THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 $
 
 THE 
 
 SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, 
 
 I. OS AKGKLEB. ■•- ' 'Ai 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "travels WITH A DONKEY," " AN INLAND BOAT VOYAGE," 
 " TREASURE ISLAND," ETC 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 189s
 
 " Vixerunt nonuUi in agris, delectati re sua familiari. His idem 
 propositura fuit quod regibus, ut ne qua re agerent, ne cui parerent, 
 libertate uterentur: cujus proprium est sic vivere ut velis." 
 
 Cic, De Off., I. XX. 
 
 JEnifafrsitp Press : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
 i
 
 •\ 
 
 ^■' 
 
 
 TO 
 
 VIRGIL WILLIAMS 
 
 AND 
 
 DORA NORTON WILLIAMS 
 Sfjesc Sfectcl)cs 
 
 ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THEIR FRIEND 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 In the Valley : 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Calistoga 23 
 
 II. The Petrified Forest 35 
 
 III. Napa Wine 46 
 
 IV. The Scot Abroad 61 
 
 With the Children of Israel: 
 
 I. To Introduce Mr. Kelmar .... 73 
 
 II. First Impressions of Silverado . . 83 
 
 III. The Return 109 
 
 The Act of Squatting 123 
 
 The Hunter's Family 149 
 
 The Sea Fogs 177 
 
 The Toll House 195 
 
 A Starry Drive 211 
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine . . . 225 
 
 Toils and Pleasures 255
 
 THE 
 
 SILVERADO SQUATTERS. 
 
 4- — * 
 
 The scene of this little book is on 
 a high mountain. There are, indeed, 
 many higher; there are many of a no- 
 bler outline. It is no place of pilgrim- 
 age for the summary globe-trotter; but 
 to one who lives upon its sides, Mount 
 Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of 
 interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one 
 section of the Californian Coast Range, 
 none of its near neighbors risins; to one- 
 half its altitude. It looks down on much 
 green, intricate country. It feeds in
 
 lo The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 the spring-time many splashing brooks. 
 From its summit you must have an 
 excellent lesson of geography ; seeing, 
 to the south, San Francisco Bay, with 
 Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte 
 Diablo on the other ; to the west and 
 thirty miles away, the open ocean ; east- 
 ward, across the corn-lands and thick tule 
 swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where 
 the Central Pacific railroad begins to 
 climb the sides of the Sierras ; and 
 rtorthward, for what I know, the white 
 head of Shasta looking down on Ore- 
 gon. Three counties, Napa County, 
 Lake County, and Sonoma County, 
 march across its cliffy shoulders. Its 
 naked peak stands nearly four thousand 
 five hundred feet above the sea ; its 
 sides are fringed with forest; and the
 
 TJie Silverado Squatters. 1 1 
 
 soil, where it is bare, glows warm with 
 cinnabar. 
 
 Life in its shadow goes rustically for- 
 ward. Bucks, and bears, and rattle- 
 snakes, and former mining operations, 
 are the staple of men's talk. Agricul- 
 ture has only begun to mount above the 
 valley. And though in a few years from 
 now tl>e whole district may be smiling 
 with farms, passing trains shaking the 
 mountain to the heart, many- windowed 
 hotels lighting up the night like factories, 
 and a prosperous city occupying the site 
 of sleepy Calistoga; yet in the mean 
 time, around the foot of that mountain 
 the silence of nature reigns in a great 
 measure unbroken, and the people of 
 hill and valley go sauntering about their 
 business as in the days before the flood.
 
 12 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 To reach Mount Saint Helena from 
 San Francisco, the traveller has twice 
 to cross the bay : once by the busy 
 Oakland Ferry, and again, after an hour 
 or so of the railway, from Vallejo junc- 
 tion to Vallejo. Thence he takes rail 
 once more to mount the long green 
 strath of Napa Valley. 
 
 In all the contractions and expan- 
 sions of that inland sea, the Bay of San 
 Francisco, there can be few drearier 
 scenes than the Vallejo Ferry. Bald 
 shores and a low, bald islet enclose the 
 sea ; through the narrows the tide bub- 
 bles, muddy like a river. When we 
 made the passage (bound, although yet 
 we knew it not, for Silverado) the 
 steamer jumped, and the black buoys 
 were dancing in the jabble ; the ocean
 
 The Silverado Squatters. 13 
 
 breeze blew killing chill ; and, although 
 the upper sky was still unflecked with 
 vapor, the sea fogs were pouring in 
 from seaward, over the hill-tops of 
 Marin County, in ©r^e great, shapeless, 
 silver cloud. 
 
 South Vallejo is typical of many Cal- 
 ifornian towns. It was a blunder ; the 
 site has proved untenable ; and, al- 
 though it is still such a young place 
 by the scale of Europe, it has already 
 begun to be deserted for its neighbor 
 and namesake. North Vallejo. A long 
 pier, a number of drinking saloons, a 
 hotel of a great . size, marshy pools 
 where the frogs keep up their croaking, 
 and even at high noon the entire ab- 
 sence of any human face or voice — 
 these are the marks of South Vallejo.
 
 14 The Silverado Sqtiatters. 
 
 Yet there was a tall building beside the 
 pier, labelled the Star Flour Mills ; and 
 sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close 
 along shore, waiting for their cargo. 
 Soon these would be plunging round 
 the Horn, soon the flour from the Star 
 Flour Mills would be landed on the 
 wharves of Liverpool. For that, too, 
 is one of England's outposts ; thither, 
 to this gaunt mill, across the Atlantic 
 and Pacific deeps and round about the 
 icy Horn, this crowd of great, three- 
 masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing 
 nothing, and return with bread. 
 
 The Frisby House, for that was the 
 name of the hotel, was a place of fallen 
 fortunes, like the town. It was now 
 given up to laborers, and partly ruin- 
 ous. At dinner there was the ordinary
 
 The Silverado Squatters. 15 
 
 display of what is called in the West a 
 two-bit hotise: the tablecloth checked 
 red and white, the plague of flies, the 
 wire hencoops over the dishes, the great 
 variety and invariable vileness of the 
 food, and the rough coatless men de- 
 vouring it in silence. In our bedroom, 
 the stove would not burn, though it 
 would smoke ; and while one window 
 would not open, the other would not 
 shut. There was a view on a bit of 
 empty road, a few dark houses, a don- 
 key wandering with its shadow on a 
 slope, and a blink of sea, with a tall ship 
 lying anchored in the moonlight. Ail 
 about that dreary inn frogs sang their 
 ungainly chorus. 
 
 Early the next morning we mounted 
 the hill along a wooden footway, bridg-
 
 1 6 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 ing one marish spot after another. 
 Here and there, as we ascended, we 
 passed a house embowered in white 
 roses. More of the bay became appar- 
 ent, and soon the blue peak of Tamal- 
 pais rose above the green level of the 
 island opposite. It told us we were 
 still but a little way from the city of 
 the Golden Gate, already, at that hour, 
 beginning to awake among the sand- 
 hills. It called to us over the waters 
 as with the voice of a bird. Its stately 
 head, blue as a sapphire on the paler 
 azure of the sky, spoke to us of wider 
 outlooks and the bright Pacific. For 
 Tamalpais stands sentry, like a light- 
 house, over the Golden Gate, between 
 the bay and the open ocean, and looks 
 down indi£ferently on both. Even as
 
 The Silverado Squatters. 17 
 
 we saw and hailed it from Vallejo, sea- 
 men, far out at sea, were scanning it with 
 shaded eyes ; and, as if to answer to the 
 thought, one of the great ships below be- 
 gan silently to clothe herself with white 
 sails, homeward bound for England. 
 
 For some way beyond Vallejo the 
 railway led us through bald green 
 pastures. On the west the rough high- 
 lands of Marin shut off the ocean; in 
 the midst, in long, straggling, gleaming 
 arms, the bay died out among the 
 grass ; there were few trees and few 
 enclosures ; the sun shone wide over 
 open uplands, the displumed hills stood 
 clear against the sky. But by and by 
 these hills beo^an to draw nearer on 
 either hand, and first thicket and then 
 wood began to clothe their sides ; and
 
 1 8 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 soon we were away from ail signs of 
 the sea's neighborhood, mounting an 
 inland, irrigated valley. A great va- 
 riety of oaks stood, now severally, now 
 in a becoming grove, among the fields 
 and vineyards. The towns were com- 
 pact, in about equal proportions, of 
 bright, new wooden houses, and great 
 and growing forest trees ; and the 
 chapel bell on the engine sounded most 
 festally that sunny Sunday, as we drew 
 up at one green town after another, 
 with the townsfolk trooping in their 
 Sunday's best to see the strangers, with 
 the sun sparkling on the clean houses, 
 and great domes of foliage humming 
 overhead in the breeze. 
 
 This pleasant Napa Valley is, at its 
 north end, blockaded by our mountain.
 
 The Silverado Squatters. 19 
 
 There, at Calistoga, the railroad ceases, 
 and the traveller who intends faring 
 farther, to the Geysers or to the springs 
 in Lake -County, must cross the spurs 
 of the mountain by stage. Thus, 
 Mount Saint Helena is not only a sum- 
 mit, but a frontier; and, up to the time 
 of writing, it has stayed the progress 
 of the iron horse.
 
 IN THE VALLEY.
 
 IN THE VALLEY. 
 
 I. 
 
 CALISTOGA. 
 
 It is difficult for a European to imag- 
 ine Calistoga, the whole place is so new, 
 and of such an occidental pattern ; the 
 very name, I hear, was invented at a 
 supper-party by the man who found the 
 springs. 
 
 The railroad and the highway come 
 up the valley about parallel to one an- 
 other. The street of Calistoga joins 
 them, perpendicular to both — a wide 
 street, with bright, clean, low houses,.
 
 24 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 here and there a veranda over the side- 
 walk, here and there a horse-post, here 
 and there lounging townsfolk. Other 
 streets are marked out, and most likely 
 named ; for these towns in the New 
 World begin with a firm resolve to 
 grow larger, Washington and Broadway, 
 and then First and Second, and so 
 forth, being boldly plotted out as soon 
 as the community indulges in a plan. 
 But, in the meanwhile, all the life and 
 most of the houses of Calistoga are con- 
 centrated upon that street between the 
 railway station and the road. I never 
 heard it called by any name, but I 
 will hazard a guess that it is either 
 Washington or Broadway. Here are the 
 blacksmith's, the chemist's, the general 
 merchant's, and Kong Sam Kee, the
 
 In the Valley. 25 
 
 Chinese laundryman's ; here, probably, is 
 the office of the local paper (for the place 
 has a paper — they all have papers) ; 
 and here certainly is one of the hotels, 
 Cheeseborough's, whence the daring 
 Foss, a man dear to legend, starts his 
 horses for the Geysers. 
 
 It must be remembered that we are 
 here in a land of stage-drivers and high- 
 waymen — a land, in that sense, like 
 England a hundred years ago. The 
 highway robber — road-agent, he is 
 quaintly called — is still busy in these 
 parts. The fame of Vasquez is still 
 young. Only a few years ago, the 
 Lakeport stage was robbed a mile or 
 two from Calistoga. In 1879, the den- 
 tist of Mendocino City, fifty miles away 
 upon the coast, suddenly threw off the
 
 26 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 garments of his trade, like Grindoff in 
 "The Miller and his Men," and flamed 
 forth in his second dress as a captain 
 of banditti. A great robbery was fol- 
 lowed by a long chase, a chase of days 
 if not of weeks, among the intricate 
 hill-country ; and the chase was followed 
 by much desultory fighting, in which 
 several — and the dentist, I believe, 
 amongst the number — bit the dust. 
 The grass was springing for the first 
 time, nourished upon their blood, when 
 I arrived in Calistosfa. I am reminded 
 of another highwayman of that same 
 year. "He had been unwell," so ran 
 his humorous defence, "and the doctor 
 told him to take something, so he took 
 the express-box." 
 
 The cultus of the stage-coachman
 
 Ill the Valley. 2"/ 
 
 always flourishes highest where there 
 are thieves on the road, and where 
 the guard travels armed, and the stage 
 is not only a link between country and 
 city, and the vehicle of news, but has 
 a faint warfaring aroma, like a man 
 who should be brother to a soldier. 
 California boasts her famous stage- 
 drivers, and among the famous Foss 
 is not forgotten. Along the unfenced, 
 abominable mountain roads, he launches 
 his team with small reo^ard to human 
 life or the doctrine of probabilities. 
 Flinching travellers, who behold them- 
 selves coasting eternity at every cor- 
 ner, look with natural admiration at 
 their driver's huge, impassive, fleshy 
 countenance. He has the very face 
 for the driver in Sam Weller's anec-
 
 28 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 dote, who upset the election party at 
 the required point. Wonderful tales 
 are current of his readiness and skill. 
 One in particular, of how one of his 
 horses fell at a ticklish passage of the 
 road, and how Foss let slip the reins, 
 and, driving over the fallen animal, 
 arrived at the next stage with only 
 three. This I relate as I heard it, 
 without guarantee. 
 
 I only saw Foss once, though, 
 strange as it may sound, I have 
 twice talked with him. He lives out 
 of Calistoga, at a ranch called Foss- 
 ville. One evening, after he was long 
 gone home, I dropped into Cheese- 
 borough's, and was asked if I should 
 like to speak with Mr. Foss. Suppos- 
 ing that the interview was impossible,
 
 hi the Valley. 29 
 
 and that I was merely called upon to 
 subscribe the general sentiment, I boldly- 
 answered "Yes." Next moment, I had 
 one instrument at my ear, another at 
 my mouth, and found myself, with 
 nothing in the world to say, conversing 
 with a man several miles off among 
 desolate hills. Foss rapidly and some- 
 what plaintively brought the conver- 
 sation to an end ; and he returned to 
 his night's grog at Fossville, while I 
 strolled forth asrain on Calistoga hii^h 
 street. But it was an odd thing that 
 here, on what we are accustomed to 
 consider the very skirts of civilization, 
 I should have used the telephone for 
 the first time in my civilized career. 
 So it goes in these young countries ; 
 telephones, and telegraphs, and news-
 
 30 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 papers, and advertisements running far 
 ahead among the Indians and the 
 grizzly bears. 
 
 Alone, on the other side of the rail- 
 way, stands the Springs Hotel, with 
 its attendant cottages. The floor of 
 the valley is extremely level to the 
 very roots of the hills ; only here and 
 there a hillock, crowned with pines, 
 rises like the barrow of some chieftain 
 famed in war ; and right against one 
 of these hillocks is the Springs Hotel 
 — is or was; for since I was there the 
 place has been destroyed by fire, and 
 has risen again from its ashes. A lawn 
 runs about the house, and the lawn is 
 in its turn surrounded by a system of 
 little five-roomed cottages, each with a 
 veranda and a weedy palm before the
 
 hi tJie Valley. 31 
 
 door. Some of the cottages are let to 
 residents, and these are wreathed in 
 flowers. The rest are occupied by or- 
 dinary visitors to the hotel ; and a very 
 pleasant way this is, by which you 
 have a little country cotta*ge of your 
 own, without domestic burdens, and 
 by the day or week. 
 
 The whole neighborhood of Mount 
 Saint Helena is full of sulphur and of 
 boiling springs. The Geysers are fa- 
 mous ; they were the great health re- 
 sort of the Indians before the coming 
 of the whites. Lake County is dotted 
 with spas; Hot Springs and White 
 Sulphur Springs are the names of two 
 stations on the Napa Valley railroad ; 
 and Calistoga itself seems to repose on 
 a mere film above a boiling, subter-
 
 32 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 ranean lake. At one end of the hotel 
 enclosure are the springs from which 
 it takes its name, hot enough to 
 scald a child seriously while I was 
 there. At the other end, the tenant 
 of a cottage sank a well, and there 
 also the water came up boiling. It 
 keeps this end of the valley as warm as 
 toast. I have gone across to the hotel 
 a little after five in the morning, when 
 a sea fog from the Pacific was hanging 
 thick and gray, and dark and dirty over- 
 head, and found the thermometer had 
 been up before me, and had already 
 climbed among the nineties ; and in the 
 stress of the day it was sometimes too 
 hot to move about. 
 
 But in spite of this heat from above 
 and below, doing one on both sides,
 
 In I lie Valley. 33 
 
 Calistoga was a pleasant place to dwell 
 in ; beautifully green, for it was then 
 that favored moment in the Californian 
 year, when the rains are over and the 
 dusty summer has not yet set in ; often 
 visited by fresh airs, now from the 
 mountain, now across Sonoma from the 
 sea; very quiet, very idle, very silent but 
 for the breezes and the cattle bells 
 afield ; and there was something satis- 
 factory in the sight of that great moun- 
 tain that enclosed us to the north, 
 whether it stood, robed in sunshine, 
 quaking to its topmost pinnacle with 
 the heat and brightness of the day, or 
 whether it set itself to weaving vapors, 
 wisp after wisp growing, trembling, fleet- 
 ing, and fading in the blue. 
 
 The tangled, woody, and almost
 
 34 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 trackless foot-hills that enclose the val- 
 ley, shutting it off from Sonoma on the 
 west, and from Yolo on the east — 
 rough as they were in outline, dug out 
 by winter streams, crowned by cliffy 
 bluffs and nodding pine trees — were 
 dwarfed into satellites by the bulk and 
 bearino^ of Mount Saint Helena. She 
 over-towered them by two-thirds of her 
 own stature. She excelled them by the 
 boldness of her profile. Her great bald 
 summit, clear of trees and pasture, a 
 cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected 
 kinship with the dark and shaggy wil- 
 derness of lesser hill-tops.
 
 In the Valley. 35 
 
 II. 
 
 THE PETRIFIED FOREST. 
 
 We drove off from the Springs Hotel 
 about three in the afternoon. The sun 
 warmed me to the heart. A broad, cool 
 wind streamed pauselessly down the val- 
 ley, laden with perfume. Up at the top 
 stood Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of 
 mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed 
 spurs, and radiating warmth. Once we 
 saw it framed in a grove of tall and 
 exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line 
 and color a finished composition. We 
 passed a cow stretched by the roadside, 
 her bell slowly beating time to the 
 movement of her ruminating jaws, her
 
 36 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 big red face crawled over by half a dozen 
 flies, a monument of content. 
 
 A little farther, and we struck to the 
 left up a mountain road, and for two 
 hours threaded one valley after another, 
 green, tangled, full of noble timber, giv- 
 ing us every now and again a sight of 
 Mount Saint Helena and the blue hilly 
 distance, and crossed by many streams, 
 through which we splashed to the car- 
 riage-step. To the right or tlie left, 
 there was scarce any trace of man but 
 the road we followed ; I think we passed 
 but one rancheros house in the whole 
 distance, and that was closed and 
 smokeless. But we had the society of 
 these bright streams — dazzlingly clear, 
 as is their wont, splashing from the wheels 
 in diamonds, and striking a lively cool-
 
 In the Valley. t^J 
 
 ness throuGfh the sunshine. And what 
 with the innumerable variety of greens, 
 the masses of fohage tossing in the 
 breeze, the glimpses of distance, the 
 descents into seemingly impenetrable 
 thickets, the continual dodging of the 
 road which made haste to plunge again 
 into the covert, we had a fine sense of 
 woods, and spring-time, and the open 
 air. 
 
