino county, on the coast side, the Range begins to lift\ntoward the snow-line; on the Sierra side the alpine crest shears away.\nFrom time to time the \"logging\" industry cuts a wide track down the\nredwood forest. One hears above the singing rivers, the clucking of\nthe donkey-engine or the rip of a mill still going in the midst of its\nself-created, sawdust desert. The glutting of the lumber region has\nbeen accomplished as wastefully, as violently, as the search for gold.\nAll up the valley tall prophets of the rain have been butchered to\nmake a lumberman's fat purse. But, link by link, the forestry bureau\nis closing in the line of the reserves against the lumber \"kings,\" the\nAhabs of a grasping time.\n\nThe hills fall into a certain order, serried rank on rank. Deciduous\ngrowth of the lower slopes gives way to redwoods and Shasta fir. Miles\nupon miles of them stand so thick that when one dies it does not fall\nbut remains erect in the arms of its brothers. Great columnar boles\nrise out of the river-basins, soaring high over what, except for their\ndwarfing proportions, would be a considerable grove of graceful oak\nand bay and glistening, magnolia-leafed, crimson-shafted madro\u00f1o.\nOver these the redwoods rise, as over the heads of worshippers the\nclustered columns of Milan seek the dome. High up the tops are caught\nin a froth of pale-green foliage through which the sunlight filters\nblue. This characteristic refraction from their yellowish, inch-long\nneedles dwells about the redwood as an aura, and far on the horizon\ndistinguishes their ranks from the hill-slopes masked with pines. So,\nblue ridge on ridge, they advance on the imperious height of Shasta.\n\n  [Illustration: DONNER LAKE, ON THE OLD EMIGRANT TRAIL]\n\nShasta is a brother of Fuji and Tacoma, one of those solitary crater\npeaks whose whiteness is the honourable age of fiery youth, a good\nmountain dead and gone to heaven. Do not go up on it; you will see\na great deal more of what you have seen, wooded hills on hills and\nperhaps the sapphire belt of the sea, the glitter of lovely, sail-less\nlakes, but you will not understand it any better, for Shasta has no\nmore to do with the abutting ranges than a great genius with the stock\nwhich produced him. This is a prophet among mountains, a vent from\nthe burning heart of creation. One is not surprised to learn that the\nIndians hereabout count their descent from the Spirit of Shasta and\nthe Grizzly Bear. That dark belt of forest circling the mountain's\nbase looks to be the proper haunt for him, the lumbering, little-eyed\nembodiment of brute creation. It is well to think of those two things\ntogether, the rip of those mighty claws with a ton or two of brute bulk\nbehind them, and the awful witness towering to the blue, and suffer the\nsoul-satisfying fear that lies in wait for man in the great places of\nthe earth. All our modern fears are mean, fears of the common opinion\nand the bill collector. Shasta will have done its best for you if it\nenables you to quake in the very marrow of consciousness.\n\nAfter this it is well to turn southward along the Coast Range, camping\nby the trout-abounding rivers, losing yourself in the stiff laurels and\nazaleas of Mendocino, fishing at the clear lakes cupped in the hollows.\nIf the season is right there will be salmon running in Klamath and\nTrinity rivers or deer in the steep-sided ca\u00f1ons. And everywhere there\nwill be the redwoods. It is not, however, in the crowds that the tree\nreveals itself. Far down the deforested hills of Sonoma, in isolated\ngroves, in small groups or singles on the tops of bossy, brass-coloured\nhills, it takes on character and charm.\n\nA redwood grove is a three-story affair. On the ground floor, turned\nrusty brown, as though the sunlight filtering through had mellowed\nthere a thousand years, creep the wild ginger, the rosy-flowered\noxalis, trilliums, and violets. All these lower rooms are crowded with\ndogwood, with the great berried manzanitas, woodwardias, man-high,\nand glistening bays, silver-tipped with light. By one of those\nstrange but charming affinities of wild life, the redwood grove is\nthe peculiar haunt of lilies. Every variation of the soil--the peat\nbogs of the coast, the high sandy ridges, the damp meadows--has each\nits appropriate variety; and not merely lilies, but droves of them,\nhundreds of swaying stems, files of them up the line of seeping springs\nor round the bases of great boulders, lilies breast high, lilies\noverhead, ruby-spotted, golden-throated, shining white, dowered with\nthe special genius of perfume. Along the chaparral-covered slope and\ndeep within the ca\u00f1ons one tracks them by the subtle, intoxicating\nscent spreading, as I am persuaded no other perfume does, by a\nconscious distillation on the melting air.\n\n  [Illustration: LAUREL LAKE, UPPER SACRAMENTO]\n\nThe second redwood story, that wondrous space of blue-diffusing sun,\nbetween the deciduous underforest and the fairy web of redwood green,\nis bird and squirrel haunted. Jays flash back and forth, bright\nflickers of the humming-bird go buzzing by. Woodpeckers may be heard\ncalling the ever-missing \"Jacob, Jacob!\" who must in their opinion\nbe concealing himself somewhere about the upper story. The wire-drawn\nwarble of the brown creeper follows the singer up and down the deeply\ncorrugated trunks. Wrens, sparrows, juncos, all manner of little\nfeathered folk in whose coats the tones of brown predominate, frequent\nthe pillared middle rooms. Once I heard what I thought to be a hermit\nthrush, singing out of the dusk of Muir Wood. But I have not the art\nof knowing birds by note. People who live much in the redwoods find\nthem silent; I think it might more easily be that the great trunks\nand green-shot glooms have the same quality of dwarfing sound as size.