ON THE SHORES OF THE PACIFIC.
To get out of the Yosemite Valley required nearly ten miles of hill
climbing, or rather walking, for there is no such thing as riding
up even an ordinary hill with three or four inches of fine dust and
numberless loose stones in the road. But once at the summit there were
thirty miles of coasting, such as it was. Long before, in going into
the valley, I had been obliged to take off the spring under the brake,
for it required every ounce of strength I had to control the machine
in coasting down some of those long hills without wasting any of my
strength in pressing down a stiff spring. The roads were very rough,
full of roots and stones, and so steep many times that it needed the
full strength of the brake to keep the machine slowed down to a safe
speed, but even then sometimes an unseen root or stone would throw
me forward on to my feet, and the head of the machine would strike
me on the lower part of the backbone till the flesh was black and
blue. So in order to keep on the bicycle for any distance, I had to
actually lie down on the saddle, keeping as far back on it as possible
and reach the handles. In this position, with my legs sprawling out
in front and the knapsack rubbing on the backbone of the machine,
I rode for miles and miles, often bounding into the air, so that
daylight might have been seen between myself and the saddle. It was
neither a graceful nor a comfortable position, but it was the only
way I could get along without walking, and to do that after walking
up these same hills in a broiling sun would have been too bad. Some
of the hills were too steep and crooked for coasting even, but most
of them I rode down without mishap.
The next day after I left the valley, just before dark, while riding
over a smooth, level strip of road, the felloe on the little wheel
broke. The butt end of an eight-penny nail was sticking through the
tire just at the point of fracture, but whether that was the cause
of the breakage or not I cannot say. But this I did know, the machine
was apparently useless,--forty-five miles from any railroad, and how
many miles from a blacksmith's shop I had not an idea. But with the
use of a piece of hoop iron and some wire that I brought all the way
from Indiana, where the old rubber tire had made the only previous
trouble with the machine, I bound up the felloe and it carried me
thirty miles, till the next noon, when a blacksmith riveted a piece
on, and made the wheel strong again.
The one hundred and sixty-two miles from the Yosemite back to
Sacramento were made in three days. On the way I dropped the machine
and ran a quarter of a mile across a wheat field to see a header
and thresher at work. It was drawn by eighteen mules, working six
abreast, and cut a swarth nearly if not quite ten feet wide. The tops
of the wheat as they fell were carried up on a cloth roller into the
threshing part of the machine which worked as the machine was drawn
along. Four or five men rode upon the machine, doing various work,
but the result of the whole was, the wheat was cut, threshed, run into
bags, and the bags tied up and thrown off, as the whole establishment
went along on two immense wheels. Any farmer can judge of the great
number of acres of wheat such a machine will harvest in a day.
Irrigation is carried on quite extensively here, but the source of a
great part of the water supply is ordinary or bored wells. Some farms
have twenty-five or thirty wells, and at each well is a wind-mill. The
wind blows almost invariably from the west, every afternoon, and
the number of revolving wind-mills seen over the level plains of the
Sacramento Valley is astonishing. They are as thick as the chimneys
in a city, and when they are all in motion, hundreds of them in all
directions, the sight is quite novel to an Easterner. An ordinary
good supply of water is had at a depth of less than twenty feet,
but let the well be carried down fifty or sixty feet and a source
of water is found that is inexhaustible, the size of the bore or the
quantity pumped up not having the slightest effect upon the clearness
or the supply of the water.
The dust, which to Californians must almost get to be a part of their
living before the season is over, is a source of great annoyance to
a wheelman who has much walking to do. The roughly worn rubber tire
raises a constant cloud and the taste and smell is very offensive,
but there are counter odors that are really very pleasant. The dried
"life-everlasting," that is very common among the foot hills, gives
off a most delicious perfume, and there is constantly being wafted
by the winds to our nostrils another scent so sweet as to be almost
sickening. What the source of this perfume is I could not ascertain,
for there was no shrub or bush in blossom to give off such fragrance,
but a farmer told me it was the leaves of the laurel, a bush that is
very common in the mountains. Crush these leaves and the smell is far
from sweet; but diluted by the air it may, perhaps, be different. At
any rate there is something in the hills and mountains of California
that constantly throws off a perfume that is most pleasant to one
breathing so much unpleasantly scented dust.
From the plains, as soon as the feed dries up in the summer, the cattle
are driven up into the mountains, where vegetation is much fresher,
and there they remain till fall. After making the journey once or twice
the cattle start off of their own accord for the mountains when the
feed gets scarce on the plains. This has the effect to diminish the
milk supply among the farmers, as I found out to my sorrow, for many
was the large farm-house at which I asked in vain for a bowl of milk.
