"Then break them."
And what I knew about horses, much less about breaking them, was just
about as much as any sailor knows. Having been kicked, bucked off,
fallen over backward upon, and thrown out and run over, on very numerous
occasions, I had a mighty vigorous respect for horses; but a wife's faith
must be lived up to, and I went at it.
King was a polo pony from St. Louis, and Prince a many-gaited love-horse
from Pasadena. The hardest thing was to get them to dig in and pull.
They rollicked along on the levels and galloped down the hills, but when
they struck an up-grade and felt the weight of the breaking-cart, they
stopped and turned around and looked at me. But I passed them, and my
troubles began. Milda was fourteen years old, an unadulterated broncho,
and in temperament was a combination of mule and jack-rabbit blended
equally. If you pressed your hand on her flank and told her to get over,
she lay down on you. If you got her by the head and told her to back,
she walked forward over you. And if you got behind her and shoved and
told her to "Giddap!" she sat down on you. Also, she wouldn't walk. For
endless weary miles I strove with her, but never could I get her to walk
a step. Finally, she was a manger-glutton. No matter how near or far
from the stable, when six o'clock came around she bolted for home and
never missed the directest cross-road. Many times I rejected her.
The fourth and most rejected horse of all was the Outlaw. From the age
of three to seven she had defied all horse-breakers and broken a number
of them. Then a long, lanky cowboy, with a fifty-pound saddle and a
Mexican bit had got her proud goat. I was the next owner. She was my
favourite riding horse. Charmian said I'd have to put her in as a
wheeler where I would have more control over her. Now Charmian had a
favourite riding mare called Maid. I suggested Maid as a substitute.
Charmian pointed out that my mare was a branded range horse, while hers
was a near-thoroughbred, and that the legs of her mare would be ruined
forever if she were driven for three months. I acknowledged her mare's
thoroughbredness, and at the same time defied her to find any
thoroughbred with as small and delicately-viciously pointed ears as my
Outlaw. She indicated Maid's exquisitely thin shinbone. I measured the
Outlaw's. It was equally thin, although, I insinuated, possibly more
durable. This stabbed Charmian's pride. Of course her near-thoroughbred
Maid, carrying the blood of "old" Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the
super-enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw
into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a paragon
of a saddle animal should not be degraded by harness.
So it was that Charmian remained obdurate, until, one day, I got her
behind the Outlaw for a forty-mile drive. For every inch of those forty
miles the Outlaw kicked and jumped, in between the kicks and jumps
finding time and space in which to seize its team-mate by the back of the
neck and attempt to drag it to the ground. Another trick the Outlaw
developed during that drive was suddenly to turn at right angles in the
traces and endeavour to butt its team-mate over the grade. Reluctantly
and nobly did Charmian give in and consent to the use of Maid. The
Outlaw's shoes were pulled off, and she was turned out on range.
Finally, the four horses were hooked to the rig--a light Studebaker trap.
With two hours and a half of practice, in which the excitement was not
abated by several jack-poles and numerous kicking matches, I announced
myself as ready for the start. Came the morning, and Prince, who was to
have been a wheeler with Maid, showed up with a badly kicked shoulder. He
did not exactly show up; we had to find him, for he was unable to walk.
His leg swelled and continually swelled during the several days we waited
for him. Remained only the Outlaw. In from pasture she came, shoes were
nailed on, and she was harnessed into the wheel. Friends and relatives
strove to press accident policies on me, but Charmian climbed up
alongside, and Nakata got into the rear seat with the typewriter--Nakata,
who sailed cabin-boy on the Snark for two years and who had shown himself
afraid of nothing, not even of me and my amateur jamborees in
experimenting with new modes of locomotion. And we did very nicely,
thank you, especially after the first hour or so, during which time the
Outlaw had kicked about fifty various times, chiefly to the damage of her
own legs and the paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple of hundred
times, to the damage of Maid's neck and Charmian's temper. It was hard
enough to have her favourite mare in the harness without also enduring
the spectacle of its being eaten alive.
Our leaders were joys. King being a polo pony and Milda a rabbit, they
rounded curves beautifully and darted ahead like coyotes out of the way
of the wheelers. Milda's besetting weakness was a frantic desire not to
have the lead-bar strike her hocks. When this happened, one of three
things occurred: either she sat down on the lead-bar, kicked it up in the
air until she got her back under it, or exploded in a straight-ahead,
harness-disrupting jump. Not until she carried the lead-bar clean away
and danced a break-down on it and the traces, did she behave decently.