 Our driver gave me a lecture by the 
 way on Californian trees — a thing I 
 was much in need of, having fallen 
 among painters who know the name of 
 nothing, and Mexicans who know the 
 name of nothing in English. He 
 taught me the madrona, the manzanita, 
 the buckeye, the maple ; he showed me 
 the crested mountain quail ; he showed
 
 38 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 me where some young redwoods were 
 already spiring heavenwards from the 
 ruins of the old ; for in this district all 
 had already perished : redwoods and 
 redskins, the two noblest indigenous 
 living things, alike condemned. 
 
 At length, in a lonely dell, we came 
 on a huge wooden gate with a sign 
 upon it like an inn. " The Petrified 
 Forest. Proprietor: C. Evans," ran 
 the legend. Within, on a knoll of 
 sward, was the house of the proprietor, 
 and another smaller house hard by to 
 serve as a museum, where photographs 
 and petrifactions were retailed. It was 
 a pure little isle of touristry among 
 these solitary hills. 
 
 The proprietor was a brave old white- 
 faced Swede. He had wandered this
 
 In tJie Valley. 39 
 
 way, Heaven knows how, and taken 
 up his acres — I forget how many years 
 ago — all alone, bent double with sci- 
 atica, and with six bits in his pocket 
 and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, 
 useless years of seafaring had thus 
 discharged him at the end, penniless 
 and sick. Without doubt he had tried 
 his luck at the diggings, and got no 
 good from that ; without doubt he had 
 loved the bottle, and lived the life of 
 Jack ashore. But at the end of these 
 adventures, here he came ; and, the 
 place hitting his fancy, down he sat 
 to make a new life of it, far from 
 crimps and the salt sea. And the 
 very sight of his ranch had done him 
 good. It was " the handsomest spot 
 in the Californy mountains." " Is n't
 
 40 The Silverado Sqiiatiers. 
 
 it handsome, now ? " he said. Every 
 penny he makes goes into that ranch 
 to make it handsomer. Then the cH- 
 mate, with the sea-breeze every after- 
 noon in the hottest summer weather, 
 had gradually cured the sciatica; and 
 his sister and niece were now domes- 
 ticated with him for company — or, 
 rather, the niece came only once in 
 the two days, teaching music the mean- 
 while in the valley. And then, for a 
 last piece of luck, " the handsomest 
 spot in the Californy mountains" had 
 produced a petrified forest, which Mr. 
 Evans now shows at the modest figure 
 of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds 
 of his capital when he first came there 
 with an axe and a sciatica. 
 
 This tardy favorite of fortune —
 
 In the Valley. 41 
 
 hobbling a little, I think, as if in 
 memory of the sciatica, but with not 
 a trace that I can remember of the 
 sea — thoroughly ruralized from head 
 to foot, proceeded to escort us up the 
 hill behind his house. 
 
 " Who first found the forest ? " asked 
 my wife. 
 
 " The first ? I was that man," said 
 he. " I was cleaning up the pasture 
 for my beasts, when I found this'' — 
 kicking a great redwood, seven feet 
 in diameter, that lay there on its side, 
 hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark, 
 all changed into gray stone, with veins 
 of quartz between what had been the 
 layers of the wood. 
 
 " Were you surprised t " 
 
 "Surprised? No! What would I
 
 42 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 be surprised about ? What did I know 
 about petrifactions — following the sea ? 
 Petrifaction ! There was no such word 
 in my language ! I knew about putre- 
 faction, though ! I thought it was a 
 stone ; so would you, if you was 
 cleaning up pasture." 
 
 And now he had a theory of his 
 own, which I did not quite grasp, 
 except that the trees had not " grewed " 
 there. But he mentioned, with evi- 
 dent pride, that he differed from all 
 the scientific people who had visited 
 the spot; and he flung about such 
 words as " tufa " and " siHca " with 
 careless freedom. 
 
 When I mentioned I was from Scot- 
 land, " My old country," he said ; 
 " my old country " — with a smiling
 
 In the Valley. 43 
 
 look and a tone of real affection in his 
 voice. I was mightily surprised, for he 
 was obviously Scandinavian, and begged 
 him to explain. It seemed he had 
 learned his English and done nearly all 
 his sailing in Scotch ships. " Out of 
 Glasgow," said he, " or Greenock ; but 
 that's all the same — they all hail from 
 Glasgow." And he was so pleased 
 with me for being a Scotsman, and 
 his adopted compatriot, that he made 
 me a present of a very beautiful piece 
 of petrifaction — I believe the most 
 beautiful and portable he had. 
 
 Here was a man, at least, who was 
 a Swede, a Scot, and an American, 
 acknowledo^inor some kind alleo^iance 
 to three lands. Mr. Wallace's Scoto- 
 Circassian will not fail to come before
 
 44 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 the reader. I have myself met and 
 spoken with a Fifeshire German, 
 whose combination of abominable ac- 
 cents struck me dumb. But, indeed, 
 I think we all belong to many coun- 
 tries. And perhaps this habit of much 
 travel, and the engendering of scat- 
 tered friendships, may prepare the 
 euthanasia of ancient nations. 
 , And the forest itself.? Well, on 
 a tangled, briery hillside — for the 
 pasture would bear a little further 
 cleaning up, to my eyes — there lie 
 scattered thickly various lengths of 
 petrified trunk, such as the one already 
 mentioned. It is very curious, of 
 course, and ancient enough, if that 
 were all. Doubtless, the heart of the 
 geologist beats quicker at the sight ;
 
 hi the Valley. 45 
 
 but, for my part, I was mightily un- 
 moved. Sight-seeing is the art of 
 disappointment. 
 
 " There 's nothing under heaven so blue, 
 That 's fairly worth the travelHng to." 
 
 But, fortunately, Heaven rewards us 
 with many agreeable prospects and ad- 
 ventures by the way ; and sometimes, 
 when we go out to see a petrified for- 
 est, prepares a far more delightful cu- 
 riosity in the form of Mr. Evans, whom 
 may all prosperity attend throughout a 
 long and green old age.
 
 46 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 III. 
 
 NAPA WINE. 
 
 I WAS interested in Californian wine. 
 Indeed, I am interested in all wines, and 
 have been all my life, from the raisin 
 wine that a schoolfellow kept secreted 
 in his play-box up to my last discov- 
 ery, those notable Valtellines, that once 
 shone upon the board of Csesar. 
 
 Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch 
 with dread the shadows falling on the 
 age ; how the unconquerable worm 
 invades the sunny terraces of France, 
 and Bordeaux is no more, and the 
 Rhone a mere Arabia Petrasa. Chateau 
 Neuf is dead, and I have never tasted
 
 In the Valley. 47 
 
 it ; Hermitage — a hermitage indeed 
 from all life's sorrows — lies expiring by 
 the river. And in the place of these 
 imperial elixirs, beautiful to every sense, 
 gem-hued, flower-scented, dream-compel- 
 lers, behold upon the quays at Cette the 
 chemicals arranged ; behold the analyst 
 at Marseilles, raising hands in obsecra- 
 tion, attesting god Lyoeus, and the vats 
 staved in, and the dishonest wines 
 poured forth among the sea. It is not 
 Pan only ; Bacchus, too, is dead. 
 
 If wine is to withdraw its most poetic 
 countenance, the sun of the white din- 
 ner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two* 
 or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, 
 degusting tenderly, and storing reminis- 
 cences — for a bottle of good wine, like 
 a good act, shines ever in the retro*
 
 48 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 spect. If wine is to desert us, go thy 
 ways, old Jack ! Now we begin to have 
 compunctions, and look back at the 
 brave bottles squandered upon dinner- 
 parties, where the guests drank grossly, 
 discussing politics the while, and even 
 the schoolboy " took his whack," like 
 liquorice water. And at the same time, 
 we look timidly forward, with a spark of 
 hope, to where the new lands, already 
 weary of producing gold, begin to green 
 with vineyards. A nice point in human 
 history falls to be decided by Californian 
 and Australian wines. 
 
 Wine in California is still in the ex- 
 perimental stage ; and when you taste a 
 vintage, grave economical questions are 
 involved. The beginning of vine-plant- 
 ing is like the beginning of mining for
 
 In the Valley. 49 
 
 the precious metals : the wine-grower 
 also " prospects." One corner of land 
 after another is tried with one kind of 
 grape after another. This is a failure ; 
 that is better ; a third best. So, bit by- 
 bit, they grope about for their Clos 
 Vougeot and Lafite. Those lodes and 
 pockets of earth, more precious than the 
 precious ores, that yield inimitable fra- 
 grance and soft fire ; those virtuous 
 Conanzas, where the soil has sublimated 
 under sun and stars to something finer, 
 and the wine is bottled poetry ; these 
 still lie undiscovered ; chaparral con- 
 ceals, thicket embowers them ; the 
 miner chips the rock and wanders 
 farther, and the grizzly muses undis- 
 turbed. But there they bide their hour, 
 awaitmg their Columbus ; and nature 
 
 )/V-,
 
 50 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 nurses and prepares them. The smack 
 of Californian earth shall linger on the 
 palate of your grandson. 
 
 Meanwhile the wine is merely a good 
 wine ; the best that I have tasted better 
 than a Beaujolais, and not unlike. But 
 the trade is poor; it lives from hand to 
 mouth, putting its all into experiments, 
 and forced to sell its vintages. To find 
 one properly matured, and bearing its 
 own name, is to be fortune's favorite. 
 
 Bearing its own name, I say, and 
 dwell upon the innuendo. 
 
 " You want to know why California 
 wine is not drunk in the States? " a San 
 Francisco wine merchant said to me, 
 after he had shown me through his 
 premises. " Well, here 's the reason." 
 
 And opening a large cupboard, fitted
 
 hi the Valley. 51 
 
 with many little drawers, he proceeded 
 to shower me all over with a great vari- 
 ety of gorgeously tinted labels, blue, red, 
 or yellow, stamped with crown or coro^ 
 net, and hailing from such a profusion 
 of clos and chateaux, that a single de- 
 partment could scarce have furnished 
 forth the names. But it was strange 
 that all looked unfamiliar. 
 
 " Chateau X } " said I ; " I never 
 
 heard of that." 
 
 " I dare say not," said he. " I had 
 been reading one of X 's novels." 
 
 They were all castles in Spain ! But 
 that sure enough is the reason why 
 California wine is not drunk in the 
 States. 
 
 Napa valley has been long a seat of 
 the wine-growing industry. It did not
 
 52 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 here begin, as it does too often, in the 
 low valley lands along the river, but took 
 at once to the rough foot-hills, where 
 alone it can expect to prosper. A bask- 
 ing inclination, and stones, to be a reser- 
 voir of the day's heat, seem necessary to 
 the soil for wine ; the grossness of the 
 earth must be evaporated, its marrow 
 daily melted and refined for ages ; until 
 at length these clods that break below 
 our footing, and to the eye appear but 
 common earth, are truly and to the per- 
 ceiving mind a masterpiece of nature. 
 The dust of Richebourg, which the wind 
 carries away, what an apotheosis of the 
 dust ! Not man himself can seem a 
 stranger child of that brown, friable 
 powder, than the blood and sun in that 
 old flask behind the fagots.
 
 In the Valley. 53 
 
 A Californian vineyard, one of man's 
 outposts in the wilderness, has features 
 of its own. There is nothing here to 
 remind you of the Rhine or Rhone, of 
 the low cote d'ar^ or the infamous and 
 scabby deserts of Champagne ; but all is 
 green, solitary, covert. We visited two 
 of them, Mr. Schram's and Mr. M'Eck- 
 ron's, sharing the same glen. 
 
 Some way down the valley below 
 Calistoga, we turned sharply to the 
 south and plunged into the thick of 
 the wood. A rude trail rapidly mount- 
 ing ; a little stream tinkling by on the 
 one hand, big enough perhaps after 
 the rains, but already yielding up its 
 life ; overhead and on all sides a bower 
 of green and tangled thicket, still 
 fragrant and still flower-bespangled by
 
 54 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 the early season, where thimbleberry 
 played the part of our English haw- 
 thorn, and the buckeyes were putting 
 forth their twisted horns of blossom : 
 through all this, we struggled toughly 
 upwards, canted to and fro by the 
 roughness of the trail, and continually 
 switched across the face by sprays of 
 leaf or blossom. The last is no great 
 inconvenience at home; but here in 
 California it is a matter of some mo- 
 ment. For in all woods and by every 
 wayside there prospers an abomina- 
 ble shrub or weed, called poison-oak, 
 whose very neighborhood is venomous 
 to some, and whose actual touch is 
 avoided by the most impervious. 
 
 The two houses, with their vine- 
 yards, stood each in a green niche of
 
 hi the Valley. 55 
 
 its own in this steep and narrow forest 
 dell. Though they were so near, there 
 was already a good difference in level ; 
 and Mr. M'Eckron's head must be a 
 long way under the feet of Mr. Schram. 
 No more had been cleared than was 
 necessary for cultivation ; close around 
 each oasis ran the tangled wood ; the 
 glen enfolds them ; thei^e they lie bask- 
 ing in sun and silence, concealed from 
 all but the clouds and the mountain 
 birds. 
 
 Mr. M'Eckron's is a bachelor estab- 
 lishment ; a little bit of a wooden 
 house, a small cellar hard by in the 
 hillside, and a patch of vines planted 
 and tended single-handed by himself. 
 He had but recently begun ; his vines 
 were young, his business young also;
 
 56 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 but I thought he had the look of the 
 man who succeeds. He hailed from 
 Greenock : he remembered his father 
 putting him inside Mons Meg, and 
 that touched me home ; and we ex- 
 changed a word or two of Scotcli, 
 which pleased me more than you would 
 fancy. 
 
 Mr. Schram's, on the other hand, is the 
 oldest vineyard in the valley, eighteen 
 years old, I think; yet he began a 
 penniless barber, and even after he had 
 broken ground up here with his black 
 malvoisies, continued for long to tramp 
 the valley with his razor. Now, his 
 place is the picture of prosperity : 
 stuffed birds in the veranda, cellars 
 far dug into the hillside, and resting 
 on pillars like a bandit's cave : — all
 
 In the Valley. 57 
 
 trimness, varnish, flowers, and sunshine, 
 among the tangled wildwood. Stout, 
 smiling Mrs. Schram, who has been 
 to Europe and apparently all about 
 the States for pleasure, entertained 
 Fanny in the veranda, while I was 
 tasting wines in the cellar. To Mr. 
 Schram this was a solemn office; his 
 serious gusto warmed my heart; pros- 
 perity had not yet wholly banished a 
 certain neophite and girlish trepidation, 
 and he followed every sip and read my 
 face with proud anxiety. I tasted all. I 
 tasted every variety and shade of Schram- 
 berger, red and white Schramberger, 
 Burgundy Schramberger, Schramberger 
 Hock, Schramberger Golden Chasse- 
 las, the latter with a notable bouquet, 
 and I fear to think how many more.
 
 58 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 Much of It goes to London — most, I 
 think ; and Mr. Schram has a great 
 notion of the English taste. 
 
 In this wild spot, I did not feel the 
 sacredness of ancient cultivation. It 
 was still raw, it was no Marathon, and 
 no Johannisberg; yet the stirring sun- 
 light, and the growing vines, and the 
 vats and bottles in the cavern, made a 
 pleasant music for the wind. Here, 
 also, earth's cream was being skimmed 
 and garnered ; and the London cus- 
 tomers can taste, such as it is, the 
 tang of the earth in this green valley. 
 So local, so quintessential is a wine, 
 that it seems the very birds in the 
 veranda might communicate a flavor, 
 and that romantic cellar influence the 
 bottle next to be uncorked in London,
 
 In the Valley. 59 
 
 and the smile of jolly Mr. Schram 
 might mantle in the glass. 
 
 But these are but experiments. All 
 thino^s in this new land are movinof fur- 
 ther on : the wine-vats and the miner's 
 blasting tools but picket for a night, like 
 Bedouin pavilions; and to-morrow, to 
 fresh woods ! This stir of change and 
 these perpetual echoes of the moving 
 footfall, haunt the land. Men move 
 eternally, still chasing Fortune ; and, 
 Fortune found, still wander. As we 
 drove back to Calistoga, the road lay 
 empty of mere passengers, but its 
 green side was dotted with the camps 
 of travelling families : one cumbered 
 with a great wagonful of household 
 stuff, settlers going to occupy a ranch 
 they had taken up in Mendocino, or
 
 6o The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 perhaps Tehama County ; another, a 
 party in dust coats, men and women, 
 whom we found camped in a grove 
 on the roadside, all on pleasure bent, 
 with a Chinaman to cook for them, 
 and who waved their hands to us as 
 we drove by.
 
 In the Valley. 6i 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE SCOT ABROAD. 
 
 A FEW pages back, I wrote that a man 
 belonged, in these days, to a variety 
 ,of countries ; but the old land is still 
 the true love, the others are but pleas- 
 ant infidelities. Scotland is indefin- y 
 able ; it has no unity except upon the 
 map. Two languages, many dialects, 
 innumerable forms of piety, and count- 
 less local patriotisms and prejudices, 
 part us among ourselves more widely 
 than the extreme east and west of that 
 great continent of America. When I 
 am at home, I feel a man from Glas- 
 gow to be something like a rival, a
 
 62 The Silverado Sqitatters. 
 
 man from Barra to be more than half 
 a foreigner. Yet let us meet in some 
 far country, and, whether we hail from 
 the braes of Manor or the braes of 
 Mar, some ready-made affection joins 
 us on the instant. It is not race. Look 
 at us. One is Norse, one Celtic, and 
 another Saxon. It is not community 
 of tonorue. We have it not amono^ 
 ourselves ; and we have it almost to 
 perfection, with English, or Irish, or 
 American. It is no tie of faith, for 
 we detest each other's errors. And 
 yet somewhere, deep down in the heart 
 of each one of us, something yearns 
 for the old land, and the old kindly 
 people. 
 
 Of all mysteries of the human 
 heart, this is perhaps the most inscrut-
 
 In the Valley. 63 
 
 able. There is no special loveliness 
 in that gray country, with its rainy, 
 sea-beat archipelago ; its fields of dark 
 mountains; its unsightly places, black 
 with coal ; its treeless, sour, unfriendly 
 looking corn-lands ; its quaint, gray, 
 castled city, where the bells clash of 
 a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and 
 the salt showers fly and beat. I do 
 not even know if I desire to live there; 
 but let me hear, in some far land, a 
 kindred voice sing out, " Oh, why left 
 I my hame ? " and it seems at once as 
 if no beauty under the kind heavens, 
 and no society of the wise and good, 
 can repay me for my absence from 
 my country. And though, I think, I 
 would rather die elsewhere, yet in my 
 heart of hearts I long to be buried
 
 64 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 among good Scots clods. I will say 
 it fairly, it grows on me with every 
 year: there are no stars so lovely as 
 Edinburgh street-lamps. When I for- 
 get thee, auld Reekie, may my right 
 hand forget its cunning! 
 
 The happiest lot on earth is to be 
 born a Scotchman. You must pay for 
 it in many ways, as for all other advan- 
 tages on earth. You have to learn 
 the paraphrases and the shorter cate- 
 chism ; you generally take to drink; 
 your youth, as far as I can find out, 
 is a time of louder war against society, 
 of more outcry and tears and turmoil, 
 than if you had been born, for instance, 
 in England. (But somehow life is 
 warmer and closer; the hearth burns 
 more redly ; the lights of home shine
 
 In the Valley. 65 
 
 softer on the rainy street; the very 
 names, endeared in verse and music, 
 cHng nearer round our hearts./ An 
 Englishman may meet an EngHsh- 
 man to-morrow, upon Chimborazo, and 
 neither of them care ; but when the 
 Scotch wine-grower told me of Mons 
 Meg, it was like magic. 
 
