Chapter XV

Through Santa Clara Valley.--Arrival at San Jose.--Old Friends.-- Semi-tropical Climate.--An Excursion to the Stars.--The Lick Observatory.--Our Journey There.--Sunset on the Summit.--With the Great Telescope.--The Tomb of James Lick.--The Midnight Ride Down the Mountain.

After leaving Palo Alto, our journey revealed to us an ideal Californian landscape. We passed through the lovely Santa Clara Valley. Rich cultivation met our eye on every side, interspersed with fine forest trees, all hemmed in by the ranges of the surrounding mountains. These vast masses enclosed the whole view with their ever-varying outlines, soft and purple in the distance, while the foreground of orchards, with their rich herbage, was all of the deepest green. It was a picture to take away with one as, indeed, that of a happy valley. But in this connection the word valley must not be construed in any limited sense. It was a vast champaign of almost boundless extent, which the fairy-like coloring of the mountains, softened by their great distance, enclosed, as it were, with banks of unmoving clouds. Through this delightful country we sped on rapidly, until at the evening hour, we reached San Jose, and once more, came to our night anchorage in the station.

We had had a full day of it, and, as if by mutual consent, we separated into various groups to wander at will through the strange streets of the pretty place. It was pleasant to look at the rose-covered cottages and the well-kept lawns, seen by the glitter of the electric light; as also it was pleasant to stroll through the busy streets with the shops all aglow, and the people lounging about in happy leisure.

I wandered off, all alone, to hunt up some friends who had moved to San Jose from distant Illinois, years and years ago. I found the street and number in a drug-store directory, and strolled on and on under the deep shadows of the overarching trees, losing myself once or twice, but after some inquiry, I was soon piloted to the place and rang the bell. There is always a little trepidation in such an adventure. Will one be remembered? Will the friends be much changed? Will one be welcome? But soon all doubts vanished when my good friend, Mrs. G----, stood in the doorway, lamp in hand. Yes, she was changed; but the years had made her look more and more like her dear mother, whose face I could never forget. Instantly my name was spoken and I was at home. The whole house was rather topsy-turvy; carpets all up, and everything in that state of desolation which house cleaning involves. But what did that matter? We had a long and good talk over all the past. I was told how, when they came to San Jose in the early days, they had first to go to New York, then take a steamer to the Isthmus, to cross that, and then once more embark on the Pacific for San Francisco, and from thence come here by team. I was shown the pictures of the five lovely girls and the boy, a man grown--all Californians--and I saw that happiness and prosperity, which rejoiced me much, had come to these my friends.

The evening hours lengthened out while our chat went on, until I had to retrace my steps once more under the overarching trees to the "Lucania," after promising that I should dine with the family on the coming Sunday. This I did, and saw them all, and enjoyed the hour to the fullest. The Chinese man-servant, cook and butler in one, was noiseless perfection in his attendance, and the works of his art which he placed before us, were well worthy of our attention; while California claret, of tenderest texture, helped to whet our appetites and loosen our tongues.

But we must return to the Saturday which intervened before that dinner. The morning was spent in a drive through the town--through the garden would better describe it, for it was all a garden, with rose-embowered roofs or stately mansions framed in by towering palms and stately growths of other graceful trees. It is strange to see the effect which this semi-tropical climate produces on familiar plants. The sweet geranium towers up until it becomes almost a tree, covering the whole ends of houses with its perfumed leaves, and the English lavender emerges from its island modesty, and stands up on this American soil with all the self-assertion of an independent shrub. In one of the parks we saw the little English daisy, but that was the same "wee crimson-tipped flower" that it ever was. It brought tears to the eyes of some of our party, as the springs of home memories welled up within the breast. What volumes do blossoms ever speak to us! A bunch of red primroses, discovered once by chance among the myriad common yellow blooms which gladdened the woods all about us, stands out forever in our memory, as a sudden revelation of beauty--and all for us who found it--which no subsequent possession of far greater worth, has ever yet excelled.

