Read Ebook: A Breeze from the Woods 2nd Ed. by Bartlett W C William Chauncey

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ever put upon any of the feline tribe, would have come to grief. Their short, stumpy tails and bad countenances came near drawing the fire of one of the pieces. But although wild game is better than tame meat, there is no evidence on record that a wild cat is any better than a tame one. They only needed handsome tails to have been taken for half-grown tigers. If every creature with an unlovely countenance is to be put to death on that account, what would become of some men and women who are not particularly angelic? The pussies are out for their dinner, and so are we. We cannot eat them, and they must not eat us. Each of them may feast on a brace of song-birds before night. But it may be assumed that each of the females who make up the party are competent to make way with a brace of innocent doves for dinner.

If it were not for the fox, the wild-cat and the hawk, the quail is so wonderfully prolific here that it would overrun the country, destroying vineyards and grain fields without limit. I suspect, also, that the great hooded owl drops down from his perch at night, and regales himself on young quails, whose nightly covert he knows as well as any bird in the woods. It is easy enough to find out what the owl eats, but does anybody know who eats the owl? You may criticise him as a singing bird, and he is rather monotonous along in the small hours of the morning. But worse music than that may be heard in-doors, and not half so impressive, withal. There is no harm in noting that the two or three attempts to sing "Sweet Home" by the camp-fire on the first night were failures. At the time when the tears should have started, there was a break and a laugh which echoed far up in the ravine. Nobody had lost a home, but five happy mortals had found one, the roof of which was of emerald, supported by great pillars of redwood, which cast their shadow far out in the wilderness, as the flames shot up from the camp-fire. The game supper was no failure. One only needs to throw overboard two-thirds of the modern appliances of the kitchen, including the cast-iron stove--that diabolical invention of modern times--to insure perfect success in the simple business of cooking a dinner. Do not, good friends, forget the currant jelly, or you may weary of doves and cotton-tails, as the Israelites did of quails and manna. And if you want the elixir of life, make the tea of soft spring water, which you will never find issuing out of any limestone or chalk rock, or where flints much abound.

The little white tent had a weird aspect, as though it might have been a ghost in the forest. It was absurdly intrusive, and harmonized with nothing in the woods or foreground save the white wall of mist that every night trended landward from the ocean, but never touched the shore. After a little time the novelty of the camp wears off, and a blessed peace comes down on weary eyes and souls. There is no use in keeping one eye open because a dry stick cracks now and then, or the night-hawk sputters as he goes by. Daylight comes at four o'clock, and the woods are thronged with animal life. The song-sparrow begins to twitter, finches and linnets hop about; and down in the oaks the robins sing, and the woodpeckers are tapping the dry limbs overhead. The gray squirrel arches his handsome tail and runs along in merry glee; and there is such a wealth and joy of abounding life--such a sweet concord of sounds and brimming over of gladness--that Heaven seems a little nearer for the morning anthem. But a heavenly state is not inconsistent with a reasonable appetite.

Did it ever strike you that the asceticism of the middle ages, which retreated to the cloister content with water-cresses as a bill of fare, was never very fruitful of high and profound discourse? The philosopher who goes up into the clouds to talk, and prefers gruel to trout before going, makes an epigastric mistake. He has taken in the wrong ballast; and has omitted some good phosphorescent material, which might have created a nimbus around his head as he entered the clouds. A mistake in the gastric region leads to errors of the head and heart. I do not know whether there is any ground of hope for a people who have not only invented cast-iron stoves, but have invented "help" in the form of the she-Titans who have made a wholesome dinner well-nigh impossible. Death on a pale horse is poetical enough. But death in the black stove of many a kitchen is terribly realistic. If these trout were to be cooked by "hireling hands," the very woods would be desecrated, and the smoke of the sacrifice would be an abomination.

Does a brook trout ever become a salmon trout? But the former goes down to the sea, and comes back the next year a larger fish. He ascends the same stream, and may be a foot or more in length, according to the size of the stream. I refer, of course, to those Coast Range streams which communicate with the ocean. If a bar or lagoon is formed at the mouth of a stream, so that it is closed for a few months, and nearly all the fish are taken out by the hook, on the opening of the lagoon or creek a fresh supply of trout will come in from the ocean, differing in no conceivable way from brook trout, except that they are larger. They take the grasshopper and the worm like honest fish bred up to a country diet. Some ichthyologist may show a distinction without a difference. The camp-fire reveals none.