 ** From the dim shieling on the misty island 
 Mountains divide us, and a world of seas ; 
 Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are High- 
 land, 
 And we, in dreams, behold the Hebrides." 
 
 And, Highland and Lowland, all our 
 hearts are Scotch. 
 
 Only a few days after I had seen 
 M'Eckron, a message reached me in 
 my cottage. It was a Scotchman who 
 had come down a long way from the 
 
 hills to market. He had heard there 
 
 s
 
 66 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 was a countryman in Calistoga, and 
 came round to the hotel to see him. 
 We said a few words to each other; 
 we had not much to say — should 
 never have seen each other had we 
 stayed at home, separated alike in 
 space and in society ; and then we 
 shook hands, and he went his way 
 again to his ranch among the hills, 
 and that was all. 
 
 Another Scotchman there was, a resi- 
 dent, who for the mere love of the com- 
 mon country, douce, serious, religious 
 man, drove me all about the valley, and 
 took as much interest in me as if I had 
 been his son : more, perhaps ; for the 
 son has faults too keenly felt, while the 
 abstract countryman is perfect — like a 
 whiff of peats.
 
 In the Valley. 67 
 
 And there was yet another. Upon 
 him I came suddenly, as he was calmly 
 entering my cottage, his mind quite 
 evidently bent on plunder : a man of 
 about fifty, filthy, ragged, roguish, with 
 a chimney-pot hat and a tail coat, and a 
 pursing of his mouth that might have 
 been envied by an elder of the kirk. 
 He had just such a face as I have seen 
 a dozen times behind the plate. 
 
 "Hullo, sir!" I cried. "Where are 
 you going ? " 
 
 He turned round without a quiver. 
 
 " You 're a Scotchman, sir ? " he said 
 gravely. " So am I ; I come from 
 Aberdeen. This is my card," present- 
 ing me with a piece of pasteboard which 
 he had raked out of some gutter in the 
 period of the rains. " I was just ex-
 
 68 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 amining this palm," he continued, indi- 
 cating the misbegotten plant before our 
 door, " which is the largest specimen I 
 have yet observed in Califoarnia." 
 
 There were four or five larger within 
 sight. But where was the use of argu- 
 ment ? He produced a tape-line, made 
 me help him to measure the tree at the 
 level of the ground, and entered the fig- 
 ures in a large and filthy pocket-book, 
 all with the gravity of Solomon. He 
 then thanked me profusely, remarking 
 that such little services were due be- 
 tween countrymen ; shook hands with 
 me, " for auld lang syne," as he said ; 
 and took himself solemnly away, radiat- 
 ing dirt and humbug as he went. 
 
 A more impudent rascal I have never 
 seen ; and had he been an American, I
 
 In the Valley. 69 
 
 should have raged. But then he came 
 from Aberdeen. 
 
 A month or two after this encounter 
 of mine, there came a Scot to Sacra- 
 mento — perhaps from Aberdeen. Any- 
 way, there never was any one more 
 Scotch in this wide world. He could 
 sing and dance, and drink, I presume ; 
 and he played the pipes with vigor and 
 success. All the Scotch in Sacramento 
 became infatuated with him, and spent 
 their spare time and money, driving him 
 about in an open cab, between drinks, 
 while he blew himself scarlet at the 
 pipes. This is a very sad story. After 
 he had borrowed money from every one, 
 he and his pipes suddenly disappeared 
 from Sacramento, and when I last heard, 
 the police were looking for him.
 
 70 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 I cannot say how this story amused 
 me, when I felt myself so thoroughly 
 ripe on both sides to be duped in the 
 same way. 
 
 It is at least a curious thing, to con- 
 clude, that the races which wander 
 widest, Jews and Scotch, should be the 
 most clannish in the world. But per- 
 haps these two are cause and effect: 
 " For ye were strangers in the land of 
 Egypt."
 
 WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.
 
 WITH THE CHILDREN OF 
 ISRAEL. 
 
 TO INTRODUCE MR. KELMAR. 
 
 One thing in this new country very 
 particularly strikes a stranger, and that 
 is the number of antiquities. Already 
 there have been many cycles of pop- 
 ulation succeeding each other, and 
 passing away and leaving behind them 
 relics. These, standing on into changed 
 times, strike the imagination as forcibly 
 as any pyramid or feudal tower. The 
 towns, like the vineyards, are experi-
 
 74 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 mentally founded : they grow great and 
 prosper by passing occasions ; and 
 when the lode comes to an end, and 
 the miners move elsewhere, the town 
 remains behind them, like Palmyra in 
 the desert. I suppose there are, in 
 no country in the world, so many 
 deserted towns as here in California. 
 
 The whole neighborhood of Mount 
 Saint Helena, now so quiet and rural, 
 was once alive with mining camps 
 and villages. Here there would be 
 two thousand souls under canvas ; 
 there one thousand or fifteen hundred 
 ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of 
 comfortable houses. But the luck had 
 failed, the mines petered out ; the army 
 of miners had departed, and left this 
 quarter of the world to the rattlesnakes
 
 With the Children of Israel. 75 
 
 and deer and grizzlies, and to the slower 
 but steadier advance of husbandry. 
 
 It was with an eye on one of these 
 deserted places, Pine Flat, on the 
 Geysers road, that we had come first 
 to Calistoga. There is something sin- 
 gularly enticing in the idea of going, 
 rent-free, into a ready-made house. 
 And to the British merchant, sitting 
 at home at ease, it may appear that, 
 with such a roof over your head and 
 a spring of clear water hard by, the 
 whole problem of the squatter's exist- 
 ence would be solved. Food, however, 
 has yet to be considered. I will go as 
 far as most people on tinned meats ; 
 some of the brighest moments of my 
 life were passed over tinned mulliga- 
 tawney in the cabin of a sixteen-ton
 
 76 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 schooner, storm-stayed in Portree Bay; 
 but after suitable experiments, I pro- 
 nounce authoritatively that man can- 
 not live by tins alone. Fresh meat 
 must be had on an occasion. It is 
 true that the great Foss, driving by 
 along the Geysers road, wooden-faced, 
 but glorified with legend, might have 
 been induced to bring us meat, but 
 the great Foss could hardly bring us 
 milk. To take a cow would have in- 
 volved taking a field of grass and a 
 milkmaid ; after which it would have 
 been hardly worth while to pause, and 
 we might have added to our colony 
 a flock of sheep and an experienced 
 butcher. 
 
 It is really very disheartening how 
 we depend on other people in this life.
 
 Wiih the Children of Israel. jy 
 
 " Mihi est propositum," as you may- 
 see by the motto, " id quod regibus ; " 
 and behold it cannot be carried out, 
 unless I find a neighbor rolling in 
 cattle. 
 
 Now, my principal adviser in this 
 matter was one whom I will call Kel- 
 mar. That was not what he called 
 himself, but as soon as I set eyes on 
 him, I knew it was or ought to be 
 his name ; I am sure it will be his 
 name among the angels. Kelmar was 
 the storekeeper, a Russian Jew, good- 
 natured, in a very thriving way of 
 business, and, on equal terms, one of 
 the most serviceable of men. He also 
 had something of the expression 
 of a Scotch country elder, who, by 
 some peculiarity, should chance to
 
 78 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 be a Hebrew. He had a projecting 
 under lip, with which he continually 
 smiled, or rather smirked. Mrs. Kel- 
 mar was a singularly kind woman ; 
 and the oldest son had quite a dark 
 and romantic bearing, and might be 
 heard on summer evenings playing 
 sentimental airs on the violin. 
 
 I had no idea, at the time I made 
 his acquaintance, what an important 
 person Kelmar was. But the Jew 
 storekeepers of California, profiting at 
 once by the needs and habits of the 
 people, have made themselves in too 
 many cases the tyrants of the rural 
 population. Credit is offered, is pressed 
 on the new customer, and when once 
 he is beyond his depth, the tune 
 changes, and he is from thenceforth
 
 With the Children of Israel. 79 
 
 a white slave. I believe, even from 
 the little I saw, that Kelmar, if he 
 chose to put on the screw, could 
 send half the farmers packing in a 
 radius of seven or eight miles round 
 Calistoga. These are continually pay- 
 ing him, but are never suffered to get 
 out of debt. He palms dull goods 
 upon them, for they dare not refuse to 
 buy; he goes and dines with them 
 when he is on an outing, and no man 
 is loudlier welcomed ; he is their fam- 
 ily friend, the director of their business, 
 and, to a degree elsewhere unknown 
 in modern days, their king. 
 
 For some reason, Kelmar always 
 shook his head at the mention of 
 Pine Flat, and for some days I thought 
 he disapproved of the whole scheme and
 
 8o The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 was proportionately sad. One fine morn- 
 ing, however, he met me, wreathed in 
 smiles. He had found the very place 
 for me — Silverado, another old mining 
 town, right up the mountain. Rufe Han- 
 son, the hunter, could take care of us 
 — fine people the Hansons; we should 
 be close to the Toll House, where the 
 Lakeport stage called daily ; it was 
 the best place for my health, besides. 
 Rufe had been consumptive, and was 
 now quite a strong man, ain't it? In 
 short, the place and all its accom- 
 paniments seemed made for us on 
 purpose. 
 
 He took me to his back door, 
 whence, as from every point of Calis- 
 toga. Mount Saint Helena could be 
 seen towering in the air. There, in
 
 ■ With the Children of Israel. 8 1 
 
 the nick, just where the eastern foot- 
 hills joined the mountain, and she 
 herself began to rise above the zone 
 of forest — there was Silverado. ' The 
 name had already pleased me ; the 
 high station pleased me still more. I 
 began to inquire with some eagerness. 
 It was but a little while ago that Sil- 
 verado was a great place. The mine 
 — a silver mine, of course — had prom- 
 ised great things. There was quite a 
 lively population, with several hotels 
 and boarding-houses ; and Kelmar him- 
 self had opened a branch store, and done 
 extremely well — "Ain't it?" he said, 
 •appealing to his wife. And she said, 
 " Yes ; extremely well." Now there 
 was no one living in the town but 
 
 Rufe the hunter ; and once more I 
 6
 
 82 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 heard Rufe's praises by the yard, and 
 this time sung in chorus. 
 
 I could not help perceiving at the 
 time that there was something under- 
 neath ; that no unmixed desire to have 
 us comfortably settled had inspired the 
 Kelmars with this flow of words. But 
 I was impatient to be gone, to be about 
 my kingly project ; and when we were 
 offered seats in Kelmar's wagon, I 
 accepted on the spot. The plan of 
 their next Sunday's outing took them, 
 by good fortune, over the border into 
 Lake County. They would carry us so 
 far, drop us at the Toll House, present 
 us to the Hansons, and call for us 
 again on Monday morning early.
 
 With the Children of Israel. 83 
 
 II. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO. 
 
 We were to leave by six precisely ; that 
 was solemnly pledged on both sides ; 
 and a messenger came to us the last 
 thing at night, to remind us of the hour. 
 But it was eight before we got clear 
 of Calistoga ; Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, a 
 friend of theirs whom we named Abra- 
 mina, her little daughter, my wife, my- 
 self, and, stowed away behind us, a clus- 
 ter of ship's coffee-kettles. These last 
 were highly ornamental in the sheen 
 of their bright tin, but I could invent 
 no reason for their presence. Our car- 
 riageful reckoned up, as near as we could
 
 84 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 get at it, some three hundred years to 
 the six of us. Four of the six, besides, 
 were Hebrews. But I never, in all my 
 life, was conscious of so strong an at- 
 mosphere of holiday. No word was 
 spoken but of pleasure ; and even when 
 we drove in silence, nods and smiles 
 went round the party like refreshments. 
 The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. 
 Close at the zenith rode the belated 
 moon, still clearly visible, and, along one 
 margin, even bright. The wind blew a 
 gale from the north ; the trees roared ; 
 the corn and the deep grass in the val- 
 ley fled in whitening surges ; the dust 
 towered into the air along the road and 
 dispersed like the smoke of battle. It 
 was clear in our teeth from the first, 
 and for all the windings of the road it
 
 With the Children of Israel. 85 
 
 managed to keep clear in our teeth until 
 the end. 
 
 For some two miles we rattled 
 through the valley, skirting the eastern 
 foot-hills ; then we struck off to the 
 right, through haugh-land, and pres- 
 ently, crossing a dry watercourse, en- 
 tered the Toll road, or, to be more 
 local, entered on " the grade." The 
 road mounts the near shoulder of 
 Mount Saint Helena, bound northward 
 into Lake County. In one place it 
 skirts along the edge of a narrow and 
 deep canyon, filled with trees, and I was 
 glad, indeed, not to be driven at this 
 point by the dashing Foss. Kelmar, 
 with his unvarying smile, jogging to the 
 motion of the trap, drove for all the 
 world like a good, plain, country clergy-
 
 86 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 man at home ; and I profess I blessed 
 him unawares for his timidity. 
 
 Vineyards and deep meadows, islanded 
 and framed with thicket, gave place 
 more and more as we ascended to woods 
 of oak and madrona, dotted with enor- 
 mous pines. It was these pines, as they 
 shot above the lower wood, that pro- 
 duced that pencilling of single trees I 
 had so often remarked from the valley. 
 Thence, looking up and from however 
 far, each fir stands separate against the 
 sky no bigger than an eyelash ; and all 
 together lend a quaint, fringed aspect to 
 the hills. The o*ak is no baby; even 
 the madrona, upon these spurs of 
 Mount Saint Helena, comes to a fine 
 bulk and ranks with forest trees ; but 
 the pines look down upon the rest for
 
 Wt^k tJie CJiiLciren of Israel. 8y 
 
 underwood. As Mount Saint Helena 
 among her foot-hills, so these dark 
 giants out-top their fellow-vegetables. 
 Alas ! if they had left the redwoods, the 
 pines, in turn, would have been dwarfed. 
 But the redwoods, fallen from their high 
 estate, are serving as family bedsteads, 
 or yet more humbly as field fences, 
 along all Napa Valley. 
 
 A rough smack of resin was in the 
 air, and a crystal mountain purity. It 
 came pouring over these green slopes 
 by the oceanful. The woods sang 
 aloud, and gave largely of their health- 
 ful breath. Gladness seemed to inhabit 
 these upper zones, and we had left in- 
 difference behind us in the valley. " I 
 to the hills will lift mine eyes ! " ^here 
 are days in a life when thus to climb
 
 88 \ The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 out of the lowlands, seems like scaling 
 heaven. 
 
 As we continued to ascend, the wind 
 fell upon us with increasing strength. 
 It was a wonder how the two stout 
 horses managed to pull us up that steep 
 incline and still face the athletic opposi- 
 tion of the wind, or how their great eyes 
 were able to endure the dust. Ten min- 
 utes after we went by, a tree fell, block- 
 ing the road ; and even before us leaves 
 were thickly strewn, and boughs had 
 fallen, large enough to make the passage 
 difficult. But now we were hard by the 
 summit. The road crosses the ridge, 
 just in the nick that Kelmar showed me 
 from below, and then, without pause, 
 plunges down a deep, thickly wooded 
 glen on the farther side. At the high-
 
 Witk the Children of Israel. 89 
 
 est point a trail strikes up the main hill 
 to the leftward ; and that leads to Silver- 
 ado. A hundred yards beyond, and in 
 a kind of elbow of the glen, stands the 
 Toll House Hotel. We came up the 
 one side, were caught upon the summit 
 by the whole weight of the wind as it 
 poured over into Napa Valley, and a 
 minute after had drawn up in shelter, 
 but all buffeted and breathless, at the 
 Toll House door. 
 
 A water-tank, and stables, and a gray 
 house of two stories, with gable ends 
 and a veranda, are jammed hard against 
 the hillside, just where a stream has 
 cut for itself a narrow canyon, filled 
 with pines. The pines go right up 
 overhead ; a little more and the stream 
 might have played, like a fire-hose, on 
 
 f I
 
 90 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 the Toll House roof. In front the 
 ground drops as sharply as it rises 
 behind. There is just room for the 
 road and a sort of promontory of cro- 
 quet ground, and then you can lean 
 over the edge and look deep below 
 you through the wood. I said cro- 
 quet ground, not green; for the surface 
 was of brown, beaten earth. The toll- 
 bar itself was the only other note of 
 originality : a long beam, turning on 
 a post, and kept slightly horizontal by 
 a counterweight of stones. Regularly 
 about sundown this rude barrier was 
 swung, like a derrick, across the road 
 and made fast, I think, to a tree upon 
 the farther side. 
 
 On our arrival there followed a gay 
 scene in the bar. I was presented to
 
 IViik the Children of Israel. 91 
 
 Mr. Corwin, the landlord ; to Mr. 
 Jennings, the engineer, who lives there 
 for his health ; to Mr. Hoddy, a most 
 pleasant little gentleman, once a mem- 
 ber of the Ohio Legislature, again the 
 editor of a local paper, and now, with 
 undiminished dignity, keeping the Toll 
 House bar. I had a number of drinks 
 and cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed 
 a famous opportunity of seeing Kelmar 
 in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling, 
 steadily edging one of the ship's ket- 
 tles on the reluctant Corwin. Corwin, 
 plainly aghast, resisted gallantly, and 
 for that bout victory crowned his 
 arms. 
 
 At last we set forth for Silverado 
 on foot. Kelmar and his jolly Jew 
 girls were full of the sentiment of
 
 92 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 Sunday outings, breathed geniality and 
 vagueness, and suffered a little vile 
 boy from the hotel to lead them here 
 and there about the woods. For three 
 people all so old, so bulky in body, 
 and belonging to a race so venerable, 
 they could not but surprise us by their 
 extreme and almost imbecile youthful- 
 ness of spirit. They were only going 
 to stay ten minutes at the Toll House ; 
 had they not twenty long miles of road 
 before them on the other side } Stay 
 to dinner? Not they! Put up the 
 horses ? Never. Let us attach them 
 to the veranda by a wisp of straw 
 rope, such as would not have held a 
 person's hat on that blustering day. 
 And with all these protestations of 
 hurry, they proved irresponsible like
 
 With the Children of Israel. 93 
 
 children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old 
 Russian Jew, with a smirk, that seemed 
 just to have concluded a bargain to 
 its satisfaction, intrusted himself and 
 us devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy 
 was patently fallacious ; and for that 
 matter a most unsympathetic urchin, 
 raised apparently on gingerbread. He 
 was bent on his own pleasure, nothing 
 else ; and Kelmar followed him to his 
 ruin, with the same shrewd smirk. If 
 the boy said there was " a hole there 
 in the hill " — a hole, pure and simple, 
 neither more nor less — Kelmar and 
 his Jew girls would follow him a hun- 
 dred yards to look complacently down 
 that hole. For two hours we looked 
 for houses ; and for two hours they 
 followed us, smelling trees, picking
 
 94 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 flowers, foisting false botany on the 
 unwary. Had we taken five, with 
 that vile lad to head them off on idle 
 divagations, for five they would have 
 smiled and stumbled through the 
 woods. 
 
