Santa Clara. That engineering was done by the Los Gatos. Entering this
defile, the stage road winds along the mountain side for six or seven
miles, and then turns to the right and goes down the mountain slope to
Santa Cruz. But as long as there are any stage roads in sight, or signs
of abrading wheels, you will find no trout. Turning to the left and
following the ridge, at the height of about two thousand feet, a walk of
three or four miles brings one to a point where civilization runs out
with the disappearance of the last trail. That mountain lifting its
dark crest so kingly into the clouds, is Loma Prieta, the highest crest
of the Coast Range. On the north side of that intervening slope, and
nearly a thousand feet higher, you will find the source of the Los
Gatos. It is six miles away. There a great fountain bubbles out of the
mountain side, and the stream, clear and strong, and singing for very
joy, goes bounding on to the gorges below. The upper stream has never
been defiled by sawdust; and no lout in shining boots ever went up to
its head. It is best to go into camp here and take a fresh start the
next morning. In the early dawn--before the sun glares on the land and
sea--town and hamlet, valley and mountain, have a morning glory, which
it were better not to miss. Looking oceanward, the fir and the redwood
send up their spires of eternal green from all the valleys. At midnight,
the full moon was flooding all the mountain top with light, and was
apparently shining upon the still ocean, which had come quite to the
base of the mountain. The fog had come in during the night, but hugged
the earth so closely that every hillock appeared like an island resting
on the calm, white sea. All night long the moon shone on this upper
stratum, revealing with wonderful distinctness the tops of the tallest
redwoods, while the trunks appeared to be submerged. It was not easy to
dispel the illusion that one with a skiff might have paddled from wooded
islet to another, treading a thousand intricate channels, drifting past
the homes of strange peoples, whose lives were symbolized by this serene
and silent sea. But the illusion would not hold water, when, at early
dawn, a clumsy two-horse wagon went lumbering down the mountain and
disappeared under this white stratum. When the sun came up, all the
ragged and fleecy edges rolled in upon the center, and there was a
silent seaward march, until at mid-day the fog banked up with
perpendicular walls, about a dozen miles from the land. A little farther
down the valley the trees were dripping with the moisture of this
migratory ocean. But not a drop was collected on the glistening leaves
of the madrono which gave us friendly shelter that night. It was a good
place enough to sleep; but if one is to take an observation every
half-hour during the night, he will have no difficulty in getting up at
the call of the birds.
The first sound heard in the morning was the yelp of a miserable coyote.
The intrusive rascal had pitched his key in advance of thrush, or lark,
or robin. It was easy enough to silence him with a shotgun; but as the
birds, also, would have been frightened into silence, this ill-favored
vagabond was moderated by pitching two stones at him, with no other
result than securing a lame shoulder for a week. The thing was entirely
overdone; and if the fellow had any perception of the ridiculous, he
went into his hole and laughed for the space of half an hour.
The altitude was too great for the home of robin and linnet. But the
woodpeckers went screaming by, and the shy yellow-hammers flitted
noiselessly from tree to tree; while, in the thicket, the cock quails
were calling out the coveys for an early breakfast. Two deer had come
down the mountain slope, and finally halted at half rifle-shot, looking
stupidly at the camp-fire. If they understood the statute made in their
behalf, they were perfectly safe. But Samson, who had stood for three
minutes with one fore-leg raised in an intensely dramatic way, made a
spring at last, and, without warrant of law, ran them down the canyon;
and ten minutes later they were seen going up the opposite slope, but
with many redundant antics, indicating contempt for the cur which had
sought to worry them. Later in the day three or four more were seen, and
one half-grown fawn was following the roe, the latter finally taking the
wind and bounding off handsomely, while the fawn, less keen of scent,
turned about and looked inquiringly, without any clear perception of
danger. It was evident that so long as the fawn depends upon the mother
for protection, it has not a very keen scent nor a quick apprehension of
approaching danger. These are only perfected later, when the fawn is
left to care for itself. The cub is very foolish; the young fox has no
more of cunning than a common puppy; and a young ground-squirrel, in
time of danger, rashly bobs his head out of the hole long before his
venerable parents venture to take an observation. We might have had a
smoking haunch of venison that morning, but it would have lacked that
fine moral quality which the game law withheld. If you want to know the
terrible power of temptation, breakfast on bacon when two deer are
within rifle-shot.