Nakata and I made the repairs with good old-fashioned bale-rope, which is
stronger than wrought-iron any time, and we went on our way.
In the meantime I was learning--I shall not say to tool a
four-in-hand--but just simply to drive four horses. Now it is all right
enough to begin with four work-horses pulling a load of several tons. But
to begin with four light horses, all running, and a light rig that seems
to outrun them--well, when things happen they happen quickly. My
weakness was total ignorance. In particular, my fingers lacked training,
and I made the mistake of depending on my eyes to handle the reins. This
brought me up against a disastrous optical illusion. The bight of the
off head-line, being longer and heavier than that of the off wheel-line,
hung lower. In a moment requiring quick action, I invariably mistook the
two lines. Pulling on what I thought was the wheel-line, in order to
straighten the team, I would see the leaders swing abruptly around into a
jack-pole. Now for sensations of sheer impotence, nothing can compare
with a jack-pole, when the horrified driver beholds his leaders prancing
gaily up the road and his wheelers jogging steadily down the road, all at
the same time and all harnessed together and to the same rig.
I no longer jack-pole, and I don't mind admitting how I got out of the
habit. It was my eyes that enslaved my fingers into ill practices. So I
shut my eyes and let the fingers go it alone. To-day my fingers are
independent of my eyes and work automatically. I do not see what my
fingers do. They just do it. All I see is the satisfactory result.
Still we managed to get over the ground that first day--down sunny Sonoma
Valley to the old town of Sonoma, founded by General Vallejo as the
remotest outpost on the northern frontier for the purpose of holding back
the Gentiles, as the wild Indians of those days were called. Here
history was made. Here the last Spanish mission was reared; here the
Bear flag was raised; and here Kit Carson, and Fremont, and all our early
adventurers came and rested in the days before the days of gold.
We swung on over the low, rolling hills, through miles of dairy farms and
chicken ranches where every blessed hen is white, and down the slopes to
Petaluma Valley. Here, in 1776, Captain Quiros came up Petaluma Creek
from San Pablo Bay in quest of an outlet to Bodega Bay on the coast. And
here, later, the Russians, with Alaskan hunters, carried skin boats
across from Fort Ross to poach for sea-otters on the Spanish preserve of
San Francisco Bay. Here, too, still later, General Vallejo built a fort,
which still stands--one of the finest examples of Spanish adobe that
remain to us. And here, at the old fort, to bring the chronicle up to
date, our horses proceeded to make peculiarly personal history with
astonishing success and dispatch. King, our peerless, polo-pony leader,
went lame. So hopelessly lame did he go that no expert, then and
afterward, could determine whether the lameness was in his frogs, hoofs,
legs, shoulders, or head. Maid picked up a nail and began to limp.
Milda, figuring the day already sufficiently spent and maniacal with
manger-gluttony, began to rabbit-jump. All that held her was the bale-
rope. And the Outlaw, game to the last, exceeded all previous
exhibitions of skin-removing, paint-marring, and horse-eating.
At Petaluma we rested over while King was returned to the ranch and
Prince sent to us. Now Prince had proved himself an excellent wheeler,
yet he had to go into the lead and let the Outlaw retain his old place.
There is an axiom that a good wheeler is a poor leader. I object to the
last adjective. A good wheeler makes an infinitely worse kind of a
leader than that. I know . . . now. I ought to know. Since that day I
have driven Prince a few hundred miles in the lead. He is neither any
better nor any worse than the first mile he ran in the lead; and his
worst is even extremely worse than what you are thinking. Not that he is
vicious. He is merely a good-natured rogue who shakes hands for sugar,
steps on your toes out of sheer excessive friendliness, and just goes on
loving you in your harshest moments.
But he won't get out of the way. Also, whenever he is reproved for being
in the wrong, he accuses Milda of it and bites the back of her neck. So
bad has this become that whenever I yell "Prince!" in a loud voice, Milda
immediately rabbit-jumps to the side, straight ahead, or sits down on the
lead-bar. All of which is quite disconcerting. Picture it yourself. You
are swinging round a sharp, down-grade, mountain curve, at a fast trot.