 However, we came forth at length, 
 and as by accident, upon a lawn, sparse 
 planted like an orchard, but with forest 
 instead of fruit trees. That was the 
 site of Silverado mining town. A piece 
 of ground was levelled up, where 
 Kelmar's store had been ; and facing 
 that we saw Rufe Hanson's house, still 
 bearing on its front the legend Silver- 
 ado Hotel. Not another sign of habi- 
 tation. Silverado town had all been 
 carted from the scene; one of the 
 houses was now tlie scliool-house far
 
 With the Children of Israel. 95 
 
 down the road ; one was gone here, 
 one there, but all were gone away. It 
 was now a sylvan solitude, and the 
 silence was unbroken but by the great, 
 vague voice of the wind. Some days 
 before our visit, a grizzly bear had 
 been sporting round the Hansons' 
 chicken-house. 
 
 Mrs. Hanson was at home alone, we 
 found. Rufe had been out late after a 
 "bar," had risen late, and was now 
 gone, it did not clearly appear whither. 
 Perhaps he had had wind of Kel- 
 mar's coming, and was now ensconced 
 among the underwood, or watching 
 us from the shoulder of the mountain. 
 We, hearing there were no houses to 
 be had, were for immediately giving 
 up all hopes of Silverado. But this-,
 
 g6 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 somehow, was not to Kelmar's fancy. 
 He first proposed that we should " camp 
 someveres around, ain't it ? " waving 
 his hand cheerily as though to weave 
 a spell ; and when that was firmly re- 
 jected, he decided that we must take 
 up house with the Hansons. Mrs. 
 Hanson had been, from the first, flus- 
 tered, subdued, and a little pale ; but 
 from this proposition she recoiled with 
 haggard indignation. So did we, who 
 would have preferred, in a manner of 
 speaking, death. But Kelmar was not 
 to be put by. He edged Mrs. Hanson 
 into a corner, where for a long time 
 he threatened her with his forefinger, 
 like a character in Dickens; and the 
 poor woman, driven to her intrench- 
 ments, at last remembered with a
 
 Wil/i I he Children of Israel. 97 
 
 shriek that there were still some houses 
 at the tunnel. 
 
 Thither we went; the Jews, who 
 should already have been miles into 
 Lake County, still cheerily accompany- 
 in2[ us. For about a furlons^ we fol- 
 lowed a good road along the hillside 
 through the forest, until suddenly that 
 road widened out and came abruptly 
 to an end. A canyon, woody below, 
 red, rocky, and naked overhead, was 
 here walled across by a dump of rolling 
 stones, dangerously steep, and from 
 twenty to thirty feet in height. A 
 rusty iron chute on wooden legs came 
 flying, like a monstrous gargoyle, across 
 the parapet. It was down this that 
 they poured the precious ore ; and 
 below here the carts stood to wait
 
 98 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 their lading, and carry it mill-ward 
 down the mountain. 
 
 The whole canyon was so entirely 
 blocked, as if by some rude guerilla 
 fortification, that we could only mount 
 by lengths of wooden ladder, fixed in 
 the hillside. These led us round the 
 further corner of the dump ; and when 
 they were at an end, we still perse- 
 vered over loose rubble and wading 
 deep in poison-oak, till we struck a 
 triangular platform, filling up the whole 
 glen, and shut in on either hand by 
 bold projections of the mountain. Only 
 in front the place was open like the 
 proscenium of a theatre, and we looked 
 forth into a threat realm of air, and 
 down upon tree-tops and hill-tops and 
 far and near on wild and varied
 
 With the Children of Israel. 99 
 
 country. The place still stood as on 
 the day it was deserted : a line of 
 iron rails with a bifurcation ; a truck 
 in working order; a world of lumber, 
 old wood, old iron ; a blacksmith's 
 forge on one side, half buried in the 
 leaves of dwarf madronas ; and on the 
 other, an old brown wooden house. 
 
 Fanny and I dashed at the house. 
 It consisted of three rooms, and was 
 so plastered against the hill, that one 
 room was right atop of another, that 
 the upper floor was more than twice 
 as large as the lower, and that all 
 three apartments must be entered from 
 a different side and level. Not a 
 window-sash remained. The door of 
 the lower room was smashed, and 
 one panel hung in splinters. We
 
 TOO The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 entered that, and found a fair amount 
 of rubbish : sand and gravel that had 
 been sifted in there by the mountain 
 winds ; straw, sticks, and stones ; a 
 table, a barrel ; a plate-rack on the 
 wall ; two home-made bootjacks, signs 
 of miners and their boots ; and a pair 
 of papers pinned on the boarding, 
 headed respectively "Funnel No. i," 
 and " Funnel No. 2," but with the tails 
 torn away. The window, sashless of 
 course, was choked with the green and 
 sweetly smelling foliage of a bay ; and 
 through a chink in the floor, a spray 
 of poison-oak had shot up and was 
 handsomely prospering in the interior. 
 It was my first care to cut away that 
 poison-oak, Fanny standing by at a 
 respectful distance.
 
 With the Children of Israel. loi 
 
 That was our first improvement by 
 which we took possession. 
 
 The room immediately above could 
 only be entered by a plank propped 
 against the threshold, along: which the 
 intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching 
 for support to sprays of poison-oak, the 
 proper product of the country. Herein 
 was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, 
 where miners had once lain ; and the 
 other gable was pierced by a sashless 
 window and a doorless doorway opening 
 on the air of heaven, five feet above the 
 ground. As for the third room, which 
 entered squarely from the ground-level, 
 but higher up the hill and further up 
 the canyon, it contained only rubbish 
 and the uprights for another triple tier 
 of beds.
 
 I02 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 The whole building was overhung by 
 a bold, lion-like, red rock. Poison-oak, 
 sweet bay trees, calcanthus, brush, and 
 chaparral, grew freely but sparsely all 
 about it. In front, in the strong sun- 
 shine, the platform lay overstrewn with 
 busy litter, as though the labors of the 
 mine might begin again to-morrow in 
 the morning. 
 
 Following back into the canyon, 
 among the mass of rotting plant and 
 through the flowering bushes, we came 
 to a great crazy staging, with a wry 
 windlass on the top; and clambering up, 
 we could look into an open shaft, lead- 
 ing edgeways down into the bowels of 
 the mountain, trickling with water, and 
 Ht by some stray sun-gleams, whence I 
 know not.
 
 Wiik the Children of Israel. 103 
 
 In that quiet place the still, far-away 
 tinkle of the water-drops was loudly 
 audible. Close by, another shaft led 
 edgeways up into the superincumbent 
 shoulder of the hill. It lay partly open ; 
 and sixty or a hundred feet above our 
 head, we could see the strata propped 
 apart by solid wooden wedges, and a 
 pine, half undermined, precariously nod- 
 ding on the verge. Here also a rugged, 
 horizontal tunnel ran straight into the 
 unsunned bowels of the rock. This 
 secure angle in the mountain's flank 
 v/as, even on this wild day, as still as my 
 lady's chamber. But in the tunnel a 
 cold, wet draught tempestuously blew. 
 Nor have I ever known that place other- 
 wise than cold and windy. 
 
 Such was our first prospect of Juan
 
 I04 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 Silverado. I own I had looked for some- 
 thing different : a clique of neighborly 
 houses on a village green, we shall say, 
 all empty to be sure, but swept and var- 
 nished ; a trout stream brawling by ; 
 great elms or chestnuts, humming with 
 bees and nested in by song birds ; and 
 the mountains standing round about, 
 as at Jerusalem. Here, mountain and 
 house and the old tools of industry were 
 all alike rusty and downfalling. The 
 hill was here wedged up, and there 
 poured forth its bowels in a spout of 
 broken mineral ; man with his picks and 
 powder, and Nature with her own great 
 blasting tools of sun and rain, laboring 
 together at the ruin of that proud moun- 
 tain. The view up the canyon was a 
 glimpse of devastation ; dry red minerals
 
 Wiih the Children of Israel 105 
 
 sliding together, here and there a crag, 
 here and there dwarf thicket clinging in 
 the general glissade, and over all a bro- 
 ken outline trenching on the blue of 
 heaven. Downwards indeed, from our 
 rock eyrie, we beheld the greener side 
 of nature ; and the bearing of the pines 
 and the sweet smell of bays and nutmegs 
 commended themselves gratefully to our 
 senses. One way and another, now the 
 die was cast. Silverado be it ! 
 
 After we had got back to the Toll 
 House, the Jews were not long of strik- 
 ing forward. But I observed that one 
 of the Hanson lads came down, before 
 their departure, and returned with a 
 ship's kettle. Happy Hansons! Nor 
 was it until after Kelmar was gone, if I 
 remember rightly, that Rufe put in an
 
 io6 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 appearance to arrange the details of our 
 installation. 
 
 The latter part of the day, Fanny and 
 I sat in the veranda of the Toll House, 
 utterly stunned by the uproar of the 
 wind among the trees on the other side 
 of the valley. Sometimes, we would 
 have it it was like a sea, but it was not 
 various enough for that ; and again, we 
 thought it like the roar of a cataract, but 
 it was too changeful for the cataract ; 
 and then we would decide, speaking in 
 sleepy voices, that it could be compared 
 with nothing but itself. My mind was 
 entirely preoccupied by the noise. I 
 hearkened to it by the hour, gapingly 
 hearkened, and let my cigarette go out. 
 Sometimes the wind would make a sally 
 nearer hand, and send a shrill, whistling
 
 Wiik the Children of Israel. 107 
 
 crash among the foliage on our side of 
 the glen ; and sometimes a back-draught 
 would strike into the elbow where we 
 sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves 
 into our faces. But for the most part, 
 this great, streaming gale passed un- 
 weariedly by us into Napa Valley, not 
 two hundred yards away, visible by the 
 tossing boughs, stunningly audible, and 
 yet not moving a hair upon our heads. 
 So it blew all night long while I was 
 writing up my journal, and after we 
 were in bed, under a cloudless, starset 
 heaven ; and so it was blowing still next 
 morning when we rose. 
 
 It was a laughable thought to us, 
 what had become of our cheerful, wan- 
 dering Hebrews. We could not sup- 
 pose they had reached a destination.
 
 io8 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 The meanest boy could lead them miles 
 out of their way to see a gopher-hole. 
 Boys, we felt to be their special danger ; 
 none others were of that exact pitch of 
 cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kin- 
 dred sway upon their minds : but before 
 the attractions of a boy their most set- 
 tled resolutions would be as wax. We 
 thought we could follow in fancy these 
 three aged Hebrew truants wandering 
 in and out on hill-top and in thicket, a 
 demon boy trotting far ahead, their will- 
 o'-the-wisp conductor ; and at last about 
 midnight, the wind still roaring in the 
 darkness, we had a vision of all three on 
 their knees upon a mountain-top around 
 a glow-worm.
 
 With the Children of Israel. 109 
 
 III. 
 
 THE RETURN. 
 
 Next morning we were up by half-past 
 five, according to agreement, and it 
 was ten by the clock before our Jew 
 boys returned to pick us up : Kelmar, 
 Mrs. Kelmar, and Abramina, all smil- 
 inor from ear to ear, and full of tales 
 of the hospitality they had found on 
 the other side. It had not gone un- 
 rewarded ; for I observed with inter- 
 est that the ship's kettles, all but 
 one, had been " placed." Three Lake 
 County families, at least, endowed for 
 life with a ship's kettle. Come, this 
 was no misspent Sunday. The absence
 
 1 1 o The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 of the kettles told its own story : our 
 Jews said nothing about them ; but, 
 on the other hand, they said many 
 kind and comely things about the 
 people they had met. The two women, 
 in particular, had been charmed out 
 of themselves by the sight of a young 
 girl surrounded by her admirers ; all 
 evening, it appeared, they had been 
 triumphing together in the girl's in- 
 nocent successes, and to this natural 
 and unselfish joy they gave expression 
 in language that was beautiful by its 
 simplicity and truth. 
 
 Take them for all in all, few people 
 
 have done my heart more good ; they 
 
 iseemed so thoroughly entitled to hap- 
 
 \ biness, and to enjoy it in so large a 
 
 ymeasure and so free from after-thought;
 
 With the Children of Israel. 1 1 1 
 
 almost they persuaded me to be a 
 Jew. There was, indeed, a chink of 
 money in their talk. They particu- 
 larly commended people who were 
 well to do. "//<? don't care — ain't 
 it?" was their highest word of com- 
 mendation to an individual fate ; and 
 here I seem to grasp the root of their 
 philosophy — it was to be free from 
 care, to be free to make these Sunday 
 wanderings, that they so eagerly pur- 
 sued after wealth ; and all this careful- 
 ness was to be careless. The fine, good 
 humor of all three seemed to declare 
 they had attained their end. Yet there 
 was the other side to it ; and the recipi- 
 ents of kettles perhaps cared greatly. 
 
 No sooner had they returned, than 
 the scene of yesterday began again.
 
 112 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 The horses were not even tied with 
 a straw rope this time — it was not 
 worth while ; and Kelmar disappeared 
 into the bar, leaving them under a 
 tree on the other side of the road. I 
 had to devote myself. I stood under 
 the shadow of that tree for, I suppose, 
 hard upon an hour, and had not the 
 heart to be angry. Once some one 
 remembered me, and brought me out 
 half a tumblerful of the playful, innoc- 
 uous American cocktail. I drank it, 
 and lo ! veins of living fire ran down 
 my leg ; and then a focus of conflag- 
 ration remained seated in my stomach, 
 not unpleasantly, for quarter of an 
 hour. I love these sweet, fiery pangs, 
 but I will not court them. The bulk 
 of the time I spent in repeating as
 
 With the Children of Israel. 1 1 3 
 
 much French poetry as I could re- 
 member to the horses, who seemed 
 to enjoy it hugely. And now it 
 went — 
 
 " O ma vieille Font-georges 
 Ou volent les rouges-gorges : " 
 
 and again, to a more trampling meas- 
 ure — 
 
 "Et tout tremble, Irun, Coimbre, 
 Santander, Almodovar, 
 Sitot qu'on entend le timbre 
 Des cymbales de Bivar." 
 
 The redbreasts and the brooks of 
 Europe, in that dry and songless land ;^ 
 brave old names and wars, strong 
 cities, cymbals, and bright armor, in 
 that nook of the mountain, sacred only 
 to the Indian and the bear! This is 
 still the strangest thing in all man's 
 travelling, that he should carry about 
 with him incongruous memories. There
 
 114 1^^^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 is no foreign land ; it is the traveller 
 only that is foreign, and now and 
 again, by a flash of recollection, lights 
 up the contrasts of the earth. 
 
 But while I was thus wandering in 
 my fancy, great feats had been trans- 
 acted in the bar. Corwin the bold 
 had fallen, Kelmar was again crowned 
 with laurels, and the last of the ship's 
 kettles had changed hands. If I had 
 ever doubted the purity of Kelmar's 
 motives, if I had ever suspected him 
 of a single eye to business in his eter- 
 nal dally ings, now at least, when the 
 last kettle was disposed of, my suspi- 
 cions must have been allayed. I dare 
 not guess how much more time was 
 wasted ; nor how often we drove off, 
 merely to drive back again and re- 
 
 J
 
 With the Childr€7i of Israel. 1 1 5 
 
 new interrupted conversations about 
 nothing, before the Toll House was 
 fairly left behind. Alas ! and not a 
 mile down the grade there stands a 
 ranch in a sunny vineyard, and here 
 we must all dismount again and enter. 
 Only the old lady was at home, 
 Mrs. Guele, a brown old Swiss dame, 
 the picture of honesty; and with her 
 we drank a bottle of wine and had 
 an age-long conversation, which would 
 have been highly delightful if Fanny 
 and I had not been faint with hunger. 
 The ladies each narrated the story of 
 her marriage, our two Hebrews with 
 the prettiest combination of sentiment 
 and financial bathos. Abramina, spe- 
 cially, endeared herself with ever}'- word. 
 She was as simple, natural, and engag-
 
 1 1 6 The Silverado Sqtiatters. 
 
 ing as a kid that should have been 
 brought up to the business of a money- 
 changer. One touch was so resplen- 
 dently Hebraic that I cannot pass it 
 over. When her " old man " wrote 
 home for her from America, her old 
 man's family would not intrust her with 
 the money for the passage, till she had 
 bound herself by an oath — on her 
 knees, I think she said — not to em- 
 ploy it otherwise. This had tickled 
 Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled 
 me fully more. 
 
 Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness 
 up here in the long winters ; of her 
 honest, country-woman troubles and 
 alarms upon the journey ; how in the 
 bank at Frankfort she had feared lest 
 the banker, after having taken her
 
 With the Children of Isi^acl. 1 1 7 
 
 cheque, should deny all knowledge of it 
 — a fear I have myself every time I go 
 to a bank ; and how crossing the Lune- 
 burger Heath, an old lady, witnessing 
 her trouble and finding whither she was 
 bound, had given her " the blessing of a 
 person eighty years old, which would be 
 sure to bring her safely to the States. 
 And the first thing I did," added Mrs. 
 Guele, " was to fall downstairs." 
 
 At length we got out of the house, 
 and some of us into the trap, when — 
 judgment of Heaven! — here came Mr. 
 Guele from his vineyard. So another 
 quarter of an hour went by; till at 
 length, at our earnest pleading, we set 
 forth again in earnest, Fanny and I 
 whitefaced and silent, but the Jews 
 still smiling. The heart fails me.
 
 1 1 8 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 There was yet another stoppage ! And 
 we drove at last into CaHstoga past 
 two in the afternoon, Fanny and I 
 havino: breakfasted at six in the morn- 
 ing, eight mortal hours before. We 
 were a pallid couple ; but still the Jews 
 were smiling. 
 
 So ended our excursion with the 
 village usurers ; and, now that it was 
 done, we had no more idea of the 
 nature of the business, nor of the part 
 we had been playing in it, than the 
 child unborn. That all the people we 
 had met were the slaves of Kelmar, 
 though in various degrees of servitude ; 
 that we ourselves had been sent up the 
 mountain in the interests of none but 
 Kelmar ; that the money we laid out, 
 dollar by dollar, cent by cent, and
 
 JVii/i tJic Children of Israel, 1 1 9 
 
 through the hands of various intemedi- 
 aries, should all hop ultimately into 
 Kelmar's till; — these were facts that 
 we only grew to recognize in the 
 course of time and by the accumulation 
 of evidence. At length all doubt was 
 quieted, when one of the kettle-holders 
 confessed. Stopping his trap in the 
 moonlight, a little way out of Calistoga, 
 he told me, in so many words, that he 
 dare not show face there with an empty 
 pocket. " You see, I don't mind if it 
 was only five dollars, Mr. Stevens," he 
 said, " but I must give Mr, Kelmar 
 something''' 
 
 Even now, when the whole tyranny is 
 plain to me, I cannot find it in my heart 
 to be as angry as perhaps I should be 
 with the Hebrew tyrant. The whole
 
 I20 The Silverado Sqtia tiers. 
 
 game of business is beggar my neigh- 
 bor; and though perhaps that game 
 looks ugher when played at such close 
 quarters and on so small a scale, it is 
 none the more intrinsically inhumane for 
 that. The village usurer is not so sad a 
 feature of humanity and human progress 
 as the millionnaire manufacturer, fatten- 
 ing on the toil and loss of thousands, 
 and yet declaiming from the platform 
 against the greed and dishonesty of 
 landlords. If it were fair for Cobden 
 to bu}'^ up land from owners whom he 
 thought unconscious of its proper value, 
 it was fair enough for my Russian Jew 
 to give credit to his farmers. Kelmar, 
 if he was unconscious of the beam in 
 his own eye, was at least silent in the 
 matter of his brother's mote.
 
 THE ACT OF SQUATTING.
 