It took not less than three hours to work through the interminable
thickets, and to climb over the rocks, and gain a place for the first
cast of a line. These mountain trout strike quick or not at all. There
is a delicious, tingling sensation when the fellows jump from the eddies
and swirls more than a foot out of water. You need not spit on your bait
for luck, when the fish are breaking water for the hook, and the dark
pools are alive with them; not very large, but with keen mountain
appetites, having the brightest colors, hard of flesh, and gamy. Well,
yes, here is where the fun comes in, after crawling for more than two
miles through the brush, and over jagged rocks. Not the least of it is
to observe that H---- has gone daft from over-excitement, and is
throwing his fish into the tree-tops. What with the moon shining on his
face last night, the deer coming down to tantalize him, and these
mountain trout jumping wild for the hook, there is just as much lunacy
as it is safe to encounter at this altitude.
The stream holds out well, and has not perceptibly diminished in a
linear ascent of the mountain-side of nearly three miles. A
never-failing reservoir, at an altitude of perhaps twenty-three hundred
feet, creates the main branch; while lower down there is a constant
augmentation from runnels, up some of which the trout find their way.
It is best not to slight these little branches; for occasionally the
water sinks, running underground for awhile, and then reappearing, so
that a succession of pools is formed, which arrest the fish; and, having
nothing to eat, they prey upon each other, until rarely more than two or
three remain, and sometimes a solitary fish is left--he having ate up
all his poor relations, and thus supplied their wants and his own. There
is nothing very strange in this piscatory economy, after all. That
bald-headed man, who lost his balance, and slid down a shelving rock
nearly twenty feet into the pool, and went out on the other side, with a
solitary fish dangling at his hook, and a most unearthly yell, is
playing the same game in a business pool. There are more in it than can
possibly succeed. One by one, he will eat up the others and become a
millionaire. If a bigger fish in the pool eats him, it is only a slight
variation of chances, which the commercial ethics of the times will just
as heartily approve. You have made that pool desolate; but it is not
necessary to yell so as to disturb the universe over a half-pound trout.
If ever, O friend, you should have the luck to be drawn out of a pool
thus, will there be no yelling in the subterranean caverns?
There is no heroism in jerking every fish out of the stream, just
because they have keen mountain appetites. Moreover, as the rays of the
sun become vertical, light is thrown into the pools and eddies, and the
bites are languid and less frequent. An hour before sunset they will be
as brisk as ever. But a hundred trout are enough for one morning, and
too many, since no one is willing to carry them down the mountain. A
year ago, an enthusiastic friend found the headwaters of the Butano,
just over the ridge, toward the coast. Having cut his way out of the San
Lorenzo Valley, making his own trail for seven miles or more, he cast in
his hook where, he stoutly affirmed, no fisherman had ever preceded him.
The falls in several places have formed deep basins in the soft, white
sandstone. There this enthusiastic fisherman found his heaven for two
hours, until night began to close in upon him. Did he go into a tree-top
for the night, and pull his two hundred trout up after him? No; but he
left them in a heap, and crept down the mountain at dusk, his pace
quickened a little by the sight of a fresh bear-track. I do not think
an honest bear, made fully acquainted with such sacrilegious conduct,
would eat a man, or so much as smell of him.
All day long the perspective has been growing broader and richer, until
these diminutive little fish, destined to be swallowed with a single
snap of the jaws--even as they sought to snap the wriggling worm--have
become a minor incident in the crowding events of the day. For an hour
after dawn the only outlook was into the Santa Clara Valley. But the
morning was cold; the thin gray smoke went up silently into the heavens
from here and there a farm-house; across the valley a low column of mist
clung to the foothills and rolled sullenly away. The rank vegetation of
early spring, broken occasionally by the plowed fields, had all the
abruptness of contrast seen in the patchwork of a bedquilt; and in the
chill of the dawn was not a whit more pleasing to the eyes. But an hour
later the sunlight filled all the valley; the harsher tints of the
morning were melted into the more subdued glory of the spring, and one
could fancy that the scent of almond blossoms came up the mountain,
mingled with the grosser incense of the mold and tilth of many fields.
Even the solitary stunted pine far up the mountain was dropping down
its leafy _spicula_, like javelins cast aslant, and the last year's
cones fell with a rattle, like hand grenades cast from some overhanging
battlement. Life was crowding death even here, and the pine was
freshening its foliage, as certain of spring time as the alder just
shaking out its tassels by the river bank. Away to the southwest the Bay
of Monterey, with its breadth of twenty miles, was reduced to a little
patch of blue water; and wide off there was a faint trail of smoke along
the horizon--the sign that a steamer was going down the coast for
puncheons of wine and fleeces of wool.
