Saucelito, which, although but a few miles away, has a climate eight
degrees warmer in winter than San Francisco, being sheltered by a
high hill from the violent trade winds and the fogs which find free
access through the Golden Gate, where they enter in order to take the
place of the vacant spaces left by the rising of the air in the heated
Sacramento Valley of the interior. Saucelito is the favorite picnic
ground of San Franciscans, and it commands superb views of the bay and
its islands, the city, and the Golden Gate, but its building-ground
is limited, since the parts unsheltered by the wall of the hill are
exposed, more even than the city opposite, to wind and weather. These
trade winds and fogs constitute the greatest drawback of the climate of
San Francisco, and make it unsuited for invalids, even in summer. For
owing to the trade winds and the effect of the Japan current, arriving
via Alaska, there are only seven days in a year when the thermometer
rises to 80°; and the mean temperature of July is 60°, or 17° lower
than in New York. Hence sea-bathing is a pleasure rarely indulged in
near San Francisco, the temperature of the water being only 53° in
July,—10° or 12° lower than at Santa Barbara.
Eastern people, and especially Europeans, coming to California for
climatic reasons are too apt to forget the immense size of this State
and its infinite variety of climates. California, if transferred to
the Atlantic Coast, would extend from Boston to Charleston, having as
much coast line as in the East is divided between ten States. A year
ago I crossed the ocean with an Englishman who was apparently in the
last stages of bronchitis, and we agreed to meet in January at San
Diego. He had not appeared in April, and I concluded he had died on
the way across the Continent. But he had gone to San Francisco, where
his trouble at once increased so much that he found himself in a worse
condition than ever, and cursed the climate and the London physician
who had sent him to California. Fortunately, a friend enlightened
him on the diversity of climate in California, and he went to Santa
Barbara, where I accidentally came across him, looking hale and
vigorous, gaining weight, climbing hills, and eating like a bear. For
persons with weak lungs, therefore, San Francisco is not a desirable
residence; but for healthy folk it is an ideal climate, because the
temperature is hardly ever oppressively warm or uncomfortably cold for
those who are well supplied with flannels. If there are only seven days
a year when the thermometer rises above 79°, there are, on the other
hand, only five days in a year when it falls to the freezing-point.
Such a climate breeds no numbness, lassitude, sultriness, _dolce far
niente_; hence the San Franciscan is energetic, quick in his movements,
but not morbidly nervous. The pale-faced fragile clerks and dudes of
New York and Philadelphia would either die here of lung disease, or if
“fit to survive” would soon assume the healthy, robust appearance of
San Franciscans, to whose strong lungs the trade winds, which sweep the
city and ever renew its atmosphere, are a tonic and a luxury.
IX.
LAKE TAHOE AND VIRGINIA CITY.
CLIMATIC PARADOXES IN SAN FRANCISCO—A LONG FERRY-BOAT—SNOW-SHEDS
AND DONNER LAKE—TRUCKEE RIVER—LOGGING AND FISHING—TAHOE
CITY—ROUND TRIP ON A BOAT—A LAKE AMIDST SNOW MOUNTAINS—A
CINNAMON BEAR—BUTTERFLIES, SNOW, AND A BLUE SKY—LARGE TROUT,
AND HOW TO CATCH THEM—SUNSETS REFLECTED IN THE LAKE—OTHER COLOR
PHENOMENA—THE FLUME TO CARSON VALLEY—A MOUNTAIN RAILWAY—DESOLATE
NEVADA MOUNTAINS—MINING UNDER A CITY—GOLD HILL.
