QUAIL SHOOTING IN THE SIERRAS.
If the reader has ever undergone the Ordeal by Baggage at an American
railway station in the middle of the night, he will appreciate our
feelings when we learnt that we should not reach Emigrant Gap until 1
a.m.
Emigrant Gap is situated near the summit, or the highest point attained
by the Central Pacific Railway in its passage of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains. _En route_ for San Francisco we had arranged to halt there
for some quail shooting, and in due course the train deserted us, half
asleep, upon a little wayside platform in the middle of a snow-shed. I
have a hazy recollection of being introduced to a friend of my
companion's, who met us there, a Western giant named Shin, who greeted
me as cordially as if, instead of being a stranger, I was a rich
relation. In a few minutes, comfortably installed in his cottage, we
were sleeping soundly.
Next morning, when I awoke, a flood of golden sunlight was streaming in
at my bed-room window, and through the open door was thrust a Velasquez
head in a broad, black sombrero, which shaded bronzed features, a crisp
black beard, and a curly upturned moustache. There was a careless,
genial air about the face, and a twinkle of humour in the dark eyes that
was as infectious as it was irresistible. It was Shin, come to wake me.
"Thought I'd just see if you were right before I went to bed," he said.
I blinked at the dazzling window.
"That's only our Sierra moonlight," he continued imperturbably. "You'll
get used to that; but if it keeps you awake, I'll pull the blind down."
Here a burst of laughter from an adjoining room interrupted us.
"Oh, pshaw!" cried B.'s voice. "Don't listen to that coon; you get up."
"Coon?" repeated my visitor attentively. "Coon!..."
But here his head was abruptly withdrawn and an amusing colloquy ensued
in the next room.
I turned out and soon joined them. Shin and B. were old friends; both,
too, were "old Californians." The conversation of an old Californian is
generally amusing. And so, another cup of coffee, and another yarn; and
another yarn, and yet another cup of coffee, prolonged breakfast far
into the morning.
Our plan of campaign was to drive slowly to Soda Springs and back,
halting to shoot when and wherever we heard quail calling. Early in the
afternoon, a buggy drawn by two horses appeared at the gate; and,
lighting our pipes, we started. Scarcely had we left the outlying
cottages a hundred yards behind us when:
"Quails!" said B.
"H'm--quails, sure!" coincided Shin judicially.
I said, "quails!" also, although without any very definite reason for
doing so.
We pulled up.
"Hush!" whispered B.
"Hush!" repeated the giant.
I also said, "hush!" The driver made the same pertinent
observation--the only remark he contributed that day. Then we all
"hushed" in chorus, which started the horses, and quieted the quails.
(_Par parenthese_, may I inquire if you ever hush, when told to do so?
Systematic experiments upon all sorts and conditions of people have led
me to conclude that the impulse to "hush" back at once is one that human
nature cannot resist.)
Silence being restored, we listened. Soon the quails' calling burst
forth again away up the hill-side, and, hastily alighting, we plunged
into the forest and followed them.
In a few minutes a bird suddenly rose before me, and vanished behind a
bush. Whilst debating in my own mind whether it were a quail or not,
another bird rose and whisked round another bush. I shot the bush. And
then another bird got up, and I shot another bush. And then another bird
got up, and there being no bush in its immediate vicinity, I stopped it,
and proceeded to pick up my first Californian mountain quail.
What a pretty bird it is, with its long drooping top-knot, and its
mottled breast and thighs! Of the sad-coloured birds, few can excel it
in beauty of shape or marking. It has that symmetrically prosperous,
that aesthetically fastidious, confidently reposeful, felicitously demure
appearance, only to be observed in perfection in wealthy, wicked, and
juvenile widows. Shin, an exquisitely bad shot (so bad indeed that he
rarely succeeded in killing a quail, unless he caught one sitting for
its photograph), used to assert that: "They would roll about on the
granite boulders with their heels in the air, and laugh till they
moulted, when they saw _him_ coming with a gun." I cannot say that I
myself ever witnessed in the quail any so striking an example of their
just appreciation of the humorous as this; but my informant was a man of
thoughtful habits, keen powers of observation, and unimpeachable
veracity. Moreover, it is well known that certain birds do laugh, and
that, too, under less provocation than Shin's quails experienced. To the
curious collector of ornithological data I can, therefore, commend this
instance.
