Chapter II: Part 2

One of the pleasures of Chinatown is to see the children of rich and poor on the street, dressed in their Oriental costumes, looking like tiny yellow flowers, as they pick their way daintily along the walk, or are carried in the arms of the happy father--never the mother. If you would make the father smile, show an interest in the boy he is carrying so proudly.

To gamble is a Chinaman's second nature. Games of fan-tan and pie-gow are constantly in operation; and the police either tolerate or are powerless to stop them. Tong wars are of frequent occurrence, crime and its punishment being so mixed up that an outsider cannot unravel them. The San Francisco police have struggled with the question, but have finally left the Chinese to settle their own affairs after their own fashion. Opium dens flourish as a matter of course, for opium and Chinese are synonymous words. You can tell an opium fiend as far as you can see him; his face looks like wet parchment stretched over a skull and dried, making a truly gruesome sight. Every ship that comes into the bay from the Orient is searched for opium, and quantities of it are found hidden away under the planking, or in other places less likely to be detected by the sharp-eyed officials. When found it is at once confiscated.

The Chinese are an extremely superstitious people, and it is very difficult to get a photograph of them, for they flee from the camera man as from the wrath to come. When you think you are about to get a good picture, and are ready to press the button, he either covers his face, or turns his back to you. The writer was congratulating himself on the picture he was about to take of four Chinese women in their native costumes, and was just going to make the exposure, when four Chinamen who were watching him deliberately stepped in front of the camera, completely spoiling the negative. The younger generation, and especially the girls, will occasionally pose for you, and a truly picturesque group they make in their queer mannish dress of bright colors, as they laugh and chatter in their odd but musical jargon.

A few years ago you could not persuade a Chinaman to talk into a telephone, for, as one of them said, "No can see talkee him," meaning he could not see the speaker. Another said, "Debil talkee, me no likee him," but now this is all changed. Some there are who still cling to their old superstitions, but they are few. The march of commerce levels all prejudices, and the telephone is an established fact in Chinatown. They have their own exchange, a small building built in Chinese style, and their own operators. Even the San Francisco telephone book has one section devoted to them, and printed in Chinese characters. And so civilization goes marching on, the old order changeth, and even the Chinaman must of necessity conform to our ways.

But the Chinatown of to-day is not the Chinatown existent before the great disaster of 1906. It has changed, and that for the better, better both for the city and the Chinaman.

Mr. Arnold Genthe, in his Old Chinatown, says: "I think we first glimpsed the real man through our gradual understanding of his honesty. American merchants learned that none need ever ask a note of a Chinaman in any commercial transaction; his word was his bond." And while they still have their joss houses, worship their idols, gamble, and smoke opium, they are their own worst enemies; they do not bother the white men, and are generally considered a law unto themselves.

As we pass on down Grant Avenue we meet a crowd gathered around a bulletin board, where hundreds of red and yellow posters are displayed. All are excited, chattering like magpies, as they discuss the latest bulletin of a Tong war, or some other notice of equal interest; and here we leave them, and Chinatown also, passing over the line out of the precincts of the Celestial, and into our own "God's country."

In a Glass-bottom Boat

About one hundred miles south of San Francisco lies the beautiful Monterey Bay. Here hundreds of fishing boats of all styles and sizes tug at their anchors, awaiting the turn of the tide to sail out and cast their lines for baracuta, yellowtail, and salmon, which abound in these waters to gladden the heart of the sturdy fisherman. One may forego the pleasure of fishing if so inclined, and take a sail in the glass-bottom boat, viewing through its transparent bottom the wonders of the mighty deep.

There were fifteen in our party, ranged along each side of the boat. Curtains were let down from the outside, practically cutting off all outside light and making the bottom of the sea as light as day. Our boatman informed us, after we were well under way, that we were approaching the place called "The Garden of the Sea Gods," one of the most beautiful submarine views on the coast. He did not exaggerate, as we were soon to know, for the scene was truly wonderful, and rightly named. All kinds of sea life began to pass before our eyes, like the fast changing figures of a kaleidoscope. Here the delicate sea moss lay like a green carpet, dotted here and there with a touch of purple, making fantastic figures; a place where the sea fairies might dance and hold their revels, as the peasant girls of Normandy dance on the village green.