 THE ACT OF SQUATTING. 
 
 There were four of us squatters — my- 
 self and my wife, the King and Queen 
 of Silverado ; Sam, the Crown Prince ; 
 and Chuchu, the Grand Duke. Chuchu, 
 a setter crossed with spaniel, was the 
 most unsuited for a rough life. He had 
 been nurtured tenderly in the society of 
 ladies ; his heart was large and soft ; he 
 regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rock 
 necessary of existence. Though about 
 the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in la- 
 dies' laps; he never said a bad word in
 
 124 ^'^^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 all his blameless days ; and if he had 
 seen a flute, I am sure he could have 
 played upon it by nature. It may seem 
 hard to say it of a dog, but Chuchu was 
 a tame cat. 
 
 The king and queen, the grand duke, 
 and a basket of cold provender for im- 
 mediate use, set forth from Calistoga in 
 a double buggy; the crown prince, on 
 horseback, led the way like an outrider. 
 Bags and boxes and a second-hand stove 
 were to follow close upon our heels by 
 Hanson's team. 
 
 It was a beautiful still day; the sky 
 was one fiedd of azure. Not a leaf 
 moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. 
 Only from the summit of the mountain 
 one little snowy wisp of cloud after 
 another kept detaching itself, like smoke
 
 The Act of Squatting. 125 
 
 from a volcano, and blowing southward 
 in some high stream of air : Mount 
 Saint Helena still at her interminable 
 task, making the weather, like a Lap- 
 land witch. 
 
 B}^ noon we had come in sight of the 
 mill : a great brown building, half-way 
 up the hill, big as a factory, two stories 
 high, and with tanks and laders along 
 the roof; which, as a pendicle of Silver- 
 ado mine, we held to be an outlying 
 province of our own. Thither, then, we 
 went, crossing the valley by a grassy 
 trail ; and there lunched out of the bas- 
 ket, sitting in a kind of portico, and 
 wondering, while we ate, at this great 
 bulk of useless building. Through a 
 chink we could look far down into the 
 interior, and see sunbeams floating in
 
 126 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 the dust and striking on tier after tier 
 of silent, rusty machinery. It cost six 
 thousand dollars, twelve hundred Eng- 
 lish sovereigns ; and now, here it stands 
 deserted, like the temple of a forgotten 
 religion, the busy millers toiling some- 
 where else. All the time we were there, 
 mill and mill town showed no sign of 
 life ; that part of the mountain-side, which 
 is very open and green, was tenanted by 
 no living creature but ourselves and the 
 insects ; and nothing stirred but the 
 cloud manufactory upon the mountain 
 summit. It was odd to compare this 
 with the former days, when the engine 
 was in full blast, the mill palpitating 
 to its strokes, and the carts came 
 rattling down from Silverado, charged 
 with ore.
 
 The Act of S qua f ting. iij 
 
 By two we had been landed at the 
 mine, the buggy was gone again, and we 
 were left to our own reflections and the 
 basket of cold provender, until Hanson 
 should arrive. Hot as it was by the sun, 
 there was something chill in such a 
 home-coming, in that world of wreck 
 and rust, splinter and rolling gravel, 
 where for so many years no fire had 
 smoked. 
 
 Silverado platform filled the whole 
 width of the canyon. Above, as I have 
 said, this was a wild, red, stony gully 
 in the mountains ; but below it was a 
 wooded dingle. And through this, I 
 was told, there had gone a path between 
 the mine and the Toll House — our nat- 
 ural north-west passage to civilization. 
 I found and followed it, clearing my way
 
 128 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 as I went through fallen branches and 
 dead trees. It went straight down that 
 steep canyon, till it brought you out 
 abruptly over the roofs of the hotel. 
 There was nowhere any break in the de- 
 scent. It almost seemed as if, were you 
 to drop a stone down the old iron chute 
 at our platform, it would never rest until 
 it hopped upon the Toll House shingles. 
 Sio:ns were not wantins^ of the ancient 
 greatness of Silverado. The footpath 
 was well marked, and had been well 
 trodden in the old days by thirsty 
 miners. And far down, buried in foli- 
 age, deep out of sight of Silverado, I 
 came on a last outpost of the mine — 
 a mound of gravel, some wreck of 
 wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a 
 tunnel, like a treasure grotto in a fairy
 
 The Act of Squatting. 129 
 
 story. A stream of water, fed by the in- 
 visible leakage from our shaft, and dyed 
 red with cinnabar or iron, ran trippingly 
 forth out of the bowels of the cave ; and, 
 looking far under the arch, I could see 
 something like an iron lantern fastened 
 on the rocky wall. It was a promising 
 spot for the imagination. No boy could 
 have left it unexplored. 
 
 The stream thenceforward stole along 
 the bottom of the dingle, and made, for 
 that dry land, a pleasant warbling in the 
 leaves. Once, I suppose, it ran splash- 
 ing down the whole length of the can- 
 yon, but now its head waters had been 
 tapped by the shaft at Silverado, and for 
 a great part of its course it wandered 
 sunless among the joints of the moun- 
 tain. No wonder that it should better 
 9
 
 130 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 its pace when it sees, far before it, day- 
 light whitening in the arch, or that it 
 should come trotting forth into the sun- 
 light with a song. 
 
 The two stages had gone by when I 
 got down, and the Toll House stood, 
 dozing in sun and dust and silence, like 
 a place enchanted. My mission was af- 
 ter hay for bedding, and that I was 
 readily promised. But when I men- 
 tioned that we were waiting for Rufe, 
 the people shook their heads. Rufe was 
 not a regular man any way, it seemed; 
 and if he got playing poker — Well, 
 poker was too many for Rufe. I had 
 not yet heard them bracketed together; 
 but it seemed a natural conjunction, and 
 commended itself swiftly to my fears ; 
 and as soon as I returned to Silverado
 
 The Act of Squatting. 131 
 
 and had told my story, we practically 
 gave Hanson up, and set ourselves to 
 do what we could find do-able in our 
 desert-island state. 
 
 The lower room had been the as- 
 sayer's office. The floor was thick 
 with debris — part human, from the 
 former occupants ; part natural, sifted 
 in by mountain' winds. In a sea of 
 red dust there swam . or floated sticks, 
 boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper ; 
 ancient newspapers, above all — for the 
 newspaper, especially when torn, soon 
 becomes an antiquity — and bills of 
 the Silverado boarding-house, some dat- 
 ed Silverado, some Calistoga Mine. 
 Here is one, verbatim ; and if any one 
 can calculate the scale of charges, 
 they have my envious admiration.
 
 132 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 Calistoga Mine, May 3d, 1875, 
 John Stanley 
 
 To S. Chapman, O. 
 
 To board from April 1st, to April 30 $25 75 
 
 " " " May ist, to 3d . . 2 00 
 
 $27 75 
 
 Where is John Stanley mining now? 
 Where is S. Chapman, within whose 
 hospitable walls we were to lodge ? 
 The date was but five years old, but 
 in that time the world had changed 
 for Silverado ; like Palmyra in the 
 desert, it had outlived its people and 
 its purpose ; we camped, like Layard, 
 amid ruins, and these names spoke 
 to us of pre-historic time. A boot- 
 jack, a pair of boots, a dog-hutch, and 
 these bills of Mr. Chapman's were the 
 only speaking relics that we disinterred 
 from all that vast Silverado rubbish-
 
 The Act of Squatting, \ 133 
 
 heap ; but what would I not have 
 given to unearth a letter, a pocket-book, 
 a diary, only a ledger, or a roll of 
 names, to take me back, in a more 
 personal manner, to the past ? It 
 pleases me, besides, to fancy that 
 Stanley or Chapman, or one of their 
 companions, may light upon this chron- 
 icle, and be struck by the name, and 
 read some news of their anterior 
 home, coming, as it were, out of a 
 subsequent epoch of history in that 
 quarter of the world. 
 
 As we were tumbling the mingled 
 rubbish on the floor, kicking it with 
 our feet, and groping for these written 
 evidences of the past, Sam, with a 
 somewhat whitened face, produced a 
 paper bag. " What 's this ? " said he.
 
 134 '^^^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 It contained a granulated powder, some- 
 thing the color of Gregory's Mixture, 
 but rosier; and as there were several 
 of the bags, and each more or less 
 broken, the powder was spread widely 
 on the floor. Had any of us ever 
 seen giant powder ? No, nobody had ; 
 and instantly there grew up in my 
 mind a shadowy belief, verging with 
 every moment nearer to certitude, that 
 I had somewhere heard somebody 
 describe it as just such a powder as 
 the one around us. I have learnt 
 since that it is a substance not unlike 
 tallow, and is made up in rolls for all 
 the world like tallow candles. 
 
 Fanny, to add to our happiness, 
 told us a story of a gentleman who 
 had camped one night, like ourselves,
 
 The Act of Squatting. 135 
 
 by a deserted mine. He was a handy, 
 thrifty fellow, and looked right and 
 left for plunder, but all he could lay 
 his hands on was a can of oil. After 
 dark he had to see to the horses with 
 a lantern ; and not to miss an oppor- 
 tunity, filled up his lamp from the 
 oil can. Thus equippisd, he set forth 
 into the forest. A little while after, 
 his friends heard a loud explosion ; 
 the mountain echoes bellowed, and 
 then all was still. On examination, 
 the can proved to contain oil, with 
 the trifling addition of nitro-glycerine ; 
 but no research disclosed a trace of 
 either man or lantern. 
 
 It was a pretty sight, after this anec- 
 dote, to see us sweeping out the giant 
 powder. It seemed never to be far
 
 136 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 enough away. And, after all, it was 
 some rock pounded for assay. 
 
 So much for the lower room. We 
 scraped some of the rougher dirt off the 
 floor, and left it. That was our sitting- 
 room and kitchen, though there was 
 nothing to sit upon but the table, and 
 no provision for a fire except a hole in 
 the roof of the room above, which had 
 once contained the chimney of a stove. 
 
 To that upper room we now pro- 
 ceeded. There were the eighteen bunks 
 in a double tier, nine on either hand, 
 where from eighteen to thirty-six miners 
 had once snored together all night long, 
 John Stanley, perhaps, snoring loudest. 
 There was the roof, with a hole in it 
 through which the sun now shot an ar- 
 row. There was the floor, in much the
 
 The Act of Sqiiaitiiig. 137 
 
 same state as the one below, though, 
 perhaps, there was more hay, and cer- 
 tainly there was the added ingredient of 
 broken glass, the man who stole the win- 
 dow-frames having apparently made a 
 miscarriage with this one. Without a 
 broom, without hay or bedding, we 
 could but look about us with a begin- 
 ning of despair. The one bright arrow 
 of day, in that gaunt and shattered 
 barrack, made the rest look dirtier and 
 darker, and the sight drove us at last 
 into the open. 
 
 Here, also, the handiwork of man lay 
 ruined : but the plants were all alive and 
 thriving ; the view below was fresh with 
 the colors of nature ; and we had ex- 
 changed a dim, human garret for a cor- 
 ner, even although it were untidy, of the
 
 138 The Silverado Squatlers. 
 
 blue hall of heaven. Not a bird, not 
 a beast, not a reptile. There was no 
 noise in that part of the world, save 
 when we passed beside the staging, and 
 heard the water musically falling in the 
 shaft. 
 
 We wandered to and fro. We 
 searched among that drift of lumber 
 — wood and iron, nails and rails, and 
 sleepers and the wheels of trucks. We 
 gazed up the cleft into the bosom of the 
 mountain. We sat by the margin of 
 the dump and saw, far below us, the 
 green tree-tops standing still in the 
 clear air. Beautiful perfumes, breaths 
 of bay, resin, and nutmeg, came to us 
 more often '.and grew sweeter and 
 sharper as the afternoon declined. But 
 still there was no word of Hanson.
 
 The Act of Squatting. 139 
 
 I set to with pick and shovel, and 
 deepened the pool behind the shaft, till 
 we were sure of sufficient water for the 
 morning ; and by the time I had fin- 
 ished, the sun had begun to go down 
 behind the mountain shoulder, the plat- 
 form was plunged in quiet shadow, and 
 a chill descended from the sky. Night 
 began early in our cleft. Before us, 
 over the margin of the dump, we could 
 'see the sun still striking aslant into the 
 wooded nick below, and on the battle- 
 mented, pine-bescattered ridges on the 
 further side. 
 
 There was no stove, of course, and no 
 hearth in our lodging, so we betook our- 
 selves to the blacksmith's forge across 
 the platform. If the platform be taken 
 as a stage, and the out-curving margin
 
 1 40 The . Silverado Squatters. 
 
 of the dump to represent the line of the 
 foot-lights, then our house would be the 
 first wing on the actor's left, and this 
 blacksmith's forge, although no match 
 for it in size, the foremost on the right. 
 It was a low, brown cottage, planted 
 close against the hill, and overhung by 
 the foliage and peeling boughs of a ma- 
 drona thicket. Within it was full of 
 dead leaves and mountain dust, and rub- 
 bish from the mine. But we soon had 
 a good fire brightly blazing, and sat 
 close about it on impromptu seats. 
 Chuchu, the slave of sofa-cushions, 
 whimpered for a softer bed ; but the 
 rest of us were greatly revived and com- 
 forted by that good creature — fire, 
 which gives us warmth and light and 
 companionable sounds, and colors up
 
 The Act of Squatting, 141 
 
 the emptiest building with better than 
 frescos. For a while it was even pleas- 
 ant in the forge, with the blaze in the 
 midst, and a look over our shoulders on 
 the woods and mountains where the 
 day was dying like a dolphin. 
 
 It was between seven and eight 
 before Hanson arrived, with a wagon- 
 ful of our effects and two of his wife's 
 relatives to lend him a hand. The 
 elder showed surprising strength. He 
 would pick up a huge packing-case, 
 full of books of all things, swing it 
 on his shoulder, and away up the 
 two crazy ladders and the break-neck 
 spout of rolling mineral, familiarly 
 termed a path, that led from the car- 
 track to our house. Even for a man 
 unburthened, the ascent was toilsome
 
 142 TJie Silverado Squatters. 
 
 and precarious ; but Irvine scaled it 
 , with a light foot, carrying box after 
 box, as the hero whisks the stage child 
 up the practicable footway beside the 
 waterfall of the fifth act. With so 
 strong a helper, the business was 
 speedily transacted. Soon the assay- 
 er's office was thronged with our be- 
 longings, piled higgledy-piggledy, and 
 upside down, about the floor. There 
 were our boxes, indeed, but my wife 
 had left her keys in Calistoga. There 
 was the stove, but alas ! our carriers 
 had forgot the chimney, and lost one 
 of the plates along the road. The 
 Silverado problem was scarce solved. 
 
 Rufe himself was grave and good- 
 natured over his share of blame ; he 
 even, if I remember right, expressed
 
 The Act of Squatting. 143 
 
 regret. But his crew, to my astonish- 
 ment and anger, grinned from ear to 
 ear, and laughed aloud at our distress. 
 They thought it " real funny " about 
 the stove-pipe they had forgotten; 
 " real funny " that they should have 
 lost a plate. As for hay, the whole 
 party refused to bring us any till 
 they should have supped. See how 
 late they were ! Never had there 
 been such a job as coming up that 
 grade ! Nor often, I suspect, such a 
 game of poker as that before they 
 started. But about nine, as a particu- 
 lar favor, we should have some hay. 
 
 So they took their departure, leaving 
 me still staring, and we resigned our- 
 selves to wait for their return. The 
 fire in the forge had been suffered
 
 144 '^^^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 to go out, and we were one and all 
 too weary to kindle another. We 
 dined, or, not to take that word in 
 vain, we ate after a fashion, in the 
 nightmare disorder of the assayer's of- 
 fice, perched among boxes. A single 
 candle lighted us. It could scarce 
 be called a house-warming; for there 
 was, of course, no fire, and with the 
 two open doors and the open win- 
 dow gaping on the night, like breaches 
 in a fortress, it began to grow rapidly 
 chill. Talk ceased ; nobody moved but 
 the unhappy Chuchu, still in quest of 
 sofa-cushions, who tumbled complain- 
 ingly among the trunks. It required 
 a certain happiness of disposition to 
 look forward hopefully, from so dismal 
 a beginning, across the brief hours
 
 The Act of Squatting. 145 
 
 of night, to the warm shining of 
 to-morrow's sun. 
 
 But the hay arrived at last, and we 
 turned, with our last spark of courage, 
 to the bedroom. We had improved 
 the entrance, but it was still a kind of 
 rope-walking; and it would have been 
 droll to see us mounting, one after 
 another, by candle-light, under the 
 open stars. 
 
 The western door — that which 
 looked up the canyon, and through 
 which we entered by our bridge of 
 flying plank — was still entire, a hand- 
 some, panelled door, the most finished 
 piece of carpentry in Silverado. And 
 the two lowest bunks next to this we 
 roughly filled with hay for that night's 
 use. Through the opposite, or eastern-
 
 146 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 looking gable, with its open door and 
 window, a faint, diffused starshine 
 came into the room like mist ; and 
 when we were once in bed, we lay, 
 awaiting sleep, in a haunted, incom- 
 plete obscurity. At first the silence 
 of the night was utter. Then a high 
 wind began in the distance among 
 the tree-tops, and for hours continued 
 to grow higher. It seemed to me 
 much such a wind as we had found 
 on our visit ; yet here in our open 
 chamber we were fanned only by gen- 
 tle and refreshing draughts, so deep 
 was the canyon, so close our house 
 was planted under the overhanging 
 rock.
 
 THE HUNTER'S FAMILY.
 
 THE HUNTER'S FAMILY. 
 
 There is quite a large race or class 
 of people in America, for whom we 
 scarcely seem to have a parallel in 
 England. Of pure white blood, they 
 are unknown or unrecognizable in 
 towns ; inhabit the fringe of settlements 
 and the deep, quiet places of the coun- 
 try ; rebellious to all labor, and pettily 
 thievish, like the English gypsies; rus- 
 tically ignorant, but with a touch of 
 wood lore and the dexterity of the 
 savage. Where they came from is a
 
 150 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 moot point. At the time of the war, 
 they poured north in crowds to escape 
 the conscription ; hved during summer 
 on fruits, wild animals, and petty theft; 
 and at the approach of winter, when 
 these supplies failed, built great fires 
 in the forest, and there died stoically 
 by starvation. They are widely scat- 
 tered, however, and easily recognized. 
 Loutish, but not ill-looking, they will 
 sit all day, swinging their legs on a 
 field fence, the mind seemingly as de- 
 void of all reflection as a Suffolk peas- 
 ant's, careless of politics, for the most 
 part incapable of reading, but with a re- 
 bellious vanity and a strong sense of 
 independence. Hunting is their most 
 congenial business, or, if the occasion 
 offers, a little amateur detection. In
 
 The Hunter s Family. 1 5 1 
 
 tracking a criminal, following a partic- 
 ular horse along a beaten highway, 
 and drawing inductions from a hair or 
 a footprint, one of those somnolent, 
 grinning Hodges will suddenly dis- 
 play activity of body and finesse of 
 mind. By their names ye may know 
 them, the women figuring as Loveina, 
 Larsena, Serena, Leanna, Orreana; 
 the men answerino^ to Alvin, Alva, or 
 Orion, pronounced Orrion, with the 
 accent on the first. Whether they are 
 indeed a race, or whether this is the 
 form of degeneracy common to all 
 backwoodsmen, they are at least known 
 by a generic byword, as Poor Whites 
 or Low-downers. 
 
