"Primeval California" was inscribed on the knapsack of the Artist, on
the portmanteau of Foster, the Artist's chum, and on the fly-leaf of the
note-book of the Scribe. The luggage of the boisterous trio was checked
through to the heart of the Red Woods, where a vacation camp was
pitched. The expected "last man" leaped the chasm that was rapidly
widening between the city front of San Francisco and the steamer bound
for San Rafael, and approached us--the trio above referred to--with a
slip of paper in his hand. It was not a subpoena; it was not a dun; it
was a round-robin of farewells from a select circle of admirers, wishing
us joy, Godspeed, success in art and literature, and a safe return at
last.
The wind blew fair; we were at liberty for an indefinite period. In
forty minutes we struck another shore and another clime. San Francisco
is original in its affectation of ugliness--it narrowly escaped being a
beautiful city--and its humble acceptation of a climate which is as
invigorating as it is unscrupulous, having a peculiar charm which is
seldom discovered until one is beyond its spell. Sailing into the
adjacent summer,--summer is intermittent in the green city of the
West,--we passed into the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, the great landmark
of the coast. The admirable outline of the mountain, however, was
partially obscured by the fog, already massing along its slopes.
The narrow-gauge of the N.P.C.R.R. crawls like a snake from the ferry on
the bay to the roundhouse over and beyond the hills, but seven miles
from the sea-mouth of the Russian River. It turns very sharp corners,
and turns them every few minutes; it doubles in its own trail, runs over
fragile trestle-work, darts into holes and re-appears on the other side
of the mountains, roars through strips of redwoods like a rushing wind,
skirts the shore of bleak Tomales Bay, cuts across the potato district
and strikes the redwoods again, away up among the saw-mills at the
logging-camps, where it ends abruptly on a flat under a hill. And what a
flat it is!--enlivened with a first-class hotel, some questionable
hostelries, a country store, a post-office and livery-stable, and a
great mill buzzing in an artificial desert of worn brown sawdust.
Here, after a five hours' ride, we alighted at Duncan's Mills, hard by
the river, and with a girdle of hills all about us--high, round hills,
as yellow as brass when they are not drenched with fog. In the twilight
we watched the fog roll in, trailing its lace-like skirts among the
highland forests. How still the river was! Not a ripple disturbed it;
there was no perceptible current, for after the winter floods subside,
the sea throws up a wall of sand that chokes the stream, and the waters
slowly gather until there is volume enough to clear it. Then come the
rains and the floods, in which rafts of drift-wood and even great logs
are carried twenty feet up the shore, and permanently lodged in
inextricable confusion.
I remember the day when we had made a pilgrimage to the coast, when from
the rocky jaws of the river we looked up the still waters, and saw them
slowly gathering strength and volume. The sea was breaking upon the bar
without; Indian canoes swung on the tideless stream, filled with
industrious occupants taking the fish that await their first plunge into
salt water. Every morning we bathed in the unpolluted waters of the
river. How fresh and sweet they are--the filtered moisture of the hills,
mingled with the distillations from cedar-boughs drenched with fogs and
dew!
Lounging upon the hotel veranda, turning our backs upon the last
vestiges of civilization in the shape of a few guests who dressed for
dinner as if it were imperative, we were greeted with mellow heartiness
by a hale old backwoodsman, a genuine representative of the primeval. It
was Ingram, of Ingram House, Austin Creek, Red Woods, Sonoma County,
Primeval California. It was he, with ranch-wagon and stalwart steeds.
The Artist, who was captain-general of the forces, at once held a
consultation with Ingram, whom we will henceforth call the Doctor, for
he is a doctor--minus the degrees--of divinity, medicine, and laws, and
master of all work; a deer-stalker, rancher, and general utility man;
the father of a clever family, and the head of a primeval house.
In half an hour we were jolting, bag and baggage, body and soul, over
roads wherein the ruts were filled with dust as fine as flour, fording
trout-streams, and winding through wood and brake. We passed the old
logging-camp, with the hills about it blackened and disfigured for life;
and the new logging-camp, with its stumps still smoldering, its steep
slides smoking with the friction of swift-descending logs, the ring of
the ax and the vicious buzz of the saw mingled with the shouts of the
woodsmen. How industry is devastating that home of the primeval!
