AMONG THE CLOUDS.
In the following May, 1896, I took a sky-scraping journey to the great
states of Washington and Oregon. The climbing of Mt. Shasta and the
Siskyo range by train presented sublime views that no language can
even feebly describe. At the summits we were at least two miles in
the air higher than the dome of the Massachusetts State House. As
we climbed, I could see from the window of the palace car, the two
engines of our train puffing for all they were worth around the
curves, far ahead.
We looked down from the narrow rim of the railroad, thousands of feet
perpendicular upon foaming rivers dashing themselves into rainbows
and cataracts against the everlasting boulders in their courses.
Here cascades, miles in length, came rushing down the mountainsides,
shooting hundreds of feet into the air as they struck the giant rocks,
and at one place we stopped for half an hour to drink from the soda
springs pure, delicious soda water, huge geysers of it effervescing,
scintillating, silvery in the sunbeams, caught in a rocky basin from
which it is sent all over the world.
Above, the mighty Sacramento River has its source in a little spring,
almost touching the stars--so emblematical of our human life, which
begins in the infinite on high; is enveloped in a dust of earth;
expands in its evolution into the angel back into the eternity from
whence it came; for science reveals that the springs come from the
clouds as dew and rain, run their courses, and by evaporation are
taken back into their first home in the vapors of the heavens.
There are enormous log-shoots seeming like Jacob's ladder to reach
from earth to heaven, and in which, the giants of the vast mountain
forests are carried by water with almost lightning speed to the mills
on the river; there the splendid snow-covered dome of Shasta gleams
above the clouds like the great white throne described by St. John in
Revelation.
Now come glimpses of little green valleys; here and there, a few small
houses and flocks of sheep show that these cases are peopled "far from
the maddening crowd's ignoble strife."
These vast solitudes of forests are very impressive and solemn as
the day of judgment; giant fir-trees, pines and spruces, beautifully
clothed in perpetual green even to the lower dead limbs which nature
has covered with a verdure of moss--like our dead hopes, blasted
by the fires of adversity but made radiant by the fore-gleams of
immortality. There the bright mistletoe is suspended from dead
tree-tops, like beauteous crowns adorning the heads of those who have
died rather than surrender to the low and base; there deep canyons,
brilliant with the diamonds made by the sun from the scintillating
drops from dashing torrents--so from the unseen heights come the dews
of heaven to refresh those who walk by faith and not by sight "looking
not at the things seen which are temporal, but at the things not seen
which are eternal."
Here comes a dense white cloud of snow through the air, covering our
train with a pearly shroud, through the rifts of which, far below, we
have glimpses of lovely vales and white ranch-houses, smiling up at
us, above the clouds.
Dearly beloved--all seems to say it becometh us, not to sorrow for the
dead hopes, broken promises, and bitter disappointments of this mortal
life, remembering that this is not our home, that we tarry here for
a few fleeting days, that our true home is with the good beyond the
infinite azure of the heavens, where dear ones are Waiting to welcome
us to the endless rest and peace awaiting all who fight the good
fight, and who keep themselves unspotted from the world.
At times, while the train was dashing along over the seemingly
interminable plains, green and productive during the rainy season, but
now parched and arid by the terrible heat, we were almost suffocated
by the dense dust clouds, and well-nigh withered by the winds which
seem to come from the very jaws of Dante's Inferno; then the shifting
young cyclone would suddenly envelop us with chilling snows from
Shasta, and so we oscillated like pendulums 'twixt torrid heats and
arctic colds.
At last, almost dazed by the unspeakable, lightning-like, climatic
transformations, the great iron steeds brought us to Portland, the
metropolis of the great state of Oregon. Here, as in many places on
the Pacific coast, people should be web-footed during the rainy season
to escape the drowning, and iron clad during the dry season to escape
the merciless peltings of the clouds of shot-like dust. The dampness
in this valley, hemmed in by the now dripping, then brook covered
mountains, is far from pleasant, and covers many of the buildings
with unsightly mosses. In Washington and Oregon those who survive the
climatic trials are a strong, energetic race, rapidly building up
powerful empires in the great aggregation of states of our grandest
nation the world has ever known.
The broad-minded, generous-hearted people of this great far west, make
no distinctions as to sex in apportioning their salaries for
school work, and this, coupled with their numerous co-educational
universities and normal schools, has given them an army of lady
teachers and superintendents unequaled elsewhere in the world.
The county superintendents of schools are elected by the popular vote,
and the women take to the stump-speaking and the usual kissing of
voters' babies as naturally as ducks take to the water. Result,--the
ladies secure the political plums, and the men are rapidly being
driven to manual labor, their natural sphere of action, though
not without vigorous kicking against the inevitable. These
ex-men-superintendents buttonhole you at every turn, reciting the
outrages perpetrated upon them by their successful women competitors.
At an election in a California town, one of these men sufferers,
mistaking me for a voter, took me by a button of my coat, and poured
forth a tale of woe so long that, unable to endure it longer, I cut
off the button and fled. He did not notice my departure, and two hours
later, there he was holding on to the button, all alone, gesticulating
frantically, and beseeching me to vote for him to save his wife and
ten children from starvation. For aught I know, he has not missed me
to this day; but is still sounding forth his wild appeals.
Should I describe fully all the wonderful scenes beheld by me in this
wonderland, I should exhaust time and trench upon eternity. Suffice it
to state that I returned to 'Frisco, fought a successful dictionary
battle there, formed the acquaintance of many distinguished men, among
them the great Irving Scott, who built the famous battleship Oregon.
He was president of the city school-board, head of the vast Union Iron
Works, and besides performing many herculean labors, was stumping the
state nightly in favor of the election of William McKinley to the
presidency of the United States.
I was fairly driven from this city by the ferocious fleas, which
seemed to render life almost unendurable in hovel and palace. I could
get no rest day or night in many parts of the state, on account of the
savage attacks of these unspeakable, insatiate biters, more terrible
than an army with Gatling guns.
Crossing the beautiful bay in the floating palace ferry-boat, I was
for a time enchanted with Highland Park, Oakland. In front, through a
vista of Eucalyptus, oak and elm trees, appear the glistening waters
of the famed inland sea; on the right are seen the domes and spires
of Oakland, Alameda, and San Francisco; across the valley loom the
mountains, in the rainy season green to their summits, on which rest
the serene blue of the heavens, except when, the frequent fogs bury
everything from sight. On one side of the house, at the same time,
the trade winds from the Pacific chill you to your very bones, on the
other side the burning heat is unbearable. Afar off the humble home of
Joaquin Miller, poet of the Sierras, clearly appears.
There are many beautiful homes on this lofty hilltop, but they were
all for sale at bargains, for their occupants have grown weary of the
cloud bursts of the long dreary rainy season, then of the parching
heats of the equally dreary dry season, when a pickaxe and crowbar are
required to dig a potato unless you keep water running from the hose
day and night. These people long to return to their old homes in New
England where the varying seasons are not so monotonous.
I was invited to accompany a religious society on a week's camp in
a romantic canyon; but I was glad I did not when they returned in a
couple of days, narrating an adventure which daunted the stoutest
hearts. On the second night of their camping, the men were aroused
from sleep by the frightful screams from the women's tent; rushing
out, they saw in the light of the great fire kept burning to frighten
the wild-cats and mountain lions, a circle of venomous rattle-snakes,
hissing like fiends and coiled for springing. The men fought
desperately all night with shotguns and clubs. Life is scarcely worth
the living with these demons, and their natural attendants, the
horrible tarantulas.