Close beside this fairy playground great gray rocks rose like sentinels, as if to warn off trespassers. Clinging to their rugged sides were starfish of all sizes and colors, varying from white to red, with all the intervening shades. Sea urchins, those porcupines of the deep, with long, prickly spines, looking like a lady's pincushion, were in profusion, and clung tenaciously to every rock. Now our boat glides over a cañon whose rugged sides extend away down into the depths, and on either side the verdure grows tier on tier, like a veritable forest. We wonder what denizens of the deep are lurking under the shadows and amid the stately aisles, to dart out on the unsuspecting victim.

On we glide over the beautiful sea anemone, half animal, half vegetable, with its colors as variegated as a rose garden. Seaweed and kelp wave to us as we pass, long-stemmed sea grasses moving by the action of the waves, like a feather boa worn by some sea nymph, twist and turn like a thing alive; tall, feathery plumes, as white as snow, or as green as emerald, toss to and fro, and make obeisance to old Neptune. Sea onions, with stems thirty feet long, and bulbous air-filled sacks, reach out their long snaky arms, like an octopus, and woe to the swimmer who becomes entangled in their slimy folds.

We pass over a school of rock cod--large, lazy fellows--who take life easy, while small, slim tommy-cod dart in and out among the rocks or hide under the mosses. Steel heads, as spotted as an adder, glide close to the glass as if to investigate, then dart away pursued by some larger fish, who look upon them as their lawful prey.

Over by that rock a hermit crab has taken possession of a sea snail's shell, and set up housekeeping; with body partly hidden he waves his long bony tentacles, while his beady eyes stare at us from the doorway of his home.

Now a sea grotto passes beneath us, marvelously beautiful with its frostlike tracery. Its arched openings are hung with a tapestry of pink sea moss, which swings back and forth to the action of the waves, as if moved by some invisible hand. We get a glimpse, in passing, of the interior view with its white, pebbly floor, in which the basket starfish have possession--a fitting reception room for sea nymph or mermaid. Pillars of stone incrusted with barnacles and periwinkles rise all around, while long tendrils of sea ferns wave like banners around their base.

Our boatman tells us that we are about to pass from "The Garden of the Sea Gods" into "Hell's Half-Acre." What a change in a moment's time! A desert of rock tumbled in a heterogeneous mass, all shapes and sizes, as if thrown by some giant hand into grotesque and fantastic shapes. No wonder they gave it such a gruesome name.

In such a place one would expect to see the bleaching bones of sailors, lost at sea, or the broken and dismantled hulk of a galleon, half buried in the sand. A shadow crosses our vision, and slowly there comes to our sight a shark, that scavenger of the deep, a fitting spot for such as he to come upon the stage. Slowly he passes, turning partly on his side, showing the cruel mouth with rows of serrated teeth. His eyes look at us as if in anger at being cheated of his prey, then on he glides like a specter, and with a flirt of his tail as he waves us adieu, he passes out of sight. We breathe a sigh of thanksgiving that the boat is between us and this hideous, cruel monster, and another sigh of regret as our boat touches the wharf, to think that the trip is so soon ended. Truly, "those who go down into the sea in ships" have wonders revealed to them such as were never dreamed of in the mind of man.

Fog on the Bay

One could hardly find a more perfect morning than this in early March. The sun was heralded over the hills in a blaze of glory; meadow larks strung like beads on a telegraph wire were calling their cheery notes, and robins were singing their overture to the morning sun.

Boarding the Key Route train, I soon arrived at the Oakland mole, to find it crowded with a restless tide of humanity, waiting impatiently for the overdue boat. Each arriving train added to the congestion, until the building between the tracks and the gangway was crowded with anxious commuters.

Finally, after much speculation as to the delay, the tardy boat arrived, and a steady stream of people flowed by the three gangways to the upper and lower decks. The last straggler was on board and the gangplank lifted, reminding me of the stories I had read of raising the drawbridge across the moat of some ancient feudal castle, and leaving the mole with its imitation portcullis behind we steamed out into the bay. The sun shone from a cloudless sky, and there was not enough wind to straighten out the pennant from the masthead.