Having bagged a couple more birds, a sugar-pine, and a granite boulder,
I rejoined the buggy, where the others soon met me, and, remounting, we
drove slowly on again. In a few minutes the same proceedings were
re-enacted, and this continued throughout the afternoon. It was the
easiest sport that I ever enjoyed. Quail shooting after this fashion has
all the attractive simplicity of vice. It induces that pleasurable
exultation which, until detection supervenes, always, I believe, attends
an infraction of the law. Enjoyment of such kind seldom fails to
stimulate even the jaded appetites of the wicked, but more especially
doth it afford a relish to those who, never having impaired their moral
palates by intemperate indulgence in crime, are still able to sin with
the sentiments of novelty and zest that ever reward moderation. Need I
say that our moral palates were yet susceptible of these delightful
impressions.
At length the driver pulled up on the summit of a grade. The shadows had
grown longer and deeper, the day had waxed old and weary, rich in colour
and in gilded glory, but in breathing faint and low. Both near and far
away the granite peaks were lurid with purple and with blood-red lights,
as if the sun shone on them through stained glass. The crests of the
ridges had become fringed with a lace-work of coruscated fire, that
glittered through the dark pine-quills, and shot soft, luminous rays and
ways down into the delicately pencilled pools of twilight in the
bottoms, whose leafy edges seemed like pebbled shores. And at one point,
where the hidden trout stream, winding on its course, had widened for
itself a resting-place, deep in a wilderness of foliage and shade there
gleamed a strange hieroglyphic in thread of gold, that flashed upon the
shifting eddies of the water-node, as though some magic beetle circled
there.
The squirrels and the chipmunks had vanished. No longer did the
challenge of the doughty quail call us to arms. It was that transient
interlude betwixt the minstrelsy of day and night. Dumb stillness had
fallen upon all the forest, and not a breath of wind wooed any flower,
nor whispered round any cone, till, with one long, low sigh, like a
lost, lonely note of music singing to seek its fellows in the brown
whorls of curled leaves--those forest shells of daintiest
biscuit-work--the dirge of day stole through the valley and passed on.
There was only the murmur of the rock-embosomed stream, and from afar
off, the fitful tinkling of a wether-bell came faintly down our way.
"Hence, thou lingerer, light!
Eve saddens into night."
"Drive on to Campbell's--we'll stay there to-night. It is getting too
late to shoot," said Shin.
The wheels grated once more on the stony track, and on we went to
Campbell's hostelry.
Very many of the pleasantest days in life are the most poverty-stricken
in regard to incident. In all this week, only one episode occurred which
would make you really laugh, and that, I regret to say, Shin would not
like me to relate. Do not infer though, that, because the current of the
trip was placid, it necessarily was dull. So far from such being the
case, we did not pass a single dull half-hour. An exhilarating
freshness, an evanescent crispness is in this mountain air, which
absolutely defies dulness. Moreover, we had started in that state of
helpless good humour in which anything serves as food for laughter. It
was not recorded that any one made a sensible remark during the whole
drive; we talked pure nonsense exclusively. In this congenial spirit we
were encouraged by the fact that, our wooden-visaged, saturnine
driver--an eminently matter-of-fact and sensible man--preserved,
throughout, impenetrable reserve. He sat on the box-seat in dignified
silence, a mute protest against the egregious imbecility of human
nature as exemplified in ourselves. Evidently he had been designed
without any reference to the rules of risible acoustics. He was angular
and flat all over. People constructed on this principle are not adapted
for the expression of merriment. If he ever had laughed, the
displacement of solemnity would have been so tremendous, that he would
never have recovered his centre of gravity, and would probably have died
mentally upside down, and mad. He only made one spontaneous observation
during the excursion. We were talking of chipmunks and squirrels.
"Chipmunks----" he ejaculated. And then he paused and thought for a
while. "Chipmunks," he resumed, later in the day, "is alegant food."
Up the hill we were slowly toiling towards Campbell's, when a ragged boy
in a broad-leafed hat, seated upon a ragged pony, whose tail coquetted
with his heels, came jogging on the down-grade towards us.
"Say!" exclaimed Shin, "now when this fellow passes, we'll all take off
our hats to him. Don't say anything; just bow and watch him."
Accordingly, when the boy drew near we greeted him with three sweeping
bows. Probably he had never seen any one bow before; evidently he was
not familiar with this form of salutation. He pulled up, and was staring
after us in dumb astonishment, when, a thought seemed to strike him.
Removing his own hat, he carefully examined it. But there was nothing
the matter with that, and he rammed it on again with an air of dogged
perplexity. Anon, he shouted something--our inability to catch which was
perhaps not to be deplored; and when, some minutes later, we turned a
corner and lost sight of him, he was still where we had left him, gazing
after us.