Soon the road led us into the very heart of the redwoods, where superb
columns stood in groups, towering a hundred and even two hundred feet
above our heads! A dense undergrowth of light green foliage caught and
held the sunlight like so much spray; the air was charged with the
fragrance of wild honeysuckle and resiniferous trees; the jay-bird
darted through the boughs like a phosphorous flame, screaming his joy to
the skies; squirrels fled before us; quails beat a muffled tattoo in
the brush-snakes slid out of the road in season to escape destruction.
We soon dropped into the bed of the stream Austin Creek, and rattled
over the broad, strong highway of the winter rains. We bent our heads
under low-hanging boughs, drove into patches of twilight, and out on the
other side into the waning afternoon; we came upon a deserted cottage
with a great javelin driven through the roof to the cellar; it had been
torn from one of the gigantic redwoods and hurled by a last winter's
gale into that solitary home. Fortunately no one had been injured, but
the inmates had fled in terror, lashed by the driving storm.
We came to Ingram House in the dusk, out of the solitude of the forest
into a pine-and-oak opening, the monotony of which was enlivened with a
fair display of the primitive necessities of life--a vegetable garden on
the right, a rustic barn on the left, a house of "shakes" in the
distance, and nine deer-hounds braying a deep-mouthed welcome at our
approach.
In the rises of the house on the hill-slope is a three-roomed bachelors'
hall; here, on the next day, we were cozily domiciled. There were a few
guests in the homestead. The boys slept in the granary. The deer-hounds
held high carnival under our cottage, charging at intervals during the
night upon imaginary intruders. We woke to the blustering music of the
beasts, and thought on the possible approach of bear, panther,
California lion, wild cat, 'coon, and polecat; but thought on it with
composure, for the hounds were famous hunters, and there was a whole
arsenal within reach.
We were waked at 6:30, and come down to the front "stoop" of the
homestead. The structure was home-made, with rafters on the outside or
inside according to the fancy of the builder; sunshine and storm had
stained it grayish brown, and no tint could better harmonize with the
background and surroundings. In one corner of the stoop a tin wash-basin
stood under a waterspout in the sink; there swung the family towels; the
public comb, hanging by its teeth to a nail, had seen much service; a
piece of brown soap lay in an _abalone_ shell tacked to the wall; a
small mirror reflected kaleidoscopical sections of the face, and made up
for its want of compass by multiplying one or another feature. We never
before ate at the hour of seven as we ate then; then a pipe on the front
steps and a frolic with the boys or the dogs would follow, and digestion
was well under way before the day's work began. Then the Artist
shouldered his knapsack and departed; the lads trudged through the road
to school; the women went about the house with untiring energy; the
male hands were already making the anvil musical in the rustic smithy,
or dragging stock to the slaughter, or busy with the thousand and one
affairs that comprise the sum and substance of life in a self-sustaining
community. We were assured that were war to be declared between the
outer world and Ingram House, lying in ambush in the heart of our black
forest, we might withstand the siege indefinitely. All that was needful
lay at our hands, and yet, a stone's-throw away from our shake-built
citadel, one loses himself in a trackless wood, whose glades are still
untrodden by men, though one sometimes hears the light step of the
_bronco_ when Charlie rides forth in search of a strong bull. All work
was like play there, because of a picturesque element which predominated
over the practical. Wood-cutting under the window of the best room,
trying out fat in a caldron or an earth-oven against our cottage,
dragging sunburnt straw in a rude sledge down the hill-side road,
shoeing a neighbor's horse in a circle of homely gossips, hunting to
supply the domestic board at the distant market--is this all that Adam
and the children of Adam suffer in his fall?
At noon a clarion voice resounded from the kitchen door and sent the
echoes up and down the creek. It was the hostess, who, having prepared
the dinner, was bidding the guests to the feast. The Artist came in
with his sketch, the Chum with his novel, the Scribe with his note-book,
followed by the horny-handed sons of toil, whose shoulders were a little
rounded and whose minds were seldom, if ever, occupied with any life
beyond the hills that walled us in. We sat down at a camp board and ate
with relish. The land was flowing with milk and honey; no sooner was the
pitcher drained or the plate emptied than each was replenished by the
willing hands of our hostess or her boys.
Another smoke under the stoop followed, and then, perhaps, a doze at the
cottage, or in one of the dozen rocking-chairs about the house, or on
the rustic throne hewn from a stump in the grove between the house and
the barn. The sun flooded the cañon with hot and dazzling light; the air
was spiced with the pungent odor of shrubs; it was time to rest a little
before beginning the laborious sports of the afternoon. Later, we all
wandered on the banks of the creek and were sure to meet at the
swimming-pool about four o'clock. Meanwhile the Artist has laid in
another study. Foster has finished his tale, and is rocking in a hammock
of green boughs; the Scribe has booked a half-dozen fragmentary
sentences that will by and by grow into an article, and the boys have
come home from school.