The ocean slope of the Coast Range is much the best for a summer excursion. The woods and the waters are full of life. There is a stretch of sixty miles or more from the San Gregorio Creek in San Mateo County, to the Aptos Creek on Monterey Bay, in Santa Cruz County, where there is an average of one good trout stream for every five miles of coast line. There are wooded slopes, dense redwood forests, and mountains in the background where the lion still has a weakness for sucking colts, and the grizzly will sometimes make a breakfast on a cow, in default of tender pigs. But neither lion nor bear is lord of the forest. Both are sneaking cowards, the lion not even fighting for her whelps. It is better, however, on meeting either, not to prolong the scrutiny, until you have surveyed a tree every way suitable for climbing. The "shinning" having been done, you can make up faces and fling back defiance with some show of coolness. Then all along there is a fore-ground of yellow harvest fields, farm-houses and orchards; the cattle cluster under the evergreen oaks at mid-day. Wide off is the great sounding sea with its fretting shore line and its eternal reach of waters--so near and yet so remote. Low down on the horizon are the white specks of ships drawing near from the other side of the globe--coming perhaps from the dear old home to lay treasures at your feet in the new one--linking the new and the old together by this swift and silent journey, begun as of yesterday, and ended to-day. There is no place afar off. The palms lift up their "fronded" heads just over there; and the cocoanut drops down as from an opening heaven--more is the shame that those frowsy, low-browed cannibals are not content therewith, but so affect the rib roast of a white man, and that too in a tropical climate! If men would always look up for their food they might become angels. But looking down, they may yet become tadpoles or demons. It needs but a little Buddhism grafted on to the development theory to turn some of the human species back into devil-fish. For when one is wholly given up to seek his prey by virtue of suction and tentacula, he might as well live under water as out of it. It might be hard to go back and begin as a crocodile; but if some of our species have once been there and show no improvement worthy of mention since, why the sooner these voracious, jaw-snapping creatures are turned back perhaps the better. Ketchum has made a hundred thousand dollars this year in buying up doubtful titles and turning widows and orphans out of their homes. Tell me, oh Brahmin, if this man was not a crocodile a thousand years ago? And if he slips any where a link in his chain of development, where will he be a thousand years hence?

It is a good thing to pitch the tent hard by the seashore once in a while. Salt is preservative; and there is a tonic in the smell of sea weed. Your best preserved men and women have been duly salted. The deer sometimes come down to get a sip of saline water, and are partial to mineral springs, which one can find every few miles along the mountain slopes. The sea weeds, or mosses, are in their glory. Such hues of carnation and purple, and such delicate tracery as you shall never see in any royal garden. A hook was thrown in for the fish, perchance, with the dyes of Tyrian purple. But there came out a great wide-mouthed, slimy eel, which was kicked down the beach into the water, with a hint never to reveal so much ugliness again on any shore of the round world. Your sea-lion has no beauty to speak of; but he is an expert fisher and knows how to dry himself upon the rocks. When a hundred of them take to the water, with their black heads bobbing about, they might be taken for so many shipwrecked contrabands. How many ages were required for the ocean to quarry these grains of sand, which under a glass, become cubes and pentagons as goodly as the stones of Venice? No more under this head, for "quahaugs" and mussels are terribly anti-suggestive.

The young quails are only half-grown; but they run about in very wantonness in all directions. How keen is the instinct of danger in every tenant of the woods; and yet birds hop about in all directions with a consciousness that no evil will befall them. A couple of wood-peckers on a trunk of a tree just overhead, have curiously ribbed and beaded it up with acorns fitted into holes for winter use. So nicely is the work done, and so exact the fit, that the squirrels cannot get them out. And yet the wild doves which we want for our breakfast, flit away upon the first sign of approach. The era of shot-guns is not a millennium era, and the screech of a bursting shell is not exactly a psalm of life. The tenderness of the Hindoo in the matter of taking life, for food, I suspect, is because of his philosophy. Soul transmigration holds him in check, otherwise he might be found eating his grandmother. But a school-girl riots on tender lambs, and is not a whit afraid of eating her ancestors. There is a curious linking of innocence with blood-shedding in our times, enough to suggest an unconscious cannibalism, one remove from that of the happy islanders.

An old farmer came up to see us, attracted by the white tent, and having a lurking suspicion that we might be squatters. He confirmed the theory that the flow of water from springs in this region was permanently increased by the great earthquake. "You see," said he, "it gave natur' a powerful jog." After the shock, a column of dust arose from the chalk cliffs and falling banks on the shore line, which could have been seen for twenty miles. There was a noise as of the rumbling of chariots in the mountain tops, and the smoke went up as from the shock of armies in battle. The great sea was silent for a moment, and then broke along the shore with a deep sigh as though some mighty relief had come at last. All the trees of the mountain sides bowed their heads, as if adoring that Omnipotence which made the mountains tremble at its touch. If one could have been just here, he might have seen the grandest sight of ages; for this was the very focus of the earthquake. As it was, we got no impression of that event above a suspicion that a mad bull was butting away at the northwest corner of a little country church, with some alarming signs that he was getting the best of the encounter.