The glass reveals the dome of a church at Santa Cruz, looking a little
larger than a bird cage set down by the ocean. The famous picture on the
ceiling of the old adobe church disappeared when the storms melted down
the mud walls. If the perspective was faulty, the picture had a lively
moral for bad Indians. But something better was found, not many years
ago (so the village tradition runs), in one of the lofts in an old
store-room near by. The _Padre_ going up there with the village sign
painter, to hunt for some half-forgotten thing, drew out of the lumber
a lot of blurred and musty canvas, giving it to his friend. The latter
hastened home and, unrolling his canvas, saw that upon one side there
had once been a picture. But the pigment was now only powdered atoms,
which a feather would sweep away. Oiling a new canvas, he laid it upon
the back of the picture, and the oil striking through, the first process
of restoration was safely accomplished. Then the surface of the picture
was carefully cleaned. The sign painter quietly hung up his picture,
satisfied that there was an infinite distance between it and a common
daub. The _Padre_ wanted the picture back after this sudden revelation
of its wonderful beauty. But it never was transferred again to the old
lumber room.
"What became of the _Padre_?"
"I think he went to heaven, where he found better pictures than were
ever fished out of that old lumber room."
"And the sign painter?"
"Did you ever know a man who had a Murillo, or even thought he had one,
who was in a hurry to leave this world?"
SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.
SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.
Whether in the Russian River Valley, Napa, or the smaller valleys of the
Clear Lake country, St. Helena is in such friendly proximity that all
sense of isolation is destroyed. Looking toward the south from its
shoulder, there was an endless succession of stubblefields and
vineyards; the faint clatter of threshing machines could be heard; sacks
of wheat stood bolt upright in the fields, like millers in convention. A
train of cars, diminished by the long perspective, was creeping with
serpentine undulations up the valley, and trailing a thin vapor against
the sky. Farther south was the bay; white sails of little schooners,
outlined by the glass, appeared to split the salt meadows open, as they
crept toward the little town of Napa. St. Helena was grandly lifted up
on that autumnal morning, and all the little mountains seemed to be
rendering homage to the king.
There is no country under the sun where a vineyard is more picturesque
than here. If there were an interminable perspective of green clothing
and coloring all the hillsides, there would be no fitting border for the
picture. But when there is not a fresh blade of grass by the wayside,
and the tawny hills touch the yellow stubble-fields, we have a broad
golden frame for some picture which ought to be worthy of it. And what
more so than a sixty-acre vineyard, set within this mitred framework of
mountains? The border is a very generous one, certainly--five or six
miles of slope on either side, and this square of emerald in the centre.
It is all worked in with true artistic effect, except those straight
lines of vines, crossing at right angles. A poet or a painter, setting
this vineyard, would have curved the lines, or secured an orderly
disorder--enough, at least, to have destroyed the association with a
schoolboy's rule and plummet.
Observe that the vines are not tied to clumsy, stiff stakes; nor are the
leaves plucked off in part, to prevent mildew. The runners reach out and
interlace, resting gently on the ground. The leaves droop a little in
the hot sun, making a complete canopy for the clusters, the largest of
which rest on the ground. How much more fitting this growing
revelation--this discovery, step by step, of hidden clusters--than to
see all this wealth at once, as one might do if the vines were trained
bolt upright, and held in bondage by stakes!
Another notable effect is produced by the twenty or more varieties,
differing in the shape of the leaf and in the color and flavor of the
grape. The Tokay blushes by the side of the blackest Malvoisie. The
Muscatel is pale where the Victoria has as much color as a ruddy English
girl. The Muscats have a tinge of gold, in fine contrast with the Rose
of Peru, whose regal purple deepens with every midday sun.
Three months hence, this border of gold will all be changed to the rank
and riotous green of pastures quickened by the vernal rains--this square
setting, as of emerald, stripped of every leaf and every cluster, but
the bronzed vines still interlacing and toning the landscape into a
mellow ripeness. A month later, the merciless pruning-knife has left
only the black stub, a foot above the ground, and two or three "eyes"
for the new wood. This amputated vineyard, with its limbs burning by the
wayside, suggests enough of prosy realism to neutralize all the
sentiment which it can inspire on a hot September day.
