THE LAST OF HIGH LIFE.
In writing this experience I disdain all intent of making myself out a
first-class sufferer or adventurer. Other men by hundreds on our
frontiers have endured far more, suffered far more, passed through many
more perils and combated them more courageously. Mine as compared to
theirs is a mere priming, a rush-light candle to an electric lamp. Our
mountains and lone valleys hold many a skeleton whose unburied,
unrecorded bones are the only relics and proofs of a live, lingering
death, preceded by hours of pain and misery. Mine was the merest
foretaste of their hardships and sufferings, and it is my chief desire
that this story shall help to a clearer realization of the perils,
hardships, and sufferings of our unknown pioneers. I passed a very
comfortable night at the foot of my snowslide, save sundry aches in my
three frozen toes. I have passed very many nights far more uncomfortably
when surrounded by all the so-called comforts of civilization, in
insect-infested beds at slovenly taverns, in rooms stifling with the
midsummer heat of New York; in cold, fireless chambers with damp beds.
Some of our civilization doesn’t civilize in the matter of comfort. Down
there in my snow hole I was better off in regard to artificial heat than
one-third the population of France, who, in their damp stone houses,
shiver over a pot of coals from November till April, while thousands
have not even this luxury. I had any amount of fuel about me, provisions
for days, powder and shot, and if more snow came I had but to let it
fall, build up the walls of my hole and protect me from the blasts. I
knew of a man caught thus in a storm on the Summit, who made a hole for
himself by kindling a fire on the snow, allowing it to melt, and going
downward with it as it melted. When the storm ended his cavity was twice
the size of a hogshead, and he emerged from it and came to our house in
Eureka Valley. Snow rightly applied, will prove man’s greatest protector
from cold, providing it is deep enough. It is the intensely cold blast
sweeping over hard, frozen ground, that kills both animal and vegetable
life.
I looked up at dawn, after finishing my breakfast, or rather the remains
of the banquet which had continued at intervals all night--for there is
nothing like eating and drinking to keep up one’s spirits and keep out
the cold, and one strong cup of coffee under such conditions is worth a
pint of whiskey, since it gives a renewal of vigor which doesn’t flash
up and then out like alcohol. I looked on the contract before me. I had
that three hundred feet of steep icy incline to climb. There was no
getting round it by gradual or zigzag upward approaches. The way to the
right and left broke off in ugly precipices. A little exploration to
find an easier route satisfied me and sent me back frightened to my
camp. For crossing on what I deemed snows with a firm foundation
underneath, I was startled to find my pole running through this surface
in an empty void beneath. Then the entire area for twenty feet square
suddenly settled down an inch or two with an ominous scrunch! which
sent my heart seemingly up in my mouth and my hair up on its various
ends. I was walking on a frail crust of snow which had formed over the
deep gorges ploughed by the rains and torrents of ages down the mountain
side. Some of these were fifteen or twenty feet deep, with rocky sides
almost perpendicular, and such pits, blocked up at either end with snow,
were regular man-traps. I hauled myself up to the place from whence I
had slipped the previous evening. The job occupied the entire morning.
There were the two snowshoes, the pole and my pack to manage, besides my
own earthly organization. In places the descent was so steep that I was
obliged to drag myself and cargo upward a foot at a time, and then chock
my feet with a knife to prevent slipping back. The moral of which is, it
is easier to go down than to go up, and easier to fall than to rise in
many ways. It does seem singular that these coincidences should be so
coincident between the world of materiality and that of morality. It was
a very laborious task, and when about noon I reached the top, I was sick
from exhaustion, and lay down for some minutes on the ledge of snow
hardly wide enough to hold me. Then, with shaky knees, I picked my way
very slowly over another dangerous mile around the mountain-side, where
every step was furnished with extra accommodation for slipping, and in
many spots where, had I slipped, I should have gone farther and fared
much worse than on the evening before. I wished I was a goose, for a
goose could in four minutes have accomplished a distance which took me
all day. We pride ourselves on our powers and the ways and means we have
devised for transporting our clumsy carcases, but after all, in point
of locomotion, we are individually miserably inferior to a goose, and
all our ingenuity and mind has not been able only to lift us from the
inferior position wherein nature has in this respect placed us, as
compared with a goose.