We were hardly opposite Yerba Buena Island, however, when we ran into a fog that completely engulfed us. To plunge from bright sunlight into a blanket of gray mist so dense that one cannot see fifty feet in any direction, has just enough spice of danger about it to make it interesting. It was like being cut off from the world, with nothing in sight but this clinging curtain enveloping one like a damp cloud, settling like frost on everything it touches, and glittering like diamond dust.

An undercurrent of anxiety pervaded the ship, for we were running with no landmark to guide us, and with only the captain's knowledge of the bay and the tides to bring us safely through.

Passengers crowded to the rails, straining their eyes into the dense smother, while whistles were blowing on all sides. The shrill shriek of the government tug, the hoarse bellow of the ocean liner, and the fog whistle on Yerba Buena Island, all joined in a strident warning, sending their intermittent blast over the water.

Our engines were slowed down to half-speed, or just enough to give her steerage way, while the anxious captain peered from the wheelhouse with one hand grasping the signal cord, ready for any emergency.

The sea gulls that in clear weather follow the boats back and forth across the bay by the hundreds, were entirely absent, except for one sturdy bird that, evidently bewildered, had lost its way in the fog, and had alighted on the flagpole as if for protection.

Suddenly across our bows a darker spot appeared, which gradually assumed shape, and a Southern Pacific boat loomed like a specter from the smother of fog. The size was greatly enlarged as seen through the veil of mist, and the dense smoke that poured from her funnel settled around her like a pall, adding greatly to its weird appearance.

Our captain was on the watch for just such an occurrence, and three short, sharp blasts from our whistle notified the oncoming boat that we had stopped our engines. But the tide was running strong, and we drew closer and closer together, until we involuntarily held our breath, and nerves were strung to the highest tension. The great screws churned the water into foam as we slowly backed away from each other, like gladiators testing each other's strength, and the Southern Pacific boat vanished into the fog like a ghost, swallowed up, as if wiped from the face of the waters, sending back its deep bellowing whistle as if bidding an angry defiance to the elements.

Slowly we moved forward, feeling every inch of the way, like one groping in the dark, passing boat after boat without accident. One, a three-masted schooner, loaded with lumber, came so near that we could toss a stone on board, and a woman who stood in the bow waved a large tin horn at us, and then applied herself to blowing it most industriously.

At last the bells on the piers at the ferry came floating across the waters, faint at first, but growing louder as we advanced, and never did bells sound sweeter or more welcome I imagine they were thrice welcome to our captain, for they gave him the direct course to our anchorage. Slower and yet slower we moved, our screw scarcely making a ripple on the water, for many other boats were cautiously feeling their way to their respective berths, and we must use all our caution not to run foul of them.

At last came the cry from some one, "There's the light," and flashing out from the pier, its electric rays cutting its way through the wall of fog, shone that intermittent flame, and we knew that only a few feet away was the dock and safety.

As the crowd hurried from the boat, anxious to reach their several places of business without further delay, many turned and looked up at the wheelhouse, to see the man whose nerve and faithfulness to duty had piloted us safe to port. In that blue-uniformed figure, still standing with hand upon the wheel, we saw a person boyish in appearance, but every inch a man.

Meiggs' Wharf

North from the ferry building, and near the foot of Powell Street, is one of the old landmarks of San Francisco, known as Meiggs' Wharf.

In the early sixties an old saloon was located on the shore end of this wharf, and connected with it was a museum which contained many quaint curios from other lands, some of them of considerable value.

The occupant of this saloon never allowed the place to be cleaned, and for years the spiders held undisputed possession, weaving their webs without fear of molestation, until every nook and corner was filled with their tapestry, and from ceiling and rafter hung long festoons of gossamer threads that swayed back and forth in the breeze. It was a place much visited by tourists, and a trip to San Francisco was not considered complete without visiting this "Cobweb Museum," a name bestowed upon it by its many guests.

