A BREAD FAMINE
_July 4._ The air beyond the flock range, full of the essences of the
woods, is growing sweeter and more fragrant from day to day, like
ripening fruit.
Mr. Delaney is expected to arrive soon from the lowlands with a new
stock of provisions, and as the flock is to be moved to fresh pastures
we shall all be well fed. In the mean time our stock of beans as well as
flour has failed—everything but mutton, sugar, and tea. The shepherd is
somewhat demoralized, and seems to care but little what becomes of his
flock. He says that since the boss has failed to feed him he is not
rightly bound to feed the sheep, and swears that no decent white man can
climb these steep mountains on mutton alone. “It’s not fittin’ grub for
a white man really white. For dogs and coyotes and Indians it’s
different. Good grub, good sheep. That’s what I say.” Such was Billy’s
Fourth of July oration.
_July 5._ The clouds of noon on the high Sierra seem yet more
marvelously, indescribably beautiful from day to day as one becomes
more wakeful to see them. The smoke of the gunpowder burned yesterday on
the lowlands, and the eloquence of the orators has probably settled or
been blown away by this time. Here every day is a holiday, a jubilee
ever sounding with serene enthusiasm, without wear or waste or cloying
weariness. Everything rejoicing. Not a single cell or crystal unvisited
or forgotten.
_July 6._ Mr. Delaney has not arrived, and the bread famine is sore. We
must eat mutton a while longer, though it seems hard to get accustomed
to it. I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread or anything
made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the
breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind they had plenty in
the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed
over the less. The trappers and fur traders of early days in the Rocky
Mountain regions lived on bison and beaver meat for months.
Salmon-eaters, too, there are among both Indians and whites who seem to
suffer little or not at all from the want of bread. Just at this moment
mutton seems the least desirable of food, though of good quality. We
pick out the leanest bits, and down they go against heavy disgust,
causing nausea and an effort to reject the offensive stuff. Tea makes
matters worse, if possible. The stomach begins to assert itself as an
independent creature with a will of its own. We should boil lupine
leaves, clover, starchy petioles, and saxifrage rootstocks like the
Indians. We try to ignore our gastric troubles, rise and gaze about us,
turn our eyes to the mountains, and climb doggedly up through brush and
rocks into the heart of the scenery. A stifled calm comes on, and the
day’s duties and even enjoyments are languidly got through with. We chew
a few leaves of ceanothus by way of luncheon, and smell or chew the
spicy monardella for the dull headache and stomach-ache that now
lightens, now comes muffling down upon us and into us like fog. At night
more mutton, flesh to flesh, down with it, not too much, and there are
the stars shining through the cedar plumes and branches above our beds.
_July 7._ Rather weak and sickish this morning, and all about a piece of
bread. Can scarce command attention to my best studies, as if one
couldn’t take a few days’ saunter in the Godful woods without
maintaining a base on a wheat-field and gristmill. Like caged parrots we
want a cracker, any of the hundred kinds—the remainder biscuit of a
voyage around the world would answer well enough, nor would the
wholesomeness of saleratus biscuit be questioned. Bread without flesh
is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also
may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I
need,—not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered
to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any
particular kind of nourishment. That this may be accomplished is
manifest, as far as bodily welfare is concerned, in the lives of people
of other climes. The Eskimo, for example, gets a living far north of the
wheat line, from oily seals and whales. Meat, berries, bitter weeds, and
blubber, or only the last, for months at a time; and yet these people
all around the frozen shores of our continent are said to be hearty,
jolly, stout, and brave. We hear, too, of fish-eaters, carnivorous as
spiders, yet well enough as far as stomachs are concerned, while we are
so ridiculously helpless, making wry faces over our fare, looking
sheepish in digestive distress amid rumbling, grumbling sounds that
might well pass for smothered baas. We have a large supply of sugar, and
this evening it occurred to me that these belligerent stomachs might
possibly, like complaining children, be coaxed with candy. Accordingly
the frying-pan was cleansed, and a lot of sugar cooked in it to a sort
of wax, but this stuff only made matters worse.
Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary
much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth
and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives
are one perpetual wash. And, as we have seen, the squirrels in these
resiny woods keep themselves clean in some mysterious way; not a hair is
sticky, though they handle the gummy cones, and glide about apparently
without care. The birds, too, are clean, though they seem to make a good
deal of fuss washing and cleaning their feathers. Certain flies and ants
I see are in a fix, entangled and sealed up in the sugar-wax we threw
away, like some of their ancestors in amber. Our stomachs, like tired
muscles, are sore with long squirming. Once I was very hungry in the
Bonaventure graveyard near Savannah, Georgia, having fasted for several
days; then the empty stomach seemed to chafe in much the same way as
now, and a somewhat similar tenderness and aching was produced, hard to
bear, though the pain was not acute. We dream of bread, a sure sign we
need it. Like the Indians, we ought to know how to get the starch out of
fern and saxifrage stalks, lily bulbs, pine bark, etc. Our education has
been sadly neglected for many generations. Wild rice would be good. I
noticed a leersia in wet meadow edges, but the seeds are small. Acorns
are not ripe, nor pine nuts, nor filberts. The inner bark of pine or
spruce might be tried. Drank tea until half intoxicated. Man seems to
crave a stimulant when anything extraordinary is going on, and this is
the only one I use. Billy chews great quantities of tobacco, which I
suppose helps to stupefy and moderate his misery. We look and listen for
the Don every hour. How beautiful upon the mountains his big feet would
be!
