SACRAMENTO—STOCKTON—CALIFORNIAN GROUND-SQUIRRELS—GRASS
VALLEY—STAGE TRAVELLING—HYDRAULIC
WASHINGS—NEVADA—MARYSVILLE—UP THE SACRAMENTO RIVER TO RED
BLUFFS—A DANGEROUS BATH.
_March 10th._—At San Francisco this morning a friend took me to see
the ‘What Cheer House,’ a very large hotel, supported by gold-miners,
where they make up six hundred beds, every lodger having a small room
to himself, with marble wash-stand, looking-glass, and dressing-table.
Each story shuts off from the next by fireproof doors, and the water is
forced to the top of the house, where there are hoses, fire-buckets,
and axes enough to fit out a fire-brigade. A large steam-engine is the
cook’s assistant, doing everything that hands usually do; it kneads the
bread, rolls the dough, drives the roasting gear, grinds coffee, peels
apples and potatoes, beats the eggs (twelve hundred dozen a week),
washes, irons, dries, and mangles the clothes; heats the water for
the bathing-houses, which are perfect in every detail; does all the
pumping, and cleans the knives.
Adjoining the dining-room is a well-selected library, general
reading-room, and museum, containing a capital collection of stuffed
birds, and other useful objects of Natural History. The rate each miner
pays is five dollars, equal to 1_£._ per week: this includes eating and
drinking. The house is strictly a temperance one, no fermented liquor
being allowed within it.
Wandering about San Francisco would be much more enjoyable, if the
hills were less steep, and the wind, which is everlastingly blowing,
freighted with fine sand, that finds its way into your very watchcase,
could be stilled.
_March 11th._—Steaming across the bay in a white steamer called the
‘Eclipse,’ propelled by the largest paddlewheels I ever saw. We are en
route to Sacramento, which we reach late at night.
_March 12th._—Strolled about. Hardly believe so vast a place can have
grown up in ten years. I think I like it better than San Francisco.
The streets running east and west are marked by numbers—_1st_ street,
_2nd_ street, and so on; those having a north and south bearing by
letter, as—_A_ street, _B_ street, &c. Received a telegram from the
Commissioner, who had just reached San Francisco on his return from
England, to join him.
Nothing material occurs in my journal until
_March 23rd._—I am at the Webber House in Stockton, a very pretty
city, built on what the Americans call a _slew_, or, in other words,
a muddy arm of the San Joaquin river. The country round is perfectly
flat, but fertile beyond description. To obtain water the inhabitants
have only to bore an auger-hole about nine feet in depth, when it
bubbles up like a fountain. In nearly every garden is a tiny windmill,
employed to irrigate the peach-orchards and general crops. Hear of 700
mules that have just arrived from Salt Lake city.
_March 24th._—Drive out in a buggy to the mule ranch. The country
very bare of timber, but thickly covered with grass. Every hillock,
I observe, is burrowed like a rabbit-warren by the Californian
ground-squirrel (_Spermophilus Beechyii_). I am told that it is next to
impossible to drive out or exterminate these most destructive pests;
entire fields of young wheat are cleared off by them, as if mowed down;
gardens are invaded, and a year’s labour and gain destroyed in a single
day. Trapping, shooting, and strychnine have failed to accomplish the
work of extinction. Farmers often flood entire districts, ‘to drown
out the darned cusses!’ Their habits are strictly diurnal; and pretty
lively little fellows they are, scampering off to their holes on the
approach of danger, where they sit up on their hind-legs, peering
curiously at the intruder. You may come very near now: there is a safe
retreat behind, and he knows it. When too close, however, for safety’s
sake, the squirrel gives a shrill defiant whistle, like the laugh of a
sprite, and dashes into its burrow.
Purchased twenty-one mules, at 150 dollars per head; the others were
team-mules, and too large for pack animals. My mules are to remain on
the ranch until I have completed my other purchases.
_March 25th._—Cross in the stage from Stockton to Sacramento, a
distance of about forty miles, through a country fertile in the
extreme. Wild flowers, in endless variety of colour, decked the
grass-land. The hawthorn, white with blossom, perfumes the air; and the
waving green cornfields contrast pleasantly with the foliage of the
oaks and chestnuts scattered about in graceful clumps. We change horses
at Woodbridge, Fugit Ranch, and Elk Grove, and at four o’clock pull up
at the St. George’s Hotel, Sacramento.
