Chapter III: Part 3

There is a cleft in the mountain, about ten miles to the southwest of Santa Clara. That engineering was done by the Los Gatos. Entering this defile, the stage road winds along the mountain side for six or seven miles, and then turns to the right and goes down the mountain slope to Santa Cruz. But as long as there are any stage roads in sight, or signs of abrading wheels, you will find no trout. Turning to the left and following the ridge, at the height of about two thousand feet, a walk of three or four miles brings one to a point where civilization runs out with the disappearance of the last trail. That mountain lifting its dark crest so kingly into the clouds, is Loma Prieta, the highest crest of the Coast Range. On the north side of that intervening slope, and nearly a thousand feet higher, you will find the source of the Los Gatos. It is six miles away. There a great fountain bubbles out of the mountain side, and the stream, clear and strong, and singing for very joy, goes bounding on to the gorges below. The upper stream has never been defiled by sawdust; and no lout in shining boots ever went up to its head. It is best to go into camp here and take a fresh start the next morning. In the early dawn--before the sun glares on the land and sea--town and hamlet, valley and mountain, have a morning glory, which it were better not to miss. Looking oceanward, the fir and the redwood send up their spires of eternal green from all the valleys. At midnight, the full moon was flooding all the mountain top with light, and was apparently shining upon the still ocean, which had come quite to the base of the mountain. The fog had come in during the night, but hugged the earth so closely that every hillock appeared like an island resting on the calm, white sea. All night long the moon shone on this upper stratum, revealing with wonderful distinctness the tops of the tallest redwoods, while the trunks appeared to be submerged. It was not easy to dispel the illusion that one with a skiff might have paddled from wooded islet to another, treading a thousand intricate channels, drifting past the homes of strange peoples, whose lives were symbolized by this serene and silent sea. But the illusion would not hold water, when, at early dawn, a clumsy two-horse wagon went lumbering down the mountain and disappeared under this white stratum. When the sun came up, all the ragged and fleecy edges rolled in upon the center, and there was a silent seaward march, until at mid-day the fog banked up with perpendicular walls, about a dozen miles from the land. A little farther down the valley the trees were dripping with the moisture of this migratory ocean. But not a drop was collected on the glistening leaves of the madrono which gave us friendly shelter that night. It was a good place enough to sleep; but if one is to take an observation every half-hour during the night, he will have no difficulty in getting up at the call of the birds.

The first sound heard in the morning was the yelp of a miserable coyote. The intrusive rascal had pitched his key in advance of thrush, or lark, or robin. It was easy enough to silence him with a shotgun; but as the birds, also, would have been frightened into silence, this ill-favored vagabond was moderated by pitching two stones at him, with no other result than securing a lame shoulder for a week. The thing was entirely overdone; and if the fellow had any perception of the ridiculous, he went into his hole and laughed for the space of half an hour.

The altitude was too great for the home of robin and linnet. But the woodpeckers went screaming by, and the shy yellow-hammers flitted noiselessly from tree to tree; while, in the thicket, the cock quails were calling out the coveys for an early breakfast. Two deer had come down the mountain slope, and finally halted at half rifle-shot, looking stupidly at the camp-fire. If they understood the statute made in their behalf, they were perfectly safe. But Samson, who had stood for three minutes with one fore-leg raised in an intensely dramatic way, made a spring at last, and, without warrant of law, ran them down the canyon; and ten minutes later they were seen going up the opposite slope, but with many redundant antics, indicating contempt for the cur which had sought to worry them. Later in the day three or four more were seen, and one half-grown fawn was following the roe, the latter finally taking the wind and bounding off handsomely, while the fawn, less keen of scent, turned about and looked inquiringly, without any clear perception of danger. It was evident that so long as the fawn depends upon the mother for protection, it has not a very keen scent nor a quick apprehension of approaching danger. These are only perfected later, when the fawn is left to care for itself. The cub is very foolish; the young fox has no more of cunning than a common puppy; and a young ground-squirrel, in time of danger, rashly bobs his head out of the hole long before his venerable parents venture to take an observation. We might have had a smoking haunch of venison that morning, but it would have lacked that fine moral quality which the game law withheld. If you want to know the terrible power of temptation, breakfast on bacon when two deer are within rifle-shot.

It took not less than three hours to work through the interminable thickets, and to climb over the rocks, and gain a place for the first cast of a line. These mountain trout strike quick or not at all. There is a delicious, tingling sensation when the fellows jump from the eddies and swirls more than a foot out of water. You need not spit on your bait for luck, when the fish are breaking water for the hook, and the dark pools are alive with them; not very large, but with keen mountain appetites, having the brightest colors, hard of flesh, and gamy. Well, yes, here is where the fun comes in, after crawling for more than two miles through the brush, and over jagged rocks. Not the least of it is to observe that H---- has gone daft from over-excitement, and is throwing his fish into the tree-tops. What with the moon shining on his face last night, the deer coming down to tantalize him, and these mountain trout jumping wild for the hook, there is just as much lunacy as it is safe to encounter at this altitude.