The climatic conditions of San Francisco are anomalous and curious;
shade trees, for instance, which are the greatest desideratum and
blessing in Los Angeles, are not desired by San Franciscans, because
the air is cool enough in summer without artificial shade. On the
other hand, it is never so cold but that many semi-tropical plants
will survive a whole winter in a sheltered situation outdoors; and
San Francisco has in its public places some palm-trees high enough to
attract attention even in San Diego. The avoidance of extremes is what
constitutes the charm and value of the climate of San Francisco. But
if the natives tire of this “golden mean,” and desire to experience
the extremes for the sake of variety, they can gratify their wish by
a few hours’ ride on the Central Pacific Railroad. At Sacramento
they may find the thermometer above ninety in May, and just beyond
it a place where oranges ripen six weeks sooner than at Los Angeles;
while the station of Summit, a few hours further on, may be buried
under four or five feet of snow,—an article almost unknown in San
Francisco. Californians, however, are not greatly addicted to the
habit of seeing the wonderful sights of their State, and such places
as the Yosemite Valley, the Big Tree Groves, and Lake Tahoe owe their
fame and vogue chiefly to Eastern and foreign tourists. There are now
half-a-dozen transcontinental routes to choose between, so that it does
not necessarily follow that every one crosses by the Central Pacific;
but those who prefer the Northern or the Canadian Pacific should not
neglect at least to patronize the Central Pacific to the extent of
twenty dollars for a round-trip ticket, which includes the finest
scenery along the whole road,—the semi-tropical Sacramento Valley, the
sudden transition to the snow-crowned summit of the Sierra Nevada,
the snow-sheds, Donner Lake, with a side excursion to Lake Tahoe, and
the silver mines in Virginia County, Nevada. Lake Tahoe has been as
often described as San Francisco; but as every pair of eyes looks at
the world from its own point of view, perhaps I may be allowed to tell
briefly what I saw. Lake Tahoe has only been known a few decades, while
the sights of Greece and Egypt were described two thousand years ago,
and are still “written up” in newspapers and periodicals.
Until two years ago the time-tables of the Central Pacific were so
arranged that the passengers lost all the fine mountain scenery between
Sacramento and Reno in the darkness of the night, unless they took
an emigrant train. Now, however, Donner Lake and the snow at Summit
and Cape Horn, where the train rounds a mass of precipitous rock
over an abyss two thousand feet below, and the thirty-four miles of
snow-sheds, which cost the company three hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, can be seen by getting up at five o’clock. Previous to this
we come upon one of the curiosities of California,—a ferry-boat four
hundred and twenty-four feet long and one hundred and sixteen wide,
which carries the whole train across a branch of the San Francisco
Bay, thirty miles from the city. It is dark, and the motion is
imperceptible. “What are we stopping here for so long?” asks a lady
of the porter. “We are on a ferry.” “But why don’t they start?” “Why,
we are half-way over!” It must be admitted that although the change
in the time-table is an improvement, much of the Sierra scenery still
remains unseen, being hidden by the snow-sheds in which the train
moves along mile after mile, as in an interminable tunnel. There are
a few gaps and window-holes here and there, but not nearly enough to
give the passengers a satisfactory view of either the mountains, or of
the lovely Donner Lake. This lake is otherwise unfortunate in having
the attention drawn from its fine elongated outlines and mountainous
surroundings by the eternal tale which some one in every seat is sure
to tell of the unfortunate Donner party of emigrants who were snowed in
here, and lost thirty-four of their eighty-one members through cold and
starvation; or else some one will begin to tell of big hauls of trout
recently made, for Donner Lake is as full of trout as Tahoe, and more
convenient to the city markets.
At Truckee we leave the train to connect with the Tahoe stage. This is
only a rough, lumbering town, but the laws of etiquette are enforced
all the same; for in the hotel office a notice is posted, that “Gents
are Requested to wear their Coats in the Dining-room.” We comply with
this rule the more readily as the temperature at this early morning
hour, and at this height, offers no inducement for sitting in our
shirt-sleeves. We find that although our train was on time, the stage
with which we were to connect had left without us. The stage company is
in an evil predicament. It has fifteen miles to cover between Truckee
and Tahoe; and if it waits for the train, the boat at Tahoe City
probably will not wait for it. However, an extra stage was provided
for our party, and the driver informed us that if we had come a day
sooner we should have been caught in a first-class snow-storm (this was
about the middle of May). To-day, however, the sun was out bright and
warm, melting the snow rapidly, without thereby improving the road. The
trees still had on a snow-costume, fitting as snugly as if tailor-made,
so that while there was not a speck in the blue sky, every gust of
wind sprinkled us with a shower of loose snow and solid crystals. The
extraordinary difference in California between shade and sunshine was
prettily demonstrated by the fact that although the sun had already
melted the snow on and near the small shrubs, little patches of it
remained wherever a tiny isolated plant of six inches cast its little
streak of shade.
