the day advanced; the droning sound of the reapers in the valley, as the
rippling wheat bowed to a sort of rural song of Old Hundred! and the
very cattle, which, for aught I know, have figured in a dozen pictures,
standing under the trees, with their identical tails over their backs.
Even the great fields of corn, which rustled and snapped under a
midsummer sun, were toned a little by the long column of mellow dust
which spun from the stage-wheels and trailed for a mile in the rear. The
artists caution against too much green in a picture, and so this brown
pigment was needed to give the best effect; and there was no lack of
material to "lay it on" liberally, anywhere in that region. With the
dropping down of the sun behind the low hills on the west, the shadows
fell aslant the valley, and light and shade melted together into the
soft twilight. It might have been a favorable time for sentiment. But
just then the stage-coach rounded a low hillock, and a farm-house was
brought suddenly into the foreground. A cosset, a flock of geese, a
windmill moving its fans indolently to the breath of the west wind, a
dozen ruminating cows--what more of pastoral simplicity would you have
for the fringe of such a landscape? But you see it was slightly
overdone. The stout young woman milking the roan cow rather heightened
the effect, to be sure; she really ought to have been there. But did any
feminine mortal ever administer such a kick to the broad sides of a cow
before? There was a dull thud, a quadrupedal humping, an undulation
along the spine of that cow--and the stage-coach was out of sight. O,
for the brawn and muscle to administer such a kick! It was more
gymnastic than esthetic, more realistic than poetical. You will never
find Arcadia where such a powerful feminine battery is set in motion on
so slight a provocation. A cow might survive; but you need not describe
the fate of any man on whom such a force were expended. And seeing that
so large a part of this world needs a healthy kicking, more is the pity
that there should have been such a needless expenditure of force. By
what mental law are grand and ridiculous scenes associated together? I
cannot summon the towering majesty of St. Helena, the golden ripple of
the harvest fields, the receding valley, softened by the twilight, but
ever in the foreground is this kicking milkmaid and that unfortunate
cow. If a house-painter had dabbed his brush of green paint on your Van
Dyke, you might be stunned by this very audacity, and turn your pet
picture to the wall. But the house-painter and Van Dyke would from that
time forth be associated together. So I turn this picture to the wall,
only wishing that the kicking milkmaid and St. Helena had been a
thousand miles apart.
The Russian River Valley "pinches out" at Cloverdale, a pretty little
town, set down in a bowl with a very large rim--so large, that unless
new life should be infused into the town, it will not be likely to slop
over. Thence, you reach the head of Anderson Valley, by a jaunt of
thirty-two miles, in a northwesterly direction, over a series of low
mountain ridges, and through canyons, sometimes widening out into
"potreros" large enough for a cattle ranch, and handsome enough for a
gentlemen's country-seat. Here the affluents of the Novarro River are
drawn together like threads of lace; and the first trout stream leaps
and eddies in the deep defiles on its way to the ocean. There is no use
of fumbling in an outside pocket for fish-hooks. The stream has a fishy
look; but that band of rancheria Indians, who have gone into summer camp
on a sand-bar, will settle the trout question for the next ten miles.
They pop their heads out of a round hole in one of the wigwams like
prairie dogs, and seem to stand on their hind legs, with the others
pendent, as if just going to bark. These are the aboriginal Gypsies,
fortunate rascals, who pay no house-rent, who want nothing but what they
can steal, or what can be got from the brawling stream, or the wooded
slopes of the adjacent hills.
These funnel-shaped willow baskets, lodged here and there along the
banks, are the salmon traps of the Indians, which have done duty until
the spring run was over. When the salmon has once set his head up
stream, he never turns it down again until he has reached the extreme
limits of his journey and accomplished his destiny. The Indians
understand this; and these long willow funnels, with a bell-shaped
mouth, are laid down in the spring--a clumsy contrivance to be sure; but
the salmon enters and pushes his way on, while this willow cylinder
contracts until it closes to a small nozzle. There is daylight ahead;
the stubborn fish will not back down, and he cannot "move on." When an
Indian gets hungry, he pulls up this willow trap, runs a spit through
his fish, holds him over the fire a little while, and his dinner is
ready.