The stream holds out well, and has not perceptibly diminished in a linear ascent of the mountain-side of nearly three miles. A never-failing reservoir, at an altitude of perhaps twenty-three hundred feet, creates the main branch; while lower down there is a constant augmentation from runnels, up some of which the trout find their way. It is best not to slight these little branches; for occasionally the water sinks, running underground for awhile, and then reappearing, so that a succession of pools is formed, which arrest the fish; and, having nothing to eat, they prey upon each other, until rarely more than two or three remain, and sometimes a solitary fish is left--he having ate up all his poor relations, and thus supplied their wants and his own. There is nothing very strange in this piscatory economy, after all. That bald-headed man, who lost his balance, and slid down a shelving rock nearly twenty feet into the pool, and went out on the other side, with a solitary fish dangling at his hook, and a most unearthly yell, is playing the same game in a business pool. There are more in it than can possibly succeed. One by one, he will eat up the others and become a millionaire. If a bigger fish in the pool eats him, it is only a slight variation of chances, which the commercial ethics of the times will just as heartily approve. You have made that pool desolate; but it is not necessary to yell so as to disturb the universe over a half-pound trout. If ever, O friend, you should have the luck to be drawn out of a pool thus, will there be no yelling in the subterranean caverns?

There is no heroism in jerking every fish out of the stream, just because they have keen mountain appetites. Moreover, as the rays of the sun become vertical, light is thrown into the pools and eddies, and the bites are languid and less frequent. An hour before sunset they will be as brisk as ever. But a hundred trout are enough for one morning, and too many, since no one is willing to carry them down the mountain. A year ago, an enthusiastic friend found the headwaters of the Butano, just over the ridge, toward the coast. Having cut his way out of the San Lorenzo Valley, making his own trail for seven miles or more, he cast in his hook where, he stoutly affirmed, no fisherman had ever preceded him. The falls in several places have formed deep basins in the soft, white sandstone. There this enthusiastic fisherman found his heaven for two hours, until night began to close in upon him. Did he go into a tree-top for the night, and pull his two hundred trout up after him? No; but he left them in a heap, and crept down the mountain at dusk, his pace quickened a little by the sight of a fresh bear-track. I do not think an honest bear, made fully acquainted with such sacrilegious conduct, would eat a man, or so much as smell of him.

All day long the perspective has been growing broader and richer, until these diminutive little fish, destined to be swallowed with a single snap of the jaws--even as they sought to snap the wriggling worm--have become a minor incident in the crowding events of the day. For an hour after dawn the only outlook was into the Santa Clara Valley. But the morning was cold; the thin gray smoke went up silently into the heavens from here and there a farm-house; across the valley a low column of mist clung to the foothills and rolled sullenly away. The rank vegetation of early spring, broken occasionally by the plowed fields, had all the abruptness of contrast seen in the patchwork of a bedquilt; and in the chill of the dawn was not a whit more pleasing to the eyes. But an hour later the sunlight filled all the valley; the harsher tints of the morning were melted into the more subdued glory of the spring, and one could fancy that the scent of almond blossoms came up the mountain, mingled with the grosser incense of the mold and tilth of many fields. Even the solitary stunted pine far up the mountain was dropping down its leafy _spicula_, like javelins cast aslant, and the last year's cones fell with a rattle, like hand grenades cast from some overhanging battlement. Life was crowding death even here, and the pine was freshening its foliage, as certain of spring time as the alder just shaking out its tassels by the river bank. Away to the southwest the Bay of Monterey, with its breadth of twenty miles, was reduced to a little patch of blue water; and wide off there was a faint trail of smoke along the horizon--the sign that a steamer was going down the coast for puncheons of wine and fleeces of wool.

The glass reveals the dome of a church at Santa Cruz, looking a little larger than a bird cage set down by the ocean. The famous picture on the ceiling of the old adobe church disappeared when the storms melted down the mud walls. If the perspective was faulty, the picture had a lively moral for bad Indians. But something better was found, not many years ago (so the village tradition runs), in one of the lofts in an old store-room near by. The _Padre_ going up there with the village sign painter, to hunt for some half-forgotten thing, drew out of the lumber a lot of blurred and musty canvas, giving it to his friend. The latter hastened home and, unrolling his canvas, saw that upon one side there had once been a picture. But the pigment was now only powdered atoms, which a feather would sweep away. Oiling a new canvas, he laid it upon the back of the picture, and the oil striking through, the first process of restoration was safely accomplished. Then the surface of the picture was carefully cleaned. The sign painter quietly hung up his picture, satisfied that there was an infinite distance between it and a common daub. The _Padre_ wanted the picture back after this sudden revelation of its wonderful beauty. But it never was transferred again to the old lumber room.

"What became of the _Padre_?"

"I think he went to heaven, where he found better pictures than were ever fished out of that old lumber room."

"And the sign painter?"

"Did you ever know a man who had a Murillo, or even thought he had one, who was in a hurry to leave this world?"

SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.

SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.

Whether in the Russian River Valley, Napa, or the smaller valleys of the Clear Lake country, St. Helena is in such friendly proximity that all sense of isolation is destroyed. Looking toward the south from its shoulder, there was an endless succession of stubblefields and vineyards; the faint clatter of threshing machines could be heard; sacks of wheat stood bolt upright in the fields, like millers in convention. A train of cars, diminished by the long perspective, was creeping with serpentine undulations up the valley, and trailing a thin vapor against the sky. Farther south was the bay; white sails of little schooners, outlined by the glass, appeared to split the salt meadows open, as they crept toward the little town of Napa. St. Helena was grandly lifted up on that autumnal morning, and all the little mountains seemed to be rendering homage to the king.

There is no country under the sun where a vineyard is more picturesque than here. If there were an interminable perspective of green clothing and coloring all the hillsides, there would be no fitting border for the picture. But when there is not a fresh blade of grass by the wayside, and the tawny hills touch the yellow stubble-fields, we have a broad golden frame for some picture which ought to be worthy of it. And what more so than a sixty-acre vineyard, set within this mitred framework of mountains? The border is a very generous one, certainly--five or six miles of slope on either side, and this square of emerald in the centre. It is all worked in with true artistic effect, except those straight lines of vines, crossing at right angles. A poet or a painter, setting this vineyard, would have curved the lines, or secured an orderly disorder--enough, at least, to have destroyed the association with a schoolboy's rule and plummet.

Observe that the vines are not tied to clumsy, stiff stakes; nor are the leaves plucked off in part, to prevent mildew. The runners reach out and interlace, resting gently on the ground. The leaves droop a little in the hot sun, making a complete canopy for the clusters, the largest of which rest on the ground. How much more fitting this growing revelation--this discovery, step by step, of hidden clusters--than to see all this wealth at once, as one might do if the vines were trained bolt upright, and held in bondage by stakes!

Another notable effect is produced by the twenty or more varieties, differing in the shape of the leaf and in the color and flavor of the grape. The Tokay blushes by the side of the blackest Malvoisie. The Muscatel is pale where the Victoria has as much color as a ruddy English girl. The Muscats have a tinge of gold, in fine contrast with the Rose of Peru, whose regal purple deepens with every midday sun.

Three months hence, this border of gold will all be changed to the rank and riotous green of pastures quickened by the vernal rains--this square setting, as of emerald, stripped of every leaf and every cluster, but the bronzed vines still interlacing and toning the landscape into a mellow ripeness. A month later, the merciless pruning-knife has left only the black stub, a foot above the ground, and two or three "eyes" for the new wood. This amputated vineyard, with its limbs burning by the wayside, suggests enough of prosy realism to neutralize all the sentiment which it can inspire on a hot September day.

Will the juice of these grapes enrich the blood, and add any essential quality to the tone and fibre of a race which is giving so many signs of physical decadence? This conglomerate which you call society is hanging out a great many flags of distress. It babbles incoherently of perfectibility, and goes straightway to the bad. Are these reformers going to save the world, who, either through intemperance of speech or drink, must needs be moderated by a padlock put upon their mouths? Nor is it safe, just now, to calculate the results of this feminine gospel of vituperation. The back of the body politic may be the better for having a political fly blister laid on; and it might, perhaps, as well be done by feminine hands as any other. But there are some evils too deep for surface remedies. If, for instance, vineyards are going to curse the people, as my moralizing friend insists, then humanity hereabout is in a bad way. Why, a little generous wine ought to enrich the blood and inspire nobility of thought. If it does more than this--if it becomes a demon to drive men and hogs into the sea--then it is evident that both were on too low a plane of existence for any safe exaltation. But shall the vineyards be rooted up, for all this? It is better to drown the swine, and let the grapes still grow purple upon the hillsides.

Some day these mountains will be wreathed and festooned with vines. One may see this culture now climbing to their tops. Oh, my friend, with thin and impoverished blood! do not pinch this question up in the vise of your morality. No doubt there was a vineyard in Eden, and there were ripe clusters close by the fig-leaves. You cannot prove to me that sinless hands have not plucked the grapes, and that millions will not do it again. What we need is not a greater company of wailing prophets, but men who will reveal to us the higher and nobler use of things. If one could not live comfortably in this Vale of Paradise and ripen from year to year, opening his soul to all enriching influences, without an everlasting protest, there would be small chance for his comfort in any more etherealized place.