The rock wall is the outside of the curve. The inside of the curve is a
precipice. The continuance of the curve is a narrow, unrailed bridge.
You hit the curve, throwing the leaders in against the wall and making
the polo-horse do the work. All is lovely. The leaders are hugging the
wall like nestling doves. But the moment comes in the evolution when the
leaders must shoot out ahead. They really must shoot, or else they'll
hit the wall and miss the bridge. Also, behind them are the wheelers,
and the rig, and you have just eased the brake in order to put sufficient
snap into the manoeuvre. If ever team-work is required, now is the time.
Milda tries to shoot. She does her best, but Prince, bubbling over with
roguishness, lags behind. He knows the trick. Milda is half a length
ahead of him. He times it to the fraction of a second. Maid, in the
wheel, over-running him, naturally bites him. This disturbs the Outlaw,
who has been behaving beautifully, and she immediately reaches across for
Maid. Simultaneously, with a fine display of firm conviction that it's
all Milda's fault, Prince sinks his teeth into the back of Milda's
defenceless neck. The whole thing has occurred in less than a second.
Under the surprise and pain of the bite, Milda either jumps ahead to the
imminent peril of harness and lead-bar, or smashes into the wall, stops
short with the lead-bar over her back, and emits a couple of hysterical
kicks. The Outlaw invariably selects this moment to remove paint. And
after things are untangled and you have had time to appreciate the close
shave, you go up to Prince and reprove him with your choicest vocabulary.
And Prince, gazelle-eyed and tender, offers to shake hands with you for
sugar. I leave it to any one: a boat would never act that way.
We have some history north of the Bay. Nearly three centuries and a half
ago, that doughty pirate and explorer, Sir Francis Drake, combing the
Pacific for Spanish galleons, anchored in the bight formed by Point
Reyes, on which to-day is one of the richest dairy regions in the world.
Here, less than two decades after Drake, Sebastien Carmenon piled up on
the rocks with a silk-laden galleon from the Philippines. And in this
same bay of Drake, long afterward, the Russian fur-poachers rendezvous'd
their _bidarkas_ and stole in through the Golden Gate to the forbidden
waters of San Francisco Bay.
Farther up the coast, in Sonoma County, we pilgrimaged to the sites of
the Russian settlements. At Bodega Bay, south of what to-day is called
Russian River, was their anchorage, while north of the river they built
their fort. And much of Fort Ross still stands. Log-bastions, church,
and stables hold their own, and so well, with rusty hinges creaking, that
we warmed ourselves at the hundred-years-old double fireplace and slept
under the hand-hewn roof beams still held together by spikes of
hand-wrought iron.
We went to see where history had been made, and we saw scenery as well.
One of our stretches in a day's drive was from beautiful Inverness on
Tomales Bay, down the Olema Valley to Bolinas Bay, along the eastern
shore of that body of water to Willow Camp, and up over the sea-bluffs,
around the bastions of Tamalpais, and down to Sausalito. From the head
of Bolinas Bay to Willow Camp the drive on the edge of the beach, and
actually, for half-mile stretches, in the waters of the bay itself, was a
delightful experience. The wonderful part was to come. Very few San
Franciscans, much less Californians, know of that drive from Willow Camp,
to the south and east, along the poppy-blown cliffs, with the sea
thundering in the sheer depths hundreds of feet below and the Golden Gate
opening up ahead, disclosing smoky San Francisco on her many hills. Far
off, blurred on the breast of the sea, can be seen the Farallones, which
Sir Francis Drake passed on a S. W. course in the thick of what he
describes as a "stynking fog." Well might he call it that, and a few
other names, for it was the fog that robbed him of the glory of
discovering San Francisco Bay.
It was on this part of the drive that I decided at last I was learning
real mountain-driving. To confess the truth, for delicious titillation
of one's nerve, I have since driven over no mountain road that was worse,
or better, rather, than that piece.
And then the contrast! From Sausalito, over excellent, park-like
boulevards, through the splendid redwoods and homes of Mill Valley,
across the blossomed hills of Marin County, along the knoll-studded
picturesque marshes, past San Rafael resting warmly among her hills, over
the divide and up the Petaluma Valley, and on to the grassy feet of
Sonoma Mountain and home. We covered fifty-five miles that day. Not so
bad, eh, for Prince the Rogue, the paint-removing Outlaw, the
thin-shanked thoroughbred, and the rabbit-jumper? And they came in cool
and dry, ready for their mangers and the straw.