There is no fish story which one may not believe when in a gentle mood.
And thus, when farther down the stream, a settler showed us a wooden
fork such as is used to load gavels of grain, with which, in less than
an hour, he pitched out of this same stream a wagon-load of salmon--why
should we doubt his veracity? No lover of the gentle art is ever
skeptical about the truth of a fish story. Faith and good luck go
together. How was our faith rewarded soon afterward, when, taking a
"cut-off," at the first cast under a shelving rock, a half-pound trout
was landed! It was a grasshopper bait, and another grasshopper had to be
run down before another cast. It is wonderful what jumps this insect
will make when he is wanted for bait, and the run is up the hill.
Another trout snapped illusively, and we had him--larger by a quarter of
a pound than the first. It was getting interesting! No doubt the settler
pitched out a load of salmon with a wooden fork. A kingdom for a
grasshopper! There they go in all directions--and the rascals have
wings! The clumsy stage-wagon is creeping far up the hill. A beetle is
tried; it won't do--no decent trout ever swallowed a beetle. A dozen
splendid game fish were left in that swirl under the rock. Was there too
much faith in that wooden fork story, or not enough? There was a hitch
somewhere. But it was all right when the passengers dined that day on
fried bacon, and we on mountain trout. If the grasshoppers had not been
too lively, there would have been trout for all.
Anderson Valley is about eighteen miles long, and half to three-fourths
of a mile wide. The hills on the left are belted with a heavy growth of
redwood, in fine contrast with the treeless hills on the right, covered
with a heavy crop of wild oats, all golden-hued in the August sun. The
farms extend across the valley, taking a portion of the hills on either
side. There has not been a Government survey made in the valley, but
every man was in possession of his own, and did not covet his
neighbor's. Land-stealing requires a degree of energetic rascality and
enterprise wholly wanting here. So near, and yet so remote! It is as if
one had gone a two-days' journey, and had somehow managed to get three
thousand miles away. I heard of a man in the valley who took a
newspaper, and was disposed to sympathize with him in his misfortune.
Why should the spray of one of the dirty surges of the outside world
break over into Arcadia? Everybody had enough, and nobody had anything
in particular to do. The dwellings had mud-and-stick chimneys on the
outside, and an occasional bake-oven garnished the back yard. At the
little tavern, such vegetables as strangers "hankered for" were procured
at the coast--a distance of twenty-six miles. An old man--he might have
been seventy, with a margin of twenty years--had heard of the rebellion,
and lamented the abolition of slavery--a mischief which he attributed to
a few fanatics. The world would never get on smoothly until the
institution of the patriarchs had been restored.
Oh, venerable friend, dwelling in Arcadia! there is much broken pottery
in this world which is past all mending; and more which is awaiting its
turn to go into the rubbish heap. All that was discovered in the
interior of a Western mound was a few fragments of earthenware; for the
rest, Time had beaten it all back to the dust. The images, whether of
brass, wood, or stone, could not be put together by any of the cohesive
arts of our time. It is appointed for some men to go through the world,
club in hand, and to break much of the world's crockery as they go. We
may not altogether like them. But observe that the men who are stoned by
one generation are canonized by the next. There was the great ebony
image set up and so long worshipped by the people of this country. How
many sleek, fat doctors climbed into their pulpits of a Sunday, to
expatiate on the scriptural beauties of this image, and the duty of
reverencing it as something set up and continued by Divine authority! It
took some whacking blows to bring that ebony idol down; but what a world
of hypocrisy, cruelty and lies went into the dust with it! Was there
ever a reformer--a genuine image-breaker--who did not, at one time or
another, make the world howl with rage and pain? Now, truth is on
eternal foundations, and does not suffer, in the long run, by the
world's questionings or buffetings. But a consecrated falsehood--whether
sacerdotal, political, or social--is some day smitten, as the giant of
old, in the forehead, and falls headlong. After all, it is by
revolution, that the world makes most of its progress. It is a violent
and often disorderly going out of an old and dead condition by the
regenerating power, not of a new truth, but of an old one dug out of the
rubbish, and freshly applied to the conscience of the world. How many
truths to-day lie buried, which, if dug up, would set the world in an
uproar! The image-breaker often heralds a revolution. He overturns the
idol, of whatever sort it is, letting the light into some consecrated
falsehood--not gently, but very rudely, and with a shocking disregard of
good manners, as many affirm. This rough-shod evangel, with the rasping
voice, and angular features, and pungent words--we neither like him nor
his new gospel at first. But he improves on acquaintance, and some day
we begin to doubt whether he really does deserve eternal burning.