Will the juice of these grapes enrich the blood, and add any essential
quality to the tone and fibre of a race which is giving so many signs of
physical decadence? This conglomerate which you call society is hanging
out a great many flags of distress. It babbles incoherently of
perfectibility, and goes straightway to the bad. Are these reformers
going to save the world, who, either through intemperance of speech or
drink, must needs be moderated by a padlock put upon their mouths? Nor
is it safe, just now, to calculate the results of this feminine gospel
of vituperation. The back of the body politic may be the better for
having a political fly blister laid on; and it might, perhaps, as well
be done by feminine hands as any other. But there are some evils too
deep for surface remedies. If, for instance, vineyards are going to
curse the people, as my moralizing friend insists, then humanity
hereabout is in a bad way. Why, a little generous wine ought to enrich
the blood and inspire nobility of thought. If it does more than this--if
it becomes a demon to drive men and hogs into the sea--then it is
evident that both were on too low a plane of existence for any safe
exaltation. But shall the vineyards be rooted up, for all this? It is
better to drown the swine, and let the grapes still grow purple upon the
hillsides.
Some day these mountains will be wreathed and festooned with vines. One
may see this culture now climbing to their tops. Oh, my friend, with
thin and impoverished blood! do not pinch this question up in the vise
of your morality. No doubt there was a vineyard in Eden, and there were
ripe clusters close by the fig-leaves. You cannot prove to me that
sinless hands have not plucked the grapes, and that millions will not do
it again. What we need is not a greater company of wailing prophets, but
men who will reveal to us the higher and nobler use of things. If one
could not live comfortably in this Vale of Paradise and ripen from year
to year, opening his soul to all enriching influences, without an
everlasting protest, there would be small chance for his comfort in any
more etherealized place.
Looking northward, or from the back side of St. Helena, is Lake County,
the centre of which can be reached by the daylight of a summer day from
San Francisco. It is a wild, isolated and mountainous region, containing
a harmless population, who are much addicted to salt pork, and needing
all the more, perhaps, the medicinal and renovating qualities of the
various thermal springs which abound. A Pike, with the wilderness at his
back, and civilization advancing in front, is sometimes a ridiculous,
and oftener a pitiable, specimen of humanity. When the schoolhouse
overtakes him, there is a crisis in his affairs. He must elect to hustle
half a score of frowzy-headed children into his covered wagon, hang a
few pots and kettles at the rear, and plunge farther into the
wilderness, or let civilization go past him, closing in upon all sides,
and, in spite of impotent protests, narrowing perhaps his own horizon,
but making it broader and brighter for his children. If the horizon is
too bright, this blinking Pike will turn his back to the light, and make
a break for Egypt. So long as there is bacon and hominy, and free
territory, with a modicum of whisky within easy reach, you cannot summon
this stolid, retreating animal to a better condition. Nature has made a
botch of him, else he would now be running on four feet, instead of
two. A border man, running away from civilization, who cannot bark and
burrow like a coyote, nor climb a tree like a gorilla, is wrestling with
his fate at a terrible disadvantage.
If you have never seen Clear Lake, do not babble about Como and Geneva.
Here are eighty square miles of water, lifted fifteen hundred feet above
the sea, and encompassed by mountains whose flaming forges were put out
but yesterday--if a thousand years may be taken as one day. One may see
Clear Lake from the top of St. Helena, twenty miles distant, on a bright
day. We saw it first from Lukonoma--an intervening mountain, about
fifteen hundred feet high--a ribbon of blue water, stretching away
between the hills, with a solitary white sail, recognized only by
bringing a tree in the range. There was the droning of the pines in the
mountain-tops in the afternoon trade-wind; a broad valley opening to the
south, which swallowed up two or three mountain streams, and then opened
its ugly adobe lips for more; smaller valleys toward the north,
encircled with tall firs, and the slumberous dome of Uncle Sam, lifting
itself up grandly three or four thousand feet hard by the lake.
Along this Lukonoma ridge there is a well-defined Indian trail for
miles. The Clear Lake Indians were accustomed to exchange visits with a
tribe in the Lukonoma Valley, ten miles below. The tops of the highest
mountain ridges were selected for trails, rather than the valley. The
Indian does not like to be surprised, even by his friends. Along these
ridges he could look off on either side, and a long way ahead. If not
molested, he might drop down to the hot springs just at the base of the
mountain, take a mud bath to make his joints a little more supple, and
if he found an ant's nest to add to his dietary stores, so much the
better. You need not overhaul the Indian's cookbook. He ate the ants
alive. No shrimp-eater ought to quarrel with him on that score.