_March 26th._—I am again on the road, this time bound to Grass Valley.
A clumsy railway with cars, or carriages, like the yellow caravans
giants, dwarfs, and wise pigs travel in, bumps me out to Fulsome, about
thirty miles off. Here I am hustled into a stage, without a chance of
seeing anything but mud, in which the horses are standing kneedeep.
This stage is different from any I have seen; loops, straps, and other
contrivances, clearly meant to hold on by, evidence an inequality
of motion and tendency to upset that give rise to disagreeable
forebodings. Constructed to hold nine inside, the centre seat swings
like a _bale_ dividing horses in a stable, and being somewhat rounded
and padded, looks very like it. Five passengers seat themselves. I have
hardly time to look at them, when a loud cracking of whips, several
voices yelling ‘Hi! git up!’ ‘Hi! git along!’ and a sudden jerk sends
me upon the _bale_—a general splash and scramble—and we are off!
We do the first ten miles with a bearable amount of jolting, and stop
to change horses. The five insiders get out, and we take a nip at
the roadside house, or what would be such if there were any roads.
I observe four most perverse, obstinate, wild-looking horses being
cautiously fastened to the stage; they are clearly uneducated—‘wild
mustangs’ one of the insiders called them. They are held tightly.
‘All aboard, boys?’ says the driver (they call him _Mose_)—in we
scramble—bang slams the door—and with an awful lurch away we go!
Now I can understand the suspicious-looking machinery, designed, on
the principle of life-buoys, for stage-tossed travellers to cling to.
Holding on to these we swing along as hard as the beasts can gallop.
I am told by a fellow-passenger that unless the ‘mustangs start at a
gallop, they either upset the stage, or kick themselves clear of the
harness.’ On this journey they were agreeable enough to gallop off, so
we escaped the two contingencies. Several times _Mose_ shouted, ‘Get
out, boys, and hang on awhile.’ I discover that this means that we are
to cling to the side of the stage, that our united weight may prevent
its capsizing, when going along the side of a slope like the slant of a
housetop.
Near dark we are requested by ‘Mose’ to walk up the last hill. A tall
sallow man, with a face hollow and sunken, closely shaven, except
a tuft at the chin, steps along with me, and we reach the top of
the hill a good time before the stage. We are standing amidst some
scrubby timber. The long shadows of the trees are swallowed up in
the gathering gloom, the music of the forest has died away, and, save
the wind sighing through the leafy foliage, everything is still. My
companion draws nearer. ‘Stranger,’ he began, in a voice that appeared
to come from his boots, and get out at his nose, ‘jist war we are
standin’, three weeks agone, a tarnation big grizzly come slick upon
two men, jist waitin’ for the stage, as we are; chawed up one, and
would a gone in for t’other, but he made tall travellin’ for the stage.
When they came up Ephraim had skedaddled, and they never see him or old
Buck-eye arter.’
This is refreshing! I hope if ‘old Ephraim’ does come, he may eat my
tough companion. The stage came, but the bear did not. We reach our
destination at 8 p.m.: how sore I am!
_March 27th._—A good sleep has worked wonders. I find Grass Valley a
romantic little mountain town, about 2,200 feet above the sea-level, on
the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, owing its existence entirely
to gold-mining. Visited Mr. A.’s mill—a magnificent quartz-crusher.
Nine stamp-heads, each 900 lbs. in weight, are worked by one of Watts’
engines. The fine-dust gold is collected on blankets, or bullocks’
hides with the hair on, over which the water washes it, as it comes
from the stamp-heads. Some of the most productive gold deposits in
California were discovered in and about this quaint little place. I
descend a shaft 240 feet deep. The gold is distributed through the mud
and silt of what was clearly an ancient riverbed.
_March 28th._—Ride on horseback to Nevada and Hunt’s Hill. Nevada is
a clean pretty _city_, with gay shops, brightly-painted houses, and
planked streets. Near it are the famed hydraulic washings. The gold is
disseminated through terraces of shingle conglomerates, often three
hundred feet in thickness. These terraces are actually washed entirely
off the face of the country, by propelling jets of water against them,
forced under great pressure through a nozzle. To accomplish this, the
water is brought in canals, tunnels, and wooden aqueducts, often forty
miles away from the drift. This supply of water the miners rent.