\nRedwoods, as I know them, are really lighter and more alive than any\nother coniferous forests, but the _effect_ of umbrageous stillness is\ninduced by vast proportions.\n\nAs for what goes on in the upper rooms, who has been there? What birds\narise to their three- or four-hundred-foot heights? The few and slight\nboughs, the feathery layers of foliage rounding in age to sloping\ncrowns, who knows them but the wind and the snows that neither stir nor\nare stayed by them? There are some matters that the great Twin Valleys\nkeep even from the men for whom they have borne an empire.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE HIGH SIERRAS AND THE SAGE-BRUSH COUNTRY\n\n\nThe proper vehicle for mountain study is not yet available. A great\nmountain range is like a great public character, there is much more\nto it than is presented to the observation, and it is not open to\nfamiliarity. But if one could fly high and wide over its cloud-lifting\nsummits, one might learn something of its private relations.\n\nFrom such a vantage it would instantly appear how distinct are the\nNevadas (_nieve_, snowy) among the Sierras of California. A very\nBonaparte of mountains, new-born and lording it over the ancient\nranges, not content with its vast empery but swinging north into the\nunpre-empted icy regions. San Bernardino and San Jacinto are as far\nfrom it as the Faubourg St. Germain from an island in the sea. Sierra\nMadre is of the Coast Range; Shasta a fire-hole, a revolutionist; the\ntrue Sierra is the midriff of a continent. From its northern extremity\none sees the sun in a circle and the Northern Lights; that portion of\nit we know as Sierra Nevada swings into the state above Honey Lake,\nand ends southward in a tumble of blunt peaks below Kern River. This\nis quite enough, however, for Californians to make free with, and more\nthan they can appreciate.\n\nGeographically the range begins on the south at Tehachapi, but at\nWalker's Pass, a day's journey to the north, is the first appearance\nof its most salient characteristic, the great Sierra Fault. In its\nyouth the range suffered incredible cataclysms. For two hundred\nmiles the great eastern plain dropped; weighted as it was with its\nwithered aristocracy of hills--how weazened and old you can see to\nthis day--it tore sharply downward, and the depth of that fall from\nthe heaven-affronting peak of Whitney to the desert valley of Inyo is\na matter of two miles of sheer descent.\n\nThe whole Sierra along the line of faultage has the contour of a\nwave about to break. It swings up in long water-shaped lines from\nthe valley of the San Joaquin, and rears its jagged crest above the\nabrupt desert shore. Seen from close under, some of these two- and\nthree-thousand-foot precipices have the pitch of toppling waters. As\nthey rose new-riven from the earth their proportions must have been\nmore than terrifying.\n\nLater the Ice Age bore downward from the north, and through\nimmeasurable years carved the fractured granite into shapes of enduring\nbeauty. It rounded the great jutting fronts, it insured them against\nthe tooth of time with the keen icy polish with which they shine\nstill against the morning. It gouged narrow wall-sided ca\u00f1ons, cut the\ncourse of rivers, and sinking like a graver's tool into the heart of\nthe range, scooped out deep wells of pleasantness. Afterward, when the\nice was old, it must have moved more slowly, for the lines it left,\nretreating northward, are more flowing, the hill-crowns rounder. And\nthen the mountain was besieged with trees. They stormed it, scaled its\nfree precipices; you can see by the thick mould of the valleys what\nranks and ranks of them went down, and along the snow-line how by the\npersistence of assault they are bent and contorted.\n\nThis is the whole effect of the sombre swathes of pine that mask the\nSierra slopes. They march along the water-courses, they climb up sheer\nprecipices in staggering files, trooping in the passes; across the\nsmooth meadow spaces they lock arms, they await the word of command.\nBy a very little observation they are seen to be ranged in orderly\ncompanies. Here a warm current of air travelling steadily from the\nsuperheated valleys carries the life zone higher, there a defiant\nbony ridge drops it a few thousand feet, but the relative arrangement\nof species does not greatly vary. The broad oaks, like reverend\ngrandsires, from the foothills see the procession go by, they follow\nas far as the gates of the mountain, crutched and bowed. All the lower\nca\u00f1ons are full of a rabble of deciduous trees, chinquapins, scrub oak,\nmadro\u00f1o, full of gay camp-followers, lilac, dogwood, azaleas, strumpet\npenstemons, flaunting lupins, monk's-hood, columbine.\n\n  [Illustration: YOSEMITE FALLS]\n\nThe grey nut pine, wide-branched, unwarlike but serviceable, opens\nthe ranks of conifers. Then the long-leaved pines begin, _ponderoso_,\n_Coulteri_, and the slender, arrowy, fire-resisting _attenuata_. On the\nwestern slope, increasing as they go northward, the redwood holds all\nthe open country, but it is no climber like _monticola_, the largest\nof all true pines, the captain of the Sierra forests. The firs usurp\nthe water-borders and the low moraines; clannish, incommunicable, they\nseem not to find it worth while to grow unless they grow stately. Above\nall these range the thin-barked pines, the lodgepole, Douglas spruce,\nlibrocedrus, and hardy junipers in windy passes. About the meadows and\nlake-borders the quaking asps push like children between the knees\nalong the line; and highest, most persistent, the creeping-limbed,\nwind-depressed white-barked pine, under whose matted boughs the wild\nsheep bed.