In the warm, hospitable Sierra, shepherds and mountain men in general,
as far as I have seen, are easily satisfied as to food supplies and
bedding. Most of them are heartily content to “rough it,” ignoring
Nature’s fineness as bothersome or unmanly. The shepherd’s bed is often
only the bare ground and a pair of blankets, with a stone, a piece of
wood, or a pack-saddle for a pillow. In choosing the spot, he shows less
care than the dogs, for they usually deliberate before making up their
minds in so important an affair, going from place to place, scraping
away loose sticks and pebbles, and trying for comfort by making many
changes, while the shepherd casts himself down anywhere, seemingly the
least skilled of all rest seekers. His food, too, even when he has all
he wants, is usually far from delicate, either in kind or cooking.
Beans, bread of any sort, bacon, mutton, dried peaches, and sometimes
potatoes and onions, make up his bill-of-fare, the two latter articles
being regarded as luxuries on account of their weight as compared with
the nourishment they contain; a half-sack or so of each may be put into
the pack in setting out from the home ranch and in a few days they are
done. Beans are the main standby, portable, wholesome, and capable of
going far, besides being easily cooked, although curiously enough a
great deal of mystery is supposed to lie about the bean-pot. No two
cooks quite agree on the methods of making beans do their best, and,
after petting and coaxing and nursing the savory mess,—well oiled and
mellowed with bacon boiled into the heart of it,—the proud cook will
ask, after dishing out a quart or two for trial, “Well, how do you like
_my_ beans?” as if by no possibility could they be like any other beans
cooked in the same way, but must needs possess some special virtue of
which he alone is master. Molasses, sugar, or pepper may be used to give
desired flavors; or the first water may be poured off and a spoonful or
two of ashes or soda added to dissolve or soften the skins more fully,
according to various tastes and notions. But, like casks of wine, no two
potfuls are exactly alike to every palate. Some are supposed to be
spoiled by the moon, by some unlucky day, by the beans having been grown
on soil not suitable; or the whole year may be to blame as not favorable
for beans.
Coffee, too, has its marvels in the camp kitchen, but not so many, and
not so inscrutable as those that beset the bean-pot. A low, complacent
grunt follows a mouthful drawn in with a gurgle, and the remark cast
forth aimlessly, “That’s good coffee.” Then another gurgling sip and
repetition of the judgment, “_Yes, sir_, that _is_ good coffee.” As to
tea, there are but two kinds, weak and strong, the stronger the better.
The only remark heard is, “That tea’s weak,” otherwise it is good enough
and not worth mentioning. If it has been boiled an hour or two or smoked
on a pitchy fire, no matter,—who cares for a little tannin or creosote?
they make the black beverage all the stronger and more attractive to
tobacco-tanned palates.
Sheep-camp bread, like most California camp bread, is baked in Dutch
ovens, some of it in the form of yeast powder biscuit, an unwholesome
sticky compound leading straight to dyspepsia. The greater part,
however, is fermented with sour dough, a handful from each batch being
saved and put away in the mouth of the flour sack to inoculate the
next. The oven is simply a cast-iron pot, about five inches deep and
from twelve to eighteen inches wide. After the batch has been mixed and
kneaded in a tin pan the oven is slightly heated and rubbed with a piece
of tallow or pork rind. The dough is then placed in it, pressed out
against the sides, and left to rise. When ready for baking a shovelful
of coals is spread out by the side of the fire and the oven set upon
them, while another shovelful is placed on top of the lid, which is
raised from time to time to see that the requisite amount of heat is
being kept up. With care good bread may be made in this way, though it
is liable to be burned or to be sour, or raised too much, and the weight
of the oven is a serious objection.
At last Don Delaney comes doon the lang glen—hunger vanishes, we turn
our eyes to the mountains, and to-morrow we go climbing toward
cloudland.
Never while anything is left of me shall this first camp be forgotten.
It has fairly grown into me, not merely as memory pictures, but as part
and parcel of mind and body alike. The deep hopper-like hollow, with its
majestic trees through which all the wonderful nights the stars poured
their beauty. The flowery wildness of the high steep slope toward
Brown’s Flat, and its bloom-fragrance descending at the close of the
still days. The embowered river-reaches with their multitude of voices
making melody, the stately flow and rush and glad exulting onsweeping
currents caressing the dipping sedge-leaves and bushes and mossy stones,
swirling in pools, dividing against little flowery islands, breaking
gray and white here and there, ever rejoicing, yet with deep solemn
undertones recalling the ocean—the brave little bird ever beside them,
singing with sweet human tones among the waltzing foam-bells, and like a
blessed evangel explaining God’s love. And the Pilot Peak Ridge, its
long withdrawing slopes gracefully modeled and braided, reaching from
climate to climate, feathered with trees that are the kings of their
race, their ranks nobly marshaled to view, spire above spire, crown
above crown, waving their long, leafy arms, tossing their cones like
ringing bells—blessed sun-fed mountaineers rejoicing in their strength,
every tree tuneful, a harp for the winds and the sun. The hazel and
buckthorn pastures of the deer, the sun-beaten brows purple and yellow
with mint and golden-rods, carpeted with chamæbatia, humming with bees.
And the dawns and sunrises and sundowns of these mountain days,—the
rose light creeping higher among the stars, changing to daffodil yellow,
the level beams bursting forth, streaming across the ridges, touching
pine after pine, awakening and warming all the mighty host to do gladly
their shining day’s work. The great sun-gold noons, the alabaster
cloud-mountains, the landscape beaming with consciousness like the face
of a god. The sunsets, when the trees stood hushed awaiting their
good-night blessings. Divine, enduring, unwastable wealth.