As we near the washing-spot, in every direction immense hose, made
of galvanized iron, and canvas tubes six feet round, coil in all
directions over the ground, like gigantic serpents, converging towards
a gap, where they disappear. On reaching this gap, I look down into
a basin, or dry lake, 300 feet below me. The hose hangs down this
cliff of shingle, and following its course by a zigzag path, I reach a
plateau of rock, from which the shingle has already been washed. A man
stands at the end of each hose, that has for its head a brass nozzle.
With the force of cannon-shot water issues, in a large jet, from this
tube; and propelled against the shingle, guided by the men, washes it
away, as easily as we could broom a molehill from off the grass.
The stream of water, bearing with it the materials washed from out
the cliff, runs through wooden troughs called ‘flumes,’ floored with
granite; these flumes extend six miles. Men are stationed at regular
distances to fork out the heavy stones. Throughout its entire length
transverse strips of wood dam back a tiny pond of mercury; these
are called _riffles_—gold-traps, in other words—that seize on the
fine-dust gold distributed throughout the shingle. The ‘flumes’ are
cleaned about once a month, and the gold extracted from the mercury.
Masses of wood occur, in every stage of change, from that of pure
silica to soft asbestiform material, and pure carbon.
I am strongly disposed to think this immense hollow must have been the
rocky shore of an inlet or a lagoon; the rocks underlying the shingle
have all the appearance, when denuded by the washing, of sea-wear. I
try with a powerful lens to detect gold amidst the material they are
washing, but not a trace is discoverable, and yet it pays an immense
profit to the gold-washers.
Hunt’s Hill is a timbered mountain, about 3,500 feet in altitude.
Washing its base is the Greenhorn river, on the banks of which some
very rich gold-washings are carried on, as well as at Bear Creek, on
the opposite slope of the ridge. Clothing the hill, towering high
above the shanties of the miners, the sugar and nut-pines wave lazily;
the immense cones of the latter, plentifully besprinkling the ground,
afford a feast to the Indians and lesser rodent mammals.
_March 29th._—Return to Marysville. Visited another hydraulic washing
at Timbuctoo, on the Yuba river, much the same as that seen at Nevada.
Marysville is about the third best city in California, situated on
the bank of the Feather river, which is rapidly filling up, from the
immense quantity of material brought down from the hydraulic washings.
A single peach-orchard I visited was 200 acres, all fenced, and the
trees in beautiful health; from it, I am told, 80,000 dollars were
returned in a single year by the sale of the peaches.
• • • • •
I commence my journal again on
_April 24th._—I am in the ‘Victor’ steamboat, a small crank
flat-bottomed affair, pushed against the current by a huge
stern-wheel—an ugly appendage, but very effective in navigating swift
shallow streams. I am bound for Red Bluffs, 275 miles above Sacramento.
Pass the exits of the Yuba and Feather rivers, and change the yellow
muddy water for the pure sparkling stream fresh from the mountain.
_April 25th._—Starting again—the ‘Victor’ having been fastened up all
night, tethered to a tree, as one would tie up his horse—the scenery,
as we wend along the sinuous course of the stream, rapidly changes
its character. The banks get steep, and sharp hills take the place of
the flat lands behind us. Wild grape-vines hang in clustering tangles
of green luxuriance from the branches of the ilex, oak, and arbutus,
forming a continuous arcade over the water.
The Bluffs are reached. A straggling town, built on a high bank
beetling over the Sacramento river, peeps out, from amidst some tall
trees. Men, women, children, and dogs are crowding down, marching like
ants from a hill towards a recent discovery of eatables. The banks
are red, the soil is red, and the houses are built of red brick—Red
Bluffs, a proper and appropriate name.
Land, and put up at —— House, not remarkable for anything but dirt
and discomfort.
_April 26th._—Purchase 59 mules, with a complete pack and equipment.
My mules and men, that I had sent by land from Stockton, arrive. Hire
two additional hands, and order the provisioning for my intended trip.
_April 27th._—Mules and men need rest; breakfast over.
‘Now, Cap’en,’ says mine host, as I was debating whether it would be
wiser to remain quietly at home, and enjoy a thoroughly idle day, or
join the hunters, I calkilate we’ve got to worry out this day somehow.