Looking northward, or from the back side of St. Helena, is Lake County, the centre of which can be reached by the daylight of a summer day from San Francisco. It is a wild, isolated and mountainous region, containing a harmless population, who are much addicted to salt pork, and needing all the more, perhaps, the medicinal and renovating qualities of the various thermal springs which abound. A Pike, with the wilderness at his back, and civilization advancing in front, is sometimes a ridiculous, and oftener a pitiable, specimen of humanity. When the schoolhouse overtakes him, there is a crisis in his affairs. He must elect to hustle half a score of frowzy-headed children into his covered wagon, hang a few pots and kettles at the rear, and plunge farther into the wilderness, or let civilization go past him, closing in upon all sides, and, in spite of impotent protests, narrowing perhaps his own horizon, but making it broader and brighter for his children. If the horizon is too bright, this blinking Pike will turn his back to the light, and make a break for Egypt. So long as there is bacon and hominy, and free territory, with a modicum of whisky within easy reach, you cannot summon this stolid, retreating animal to a better condition. Nature has made a botch of him, else he would now be running on four feet, instead of two. A border man, running away from civilization, who cannot bark and burrow like a coyote, nor climb a tree like a gorilla, is wrestling with his fate at a terrible disadvantage.

If you have never seen Clear Lake, do not babble about Como and Geneva. Here are eighty square miles of water, lifted fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and encompassed by mountains whose flaming forges were put out but yesterday--if a thousand years may be taken as one day. One may see Clear Lake from the top of St. Helena, twenty miles distant, on a bright day. We saw it first from Lukonoma--an intervening mountain, about fifteen hundred feet high--a ribbon of blue water, stretching away between the hills, with a solitary white sail, recognized only by bringing a tree in the range. There was the droning of the pines in the mountain-tops in the afternoon trade-wind; a broad valley opening to the south, which swallowed up two or three mountain streams, and then opened its ugly adobe lips for more; smaller valleys toward the north, encircled with tall firs, and the slumberous dome of Uncle Sam, lifting itself up grandly three or four thousand feet hard by the lake.

Along this Lukonoma ridge there is a well-defined Indian trail for miles. The Clear Lake Indians were accustomed to exchange visits with a tribe in the Lukonoma Valley, ten miles below. The tops of the highest mountain ridges were selected for trails, rather than the valley. The Indian does not like to be surprised, even by his friends. Along these ridges he could look off on either side, and a long way ahead. If not molested, he might drop down to the hot springs just at the base of the mountain, take a mud bath to make his joints a little more supple, and if he found an ant's nest to add to his dietary stores, so much the better. You need not overhaul the Indian's cookbook. He ate the ants alive. No shrimp-eater ought to quarrel with him on that score.

We shall have a nearer view of Lower Lake another day. It is better to have the first view of some old and famous city from the hill-tops. That revelation ripens into a picture which ever afterward we hasten to set over against the squalor and ugliness disclosed by a nearer view. One need not be wholly disgusted if in place of a trout, he has caught a mud-turtle from the lake which opened its sheen of waters to him first from the mountain summit.

The shadows had stretched nearly across the narrow valleys, when it occurred to us that, in climbing to the highest and baldest peak, the Indian trail had run out, and that the hot springs--the point of departure--were eight miles distant, and were shut out of view by an intervening spur. Either a short cut was to be made, trusting to luck to find a trail, or there was to be a night on the mountain. There were two intervening canyons to be crossed before there was any prospect of striking a trail. It is not pleasant to slide a horse on his haunches down into one of these chasms without knowing where one is to bring up. If the most obscure cattle trail can be found leading in, one may trust to the instincts of horse sense to find it, and also the one which will most certainly lead out on the other side. The tinkling of a cow-bell on the table-lands beyond was a welcome sound. The horses wound into the first canyon, and went out without much hesitation. The trail for the next, by good luck, had been found. But it was a suspicious circumstance that these ponies--accustomed to such defiles, and now heading for home--hesitated, snuffed, snorted and turned about. The rein was given to them, but, hungry as they were, they seemed disposed to turn back. The little Cayuse pony trembled, threw his ears forward, advanced and retreated, and blew out a column of vapor from each nostril as he kept up his aboriginal snort. Either two tired and hungry excursionists must make a night of it, shut in by a canyon in front and in the rear, or the second one must be crossed without delay.

A horse is generally willing to plant his feet where he sees a man do it in advance. But these horses were dragged into the chasm, sometimes dropping on their haunches, and at other times plowing along with the fore feet braced well ahead. Once at the bottom, a fresh cinch was taken with the greatest difficulty, as neither horse could be kept still for a second. A moment afterward the click of the pony's feet was heard, and the sparks thrown off by his shoes were distinct enough as he shot up the trail as though projected from a mortar. The old horse--stiff in the shoulders, and his legs like crowbars--was not a rod behind him.

"Did you see anything in that canyon?"

"No--yes. I saw the outline of a steer going down to drink."

"Nonsense! Do you think these tired horses, refusing first to come into the canyon, would have gone out on the other side as if Satan were after them, if they did not know that that particular steer had claws. If you had seen twenty mules break out of a yard and stampede when the foot of a cinnamon bear was thrown over, you would not blame these horses for blazing the trail with fire as they thundered up the rocks with the fresh scent of a live grizzly in their nostrils.