But the friends, the flowers, the fruits, and the foliage of San Jose, charming as they all were, could not detain us. We were bound for the stars; and at noon or thereabouts, a happy party of us took passage in a large brake, with four horses, for the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton. We were armed with an introduction to Professor Schaeberle, the astronomer in charge, and the electric wire had flashed also our coming, beforehand.

It was a merry party that rattled out of San Jose and looked down on the orchards on either hand as we whirled by. Our ascent was gradual at first, but soon the magnificent, winding roadway, which cost Santa Clara County nearly $100,000 to construct, took us up, and up, ever extending our view, and giving us fresh vistas of surprise, as we dashed by curves and grades which made the nervous among us more nervous still. But there was little to fear with such good drivers and well-trained animals. They knew their business, and were as careful of themselves as if we were not in existence. The ever-increasing panorama of the mountains was full of interest. The great, swelling foothills were yielding and soft-looking in their brown outline, dotted over by huge, woolly-looking, dark green live-oaks and other trees. The whole effect was like a gigantic piece of old Flemish tapestry. If some giant horsemen with winding horns and bounding dogs of like vast scale, and a stag with antlers touching the mountain-tops, and a castle like Walhalla were in our vision, the thing would have been the ancient tapestry, indeed, in true Californian proportions. It was all beautiful as it was, the mossy brown of the mountains, and the dark green of the trees, and over all a cloudless sky, and in our lungs the clear, pure air, full of elation and vigorous life.

Of course in such a mountain drive we changed horses frequently, and at Smith Creek we made a long halt for supper. It seemed that that much-desired meal would never arrive, and the fear that we would miss the sunset view from the summit, added to our impatience. It so happened that there was a rush of visitors that day, and we had to wait our turn while the limited domestic force in this isolated spot, renewed their labors in cooking and serving another meal.

The perfect imperturbability of our host was a thing to admire. No amount of muttered discontent moved him a particle. He did not show impatience even, when we lined up at the dining-room door; by this action, and the rush which it intimated, suggesting that we felt he might come some game upon us, and let some more favored ones in first. When we did make the rush, and saw the well-filled tables, and saw also the patient wife and daughter, neither of them over-robust, who had to do all the work, no "help" wishing to stay up there, we almost felt ashamed of ourselves for our grumbling.

We soon got through our eating, and once more were _en route_ for the summit. We got there before sunset all right, and were received in most hospitable fashion by Professor Schaeberle, who showed us through the long halls and into the library, where transparencies and photographs of eclipses and double stars, and various other celestial phenomena charmed us, until at last it was announced that the royal presence of the sun was about to sink to its rest, in the distant west. Then all were soon out on the grand terrace, and as we watched the great, round orb vanish from our sight, a silence fell upon us all, the cause of which it would be hard to put into words. We had seen the great mystery of life move on a point. We thought, perhaps, of the angel trumpeter, who some day will say so that all will hear, "Time shall be no more!" We thought, perhaps, of that day when we should close our eyes upon the earthly sun forever, and days for us should be at an end.

As the darkness settled down, so solemnly and grandly on the mountains, we retraced our steps to the Observatory, and followed our kind guide through its many mysteries.

We first looked through some of the smaller telescopes. In one of these, while the glow was still in the heavens, we saw Venus, the evening star, in all its beauty. The earth currents, through which we had to look, gave the glowing planet a purplish tinge and a sort of vibratory motion, which quite suggested the floating movements of the goddess, as she figures in Virgil's verse.

We saw all sorts of instruments, of the most delicate and yet simple character, for recording seismic disturbances of any kind, or, as we might call them in plainer speech, earthquakes. It is most interesting to note how a glass disk, a little lamp-black, a spring or two, a bit of clockwork, and a tracing-pen, will do the work automatically, and record the direction, the duration, and the time of any seismic disturbance at any hour of day or night. The brain which contrived all this cunning machinery, can go to rest and take its needed sleep, but the wires and traps set to catch the shakes of the old globe, are always wide awake, animated ever by the intelligence of the brain which sleeps, and can sleep in peace; for, when the brain wakes, it will find that the machine has faithfully recorded every quiver of this old, trembling world. Professor Schaeberle told me, with quiet humor, that earthquakes of some kind were always going on, but so slight that machinery alone could detect them.