S’pose we take a ride over to the Tuscan Springs. It’s a mighty strange
place, you bet your life; they say it’s right over the devil’s kitchen,
and when he’s tarnation hot, he comes up and pops out his head to get
a taste of fresh air. The very water comes risin’ up a-bilin’, and the
pools flash into flame like powder, if you put fire near ‘um.’
‘Why, Major,’ I replied, ‘it is the place of all others I should enjoy
seeing. How far is it?’
‘Waal, it ain’t over ten mile, but a mighty bad road at that.—Here,
Joe, saddle up, and bring round two mustangs.’
The mustangs are small compact horses, seldom exceeding
fourteen-and-a-half hands in height, descended from Spanish stock,
originally brought into Mexico on its conquest by the Spaniards. They
run wild in large herds on the grassy prairies in California and
Texas, and are just lassoed when needed. I may perhaps mention, _en
passant_, that a lasso is from thirty to forty feet long, and made of
strips of raw hide plaited together. When a mustang is to be caught, an
experienced hand always keeps the herd to windward of him; sufficiently
near he circles the lasso round his head, and with unerring certainty
flings it over the neck of the horse he has selected.
The end of a lasso being made fast to a ring in the saddle, as soon
as the horse is captured, the rider turns his steed sharp round, and
gallops off, dragging the terrified and choking animal after him. The
terrible noose becomes tighter and tighter, pressing on the windpipe,
until, unable to offer further resistance, the panic-stricken beast
rolls in agony, half suffocated, on the prairie. Never after this does
the horse forget the lasso—the sight of it makes him tremble in every
limb. I have seen the most wild and vicious horses rendered gentle and
docile in a minute, by simply laying the lasso on the neck behind the
ears.
The breaking-in is a very simple affair: while the animal is down the
eyes are bandaged, and a powerful Spanish bit placed in the mouth.
This accomplished, he is allowed to get up, and the saddle is firmly
‘synched.’ The saddles commonly used in California differ very little
from those used in Mexico. The stirrups are cut out from a block of
wood, allowing only the point of the toe to be inserted; they are set
far back, and oblige the rider to stand rather than sit in the saddle.
One girth only is used, styled a ‘synch,’ made of horsehair, and
extremly wide; no buckles or stitching is used, but all is fastened
with strips of raw hide. Everything being complete, the rider fixes
himself firmly in the saddle, and leaning forward jerks off the blind;
it is now an open question who is to have the best of it. If the man
succeeds in sitting on the mustang until he can spur him into a gallop,
his wildness is soon taken out of him, and one or two more lessons
complete the breaking.
Joe by this time had made his appearance with the mustangs. Mounting,
away we went at a raking gallop! I know no exercise half as
exhilarating and exciting as the ‘lope,’ a kind of long canter, the
travelling pace of a mustang; there is no jarring or jolting. All
one has to do is to sit firmly in the saddle; the horse, obeying the
slightest turn of the wrist or check of the rein, swings along for
hours at a stretch, without any show of weariness.
Having crossed the Sacramento in a ‘scow,’ a kind of rough ferry-boat,
our road lay over broad plains and through scattered belts of timber.
The grass was completely burnt up, and the series of gravelly arroyos,
in and out of which we continually plunged and scrambled, marked
clearly the course of the winter streams.
The air felt hot and sultry, but fragrant with the perfume of the
mountain cudweed. Not a cloud was visible in the lurid sky, and the
distant mountains, thinly dotted with timber, seemed softened and
subdued as seen through the blue haze. We entered a valley leading
through a pile of volcanic hills that one could easily have imagined
had been once the habitat of civilised man. The wooded glades had
all the appearance of lawns and parks planted with exquisite taste;
the trees, in nothing resembling the wild growth of the forest, were
grouped in every variety of graceful outline.
On either side the hills were covered with wild oat as thick as
it could grow; its golden-yellow tints, contrasting with the dark
glossy-green of the cypress, the oak, and the manzanita, had an
indescribably charming effect. As we advanced the valley gradually
narrowed, until it became a mere _cañon_ (the Spanish for funnel),
shut in by vast masses of rock that looked like heaps of slag and
cinder—bare, black, and treeless. A small stream of bitter, dark,
intensely salt water trickled slowly through the gorge.