The world is full of cant; it infects our common speech. The odor of
sanctity and the form of sound words are no nearer the living spirit
than are those petrifactions which present an outline of men, but never
again pulsate with life. Once in every half a century it is needful that
the image-breaker should come along and knock on the head the brainless
images of cant. The sturdy man of truthful and resolute speech! How
irreverent and impious he is! He makes the timid hold their breath, lest
he should break something that he ought not to touch. What has he done,
after all, but to teach men and women to be more truthful, more
courageous, and less in love with shams.
At the close of a little "exhortation," something like this, the old man
said--rather dogmatically, I thought--"Stranger, them sentiments of
yourn won't do for this settlement." No doubt he was right. They won't
do for any settlement where they build mud-and-stick chimneys on the
outside of houses, and fry meat within.
It is good to get into a forest where there is not a mark of the
woodman's axe. The redwood is, after all, one of the handsomest
coniferous trees in the world. It grows only in a good soil and a moist
climate. There may be larger trees of the _sequoia_ family in the
Calaveras group, but that presumption will bear questioning. A guide
offered to take us to a group of trees, distant about a day's ride, the
largest of which he affirmed was seventy-five feet in circumference, and
not less than two hundred and sixty feet high. Larger trees than this
are reported in the Coast Range; but we have never yet _seen_ a redwood
which measured over fifty feet in circumference, nor can any
considerable tree of this species be found beyond the region of
sandstone and the belt of coast fogs.
It is curious to note tree and tribal limitations. The oak and the
redwood do not associate together, but the madrono is the friend of
both. The line of redwood limits the habitation of the ground squirrel,
and within that line his half-brother, the wood squirrel, arches his
tail in the overhanging boughs, and barks just when the charge is out of
your gun, with surprising impudence. There is the dominion of trees and
animals older and better defined than any law of boundaries which has
yet got into our statute-books. Who knows but races of men have
overleaped boundaries of Divine ordination, and so must struggle with
adverse fate towards nothing more hopeful than extinction. The black man
of the tropics, planted near the North Pole, has all the grin taken out
of him, and there is nothing but a frigid chatter left. There is the
Indian of the great central plains. Have we got into his country, or has
he got into ours? There is some confusion of boundaries; and the
locomotive, that demon of modern civilization, is tracing new boundaries
with a trail of fire. It is possible to put one's finger upon the weak
link in the logic that what is bad for the Indian is good for the white
man.
That gopher snake just passed on the trail, with a young rabbit half
swallowed, illustrates near enough how one-half of the world is trying
to swallow the other. Observe, too, that provision of nature, by which
game is swallowed larger than the throat. It is the smallest half of the
world, it seems, that is trying to swallow the largest half, with good
prospect of success. Half a dozen men have located all the redwood
timber upon the accessible streams of this county. Looking coastward
along the Novarro, there is a chain of townships spanning this stream
for fifteen miles in length, owned by two men. You may write down the
names of twenty men who are at this moment planning to swallow all the
leading business interests of this State. They will elect Governors and
Legislators. It don't matter that the game is larger than the throat. In
fact, deglutition is already pretty well advanced--as far, at least, as
with the rabbit; but with this difference, that our victims will be made
to grease themselves.