We shall have a nearer view of Lower Lake another day. It is better to
have the first view of some old and famous city from the hill-tops. That
revelation ripens into a picture which ever afterward we hasten to set
over against the squalor and ugliness disclosed by a nearer view. One
need not be wholly disgusted if in place of a trout, he has caught a
mud-turtle from the lake which opened its sheen of waters to him first
from the mountain summit.
The shadows had stretched nearly across the narrow valleys, when it
occurred to us that, in climbing to the highest and baldest peak, the
Indian trail had run out, and that the hot springs--the point of
departure--were eight miles distant, and were shut out of view by an
intervening spur. Either a short cut was to be made, trusting to luck to
find a trail, or there was to be a night on the mountain. There were two
intervening canyons to be crossed before there was any prospect of
striking a trail. It is not pleasant to slide a horse on his haunches
down into one of these chasms without knowing where one is to bring up.
If the most obscure cattle trail can be found leading in, one may trust
to the instincts of horse sense to find it, and also the one which will
most certainly lead out on the other side. The tinkling of a cow-bell on
the table-lands beyond was a welcome sound. The horses wound into the
first canyon, and went out without much hesitation. The trail for the
next, by good luck, had been found. But it was a suspicious circumstance
that these ponies--accustomed to such defiles, and now heading for
home--hesitated, snuffed, snorted and turned about. The rein was given
to them, but, hungry as they were, they seemed disposed to turn back.
The little Cayuse pony trembled, threw his ears forward, advanced and
retreated, and blew out a column of vapor from each nostril as he kept
up his aboriginal snort. Either two tired and hungry excursionists must
make a night of it, shut in by a canyon in front and in the rear, or the
second one must be crossed without delay.
A horse is generally willing to plant his feet where he sees a man do it
in advance. But these horses were dragged into the chasm, sometimes
dropping on their haunches, and at other times plowing along with the
fore feet braced well ahead. Once at the bottom, a fresh cinch was taken
with the greatest difficulty, as neither horse could be kept still for a
second. A moment afterward the click of the pony's feet was heard, and
the sparks thrown off by his shoes were distinct enough as he shot up
the trail as though projected from a mortar. The old horse--stiff in
the shoulders, and his legs like crowbars--was not a rod behind him.
"Did you see anything in that canyon?"
"No--yes. I saw the outline of a steer going down to drink."
"Nonsense! Do you think these tired horses, refusing first to come into
the canyon, would have gone out on the other side as if Satan were after
them, if they did not know that that particular steer had claws. If you
had seen twenty mules break out of a yard and stampede when the foot of
a cinnamon bear was thrown over, you would not blame these horses for
blazing the trail with fire as they thundered up the rocks with the
fresh scent of a live grizzly in their nostrils.
"Then, if you are willing to take the affidavits of these two horses as
to the facts--and the jurat of eight steel-clad hoofs, striking fire on
the rocks, was a very solemn one--you can settle the question in favor
of the grizzly much more comfortably than he would have settled it for
you. It is not necessary that one's scalp should be pulled over his eyes
and his face set awry for life, in order to obtain a more convincing
demonstration. I can refer you to a settler who has had these things
done for him, whereat his satisfaction has in no whit increased."
An hour afterward two horses with drooping heads went into their stalls,
and two jaded excursionists had each dropped into hot baths at Harbin's
Springs. Nothing externally will neutralize the chill of a night ride
among the mountains better than water which spouts from this hillside
heated to 110 degrees. It is a notable caprice of Nature that, of three
springs within the space of twenty feet, one is cold and has no mineral
qualities; the other two are of about the same temperature, the waters
of one strongly impregnated with iron and the other with sulphur. The
waters of the two mineral springs combined are not only as hot as a
strong man can bear, but they dissolve zinc bath-tubs, which was a
satisfactory reason for the substitution of ugly wooden bathing-boxes.
It is a pleasant nook, grandly encircled with mountains, with the
wonderfully blue heavens by day, and lustrous stars by night.
Fifty or sixty moping invalids made up the assortment at the hotel.
These taciturn and moody people did not wait for the angel to go down
and trouble the waters, but each went in his own way and time, and
troubled the waters mightily on his personal account. The fact may be
assumed that the angel had been there in advance. For a thousand years,
a great subterranean caldron had been heated, tempered and medicated,
and its vapors had ascended as incense toward heaven.