It is said that Robert Louis Stevenson loved to visit this wharf and listen to the tales told by the hardy sailors, and that out of them he wove some of his most delightful South Sea Island stories.

Meiggs died in Peru in 1877, where he fled, a fugitive from justice, and has long since been forgotten except by the older residents. The wharf still remains, however, though more familiarly known to the people of this generation as "Fisherman's Wharf"; but the old cobweb saloon and museum are things of the past.

From here the Italian fishing boats leave for their fishing grounds out beyond the heads, and if you visit the wharf in the early morning you may see hundreds of these boats sail out past Land's End, and through the Golden Gate, making a picture worthy of an artist's brush.

When the sun comes flashing over the hills, and the dancing waves glisten with its rosy light, then the waters of the bay take on the color of the amethyst. Go then to Meiggs' Wharf, and see the fishing boats start out with lateen sail full set; hear the "Yo heave ho" of the swarthy Italian fishermen, as they set their three-cornered, striped sail to catch the breeze, and imagine yourself on the far-famed bay of Naples. Your imagination does not suffer by comparison, as San Francisco, like Naples, is built upon the hills, and Mount Tamalpais across the bay, with wreaths of fog floating around its summit, might well be taken for Mount Vesuvius.

Out through the portals of the Golden Gate they sail, like brown-winged pelicans, to drop their nets and cast their lines into the mighty deep; but these picturesque boats are fast giving way to more modern conveyances, and the fussy motorboat, that is not dependent upon wind or tide, will soon relegate the lateen sail to total obscurity.

Go again to the wharf in the late afternoon, and watch these same boats come laboring in against the tide, sunk deep in the water with their day's catch. See them unload, and spread the nets to dry, and if you can find one of these grizzled old salts off duty, and he feels so inclined, he will tell you (between puffs on his short, black pipe) strange and interesting stories of adventure at sea or of shipwreck on lonely island.

Then, as the sails are furled, and all made snug aloft and below, and the boats bob up and down on the long swells, straining at their moorings, the sun sinks down behind the ocean, leaving the wharf in shadow. The lights begin to gleam in the city, the tower of the ferry building gleams like a beacon, outlined with its thousands of incandescent lights, and the ferryboat takes us across the bay and home, to dream of queer-shaped sails, of ancient mariners, and the "Golden City" on the bay.

The Stake and Rider Fence

I love to let my fancy go wandering where it will,
To the happy days of boyhood, to the meadow and the hill;
To the brooks and quiet places, to the woods that seemed immense,
But they always linger fondly at the stake-and-rider fence.

Here, cicadas sing their loudest, and the crickets draw the bow,
And the 'hoppers and the locusts join the chorus, soft and low;
And you hear the bees a humming like a fiddle with one string,
While the air just seems to vibrate with a soothing kind of ring.

There the squirrel scolds and chatters as he runs along the rail,
And you hear the rain-crow calling, and the whistle of the quail;
And the catbird, and the blue jay, scold with vigor most intense,
As they build among the branches by the stake-and-rider fence.

There grew the tasseled milkweed with its bursting silken pods,
And the stately, waving branches of the yellow goldenrod;
The mullein stalk and asters, with teasels growing dense,
God's garden, in the angle of the stake-and-rider fence.

It was homely, but I loved it, and I wouldn't trade, would you?
For all the hothouse beauties that a florist ever knew.
Yes, I'd give up earthly honors, and count it recompense,
Just to wander through the meadow by the stake-and-rider fence.

Moonlight

The beautiful California days, with warm sunshine tempered by the cool winds from the bay, are not surpassed in any country under the sun. But if the _days_ are perfect, the brilliant moonlight nights lose nothing by comparison.

To tramp the hills and woods, or climb the rugged mountains by day, is a joy to the nature lover. But the same trip by moonlight has an interest and charm entirely its own, and mysteries of nature are revealed undreamed of at noonday.

The wind, that has run riot during the day, has blown itself out by evening, and the birds have gone to sleep with heads tucked under their wings, or settled with soft breasts over nestlings that twitter soft "good nights" to mother love. The dark shadows of evening steal the daylight, and cañon and ravine lose their rugged outlines, blending into soft, shadowy browns and purples. The moon peeps over the hilltop, the stars come out one by one, the day is swallowed up in night, and the moonlight waves its pale wand over the landscape.