One learns to distinguish the sounds of this multitudinous life in the woods, after a few days, with great facility. The bark of the coyote becomes as familiar as that of a house dog. But there is the solitary chirp of a bird at midnight, never heard after daylight, of which beyond this we know nothing. We know better from whence come the cries, as of a lost child at night, far up the mountain. The magpies and the jays hop round the tent for crumbs; and a coon helped himself from the sugar box one day in our absence. He was welcome, though a question more nice than wise was raised as to whether, on that occasion, his hands and nose were clean. There is danger of knowing too much. It is better not to know a multitude of small things which are like nettles to the soul. What strangely morbid people are those who can suggest more unpleasant things in half an hour than one ought to hear in a life-time! Did I care before the question was raised, whether the coon's nose were clean or otherwise? Now there is a lurking suspicion that it was not. If you offer your friend wine, is it necessary to tell him that barefooted peasants trampled out the grapes? Is honeycomb any the sweeter for a confession that a bee was also ground to pulp between the teeth? We covet retentive memories. But more trash is laid up than most people know what to do with. There is great peace and blessedness in the art of forgetfulness. The memory of one sweet, patient soul is better than a record of a thousand selfish lives.

It was a fine conceit, and womanly withal, which wove a basket out of plantain rods and clover, and brought it into camp filled with wild strawberries. Thanks, too, that the faintest tints of carnation are beginning to touch cheeks that were so pallid a fortnight ago. Every spring bursting from the hill-side is a fountain of youth, although none have yet smoothed out certain crow tracks. The madrono, the most brilliant of the forest trees, sheds its outer bark every season; when the outer rind curls up and falls off, the renewed tree has a shaft polished like jasper or emerald. When humanity begins to wilt, what a pity that the cuticle does not peel as a sign of rejuvenation! There is also a hint of a sanitary law requiring people averse to bathing to peel every spring.

But let us hope that the musician is born who will yet come to the woods and take down all the bird songs. What a splendid baritone the horned owl has! Who has written the music of the orioles and thrushes? Who goes to these bird operas at four o'clock in the morning? There is room for one fresh, original music book, the whole of which can be written at a few sittings upon a log just where the forests are shaded off into copses and islands of verdure beyond.

It is something to have lived three weeks without a sight of the sheriff, the doctor or the undertaker. Something of a victory to have passed out from under the burden of intense anxiety into a condition of serene indifference as to how this boisterous old world was getting on. If so much as a fugitive letter had reached us, it would have been construed into a mild case of assault and battery. The business of rejuvenation commences with lying down on the ground at night with the head due north, that the polar current may strike the weary brain first and gently charge the whole mortal system. The days of renewal may end by circumventing a two-pound trout, or with a long range rifle shooting at a running deer. But as no pilgrim ever reached the gates of Paradise with a pack on his back, so it is reasonably certain that heaven never came down to one who carried his burden into the wilderness in vacation.

What a great repose there is in these mountains draped in purple and camping like giants hard by the sea! And yet what an infinite shifting of light and shadow there is on sea and shore! Is the artist yet to be born on this soil who will paint the mountains in the glory of an evening transfiguration; or who will catch the inspiration of these grand defiles, opening vistas, and landscapes ripened and subdued under the harvest sun? We will leave him our bill of fare, that he may take heart on finding that while fame follows translation, a good dinner may safely precede that event. And as for you, oh friend, with the sallow face and sunken eyes--you had better get to the woods and read it for very life.

LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.

LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY.

It matters little how one betakes himself to the wilderness, so that he gets there in some fitting mood to enjoy its great hospitality. If a bruised and battered guest, so much the more need of the profound peace and restfulness of the woods. There is a fine contrast in the autumn tints of yellow stubble fields set with the unfading green of oaks, like emeralds in settings of gold. The mysteries of the uplifted mountains are veiled in with a dreamy haze, as if all harsh and jerky outlines were the unfinished places yet to be rounded into fullness and beauty before the day of unveiling comes. These mighty throes of nature may be in accordance with some law of adjustment working towards an eternal perfection of finish, of which we have not yet attained so much as a dim conception. If our playhouses are toppled over, so much the better for some of the shams which now and then need the wholesome revision of fires and earthquakes. You see that ambitious wooden palace down the valley. What does it symbolize more than pretence, weakness and barrenness of all aesthetic culture? Some day nature will feel the affront, and this blot in the foreground of a noble picture will be gone. Is it because this type of civilization is but for a day, that the habitations of men are built for a day also? Where do our architects get their inspiration, that they cut such fantastic capers in wood? It might be well to put a new padlock on the tomb of Cicero before any further imitations of the villa at Tusculum are perpetrated. The savage leaves behind some show of broken pottery, or at least, here and there, an arrowhead of flint. We do not build well enough to secure any respectable ruins. What other antiquities, besides debts, are we likely to bequeath to posterity?