The road keeps alongside of the rapid Truckee River, which forms the
outlet of Lake Tahoe and connects it with the great Pyramid Lake in
Nevada,—being, therefore, like the Niagara, not a river in the ordinary
acceptation of the term, having its source directly in the springs or
melting snows and its mouth in the ocean, but a mere connecting link
between two fresh-water lakes entirely isolated from the ocean. As both
these lakes are alive with trout,—Pyramid even more than Tahoe, owing
to its greater size and difficulty of access,—it may be imagined that
the Truckee is good fishing-ground. Not so good, however, as it used
to be; for whereas formerly the trout used to come up the Truckee from
Pyramid Lake in great numbers to spawn in Tahoe, a dozen dams are now
in the way, impeding their progress; and the difference this makes is
already so perceptible that last year the fish commissioners had to
place half a million young trout in Tahoe, and this year a still larger
number was to be put in, since in a lake twenty-two miles long and ten
wide, half a million is after all a mere handful. Besides trout, there
are many whitefish, suckers, chubs, and other fish in this river, and
the driver showed us a deep pool in which some law-breaking Chinamen
once killed over three thousand pounds of fish by a dynamite explosion.
The Truckee River is also utilized by the lumbermen to float their
logs to market. We saw many of the loggers rolling in the timber and
wading in the snow-water with their big rubber boots. They get five
dollars a day and board, which is not too much, considering that their
amphibious life in ice-water exposes them to rheumatism and pneumonia;
while at the same time they are sure to earn their wages, since they
have to keep at work briskly all the time in order to keep warm. Slides
are to be seen on the mountain sides, on which the timber is shot down
into the water, and the driver had a story of an Indian who once for a
bottle of whiskey tobogganed down on one of these logs, saving himself
by a plunge in the pool at the end. It sounded like a “California
story,” but was told with so much circumstantial detail that we were
forced to believe it. Near its outlet at the lake the river is dammed,
and whenever desirable the floodgates are opened, and the rush of
liberated waters carries the timber down to the station.
By and by, when the population of San Francisco has reached over half a
million, this dam will doubtless be raised a few feet and the Truckee
outlet converted into an aqueduct. It will cost a neat little sum, for
it takes the train eleven hours to come from San Francisco to Truckee;
but the city needs the water, as its present supply is of poor quality
and inadequate. With Tahoe on tap, the San Franciscans will have the
best water of all the cities in the world; for Tahoe has no equal in
purity and clearness, its bottom being pure gravel, without a trace
of slime or mud, so that stirring it with a cane does not cloud it
the least shade. But before the San Franciscans can get permission to
swallow the Truckee River they will have to reckon with the Nevadans,
who utilize it extensively for milling and irrigating purposes, and
who, moreover, own the eastern half of Lake Tahoe.
Tahoe City is situated on the shore of the lake, not far from where it
finds an outlet in the Truckee River. It consists of a dozen houses,
including a “Grand Central Hotel” and a boarding-house, the latter
being open all winter, while the hotel was closed when I was there. The
boat which makes a round trip of the lake every day had left an hour
before we arrived, so we were obliged to stay here till next morning.
But this was far from being a misfortune, for Tahoe City commands one
of the finest views on the whole lake shore. Those who arrive in the
morning are apt to feel that the lake does not quite come up to its
reputation. It seems, indeed, a large, majestic body of water, and the
knowledge that it lies as high above the level of the ocean as the
summit of Mount Washington adds to its apparent grandeur; but the sun
is on the wrong side, and the profiles of the mountains opposite do not
stand out clearly enough. But in the afternoon, and especially towards
sunset, when Tahoe City is in the shade, and all the light withdrawn
from it seems to be concentrated on those mountain ridges, intensified
by reflections from the glowing surface of the lake, then the
snow-peaks do stand out superbly against the blue sky and the golden
clouds; and the scene becomes truly sublime as we watch the faint,
rosy sunset glimmer gradually climbing one summit after another, and
fading away till only one tip retains its tinge, thereby proving that
it is the highest of the peaks, though seemingly it is not. Knowing
the rate of the sun’s motion, why should it not be possible to measure
the height of inaccessible mountains by thus watching the fading
sunset glow on them? An old fisherman, to whom I described the Swiss
_Alpglühen_, declared that he had never seen anything just like it at
Tahoe, but the scene I had just witnessed was a very fair substitute
for it.