After seeing the many minor attractions of transit instruments and meridians and other affairs, which some of us wondered at, in complete, but polite and interested ignorance, we were at last ushered into the presence of the great Lick telescope. The immense dim space in which we stood, the half-seen figures of the visitors, the professor and his attendants, with lanterns in their hands, accenting the gloom by the very light itself, made up a weird picture. Then, towering over all, was the movable dome, with the great notch from top to bottom of its curved surface, open to the sky, for the great telescope to reach through; while the great instrument itself, in its huge proportions, its intricate machinery, and the wonderful ease of its movements, as it yielded to the slightest touch of a hand, seemed like some living thing, some being of superior intelligence from some other sphere, captive and at work for our pleasure and our profit. Who can ever forget the mystery of it all in the silent darkness of that night!

But before looking through the great tube, the professor, with quite unintended, but most dramatic effect, called our attention to a black-looking object at the base of the great pier, on which the telescope stands. It was like an altar, as we saw it in the dimness, but a lantern flash upon the front showed us it was a monument above the last resting-place of James Lick, by whose munificent bequest of seven hundred thousand dollars, the Observatory on Mount Hamilton, with all its wonderful instruments, has been established for all time.

It was a thrilling thing to see there in the dimness that plain, unpretending tomb, and to read thereon the short and simple record:

JAMES LICK.

1796--1876.

But what a life story is revealed by the dash which separates those figures, 1796--1876! Eighty years of toil and endurance, toil in early youth, toil in manhood, toil in the midst of amassed wealth, until the inevitable end at last came. He was born in Fredericksburg, Pa., where he received a common school education. He learned the trade of an organ builder and piano maker in Hanover, Pa. He went into business in Baltimore, Md., and also in Philadelphia; but his destiny drove him away to Buenos Ayres, to Valparaiso, and other places in South America, until, in 1847, he settled in California, where he became interested in real estate, and in due time amassed a large fortune. His strong face, which greets one in bronze, at the Mount Hamilton Observatory, bespeaks a powerful and stern character. He never married. He was deemed by those who knew him to be "unlovable, eccentric, solitary, selfish, and avaricious," but when this is said, the memory of it is somewhat condoned, for there was a romance in the case--he was crossed in love.

It is hard to judge of such a man, and of such circumstances. He certainly has made amends for all his shortcomings, or tried to, if they were as related, by his munificent bequests to charity, and above all to pure science. When one looks at his carpenter's bench, preserved as a relic of his workman's life, and then at his tomb in the still silence and darkness of the great telescope chamber, and then remembers all that this silent, lonely man has done, one cannot but believe that he had in heart, all along, great ideals which none of those about him, in the vulgar strife of life, ever imagined. What can be more unlike a narrow, selfish, unlovable, and avaricious man than his splendid offering of a fortune to keep eternal watch upon the stars?

These thoughts danced through one's brain in presence of it all. We were grateful to the old man, whose face, singularly like that of John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, seemed to embody the tragedies and aspirations of life; and we thought of his silent dust beneath us, as through his gifts we looked at Jupiter and his moons, and noted the strange belts which band the planet, brought near to us by the lens of the Lick telescope. We saw also the crested edge, glittering like molten silver, of the moon of this our own planet, and longed to wait until Saturn should rise, and other wonders open before us. Professor Schaeberle made me the fascinating offer to stay all night, and go down the mountain in the early morning; but I kept with the party, and, well after eleven at night, we started on the home run down the mountain to San Jose.

The coming up was grand indeed, but the going down was better. The great moon flung its radiance over the vast expanse. It was a symphony in gray and silver. It was a downward plunge into black mysteries of overhanging mountains. It was delirious with possible dangers. It set one's heart throbbing, and the best relief we could have was in song and shout which roused the echoes of the night.

We subsided into silence when we reached safety and the plain, and were rather bored than otherwise, as we cantered into the deserted streets of San Jose at half-past two o'clock in the morning. How tame seemed the dull surroundings of even that pretty place at such an hour--a few saloons yet aglare, a light in an occasional window, all the rest ghostly, silent, and yet commonplace, too, after our splendid excursion to the stars.