I arrived at Hulse’s empty cabin about an hour before dark. The place
looked melancholy, murderous, and cold. The locality was higher than
ours in Eureka Valley, and not so well protected. Of the house little
was visible save the ridgepole. Five feet of snow lay on the kitchen
roof, which could easily be walked on. I gained entrance with some
difficulty through the upper sash of a front window. The door was
permanently barred for the winter by snow. I was no sooner in the house
than the requirements of the situation drove me out again to collect
fuel for the night. There was no rest for the wicked. It is only when
man is entirely alone that he realizes how many things are necessary not
only to his comfort but his very existence. A bear could have lain
during the night in comfort at that house on a bed of straw. The
assertion that “man wants but little here below” is not true, and should
no longer pass uncontradicted. Here was I, at that time, a dweller in
the wilderness with the foxes--a tramp, standing almost within the
threshhold of beggary, owner neither of house nor lands, and a cipher
“on change.” Yet I couldn’t get along without iron and steel, phosphorus
and sulphur, or my matches, coffee from the tropics, sugar from the
Indies, salt from somewhere, pepper from pepperland, grain ground to
flour, chemicals to “raise it,” tea from China, and utensils of tin to
keep it in. It is good to be so alone once in one’s life to realize how
much man’s present development is due to the numberless articles he
brings from all the ends of the earth for his subsistence and comfort,
and what an endless amount of labor is necessary to keep him up to his
present standard of development.
My fuel was pine bark, stripped from the surrounding trees. It came off
easily in great sheets, making an imposing-looking pile as heaped in the
kitchen, and burned like shavings. The night passed in alternate cat
naps and firing up. I would doze, to wake up shivering, finding the room
dark and the fire nearly out. Throwing on more bark, the flames leaped
up. I dozed again, to wake up in cold and darkness as before. It was a
gloomier camp than the one of the night previous. An empty house always
has a tomb-like atmosphere about it, and, when alone, I prefer a bivouac
under the trees. With morning came a heavy snowstorm, or rather a
continuation of the snow that had been falling all winter. I started
out. The pine boughs along the road brushed my face, where, in summer,
they would have been many feet over my head. The strap of one of my
snowshoes tore out of the wood, and left me crippled as to further
progress until I repaired it. The snow was soft, and to get off the
shoes was to sink in it to the middle. I was literally afloat on a sea
of snow, and to get overboard was to founder and flounder--another proof
of man’s miserable helplessness as compared with the goose. It began to
occur to me that this storm was one of unusual severity. It blew
violently, and the snow at times came in such whirls that I could not
open my eyes for several seconds. If I had not in this story
determined, in point of detail, to reduce everything to a rigid
mathematical accuracy of statement, I might say that the snow blinded me
for minutes, since seconds seem very long under these circumstances.
Time seems to be a quality or a something, which, in point of length or
shortness, is largely dependent on one’s condition and sensations. A
good time is always short--a bad time always long.
The aim on starting that morning was to reach Strawberry Flat, fourteen
miles distant. There is no road over the Sierras without its Strawberry
Flat, generally so called because no strawberries are ever found there.
This Strawberry Flat, then, contained a population of four men, and was
regarded by us in Eureka valley as a bustling place. In two hours I gave
up all idea of reaching Strawberry Flat, and I concentrated my hopes on
an empty house four miles below Hulse’s. Given good weather and a crust
on the snow, I could with tolerable ease have made the fourteen miles
between Hulse’s and Strawberry. But the wind was ahead, the snow
constantly blinded me, and as it came much more horizontally as driven
by the blast than perpendicularly, and being of a sleety nature, formed
at intervals of every few minutes a slim film of ice on my face, which,
as with my hand I swept it off, fell to the ground in broken ice casts
of my ordinary countenance. The empty house was at last reached. It was
past noon. The empty house was not there. Where it once stood was more
empty than ever. The weight of the snow had crushed the shanty. A few
timbers and splinters sticking out told the story. There was but one
thing to do--return to Hulse’s. To go forward was impossible, and so I
fought my way back. It was a hard fight, for the wind and the snow at
times seemed as if inspired by the demons of the air or some spirit
cause or effect which is expressed by such term. They beat and buffeted
and blinded me, so that twice I lost my way, blundered about in circles,
and got back to Hulse’s about three in the afternoon only through the
wandering of sheer stupidity or the guidance of some special
providence--perhaps both. Tired as I was it was necessary to go
straightway to work and get in more pine bark for the night. There was
no lack of business on this trip. I never had a moment to spare from
morning till night. One’s body is an imperious master, and, unsupported
by civilization or the help of one’s fellow-beings, it keeps one on the
keen jump to supply it with food, fuel, and cover.
As I lay stretched in my blankets before the blaze that night I heard
from time to time a sharp crack overhead. I gazed upward and made a most
unpleasant discovery. It was another form of Damocles’ sword over me.
The rafters were bent like bows from the great pressure of the snow on
the roof. The cracking was a notice that they might not stand the strain
much longer. The roof might at any time tumble in with several tons of
snow upon me. This weight was steadily increasing. I could not go out in
the storm, nor could I remove the snow from the roof. The situation kept
my mind busy while the body was at rest, and anxiety and suspense are
about as wearing as toting in pine bark after snow-shoeing all day in a
snowstorm. Hulse’s was my home and anxious seat for two days. The sword
of Damocles hung and cracked, but did not fall. I found Hulse’s store
of provision under the boards of the front room floor. The boards were
weighted down by a great pile of shingles. It was this monument of
shingles in the parlor which caused me to suspect the existence of the
cache. Taking from the big box I found underneath a renewed supply of
flour and pork, and breaking the face of Hulse’s family clock, also
packed therein, a matter never revealed until this present writing, I
re-closed it, buried it, boarded it over and re-piled the shingles over
it.