By and by we wanted change; the monotony of town life is always more or
less interesting; the monotony of country life palls after a season.
Change comes over us in a most unexpected guise. Our cañon was decked
with the flaming scarlet of the poison-oak; these brilliant bits of
foliage are the high-lights in almost every California landscape, and
must satisfy our love of color, in the absence of the Eastern autumnal
leaf. The gorgeous shrubs stand out like burning bushes by the roadside,
on the hill-slope, in the forest recesses, and almost everywhere. The
Artist's chum gave evidence of a special susceptibility to the poison by
a severe attack that prostrated him utterly for a while. Yet he stood by
us until his vacation came to an end, and, to the last, there was no
complaint heard from this martyr to circumstances.
One day he left us--on mule-back, with nine dogs fawning upon his
stirrup, and amid a hundred good-byes wafted to him from the house, the
smithy, the barn, and the swimming-pool. He had orders to send in the
Kid, or his successor, immediately upon his arrival at the Bay. We must
needs have some one to indulge, some one whose interests were not
involved in the primeval farther than the pleasure it afforded for the
hour. The Kid was the very thing--a youngster with happiness in heart,
luster in his eye, and nothing more serious than peach-down on his lip;
yet there was gravity enough in his composition to carry him beneath the
mere surface of men and things. The Kid drove in one night with rifle
tall as himself, fishing-tackle, and entomological truck, wild with
enthusiasm and hungry as a carp.
What days followed! Our little entomologist chased scarlet-winged
dragon-flies and descanted on the myriad forms of insect-life with
premature accomplishment. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings" we
heard revelations not unmixed with the ludicrous superstitions of the
nursery.
There is a school-house a mile distant, on the forks of the creek; we
visited it one Friday, and saw six angular youths, the sum total of the
young ideas within range of the instructress, spelled down in
broadsides; and heard time-honored recitations delivered in the same old
sing-song that could only have been original with the sons of our first
parents. The school-mistress, with a sun-bonnet that buried her face
from the world, passed Ingram's ten times a week, footing it silently
along the dusty road, lunch-pail in hand. She lives in a lonely cabin on
the trail to the wilderness over the hill.
The Kid sketched a little; indeed, the artistic fever spread to the
granary, where the boys spent some hours of each day restoring, not to
say improving, the tarnished color of certain face-cards of an imperfect
euchre deck, the refuse of the palette being carefully secreted to this
end; we never knew at what moment we might sit upon the improvised
color-box of some juvenile member of the family.
But hunting was our delectable recreation; the Doctor would lead off on
a half-broken _bronco_, followed by a select few from the house or the
friendly camps, Fred bringing up the rear with a pack-mule. This was the
chief joy of the hounds; the old couple grew young at the scent of the
trail, and deserted their whining progeny with Indian stoicism. Two
nights and a day were enough for a single hunt,--one may in that time
scour the rocky fortresses of the Last Chance, or scale the formidable
slopes of the Devil's Ribs.
The return from the hunt was a scene of picturesque interest: the
approach of the hunters at dusk, as they emerged one after another from
the dark wood; the pack-mule prancing proudly under a stark buck
weighing one hundred and thirty-three pounds, without its vitals; the
baby fawn slain by chance (for no one would acknowledge the criminal
slaughter); the final arrival of the fagged, sore-footed dogs, who were
wildly greeted by the puppies, and kissed on the mouth and banged about
by many a playful paw; the grouping under the trees in front of
Bachelors' Hall, where the buck was slung, head downward among green
leaves, and with stakes crossed between the gaping ribs; the light of
the flickering lantern; the dogs supping blood from the ground where it
had dripped; the satisfaction of the hunters; the admiration of the
women; the wild excitement of the boys, who all talked at once, at the
top of their voices, with gestures quicker than thought;--this was the
Carnival of the Primeval.
One night, the Kid set out for the stubble-field and lay in wait for
wild rabbits; when he came in with his hands full of ears, the glow of
moonlight was in his eye, the flush of sunset on his cheek, the riotous
blood's best scarlet in his lips, and his laugh was triumphant; with a
discarded hat recalled for camp-duty, a blue shirt open at the throat,
hair very much tumbled, and no thoughts of self to detract from the
absolute grace of his pose.