\n\nThe trees have each their own voice--a degree of flexibility or length\nof needles upon which the wind harps to produce its characteristic\nnote. The traveller in the dark of mountain nights knows his way among\nthem as by the street cries of his own city. The creaking of the firs,\nthe sough of the long-leaved pines, the whispering whistle of the\nlodgepole pine, the delicate frou-frou of the redwoods in a wind, these\ncome out for him in the darkness with the night scent of moth-haunted\nflowers. But there is one tree that for the footer of the mountain\ntrails is voiceless; it speaks no doubt, but it speaks only to the\naustere mountain-heads, to the mindful winds and the watching stars.\nIt speaks as men speak to one another and are not heard by the little\nants crawling over their boots. This is the \"big tree,\" the sequoia. In\nsomething less than a score of forest patches about the rim of the Twin\nValleys, the sequoia abides, out of some possible preglacial period,\nout of some past of which nothing is left to us but the fading memory\nof the \"giants in those days.\" The age of individual big trees can\nbe computed in terms of human history. There are evidences written in\nthe rings of these that they endured the drouth which made the famine\nin the days of Ahab the king, against which Elijah prayed. These are\ngrowing trees whose seeds are fertile.\n\nOne might make a very dramatic collocation of the rise and fall of\nempires against the life period of a single sequoia, and that would\nbe easier than to transcribe by mere phrases the impression of one\nof these green towers of silence on the sense. Single and deeply\ncorrugated as a Corinthian column, with only a lightly-branched crown\nfor a capital, they spire for five thousand years or so, and then the\nleaf-crown becomes rounded to a dome in which the winds breed. Warm\ndays of Spring, their young nestling zephyrs come fluttering down the\ndeep wells of shade to shake the saplings of a hundred years. In Summer\nthe fine-leafed foliage catches the sun like spray, diffusing vaporous\nblueness; but the majesty of their gigantic trunks is incommunicable.\nAfter a while the stifling sense of awe breaks before it, and you go\non with your small affairs as children will go on playing even in the\nroyal presence.\n\n  [Illustration: BLUE LAKE, LAKE COUNTY]\n\nThe name _Sequoia_ is one of the few cheering notes among our habitual\nbotanical stupidities--an attempt to express quality as it is humanly\nmeasured in a name. There was once an American Cadmus, Sequoyah, a\nCherokee who invented an Indian alphabet and taught his tribe to read.\nSeeing them outnumbered in their own territory, he started west with\nthe idea of founding a great Indian empire. He was last seen trailing\nnorth across the desert and was heard of no more. Tradition has it that\nhe reached the forest of the upper Kern River and gave the trees his\nname. At least no botanist with his nose in a book has usurped it.\n\nForests are for cover. They mask not only the naked rock, but the paths\nof deer and bear and bighorn. Under the spire-pointed ranks of conifers\nthat look so black from above, verging to blueness, a world of furtive\nfolk goes on. A world of birds is in its branches, squirrels nimble\nas sparrows, but scarcely anything of this is visible to the watcher\non the heights. Rabbits playing on your lawn would be more noticeable\nin proportion than the seldom-seen bighorn leading his light-footed\nyoung from ledge to rocky ledge. The jealous trees cover the trails and\nobscure the passes.\n\nAs you come up through them you observe the flat, soddy spaces of\nold lake basins, green as jewels, and the hanging meadows gay with\ncascades of flowers, the stream tangles, the new-made moraines bright\nwith bindweed and sulphur-flower. But from the heights all this lovely\ndetail is hidden by the overlapping tents of boughs. Here and there a\nstream leaps forth at the falls like a sword from a green scabbard,\nor higher up, may be traced as the silver wire on which are strung\nunrippled lakes as blue as cobalt. Great chains of such lakes lead down\nfrom the snow-line to the foothill borders, encroached upon by the\nsilent ranks of trees. As they go down they show soddy borders, they\ntend to fill and to grow meadows where presently deep-rooting trees\nassume their stations. This is the strategic rule for the taking of a\ngranite mountain. First the grinding ice and the disintegrating water;\nwhat the streams wash down collects in the glacier-ploughed basins. It\nmakes lake borders by which the grass comes in--the small grass that\nis mightier than mountains, that eats them for its food. Lakes at the\nlower levels become meadows, then trees arrive; they overrun the soddy\nground, the snow-manured moraines. The trees themselves take centuries\nto fruition. At a later stage men dispossess the forest and build\ncities, but this has not yet come to the Sierras. There is something\nindomitable in the will of the trees to spread and climb. In the floor\nof Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy there are hundred-year-old oaks of full\nform and generous growth, and on the slopes above them the same oaks\nand of almost the same age are so dwarfed by drouth and altitude that\nthey are not knee-high to a man, but they keep the due proportions of\ntheir type. A white bark pine will climb where the weight of the winter\ndrifts is so heavy that it is never able to lift its decumbent trunk\nfrom the ground, clinging like ivy to the wall in which it roots.