Californians delight as much as do the Mormons in camping out. It
is the custom, after the harvest is over, for the farmer to lock
up his house, take his whole family up into the mountains and stay
for weeks. Many times a day I met these parties going or coming; and
taking an early start some mornings I passed men and women lying on
the ground under their wagons wrapped up in blankets, sound asleep, the
silent running machine not disturbing them in their slumbers. In fact
everywhere, at the Big Trees, in the Yosemite, and by the roadside,
along the route, everybody seems to be living out under the sky. It
must be a delightful life, for the ground is warm; there is no dew,
and by the side of a nice, clear, cool brook, where the fishing and
hunting is good, the enjoyment must be great. I really wanted to stop
with many a party I saw thus situated.
My appearance in Sacramento after a twelve days' trip of three hundred
and eighty miles in the Lower Sierras was, to put it mildly, peculiar,
and the attention I attracted from every one was rather disconcerting
to a modest man. My shoes had become so worn and torn, that the
different pieces of canvas had to be tied together with strings in
order to keep them on my feet. My stockings were little better than
leggings--feet all gone--and what there was left of the uppers was
very holey, in sharp contrast with the almost sole-less condition of
my shoes. And the trousers,--well, not to mention one knee torn out and
the other sewed up in a bunch, the part most intimately acquainted with
the saddle would make a very good crazy-quilt pattern. A piece of black
silk taken from an old skull cap, a portion of a pair of overalls, and
a part of a pair of merino stockings were all sewed into the inside
of the trousers to strengthen them, and as the different pieces wore
through it left a garment of many colors, and I felt constrained to
face every one. Had I brought the heavy corduroy buckskin-seated
trousers, instead of leaving them at Denver, on account of their
weight, I should not have been thus left at the last of the journey
in such a deplorable condition, but a traveling wheelman who does
his own tailoring whenever occasion suddenly requires, behind a
stone wall or clump of bushes, or after he was disrobed at night,
cannot stop to do a very nice piece of work even if he could. It
is needless to say that my first business on reaching civilization,
was in a clothing and shoe store.
I had ridden from Milton that day, a distance of sixty-seven miles,
and although I had eaten two hearty meals during the ride (and a hearty
meal for a hungry wheelman means a good deal), yet at five o'clock,
when I reached the hotel, I was half starved. At this hotel, the
instant you are seated at the table a waiter on one side of you reels
off: "Beef-steak, pork-steak, mutton-chop, fried tripe, corned-beef,
pork and beans, fried liver and onions, bacon, and potpie," with a
rapidity that classes him as a gastronomic; and another waiter on
the other side, the instant you have given your order says, "tea or
coffee?" so quickly that you really believe he is about to pour from
the large steaming pots which he holds in his hands, both the tea
and coffee all over you if you did not respond instanter.
Before the square chunks of sugar have had a chance to dissolve in
the coffee, the first waiter has returned, not only with what you
have ordered, but with lots of other stuff, and as there is not room
enough on the table for all the various dishes, he piles them up in
a semi-circle around you, two or three layers high. I rather liked
the way they had of doing business in that dining-room. Once or twice
during the first meal I dug a hole through the breastwork, but at a
nod the waiters quickly filled it up again, preventing my escape in
that direction. I liked the place, first-rate, and so I stayed there
two days--not in the dining-room, but close by. I had considerable
writing to do, and thus I simply vibrated all the next day between
the desk and the dining-room. It was immaterial what I ordered at the
table, everything tasted so good, and so much tasted that same way. In
short, I ate as never a wheelman ate before, and as this particular
wheelman will never eat again, under the same circumstances. I have
forgotten just what the various dishes were that surrounded me at the
beginning, during the progress, and at the latter part of the supper
siege, but I remember distinctly that fried liver and onions were the
last to enter the list and that in a few hours, they were, like the
"Bloody Sixty-ninth," the last on the field and the first to leave it.
That night I had not been abed long when, in my dreams, one of those
watchful waiters, seeing something troubled me, came to the bedside
with an armful of liver and onions, simply that and nothing more, and
as he placed the dishes around on the bed in that same semi-circle,
he took care to heap them up in the center of the circle so that I
could hardly see out. Although such a task at first weighed heavily
on me, I soon lifted the burden by devouring each dish in turn, but
scarcely had I drawn a sigh of relief when another waiter appeared,
more heavily loaded than the first, with the same, liver and onions,
simply that; but I said I didn't want any more. Still they came,
piling the dishes around and above me in an immense semi-circle
pyramid, and the more I tried to do my whole duty as a wheelman by
stowing away the monotonous meal before me, the more solid grew the
foundation of that pyramid. But there was no escape. On all sides of
the bed were those wasteful waiters filling the room, and hovering
about with dishes piled along up both arms and upon their shoulders,
until I seemed to be in the center of a great amphitheater of dishes
of liver and onions. Even then I should not have become discouraged
at that, simply that, but out in the hall there was plenty more. So,
much as I dislike to acknowledge defeat, I was finally induced (but it
took a deuce of a long while) to stop eating, and, in sudden awakening,
throw up the whole business, liver, onions, and all.