The trailing dust of the beaten thoroughfare comes to an end at last. The ox-teams have crawled down into the valley, more patient than the driver, who causes a perpetual series of undulations to run along their backs by an inhuman prodding. There are some vocations which seem to develop all the hatefulness and cruelty of human nature, and this is evidently one of them. In five minutes more there will be no visible sign of civilization in all the horizon. If one is piqued at the silence of a reception in the wilderness, let him consider how gracious it is, withal. It will grow upon him from day to day, until he may come to think that these very solitudes have been waiting for his coming a thousand years. It is not to go apart from ourselves, but to recover a more intense self-consciousness, that we need this seclusion. The ceaseless jar and uproar of life set in a hard materialism at last, because there has been an absence of all softening influences and all seasons of communion. It is a small thing that the dead are sometimes turned to stone by some chemistry of nature. But what of the living who are every day turning to stone by an increasing deadness to all human sympathies?

The host is at home in the wilderness, but you may not see his face for many a day. In the meantime there is the guest chamber; enter and make no ado about it. The trees overarch you gently, and bend with graceful salutations; the rocks are most generous hearth-stones, and the pools under the cliffs are large enough for a morning splash. You have only to climb the precipice yonder to count more towns and villages than you have fingers. But the sight is not worth the effort, since one needs to pray earnestly for deliverance from both. If most country villages on this coast are not so many blots upon otherwise fine landscapes, how much do they fall short of them? The authorities of the most favored town in the State, so far as climate and physical characteristics go, could think of nothing better than to destroy a line of Mission willows, extending through the main street for nearly a mile--every tree a monument of historic interest--and then, with innocent boorishness, looked up to the faces of men who were ashamed of them, for some token of approval. Tree-murder has culminated, let us hope, since Time has been busy swinging his scythe close upon the heels of the culprits. There may be hope for the next generation. The children born upon the soil may get a better inspiration, and draw a more generous life from the earth which nourishes them. How, otherwise, shall these dreary highways and barren villages be translated from ugliness to beauty? What a divine challenge do these encompassing mountains and grandest of forests send out to men to cease defiling the earth!

It is not so much a question whether the "coming man" will be a wine-bibber, as whether the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for him. Will he plant trees? Will he train rivulets adown the mountains into stone fountains by dusty roadsides? Will he refuse to cut down trees because they are old, with as sturdy a decision as he would refrain from cutting a man's legs off because he chanced to be old and venerable? Will he recognize the great truth that the earth is the garden of the Lord, and that he is sent forth to dress it, and make it, if possible, still more beautiful? If he will not, by all that is good, let a message be sent to the "coming man" not to come.

What a large freedom there is in the wilderness! You come and go with a consciousness that you will be fed and lodged in a manner both befitting you and your host. There are no pressing attentions, and no snobbery to offend. Mr. Bullion said at his feast that he had made more than a quarter of a million of dollars by some lucky ventures this year; and that he is interested in several horses of a remarkably fast gait. Did he propose to make some grateful return for so much good fortune? Would he found a library? endow a school? encourage some scientific expedition? become a generous patron of the struggling literature of the new commonwealth? He had thought of none of these things. Nor did it occur to him how much emptiness there was at the feast. It is saddest of all that so many of our rich men neither recognize times nor opportunities. They have not yet learned to make a feast an occasion of noble deeds. Of grosser hospitality there is no lack; but the lame, the halt, and the blind, are none the better for it.

There is something ignoble in reducing the problem of life to a mere game of "keeps." The world is probably mortgaged or put in pawn for more than it is worth, considering how much rubbish goes with it. The wrappers of Egyptian mummies of high lineage, which were wound up four thousand years ago, have been sold in our times for paper-stock. But will the men of these times, who boast that they have got the world in pawn, contribute so much as one nether garment to posterity four thousand years hence? The world changes hands every thirty years, and a new set of pawn-keepers appears; but it is the same old grip. There will be confusion yet, when the secret is found out that the world is worth only a moiety of the sum for which it is pledged, and there is a general call for collaterals.

It is not safe to despise this tonic of the wilderness. Most men do not know how small they are until they go forth into some larger place. It is good to have illusions dispelled in a healthy way. A man is great in the counting-room, pulpit or forum, because no one has thought it worth the while to dispute the assumption. The position held at first by sufferance may ripen into a possessory title, provided he sticks to his claim.