\n\nIn the Spring the rich florescence of the conifers sheds pollen in\ndrifts that, carried down the melting water, warn the sheep-herder and\nthe orchardist a hundred miles away of the advancing season. A pine\nforest in flower is one of the things worth seeing which is most seldom\nseen, for at its best the high passes are still choked by snow, the\nlakes ice-locked, the trails dangerous. And then the blossoms, yellow\nand crimson tassels and rosy spathes, are carried on the leafy crowns\nhigh over the heads of the most adventurous foresters. What one finds,\nas late as the end of June when the trails are open, is a stain of\npollen on the lingering snow, and great clouds of it flying wherever a\nbough is brushed by a light wing. In the autumn the whole wood is full\nof the click and glint of the winged seeds. Storms of them, like clouds\nof locusts, are carried past on the wind, to be dropped in the nearest\nclearing or to find a chance lodging in a moss-lined crevice of the\nweathered headlands.\n\n  [Illustration: LAKE TAHOE, THE HIGH SIERRAS]\n\nBut from the heights, all feeling for the process of the forest is\nlost in the sense of its irresistible march--it creeps and winds, it\nwaits darkly for the word. Above the tree-line no sound ascends but a\nfaint vibration, the body of sound making itself felt in the silence.\nOn windless days the forest lies black like weed at the bottom of a\nlake of air as clear as a vacuum. When the great wind rivers pour about\nthe peaks, it can be seen lashing like weed in the currents, but still\nalmost soundlessly--the roar of it passes down the ca\u00f1ons, and is heard\nin the cities of the plain. But if the peaks cannot hear what the trees\nare plotting about, it is not so with the voices of the water. These\nare sharper, more definitive; they rise re-echoing from the rocky walls\nand are recognisable each by its distinctive note at incredible heights\nof the sheer, glassy, granite frontlets.\n\nIn the glacial valleys, such as Yosemite, Tehipite, and Hetch Hetchy,\nwhere young rivers drop from the headlands in long streaming falls,\nthe noise of them contending with the wind makes mimic thunder. Immense\ncurtains of falling water are tossed this way and that, they are caught\nup and suspended in mid-air, and let fall crashing to the lower levels.\nWhen the wind blows straight up the ca\u00f1on they will rear against it,\nand leap out a shining arc, shattering in mid-air like bursting bombs\nof spray. But later in the season, when the streams are heavy with the\nmelting snows, the wind itself is shattered by the weight of falling\nwater--it exhausts itself in obscuring clouds of silver dust. When from\nWhitney or Williamson or King's Mountain you can see half-a-hundred\nsuch young rivers roaring to the morning, it is as beautiful and as\nterrifying as the sight of youth to timorous age. They go leaping with\ntheir shining shields, and their shouting shakes the rocks. Neither\nyou nor they believe that the most and the best they will come to is an\nirrigating canal between sober rows of prunes and barley.\n\nHigher than the forests, or the waters rising out of them, is the\n_Py-weack_, the Land of Shining Rocks. They shine with glacier polish;\nhorses on the high trails sniff suspiciously at their glittering\nsurfaces. Time can lay slight hold on them by thunder, by frost, and\nthe little grey moss; it has not yet subdued the front of Oppapago.\nHere between snowless ribs and buttresses are the shrunken glaciers\nthat feed the streams, little toy models of the ancient rivers of ice.\nThe snowfields of the Sierras are not so inconsiderable as they seem:\nthey are dwarfed by the precipices among which they hide. Inaccessible\nto ordinary mountain travel, they make their best showing from the\nsurrounding plains, where, lifted in the middle air, they glow with\nethereal whiteness. Close by they display a bewildering waste of broken\nice, boulders, and crevasses, made bleaker by the cobalt shadows.\n\n  [Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA--SIERRA GLOW]\n\nNorth the line of peaks stretches, broken by the passes that give\naccess to the west. Between them, above the source of streams, in the\nice-gouged hollows, lie unfathomable waters that take all their life\nfrom the sky. Or perhaps they are reservoirs from which the sky is\nmade, fluid jade and azulite and hyacinth and chrysoprase, as if the\nskies of many days had run their colours in those bleak bowls. For at\nthis altitude the wave contour of the range comes out most sharply; the\nsky is strangely deep and darker, as if through its translucence one\nglimpsed the void of space. One sees the moon and the planets wandering\nthere with pale lamps held aloft.\n\nNo life of any sort is visible from here. Farther down toward the\ncoast, over the forested moraines, the condor may be seen leaning\nagainst the wind at sunrise. On the edge of the abysmal ca\u00f1ons eagles\nmake their nests and go dropping down the shadowy depths to seek their\nfood from God, but they do not rise to these stark heights. Sometimes\na clanging horde of water-fowl, beating up from the Gulf of California\noverland to the Canadian marshes, will grow bewildered in the face of\nthe great wall-sided cliffs; circling they attempt the forward flight,\nonly to circle and rise anew, until, wing-weary in that thin air, they\nsink exhausted to the margin of a mountain lake, satisfied at last to\nthread their way humbly along the creek-beds to open country.\n\nThe live forces of the High Sierra are the forces of wind and light.