_A propos des bottes_: this unkempt, young mountaineer possessed
aquiline features of the purest type; and it appears to me, as a
superficial observer, open to correction, that these will distinguish
the American of the future. The fusion of races in America is remarkably
rapid. Distinctive physical peculiarities vanish not less swiftly than
do national idiosyncrasies in character. And the mould in which these
disappear is one that bears a striking resemblance to that formerly
prevalent among the higher class Indian nations of the continent. The
typical American is aquiline-featured, stern or impassible in
expression of countenance, spare of frame, chary of speech, impassive in
demeanour, endued with unusual self-control and determination. But these
traits--which, if further example were necessary, could be
multiplied--were all once distinctive of the Indian; and that they
should reassert themselves thus uniformly in the descendants of the
divers alien races settled in America, opens a physiological problem of
unusual magnitude and interest. Doubtless, in process of time, the
citizen of the republic will become tinged with copper. A tone of brass
is already noticeable occasionally.
Next morning saw us early under way; and during all the forenoon the
road led through rocky passes, or was blasted in the steep sides of
sombre valleys. On we drove amidst a network of crumbled light, whose
shadowed meshes were cast by the vast trunks of cedars, sugar and yellow
pines, red and silver firs, tamaracks, and spruces. Nothing in the
forest races can match the stately beauty of these straight-limbed
giants, clad in dark plumes. They are an order of knights, a dynasty of
kings amongst trees. Where they have fallen, they lie like vanquished
Titans, and seem even grander stretched out beneath clinging palls of
moss than when upreared, archetypes of strength and grace, they toss
their quilled foliage in the winds, and tower majestically above the
earth.
Ever and anon the continuity of their solemn crypts and corridors was
interrupted by some still glen, a cache of dreams and summer beauty. And
here--scattered amidst enormous boulders, or gray and grim, or worked
with gorgeous blazonry in lichens--red-leaved sumachs, golden-foliaged
aspens, and masses of flushed flowers blent in the rich arabesque of
purple, brown, and russet bracken, had writ an idyl in a silent
language, whose words were colour, and whose characters were leafy
tracery, delicate and ever new. Yonder, by the lucent gleam of sunbeams,
its tinted poetry was touched with fire, and there in the pearly shadows
of midday it was yet coolly sleeping.
Long must have been the list of killed and wounded in the _Quail
Gazette_ after that morning's work. At times the forest rang and
re-echoed like a choice covert in England. Towards noon, having finished
a beat before the others were ready, I walked on ahead of the buggy to a
turnpike gate to ask for a glass of water. Instead of a crusty old
gate-keeper I was agreeably surprised to see, tripping bare-headed from
the neighbouring cottage, a pretty dark girl with black eyes, a "peart"
air, and a smart _sang de boeuf_ bow under her chin. In the course of
some conversation which ensued I mentioned that Mr. Shin was on the
road, and inquired whether she knew him. A smile rose immediately on her
cherry lips.
"Shin? Well, you'd better believe I do; he's pretty well known around.
Say, Alice! d'ye hear?" she cried, raising her voice, "Shin's coming
'long."
A merry laugh from the interior of the log-house greeted this
announcement.
"There ain't another just like Shin from here to Panama," explained the
damsel. "He's a genius. He's bound to be foolin' all the time, and he
looks so sad with it--like he'd got a pain somewhere, or was making up
poetry. Oh! Shin's a whole show, and he plays the music himself."
We lunched here, the gate-keeper's daughter kindly undertaking to cook
quails for us if we would pluck them. Shin "played the music."
In the afternoon we set forth again through the forest, and its
clearings, and its old deserted villages, that had flourished when the
route we were following was the high-way betwixt Sacramento and Virginia
City, when placer mining was carried on in the district, and before the
railway had usurped the traffic. Now, owing to neglect, and to the
destruction caused by heavy rains, the track appears to have lain
disused for centuries instead of for little more than a decade. Many a
yarn had Shin and B. to relate of the days when this same dried
watercourse was a well-kept road, and they rattled up and down its steep
grades on the mail-coach. One, and not the least curious of the wayside
features, is the still standing trunks of pine-trees that were sawn off
twenty and thirty feet from the ground, when the snow lay that deep on
the Sierras.
We had come in our old weather-stained hunting garments, and, in order
not to burden the buggy, had brought with us very little extra clothing.
During the day's work the dust had accumulated upon us, until it almost
seemed as if we were fulfilling the biblical prophecy and returning to
the original component of man. It was anything but comforting,
therefore, to hear Shin remark, as we turned off the main road in the
direction of Soda Springs, that it was the time of year when visitors
were numerous there. He, however, was right. When, in due course, we
issued from the forest, and crossing a rustic bridge drew up before the
hotel, we found its verandah full of pretty faces and well-dressed men.