On the fourth morning of this excursion the storm was over, the sky
clear, the heavens brightly blue, and the newly fallen snow had dressed
the pines all in new suits. For the second time I bade Hulse’s lone
house a doubtful farewell, for after travelling all day I had before
succeeded only in bringing up there at night, and knew not but that I
might do so again. The newly fallen snow being very light and feathery,
I made slow progress. A frozen crust grants the best track for
snowshoes. As the sun got higher it melted this feathery top snow,
fusing it into a close, sodden mass, which stuck and bunched on the
bottoms of the shoe runners. This delayed me still more. Other
troublesome obstacles were the little rivulets and brooks, which,
cutting through the snow, left banks on either side six or seven feet in
height. To climb these was difficult. The snow gave way, and one could
only flounder through and up to the top. Besides, it was necessary to
wade the creeks. This wet my feet and caused more snow to bunch and
freeze on them. Night came, and with it an increase of cold, which,
causing the snow to freeze to a crust on top, iced and smoothed the
track anew for me. But with one additional facility for making
progress, I lacked another. That was the strength and freshness with
which I had started at morn.
My day had been one of most laborious progress, wading creeks,
floundering through their soft snowbanks, and stopping every ten minutes
to clean my shoes of damp snow. I had no other grease for their bottoms
save a bit of pork, which I wore out upon them. Snowshoes won’t run well
unless frequently greased. Then there was no rest for my body. The
supply of pines from about whose roots the snow had melted away had
given out; to step off the shoes was to sink to the middle; to rest at
all was to rest squatting; a few minutes’ trial of this position under
the most favorable circumstances will convince any reader of its
back-aching tendencies. Man is a lying animal; I mean he must lie down
to recuperate. My meals I cooked on the snow. The regular _menu_ was
coffee, bread, and pork. The base of the kitchen was a big piece of dry
pine bark, always at hand. On this the fire was kindled. The evolution
of coffee under these conditions was slow, because the water for making
it had first to be melted from snow in the coffee-pot, and snow under
these circumstances melts with an exasperating slowness. The quantity
required to make a single pint of water is something remarkable. I think
I was obliged to fill that vessel four or five times with snow to get
the suitable quantity of water. Then it must be remembered that the
water would not proceed to boil until all the snow was melted. “A
watched pot never boils,” but a watched pot of plain water is velocity
itself when compared with a pot of snow and water watched by a tired and
hungry being in the wilderness. Night found me twelve miles from
Strawberry Flat. About one in the morning I found another empty cabin.
This was four miles from the desired haven. It was desolation inside and
out--the windows gone, the door torn from its hinges, the inside a
litter of snow and rubbish, and one dead cow in the kitchen. The
cooking-stove remained. I cleared the grate of snow and attempted a
fire. It wouldn’t draw. Of course it wouldn’t draw, for the stovepipe
was full of snow. Then I kindled the fire on the top of the stove and
gradually burned up a portion of the house. Like Sherman and Napoleon, I
lived on the country invaded. The firelight cast its ruddy glow on the
surrounding domestic desolation and the red dead cow, which, being
frozen hard as a rock, served for a seat. I waited for the morn; but the
morn would not come. I saw from the sashless windows the preliminary
streaks of dawn ever so faintly lighting up the eastern horizon full
forty times, and found they were only in my imagination, so covetous for
the coming day. When the sun did rise he came up in the opposite
direction.
Impatient of waiting longer, and converting myself to the false belief
that the light was really coming in what turned out to be the west, I
did battle in the dark with the last four miles of the journey. All went
well until I reached a certain point in the road, which was now well
defined through the trees. There every time I brought up in a clump of
bushes and lost the track. Back, time after time, I went, seeking with
careful calculation to make a fresh and truer start, only to bring up
again in brambles and briers. When the light did come, I had, for two
hundred yards, in this going and coming, beaten a path in the snow
which looked as if travelled over for a week. Daylight showed what a
ridiculously trifling turn had caused me thus to miss the route. The
moral of which is that man’s welfare is often wrecked on some trifling
error. A failure to say, “Good morning” to an acquaintance, a long,
gloomy countenance or putting one’s knife in the mouth, or guzzling down
soup or coffee with undue noise, has repelled one man from another, and
such repulsion has sent our fortunes on the wrong track altogether. I
was welcomed at the Strawberry House by six hounds, who, in the still
faint light, made at me as they would at another beast, and the first
few moments of my arrival on this outpost of civilization was occupied
in energetic attempts to keep what was left of me from being eaten by
the dogs. Indeed, the way of the transgressor is hard. I had never
injured these dogs. However, the hospitality I experienced at Palmer’s
stood out in bold relief against the churlishness of their brute
creation.