There is that spring yonder under the shelving rock, having a trace of sulphur and iron, and possibly, some other qualities for physical regeneration. For two hours at mid-day there has been a succession of birds and beasts to its waters. Curiously enough, there has been no collision; but every kind in its own order. The roe, with a half-grown fawn, comes down early in the morning; and as the heat of mid-day increases, coveys of quails, led by the parent-birds, emerge from the thickets, and trail along to the spring. Later still, orioles, thrushes, robins, linnets, and a wild mockingbird without any name, go down not only to drink, but to lave in the waters. You may watch for days and months, but you will never see the hawk or the crow, or any unclean bird do this thing. But birds of song, which have neither hooked beaks nor talons, sprinkle themselves with purifying waters, and are innocent of all violence and blood. The spring is not only a tonic, but it serves to take the conceit out of a ponderous man who has been putting on the airs of Wisdom in the woods. He, too, went down on "all-fours" to drink; and such an ungraceful figure did this counting-house prince make, and blew so like a hippopotamus backing out of the ooze and mire, that all the woods rang with wildest mirth. But a lad, bending the visor of his cap, lifted the water to his mouth, and drank erect like one to the manor born. For the space of half an hour the great man was as humble as a child, and there was no more wisdom in him. But the spirit of divination overtook him at last; with a tape line he set about measuring the girth of the noblest redwood tree of the forest; and with pencil in hand was calculating the number of thousand feet of inch-boards it would make, if cut up at the mills! If the gentle hamadryad which, for aught I know, still dwelleth in every living tree, saw this gross affront, there were utterances which were nigh unto cursing. Were the forests made for no better ends than this sordid wood-craft which hews down and saws them into deals for dry-good boxes and the counters of shop-keepers? There is not one tree too many on this round globe; and the whole herd of wood craftsmen ought to be served with notices to set out a new tree for every one destroyed, or quit at once.

It is worth the inquiry, at what point that tendency in modern civilization is to be arrested, which is hastening the world on to barrenness and desolation. The sites of ruined cities are deserts often; but rarely is one overgrown with forest trees; as though nature were still in revolt, and had no heart for renewal, where for ages she has been ravaged and impoverished by multitudinous populations. Observe, too, how nature shifts her burdens. The sand drifts to-day over the foundations of the vastest cities of antiquity. But when the great cycle of rest is filled out, if so be that the old verdure is restored, what wastes may there not be, and what drifting sands over buried cities in the heart of this continent? What ravages, too, are these new demons yet to commit upon the forests, as they go up and down the mountain sides with wheels of thunder and eyes of flame? Are all the trees of the woods to be offered up to these new idols of civilization?

All sounds are musical in the woods, and the far-off tinkling of a cow-bell is wondrously grateful to the ear. There is nothing marvelous in the sharpened senses of an Indian. This half-grown lad is already a match for the best of them. There is not a sound in the woods, however obscure, that he does not rightly interpret; and I have more than once been misled by his counterfeit imitations of game birds and wild animals. No Indian can reason from observation so accurately as he whose intellect has had the schooling of nature grafted upon the discipline of books. The sharpest insight into nature is never given to the savage, but to him whose grosser senses have been purged, and whose vision is clarified by some wisdom which is let down from above.

All healthy souls love the society of trees; and the mold which feeds them is a better fertilizer of thought than the mold of many books. You see the marks of fires which have swept along these mountain sides; here and there the trunk of a redwood has been streaked by a tongue of flame. But the tree wears its crown of eternal green. It is only the dry sticks and rubbish which are burned up to make more room for the giants; while many noxious reptiles have been driven back to their holes. Possibly, the wood-ticks number some millions less. But very little that is worth saving is consumed.

We shall need a regenerating fire some day, to do for books what is done for the forests. May it be a hot one when it comes. Let no dry sticks nor vermin escape. Ninety in every hundred books which have got into our libraries within the last half century, will fail to enlighten the world until there is one good, honest conflagration. Something might be gained from the ashes of these barren books; therefore, pile on the rubbish, and use the poker freely. Let not the fire go out until some cords of pious doggerel, concocted in the name of poetry, have been added thereto. The giants will survive the flames; but punk-wood, moths, and wood-ticks will all be gone.

A WEEK IN MENDOCINO.

A WEEK IN MENDOCINO.

If one is in robust health and a vigorous trencher-man, who is there on the earth, in these degenerate times, to congratulate him on such good fortune? But no sooner is there a gastric revolt at the diabolical inventions of some high-priestess of the kitchen, with a growing cadaverousness, than every friend is ready with an ominous warning. When we publish a list of the patent medicines recommended, the world will know how many disinterested friends we have. Just now, the earth cure is all-potent. Try it in any shape you like--as a mud bath, a powder, a poultice, or an honest bed at mid-day--and this chemistry of earth and sun will work wonders. Are we not getting back to first principles? You talk of the shaking up which religious dogmas have suffered within the last half century: what is there of all the medical theories of the last fifteen hundred years which now goes unchallenged?