Following a rough kind of road, that led up the base of the hills
for about two miles, we entered what I imagine was the crater of
an extinct volcano nearly circular, about a mile in diameter, and
shut in on every side by columnar walls of basalt. There was a weird
desolation about the place that forcibly reminded me of the Wolf’s
Glen in Der Freischütz—a fit haunt for Zamiel! Scarce a trace of
forest-life was to be seen, not a tree or flower; everything looked
scorched and cinderous, like the _débris_ of a terrible fire, and smelt
like a limekiln on a summer-night. A long narrow house, resembling a
cattle-shed, stood in the centre of this circle.
‘Waal, Cap’en, I guess we’ve made the ranch anyhow,’ said the Major, as
we drew up at the door of this most uninviting-looking establishment.
‘A mighty tall smell of brimstone,’ he further added, ‘seems coming up
from “Old Hoof’s” stove-pipe. Calkilate he’s doing a tallish kind of
dinner below.’
I had no time to reply, ere the host, owner, and general manager of
the Tuscan Springs made his appearance. ‘How’s your health, Doctor?’
inquired the Major. ‘I’ve brought up Cap’en —— to have a peep at your
location; he’s mighty curious about these kind of diggins.’
‘Waal, Cap’en,’ said the Doctor, in a long drawling voice, ‘I am glad
to see you. I raither guess you don’t see such nat’ral ready-made
places, for curin’ jist every sickness, in the old country as we have
in California.—Here, boy, put up the mustangs: and now step in, and
I’ll tell old aunty to scramble up some eggs and bacon, and then we can
take a look round the springs.’
Aunty was a quaint specimen of the feminine gender, not at all
suggestive of the gentler sex. Her features were small, but sharply
cut. She was bent naturally, but not from age, and reminded me of a
witch. One would not have felt at all astonished at seeing her mount a
broomstick, and start on an aërial trip over the burnt-up rocks. But
all honour to her skill as a cook,—she did her fixings admirably!
During dinner I had ample time to take stock of Doctor Ephraim Meadows.
His face would have been a fortune as a study to a painter; his
forehead high but narrow, his eyebrows thick, bushy, and overhanging;
his hair would have joined his eyebrows, had not a narrow line of
yellow skin formed a kind of boundary between them. Peering out from
beneath his shaggy hair were two little twinkling, restless grey eyes,
more roguish than good-natured. His nose, crooked and sharp, was like
the beak of a buzzard; with thin dry lips that shut in a straight line,
which told in pretty plain language he could be resolute and rusty if
need be. The tip of his chin, bent up in an easy curve, was covered
with a yellowish beard, that had been guiltless of comb or shears for
many a day. His nether limbs were clad in leather never-mention-ums,
kept up by a wide belt, from which dangled a six-shooter. A red shirt,
with an immense collar that reached the point of the shoulders, and a
dirty jean jacket completed his costume.
Our meal over, we started out to see the wonders of the doctor’s
establishment. The house or hospital, as he designated it, was a long
frame-building, divided into numerous small rooms, all opening on a
kind of platform that extended the entire length of the building;
and sheltered overhead by a rough kind of verandah. A camp-bed,
wash-basin, and stool constituted the furniture of each apartment. Four
sickly-looking men were walking feebly up and down the platform. These,
the Doctor assured me, were giants now as compared to what they had
been ere they stumbled on the Tuscan Springs and his water-cure.
The springs are about ten in number, but not all alike. In some of
them, the water rises at a temperature near to boiling, and densely
impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen-gas, perfectly poisoning the air
with a most insufferable stench. In others, again, the waters bubble
up tepid, but bitter and saline. From two of them, that widen into
pools, gas (I imagine some compound of hydrogen) rises constantly to
the surface; and when I applied a match to the water, a sudden flash
lighted up the pool for a second or two, and this could be repeated at
intervals of three or four minutes. This gas, by a simple contrivance,
is collected and conveyed into a small shanty, dignified with the name
of ‘Steam Bath,’ the gas being used to heat the water from one of the
springs so as to fill a small room with steam.
It is one of the most singular and interesting places I have ever
visited. There can be no doubt that the springs rise from the crater
of an extinct volcano, and that there is some active volcanic action
still going on in the depths below. Incrustations of various salts and
sulphur covered the edges of the pools and rocks over which the water
runs. The water they drink has to be brought from a spring the other
side of the encircling hills.