\nOne feels the push of tremendous currents flowing between the peaks\nas among rocky islands. Day by day they may be charted by the cloud\nfragments floating on them, by the banners of dry snow dust, streaming\nout like long grass from the island shores. Thundering fleets of cumuli\ndrift up the wind rivers and assault the great domes of Whitney and\nOppapago. The light breaks through all the varying cloud strata, and\ncolours them with splendour; the glow of the clouds reflected on the\nsnow is caught by the watchful mountain-lover far down the valleys of\nInyo and San Joaquin. This painted hour of sunset is the apotheosis of\nmountains, but for me it has less of majesty than the morning after\ndeep snows. These come usually early in the season. The air for days\nwill be full of the formless stir, then the range withdraws itself\nbehind a veil which closes from tented peak to peak, and includes\nsometimes the parallel desert ranges which lie along its eastern coast.\nTwenty feet will fall in a single session of the white gods behind the\nveil. Then comes a morning blue and sharp as a spear-thrust. Every tree\nis like an arrow feathered in green and white. Airy bridges built upon\nthe bending stems shut in the water-courses; the moraines are smooth\nand soft as the backs of huddled sheep. By night the range shows from\nthe valley as a procession of winged figures holding the snows upon\ntheir bosoms. And that, after all, is the business of mountains. The\nwestern front of the Sierra Nevada, which receives the full force of\nthe Pacific storms, is rewarded with the stateliest forests. Before\nthose extended snowy mountain arms lie the great Twin Valleys; behind\nthem stretches the illimitable sage-brush country, the backyard of the\nSierra.\n\n  [Illustration: VALLEY OF THE YOSEMITE]\n\n\"Sage-brush country\" is one of those local terms that stand for a type\nof landscape as distinctive as the moors of England and the campagna\nof Italy. It means first of all, open country, great space of sky,\nwhat the inhabitants of it call \"eye-reach,\" treeless except for a few\ncotton-woods and willows along the sink of intermittent streams, and\nstippled with low shrubs of artemesia. This is the true \"sage-brush,\"\nthough it is no sage, the sacred bush of Diana, _Artemisia tridentata_.\nIt may grow in favoured districts man-high, but ordinarily not more\nthan two or three feet in the arid regions which it haunts. Other\nsocial shrubs will be found pre-empting miles of the territory to\nwhich the artemesia gives its name, _coleogeny_, _pursia_, _dalia_,\n\"creosote,\" but none other gives it the distinctive feature, the web of\npale, silky sage-green against the sun-burned sand.\n\nOther items of the sage-brush landscape are so constant that they\nare immediately suggested by it: mountains hanging on the horizon in\nopalescent haze, low flowing lines of hills overlaid by old lava-flows,\nthe \"black rock\" simulating cloud shadows on the distant ranges, dry\nred cones of ancient volcanic ash, and great flat table-topped \"buttes\"\nof the painted desert.\n\nWhite-crested ranges on the one hand and buttes on the other mark the\nlimits of the sage; for where snow-caps are, there are trees, and where\nthe buttes begin the cactus and the palo verde reign.\n\nA sage-brush country is a cattle country primarily; perhaps there may\nbe mines; where there is water to be stored for irrigation there will\nbe towns, but the virtue of the sage is that it grows in lands that\nman, at least, has found no other use for.\n\nIt can thrive on an allowance of water that will support no larger\nthing than a chipmunk or a lizard, and, growing, feeds the cattle\non a thousand hills. Therefore it is indispensable to any picture of\nthe sage-brush country that there should be herds at large in it and\nvaqueros riding, or far down the bleached valley the dust of a rodeo\nrising. It is impossible to think of such a land and not think of these\nthings, free life, and air as clear and vibrant with vitality as a\nbell. I can never think of it myself without seeing, in addition, the\nvultures making a merry-go-round over Panamint, and up from Coso the\ncreaking line of a twenty-mule team.\n\nThe sage-brush country of California begins properly at the foot of\nthe Sierras where the state-line sheers east by south from Lake Tahoe.\nIt covers the high valleys that divide the true Sierra from the older,\nlesser ranges that keep it company as far south as Olancha. Below\nMono Lake, that part of the gold region made immortal by Mark Twain,\nit gives to the chrome- and ochre-tinted soil its distinguishing\ncharacteristic. From the long arm of Death Valley it begins to be\nencroached upon by the mesquite, and at Indian Wells it is driven close\nunder the lee of the last Sierra. The range of which San Bernardino\nand San Jacinto are outposts carries the artemisia farther desertward,\nalmost to the Colorado River in fact, and south again about the Salton\nSea it holds its own with sahuro and palo verde. Its eastern border,\nlike that of the wild tribes along the Mojave line, is lost in pure\ndesertness. Formerly much of that country from San Bernardino to\nthe sea was native to the sage, and all the southern end of the San\nJoaquin. But now all this is replaced with orchards, for the artemisia\nproves nothing so much of the soil on which it grows as that, given a\ndue allowance of water, it is as desirable for other things.