In the deep woods it flickers through the branches, mottling the ground with silver patches, and throwing into grand relief the trunks of trees, like sentinels on duty. It touches the little brook as softly as a baby's kiss, and transforms it into a sheen of gold. It drops its yellow light upon a bed of ferns until each separate frond stands out like a willow plume nodding up and down in the mellow gleam. A flowering dogwood bathed in its ethereal light shimmers like a bridal veil adorning a wood nymph. It lays its gentle touch on the waterfall, transforming it into a torrent of molten silver, and causing each drop to glisten like topaz under its witching light.

Overhead fleecy clouds, like white-winged argosies, sail high amid the blue, or, finer spun, like a lady's veil, are drawn, gauzelike, across the sky, through which the stars peep out with twinkling brilliancy. The scent of new-mown hay laden with falling dew comes floating up from the valley with an intoxicating sweetness, a sweetness to which the far-famed perfume of Arabia is not to be compared.

The crickets, those little black minstrels of the night, chirp under the log upon which you are resting, and the katydids repeat over and over again "Katy's" wonderful achievement, though just what this amazing conquest was no one has been able to discover. The cicadas join the chorus with their strident voices, their notes fairly tumbling over each other in their exuberance, and in their hurry to sing their solos. Tree toads tune up for the evening concert, a few short notes at first, like a violinist testing the strings, then, the pitch ascertained, the air fairly vibrates with their rhapsody.

Fireflies light their tiny lanterns and flash out their signals, like beacon lights in the darkness, while, ringing up from the valley, the call of the whip-poor-will echoes clear and sweet, each syllable pronounced as distinctly as if uttered by a human voice. In a tree overhead a screech owl emits his evening call in a clear, vibrating tremolo, as if to warn the smaller birds that he is on watch, and considers them his lawful prey. The night hawk wheels in his tireless flight, graceful as a thistledown, soaring through space without a seeming motion of the wings, emitting a whirring sound from wings and tail feathers, and darting, now and again, with the swiftness of light after some insect that comes under his keen vision.

If you remain quite still, you may perchance detect a cotton-tail peeping at you from some covert. Watch him closely, and do not move a muscle, and when his curiosity is somewhat appeased, see him thump the ground with his hind foot, trying to scare you into revealing your identity. If not disturbed, his fear will vanish, and he will gambol almost at your feet.

You are fortunate indeed, if, on your nightly rambles, you find one of the large night moths winging its silent flight over the moonlit glade, resting for an instant on a mullein-stalk, then dancing away in his erratic flight, like some pixy out for a lark.

O the witchery of moonlight nights, when tree, shrub, and meadow are bathed in a sheen of silver; when lovers walk arm in arm, and in soft whisperings build air castles for the days to come, when the honeysuckle shall twine around their doorway, and the moonlight rest like a benediction on their own home nest; when you sit on the porch with day's work done, and the fireflies dance over the lawn, and the voice of the whip-poor-will floats up from the meadow, and you dream dreams, and weave strange fancies, under the witching spell of the silver moonlight!

Mount Tamalpais

There are mountains and mountains, each one with an individuality all its own. There are mountains whose lofty peaks are covered with perpetual snow, like a bridal robe adorned with jewels, with the rising sun kissing each separate fold into glowing splendor; mountains whose rugged summits rise far above the timber line, somber and imposing, with fleecy clouds floating round the rocky pinnacles like fine spun silver.

Mount Tamalpais is not so lofty as Pike's Peak, or Mount Hood, but what it loses in altitude it makes up in splendor, and a trip to its summit, over the crookedest railroad in the world, offers a view that is unsurpassed.