"Then, if you are willing to take the affidavits of these two horses as to the facts--and the jurat of eight steel-clad hoofs, striking fire on the rocks, was a very solemn one--you can settle the question in favor of the grizzly much more comfortably than he would have settled it for you. It is not necessary that one's scalp should be pulled over his eyes and his face set awry for life, in order to obtain a more convincing demonstration. I can refer you to a settler who has had these things done for him, whereat his satisfaction has in no whit increased."

An hour afterward two horses with drooping heads went into their stalls, and two jaded excursionists had each dropped into hot baths at Harbin's Springs. Nothing externally will neutralize the chill of a night ride among the mountains better than water which spouts from this hillside heated to 110 degrees. It is a notable caprice of Nature that, of three springs within the space of twenty feet, one is cold and has no mineral qualities; the other two are of about the same temperature, the waters of one strongly impregnated with iron and the other with sulphur. The waters of the two mineral springs combined are not only as hot as a strong man can bear, but they dissolve zinc bath-tubs, which was a satisfactory reason for the substitution of ugly wooden bathing-boxes. It is a pleasant nook, grandly encircled with mountains, with the wonderfully blue heavens by day, and lustrous stars by night.

Fifty or sixty moping invalids made up the assortment at the hotel. These taciturn and moody people did not wait for the angel to go down and trouble the waters, but each went in his own way and time, and troubled the waters mightily on his personal account. The fact may be assumed that the angel had been there in advance. For a thousand years, a great subterranean caldron had been heated, tempered and medicated, and its vapors had ascended as incense toward heaven.

This little sanitarium among the mountains, crowded with curious people--angular, petulant and capricious--was invested with a great peace and restfulness for brain-weary folk. When the sun went down, invalids, like children, went off to bed. There was nothing to do but to sleep through the long cool nights. All the conventionalities of a more artificial social life were reversed. The people who had fought Nature and common sense for years, and had been worsted in the conflict, came here to make their peace with her. They were up with the opening of the day. They drank medicated waters heroically; dropped into hot baths with a sensation akin to have fallen on the points of a million needles; plunged into pools, or were immersed with the vapors collected in close rooms. There were early breakfasts, when the boards were swept by invalids with ravenous appetites; dinners at midday, attended by the same hungry, silent, introspective people; supper, before sundown, when the same famishing people were eating away for dear life. A four-horse passenger wagon arrived just at nightfall, bringing the mail and an occasional guest. There was a glance at the newspapers, now and then a letter was read, and then night and a sweet stillness settled over this mountain dell. Time was of little consequence; people searched an old almanac for the day of the week or month; the sun rose above the crest of one mountain and went down behind another; there were the morning and evening shadows, the same flood of light in the valley at midday, the monotonous drone of the little rivulet in the canyon, and at long intervals the twitter of a solitary bird. Some sauntered along trails, counting the steps with a sort of mental vacuity; others tilted their chairs under porches, and slept with hats over their eyes. If a bustling, loud-voiced guest arrived, in a day or two he fell into the same peaceful and subdued ways. The repose of sky and mountain came down gently upon him, and a dreamy indolence shortened his steps and prolonged his afternoon naps.

There would have been an utter stagnation of life but for the advent of one of those characters who had been everywhere, seen everybody, and had become a sort of itinerating museum of odd conceits and grotesque incidents. There were many invalids who had separated themselves from business cares, only to brood over their infirmities. They wanted nothing so much as, in some way, to be led apart from their own morbid natures. The eccentric little man told his stories. They were not always fresh, nor always extremely witty. But, as the assortment never ran out, and the quality improved from day to day, the fact was alike creditable to his inventive powers and his benevolence. At first, the worst specimens of morbid anatomy listened from a distance, and muttered, "Foolish;" "Don't believe a word of it." The next day they hitched their chairs along a few feet nearer to this story-telling evangel. One could occasionally see that a crisis was coming; either these people must laugh, or be put on the list of hopeless incurables. Observing, on one occasion, a man on crutches who, after listening for a time with apparent contempt, suddenly withdrew and hobbled off around a turn of the narrow road, I ventured to ask him if stories were disagreeable to him.

"Oh, no, that is not it. You see I had not laughed in years. I was determined that old Hooker should not make me laugh, if I did not choose to. The fact is, I had either to holler or die. I wouldn't make a fool of myself, and so I went around the bend in the road, and turned off into the chaparral."

As this man dropped one crutch in a week from that time, and in ten days thereafter was walking with a cane, I have never doubted that he "hollered."

At nightfall generous wood fires glowed upon the hearth of the sitting room, and there was a more hopeful light in many faces. People lingered in the doorway, on the stairs, and leaned over the balustrade for one more story from the genial and eccentric man. A ripple of half-suppressed laughter went around the room, ran up the stair-way, and ended in gentle gurgles in the rooms with open doors at the end of the corridor. The man of anecdote and story had touched, with healing influences, maladies which no medicated waters could reach. He exorcised the demons so gently, that these brooding invalids hardly knew how they were rescued. New and marvelous virtues were thereafter found in the spring water; there was a softer sunlight in the dell; the man with the liver complaint became less sallow, and no longer talked spitefully about "Old Hooker"; and the woman who did not expect to live a week, no longer sent down petulant requests that the house might be still, but only wanted that last story repeated to her "just as he told it."

