transit and pass it across; the view it afforded down the abyss was
calculated to make a man cool and steady.
Barometer and knapsack were next passed over. I placed them all at the
crevice head, and flattened myself against the rock to make room for
Gardiner. I shall never forget the look in his eye as he caught a
glimpse of the abyss in his leap. It gave me such a chill as no amount
of danger, or even death, coming to myself could ever give. The _débris_
grated under his weight an instant and wedged themselves again.
We sprang up on the rocks like chamois, and stood on the top shouting
for joy.
Our summit was four feet across, not large enough for the transit
instrument and both of us; so I, whose duties were geological, descended
to a niche a few feet lower and sat down to my writing.
The sense of aërial isolation was thrilling. Away below, rocks, ridges,
crags, and fields of ice swell up in jostling confusion to make a base
from which springs the spire of stone 11,600 feet high. On all sides I
could look right down at the narrow pedestal. Eastward great ranks of
peaks, culminating in Mount Lyell, were in full, clear view; all streams
and cañons tributary to the Merced were beneath us in map-like
distinctness. Afar to the west lay the rolling plateau gashed with
cañons; there the white line of Yosemite Fall; and beyond, half
submerged in warm haze, my Sunday mountain.
The same little arctic bluebird came again and perched close by me,
pouring out his sweet, simple song with a gayety and freedom which
wholly charmed me.
During our four hours’ stay the thought that we must make that leap
again gradually intruded itself, and whether writing or studying the
country I could not altogether free myself from its pressure.
It was a relief when we packed up and descended to the horrible cleft to
actually meet our danger. We had now an unreliable footing to spring
from, and a mere block of rock to balance us after the jump.
We sprang strongly, struck firmly, and were safe. We worked patiently
down the east face, wound among blocks and pinnacles of the lower
descent, and hurried through moraines to camp, well pleased that the
Obelisk had not vanquished us.
X
CUT-OFF COPPLES’S
1870
One October day, as Kaweah and I travelled by ourselves over a lonely
foothill trail, I came to consider myself the friend of woodpeckers.
With rather more reserve as regards the bluejay, let me admit great
interest in his worldly wisdom. As an instance of co-operative living
the partnership of these two birds is rather more hopeful than most
mundane experiments. For many autumn and winter months such food as
their dainty taste chooses is so rare throughout the Sierras that in
default of any climatic temptation to migrate the birds get in harvests
with annual regularity and surprising labor. Oak and pine mingle in open
growth. Acorns from the one are their grain; the soft pine bark is
granary; and this the process:
Armies of woodpeckers drill small, round holes in the bark of standing
pine-trees, sometimes perforating it thickly up to twenty or thirty and
even forty feet above the ground; then about equal numbers of
woodpeckers and jays gather acorns, rejecting always the little cup, and
insert the gland tightly in the pine bark with its tender base outward
and exposed to the air.
A woodpecker, having drilled a hole, has its exact measure in mind, and
after examining a number of acorns makes his selection, and never fails
of a perfect fit. Not so the jolly, careless jay, who picks up any sound
acorn he finds, and, if it is too large for a hole, drops it in the most
off-hand way, as if it were an affair of no consequence; utters one of
his dry, chuckling squawks, and either tries another or loafs about,
lazily watching the hard-working woodpeckers.
Thus they live, amicably harvesting, and with this sequel: those acorns
in which grubs form become the sole property of woodpeckers, while all
sound ones fall to the jays. Ordinarily chances are in favor of
woodpeckers, and when there are absolutely no sound nuts the jays sell
short, so to speak, and go over to Nevada and speculate in
juniper-berries.
The monotony of hill and glade failing to interest me, and in default of
other diversion, I all day long watched the birds, recalling how many
gay and successful jays I knew who lived, as these, on the wit and
industry of less ostentatious woodpeckers; thinking, too, what naïvely
dogmatic and richly worded political economy Mr. Ruskin would phrase
from my feathered friends. Thus I came to Ruskin, wishing I might see
the work of his idol, and after that longing for some equal artist who
should arise and choose to paint our Sierras as they are with all their
color-glory, power of innumerable pine and countless pinnacle, gloom of
tempest, or splendor, where rushing light shatters itself upon granite
crag, or burns in dying rose upon far fields of snow.