But all hunting-parties were not so successful. One of seven came home
empty-handed and disgusted. It became necessary, while the unlucky
huntsmen were under our roof, to give them festive welcome. Fred drew
out his fiddle; the Doctor gathered his strength and shook as lively a
shoe on the sanded floor of the best room as one will hear the clang of
in many a day. Clumsy joints grew supple; heavy boots made the splinters
fly; a fellow-townsman, like ourselves on a vacation tour, jigged with
the inimitable grace of a trained dancer. How few of our muscles are
aware of the joy of full development! From the wall of the best room the
"Family of Horace Greeley," in mezzotint, looked down through clouded
glass and a veneered frame. The county map hung _vis-à-vis_. A family
record, wherein a pale infant was cradled in saffron, and schooled in
pink, passing through a rainbow-tinted life that reached the climax of
color at the scarlet and gold bridal, and ended in a sea-green grave;
this record, with a tablet for appropriate inscriptions under each epoch
in the family history, was still further enriched with lids of stained
isinglass carefully placed over the domestic calendar, as much as to
say, "What is written here is not for the public eye." On the triangular
shelf in the corner, stood the condensed researches of all Arctic
explorers, in one obese volume; its twin contained the revelations of
African discoveries boiled down and embellished with numberless cuts; a
Family Physician, one volume of legislative documents, and three stray
magazines, with a Greek almanac, completed the library. So, even in the
primeval state, we were not without food for our minds as well as
exercise for our muscles. After a time, even the dance ceased to attract
us. The Artist had lined the walls of his chamber with brilliant
sketches; the kid clamored for home.
I suppose we might have tarried a whole summer and still found some turn
in the brook, some vista in the wood, some cluster of isolated trees, to
hold us entranced; for the peculiar glory of the hour transfigured
them, and the same effect was never twice repeated. Moreover, we at last
grew intolerant of one great annoyance. You all have known it as we knew
it, and doubtless endured it with as little grace. Is there anything
more galling than the surpassing impudence of country flies? We resolved
to return to town, and returned close upon the heels of our resolution.
Again we threaded the dark windings of the wood, and bade farewell to
every object that had become endeared to us. We wondered how soon change
would lay its hand upon this primeval beauty. We approached the
logging-camp. Presto! in the brief interval since our first glimpse of
the forests above it, the hills had been shorn of their antique harvest,
and the valley was a place of desolation and of death.
It seemed incredible that the dense growth of gigantic trees could be so
soon dragged to market. There was a famous tree--we saw the stump still
bleeding and oozing up--which, three feet from the ground, measured
eleven and a half feet one way by fourteen feet the other. When its doom
was sealed, a path was cut for it and a soft bed made for it to lie on.
The land was graded, and covered with a cushion of soft boughs. Had the
tree fallen on uneven ground, it would have been shattered; if it had
swerved to right or left, nothing but fire could have cleared the
wrecks.
The making of the death-bed of this monster cost Mrs. Duncan forty
dollars. Then the work began. An ax in the hands of a skillful
wood-cutter threw the tree headlong to the earth. Then it was sawed
across, yielding eighteen logs, each sixteen feet in length, with a
diameter of four feet at the smallest end. The logs were put upon
wheels, and run over a light trestle-work to the mill, drawn thither by
a ridiculous dummy, which looked not unlike an old-fashioned tavern
store on its beam-ends, with an elbow in the air. At the mill, it was
sawed into eighty thousand feet of marketable lumber.
Reaching the forest, on our way to the Mills, we found the river had
risen so that ten miles from the mouth we were obliged to climb upon the
wagon-seats, and hold our luggage above high-water mark.
At Duncan's, on the home stretch, we made our final pilgrimage, to a
wild glen over the Russian River, where, a few weeks before, the
Bohemian Club had held high jinks. The forest had been a scene of
enchantment on that midsummer night; but now the tents were struck, the
Japanese lanterns were extinguished, and nothing was left to tell the
tale but the long tables of rough deal, where we had feasted. They were
covered with leaves and dust; spiders had draped them with filmy robes.
The quail piped, the jay-bird screamed, the dove sobbed, and a slim
snake, startled at the flight of a bounding hare, glided away among the
rustling leaves. So soon does this new land recover the primeval beauty
of eternal youth.