Yosemite has been a little overdone of late. The seashore and the springs are dreadfully haunted by the young lady in rustic hat, garnished with pea-green ribbon, and who either writes poetry, or reads the latest love story. There is comfort in the fact that the territory of this State is not more than half explored, and is not likely to be for some time to come. There are reaches equal to a degree of latitude untrodden, as yet, by the foot of the tourist, and where the clanking of the surveyor's chain and rods has never been heard; and some of these you may find within two hundred miles of San Francisco. Going still farther, there are vales where a white man was, till recently, something of a curiosity. It is interesting to find a country where morganatic marriages are in high repute. The red-headed lumberman's cross-cut saw would not, by this arrangement, descend to his children; nor would an old hunter's powder-horn and ancient rifle, by the same prudential forethought, be handed down to some little vagabond half-breeds.

In twenty-four hours one may be set down in the wildest part of Mendocino County. We selected Anderson Valley, on the headwaters of the Novarro River, not so much for its wildness as because it was the most accessible spot unfrequented by the tourist. It will be hard to miss the Russian River Valley in getting there, and harder still not to linger for a day or two to look at such pictures as no artist has quite succeeded in putting on to his canvas.

The Russian River Valley "pinches out" at Cloverdale, a pretty little town, set down in a bowl with a very large rim--so large, that unless new life should be infused into the town, it will not be likely to slop over. Thence, you reach the head of Anderson Valley, by a jaunt of thirty-two miles, in a northwesterly direction, over a series of low mountain ridges, and through canyons, sometimes widening out into "potreros" large enough for a cattle ranch, and handsome enough for a gentlemen's country-seat. Here the affluents of the Novarro River are drawn together like threads of lace; and the first trout stream leaps and eddies in the deep defiles on its way to the ocean. There is no use of fumbling in an outside pocket for fish-hooks. The stream has a fishy look; but that band of rancheria Indians, who have gone into summer camp on a sand-bar, will settle the trout question for the next ten miles. They pop their heads out of a round hole in one of the wigwams like prairie dogs, and seem to stand on their hind legs, with the others pendent, as if just going to bark. These are the aboriginal Gypsies, fortunate rascals, who pay no house-rent, who want nothing but what they can steal, or what can be got from the brawling stream, or the wooded slopes of the adjacent hills.

These funnel-shaped willow baskets, lodged here and there along the banks, are the salmon traps of the Indians, which have done duty until the spring run was over. When the salmon has once set his head up stream, he never turns it down again until he has reached the extreme limits of his journey and accomplished his destiny. The Indians understand this; and these long willow funnels, with a bell-shaped mouth, are laid down in the spring--a clumsy contrivance to be sure; but the salmon enters and pushes his way on, while this willow cylinder contracts until it closes to a small nozzle. There is daylight ahead; the stubborn fish will not back down, and he cannot "move on." When an Indian gets hungry, he pulls up this willow trap, runs a spit through his fish, holds him over the fire a little while, and his dinner is ready.

There is no fish story which one may not believe when in a gentle mood. And thus, when farther down the stream, a settler showed us a wooden fork such as is used to load gavels of grain, with which, in less than an hour, he pitched out of this same stream a wagon-load of salmon--why should we doubt his veracity? No lover of the gentle art is ever skeptical about the truth of a fish story. Faith and good luck go together. How was our faith rewarded soon afterward, when, taking a "cut-off," at the first cast under a shelving rock, a half-pound trout was landed! It was a grasshopper bait, and another grasshopper had to be run down before another cast. It is wonderful what jumps this insect will make when he is wanted for bait, and the run is up the hill. Another trout snapped illusively, and we had him--larger by a quarter of a pound than the first. It was getting interesting! No doubt the settler pitched out a load of salmon with a wooden fork. A kingdom for a grasshopper! There they go in all directions--and the rascals have wings! The clumsy stage-wagon is creeping far up the hill. A beetle is tried; it won't do--no decent trout ever swallowed a beetle. A dozen splendid game fish were left in that swirl under the rock. Was there too much faith in that wooden fork story, or not enough? There was a hitch somewhere. But it was all right when the passengers dined that day on fried bacon, and we on mountain trout. If the grasshoppers had not been too lively, there would have been trout for all.