Had I rubbed Aladdin’s lamp? A turn in the trail brought suddenly into
view a man who sat under shadow of oaks, painting upon a large canvas.
As I approached, the artist turned half round upon his stool, rested
palette and brushes upon one knee, and in familiar tone said, “Dern’d if
you ain’t just naturally ketched me at it! Get off and set down. You
ain’t going for no doctor, I know.”
My artist was of short, good-natured, butcher-boy make-up, dressed in
what had formerly been black broadcloth, with an enlivening show of red
flannel shirt about the throat, wrists, and a considerable display of
the same where his waistcoat might once have overlapped a strained but
as yet coherent waistband. The cut of these garments, by length of
coat-tail and voluminous leg, proudly asserted a “Bay” origin. His small
feet were squeezed into tight, short boots, with high, raking heels.
A round face, with small, full mouth, non-committal nose, and black,
protruding eyes, showed no more sign of the ideal temperament than did
the broad daub upon his square yard of canvas.
“Going to Copples’s?” inquired my friend.
That was my destination, and I answered, “Yes.”
“That’s me,” he ejaculated. “Right over there, down below those two
oaks! Ever there?”
“No.”
“My _studio_ ’s there now;” giving impressive accent to the word.
All the while these few words were passing he scrutinized me with
unconcealed curiosity, puzzled, as well he might be, by my dress and
equipment. Finally, after I had tied Kaweah to a tree and seated myself
by the easel, and after he had absently rubbed some raw sienna into his
little store of white, he softly ventured: “Was you looking out a
ditch?”
“No,” I replied.
He neatly rubbed up the white and sienna with his “blender,”
unconsciously adding a dash of Veronese green, gazed at my leggings,
then at the barometer, and again meeting my eye with a look as if he
feared I might be a disguised duke, said in slow tone, with hyphens of
silence between each two syllables, giving to his language all the
dignity of an unabridged Webster, “I would take pleasure in stating that
my name is Hank G. Smith, artist;” and, seeing me smile, he relaxed a
little, and, giving the blender another vigorous twist, added, “I would
request yours.”
Mr. Smith having learned my name, occupation, and that my home
was on the Hudson, near New York, quickly assumed a familiar
me-and-you-old-fel’ tone, and rattled on merrily about his winter in New
York spent in “going through the Academy,”--a period of deep moment to
one who before that painted only wagons for his livelihood.
Storing away canvas, stool, and easel in a deserted cabin close by, he
rejoined me, and, leading Kaweah by his lariat, I walked beside Smith
down the trail toward Copples’s.
He talked freely, and as if composing his own biography, beginning:
“California-born and mountain-raised, his nature soon drove him into a
painter’s career.” Then he reverted fondly to New York and his
experience there.
“Oh, no!” he mused in pleasant irony, “he never spread his napkin over
his legs and partook French victuals up to old Delmonico’s. ’Twasn’t H.
G. which took _her_ to the theatre.”
In a sort of stage-aside to me, he added, “_She_ was a _model_! Stood
for them sculptors, you know; perfectly virtuous, and built from the
ground up.” Then, as if words failed him, made an expressive gesture
with both hands over his shirt-bosom to indicate the topography of her
figure, and, sliding them down sharply against his waistband, he added,
“Anatomical torso!”
Mr. Smith found relief in meeting one so near himself, as he conceived
me to be, in habit and experience. The long-pent-up emotions and
ambitions of his life found ready utterance, and a willing listener.
I learned that his aim was to become a characteristically California
painter, with special designs for making himself famous as the
delineator of muletrains and ox-wagons; to be, as he expressed it, “the
Pacific Slope Bonheur.”
“There,” he said, “is old Eastman Johnson; he’s made the riffle on
barns, and that everlasting girl with the ears of corn; but it ain’t
_life_, it ain’t got the real git-up.
“If you want to see _the_ thing, just look at a Gérôme; his Arab folks
and Egyptian dancing-girls, they ain’t assuming a pleasant expression
and looking at spots while their likenesses is took.
“H. G. will discount Eastman yet.”
He avowed his great admiration of Church, which, with a little leaning
toward Mr. Gifford, seemed his only hearty approval.
“It’s all Bierstadt, and Bierstadt, and Bierstadt nowadays! What has he
done but twist and skew and distort and discolor and belittle and
be-pretty this whole dog-gonned country? Why, his mountains are too high
and too slim; they’d blow over in one of our fall winds.