Leaving the ferry building, we have a delightful ride on the bay, passing close to Alcatraz Island, where the military prison is located, with a view of Fort Point and Fort Baker, passing near the United States Quarantine Station on Angel Island, and arrive at Sausalito, perched on the hillside like some hamlet on the Rhine; then by rail to Mill Valley, a beautiful little town nestling at the foot of the mountain like a Swiss village. Here we change to the observation train drawn by a mountain-climbing traction engine, and begin the climb. The ascent is a gradual one, the steepest grade being a trifle over seven per cent, while the train twists and turns around two hundred and sixty curves from the base to the summit. We enter a forest of the giant redwoods, which, enormous in girth, and three hundred feet high, have defied the elements for thousands of years. Crossing a cañon filled with madrones, oaks, and laurels, we look down upon a panorama of exceeding beauty. At a certain point the train seems about to jump off into space, but it makes a sharp curve around a jutting cliff on the edge of the cañon, and a broader view bursts upon us, a view unparalleled for its magnificence.

About half way up we reach the double bowknot, where the road parallels itself five times in a short distance, and where one can change cars and go down the other side of the mountain to Muir Woods. We stay by the train, and toil upward, over Slide Gulch, through McKinley Cut, and at last, with aching but beauty-filled eyes, we reach the summit. From the top of most mountains surrounding peaks shut off the view to some extent, but from the summit of Mount Tamalpais there is an unbroken view. Rising as it does almost from the shores of the bay, there are miles and miles of uninterrupted view. Far below us the ocean and the bay shimmer like a mirror, and majestic ocean liners, outward bound, look like toy boats. To the left Mount Hamilton rises out of the purple haze, while to the right Mount Diablo pushes its great bulk above the clouds.

It is claimed that twenty or more cities and towns can be seen from the top of Mount Tamalpais. Whether this be true or not, I cannot say, but it is certain that we saw a good many, near and far, and it is also true that on a clear day the Sierras, one hundred and fifty miles distant, can be plainly seen.

From the hotel near the summit one gets an unsurpassed view of San Francisco Bay, the Cliff House, and the Farallone Islands; and if you are fortunate enough to see the sun sink behind the ocean, between the portals of the Golden Gate, you will never forget the sight. All the colors of the artist's palette are thrown across the sky, changing from red to orange, from orange to purple; each white-capped wave is touched with a rosy phosphorescence, and scintillates like a thousand jewels.

To ascend Mount Tamalpais on foot, following the railroad, is not a difficult task, and is well worth the effort, for then you can take time to enjoy the varied views that burst upon your vision at each turn of the road, and linger as long as you like over each choice bit of scenery. As you descend you feel that the day upon the mountain has been a day of vision and of beauty.

Bear Creek

Over the second range of hills that shut in San Francisco Bay on the east is a delightful little trout brook known as Bear Creek. With my camera, a frugal lunch, and an assortment of trout flies carefully stowed away in my knapsack, I started in quest of this little stream that follows the windings of the cañon.

If bears had ever inhabited this locality, and posed as its godfathers, they had long since disappeared, and many years had passed since they had slaked their thirst with its sparkling waters. Only the name remained to remind one of other days, and one name is as good as another to a trout brook.

My object was not so much to tempt the speckled trout with gaudy fly from quiet pool or swirling riffle, as to follow the windings of the stream, and spy out the quiet nooks, where the sun comes filtering through the trees, dappling the water; or resting in the shadows where the thick foliage defies its penetrating rays, and spreads a somber hue on mossy rock or bed of ferns. At one place, perhaps a rod from the margin of the brook, was a sort of amphitheater among the trees, where nature had been prodigal with her colors, touching the woods in spots here and there with ocher, umber, and vermilion. She had even brushed with scarlet many of the shrubs and vines, until they glowed with a warm color against the green background.

The pine trees had shed their needles, making a carpet soft as velvet, where woodland elves might revel or the god Pan practice upon his pipes, laughing nymphs dancing to the music.

Is there anything in nature more companionable than a mountain brook? It has its moods both grave and gay, and is as fickle as a schoolgirl. At times it chuckles at you in a musical undertone as you walk along its banks, and again it seems to warn you from trespassing on its preserves, scolding in a shrill falsetto as it dodges under the roots of a fallen tree, or dives among the lilypads, as if to hide from your sight. But when it swirls down the eddy, and comes to rest by an overhanging rock, where the shadows are dark and the water deep, its song is hushed, as if in fear of disturbing the wary trout that lie in hiding in the depths of the pool.