Once, as the twilight drew on, the face of Hooker seemed to glow with unwonted radiance, as he unfolded his plans for a sanitary retreat. His theory was, that civilization had culminated in mental disorders, and the world was running mad with excitements, which half-demented people were busy in fomenting. Of the sixty guests at the Springs, he estimated that, at one time, not more than seven per cent. were free from some sort of a delusion--the evidence of lunacy in its milder forms. If put into strait-jackets, or shut up in the wards of an hospital, or treated otherwise as if insane, they would become as mad as Bedlam. One delusion must be matched against another. Every man and woman must be treated as sane, and all that they did, or thought, or said, as the perfection of reason. The nonsense of clowns had cured more people than the wisdom of philosophers. The chemistry of Nature, the sunshine, the pure mountain air, and all the subtle combinations of thaumaturgic springs must be supplemented by every art which could beguile and lead people away from a miserable self-consciousness. A half-hour of sound sleep is sometimes the bridge over the gulf from death to life. He would not only make people sleep, but even laugh in their sleep. He would practice the highest arts of a sanitary magician. His patients should laugh by night and by day. They should forget themselves. The time would come when the best story-teller would be accounted the best physician.

On the evening before leaving the Springs, two hunters, in clay-colored clothes, deposited upon the porch each a deer and a string of mountain trout. Hooker, of blessed memory, after whispering confidentially the bill of fare for an early breakfast, went aside and talked in an undertone with the hunters, who soon afterward disappeared in the direction of the canyon we had crossed a few evenings before. The moon being nearly at full, there would be a good prospect for deer during the latter part of the night; but there was a possible hint of larger game, in the chuckling undertone of one of the hunters as he shouldered his rifle: "Fellers as wear them kind o' clothes don't know a bar when they see him."

In the early morning, the same hunters were warming their fingers by the wood fire in the sitting-room. Hooker was already up, and flitted about--now conferring with the hunters, and then with the steward. A game breakfast was already assured. Hooker whispered that the hunters had found the bear which sent the ponies flying out of the canyon. He had been taken alive, and we should have a parting look at him in advance of the other guests as we drove down the road. A Pike, astride of the corral fence, saluted Hooker as we were climbing to the top rail: "Glad you 'uns found old corn-cracker up the gulch. He was powerful weak when I turned him out. He's a good 'un."

One glance at his long, yellow tusks and bristling back was enough. There was a sudden snap of the whip, and the dust spun from the wheels as two horses shot down the road on a bright October morning. The little dell, with its thermal springs, its colony of invalids, Hooker, the incorrigible, and the "bear" in the corral, disappeared with a gentle benediction.

One may traverse a thousand miles of the Coast Range, and not find another mountain road which reveals, at every turn, so many striking views as the one of twenty miles from Harbin's to Calistoga. The road, for a considerable distance, follows the windings of a noisy and riotous little rivulet, which, heading on the easterly side of St. Helena, runs obstinately due north for several miles. The fringe of oaks and madronos were wonderfully fresh, as they stood half in sunlight and half in shadow, still dripping, here and there, with the moisture which had been condensed during the night. A delegation of robins had come down from higher latitudes, and were taking an early and cheery breakfast from the scarlet berries of the madrono. It needed but the flaming maple and falling chestnuts, with some prospect of "shell-barks," to round into perfect fullness these autumnal glories. But no one living east of the Hudson could raise such a wild and unearthly yell as broke from the Judge every time a cotton-tail rabbit darted across the road. The obstreperous woodpecker was awed into silence, and the more industrious ones dropped in amazement the acorns which they were tapping into the trunks of the trees, and flitted silently away.

"That," said the Judge, "is not half as loud as I heard Hooker yell six months ago."

"Then he was demented?"

"Yes; he was as mad as a March hare, and in a strait-jacket at that."

"That clears up one or two mysteries. But you might have made the revelation before."

"When are you going to start that hilarious institution which you and Hooker called a sanitarium?"

Just then, the summit of the mountain road had been gained, and the long perspective of the Napa Valley opened at the base of St. Helena, and melted away toward the south into the soft, dreamy atmosphere of an autumnal noonday.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

A country without grandmothers and old houses needs a great many balancing compensations. Everywhere one is confronted with staring new houses, which require an external ripening in the wind and sun for half a century. If the motherly wisdom of seventy-five years is lodged therein, it is something of recent importation. I have walked two miles to see an old lady, who not only bears this transplanting well, but is as fresh and winsome in thought as a girl of sixteen. If only there had been an old house, a stone fire-place--wide at the jambs--and a low, receding roof in the rear, with a bulging second story and oaken beams, nothing more would have been wanting.