[Illustration: LAKE TAHOE.]
Strolling along the shores of Tahoe one can enjoy a solitude as
profound as if no human eye has ever before gazed on this liquid
mountain mirror in a Sierra frame. A few logs here and there, in the
water or washed ashore, are the only visible signs that man has ever
been there. The faint, distant roar of a torrent, or the mocking of
that sound by the melancholy voices of pines, only intensifies the
feeling of isolation. Two weeks previously I had been at the Yosemite,
where the flowers and bushes were in full bloom; but Tahoe lies two
thousand feet higher, and some distance farther north than that Valley,
hence the season is later. The first flowers were just budding out
here, and the smooth, alligator-skinned manzanita bush was only in
flower, while at Yosemite it had already formed its “little apples” a
fortnight sooner. There, too, the hotels were open in the middle of
April, while of those on the shores of Tahoe only one had opened its
doors for the season, and the fire was burning all day long in our
little inn at Tahoe City. At the supper-table Nevada beef was neglected
for the more succulent lake-trout. They are delicious, especially the
silver trout: yet I saw a man at the next table commit the gastronomic
atrocity of putting Worcestershire sauce on Tahoe silver trout. Then he
called to the waiter-girl, a buxom, rosy-cheeked country maiden, for a
teaspoon—probably to eat it with. “Great Cæsar!” exclaimed the maiden.
“Haven’t you got a spoon? Why didn’t you sing out?”
Next morning, as the little steamer starts with us on its round trip,
a pleasant surprise is in store for us. As seen from Tahoe City the
lake had seemed so perfect as to make us fancy we had seen about all
there was of it. But hardly have we left the pier when new groups of
snow-capped mountains, grander even than those we had been gazing
upon, arise where before nothing had been visible but a dense, gloomy
forest. And when we get far enough towards the middle of the lake to
take it all in at a glance, we find that it is indeed a mountain lake,
being shut in on all sides by giant peaks rising from nine to eleven
thousand feet above sea-level. There is reason to believe that the
site of the present lake was once a monstrous volcanic crater. It is
now a reservoir in which is stored the outflow of more than fifty
brooks and creeks, which drain an area of about five hundred square
miles of mountains, and its depth is from fifteen hundred to eighteen
hundred feet—water enough to extinguish a crater of even such vast
size. It is a curious fact that this lake, though lying more than a
mile above sea-level and surrounded by snow-fields, never freezes, even
in the coldest Sierra midwinter. Perhaps this is due to the frequent
squalls which agitate its surface and prevent the ice from gaining a
foothold. These squalls, blowing down the cañons, make sailing on the
lake somewhat risky at any time in the year, and tourists desiring
a Christian burial for their mortal remains will do well to avoid
sail-boats, because the bodies of those who are drowned here are never
recovered, the coldness of the water preventing decomposition and the
formation of gases which would bring them to the surface.
The steamboat, however, does not fear these squalls, which seem to
strike only certain limited portions of the lake at a time. It makes
half-a-dozen or more stops at points where there are summer hotels,
which are open from about the middle of May to the end of October.
Tallac’s opens a few weeks earlier, and I made that my headquarters
for a few days. The superb view from here includes Mt. Tallac, highest
of the Tahoe peaks, bearing on its hollow sides dazzling Alpine
snow-fields, so large that one looks instinctively for solid ice-rivers
at its lower end; but the California summer sun does not tolerate
perennial glaciers even at these Sierra heights, and the straggling
pine-trees sticking up like stubbles here and there through the lower
névés indicate that not even these snow-fields are eternal like those
of Switzerland or Alaska. But in early May the scene is still quite
Alpine, especially the immense snow-ridge with perpendicular sides,
which resembles the snow-wall that connects the Mönch with the Jungfrau
as seen from Mürren.