“I’ve herded colts two summers in Yosemite, and honest now, when I stood
right up in front of his picture, I didn’t know it.
“He hasn’t what old Ruskin calls for.”
By this time the station buildings were in sight, and far down the
cañon, winding in even grade round spur after spur, outlined by a low,
clinging cloud of red dust, we could see the great Sierra
mule-train,--that industrial gulf-stream flowing from California plains
over into arid Nevada, carrying thither materials for life and luxury.
In a vast, perpetual caravan of heavy wagons, drawn by teams of from
eight to fourteen mules, all the supplies of many cities and villages
were hauled across the Sierra at an immense cost, and with such skill of
driving and generalship of mules as the world has never seen before.
Our trail descended toward the grade, quickly bringing us to a high bank
immediately overlooking the trains a few rods below the group of station
buildings.
I had by this time learned that Copples, the former station-proprietor,
had suffered amputation of the leg three times, receiving from the road
men, in consequence, the name of “Cut-off,” and that, while his doctors
disagreed as to whether they had better try a fourth, the kindly hand of
death had spared him that pain, and Mrs. Copples an added extortion in
the bill.
The dying “Cut-off” had made his wife promise she would stay by and
carry on the station until all his debts, which were many and heavy,
should be paid, and then do as she chose.
The poor woman, a New Englander of some refinement, lingered, sadly
fulfilling her task, though longing for liberty.
When Smith came to speak of Sarah Jane, her niece, a new light kindled
in my friend’s eye.
“You never saw Sarah Jane?” he inquired.
I shook my head.
He went on to tell me that he was living in hope of making her Mrs. H.
G., but that the bar-keeper also indulged a hope, and as this important
functionary was a man of ready cash, and of derringers and few words, it
became a delicate matter to avow open rivalry; but it was evident my
friend’s star was ascendant, and, learning that he considered himself
to possess the “dead-wood,” and to have “gaited” the bar-keeper, I was
more than amused, even comforted.
It was pleasure to sit there leaning against a vigorous old oak while
Smith opened his heart to me, in easy confidence, and, with quick eye
watching the passing mules, pencilled in a little sketch-book a leg, a
head, or such portions of body and harness as seemed to him useful for
future works.
“These are notes,” he said, “and I’ve pretty much made up my mind to
paint my great picture on a _gee-pull_. I’ll scumble in a sunset effect,
lighting up the dust, and striking across the backs of team and driver,
and I’ll paint a come-up-there-d’n-you look on the old teamster’s face,
and the mules will be just a-humping their little selves and laying down
to work like they’d expire. And the wagon! Don’t you see what fine
color-material there is in the heavy load and canvas-top with sunlight
and shadow in the folds? And that’s what’s the matter with H. G. Smith.
“Orders, sir, orders; that’s what I’ll get then, and I’ll take my little
old Sarah Jane and light out for New York, and you’ll see _Smith_ on a
studio doorplate, and folks’ll say, ‘Fine feeling for nature, has
Smith!’”
I let this singular man speak for himself in his own vernacular, pruning
nothing of its idiom or slang, as you shall choose to call it. In this
faithful transcript there are words I could have wished to expunge, but
they are his, not mine, and illustrate his mental construction.
The breath of most Californians is as unconsciously charged with slang
as an Italian’s of garlic, and the two, after all, have much the same
function; you touch the bowl or your language, but should never let
either be fairly recognized in salad or conversation. But Smith’s
English was the well undefiled when compared with what I every moment
heard from the current of teamsters which set constantly by us in the
direction of Copples’s.
Close in front came a huge wagon piled high with cases of freight, and
drawn along by a team of twelve mules, whose heavy breathing and
drenched skins showed them hard-worked and well tired out. The driver
looked anxiously ahead at a soft spot in the road, and on at the
station, as if calculating whether his team had courage left to haul
through.
He called kindly to them, cracked his black-snake whip, and all together
they strained bravely on.
The great van rocked, settled a little on the near side, and stuck fast.
With a look of despair the driver got off and laid the lash freely among
his team; they jumped and jerked, frantically tangled themselves up, and
at last all sulked and became stubbornly immovable. Meanwhile, a mile of
teams behind, unable to pass on the narrow grade, came to an unwilling
halt.