When, therefore, it was whispered, one day, that there was an old house in the middle of a large lot on a hill, overlooking the Golden Gate, there was a strong and unaccountable desire to take possession of it immediately. But when the fact was stated that the house was ten years old, that there was moss upon the shingles, low ceilings within, and a low roof without, the destiny of that house was well nigh settled. The owner wanted money much more than old houses. In fact, a Californian who refuses to sell anything, except his wife, is only found after long intervals. The transfer of ownership was natural enough. It followed that one evening there was a dreamy consciousness that we were the owner of a small, rusty-looking cottage, set down in the middle of an acre lot, defined by dilapidated fences, and further ornamented by such stumps of trees as had been left after all the stray cattle of the neighborhood had browsed them at will. As incidents of the transfer, there was the Golden Gate, with the sun dropping into the ocean beyond; the purple hills; the sweep of the bay for fifteen miles, on which a white sail could be seen, here and there; and, later, the long rows of flickering street lamps, revealing the cleft avenues of the great city dipping toward the water on the opposite side of the bay.

Consider what an investment accompanies these muniments of title. It is not an acre lot and an old house merely, with several last year's birds' nests and a vagrant cat, but the ownership extends ninety-five millions of miles toward the zenith, and indefinitely toward the nadir. No one can, in miners' parlance, get an extension above or below. It is a square acre, bounded by heaven and hades.

If my neighbor builds an ugly house, why should I find fault with it, since it is the expression of his wants, and not of mine. If these are honestly expressed, he has compassed the main end of house-building. He may have produced something that nobody in the wide world will be suited with, or will ever want but himself. But if it is adapted to _his_ wants, it is only in some remote and aesthetic way that his neighbors have anything to do with the matter. They may wish that he had not made it externally as ugly as original sin; that he had laid a heavy hand on the antics of architect and carpenter; that lightning would some day strike the "pilot-house," or some other excrescence which has been glued on to the top; and that a certain smart obtrusiveness were toned down a little to harmonize with a more correct taste. But one could not formulate these defects and send them to his neighbor without running a risk quite unwarranted by any good that might be effected.

Taking possession of an old house, its ugliness is to be redeemed, not rashly, but considerately, and in the spirit of gentleness. Its homeliness has been consecrated; its doors may have been the portals both of life and death. Possibly, some one has gone out whose memory of it in the ends of the earth will transform it into something of comeliness and beauty.

Investing an old house, the first process is to become thoroughly acquainted with it, and then, if it is to be enlarged, push it out from the center with such angles as will catch the sun, and will bring the best view within range from the windows. It will grow by expansions and accretions. You want a bed-room on the eastern side, because of the morning sun. By all means, put it there. The morning benediction which comes in at the window may temper one to better ways all the day.

No man will build a house to suit his inmost necessities, unless he proceeds independently of all modern rules of construction. Some of these are good enough, but they nearly all culminate in an ambitious externalism. The better class of dwellings erected seventy-five years ago contained broad staircases, spacious sleeping-rooms, and a living-room, where the whole family and the guests, withal, might gather at the fire-side. The house was an expression of hospitality. The host had room for friendships in his heart, and room at his hearthstone. The modern house, with its stiff angularities, narrow halls, and smart reception-rooms, expresses no idea of hospitality. It warns the stranger to deliver his message quickly, and be off. It is well adapted to small conventional hypocrisies, but you will never count the stars there by looking up the chimney.

One may search long to find the man who has not missed his aim in the matter of house-building. It is generally needful that two houses should be built as a sacrifice to sentiment, and then the third experiment may be reasonably successful. The owner will probably wander through the first two, seeking rest and finding none. His ideal dwelling is more remote than ever. There may be a wealth of gilt and stucco, and an excess of marble, which ought to be piled up in the cemetery for future use. But the house which receives one as into the very heaven--which is, from the beginning, invested with the ministries of rest, of hospitality, of peace, of that indefinable comfort which seems to converge all the goodness of the life that now is with the converging sunbeams--such a dwelling does not grow out of the first crude experiment. It will never be secured until one knows better what he really wants than an architect or carpenter can tell him.

"Did you bring the old house up to this ideal standard?" Just about as near as that pear tree, at the lower end of the garden, has been brought up to a perfect standard of fruiting. You perceive that where half of the top was cut away, and new scions inserted, the pears hung in groups and blushed in the autumnal sun. As you let one of them melt on your palate, turn to the other side of the tree, and note that, if ever a premium were offered for puckering, acrid fruit, these pears from the original stock ought to take it.

Now, if you graft your ideas on to another's, premising that his views were crude and primitive, the result will be somewhat mixed. We should say that the grafts put into that old house were tolerably satisfactory. But we counsel no friend to build over an old house, unless he owns a productive gold mine, and the bill of particulars at the end of his exploit is more interesting and gratifying to him than any modern novel.

