Chapter XXII: , Roughing It.--We had heard a world of

talk about the marvelous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally
curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four members of
the Brigade[1] had been there and located some timber lands
on its shores and stored up a quantity of provisions in their
camp. We strapped a couple of blankets on our shoulders
and took an ax apiece and started--for we intended to
take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy. We
were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go on
horseback. We were told that the distance was eleven miles.
We tramped a long time on level ground, and then toiled
laboriously up a mountain about a thousand miles high and
looked over. No lake there. We descended on the other side,
crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three or
four thousand miles high, apparently, and looked over again.
No lake yet. We sat down tired and perspiring, and hired a
couple of Chinamen to curse those people who had beguiled us.
Thus refreshed, we presently resumed the march with renewed
vigor and determination. We plodded on, two or three hours
longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us--a noble sheet of
blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the
level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snowclad mountain
peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher
still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up eighty
or a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As it
lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly
photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely
be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.

[Footnote 1: The "Brigade" to which the distinguished humorist here refers was a company of fourteen camp-followers of the Governor of Nevada, who boarded at the same house as Mark, that of Mrs. O'Flannigan. They had joined the Governor's retinue "by their own election at New York and San Francisco, and came along, feeling that in the scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not make their condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably expect to make it better. They were popularly known as the 'Irish Brigade,' though there were only four or five Irishmen among them."]

... After supper as the darkness closed down and the stars
came out and spangled the great mirror with jewels, we smoked
meditatively in the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and
our pains. In due time we spread our blankets in the warm sand
between two large bowlders and soon fell asleep.... The wind
rose just as we were losing consciousness, and we were lulled
to sleep by the beating of the surf upon the shore.

It is always very cold on that Lake shore in the night, but we
had plenty of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved
a muscle all night, but waked at early dawn in the original
positions, and got up at once thoroughly refreshed, free from
soreness, and brim full of friskiness. There is no end of
wholesome medicine in such an experience. That morning
we could have whipped ten such people as we were the day
before--sick ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and
people will go to "water cures" and "movement cures" and to
foreign lands for health.
to Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an
Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite
like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest
mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. The air up there in
the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And
why shouldn't it be?--It is the same the angels breathe.
I think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered
together that a man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand
by its side. Not under a roof, but under the sky; it seldom or
never rains there in the summer time.

... Next morning while smoking the pipe of peace after
breakfast we watched the sentinel peaks put on the glory of
the sun, and followed the conquering light as it swept down
among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests free.
We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the
water till every little detail of forest, precipice, and
pinnacle was wrought in and finished, and the miracle of the
enchanter complete. Then to "business."

That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north
shore. There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray,
sometimes white. This gives the marvelous transparency of the
water a fuller advantage than it has elsewhere on the Lake. We
usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from the shore, and
then lay down on the thwarts in the sun, and let the boat
drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It
interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the
luxurious rest and indolence brought. The shore all along was
indented with deep, curved bays and coves, bordered by
narrow sand-beaches; and where the sand ended, the steep
mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space--rose up like
a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly
wooded with tall pines.

So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only
twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly
distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air! Yes, where
it was even _eighty_ feet deep. Every little pebble was
distinct, every speckled trout, every hand's-breadth of sand.
Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite bowlder, as large as
a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently,
and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently
it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the
impulse to seize an oar and avert the danger. But the boat
would float on, and the bowlder descend again, and then we
could see that when we had been exactly above it, it must have
been twenty or thirty feet below the surface. Down through
the transparency of these great depths, the water was not
_merely_ transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All
objects seen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not
only of outline, but of every minute detail, which they
would not have had when seen simply through the same depth of
atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces seem below
us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft
in mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions
"balloon-voyages."

We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a
week. We could see trout by the thousand winging about in the
emptiness under us, or sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but
they would not bite--they could see the line too plainly,
perhaps. We frequently selected the trout we wanted, and
rested the bait patiently and persistently on the end of his
nose at a depth of eighty feet, but he would only shake it off
with an annoyed manner, and shift his position.[1]

[Footnote 1: These extracts are made from Mark Twain's copyrighted works by especial arrangement with his publishers, Harper & Bros., New York.]