About five wagons back I noticed a tall Pike, dressed in checked shirt,
and pantaloons tucked into jack-boots. A soft felt hat, worn on the
back of his head, displayed long locks of flaxen hair, which hung freely
about a florid pink countenance, noticeable for its pair of violent
little blue eyes, and facial angle rendered acute by a sharp, long nose.
This fellow watched the stoppage with impatience, and at last, when it
was more than he could bear, walked up by the other teams with a look of
wrath absolutely devilish. One would have expected him to blow up with
rage; yet withal his gait and manner were cool and soft in the extreme.
In a bland, almost tender voice, he said to the unfortunate driver, “My
friend, perhaps I can help you;” and his gentle way of disentangling and
patting the leaders as he headed them round in the right direction would
have given him a high office under Mr. Bergh. He leisurely examined the
embedded wheel, and cast an eye along the road ahead. He then began in
rather excited manner to swear, pouring it out louder and more profane,
till he utterly eclipsed the most horrid blasphemies I ever heard,
piling them up thicker and more fiendish till it seemed as if the very
earth must open and engulf him.
I noticed one mule after another give a little squat, bringing their
breasts hard against the collars, and straining traces, till only one
old mule, with ears back and dangling chain, still held out. The Pike
walked up and yelled one gigantic oath; her ears sprang forward, she
squatted in terror, and the iron links grated under her strain. He then
stepped back and took the rein, every trembling mule looking out of the
corner of its eye and listening at _qui vive_.
With a peculiar air of deliberation and of childlike simplicity, he said
in every-day tones, “Come up there, mules!”
One quick strain, a slight rumble, and the wagon rolled on to Copples’s.
Smith and I followed, and as we neared the house he punched me
familiarly and said, as a brown petticoat disappeared in the station
door, “There’s Sarah Jane! When I see that girl I feel like I’d reach
out and gather her in;” then clasping her imaginary form as if she was
about to dance with him, he executed a couple of waltz turns, softly
intimating, “That’s what’s the matter with H. G.”
Kaweah being stabled, we betook ourselves to the office, which was of
course bar-room as well. As I entered, the unfortunate teamster was
about paying his liquid compliment to the florid Pike. Their glasses
were filled. “My respects,” said the little driver. The whiskey became
lost to view, and went eroding its way through the dust these poor
fellows had swallowed. He added, “Well, Billy, you _can_ swear.”
“Swear?” repeated the Pike in a tone of incredulous questioning. “Me
swear?” as if the compliment were greater than his modest desert. “No, I
can’t blaspheme worth a cuss. You’d jest orter hear Pete Green. _He can
exhort the impenitent mule._ I’ve known a ten-mule-team to renounce the
flesh and haul thirty-one thousand through a foot of clay mud under one
of his outpourings.”
As a hotel, Copples’s is on the Mongolian plan, which means that
dining-room and kitchen are given over to the mercies--never very
tender--of Chinamen; not such Chinamen as learned the art of
pig-roasting that they might be served up by Elia, but the average John,
and a sadly low average that John is. I grant him a certain general air
of thrift, admitting, too, that his lack of sobriety never makes itself
apparent in loud Celtic brawl. But he is, when all is said, and in spite
of timid and fawning obedience, a very poor servant.
Now and then at one friend’s house it has happened to me that I dined
upon artistic Chinese cookery, and all they who come home from living in
China smack their lips over the relishing _cuisine_. I wish they had sat
down that day at Copples’s. No; on second thought I would spare them.
John may go peacefully to North Adams and make shoes for us, but I shall
not solve the awful domestic problem by bringing him into my kitchen;
certainly so long as Howells’s “Mrs. Johnson” lives, nor even while I
can get an Irish lady to torment me, and offer the hospitality of my
home to her cousins.
After the warning bell, fifty or sixty teamsters inserted their dusty
heads in buckets of water, turned their once white neck-handkerchiefs
inside out, producing a sudden effect of clean linen, and made use of
the two mournful wrecks of combs which hung on strings at either side
the Copples’s mirror. Many went to the bar and partook of a
“dust-cutter.” There was then such clearing of throats, and such loud
and prolonged blowing of noses as may not often be heard upon this
globe.
In the calm which ensued, conversation sprang up on “lead harness,” the
“Stockton wagon that had went off the grade,” with here and there a
sentiment called out by two framed lithographic belles, who in great
richness of color and scantiness of raiment flanked the bar-mirror;--a
dazzling reflector, chiefly destined to portray the bar-keeper’s back
hair, which work of art involved much affectionate labor.