Anderson Valley is about eighteen miles long, and half to three-fourths of a mile wide. The hills on the left are belted with a heavy growth of redwood, in fine contrast with the treeless hills on the right, covered with a heavy crop of wild oats, all golden-hued in the August sun. The farms extend across the valley, taking a portion of the hills on either side. There has not been a Government survey made in the valley, but every man was in possession of his own, and did not covet his neighbor's. Land-stealing requires a degree of energetic rascality and enterprise wholly wanting here. So near, and yet so remote! It is as if one had gone a two-days' journey, and had somehow managed to get three thousand miles away. I heard of a man in the valley who took a newspaper, and was disposed to sympathize with him in his misfortune. Why should the spray of one of the dirty surges of the outside world break over into Arcadia? Everybody had enough, and nobody had anything in particular to do. The dwellings had mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside, and an occasional bake-oven garnished the back yard. At the little tavern, such vegetables as strangers "hankered for" were procured at the coast--a distance of twenty-six miles. An old man--he might have been seventy, with a margin of twenty years--had heard of the rebellion, and lamented the abolition of slavery--a mischief which he attributed to a few fanatics. The world would never get on smoothly until the institution of the patriarchs had been restored.

Oh, venerable friend, dwelling in Arcadia! there is much broken pottery in this world which is past all mending; and more which is awaiting its turn to go into the rubbish heap. All that was discovered in the interior of a Western mound was a few fragments of earthenware; for the rest, Time had beaten it all back to the dust. The images, whether of brass, wood, or stone, could not be put together by any of the cohesive arts of our time. It is appointed for some men to go through the world, club in hand, and to break much of the world's crockery as they go. We may not altogether like them. But observe that the men who are stoned by one generation are canonized by the next. There was the great ebony image set up and so long worshipped by the people of this country. How many sleek, fat doctors climbed into their pulpits of a Sunday, to expatiate on the scriptural beauties of this image, and the duty of reverencing it as something set up and continued by Divine authority! It took some whacking blows to bring that ebony idol down; but what a world of hypocrisy, cruelty and lies went into the dust with it! Was there ever a reformer--a genuine image-breaker--who did not, at one time or another, make the world howl with rage and pain? Now, truth is on eternal foundations, and does not suffer, in the long run, by the world's questionings or buffetings. But a consecrated falsehood--whether sacerdotal, political, or social--is some day smitten, as the giant of old, in the forehead, and falls headlong. After all, it is by revolution, that the world makes most of its progress. It is a violent and often disorderly going out of an old and dead condition by the regenerating power, not of a new truth, but of an old one dug out of the rubbish, and freshly applied to the conscience of the world. How many truths to-day lie buried, which, if dug up, would set the world in an uproar! The image-breaker often heralds a revolution. He overturns the idol, of whatever sort it is, letting the light into some consecrated falsehood--not gently, but very rudely, and with a shocking disregard of good manners, as many affirm. This rough-shod evangel, with the rasping voice, and angular features, and pungent words--we neither like him nor his new gospel at first. But he improves on acquaintance, and some day we begin to doubt whether he really does deserve eternal burning.

The world is full of cant; it infects our common speech. The odor of sanctity and the form of sound words are no nearer the living spirit than are those petrifactions which present an outline of men, but never again pulsate with life. Once in every half a century it is needful that the image-breaker should come along and knock on the head the brainless images of cant. The sturdy man of truthful and resolute speech! How irreverent and impious he is! He makes the timid hold their breath, lest he should break something that he ought not to touch. What has he done, after all, but to teach men and women to be more truthful, more courageous, and less in love with shams.

At the close of a little "exhortation," something like this, the old man said--rather dogmatically, I thought--"Stranger, them sentiments of yourn won't do for this settlement." No doubt he was right. They won't do for any settlement where they build mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside of houses, and fry meat within.

It is curious to note tree and tribal limitations. The oak and the redwood do not associate together, but the madrono is the friend of both. The line of redwood limits the habitation of the ground squirrel, and within that line his half-brother, the wood squirrel, arches his tail in the overhanging boughs, and barks just when the charge is out of your gun, with surprising impudence. There is the dominion of trees and animals older and better defined than any law of boundaries which has yet got into our statute-books. Who knows but races of men have overleaped boundaries of Divine ordination, and so must struggle with adverse fate towards nothing more hopeful than extinction. The black man of the tropics, planted near the North Pole, has all the grin taken out of him, and there is nothing but a frigid chatter left. There is the Indian of the great central plains. Have we got into his country, or has he got into ours? There is some confusion of boundaries; and the locomotive, that demon of modern civilization, is tracing new boundaries with a trail of fire. It is possible to put one's finger upon the weak link in the logic that what is bad for the Indian is good for the white man.

That gopher snake just passed on the trail, with a young rabbit half swallowed, illustrates near enough how one-half of the world is trying to swallow the other. Observe, too, that provision of nature, by which game is swallowed larger than the throat. It is the smallest half of the world, it seems, that is trying to swallow the largest half, with good prospect of success. Half a dozen men have located all the redwood timber upon the accessible streams of this county. Looking coastward along the Novarro, there is a chain of townships spanning this stream for fifteen miles in length, owned by two men. You may write down the names of twenty men who are at this moment planning to swallow all the leading business interests of this State. They will elect Governors and Legislators. It don't matter that the game is larger than the throat. In fact, deglutition is already pretty well advanced--as far, at least, as with the rabbit; but with this difference, that our victims will be made to grease themselves.