Oh, we didn't stop. We considered we were just starting, and that was
many weeks ago. We have kept on going over six counties which are
comfortably large, even for California, and we are still going. We have
twisted and tabled, criss-crossed our tracks, made fascinating and
lengthy dives into the interior valleys in the hearts of Napa and Lake
Counties, travelled the coast for hundreds of miles on end, and are now
in Eureka, on Humboldt Bay, which was discovered by accident by the gold-
seekers, who were trying to find their way to and from the Trinity
diggings. Even here, the white man's history preceded them, for dim
tradition says that the Russians once anchored here and hunted sea-otter
before the first Yankee trader rounded the Horn, or the first Rocky
Mountain trapper thirsted across the "Great American Desert" and trickled
down the snowy Sierras to the sun-kissed land. No; we are not resting
our horses here on Humboldt Bay. We are writing this article, gorging on
abalones and mussels, digging clams, and catching record-breaking sea-
trout and rock-cod in the intervals in which we are not sailing, motor-
boating, and swimming in the most temperately equable climate we have
ever experienced.
These comfortably large counties! They are veritable empires. Take
Humboldt, for instance. It is three times as large as Rhode Island, one
and a half times as large as Delaware, almost as large as Connecticut,
and half as large as Massachusetts. The pioneer has done his work in
this north of the bay region, the foundations are laid, and all is ready
for the inevitable inrush of population and adequate development of
resources which so far have been no more than skimmed, and casually and
carelessly skimmed at that. This region of the six counties alone will
some day support a population of millions. In the meanwhile, O you home-
seekers, you wealth-seekers, and, above all, you climate-seekers, now is
the time to get in on the ground floor.
Robert Ingersoll once said that the genial climate of California would in
a fairly brief time evolve a race resembling the Mexicans, and that in
two or three generations the Californians would be seen of a Sunday
morning on their way to a cockfight with a rooster under each arm. Never
was made a rasher generalisation, based on so absolute an ignorance of
facts. It is to laugh. Here is a climate that breeds vigour, with just
sufficient geniality to prevent the expenditure of most of that vigour in
fighting the elements. Here is a climate where a man can work three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year without the slightest hint of
enervation, and where for three hundred and sixty-five nights he must
perforce sleep under blankets. What more can one say? I consider myself
somewhat of climate expert, having adventured among most of the climates
of five out of the six zones. I have not yet been in the Antarctic, but
whatever climate obtains there will not deter me from drawing the
conclusion that nowhere is there a climate to compare with that of this
region. Maybe I am as wrong as Ingersoll was. Nevertheless I take my
medicine by continuing to live in this climate. Also, it is the only
medicine I ever take.
But to return to the horses. There is some improvement. Milda has
actually learned to walk. Maid has proved her thoroughbredness by never
tiring on the longest days, and, while being the strongest and highest
spirited of all, by never causing any trouble save for an occasional kick
at the Outlaw. And the Outlaw rarely gallops, no longer butts, only
periodically kicks, comes in to the pole and does her work without
attempting to vivisect Maid's medulla oblongata, and--marvel of
marvels--is really and truly getting lazy. But Prince remains the same
incorrigible, loving and lovable rogue he has always been.
And the country we've been over! The drives through Napa and Lake
Counties! One, from Sonoma Valley, via Santa Rosa, we could not refrain
from taking several ways, and on all the ways we found the roads
excellent for machines as well as horses. One route, and a more
delightful one for an automobile cannot be found, is out from Santa Rosa,
past old Altruria and Mark West Springs, then to the right and across to
Calistoga in Napa Valley. By keeping to the left, the drive holds on up
the Russian River Valley, through the miles of the noted Asti Vineyards
to Cloverdale, and then by way of Pieta, Witter, and Highland Springs to
Lakeport. Still another way we took, was down Sonoma Valley, skirting
San Pablo Bay, and up the lovely Napa Valley. From Napa were side
excursions through Pope and Berryessa Valleys, on to AEtna Springs, and
still on, into Lake County, crossing the famous Langtry Ranch.