A second bell and rolling away of doors revealed a long dining-room,
with three parallel tables, cleanly set and watched over by Chinamen,
whose fresh, white clothes and bright, olive-buff skin made a contrast
of color which was always chief among my yearnings for the Nile.
While I loitered in the background every seat was taken, and I found
myself with a few dilatory teamsters destined to await a second table.
The dinner-room communicated with a kitchen beyond by means of two
square apertures cut in the partition wall. Through these portholes a
glare of red light poured, except when the square framed a Chinese
cook’s head, or discharged hundreds of little dishes.
The teamsters sat down in patience; a few of the more elegant sort
cleaned their nails with the three-tine forks, others picked their
teeth with them, and nearly all speared with this implement small
specimens from the dishes before them, securing a pickle or a square
inch of pie or even that luxury, a dried apple; a few, on tilted-back
chairs, drummed upon the bottom of their plates the latest tune of the
road.
When fairly under way the scene became active and animated beyond
belief. Waiters, balancing upon their arms twenty or thirty plates,
hurried along and shot them dexterously over the teamsters’ heads with
crash and spatter.
Beans swimming in fat, meats slimed with pale, ropy gravy, and over
everything a faint Mongol odor,--the flavor of moral degeneracy and of a
disintegrating race.
Sharks and wolves may no longer be figured as types of prandial haste.
My friends, the teamsters, stuffed and swallowed with a rapidity which
was alarming but for the dexterity they showed, and which could only
have come of long practice.
In fifteen minutes the room was empty, and those fellows who were not
feeding grain to their mules lighted cigars and lingered round the bar.
Just then my artist rushed in, seized me by the arm, and said in my ear,
“We’ll have _our_ supper over to Mrs. Copples’s. O no, I guess
not--Sarah Jane--arms peeled--cooking up stuff--old woman gone into the
milk-room with a skimmer.” He then added that if I wanted to see what I
had been spared, I might follow him.
We went round an angle of the building and came upon a high bank, where,
through wide-open windows, I could look into the Chinese kitchen.
By this time the second table of teamsters were under way, and the
waiters yelled their orders through to the three cooks.
This large, unpainted kitchen was lighted up by kerosene lamps. Through
clouds of smoke and steam dodged and sprang the cooks, dripping with
perspiration and grease, grabbing a steak in the hand and slapping it
down on the gridiron, slipping and sliding around on the damp floor,
dropping a card of biscuits and picking them up again in their fists,
which were garnished by the whole bill of fare. The red papers with
Chinese inscriptions, and little joss-sticks here and there pasted upon
each wall, the spry devils themselves, and that faint, sickening odor of
China which pervaded the room, combined to produce a sense of deep,
sober gratitude that I had not risked their fare.
“Now,” demanded Smith, “you see that there little white building
yonder?”
I did.
He struck a contemplative position, leaned against the house, extending
one hand after the manner of the minstrel sentimentalist, and softly
chanted:
“‘’Tis, O, ’tis the cottage of me love;’
“and there’s where they’re getting up as nice a little supper as can be
found on this road or any other. Let’s go over!”
So we strolled across an open space where were two giant pines towering
sombre against the twilight, a little mountain brooklet, and a few quiet
cows.
“Stop,” said Smith, leaning his back against a pine, and encircling my
neck affectionately with an arm; “I told you, as regards Sarah Jane, how
my feelings stand. Well, now, you just bet she’s on the reciprocate!
When I told old woman Copples I’d like to invite you over,--Sarah Jane
she passed me in the doorway,--and said she, ‘Glad to see _your_
friends.’”
Then _sotto voce_, for we were very near, he sang again:
“‘’Tis, O, ’tis the cottage of me love;’
“and C. K.,” he continued familiarly, “you’re a judge of wimmen,”
chucking his knuckles into my ribs, whereat I jumped; when he added,
“There, I knew you was. Well, Sarah Jane is a derned magnificent female;
number three boot, just the height for me. _Venus de_ Copples, I call
her, and would make the most touching artist’s wife in this planet. If I
design to paint a head, or a foot, or an arm, get my little old Sarah
Jane to peel the particular charm, and just whack her in on the canvas.”