Tallac’s is the largest of the hotels on Tahoe, but not large enough
to indicate that San Franciscans come here in vast crowds during the
season. The reason is obvious. Though scenically incomparable, Tahoe
is not in midsummer as cool a place as San Francisco, which, during
July and August, is the coolest place on the Pacific Coast. Were Tahoe
within eleven hours’ ride of sultry New York, there would be a score or
two of hotels on its bank in place of half-a-dozen. Residents say it
was Eastern tourists who made Tahoe the resort it is now. Tallac’s is
situated in the midst of a primitive mountain wilderness, and tourists
anxious to see a wild animal in its native haunts will have no great
difficulty in gratifying their curiosity. One day I set out to climb
part way up the mountain which begins to rise about a mile or so behind
the hotel. I followed a cow-path, but it soon was lost in a swamp
which is fed by snow-water brooks, and which I had some difficulty
in crossing. Beyond the swamp, on beginning to climb the mountain, I
soon found myself in the midst of thousands of manzanita bushes, which
presented a curious spectacle. The branches were bowed down by heavy
snow, which formed a continuous layer over them thick enough apparently
to walk on. But appearances were deceptive; for as soon as I came into
contact with the bushes, the snow slipped off, the liberated branches
flapped against my face, and I was surprised to find them covered with
blossoms. To add to the contrast, several butterflies were flitting
about in the warm sunlight. It takes California for such odd mixtures
of the seasons,—snow-fed swamps haunted by mosquitoes, flowering bushes
bowed down by snow, under a blue sky, and visited by butterflies.
The finishing touch was given by a large cinnamon bear, who suddenly
hove in sight only a few hundred yards below me. As these bears
are considered quite as vicious and aggressive, at certain times,
as grizzlies, and having no means of defence except an olive
walking-stick, I concluded not to molest the poor beast, but edged off
quietly to the left, unseen, and made my way back through the trackless
jungle of the swamp. In the evening I met two ladies who had been out
alone in the afternoon for a walk, and had seen “a large yellowish
animal with a slender body and a long tail.” They changed color on
hearing that it was undoubtedly a California lion, and made a vow never
again to go into the woods alone. A small boy who is attached to the
hotel as a guide for brook-trouting parties told us his bear story,
which had a somewhat more dramatic climax than mine. He went fishing
alone one day, and having found a good place, he tied his horse to
a tree, and started up the creek. Suddenly he heard a crackling and
whining noise near him, and at the same moment a cinnamon bear thrust
her head through the brush. A small tree being close at hand, the boy
climbed out of reach just as the bear arrived at its foot. She was in
a dangerous mood because she had her two cubs with her; but it was to
the cubs that the boy owed his release; for after a moment they became
impatient and moved away, and the old bear followed them. As soon as
they were out of sight, he slid down the tree, ran for his horse, and
thus survived to tell the tale.
The same boy assured me that he had seen trout caught in the lake
weighing twenty-two, twenty-four, and twenty-nine and three-quarters
pounds respectively. This being both a fish story and a California
story, seemed a tough combination; but in the morning he took me out
in a boat to fish, and as luck would have it, we were followed for a
time by a monstrous trout which must have weighed fully twenty-five or
thirty pounds. He would not take the bait, however, and such monsters
are not often caught, the average catch being from one to three pounds.
I caught three in a couple of hours, weighing together about four
pounds, and that seemed to be considered a good catch at the hotel for
that season. Fishing luck at Tahoe varies greatly with the season, the
time of day, and the knowledge and skill of the fisherman. The best
place to throw the line is just where the water becomes so deep that
the bottom is no longer visible. Row slowly all the time, and let out a
very long line, with a very bright silver spoon, to attract the game.
The bright spoon seemed to be of prime importance; for I had one and
caught three fish, while the boy, who had a dull spoon, did not get a
bite. Whole minnows are used as bait, and the catching of these in a
brook, or in the lake with bread crumbs and a net, gives employment to
a thin, mummified old Indian who haunts the premises.