Continuing up the Napa Valley, walled on either hand by great rock
palisades and redwood forests and carpeted with endless vineyards, and
crossing the many stone bridges for which the County is noted and which
are a joy to the beauty-loving eyes as well as to the four-horse tyro
driver, past Calistoga with its old mud-baths and chicken-soup springs,
with St. Helena and its giant saddle ever towering before us, we climbed
the mountains on a good grade and dropped down past the quicksilver mines
to the canyon of the Geysers. After a stop over night and an exploration
of the miniature-grand volcanic scene, we pulled on across the canyon and
took the grade where the cicadas simmered audibly in the noon sunshine
among the hillside manzanitas. Then, higher, came the big cattle-dotted
upland pastures, and the rocky summit. And here on the summit, abruptly,
we caught a vision, or what seemed a mirage. The ocean we had left long
days before, yet far down and away shimmered a blue sea, framed on the
farther shore by rugged mountains, on the near shore by fat and rolling
farm lands. Clear Lake was before us, and like proper sailors we
returned to our sea, going for a sail, a fish, and a swim ere the day was
done and turning into tired Lakeport blankets in the early evening. Well
has Lake County been called the Walled-in County. But the railroad is
coming. They say the approach we made to Clear Lake is similar to the
approach to Lake Lucerne. Be that as it may, the scenery, with its
distant snow-capped peaks, can well be called Alpine.
And what can be more exquisite than the drive out from Clear Lake to
Ukiah by way of the Blue Lakes chain!--every turn bringing into view a
picture of breathless beauty; every glance backward revealing some
perfect composition in line and colour, the intense blue of the water
margined with splendid oaks, green fields, and swaths of orange poppies.
But those side glances and backward glances were provocative of trouble.
Charmian and I disagreed as to which way the connecting stream of water
ran. We still disagree, for at the hotel, where we submitted the affair
to arbitration, the hotel manager and the clerk likewise disagreed. I
assume, now, that we never will know which way that stream runs. Charmian
suggests "both ways." I refuse such a compromise. No stream of water I
ever saw could accomplish that feat at one and the same time. The
greatest concession I can make is that sometimes it may run one way and
sometimes the other, and that in the meantime we should both consult an
oculist.
More valley from Ukiah to Willits, and then we turned westward through
the virgin Sherwood Forest of magnificent redwood, stopping at Alpine for
the night and continuing on through Mendocino County to Fort Bragg and
"salt water." We also came to Fort Bragg up the coast from Fort Ross,
keeping our coast journey intact from the Golden Gate. The coast weather
was cool and delightful, the coast driving superb. Especially in the
Fort Ross section did we find the roads thrilling, while all the way
along we followed the sea. At every stream, the road skirted dizzy cliff-
edges, dived down into lush growths of forest and ferns and climbed out
along the cliff-edges again. The way was lined with flowers--wild lilac,
wild roses, poppies, and lupins. Such lupins!--giant clumps of them, of
every lupin-shade and--colour. And it was along the Mendocino roads that
Charmian caused many delays by insisting on getting out to pick the wild
blackberries, strawberries, and thimble-berries which grew so profusely.
And ever we caught peeps, far down, of steam schooners loading lumber in
the rocky coves; ever we skirted the cliffs, day after day, crossing
stretches of rolling farm lands and passing through thriving villages and
saw-mill towns. Memorable was our launch-trip from Mendocino City up Big
River, where the steering gears of the launches work the reverse of
anywhere else in the world; where we saw a stream of logs, of six to
twelve and fifteen feet in diameter, which filled the river bed for miles
to the obliteration of any sign of water; and where we were told of a
white or albino redwood tree. We did not see this last, so cannot vouch
for it.
All the streams were filled with trout, and more than once we saw the
side-hill salmon on the slopes. No, side-hill salmon is not a
peripatetic fish; it is a deer out of season. But the trout! At Gualala
Charmian caught her first one. Once before in my life I had caught two
. . . on angleworms. On occasion I had tried fly and spinner and never got
a strike, and I had come to believe that all this talk of fly-fishing was
just so much nature-faking. But on the Gualala River I caught trout--a
lot of them--on fly and spinners; and I was beginning to feel quite an
expert, until Nakata, fishing on bottom with a pellet of bread for bait,
caught the biggest trout of all. I now affirm there is nothing in
science nor in art. Nevertheless, since that day poles and baskets have
been added to our baggage, we tackle every stream we come to, and we no
longer are able to remember the grand total of our catch.