If the day is preceded by three or four hours of moonlight, you will not
often find a deer browsing after the sun is up. His work is done, and he
has lain down in a thicket for a morning nap. It was kind of the
log-driver to take us to the hills at the faintest streak of dawn. But
once there, he slipped away by himself, and in hardly more than half an
hour there were three cracks of a rifle. He came round with no game. We
had seen none. It was not so very interesting to stand as a sentinel on
the hill-tops in the chill of a gray morning, yearning for one's
breakfast, and wishing all the deer were locked up in some canyon with a
bottomless abyss. A new stand was taken, when presently our friend
pointed out the line of a deer's back, standing half hidden by a clump
of rocks of nearly the same color. We must both fire together, and make
a sure thing of the game. There was a sharp report, and the deer jumped
clear of the rocks and disappeared. He fell in his tracks. There was a
single bullet-mark. But our friend insisted that both shots had taken
effect in the same spot. It was a fawn, not more than two-thirds grown,
and the glaze was just coming over its mild, beseeching eyes. We were
sorry for a moment that both rifles had not missed. The log-driver
shouldered the game, but disclaimed all ownership. A little farther on a
dead buck was skewered over a limb, and still farther a buck and a doe
were suspended in the same way. It was a good morning's work. Every shot
of the log-driver had told. A slight pang of remorse was succeeded by a
little glow of exultation. Venison is good, and a hungry man is
carnivorous. It is a clear case that the taking of this one deer is
right. The log-driver must satisfy his conscience for taking three, as
best he can. His left eye had a merry twinkle, however, when, on handing
over our gun, he observed that the cap only had exploded, and that the
load placed there on setting out was still in the rifle chamber. Well,
we got the venison, and the log-driver told his sly story with a keen
relish, and some addenda.
This Arcadia is a wondrously human place, after all. Borrowing a pony to
ride up the valley three or four miles, night and the hospitality of a
neighbor overtook us. A mist settled down over the valley, and under the
great overhanging trees not a trace of the road could be seen. "Only
give him the rein," said the settler, "and the horse will go straight
home." We gave him the rein. An hour, by guess, had gone by, and still
that pony was ambling along, snorting occasionally as the dry sticks
broke suspiciously in the edge of the woods. If a grizzly was there, his
company was not wanted. Another hour had gone by. Pray, how long does it
take a pony to amble over three miles in a pitch-dark night? Half an
hour later, he turned off to the left, crossed the valley, and brought
up at a fence. "Give him the rein," was the injunction. He had that, and
a vigorous dig besides. In half an hour more he was on the other side of
the valley, drawn up at another fence. It was too dark to discover any
house. The true destination was a small white tavern by the roadside,
and the light of the wood fire in the great fire-place would certainly
shine through the window. The vagabond pony took the spur viciously, and
went off under the trees. We were lost; that was certain. It was getting
toward midnight. It was clear that this equine rascal was not going
home. He had traveled at least four hours, and was now, probably,
several miles outside the settlement, unless he had been going around in
a circle. A night in a wilderness, enveloped in a chilling fog, the
moisture of which was now dripping from the trees, with the darkness too
great to discover when the horse laid his ears back as a sign of danger,
was the best thing in prospect. Some time afterward he had evidently
turned into a field, and a few minutes later was in front of a settler's
house. A ferocious dog made it useless to dismount; the bars were
jumped--the diminutive cob coming down on his knees, and a moment
afterward bringing up under the window of a small house. The window went
up slowly, in answer to a strong midnight salutation; and to this day it
is not quite clear whether a rifle barrel, a pitchfork, or a hoe-handle
was protruded from that window, or whether all this was an illusion
born of the darkness of the night.
"Well, stranger, how did you get in here, and what do you want?" asked
the keeper of this rural castle.
"I am lost; you must either let me in, or come out and show me the way."
"Likely story you're lost! Reckon that don't go down in this settlement.
You ain't lost if you're here, are you?"
"Look here! I borrowed Jimson's pony to go up to Dolman's, and started
back after nightfall. Dolman said, 'Give him the reign, and he would go
straight back to the tavern.' I gave him the rein, and he has been going
for the last four or five hours, except when he stopped two or three
times at fences, until he brought up here."
I think the hoe-handle, or whatever it might have been, was slowly drawn
in. A match was touched off on the casement, making about as much light
as a fire-fly. The settler, shading his eyes, threw a glimmer of light
on to the neck of the iron-gray pony.
"Yes; that's Jimson's pony--that are a fact."
A moment after, a tall figure glided out, as from a hole in the wall,
and stood by the horse.