\n\n  [Illustration: THE HALF DOME, YOSEMITE]\n\nAll this country which I have described to you has so recently been sea\nthat the mark of its old beach-line is plainly to be traced along the\neast Sierra wall. Still the evaporating water leaves vast deposits of\nsalt and alkali, blinking white in the sink of Death Valley. There are\nlakes there still where the salt crusts over hard and clear like ice,\nand deep thick puddles of bitter minerals, the lees of that ancient\ninland ocean. From the top of any of the denuded desert ranges it is\npossible to trace the winding bays and estuaries, and, with an eye for\nlocation, to choose the points at which one may fairly expect to find\npotsherds, amulets, fire-blackened hearthstones, and the middens of a\nnameless people who built their primitive towns along its beaches. It\nmust have had much to recommend it in those days before the sage-brush\ntook it, for this inland sea, rather than the more mountainous Pacific\nshore, was the route taken by the ancient migratory peoples who left\ntheir undecipherable signs scored into the rocks from the Aztec country\nto the Arctic. On isolated igneous rocks near their old encampments,\nand high on the walls of the box canons, such as might have been\ntide-rifts, high above any mechanical contrivance of the present-day\nIndians, the records resist equally the shifts of sea and sand and the\nefforts of modern science to read them.\n\nWhether the ghosts of the departed peoples ever revisit the ancient\nbeaches, the ghosts of waters haunt there daily. Morning and\nmid-afternoon the rivers of mirage arise; they well out of the past\nand are poured trembling on the plain; phantom fogs blow across them,\nwraiths of trees grow up and are reflected in false streams. Often\nin very early light there are strange suggestions of----dunes and\nboulders perhaps? Only no boulders in that country are flat-topped like\nthe houses built in lands of the sun, and no dunes are wall-sided.\nMirage, we are told, is but a picture of distant things, mirrored on\natmospheric planes, but then maybe a ghost is only a mirage deflected\non our atmosphere from worlds outside our ken, and it is always easy\nin the desert to see things that you cannot possibly believe. Whatever\nthey are, mirages are real to the eye. I mean that they are not to\nbe winked away nor dissipated by contact. I have watched a vaquero\nride into one of them and drown to all appearances, or seem to be\nswimming his horse across its billows, all of him below its surface as\ncompletely hidden as by rivers of water. Moreover, mirages tend always\nto occur under given conditions and in the same places. I recall one\nof the stations on the old Mojave stage road, which, approached from\nthe north about an hour after sunrise, would instantly duplicate: two\nhouses, two lines of poplars, two high corrals.\n\n  [Illustration: SHASTA--SNOW CLOUDS]\n\nOccasionally along the edge of the sage-brush country one may see that\nsurpassing wonder, the moon mirage, poured like quicksilver along the\nnarrow valleys, as if the thirsty land had dreamed of water.\n\nIt is odd how this suggestion of sea and river clings to a country\nwhere there is nothing harder to come by than good water to drink.\nFor any other purpose it is not to be thought of. After one of those\nterrible wind storms, the only really incommoding desert weather, it is\npossible to find great spaces all rippled and lined in water-markings\nlike a sea that has suddenly undergone a magic transformation into\nsand. The contours of the desert ranges are billowy; they rise out\nof the plain like the grey-backed breakers of open sea. The valleys\nbetween are narrow and trough-like; the shores of them are lined with\ncrawling dunes that, under the steady pressure of wind currents, are\nfor ever sliding up their own peaks and down the other side, changing\nplace without ever once losing the long slope to windward and the\nabrupt landward fall of waves.\n\nAnother item which adds to the suggestion of the illimitable spread\nof sage-brush country, like the sea, is the way the sparse forests\nof the mountain-tops appear to be islanded by it. For the sage-brush\nextends on across the Great Basin, it stretches into Montana and\nsouth to Arizona and New Mexico, it works about the lower end of the\nRocky Mountains and well into the great central plain. The ranges\nlie thick in it as ocean swells, as I have said, and stepping from\ncrest to crest has come the fox-tail pine, _Pinus flexilis_, all the\nway from Humboldt Mountain to San Jacinto. A sinewy, thinly-branched\nspecies, as straight-backed as an Indian, it has little affinity for\nits noble congeners of the Sierra forests, but keeps to the dry and\nopen ridges, nourished by clouds and by infrequent shallow snows. With\nit, but at lower levels to which the _flexilis_ will never come, is\nfound frequently the one-leaved pi\u00f1on pine, the food-crop of the wild\ntribes. But the pi\u00f1on is a pushing sort, it establishes itself upon the\nslightest invitation.\n\nThere is a story told in the desert of how this grey, round-headed tree\nwas once a very great _capitan_, who, in order that his death might be\nas beneficent to his people as his life had been, was changed into the\nfoodful pine. Whether the legend is true or not, certain it is that\nif you sit down by a pi\u00f1on, wherever found, and stay long enough, you\nwill see Indians. They might come in the Spring looking for _taboose_,\nor later for willows and grasses for basketry, for seeds of sunflower\nand chia, to shoot doves by the water-holes or to hunt chuckwallas. A\nchuckwalla is a lizard, a kind of dragon in miniature, barred black and\nwhite, and as offensive to look at as he is harmless, in fact very good\neating and not too plentiful. Mojaves, Shoshones, Paiutes, Pimas, all\nthe tribes of the sage-brush country, have this in common, that they\nlive very close to the earth; roots, seeds, reptiles, thick pads of\nthe cholla cactus, even the grass of the field, serve them. They look,\nindeed, as though they had been made of the earth on the very spot that\nproduced them, of the black rock, the brown sand, and the dark water\nthat collects in polished basins of the wind-denuded ranges.