At Usal, many hilly and picturesque miles north of Fort Bragg, we turned
again into the interior of Mendocino, crossing the ranges and coming out
in Humboldt County on the south fork of Eel River at Garberville.
Throughout the trip, from Marin County north, we had been warned of "bad
roads ahead." Yet we never found those bad roads. We seemed always to
be just ahead of them or behind them. The farther we came the better the
roads seemed, though this was probably due to the fact that we were
learning more and more what four horses and a light rig could do on a
road. And thus do I save my face with all the counties. I refuse to
make invidious road comparisons. I can add that while, save in rare
instances on steep pitches, I have trotted my horses down all the grades,
I have never had one horse fall down nor have I had to send the rig to a
blacksmith shop for repairs.
Also, I am learning to throw leather. If any tyro thinks it is easy to
take a short-handled, long-lashed whip, and throw the end of that lash
just where he wants it, let him put on automobile goggles and try it. On
reconsideration, I would suggest the substitution of a wire fencing-mask
for the goggles. For days I looked at that whip. It fascinated me, and
the fascination was composed mostly of fear. At my first attempt,
Charmian and Nakata became afflicted with the same sort of fascination,
and for a long time afterward, whenever they saw me reach for the whip,
they closed their eyes and shielded their heads with their arms.
Here's the problem. Instead of pulling honestly, Prince is lagging back
and manoeuvring for a bite at Milda's neck. I have four reins in my
hands. I must put these four reins into my left hand, properly gather
the whip handle and the bight of the lash in my right hand, and throw
that lash past Maid without striking her and into Prince. If the lash
strikes Maid, her thoroughbredness will go up in the air, and I'll have a
case of horse hysteria on my hands for the next half hour. But follow.
The whole problem is not yet stated. Suppose that I miss Maid and reach
the intended target. The instant the lash cracks, the four horses jump,
Prince most of all, and his jump, with spread wicked teeth, is for the
back of Milda's neck. She jumps to escape--which is her second jump, for
the first one came when the lash exploded. The Outlaw reaches for Maid's
neck, and Maid, who has already jumped and tried to bolt, tries to bolt
harder. And all this infinitesimal fraction of time I am trying to hold
the four animals with my left hand, while my whip-lash, writhing through
the air, is coming back to me. Three simultaneous things I must do: keep
hold of the four reins with my left hand; slam on the brake with my foot;
and on the rebound catch that flying lash in the hollow of my right arm
and get the bight of it safely into my right hand. Then I must get two
of the four lines back into my right hand and keep the horses from
running away or going over the grade. Try it some time. You will find
life anything but wearisome. Why, the first time I hit the mark and made
the lash go off like a revolver shot, I was so astounded and delighted
that I was paralysed. I forgot to do any of the multitudinous other
things, tangled the whip lash in Maid's harness, and was forced to call
upon Charmian for assistance. And now, confession. I carry a few
pebbles handy. They're great for reaching Prince in a tight place. But
just the same I'm learning that whip every day, and before I get home I
hope to discard the pebbles. And as long as I rely on pebbles, I cannot
truthfully speak of myself as "tooling a four-in-hand."
From Garberville, where we ate eel to repletion and got acquainted with
the aborigines, we drove down the Eel River Valley for two days through
the most unthinkably glorious body of redwood timber to be seen anywhere
in California. From Dyerville on to Eureka, we caught glimpses of
railroad construction and of great concrete bridges in the course of
building, which advertised that at least Humboldt County was going to be
linked to the rest of the world.
We still consider our trip is just begun. As soon as this is mailed from
Eureka, it's heigh ho! for the horses and pull on. We shall continue up
the coast, turn in for Hoopa Reservation and the gold mines, and shoot
down the Trinity and Klamath rivers in Indian canoes to Requa. After
that, we shall go on through Del Norte County and into Oregon. The trip
so far has justified us in taking the attitude that we won't go home
until the winter rains drive us in. And, finally, I am going to try the
experiment of putting the Outlaw in the lead and relegating Prince to his
old position in the near wheel. I won't need any pebbles then.