If the day is preceded by three or four hours of moonlight, you will not often find a deer browsing after the sun is up. His work is done, and he has lain down in a thicket for a morning nap. It was kind of the log-driver to take us to the hills at the faintest streak of dawn. But once there, he slipped away by himself, and in hardly more than half an hour there were three cracks of a rifle. He came round with no game. We had seen none. It was not so very interesting to stand as a sentinel on the hill-tops in the chill of a gray morning, yearning for one's breakfast, and wishing all the deer were locked up in some canyon with a bottomless abyss. A new stand was taken, when presently our friend pointed out the line of a deer's back, standing half hidden by a clump of rocks of nearly the same color. We must both fire together, and make a sure thing of the game. There was a sharp report, and the deer jumped clear of the rocks and disappeared. He fell in his tracks. There was a single bullet-mark. But our friend insisted that both shots had taken effect in the same spot. It was a fawn, not more than two-thirds grown, and the glaze was just coming over its mild, beseeching eyes. We were sorry for a moment that both rifles had not missed. The log-driver shouldered the game, but disclaimed all ownership. A little farther on a dead buck was skewered over a limb, and still farther a buck and a doe were suspended in the same way. It was a good morning's work. Every shot of the log-driver had told. A slight pang of remorse was succeeded by a little glow of exultation. Venison is good, and a hungry man is carnivorous. It is a clear case that the taking of this one deer is right. The log-driver must satisfy his conscience for taking three, as best he can. His left eye had a merry twinkle, however, when, on handing over our gun, he observed that the cap only had exploded, and that the load placed there on setting out was still in the rifle chamber. Well, we got the venison, and the log-driver told his sly story with a keen relish, and some addenda.

This Arcadia is a wondrously human place, after all. Borrowing a pony to ride up the valley three or four miles, night and the hospitality of a neighbor overtook us. A mist settled down over the valley, and under the great overhanging trees not a trace of the road could be seen. "Only give him the rein," said the settler, "and the horse will go straight home." We gave him the rein. An hour, by guess, had gone by, and still that pony was ambling along, snorting occasionally as the dry sticks broke suspiciously in the edge of the woods. If a grizzly was there, his company was not wanted. Another hour had gone by. Pray, how long does it take a pony to amble over three miles in a pitch-dark night? Half an hour later, he turned off to the left, crossed the valley, and brought up at a fence. "Give him the rein," was the injunction. He had that, and a vigorous dig besides. In half an hour more he was on the other side of the valley, drawn up at another fence. It was too dark to discover any house. The true destination was a small white tavern by the roadside, and the light of the wood fire in the great fire-place would certainly shine through the window. The vagabond pony took the spur viciously, and went off under the trees. We were lost; that was certain. It was getting toward midnight. It was clear that this equine rascal was not going home. He had traveled at least four hours, and was now, probably, several miles outside the settlement, unless he had been going around in a circle. A night in a wilderness, enveloped in a chilling fog, the moisture of which was now dripping from the trees, with the darkness too great to discover when the horse laid his ears back as a sign of danger, was the best thing in prospect. Some time afterward he had evidently turned into a field, and a few minutes later was in front of a settler's house. A ferocious dog made it useless to dismount; the bars were jumped--the diminutive cob coming down on his knees, and a moment afterward bringing up under the window of a small house. The window went up slowly, in answer to a strong midnight salutation; and to this day it is not quite clear whether a rifle barrel, a pitchfork, or a hoe-handle was protruded from that window, or whether all this was an illusion born of the darkness of the night.

"Well, stranger, how did you get in here, and what do you want?" asked the keeper of this rural castle.

"I am lost; you must either let me in, or come out and show me the way."

"Likely story you're lost! Reckon that don't go down in this settlement. You ain't lost if you're here, are you?"

"Look here! I borrowed Jimson's pony to go up to Dolman's, and started back after nightfall. Dolman said, 'Give him the reign, and he would go straight back to the tavern.' I gave him the rein, and he has been going for the last four or five hours, except when he stopped two or three times at fences, until he brought up here."

I think the hoe-handle, or whatever it might have been, was slowly drawn in. A match was touched off on the casement, making about as much light as a fire-fly. The settler, shading his eyes, threw a glimmer of light on to the neck of the iron-gray pony.

"Yes; that's Jimson's pony--that are a fact."

A moment after, a tall figure glided out, as from a hole in the wall, and stood by the horse.

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