This is a likely place for fish, and I put my rod together and cast my flies, dropping them as lightly as a thistledown, and using all my skill, but no trout rise to my lure; this is evidently their day off, or my flies are too palpable a subterfuge to tempt a self-respecting trout.

Sitting on a log, one end of which projects over the stream, I watch a dragon-fly, or darning needle, float over the water, his flight so swift my eyes can hardly follow it. At last it stops in front of me, perfectly poised for a second, but with wings in rapid motion, then darts away to perform its acrobatic feat of standing on its head on a lilypad, or to feast on the gnats and other insects that it captures while on the wing. Truly it is rightly named a dragon.

The whirligig-beetles, those social little black fellows, gather in large numbers and chase each other round and round in graceful curves, skating over the water as if enjoying a game of tag.

Leaving the beetles at their game, I come to a place where the brook seems to hesitate on the brink of a mimic waterfall, as if afraid to take the dive, but like a boy unwilling to take a dare, it plunges over the brink to the pool below, with gurgling laughter, in a perfect ecstasy of bravado.

A leaf drops from an overhanging bough, falling so lightly that it barely makes a ripple, then sails away like a mimic ship to far-off ports, dancing along at every caprice of the fitful current; only to be stranded at last, cast away like a shipwrecked galleon, on some distant island.

In the shadows the brook seems to have a more solemn tone, in keeping with its somber surroundings, singing its song to the white-petaled saxifrage that peeps out at it over the bed of maidenhair fern, or the bright-leaved water cress; then flashing out into the sunlight, and, like a boy out of school, romping and laughing in utter abandon.

Flowering currants, with rose-pink clusters of blossoms, line the banks, scattering their fragrance far and near. The rancorous cry of the catbird, and the rattling call of the kingfisher, that feathered spirit of the stream, are left behind; the clear flutelike notes of the meadow lark take their place, and the hills, covered with wild flowers, roll back from its margin, as if to make room for its uninterrupted flow.

The Western bluebird floats across the meadow like a flashing sapphire, and the lark-sparrow pours forth his melody, as he teeters up and down on a weed stalk.

But at night the brook is heard at its best, when it performs its symphonies for the flickering moonlight that nestles upon its bosom, and the stars that reflect their lamps on its surface.

Make your camp on its margin and when your fire burns low, and you draw your blanket around you, with the mountain brook singing its lullaby, and the vesper sparrow chanting its melodious vesper hymn, you can say with the psalmist, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep," and you might add, "lulled by the song of the mountain brook."

The Song of the Reel

Close by the edge of the lily pads,
there's a flash and swirl of spray,
And the line draws taut, and the rod dips
low, and I sing as he speeds away;
And I whir and click with the joy of life, as
the line runs in and out,
And I laugh with glee as I reel him in, the
gamy and speckled trout.

And again the silken line is cast, and the fly
like a feather glides,
Close to the rock where the water's deep, and
the wary black bass hides.
There's a strike and a run as the game is
hooked, and his rush with a snub is met,
But he yields at last to the steady strain, and
is brought to the landing net.

As the sun sinks low in the western sky, and
the shadows longer grow,
And the night hawk wheels in his silent flight,
and the crickets draw their bow,
And the cat-tails wave in the gentle breeze,
and the boat glides on apace;
Then I reel in the line, while the bamboo rod
is laid away in its case.

The bass and the trout, and the wall-eyed pike,
the pickerel and muskalonge,
Have each and all been lost or won as I caused
them to race or plunge,
I'm the sportsman's friend, and a foeman bold,
and I've filled full many a creel;
For what would the fisherman's luck be worth
without the song of the reel?

The Old Road

There is an old road that I love to follow. If one may judge by appearances, it is but slightly used by travelers, for it seems to lead nowhere, and is quite content in its wanderings, winding through cañons, over hills, and down valleys. I am told by one who ought to know--for he is an old resident--that if you follow its tortuous course far enough, it will lead you to a town called Walnut Creek, but I cannot vouch for the truth of this assertion, as I have never found a town or hamlet along its winding course. In fact, I remember but one place of abode along its entire length, and this, a weather-beaten cottage nearly hidden by the pepper and acacia trees that surround it.