 I will not say that the Hanson fam- 
 ily was Poor White, because the name
 
 152 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 savors of offence ; but I may go as far 
 as this — they were, in many points, not 
 unsimilar to the people usually so called. 
 Rufe himself combined two of the 
 qualifications, for he was both a hun- 
 ter and an amateur detective. It was 
 he who pursued Russel and Dollar, the 
 robbers of the Lake Port stage, and 
 captured them the very morning after 
 the exploit, while they were still sleep- 
 ing in a hay-field. Russel, a drunken 
 Scotch carpenter, was even an acquain- 
 tance of his own, and he expressed 
 much grave commiseration for his fate. 
 In all that he said and did, Rufe was 
 grave. I never saw him hurried. 
 \\[hen he spoke, he took out his pipe 
 th ceremonial deliberation, looked 
 east and west, and then, in quiet tones 
 
 '^^
 
 The Hunters Family 1 153 
 
 and few words, stated his business or 
 told his story. His gait was to match ; 
 it would never have surprised you if, 
 at any step, he had turned round and 
 walked away again, so warily and 
 slowly, and with so much seeming hesi- 
 tation did he go about. He lay long 
 in bed in the morning — rarely, indeed, 
 rose before noon ; he loved all games, 
 from poker to clerical croquet ; and in 
 the Toll House croquet ground I have 
 seen him toiling at the latter with the 
 devotion of a curate. He took an 
 interest in education, was an active 
 member of the local school-board, and 
 when I was there, he had recently lost 
 the school-house key. His wagon was 
 broken, but it never seemed to occur 
 to him to mend it. Like all truly idle
 
 1 54 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 people, he had an artistic eye. He 
 chose the print stuff for his wife's 
 dresses, and counselled her in the 
 making of a patchwork quilt, always, 
 as she thought, wrongly, but to the 
 more educated eye, always with bizarre 
 and admirable taste — the taste of an 
 Indian. With all this, he was a per- 
 fect, unoffending gentleman in word 
 and act. Take his clay pipe from him, 
 and he was fit for any society but that 
 of fools. Quiet as he was, there burned 
 a deep, permanent excitement in his 
 dark blue eyes ; and when this grave 
 man smiled, it was like sunshine in a 
 shady place. 
 
 Mrs. Hanson {nee, if you please. Love- 
 lands) was more commonplace than her 
 lord. She was a comely woman, too.
 
 The Hunters Family. i55 
 
 plump, fair-colored, with wonderful white 
 teeth ; and in her print dresses (chosen 
 by Rufe) and with a large sun-bonnet 
 shading her valued complexion, made, I 
 assure you, a very agreeable figure. But 
 she was on the surface, what there was 
 of her, out-spoken and loud-spoken. 
 Her noisy laughter had none of the 
 charm of one of Hanson's rare, slow- 
 spreading smiles ; there was no reti- 
 cence, no mystery, no manner about the 
 woman : she was a first-class dairymaid, 
 but her husband was an unknown quan- 
 tity between the savage and the noble- 
 man. She was often in and out with 
 us, merry, and healthy, and fair ; he 
 came far seldomer — only, indeed, when 
 there was business, or now and again, 
 to pay a visit of ceremony, brushed up
 
 156 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 for the occasion, with his wife on his 
 arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth. 
 These visits, in our forest state, had 
 quite the air of an event, and turned 
 our red canyon into a salon. 
 
 Such was the pair who ruled in the 
 old Silverado Hotel, among the windy 
 trees, on the mountain shoulder over- 
 looking the whole length of Napa Val- 
 ley, as the man aloft looks down on the 
 ship's deck. There they kept house, 
 with sundry horses and fowls, and a 
 family of sons, Daniel Webster, and I 
 think George Washington, among the 
 number. Nor did they want visitors. 
 An old gentleman, of singular stolidity, 
 and called Breedlove — I think he had 
 crossed the plains in the same caravan 
 with Rufe — housed with them for
 
 The Hunters Family. 157 
 
 awhile during our stay ; and they had 
 besides a permanent lodger, in the form 
 of Mrs. Hanson's brother, Irvine Love- 
 lands. I spell Irvine by guess ; for I 
 could get no information on the subject, 
 just as I could never find out, in spite of 
 many inquiries, whether or not Rufe was 
 a contraction for Rufus. They were 
 all cheerfully at sea about their names 
 in that generation ; and this is surely 
 the more notable where the names are 
 all so strange, and even the family 
 names appear to be made up. At one 
 time, at least, the ancestors of all these 
 Alvins and Alvas, Loveinas, Lovelands, 
 and Breedloves, must have taken seri- 
 ous council and found a certain poetry 
 in these denominations ; that must have 
 been, then, their form of literature. But
 
 158 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 still times change ; and their next de- 
 scendants, the George Washingtons and 
 Daniel Websters, will at least be clear 
 upon the point. And anyway, and 
 however his name should be spelt, this 
 Irvine Lovelands was the most unmiti- 
 gated Caliban I ever knew. 
 
 Our very first morning at Silverado, 
 when we were full of business, patching 
 up doors and windows, making beds and 
 seats, and getting our rough lodging 
 into shape, Irvine and his sister made 
 their appearance together, she for neigh- 
 borliness and general curiosity ; he, be- 
 cause he was working for me, to my sor- 
 row, cutting firewood at I forget how 
 much a day. The way that he set about 
 cutting wood was characteristic. We 
 were at that moment patching up and
 
 The Hunters Family. 159 
 
 unpacking in the kitchen. Down he 
 sat on one side, and down sat his sister 
 on the other. Both were chewing pine- 
 tree gum, and he, to my annoyance, 
 accompanied that simple pleasure with 
 profuse expectoration. She rattled away, 
 talking up hill and down dale, laughing, 
 tossing her head, showing her brilliant 
 teeth. He looked on in silence, now 
 spitting heavily on the floor, now put- 
 ting his head back and uttering a loud, 
 discordant, joyless laugh. He had a 
 tangle of shock hair, the color of wool ; 
 his mouth was a grin ; although as 
 strong as a horse, he looked neither 
 heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, 
 and in the road. But it was plain he 
 was in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying 
 his visit, and he laughed frankly when-
 
 i6o The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 ever we failed to accomplish what we 
 were aboui. This was scarcely helpful : 
 it was even, to amaieur carpenters, 
 embarrassing ; but, it lasted until we 
 knocked off work and began to get din- 
 ner. Then Mrs. Hanson remembered 
 she should have been gone an hour ago; 
 and the pair retired, and the lady's 
 laughter died away among the nutmegs 
 down the path. That was Irvine's first 
 day's work in my employment — the 
 devil take him ! 
 
 The next morning he returned and, 
 as he was this time alone, he bestowed 
 his conversation upon us with great lib- 
 erality. He prided himself on his intel- 
 ligence ; asked us if we knew the school 
 ma'am. He did n't think much of her, 
 anyway. He had tried her, he had.
 
 The Hunters Family. i6i 
 
 He had put a question to her. If a tree 
 a hundred feet high were to fall a foot a 
 day, how long would it take to fall right 
 down ? She had not been able to solve 
 the problem. "She don't know noth- 
 ing," he opined. He told us how a 
 friend of his kept a school with a revol- 
 ver, and chuckled mightily over that ; 
 his friend could teach school, he could. 
 All the time he kept chewing gum and 
 spitting. He would stand a while look- 
 ing down ; and then he would toss back 
 his shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, 
 and spit, and bring forward a new sub- 
 ject. A man, he told us, who bore a 
 grudge against him, had poisoned his 
 dog. " That was a low thing for a man 
 to do now, wasn't it? It wasn't like a 
 man, that, nohow. But I G^ot even with
 
 1 62 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 him : I pisoned his dog." His clumsy 
 utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, 
 set a fresh value on the stupidity of his 
 remarks. I do not think I ever appre- 
 ciated the meaning of two words until I 
 knew Irvine — the verb, loaf, and the 
 noun, oaf; between them, they com- 
 plete his portrait. He could lounge, and 
 wriggle, and rub himself against the 
 wall, and grin, and be more in every- 
 body's way than any other two people 
 that I ever set my eyes on. Nothing 
 that he did became him ; and yet you 
 were conscious that he was one of your 
 own race, that his mind was cumbrously 
 at work, revolving the problem of exist- 
 ence like a quid of gum, and in his own 
 cloudy manner enjoying life, and pass- 
 ing judgment on his fellows. Above all
 
 The Hunters Family. 163 
 
 things, he was delighted with himself. 
 You would not have thought it, from his 
 uneasy manners and troubled, struggling 
 utterance ; but he loved himself to the 
 marrow, and was happy and proud like a 
 peacock on a rail. 
 
 His self-esteem was, indeed, the one 
 joint in his harness. He could be 
 got to work, and even kept at work, 
 by flattery. As long as my wife stood 
 over him, crying out how strong he 
 was, so long exactly he would stick 
 to the matter in hand; and the mo- 
 ment she turned her back, or ceased to 
 praise him, he would stop. His phys- 
 ical strength was wonderful ; and to 
 have a woman stand by and admire 
 his achievements, warmed his heart 
 like sunshine. Yet he was as cowardly
 
 164 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 as he was powerful, and felt no shame 
 in owning to the weakness. Some- 
 thing was once wanted from the crazy 
 platform over the shaft, and he at once 
 refused to venture there — "did not 
 like," as he said, "foolen' round them 
 kind o' places," and let my wife go 
 instead of him, looking on with a grin. 
 Vanity, where it rules, is usually more 
 heroic : but Irvine steadily approved 
 himself, and expected others to approve 
 him ; rather looked down upon my 
 wife, and decidedly expected her to 
 look up to him, on the strength of 
 his superior prudence. 
 
 Yet the strangest'' part of the whole 
 matter was perhaps this, that Irvine 
 was as beautiful as a statue. His 
 features were, in themselves, perfect;
 
 The Hunters Family, 165 
 
 it was only his cloudy, uncouth, and 
 coarse expression that disfigured them. 
 So much strength residing in so spare 
 a frame was proof sufficient of the 
 accuracy of his shape. He must have 
 been built somewhat after the pattern 
 of Jack Sheppard ; but the famous 
 housebreaker, we may be certain, was 
 no lout. It was by the extraordinary 
 powers of his mind no less than by 
 the vigor of his body, that he broke 
 his strong prison with such imperfect 
 implements, turning the very obstacles 
 to service. Irvine, in the same case, 
 would have sat down and spat, and 
 grumbled curses. -^ He had the soul 
 of a fat sheep, but, regarded as an 
 artist's model, the exterior of a Greek 
 God. It was a cruel thought to per
 
 1 66 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 sons less favored in their birth, that 
 this creature, endowed — to use the 
 language of theatres — with extraor- 
 dinary " means," should so manage to 
 misemploy them that he looked ugly 
 and almost deformed. It was only 
 by an effort of abstraction, and after 
 many days, that you discovered what 
 he was. 
 
 By playing on the oaf's conceit, and 
 standing closely over him, we got a 
 path made round the corner of the 
 dump to our door, so that we could 
 come and go with decent ease ; and 
 he even enjoyed the work, for in that 
 there were bowlders to be plucked up 
 bodily, bushes to be uprooted, and 
 other occasions for athletic display: 
 but cutting wood was a different mat-
 
 The Hunters Family. 167 
 
 ter. Anybody could cut wood; and, 
 besides, my wife was tired of super- 
 vising him, and had other things to 
 attend to. And, in short, days went 
 by, and Irvine came daily, and talked 
 and lounged and spat ; but the fire- 
 wood remained intact as sleepers on 
 the platform or growing trees upon 
 the mountain-side. Irvine, as a wood- 
 cutter, we could tolerate ; but Irvine 
 as a friend of the family, at so much 
 a day, was too bald an imposition, 
 and at length, in the afternoon of the 
 fourth or fifth day of our connection, 
 I explained to him, as clearly as I 
 could, the light in which I had grown 
 to regard his presence. I pointed out 
 to him that I could not continue to 
 give him a salary for spitting on the
 
 1 68 The Silverado Squatters- 
 
 floor; and this expression, which came 
 after a good many others, at last pen- 
 etrated his obdurate wits. He rose 
 at once, and said if that was the way- 
 he was going to be spoken to, he 
 reckoned he would quit. And, no one 
 interposing, he departed. 
 
 So far, so good. But we had 
 no firewood. The next afternoon, I 
 strolled down to Rufe's and consulted 
 him on the subject. It was a very 
 droll interview, in the large, bare 
 north room of the Silverado Hotel, 
 Mrs. Hanson's patchwork on a frame, 
 and Rufe, and his wife, and I, and 
 the oaf himself, all more or less em- 
 barrassed. Rufe announced there was 
 nobody in the neighborhood but Irvine 
 who could do a day's work for any-
 
 The Hunters Family. 169 
 
 body. Irvine, thereupon, refused to 
 have any more to do with my service ; 
 he " would n't work no more for a man 
 as had spoke to him 's I had done." 
 I found myself on the point of the 
 last humiliation — driven to beseech 
 the creature whom I had just dismissed 
 with insult: but I took the high hand 
 in despair, said there must be no talk 
 of Irvine coming back unless matters 
 were to be differently managed ; that 
 I would rather chop firewood for my- 
 self than be fooled ; and, in short, the 
 Hansons being eager for the lad's 
 hire, I so imposed upon them with 
 merely affected resolution, that they 
 ended by begging me to re-employ him, 
 on a solemn promise that he should 
 be more industrious. The promise, I
 
 1 70 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 am bound to say, was kept. We soon 
 had a fine pile of firewood at our 
 door ; and if Caliban gave me the cold 
 shoulder and spared me his conversa- 
 tion, I thought none the worse of him 
 for that, nor did I find my days much 
 longer for the deprivation. 
 
 The leading spirit of the family was, 
 I am inclined to fancy, Mrs. Hanson. 
 Her social brilliancy somewhat dazzled 
 the others, and she had more of the 
 small change of sense. It was she 
 who faced Kelmar, for instance ; and 
 perhaps, if she had been alone, Kelmar 
 would have had no rule within her 
 doors. Rufe, to be sure, had a fine, 
 sober, open-air attitude of mind, seeing 
 the world without exaggeration — per- 
 haps, we may even say, without enough ;
 
 The Hunters Family. 171 
 
 for he lacked, along with the others, 
 that commercial idealism which puts 
 so high a value on time and money. 
 Sanity itself is a kind of convention. 
 Perhaps Rufe was wrong; but, looking 
 on life plainly, he was unable to per- 
 ceive that croquet or poker were in 
 any way less important than, for in- 
 stance, mending his wagon. Even his 
 own profession, hunting, was dear to 
 him mainly as a sort of play ; even 
 that he would have neglected, had it 
 not appealed to his imagination. His 
 hunting-suit, for instance, had cost I 
 should be afraid to say how many 
 bucks- — the currency in which he 
 paid his way: it was all befringed, 
 after the Indian fashion, and it was 
 dear to his heart. The pictorial side
 
 172 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 of his daily business was never forgot- 
 ten. He was even anxious to stand 
 for his picture in those buckskin hunt- 
 ing clothes; and I remember how Hie 
 once warmed almost into enthusiasm, 
 his dark blue eyes growing perceptibly 
 larger, as he planned the composition 
 in which he should appear, " with the 
 horns of some real big bucks, and dogs, 
 and a camp on a crick " (creek, stream). 
 
 There was no trace in Irvine of this 
 woodland poetry. He did not care for 
 hunting, nor yet for buckskin suits. 
 He had never observed scenery. The 
 world, as it appeared to him, was almost 
 obliterated by his own great grinning 
 figure in the foreground : Caliban Mal- 
 volio. And it seems to me as if, in the 
 persons of these brothers-in-law, we had
 
 Tlie Huniers Family. 1 73 
 
 the two sides of rusticity fairly well 
 represented: the hunter living really in 
 nature ; the clodhopper living merely 
 out of society : the one bent up in every 
 corporal agent to capacity in one pur- 
 suit, doing at least one thing keenly 
 and thoughtfully, and thoroughly alive 
 to all that touches it.* the other in the 
 inert and bestial state, walking in a 
 faint dream, and taking so dim an im- 
 pression of the myriad sides of life that 
 he is truly conscious of nothing but 
 himself. It is only in the fastnesses of 
 nature, forests, mountains, and the back 
 of man's beyond, that a creature en- 
 dowed with five senses can grow up 
 into the perfection of this crass and 
 earthy vanity. In towns or the busier 
 country sides, he is roughly reminded
 
 174 ^-^^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 of other men's existence ; and if he 
 learns no more, he learns at least to 
 fear contempt. But Irvine had come 
 scatheless through life, conscious only 
 of himself, of his great strength and 
 intelligence; and in the silence of the 
 universe, to which he did not listen, 
 dwelling with delight on the sound of 
 his own thoughts.
 
 THE SEA FOGS.
 
 THE SEA FOGS. 
 
 A CHANGE in the color of the light 
 usually called me in the morning. By 
 a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks 
 in our western gable, where the boards 
 had shrunk and separated, flashed sud- 
 denly into my eyes as stripes of dazzling 
 blue, at once so dark and splendid that 
 I used to marvel how the qualities could 
 be combined. At an earlier hour, the 
 heavens in that quarter were still quietly 
 colored, but the shoulder of the moun- 
 tain which shuts in the canyon already
 
 178 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 glowed with sunlight in a wonderful 
 compound of gold and rose and green ; 
 and this too would kindle, although 
 more mildly and with rainbow tints, the 
 fissures of our crazy gable. If I were 
 sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue 
 that struck me awake; if more lightly, 
 then I would come to myself in that 
 earlier and fairer light. 
 
 One Sunday morning, about five, the 
 first brightness called me. I rose and 
 turned to the east, not for my devoticius, 
 but for air. The night had been very 
 still. The little private gale that blew 
 every evening in our canyon, for ten 
 minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, 
 had swiftly blown itself out ; in the 
 hours that followed not a sign of wind 
 had shaken the tree-tops ; and our bar-
 
 The Sea Fogs. i 79 
 
 rack, for all its breaches, was less fresh 
 that morning than of wont. But I had 
 no sooner reached the window than I 
 forgot all else in the sight that met my 
 eyes, and I made but two bounds into 
 my clothes, and down the crazy plank 
 to the platform. 
 
 The sun was still concealed below the 
 opposite hill-tops, though it was shining 
 already, not twenty feet above my head, 
 on our own mountain slope. But the 
 scene, beyond a few near features, was 
 entirely changed. Napa valley was 
 gone ; gone were all the lower slopes 
 and woody foot-hills of the range ; and 
 in their place, not a thousand feet below 
 me, rolled a great level ocean. It was 
 as though I had o"one to bed the nic^ht 
 before, safe in a nook of inland nioun-
 
 i8o The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 tains, and had awakened in a bay upon 
 the coast. I had seen these inundations 
 from below; at Calistoga I had risen 
 and gone abroad in the early morning, 
 coughing and sneezing, under fathoms 
 on fathoms of gray sea vapor, like a 
 cloudy sky — a dull sight for the artist, 
 and a painful experience for the invalid. 
 But to sit aloft one's self in the pure 
 air and under the unclouded dome of 
 heaven, and thus look down on the 
 submergence of the valley, was strangely 
 different and even delightful to the eyes. 
 Far away were hill-tops like little islands. 
 Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the 
 foot of precipices and poured into all 
 the coves of these rough mountains. 
 The color of that fog ocean was a thing 
 never to be forgotten. For an instant,
 
 The Sea Foos. i8i 
 
 among the Hebrides and just about 
 sundown, I have seen something hke 
 it on the sea itself. But the white was 
 not so opaline; nor was there, what 
 surprisingly increased the effect, that 
 breathless, crystal stillness over all. 
 Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea 
 travails, moaning among the weeds or 
 lisping on the sand ; but that vast fog 
 ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor 
 did the sweet air of the morning tremble 
 with a sound. 
 