Although at this place I observed more direct evidence of some great
internal fire or subterranean laboratory, in which Nature is ever
transforming the elemental forms of crude matter into available
materials for the supply of organic life; still throughout Oregon and
California I have constantly come across similar sulphurous and saline
eruptions, particularly soda-water springs, where the water rises
through the earth, thoroughly impregnated with carbonic-acid gas. At
Napa, not far from San Francisco, native soda-water is collected and
bottled at the springs for the supply of the San Francisco market.
Olympian nectar was never more grateful to the thirsty gods, than is
this soda-water to the hot, parched, and thirsty hunter!
The Doctor had many strange and wild theories about these springs, and
evidently entertained a lively belief in their close proximity to his
Satanic Majesty’s kitchen.
‘Cap’en,’ said the doctor, ‘I calkilate you ain’t a-goin’ home without
just tryin’ a bath?’
I at first declined. I did not feel at all ill, and as I bathed every
day grudged the trouble of undressing. It was of no use—the Major
joined the Doctor; persuasion failing, mild force was hinted at if I
did not comply. I was led, or rather hustled, into the bathing-house.
In one corner of this dismal-looking shed was an immense square tray,
and over it was a most suspicious-looking contrivance, like the rose
of a giant’s watering-pot. I shuddered, for I knew I should be held in
that tray, and deluged from the terrible nozzle.
My miseries commenced by my being seized on by two brawny attendants
(the bathers), and literally peeled like an onion, rather than
undressed. This completed, a small door that I had not noticed before
was opened, and disclosed a kind of cupboard, about six feet square. A
flap of board was raised by an attendant, and supported by a bracket;
a contrivance one frequently sees in small kitchens to economise room.
On this I was laid; my janitors withdrew, the door slammed, and I was
alone in the dark.
A sudden noise, between a hiss and a whistle, enlightened me as to
the fact, that sundry jets of steam were turned on. The room rapidly
filled, and the perspiration soon streamed from my skin. At first I
fancied it rather pleasant; a sort of lazy sleepy feeling came over
me, but as this passed away I felt faint and thirsty, and yelled to be
let out. No reply. I began to think it anything but a joke, and again
shouted: not a sound but the hissing steam.
My thirst grew insupportable; it seemed as if a live crab was
gnawing and rending my stomach with his claws and nippers. I made
several attempts to get off the table, but wherever I put my leg the
burning-hot steam came like a flame against it, and there was not
sufficient room to stand betwixt the table and the partition of my
steam-prison. I called louder and louder; my reasoning powers were
growing feeble, my presence of mind was rapidly abandoning me, and
a thousand wild fancies passed through my brain; I had given up all
hope, when I saw a gleam of light. I have a vague remembrance of being
dragged out, plunged into cold water, and savagely rubbed with a kind
of hempen rasp.
As I became quite conscious of what was going on, I was partly dressed,
and lying on the grass, the Doctor and the Major standing close by, the
bathers rubbing my hands and feet; whilst Aunty, squatted on a log, was
holding a cup containing some steaming mixture.
‘O Doctor!’ I said, as well as I could articulate, ‘a little more, and
you would have had to bury me; I was nearly gone!’
‘Waal, Cap’en, I kind of guess you must have had a near shave for life,
but it warn’t meant nohow. You see the Major and me just strolled
up to take a peep at the mustangs, and the darned brutes stampeded,
breaking clean out of the “corral,” and went past the bath-house like
mad. The boys see ’em, and hearin’ us a-hollerin’, made tracks right
after ’em, and never thought about your bein’ a-steamin’. Old Aunty, by
sheer luck, heard you a-screamin’ and a-snortin’, and it mighty nigh
skeert the old woman to death, for she thought “Old Hoof” was a-bilin’
himself. Up she came a-tearin’ and a-shriekin’ that somethin’ unearthly
was in the steamroom. “Thunder and grizzlys,” says the Major, “the
boys have forgot the Cap’en, and gone right after the mustangs!” You’d
better believe we soon had you out, and you ain’t none the worse for
it, thank Providence!’
The combined powers of Aunty’s mixture and the Major’s whisky-flask
rapidly restored me. The villainous mustangs—the cause of my
mishap—were caught and saddled. Danger past is lightly thought of and
we enjoyed a hearty laugh as the Major quaintly told the story at the
Bluffs of the Cap’en’s bath at the Tuscan Springs.