\n\nVery little rain gets past the heaven-raking crest of the Sierra Nevada\ninto the sage-brush country; the most that falls is blown up from the\nGulf of California along the draw created by the close, parallel desert\nranges. It is precipitated usually under atmospheric conditions that\nproduce violent drops and changes. All that the traveller is likely to\nfind of it is in these rock reservoirs under the run-off of some bare\ngranite cliff, or in the rare, persistent \"water-holes\" hollowed out by\nbeasts or men, marked in the landscape by one lone tree perhaps, or a\nclump of shrubby willows. Often there will be no mark at all except the\nfrequency along the trail of skeleton cattle or wild sheep, pointing\nall in one direction, as they died on their way to the far-between\ndrinking-places. There are districts in this back-door country where\nevaporation from the body is so rapid that death overtakes the chance\nprospector even with water in sight or in his canteen across his back.\nFor years a notorious outlaw protected himself in the Death Valley\nregion, by filling in all the springs in a circle about the territory\nto which he had retreated. Beyond that waterless rim even the law could\nnot penetrate.\n\nAnd yet how the land repays the slightest moisture! Years when the\nKuro-Siwa swings closer to our coast and the winds are friendly,\nI have seen all that country, from Tehachapi, outside the wall, to\nSan Gorgiono, one sheet of blue and gold. Seeds of a hundred tender\nannuals lie in the loose sands for years between the shrubby sage,\ntheir vitality unimpaired by the delayed resurrection of a chance wet\nspring. Often I have sifted the sand in my fingers looking for a sign\nof the life-giving principle which bursts so suddenly into beauty,\nwithout finding it. Yet after years in which there is no alteration\nin the aspect of the country, except the insensible change of the sage\ntints from grey to green and grey again, the miracle takes place, the\nblossomy wonder is upon the world.\n\nAs a matter of fact, the sage-brush country is by no means the desert\nthat it looks to the casual eye. Besides the social shrubs which have\neach their own blossom and seed time, even the driest years will\nafford a few blooms of crimson mallow, and in the shelter of every\nconsiderable shrub some dwarfed and delicate phacelia or nemophilia.\nEven out of dunes which bury its hundred old trunks to the new season's\ntwigs, the mesquite will bear its sweet foodful pods. If you know at\nwhat hours to look for it, wild life is never absent, but it is not\nordinarily to be found by white men blundering about in broad noon.\n\nIt is only when you meet, in the midst of great open valleys wherein\nthere is nothing growing higher than the knees of your horse, and\nnothing moving bigger than the little horned toad under the cactus\nbush, bands of Indians well fed, cushiony with fat of mesquite meal and\nchia, that you understand how little you know of the land in which you\nmove.\n\nThere is a Paiute proverb to the effect that no man should attempt the\ncountry east of the Sierras until he has learned to sleep in the shade\nof his arrows. This is a picturesque way of saying that he must be able\nto reduce his wants to the limit of necessity. Those who have been able\nto do so, and have trusted the land to repay them, have discovered that\nthe measure is over-full.\n\nA man may not find wealth there, nor too much of food even, but he\noften finds himself, which is much more important.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n_The illustrations are indexed in italics._\n\n\n     Alcatraz, 112\n\n     Alviso, 112\n\n     Angels, 138\n\n     Antioch, 112, 119\n\n     Arbolado, 84\n\n     \"Arroya,\" definition of, 30\n\n\n     Bakersfield, 129, 132, 133\n\n     Berkeley Hills, 108, 114\n\n     _Blue Lake, Lake County_, 155\n\n     Buena Vista, 122\n\n\n     Cabrillo, 49, 108\n\n     Cahuenga, 47, 48, 67\n\n     Calaveras, 139\n\n     Camulas, 41\n\n     _Ca\u00f1on in the Sierra Madres_, 49\n\n     Carmel, 74, 77, 80, 83\n\n     Carmel River, 76\n\n     Carmel Valley, 78\n\n     Carquinez, 112\n\n     Carquinez Strait, 107, 119\n\n     _Castle Crag, Rattlesnake Ca\u00f1on_, 136\n\n     Castro, 66\n\n     Catalina, 49\n\n     _Cemetery, The, Santa Barbara Mission_, 56\n\n     Cession of California from Mexico, 48\n\n     _Clear Lake, Lake County_, 134\n\n     \"Coasts of Adventure, The,\" 47-60\n\n     Colorado River, 166\n\n     Contra Costa, 117\n\n     Coronado, 23\n\n     Coronel, Don Antonio, 48\n\n     Corta Madero, 116\n\n     Coso, 165\n\n     Coulterville, 139\n\n     _Cypress Point, near Carmel_, 75\n\n\n     Death Valley, 166, 172\n\n     _Donner Lake_, 142\n\n     Donner Lake, 140\n\n     Drake, Sir Francis, 9, 43, 108\n\n\n     Eagle Rock, 47\n\n     Emigrant Gap, 140\n\n     _Eucalyptus Grove, A_, 33\n\n     Exeter, 135\n\n\n     Faralones, The, 113\n\n     Farmington, 139\n\n     Fort Point, 67\n\n     Francis of Assisi, 10, 108\n\n     Franciscan \"Frailes,\" 9, 12\n\n     Fr\u00e9mont, 66\n\n     Fresno, 135\n\n     Fuca, Juan de, 108\n\n\n     _Glendale, Valley of the San Gabriel_, 40\n\n     Golden Gate, 107\n\n     _Golden Gate and Black Point_, 107\n\n     Gulf of California, 161, 171\n\n\n     _Half Dome, The, Yosemite_, 166\n\n     Hamlin, Jack, 137\n\n     