 As I continued to sit upon the dump, 
 I began to observe that this sea was not 
 so level as at first sight it appeared to 
 be. Away in the extreme south, a little 
 hill of fog arose against the sky above 
 the general surface, and as it had al- 
 ready caught the sun, it shone on the
 
 1 82 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 horizon like the topsails of some giant 
 ship. There were huge waves, station- 
 ary, as it seemed, like waves in a frozen 
 sea; and yet, as I looked again, I was 
 not sure but they were moving after all, 
 with a slow and august advance. And 
 while I was yet doubting, a promontory 
 of the hills some four or five miles away, 
 conspicuous by a bouquet of tall pines, 
 was in a single instant overtaken and 
 swallowed up. It reappeared in a little, 
 with its pines, but this time as an islet, 
 and only to be swallowed up once more 
 and then for good. This set me looking 
 nearer, and I saw that in every cove 
 along the line of mountains the fog was 
 being piled in higher and higher, as 
 though by some wind that was inaudible 
 to me. I could trace its progress, one
 
 The Sea Fogs. 183 
 
 pine tree first growing hazy and then 
 disappearing after another; although 
 sometimes there was none of this fore- 
 running haze, but the whole opaque 
 white ocean gave a start and swallowed 
 a piece of mountain at a gulp. It was 
 to flee these poisonous fogs that I had 
 left the seaboard, and climbed so high 
 among the mountains. And now, be- 
 hold, here came the fog to besiege me 
 in my chosen altitudes, and yet came 
 so beautifully that my first thought was 
 of welcome. 
 
 The sun had now gotten much high- 
 er, and through all the gaps of the 
 hills it cast lono bars of q-old across 
 that white ocean. An eagle, or some 
 other very great bird of the mountain, 
 came wheeling over the nearer pine-
 
 184 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 tops, and hung, poised and something 
 sideways, as if to look abroad on that 
 unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps 
 with terror, for the eyries of her com- 
 rades. Then, with a long cry, she 
 disappeared again towards Lake County 
 and the clearer air. At length it seemed 
 to me as if the flood were beginning 
 to subside. The old landmarks, by 
 whose disappearance I had measured 
 its advance, here a crag, there a brave 
 pine tree, now began, in the inverse 
 order, to make their reappearance into 
 daylight. I judged all danger of the fog 
 was over. This was not Noah's fiood ; 
 it was but a morning spring, and 
 would now drift out seaward whence 
 it came. So, mightily relieved, and 
 a good deal exhilarated by the sight,
 
 The Sea Fogs. 185 
 
 I went into the house to light the 
 fire. 
 
 I suppose it was nearly seven when 
 I once more mounted the platform to 
 look abroad. The fog ocean had 
 swelled up enormously since last I saw 
 it ; and a few hundred feet below me, 
 in the deep gap where the Toll House 
 stands and the road runs through into 
 Lake County, it had already topped 
 the slope, and was pouring over and 
 down the other side like driving smoke. 
 The wind had climbed along with it ; 
 and though I was still in calm air, I 
 could see the trees tossing below me, 
 and their long, strident sighing mount- 
 ed to me where I stood. 
 
 Half an hour later, the fog had sur- 
 mounted all the ridge on the opposite
 
 1 86 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 side of the gap, though a shoulder of 
 the mountain still warded it out of 
 our canyon. Napa valley and its bound- 
 ing hills were now utterly blotted out. 
 The fog, sunny white in the sunshine, 
 was pouring over into Lake County in 
 a huge, ragged cataract, tossing tree- 
 tops appearing and disappearing in the 
 spray. The air struck with a little 
 chill, and set me coughing. It smelt 
 strong of the fog, like the smell of a 
 washing-house, but with a shrev/d tang 
 of the sea salt. 
 
 Had it not been for two things — 
 the sheltering spur which answered as 
 a dyke, and the great valley on the 
 other side which rapidly engulfed 
 whatever mounted — our own little plat- 
 form in the canyon must have been
 
 The Sea Fogs. 187 
 
 already buried a hundred feet in salt 
 and poisonous air. As it was, the inter- 
 est of the scene entirely occupied our 
 minds. We were set just out of the 
 wind, and but just above the fog; we 
 could listen to the voice of the one as 
 to music on the stage ; we could plunge 
 our eyes down into the other, as into 
 some flowing: stream from over the 
 parapet of a bridge ; thus we looked 
 on upon a strange, impetuous, silent, 
 shifting exhibition of the powers of 
 nature, and saw the familiar landscape 
 changing from moment to moment 
 like figures in a dream. 
 
 The imagination loves to trifle with 
 what is not. Had this been indeed 
 the deluge, I should have felt more 
 strongly, but the emotion would have
 
 1 88 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 been similar in kind. I played with 
 the idea, as the child flees in delighted 
 terror from the creations of his fancy. 
 The look of the thing helped me. 
 And when at last I began to flee up 
 the mountain, it was indeed partly to 
 escape from the raw air that kept me 
 coughing, but it was also part in play. 
 As I ascended the mountain-side, I 
 came once more to overlook the upper 
 surface of the fog; but it wore a differ- 
 ent appearance from what I had beheld 
 at daybreak. For, first, the sun now 
 fell on it from high overhead, and its 
 surface shone and undulated like a great 
 norland moor country, sheeted with un- 
 trodden morning snow. And next the 
 new level must have been a thousand or 
 fifteen hundred feet higher than the old,
 
 The Sea Fogs, 189 |j^ 
 
 so that only five or six points of all the 
 broken country below me, still stood 
 out. Napa Valley was now one with 
 Sonoma on the west. On the hither 
 side, only a thin scattered fringe of 
 bluffs was unsubmerged ; and through 
 all the gaps the fog was pouring over, 
 like an ocean, into the blue clear sunny 
 country on the east. There it was soon 
 lost ; for it fell instantly into the bottom 
 of the valleys, following the water-shed ; 
 and the hill-tops in that quarter were 
 still clear cut upon the eastern sky. 
 
 Through the Toll House gap and 
 over the near ridges on the other side, 
 the deluge was immense. A spray of 
 thin vapor was thrown high above it, 
 rising and falling, and blown into fantas- 
 tic shapes. The speed of its course was
 
 IQO The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 like a mountain torrent. Here and 
 there a few tree-tops were discovered and 
 then whehned again ; and for one sec- 
 ond, the bough of a dead pine beckoned 
 out of the spray Hke the arm of a drown- 
 ing man. But still the imagination was 
 dissatisfied, still the ear waited for some- 
 thing more. Had this indeed been 
 water (as it seemed so, to the eye), with 
 what a plunge of reverberating thunder 
 would it have rolled upon its course, dis- 
 embowelling mountains and deracinat- 
 ing pines! And yet water it was, and 
 sea-water at that — true Pacific billows, 
 only somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid 
 air among the hill-tops. 
 
 I climbed still higher, among the red 
 rattlinor travel and dwarf underwood of 
 Mount Saint Helena, until I could look
 
 The Sea Fogs. 191 
 
 right down upon Silverado, and admire 
 the favored nook in which it lay. The 
 sunny plain of fog was several hundred 
 feet higher; behind the protecting spur 
 a gigantic accumulation of cottony va- 
 por threatened, with every second, to 
 blow over and submerge our homestead ; 
 but the vortex setting past the Toll 
 House was too strong ; and there lay 
 our little platform, in the arms of the 
 deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken 
 sunshine. About eleven, however, thin 
 spray came flying over the friendly but- 
 tress, and I began to think the fog had 
 hunted out its Jonah after all. But it 
 was the last effort. The wind veered 
 while we were at dinner, and began to 
 blow squally from the mountain summit; 
 and by half-past one, all that world of
 
 192 The Silverado _ Squatters. 
 
 sea-fogs was utterly routed and flying 
 here and there into the south in little 
 rags of cloud. And instead of a lone 
 sea-beach, we found ourselves once more 
 inhabiting a high mountain-side, with 
 the clear green country far below us, 
 and the light smoke of Calistoga blow- 
 ing in the air. 
 
 This was the great Russian campaign 
 for that season. Now and then, in the 
 early morning, a little white lakelet of 
 fog would be seen far down in Napa 
 Valley; but the heights were not again 
 assailed, nor was the surrounding world 
 again shut off from Silverado.
 
 THE TOLL HOUSE. 
 
 13
 
 THE TOLL HOUSE. 
 
 The Toll House, standing alone by 
 the wayside under nodding pines, with 
 its streamlet and water-tank ; its back- 
 woods, tool-bar, and well trodden cro- 
 quet ground ; the ostler standing by 
 the stable door, chewing a straw ; a 
 glimpse of the Chinese cook in the 
 back parts ; and Mr. Hoddy in the 
 bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and 
 equally anxious to lend or borrow 
 books; — dozed all day in the dusty 
 sunshine, more than half asleep. There
 
 196 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 were no neighbors, except the Hansons 
 up the hill. The traffic on the road 
 was infinitesimal ; only, at rare intervals, 
 a couple in a wagon, or a dusty farmer 
 on a spring-board, toiling over " the 
 grade " to that metropolitan hamlet, 
 Calistoga; and, at the fixed hours, the 
 passage of the stages. 
 
 The nearest building was the school- 
 house, down the road ; and the school- 
 ma'am boarded at the Toll House, 
 walking thence in the morning to the 
 little brown shanty, where she taught 
 the young ones of the district, and 
 returning thither pretty weary in the 
 afternoon. She had chosen this out- 
 lying situation, I understood, for her 
 health. Mr. Corwen was consumptive; 
 so was Rufe ; so was Mr. Jennings,
 
 The Toll House. 197 
 
 the engineer. In short, the place was 
 a kind of small Davos : consumptive 
 folk consorting on a hill-top in the most 
 unbroken idleness. Jennings never 
 did anything that I could see, except 
 now and then to fish, and generally 
 to sit about in the bar and the ver- 
 anda, waiting for something to happen. 
 Corwen and Rufe did as little as pos- 
 sible ; and if the school-ma'am, poor 
 lady, had to work pretty hard all morn- 
 ing, she subsided when it was over into 
 much the same dazed beatitude as all 
 the rest. 
 
 Her special corner was the parlor — 
 a very genteel room, with Bible prints, 
 a crayon portrait of Mrs. Corwen in 
 the height of fashion, a few years ago, 
 another of her son (Mr. Corwen was
 
 198 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 not represented), a mirror, and a selec- 
 tion of dried grasses. A large book 
 was laid religiously on the table — 
 " From Palace to Hovel," I believe, its 
 name — full of the raciest experiences 
 in England. The author had mingled 
 freely with all classes, the nobility 
 particularly meeting him with open 
 arms; and I must say that traveller 
 had ill requited his reception. His 
 book, in short, was a capital instance 
 of the Penny Messalina school of lit- 
 erature ; and there arose from it, in 
 that cool parlor, in that silent, way- 
 side, mountain inn, a rank atmosphere 
 of gold and blood and Jenkins, and 
 the " Mysteries of London," and sick- 
 ening, inverted snobbery, fit to knock 
 you down. The mention of this book
 
 The Toll House. 199 
 
 reminds me of another and far racier 
 picture of our island life. The latter 
 parts of Roca77tbole are surely too spar- 
 ingly consulted in the country which 
 they celebrate. No man's education 
 can be said to be complete, nor is the 
 world yet emptied of enjoyment, till 
 he has made the knowledge of that 
 desperate fellow, " the Reverend Pat- 
 terson, director of the Evangelical So- 
 ciety." To follow the evolutions of that 
 reverend gentleman, who goes through 
 scenes in which even Mr. Duffield would 
 hesitate to place a bishop, is to rise to 
 new ideas. But, alas ! there was no 
 Patterson about the Toll House. Only, 
 alongside of " From Palace to Hovel," a 
 sixpenny " Ouida " figured. So litera- 
 ture, you see, was not unrepresented.
 
 200 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 The school-ma'am had friends to stay 
 with her, other school-ma'ams enjoying 
 their holidays, quite a bevy of damsels. 
 They seemed never to go out, or not 
 beyond the veranda, but sat close in 
 the little parlor, quietly talking or list- 
 ening to the wind among the trees. 
 Sleep dwelt in the Toll House, like a 
 fixture : summer sleep, shallow, soft and 
 dreamless. A cuckoo-clock, a great 
 rarity in such a place, hooted at in- 
 tervals about the echoing house ; and 
 Mr. Jennings would open his eyes for 
 a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf 
 of a newspaper, and the resting school- 
 ma'ams in the parlor would be recalled 
 to the consciousness of their inaction. 
 Busy Mrs. Corwen and her busy China- 
 man might be heard indeed, in the pen-
 
 The Toll House. 201 
 
 etralia, pounding dough or rattling 
 dishes ; or perhaps Rufe had called 
 up some of the sleepers for a game of 
 croquet, and the hollow strokes of the 
 mallet sounded far away among the 
 woods : but with these exceptions, it 
 was sleep and sunshine and dust, and 
 the wind in the pine trees, all day long. 
 A little before stage time, that castle 
 of indolence awoke. The ostler threw 
 his straw away and set to his prepara- 
 tions, Mr. Jennings rubbed his eyes; 
 happy Mr. Jennings, the something he 
 had been waiting for all day about to 
 happen at last ! The boarders gathered 
 in the veranda, silently giving ear, and 
 gazing down the road with shaded eyes. 
 And as yet there was no sign for the 
 senses, not a sound, not a tremor of the
 
 202 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 mountain road. The birds, to whom 
 the secret of the hooting cuckoo is un- 
 known, must have set down to instinct 
 this premonitory bustle. 
 
 And then the first of the two stages 
 swooped upon the Toll House with a 
 roar and in a cloud of dust; and the 
 shock had not yet time to subside, 
 before the second was abreast of it. 
 Huge concerns they were, w'ell-horsed 
 and loaded, the men in their shirt- 
 sleeves, the women swathed in veils, the 
 long whip cracking like a pistol ; and as 
 they charged upon that slumbering hos- 
 telry, each shepherding a dust storm, 
 the dead place blossomed into life and 
 talk and clatter. This the Toll House, 
 with its city throng, its jostling shoul- 
 ders, its infinity of instant business in
 
 The Toll House. 203 
 
 the bar ? The mind would not receive 
 it ! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is 
 hardFy credible ; the thrill of the great 
 shower of letters from the post-bag, the 
 childish hope and interest with which 
 one gazed in all these strangers' eyes. 
 They paused there but to pass: the 
 blue-clad China-boy, the San Francisco 
 magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, 
 the secret memoirs in tweed, the gog- 
 gling, well-shod lady with her troop of 
 girls ; they did but flash and go ; they 
 were hull-down for us behind life's 
 ocean, and we but hailed their topsails 
 on the line. Yet, out of our great soli- 
 tude of four and twenty mountain hours, 
 we thrilled to their momentary pres- 
 ence ; gauged and divined them, loved 
 and hated ; and stood lioht-headed in
 
 204 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 that storm of human electricity. Yes, 
 Hke Piccadilly Circus, this is also one 
 of life's crossing-places. Here I beheld 
 one man, already famous as infamous, 
 a centre of pistol-shots: and another 
 who, if not yet known to rumor, will fill 
 a column of the Sunday paper when 
 he comes to hang — a burly, thick-set, 
 powerful Chinese desperado, six long 
 bristles upon either lip ; redolent of 
 whiskey, playing cards, and pistols ; 
 swaggering in the bar with the low- 
 est assumption of the lowest Euro- 
 pean manners; rapping out blackguard 
 English oaths in his canorous oriental 
 voice ; and combining in one person the 
 depravities of two races and two civili- 
 zations. For all his lust and vigor, he 
 seemed to look cold upon me from the
 
 The Toll House. 205 
 
 valley of the shadow of the gallows. 
 He imagined a vain thing ; and while 
 he drained his cocktail, Holbein's death 
 was at his elbow. Once, too, I fell in 
 talk with another of these flitting stran- 
 gers — like the rest, in his shirt-sleeves 
 and all begrimed with dust — and the 
 next minute we were discussing Paris 
 and London, theatres and wines. To 
 him, journeying from one human place 
 to another, this was a trifle ; but to me ! 
 No, Mr. Lillie, I have not forgotten it. 
 
 And presently the city-tide was at its 
 flood and began to ebb. Life runs in 
 Piccadilly Circus, say, from nine to one, 
 and then, there also, ebbs into the small 
 hours of the echoing policeman arid the 
 lamps and stars. But the Toll House 
 is far up stream, and near its rural
 
 2o6 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 springs ; the bubble of the tide but 
 touches it. Before you had yet grasped 
 your pleasure, the horses were put to, 
 the loud whips volleyed, and the tide 
 was gone. North and south had the 
 two stages vanished, the towering dust 
 subsided in the woods ; but there was 
 still an interval before the flush had 
 fallen on your cheeks, before the ear 
 became once more contented with the 
 silence, as the seven sleepers of the Toll 
 House dozed back to their accustomed 
 corners. Yet a little, and the ostler 
 would swing round the great barrier 
 across the road ; and in the golden 
 evening, that dreamy inn begin to trim 
 its lamps and spread the board for 
 supper. 
 
 As I recall the place — the green
 
 The Toll House, 207 
 
 dell below ; the spires of pine ; the sun- 
 warm, scented air ; that gray, gabled inn, 
 with its faint stirrings of life amid the 
 slumber of the mountains — I slowly 
 awake to a sense of admiration, grati- 
 tude, and almost love. A fine place, 
 after all, for a wasted life to doze away 
 in — the cuckoo-clock hooting of its 
 far home country ; the croquet mallets, 
 eloquent of English lawns ; the stages 
 daily bringing news of the turbulent 
 world away below there ; and perhaps 
 once in the summer, a salt fog pouring 
 overhead with its tale of the Pacific.
 
 A STARRY DRIVE. 
 
 H
 
 A STARRY DRIVE. 
 
 In our rule at Silverado, there was a 
 melancholy interregnum. The queen 
 and the crown prince with one accord 
 fell sick ; and, as I was sick to begin 
 with, our lone position on Mount Saint 
 Helena was no longer tenable, and we 
 had to hurry back to Calistoga and a 
 cottage on the green. By that time 
 we had begun to realize the difficulties 
 of our position. We had found what 
 an amount of labor it cost to support 
 life in our red canyon ; and it was the
 
 2 12 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 dearest desire of our hearts to get a 
 China-boy to go along with us when 
 we returned. We could have given 
 him a whole house to himself, self- 
 contained, as they say in the adver- 
 tisements ; and on the money question 
 we were prepared to go far. Kong 
 Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, 
 was entrusted with the affair ; and from 
 day to day it languished on, with pro- 
 testations on our part and melliflu- 
 ous excuses on the part of Kong Sam 
 Kee. 
 