There was, however, a shade of regret when it was announced that nothing more remained to be done. For three months there had been a series of gentle transitions, and an undercurrent of pleasurable excitement as a door appeared in a new place, a window opened here and there, stairways were cut, and old pieces pushed off and new took their places. It seemed as if these transitions ought to be always going on, and therefore the most natural thing in the world that the carpenters should always be cutting or hammering that house. They might grow old and another set take their places, but there would always be some room to enlarge, or some want growing out of the exigencies of a new day. Moreover, the first part taken in hand would in time decay or become antiquated, and why not associate builders and house together, since all the jars, wrenching of timbers, sawing and hammering had become musical, and seemed to be incorporated as the law of the house? Nothing but financial considerations prevented a contract for life with the builders, and the life-long luxury of changing an old house into a new one. There came a day at last of oppressive silence. Painters came down from their ladders; the carpenters packed up their tools and walked thoughtfully around, taking an honest view on all sides of a structure which had grown under their hands until, outwardly, there was not the slightest semblance of the old house which they took in hand some months before. There was a shade akin to sadness on the face of the master workman. Evidently the idea of ever leaving that house had overtaken him for the first time that day. He had grown with the house; or, at any rate, his children had been growing. Why should he not come back on the morrow, and plumb, hammer and saw; creeping up the ladder with every new day, and sliding down with every descending sun?

The loftiest house, and the most perfect, in the matter of architecture, I have ever seen, was that which a wood-chopper occupied with his family one winter in the forests of Santa Cruz County. It was the cavity of a redwood tree two hundred and forty feet in height. Fire had eaten away the trunk at the base, until a circular room had been formed, sixteen feet in diameter. At twenty feet or more from the ground was a knot-hole, which afforded egress for the smoke. With hammocks hung from pegs, and a few cooking utensils hung upon other pegs, that house lacked no essential thing. This woodman was in possession of a house which had been a thousand years in process of building. Perhaps on the very day it was finished he came along and entered it. How did all jack-knife and hand-saw architecture sink into insignificance in contrast with this house in the solitudes of the great forest! Moreover, the tenant fared like a prince; within thirty yards of his coniferous house a mountain stream went rushing past to the sea. In the swirls and eddies under the shelving rocks, if one could not land half a dozen trout within an hour, he deserved to go hungry as a penalty for his awkwardness. Now and then a deer came out into the openings, and, at no great distance, quail, rabbits and pigeons could be found. What did this man want more than Nature furnished him? He had a house with a "cupola" two hundred and forty feet high, and game at the cost of taking it.

It was a good omen, that the chimneys of the house on the hill had not been topped out more than a week, before two white doves alighted on them, glancing curiously down into the flues, and then toward the heavens. Nothing but the peace which they brought could have insured the serenity of that house against an untoward event which occurred a week afterward. Late one evening the expressman delivered a sack at the rear door, with a note from a friend in the city, stating that the writer, well knowing our liking for thoroughbred stock, had sent over one of the choicest game-chickens in San Francisco. The qualities of that bird were not overstated. Such a clean and delicately-shaped head! The long feathers on his neck shaded from black to green and gold. His spurs were as slender and sharp as lances; and his carriage was that of a prince, treading daintily the earth, as if it were not quite good enough for him. There was a world of poetry about that chicken, and he could also be made to serve some important uses. It is essential that every one dwelling on a hill, in the suburbs, should be notified of the dawn of a new day. Three Government fortifications in the bay let off as many heavy guns at daybreak; and, as the sound comes rolling in from seaward, the window casements rattle responsively. But these guns do not explode concurrently; frequently more than ten minutes intervene from the first report to the last one. There is ever a lingering uncertainty as to which is making a truthful report, or whether they are not all shooting wide of the mark. Then, there is a military school close by, which stirs up the youngsters with a reveille, a gong and a bell, at short intervals. With so many announcements, and none of them concurrent, there would still remain a painful uncertainty as to whether the day had dawned; but when that game bird lifted up his voice, and sounded his clarion notes high over the hill, the guns of Alcatraz and the roll of the drums over the way, there could be no doubt that the day was at the dawn.

For a week did this mettlesome bird lift up his voice above all the meaner roosters on the hill; but one morning there was an ominous silence about the precincts where he was quartered. The Alcatraz gun had been let off; but the more certain assurance of the new day had failed. Something had surely happened, for a neighbor was seen hurrying up the walk in the gray of the morning, red, puffy, and short of wind, at that unseasonable hour.

"Come with me, and take a look in my yard.... There, is that your blasted game chicken?"

"Why, yes--no--he was sent over as a present from a friend."

Just then the whole mischief was apparent; a great Cochin rooster was sneaking off toward the hedge, bloody and blind; two Houdans lay on their backs, jerking their feet convulsively--in short, that hen-yard had been swept as with the besom of destruction.

"Do you call that a poetical or sentimental bird, such as a Christian man ought to worship?"

"No, not exactly."

Just then that game chicken arched his beautiful neck and sent his clear notes high over the hill and into the very heavens. We hinted, in a mollifying way, that he had escaped over a fence ten feet high, but that blood would tell.

"Yes, I think it has told this morning. Never mind the damages; but I think you had better cut his wings," said our neighbor, already placated.