CHAPTER B

MARK TWAIN AND THE FOREST RANGERS

In a quarterly magazine published solely for the Rangers of the Tahoe Reserve, one of the Rangers thus "newspaperizes" Mark's experiences in two different sketches, one as it was in 1861 "before" the establishment of the Reserve, and the other as it would be "now."

AS IT WAS IN 1861

_Extract from January Harper's_.--Mark Twain heard that
the timber around Lake Bigler (Tahoe) promised vast wealth
which could be had for the asking. He decided to locate a
timber claim on its shores. He went to the Lake with a young
Ohio lad, staked out a timber claim, and made a semblance of
fencing it and of building a habitation, to comply with the
law. They did not sleep in the house, of which Mark Twain
says: "It never occurred to us for one thing, and besides, it
was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not
wish to strain it."

They lived by their camp-fire on the borders of the Lake and
one day--it was just at nightfall--it got away from them,
fired the Forest, and destroyed their fence and habitation.
His picture of the superb night spectacle--the mighty mountain
conflagration--is splendidly vivid.

"The level ranks of flame were relieved at intervals by the
standard-bearers, as we called the tall dead trees, wrapped in
fire, and waving their blazing banners a hundred feet in the
air. Then we could turn from the scene to the Lake and see
every branch and leaf, and cataract of flame upon its banks
perfectly reflected, as in a gleaming, fiery mirror. The
mighty roaring of the conflagration, together with our
solitary and somewhat unsafe position (for there was no one
within six miles of us), rendered the scene very impressive."

AS IT WOULD BE NOW

_Press Dispatch_,--_August_ 15, 1912.

MARK TWAIN FIRES FOREST! ! !

NOTED HUMORIST CHARGED BY FOREST OFFICERS WITH CRIMINAL
CARELESSNESS

Mark Twain and a friend from Ohio, who have been camping on
Lake Tahoe, are responsible for a Forest fire which burned
over about 200 acres before it was checked by Forest
officers. The fire was sighted at 6 o'clock P.M. by one of the
cooeperative patrolmen of the Crown Columbia Paper Company, who
at once telephoned to the tender of the Launch 'Ranger' for
help. Within an hour the launch was on the scene with a dozen
men picked up at Tahoe City, and by 10 o'clock the fire was
practically under control.

Twain and his friend were found spell-bound by the Rangers, at
the impressiveness of the fire. After fighting it for several
hours, however, its grandeur palled upon them, and at the
present time they are considerably exercised inasmuch as
it was ascertained that the fire was a result of their
carelessness in leaving a camp-fire to burn unattended. It is
extremely likely that the well-known humorist will find the
penalty attendant to his carelessness, no "joking" matter.

To which I take the liberty of adding the following:

SUBSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS

From the _Nevada City Bulletin_, Sept. 6, 1912.

Samuel L. Clemens (popularly known as Mark Twain), together with
Silas Snozzlebottom, of Columbus, Ohio, was to-day arraigned
before Justice Brown, of the Superior Court, charged with having
caused a destructive fire by leaving his campfire unattended. The
eminent humorist and author was evidently unaware of the
seriousness of his offense for he positively refused to engage an
attorney to defend him. When called upon to plead he began to
explain that while he confessed to lighting the fire, and leaving
it unattended, he wished the Judge to realize that it was the act
of God in sending the wind that spread the flames that caused the
destructive fire which ensued. The Judge agreed with him, and
then grimly said it was a similar act of God which impelled him
to levy a fine of $500.00 and one month in jail for leaving his
campfire subject to the influence of the wind. The humorist began
to smile "on the left," and expressed an earnest desire to argue
the matter out with the Judge, but with a curt "Next Case!" Mark
was dismissed in charge of an officer and retired "smiling a
sickly smile," and though he did not "curl up on the floor," it
is evident that the subsequent proceedings interested him no
more.