It is a quaint little place, and might have inspired the poet to write that beautiful poem containing the lines,

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
And be a friend to man,

for the cooling draught passed out to me one hot afternoon from this house would certainly class the occupant as a benefactor.

The dew was sparkling on the grass when I set out in the early morning, gossamer spider webs strung from leaf and stem glistened in the sunlight, and up from a tuft of grass a meadow lark sprang on silent wing, scattering his silvery notes, a paean of praise to the early dawn.

A bluebird's notes blend with those of the song sparrow, and a robin swinging on the topmost branch of a eucalyptus, after a few short notes as a prelude, pours forth a perfect rhapsody of melody.

At this place a hill encroaches upon the road at the right, covered thickly with underbrush and blackberry vines, its crest surmounted with a stately grove of eucalyptus trees, while on the left there is an almost perpendicular drop to the valley below. So narrow is the road that teams can hardly pass each other. Why it should crowd itself into such narrow quarters when there is room to spare is its own secret.

Stretching its dusty length along, it soon broadens out as if glad to escape from its cramped quarters, and glides under the wide spreading branches of a California buckeye, which stands kneedeep in the beautiful clarkia, with its rose-pink petals, and wand-like stalks of the narrow-leaved milkweed, with silken pods bursting with fairy sails ready to start out on unknown travels.

Leaving the shade, it climbs the hill for a broader view of the surrounding landscape, and looks down on the bay on one side, and the rolling hills and valleys on the other. Yellow buttercups nod to it from the meadow, and the lavender snap dragons wave their threadlike fingers in silent greeting. Tall, stately teasels stand like sentinels along the way, and the balsamic tarweed spreads its fragrance along the outer edge.

Threading its way down a steep hill; through a wealth of tangled grasses; past a grove of live oaks, from whose twisted and contorted limbs the gray moss hangs in long festoons, by Indian paintbrush and scarlet bugler gleaming like sparks of fire amid the green and bronze foliage, it glides at last into a somber cañon. There a bridge spans the brook that gurgles its elfin song to cheer the dusty traveler on its way.

The laurel, madrone, and manzanitas keep it company for some distance on either side, and a catbird mews and purrs from a clump of willows on the margin of the stream. A dozen or more yellow-winged butterflies gathered at a moist spot, scatter like autumn leaves before a gust of wind at my approach, dancing away on fairy wings like golden sunbeams.

At a place where the road makes a bend to the right, and the cat-tails and rushes grow in profusion, a blue heron, that spirit of the marsh, stands grotesque and sedate, and gazes with melancholy air into the water. Bullfrogs pipe, running the whole gamut of tones from treble to bass, hidden away amid the water grasses. Darning needles dodge in and out among the rushes in erratic flight, and a blackbird teeters up and down on a tulle stem while repeating over and over his pleasant "O-ko-lee."

But the road does not stop to look or listen, and once more it climbs the hill where the golden poppy basks in the sunshine, and the dandelions spread their yellow carpet for it to pass over, or, nodding silken heads scatter their tiny fleet of a hundred fairy balloons upon the wings of the summer winds.

Down the road, whistling blithely, comes a slip of a boy, with fishing rod, cut from the adjacent thicket, over his shoulder and a can of bait tucked securely under his arm, happy as a king in anticipation of the fish he may never catch. At his heels trots contentedly a yellow dog. True companions of the highway are they, for no country road would be complete without its boy and dog, and as I pass them I call back, "Good luck, my doughty fisherman," and the road answers--or was it an echo?--"Good luck, good luck."

But at last the shadows creep down cañon and hillside, the soft light of evening touches the tops of tree and shrub with a rosy splendor, shading from green to gold, from gold to purple; and through the gathering dusk the road sinks into the surrounding gloom, toiling on in silence with only the stars for company, and the lights from firefly lanterns to guide it on its lonely way.