Once more taking the train, which was ferried across the water at
Benecia, the twelve heavy cars and monster locomotive not making the
slightest depression of the boat, I finally reached San Francisco,
the turning point on the trip. It may not be uninteresting to give the
boys a few notes in regard to the cost of the journey in time, money,
and muscle. The stock of muscle is of course decidedly larger than at
the beginning, but the amount of flesh is about fifteen pounds less,
which was all lost on the first month or six weeks. My stomach has
given trouble twice, both times when after long, hard riding for many
days, I ceased all work and tried to appease a ravenous appetite by
eating enormously. I succeeded, both in satisfying my appetite and
myself that even a wheelman's stomach can be overloaded when he stops
riding for a few days. The water, of which I have drank very freely
everywhere, excepting across the plains, where there was but little
to be had, has caused me no trouble. Three pairs of shoes have been
worn out, and the feet of twice as many pairs of stockings.
The distance on the wheel has been 3,036 miles, that on the cars
about 1,800, and in climbing up and about Pike's Peak and the peaks
about the Yosemite, nearly one hundred miles more, so that the entire
distance traveled has been nearly, if not quite, 5,000 miles. The
cost has been $120. This includes repairs to machine, new clothes,
and repairs of old ones, and every expense whatsoever.
It is a curious fact, curious to me at least, that on both the other
bicycle trips I have taken, one of 500 miles down through Rhode Island
and Martha's Vineyard, and the other of 1,200 miles up through the
White Mountains, the cost per mile of distance traveled should have
been so nearly what it has been on this trip. It is within so small
a fraction of two cents a mile that I feel confident one can travel
on a wheel, in almost any part of this great country, for nearly the
same price. And it would be almost ungrateful to the machine now not
to say a word in its favor, for I have a feeling of affection towards
this Columbia Expert, that is akin to that felt by an equestrian for
a strong, able horse that has carried him safely over so much country.
Before I started on this trip the machine had carried me 3,000 miles,
into mill flumes and mountain passes, and had been put to as severe
a test as it is possible for New England roads and a Yankee rider
to place upon it. It was the manner in which it stood the test that
inspired confidence to give it a harder task, and the manner in which
it has brought me here is now known to the reader. The trip into
the Yosemite was the severest strain ever put upon the machine, and,
in fact, the rider; but the wheel I think would have come out in a
whole condition had it not been for that butt end of an eight-penny
nail. As it is, the expense of keeping the machine in good repair
for three years has been less than five dollars, or one-thirteenth
of a cent a mile for distance traveled.
The time taken to accomplish this portion of the trip has been one
hundred and ten days, so that the living and traveling expenses
combined have been but little over a dollar a day.
And now that the turning point in the journey has been reached, and
as this is a "true relation," as our forefathers used to say, of the
common-place adventures of a wheelman, there is only one more little
incident that needs to be told, if it need be told at all, and that is
in regard to a bottle. From the start I have carried one. Many cowboys
and ranchmen thought the tool bag was a liquor flask, but the little
bottle above mentioned was carried in the knapsack, and everywhere the
knapsack went the bottle was sure to go. That bottle and the Yosemite
were the two objects, great and small, that kept my spirits up during
the thousands of miles, and many of them weary ones, that we traveled
together. The prime motive of the journey was to see the Yosemite
and carry that bottle of liquid to California. The cork was not even
drawn during the entire journey, and yet that liquid had a wonderful
power in keeping my spirits up. In fact, a glass of California wine
has been the only alcoholic stimulant thus far drank. The object
of carrying a bottle of liquid so far and not even smelling of the
cork may seem to some foolish on my part, but had the liquor being
used sooner the object sought could not have been accomplished, which
object was to get some mixed liquor, some "'alf and 'alf," and carry
it back to Connecticut. The object was partly accomplished to-day.
Last fall, while riding along the rocky shoes of Nahant, I filled a
small bottle with water from the Atlantic Ocean. To-day I emptied part
of that water into the Pacific Ocean near the Cliff House, and now I
have a bottle filled with water taken from the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, and in the bottom of the bottle are some pebbles and sand,
the former from the Atlantic, the latter from the Pacific.
And to-day, standing on the extreme western limit of the Great American
Continent, I make obeisance to the good wheel by whose aid I have
now accomplished the wonderful and laborious yet delectable journey!