Harte, Bret, 137, 138\n\n     Hetch Hetchy Valley, 159\n\n     \"High Sierras and the Sage-Brush Country, The\" 149-174\n\n     H\u00f4tel Del Monte, 76\n\n     Humboldt Mountain, 170\n\n\n     Indian Wells, 166\n\n     Inyo Valley, 162\n\n\n     Jackass Hill, 139\n\n     Jimtown, 139\n\n     Jumping Frog, the, 139\n\n\n     Kaweah Mountain, 133\n\n     Kaweah River, 129\n\n     Kern River, 129, 132, 134, 155\n\n     King's Mountain, 159\n\n     King's River, 129\n\n     King's River Ca\u00f1on, 137\n\n     Klamath River, 143\n\n     Kuro-Siwa Current, 49, 172\n\n\n     Laboratory Point, 68\n\n     Lake Mono, 165\n\n     Lake Tahoe, 165\n\n     _Lake Tahoe_, 158\n\n     \"Land of the Little Duck, The,\" 107-124\n\n     _Laurel Lake, Upper Sacramento_, 145\n\n     Lindsay, 135\n\n     _Looking down on Monterey and the Bay_, 65\n\n     Lopez, Francisco, 47\n\n     Los Angeles, 29, 35\n\n     Los Angeles River, 30\n\n\n     _McCloud River_, 139\n\n     Madera, 135\n\n     Maldonado, 108\n\n     Mare Island, 116\n\n     Mendocino Country, 141\n\n     Merced River, 129, 135\n\n     _Mill Valley_, 113\n\n     _Mirror Lake, Yosemite_, 129\n\n     Mission Dolores, 108\n\n     Mission Point, 69, 81\n\n     Mission River, 17\n\n     Mission of San Carlos Borromeo, 76, 78\n\n     Mission San Fernando, 47\n\n     Missions, ruins of, 19\n\n     Mokelumne River, 140\n\n     Monterey, 11, 18, 35, 55, 60\n\n     \"Monterey, the Port of,\" 63-84\n\n     Monterey Cypress, 72\n\n     \"Mothering Mountains,\" 27-24\n\n     Mount Oppapago, 160, 162\n\n     Mount Shasta, 5, 143, 150\n\n     _Mount Shasta_, 161\n\n     Mount Whitney, 6, 137, 150, 159, 162\n\n     Mount Williamson, 159\n\n\n     Napa, 118\n\n     Noriega's, 134\n\n\n     Olancha, 165\n\n     \"Old Spanish Gardens,\" 87-103\n\n\n     Pacific Grove, 75\n\n     Padre Jayme Bravo, 7, 17, 18\n\n     Padre Lausan, 66\n\n     Padre Serra (Junipero Serra), 11, 76, 78\n\n     Paiute Indians, 96\n\n     Pajaro, 54, 93\n\n     Pajaro river, 64\n\n     Pala, 19\n\n     \"Palatingwas,\" 20\n\n     Palo Corona, 80\n\n     Panamint, 165\n\n     Pasadena, 34\n\n     Paso Robles, 56\n\n     _Patio, The, Old Spanish Residence_, 88\n\n     _Pescadero, Monterey Bay_, 72\n\n     Pieoras Blancos, 83\n\n     Point Conception, 67\n\n     Point Lobos, 71, 81, 84\n\n     Point of Pines, 67\n\n     Point Pinos, 70, 81\n\n     Point Sur, 70\n\n     Portersville, 135\n\n     Portola, Don Gaspar de, 11, 55, 93, 108\n\n\n     _Redlands_, 16\n\n     _Redwoods_, 131\n\n     \"Rio,\" A, 30\n\n     Riverside, 33, 39\n\n\n     Sacramento, 112, 123\n\n     Sacramento River, 107, 127, 135, 140\n\n     \"Sage-Brush country,\" meaning of term, 163\n\n     Salinas, 83\n\n     Salinas River, 64\n\n     Salton Sea, 166\n\n     Sausalito, 116\n\n     San Antonio, 57\n\n     \"San Antonio,\" the, 10\n\n     San Bernardino, 7, 33, 39, 149, 166\n\n     San Carlos, 79\n\n     San Clemente, 48\n\n     San Diego, 22, 78\n\n     San Diego, Bay of, 9\n\n     _San Diego, looking towards Point Loma_, 9\n\n     San Emigdio, 128\n\n     San Fernando, 41, 128\n\n     San Francisco, 67, 107, 108, 110\n\n     San Francisco, Bay of, 112\n\n     San Gabriel, 36\n\n     San Gabriel Valley, 27, 33, 40\n\n     San Gorgiono, 41, 172\n\n     San Gorgiono, Pass of, 6\n\n     San Jacinto, 5, 27, 149, 166, 170\n\n     San Joaquin, 128, 132, 139, 166\n\n     San Joaquin River, 107, 112, 123, 127, 129, 130, 140, 150\n\n     San Joaquin Valley, 162\n\n     San Jose, Se\u00f1or, 10\n\n     San Juan, 83\n\n     San Juan Bautista, 65, 66\n\n     San Juan Capistrano, 18, 48, 50\n\n     San Luis Rey, 19\n\n     San Pablo, 112\n\n     San Pablo Bay, 116\n\n     San Quentin, 116\n\n     San Raphael, 116, 118\n\n     Santa Barbara, 58\n\n     Santa Catalina, 48\n\n     Santa Clara, 54\n\n     Santa Cruz Coast, 74\n\n     Santa Cruz Mountains, 55, 64\n\n     _Santa Cruz Mountains, the Coast Range_, 78\n\n     Santa Inez, 48, 58\n\n     Santa Margarita, 56\n\n     Santa Rosa, 48\n\n     Sequoia, origin of name, 155\n\n     _Shasta--Snow Clouds_, 168\n\n     Sierra Madre, 27, 28, 37, 40, 42, 44, 149\n\n     Sierra Nevada, 128, 163, 171\n\n     Sierra Nevada, origin of name, 149\n\n     Sierras, the, 4\n\n     Solano, 78\n\n     Sonoma, 107, 118, 144\n\n     Sonoma County, 92\n\n     Sonora, 138, 140\n\n     \"Sparrow-Hawk's Own, The,\" 3-23\n\n     Squaw Creek, 139\n\n     Stanislaus River, 137\n\n     Stockton, 123\n\n     Suisun, 112, 119\n\n     Sur, 80, 83\n\n     _Sycamores, a Coast Range Ca\u00f1on_, 59\n\n\n     Table Mountain, 138\n\n     _Tall Chaparral, Santa Cruz_, 62\n\n     Tamalpias, Mount, 109\n\n     _Tamalpias_, 110\n\n     Tasajara, 83\n\n     Tehachapi, 128, 150, 172\n\n     Tehipite Valley, 159\n\n     Tejon, 129\n\n     Tejon Pass, 89, 128, 132\n\n     Temblors, The, 128, 133\n\n     _\"Three Brothers, The,\" Yosemite_--_Frontispiece_\n\n     Tiburon, 112, 116\n\n     Trinity River, 143\n\n     Truthful James, 138\n\n     Tulare, the, 120\n\n     Tule River, 129\n\n     Tuolumne River, 129\n\n     Turlock, 139\n\n     Twain, Mark, 138, 139, 165\n\n     \"Twin Valleys, The,\" 127-146\n\n\n     _Valley of the Yosemite_, 163\n\n     Visalia, 129\n\n     Viscaino, Sebastian, 9, 63, 76, 108\n\n\n     _Waiting for Duck--Los Ba\u00f1os_, 120\n\n     Walker's Pass, 150\n\n     Warner's Ranch, 20\n\n\n     Yerba Buena, 108\n\n     _Yosemite Falls_, 152\n\n     Yosemite Valley, 135, 137, 157, 159\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.\n\n  [Illustration: SKETCH MAP ACCOMPANYING \"CALIFORNIA\" BY SUTTON PALMER","title":"California: The Land of the Sun","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":34083}