Soda Springs is a summer resort, consisting merely of a hotel, a few
outhouses, and a private cottage, all prettily situated in a valley. A
dashing trout stream runs hard by, and there is some fair shooting in
the neighbourhood.
To visit Soda Springs without ascending Tinkler's Nob was to incur an
everlasting stigma of reproach. Nevertheless, as I sat smoking in the
verandah next morning (Sunday), eyeing askance that most
uncompromisingly perpendicular mountain, my heart opened towards the
stigma. It was so hot. I suggested this to B., he merely remarked that
it was nothing to what we should experience half-way up the Nob. B. had
determined that I should go up. I indulged in another long and careful
survey of the disagreeable eminence with the cacophonious appellation.
It looked more inaccessible than ever. I observed that, the farther you
were from mountains the finer they looked; that when once you had scaled
a mountain you seemed to lose all respect for it; and that I had a
reverence for Tinkler's Nob which I should be loth to disturb.
But I had to deal with one of those energetic men who love to get to the
top of everything. I confess to a preference for the base end, at any
rate, of mountains and high places. It is shadier and safer, and not so
far off where I generally am. However, after exhausting a variety of
excuses, Tinkler's Nob and the path of duty still lay directly in front
of me, B. was still sternly pointing at them, and the thermometer was
still rising.
Shin did not accompany us. We reluctantly left him with a cool drink, a
long cigar, and a newspaper in the verandah. He said that the only thing
he had promised his parents when he left Kentucky, twenty years before,
was, "to sit around and reflect on Sunday mornings;" that the more he
sat around and reflected, the more he became convinced that there was
"something in it;" and that as soon as he "struck a Bonanza," he meant
to sit around and reflect on week-days too. He said, moreover, that he
didn't believe mountains were ever intended to be ascended, or they
would have been arranged somehow differently, perhaps bottom upwards--he
wasn't sure; the question was too deep a one to go into on so warm a
morning.
We started without a guide, and when half the ascent was completed, lost
the track. After some time spent in vainly seeking it, we laid the reins
upon our horses' necks, and commended ourselves to their sagacity. They
did not immediately bear us to our destination without guidance,
although they must have known every pebble in the route; they started
straight down hill, fast. With some difficulty we put them about, and
eventually invented a way of our own to the summit.
I had carefully abstained from spoiling the effect of the final _coup
d'oeil_ by studying the panorama in detail as we ascended. Lavishly was
my patience rewarded. Far as the eye could reach on every side stretched
a confused sea of keen-crested rocky billows. Ridge behind rugged ridge
rose up, and bluff behind leonine bluff appeared like mountains
couchant. Peak towered over peak, from the vast iron helmets near at
hand to the thin, blue, palpitating spectres of hills upon the verge of
the horizon; from Devil's Point and Fremont's granite roof away to
Imperial Shasta "diademed with circling snow," queen of them all. And
grim as sentinels, keeping a silent watch throughout all time over the
pine-shut valleys, they reared their furrowed brows far up above the
clouds that sought to veil their majesty, but only lay a wreath of snowy
fleece about their mighty shoulders. The world lay below us. What
solitudes were there not there, what distances, what joyous mood, what
melancholy, what fields of light, what cloud-cast drifting wastes of
shadow! Beside hollows of lapis-lazuli, brimming with golden haze, might
be seen gulfs of sullen gloom; through the mantle of purple pines showed
flanks of naked stone. Even summer noon but half beguiled the scene of
its savage character.
"There was wide wandering for the greediest eye."
Yonder was Emerald Bay; the Sacramento Valley there; there ran the
railways, covered in for miles and miles by snow-sheds. Elsewhere two
forest fires headed by columns of smoke crept on their devastating
march. And in the distance, in the midst of all this wild scenery, like
a great opal upon the iron bosom of the Sierras, slept crystal Tahoe
beneath hazy curtains, its gray and silver ripples shivering in cold
light, and winking through the atmospheric dimness with countless rapid
flashes.
Here, reader, upon the extreme summit of Tinkler's Nob, I purpose to
abandon you: you must find your own way down. Shin met us when we
returned half baked to the verandah. He said that he had changed his
mind about going up, and if we cared to turn round and repeat the
ascent, he would now come with us.
What followed was but a repetition of what had gone before. On the next
day we started to return to Emigrant Gap, and parting there from Shin,
the pleasantest of companions and hosts, sped on to San Francisco.