"Now, tell me, my good friend, where I am, what is the hour, and how to
get back to the tavern."
"Well, it mought be nigh onto twelve o'clock, and you're not more'n two
miles from Jimson's."
"I left at seven o'clock to go down to Jimson's, about three miles.
Where have I been all this time? If I have been nearly five hours going
half of three miles, how shall I ever get back to the tavern?"
"Stranger, you don't understand all the ways of this settlement. You see
that's the pony that the Jimson boys take when they go 'round courting
the gals in this valley. He thought you wanted to go 'round kind o' on a
lark; and that pony, for mere devilment, had just as lief go-a-courting
as not. Stopped out yonder at a fence, did he, and then went across the
valley, and then over to the foot-hills? Well, he went up to Tanwood's
first, and being as that didn't suit, expect he went across to
Weatherman's--he's got a fine gal--then he came on down to
Jennings'--mighty fine gal there. He's been there with the boys lots o'
times."
"Well, why did the pony come over here?"
"You see, stranger, I've got a darter, too."
"How far has that wandering rascal carried me since seven o'clock?"
"Nigh upon fifteen miles, maybe twenty; and he'd a gone all night, if
you'd let him. He ain't half done the settlement yet."
"Then I, a middle-aged man of family, have been carried 'round this
settlement in this fog, which goes to the marrow-bones, and under trees,
to get a broken head, and on blind cross-trails, for twenty miles or so,
and have got just half-way back; and all because this pony is used by
the boys for larking?"
"I reckon you've struck it, stranger. Mustn't blame that hoss too much.
He thought you was on it. Now, it's a straight road down to Jimson's;
but don't let him turn to the left below. Runnel lives down there, and
he's got a darter, too. She's a smart 'un."
A few minutes later, as if the evil one was in that iron-gray, he took
the left-hand road. But he sprang to the right, when the rowel went into
his flank, carrying with it the assurance that the game was up.
It was past midnight when that larking pony came steaming up to the
little white tavern. The smoldering wood fire threw a flickering light
into the porch, enough to see that the ears of the gamy little horse
were set forward in a frolicking way, saying clearly enough: "If you had
only given me the rein, as advised, we would have made a night of it."
This new Arcadia is not so dull, when once the ways are learned. The
Jimson boys affirmed that the pony was just mean enough to play such a
trick on a stranger. But the old tavern loft rang with merriment until
the small hours of the night. It was moderated by a motherly voice which
came from the foot of the stairs: "You had better hush up. The stranger
knows all the places where you've been gallivanting 'round this
settlement."
When the sun had just touched the hills with a morning glory, we were
well on the way out of the valley. Coveys of quails with half-grown
chicks were coming out from cover. The grouse were already at work in
the wild berry patches on the side of the mountain; one or two larks
went before with an opening benediction, while the glistening madrono
shed its shower of crystals. Looking back, there was a thin, blue vapor
curling up from the cabins. We were reconciled to the mud-and-stick
chimneys on the outside, with a reservation about the fried meat within.
Peace be with the old man who said our speech would not do for that
settlement. And long life to the pony that mistook our sober mission for
one of wooing and frolic on a dark and foggy night.
UNDER A MADRONO.
UNDER A MADRONO.
Jeeheeboy, the Parsee, says that the highest conception of heaven is a
place where there is nothing to do. We had found that place under an
oak, yesterday, and had conquered a great peace. All the world was going
right, for once, no matter which way it went. But opening one eye, the
filagree of sunlight, sifting through the leaves, disclosed hundreds of
worms letting themselves down by gossamer cables toward the earth. Now
and then a swallow darted under the tree, and left a cable fluttering
without ballast in the breeze. If a worm is ambitious to plumb some part
of the universe, there is no philosophy in this world which will insure
perfect composure, when it is clear that one's nose or mouth is to be
made the "objective point." The madrono harbors no vagabonds--not a leaf
is punctured, and no larva is deposited under its bark, probably for the
reason that the outer rind is thrown off every year. It is not kingly,
but it is the one undefiled tree of the forest. When its red berries are
ripe, the robins have a thanksgiving-day; and the shy wild pigeons dart
among its branches, unconsciously making themselves savory for the spit.