 At length, about half-past eight of 
 our last evening, with the wagon 
 ready harnessed to convey us up the 
 grade, the washerman, with a somewhat 
 sneering air, produced the boy. He 
 was a handsome, gentlemanly lad, at-
 
 A Starry Drive. 2 1 3 
 
 tired in rich dark blue, and shod with 
 snowy white ; but, alas ! he had heard 
 rumors of Silverado. He knew it for 
 a lone place on the mountain-side, 
 with no friendly wash-house near by, 
 where he might smoke a pipe of opium 
 o' nights with other China-boys, and 
 lose his little earnings at the game of 
 tan ; and he first backed out for more 
 money; and then, when that demand 
 was satisfied, refused to come point- 
 blank. He was wedded to his wash- 
 houses ; he had no taste for the rural 
 life ; and we must go to our mountain 
 servantless. It must have been near 
 half an hour before we reached that 
 conclusion, standing in the midst of 
 Calistoga high street under the stars, 
 and the China-boy and Kong Sam Kee
 
 214 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 singing their pigeon English in the 
 sweetest voices and with the most 
 musical inflections. 
 
 We were not, however, to return 
 alone ; for we brought with us Joe 
 Strong, the painter, a most good- 
 natured comrade and a capital hand 
 at an omelette. I do not know in 
 which capacity he was most valued — 
 as a cook or a companion ; and he did 
 excellently well in both. 
 
 The Kong Sam Kee negotiation 
 had delayed us unduly ; it must have 
 been half-past nine before we left Cal- 
 istoga, and night came fully ere we 
 struck the bottom of the grade. I 
 have never seen such a night. It 
 seemed to throw calumny in the teeth 
 of all the painters that ever dabbled
 
 A Stai'ry Drive. 2 1 5 
 
 in starlight. The sky itself was of a 
 ruddy, powerful, nameless, changing 
 color, dark and glossy like a serpent's 
 back. The stars, by innumerable mil- 
 lions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. 
 The milky way was bright, like a 
 moonlit cloud ; half heaven seemed 
 milky way. The greater luminaries 
 shone each more clearly than a win- 
 ter's moon. Their light was dyed in 
 every sort of color — red, like fire; 
 blue, like steel ; green, like the tracks 
 of sunset; and so sharply did each 
 stand forth in its own lustre that there 
 was no appearance of that flat, star- 
 spangled arch we know so well in pic- 
 tures, but all the hollow of heaven was 
 one chaos of contesting luminaries — 
 a hurly-burly of stars. Against this
 
 2i6 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 the hills and rugged tree-tops stood out 
 redly, dark. 
 
 As we continued to advance, the 
 lesser lights and milky ways first grew 
 pale, and then vanished ; the count- 
 less hosts of heaven dwindled in num- 
 ber by successive millions; those that 
 still shone had tempered their exceed- 
 ing brightness and fallen back into 
 their customary wistful distance ; and 
 the sky declined from its first bewil- 
 dering splendor into the appearance of 
 a common night. Slowly this change 
 proceeded, and still there was no sign 
 of any cause. Then a whiteness like 
 mist was thrown over the spurs of the 
 mountain. Yet a while, and, as we 
 turned a corner, a great leap of silver 
 light and net of forest shadows fell
 
 A Starry Drive. 217 
 
 across the road and upon our won- 
 dering wagonful ; and, swimming low 
 among the trees, we beheld a strange, 
 misshapen, waning moon, half-tilted on 
 her back. 
 
 " Where are ye when the moon ap- 
 pears ? " as the old poet sang, half- 
 taunting, to the stars, bent upon a 
 courtly purpose. 
 
 " As the sunlight round the dim earth's midnight 
 tower of shadow pours, 
 Streaming past the dim, wide portals. 
 Viewless to the eyes of mortals, 
 Till it floods the moon's pale islet or the morning's 
 golden shores." 
 
 So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a no- 
 ble inspiration. And so had the sun- 
 light flooded that pale islet of the 
 moon, and her lit face put out, one 
 after another, that galaxy of stars.
 
 2i8 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 The wonder of the drive was over; 
 but, by some nice conjunction of clear- 
 ness in the air and fit shadow in the 
 valley where we travelled, we had seen 
 for a little while that brave display of 
 the midnight heavens. It was gone, 
 but it had been ; nor shall I ever again 
 behold the stars with the same mind. 
 He who has seen the sea commoved 
 with a great hurricane, thinks of it very 
 differently from him who has seen it 
 only in a calm. And the difference 
 between a calm and a hurricane is not 
 greatly more striking than that be- 
 tween the ordinary face of night and 
 the splendor that shone upon us in 
 that drive. Two in our wagon knew 
 night as she shines upon the tropics, 
 but even that bore no comparison.
 
 A Starry Drive. 219 
 
 The nameless color of the sky, the 
 hues of the star-fire, and the incredible 
 projection of the stars themselves, start- 
 ing from their orbits, so that the eye 
 seemed to distinguish their positions 
 in the hollow of space ^— these were 
 things that we had never seen before 
 and shall never see again. 
 
 Meanwhile, in this altered night, we 
 proceeded on our way among the 
 scents and silence of the forest, reached 
 the top of the grade, wound up by 
 Hanson's, and came at last to a stand 
 under the flying gargoyle of the chute. 
 Sam, who had been lying back, fast 
 asleep, with the moon on his face, 
 got down, with the remark that it was 
 pleasant " to be home." The wagon 
 turned and drove away, the noise
 
 2 20 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 gently dying in the woods, and we 
 clambered up the rough path, Cali- 
 ban's great feat of engineering, and 
 came home to Silverado. 
 
 The moon shone in at the eastern 
 doors and windows, and over the lum- 
 ber on the platform. The one tall pine 
 beside the ledge was steeped in silver. 
 Away up the canyon, a wild-cat wel- 
 comed us with three discordant squalls. 
 But once we had lit a candle, and 
 began to review our improvements, 
 homely in either sense, and count our 
 stores, it was wonderful what a feeling 
 of possession and permanence grew up 
 in the hearts of the lords of Silverado. 
 A bed had still to be made up for 
 Strong, and the morning's water to be 
 fetched, with clinking pail ; and as we
 
 A Starry Drive. 221 
 
 set about these household duties, and 
 showed off our wealth and conveniences 
 before the stranger, and had a glass of 
 wine, I think, in honor of our return, 
 and trooped at length one after another 
 up the flying bridge of plank, and lay 
 down to sleep in our shattered, moon- 
 pierced barrack, we were among the 
 happiest sovereigns in the world, and 
 certainly ruled over the most contented 
 people. Yet, in our absence, the pal- 
 ace had been sacked. Wild-cats, so 
 the Hansons said, had broken in and 
 carried off a side of bacon, a hatchet, 
 and two knives.
 
 EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A 
 MINE.
 
 EPISODES IN THE STORY 
 OF A MINE. 
 
 No one could live at Silverado and not 
 be curious about the story of the mine. 
 We were surrounded by so many evi- 
 dences of expense and toil, we lived so 
 entirely in the wreck of that great en- 
 terprise, like mites in the ruins of a 
 cheese, that the idea of the old din and 
 bustle haunted our repose. Our own 
 house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, 
 the rails, the windlass, the mass of 
 broken plant ; the two tunnels, one far 
 
 I?
 
 226 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 below in the green dell, the other on 
 the platform where we kept our wine ; 
 the deep shaft, with the sun-glints and 
 the water-drops ; above all, the ledge, 
 that great gaping slice out of the moun- 
 tain shoulder, propped apart by wooden 
 wedges, on whose immediate margin, 
 high above our heads, the one tall pine 
 precariously nodded — these stood for 
 its greatness ; while the dog-hutch, 
 boot-jacks, old boots, old tavern bills, 
 and the very beds that we inherited 
 from bygone miners, put in human 
 touches and realized for us the story 
 of the past. 
 
 I have sat on an old sleeper, under 
 the thick madronas near the forge, with 
 just a look over the dump on the green 
 world below, and seen the sun lying
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Aline. 227 
 
 broad among the wreck, and heard the 
 silence broken only by the tinkling 
 wat^r in the shaft, or a stir of the royal 
 family about the battered palace, and 
 my mind has gone back to the epoch 
 of the Stanleys and the Chapmans, with 
 a grand tiitti of pick and drill, hammer 
 and anvil, echoing about the canyon ; 
 the assayer hard at it in our dining- 
 room ; the carts below on the road, and 
 their cargo of red mineral bounding 
 and thundering down the iron chute. 
 And now all gone — all fallen away 
 into this sunny silence and desertion : 
 a couple of squatters dining in the 
 assayer's ofifice, making their beds 
 in the big sleeping-room erstwhile so 
 crowded, keeping their wine in the. 
 tunnel that once rang with picks.
 
 2 28 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 But Silverado itself, although now 
 fallen in its turn into decay, was once 
 but a mushroom, and had succeeded to 
 other mines and other flitting cities. 
 Twenty years ago, away down the glen 
 on the Lake County side there was a 
 place, Jonestown by name, with two 
 thousand inhabitants dwelling under 
 canvas, and one roofed house for the 
 sale of whiskey. Round on the western 
 side of Mount Saint Helena there was, 
 at the same date, a second large en- 
 campment, its name, if it ever had one, 
 lost for me. Both of these have per- 
 ished, leaving not a stick and scarce 
 a memory behind them. Tide after 
 tide of hopeful miners have thus flowed 
 and ebbed about the mountain, coming 
 and going, now by solitary prospectors,
 
 Episodes i7i the Story of a Mme. 229 
 
 now with a rush. Last in order of 
 time came Silverado, reared the big 
 mill, in the valley, founded the town 
 which is now represented, monumen- 
 tally, by Hanson's, pierced all these 
 slaps and shafts and tunnels, and in 
 turn declined and died away. 
 
 " Our noisy years seem moments in the wake 
 Of the eternal silence." 
 
 As to the success of Silverado in its 
 time of being, two reports were current. 
 According to the first, six hundred thou- 
 sand dollars were taken out of that 
 great upright seam, that still hung open 
 above us on crazy wedges. Then the 
 ledge pinched out, and there followed, 
 in quest of the remainder, a great drift- 
 ing and tunnelling in all directions, and 
 a great consequent effusion of dollars,
 
 230 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 until, all parties being sick of the ex- 
 pense, the mine was deserted, and the 
 town decamped. According to the sec- 
 ond version, told me with much secrecy 
 of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, 
 and town, were parts of one majestic 
 swindle. There had never come any 
 silver out of any portion of the mine ; 
 there was no silver to come. At mid- 
 night trains of pack-horses might have 
 been observed winding by devious 
 tracks about the shoulder of the moun- 
 tain. They came from far away, from 
 Amador or Placer, laden with silver 
 in " old cigar-boxes." They discharged 
 their load at Silverado, in the hour of 
 sleep ; and before the morning they 
 were gone again with their mysteri- 
 ous drivers to their unknown source.
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine. 231 
 
 In this way, twenty thousand pounds' 
 worth of silver was smuQ^orled in under 
 cover of night, in these old cigar-boxes ; 
 mixed with Silverado mineral ; carted 
 down to the mill ; crushed, amalgamated, 
 and refined, and despatched to the city 
 as the proper product of the mine. 
 Stock-jobbing, if it can cover such ex- 
 penses, must be a profitable business in 
 San Francisco. 
 
 I give these two versions as I got 
 them. But I place little reliance on 
 either, my belief in history having been 
 greatly shaken. For it chanced that I 
 had come to dwell in Silverado at a 
 critical hour ; great events in its history 
 were about to happen — did happen, as 
 I am led to believe ; nay, and it will be 
 seen that I played a part in that revolu-
 
 232 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 tion myself. And yet from first to last 
 I never had a glimmer of an idea what 
 was going on ; and even now, after full 
 reflection, profess myself at sea. That 
 there was some obscure intrigue of the 
 cigar-box order, and that I, in the char- 
 acter of a wooden puppet, set pen to 
 paper in the interest of somebody, so 
 much, and no more, is certain. 
 
 Silverado, then under my immedi- 
 ate sway, belonged to one whom I will 
 call a Mr. Ronalds. I only knew him 
 through the extraordinarily distorting 
 medium of local gossip, now as a mo- 
 mentous jobber; now as a dupe to 
 point an adage ; and again, and much 
 more probably, as an ordinary Christian 
 gentleman like you or me, who had 
 opened a mine and worked it for a while
 
 Episodes i7i the Story of a Mine, 233 
 
 with better and worse fortune. So, 
 through a defective window-pane, you 
 may see the passer-by shoot up into a 
 hunch-backed giant or dwindle into a 
 pot-bellied dwarf. 
 
 To Ronalds, at least, the mine be- 
 longed ; but the notice by which he held 
 it would run out upon the 30th of June 
 — or rather, as I suppose, it had run out 
 already, and the month of grace would 
 expire upon that day, after which any 
 American citizen might post a notice of 
 his own, and make Silverado his. This, 
 with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe told 
 me at an early period of our acquaint- 
 ance. There was no silver, of course ; 
 the mine "wasn't worth nothing, Mr. 
 Stevens," but there was a deal of old 
 iron and wood around, and to gain pos-
 
 2 34 ^^<^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 session of this old wood and iron, and 
 get a right to the water, Rufe proposed, 
 if I had no objections, to "jump the 
 claim." 
 
 Of course, I had no objection. But 
 I was filled with wonder. If all he 
 wanted was the wood and iron, what, 
 in the name of fortune, was to prevent 
 him taking them? "His right there 
 was none to dispute." He might lay 
 hands on all to-morrow, as the wild- 
 cats had laid hands upon our knives 
 and hatchet. Besides, was this mass 
 of heavy mining plant worth transpor- 
 tation ? If it was, why had not the 
 rightful owners carted it away.^* If it 
 was, would they not preserve their title 
 to these movables, even after they had 
 lost their title to the mine.i^ And if
 
 Episodes iii the Story of a Mine. 235 
 
 it were not, what the better was Rufe ? 
 Nothing would grow at Silverado ; there 
 was even no wood to cut ; beyond a 
 sense of property, there was nothing 
 to be gained. Lastly, was it at all 
 credible that Ronalds would forget what 
 Rufe remembered ? The days of grace 
 were not yet over: any fine morning 
 he might appear, paper in hand, and 
 enter for another year on his inherit- 
 ance. However, it was none of my 
 business ; all seemed legal ; Rufe or 
 Ronalds, all was one to me. 
 
 On the morning of the 27th, Mrs. 
 Hanson appeared with the milk as 
 usual, in her sun-bonnet. The time 
 would be out on Tuesday, she reminded 
 us, and bade me be in readiness to play 
 my part, though I had no idea what it
 
 236 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 was to be. And suppose Ronalds 
 came? we asked. She received the 
 idea with derision, laughing aloud with 
 all her fine teeth. He could not find 
 the mine to save his life, it appeared, 
 without Rufe to guide him. Last year, 
 when he came, they heard him " up and 
 down the road a hollerin' and a raisin' 
 Cain." And at last he had to come 
 to the Hansons in despair, and bid 
 Rufe, "Jump into your pants and shoes, 
 and show me where this old mine is, 
 anyway ! " Seeing that Ronalds had 
 laid out so much money in the spot, 
 and that a beaten road led right up to 
 the bottom of the dump, I thought this 
 a remarkable example. The sense of 
 locality must be singularly in abeyance 
 in the case of Ronalds.
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine, 237 
 
 That same evening, supper comfort- 
 ably over, Joe Strong busy at work on 
 a drawing of the dump and the opposite 
 hills, we were all out on the platform 
 together, sitting there, under the tented 
 heavens, with the same sense of privacy 
 as if we had been cabined in a parlor, 
 when the sound of brisk footsteps came 
 mounting up the path. We pricked 
 our ears at this, for the tread seemed 
 lighter and firmer than was usual with 
 our country neighbors. And presently, 
 sure enough, two town gentlemen, with 
 cigars and kid gloves, came debouching 
 past the house. They looked in that 
 place like a blasphemy. 
 
 " Good evening," they said. For 
 none of us had stirred ; we all sat stiff 
 with wonder.
 
 238 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 " Good evening," I returned ; and 
 then, to put them at their ease, " A 
 stiff climb," I added. 
 
 " Yes," replied the leader ; " but we 
 have to thank you for this path." 
 
 I did not like the man's tone. None 
 of us liked it. He did not seem em- 
 barrassed by the meeting, but threw us 
 his remarks like favors, and strode 
 magisterially by us towards the shaft 
 and tunnel. 
 
 Presently we heard his voice raised 
 to his companion. " We drifted every 
 sort of way, but could n't strike the 
 ledge." Then again : " It pinched 
 out here." And once more : " Every 
 miner that ever worked upon it says 
 there 's bound to be a ledge some- 
 where."
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine. 239 
 
 These were the snatches of his talk 
 that reached us, and they had a damn- 
 ing significance. We, the lords of 
 Silverado, had come face to face with 
 our superior. It is the worst of all 
 quaint and of all cheap ways of life 
 that they bring us at last to the pinch 
 of some humiliation. I liked well 
 enough to be a squatter when there 
 was none but Hanson by; before 
 Ronalds, I will own, I somewhat 
 quailed. I hastened to do him fealty, 
 said I gathered he was the Squattee, 
 and apologized. He threatened me 
 with ejection, in a manner grimly 
 pleasant — more pleasant to him, I 
 fancy, than to me ; and then he passed 
 off into praises of the former state of 
 Silverado. " It was the busiest little
 
 240 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 mining town you ever saw : " a popula- 
 tion of between a thousand and fifteen 
 hundred souls, the engine in full blast, 
 the mill newly erected; nothing going 
 but champagne, and hope the order of 
 the day. Ninety thousand dollars came 
 out ; a hundred and forty thousand were 
 put in, making a net loss of fifty thou- 
 sand. The last days, I gathered, the 
 days of John Stanley, were not so 
 bright; the champagne had ceased to 
 flow, the population was already moving 
 elsewhere, and Silverado had begun 
 to wither in the branch before it was 
 cut at the root. The last shot that was 
 fired knocked over the stone chimney, 
 and made that hole in the roof of our 
 barrack, through which the sun was 
 wont to visit slug-a-beds towards after-
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine. 241 
 
 noon. A noisy last shot, to inaugurate 
 the days of silence. 
 
 Throughout this interview, my con- 
 science was a good deal exercised ; and 
 I was moved to throw myself on my 
 knees and own the intended treachery. 
 But then I had Hanson to consider. 
 I was in much the same position as 
 Old Rowley, that royal humorist, whom 
 *' the rogue had taken into his con- 
 fidence." And again, here was Ronalds 
 on the spot. He must know the day 
 of the month as well as Hanson and 
 I. If a broad hint were necessar)^, he 
 had the broadest in the world. For 
 a large board had been nailed by the 
 crown prince on the very front of our 
 house, between the door and window, 
 
 painted in cinnabar — the pigment of 
 16
 
 242 The Silverado Squatters, 
 
 the country — with doggerel rhymes and 
 contumelious pictures, and announcing, 
 in terms unnecessarily figurative, that 
 the trick was already played, the claim 
 already jumped, and Master Sam the 
 legitimate successor of Mr. Ronalds. 
 But no, nothing could save that man ; 
 quern deus vult perdere, prius dementat. 
 As he came so he went, and left his 
 rights depending. 
 
 Late at night, by Silverado reckoning, 
 and after we were all abed, Mrs. Han- 
 son returned to give us the newest of 
 her news. It was like a scene in a 
 ship's steerage ; all of us abed in our 
 different tiers, the single candle strug- 
 gling with the darkness, and this plump, 
 handsome woman, seated on an up- 
 turned valise beside the bunks, talking
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine. 243 
 
 and showing her fine teeth, and laugh- 
 ing till the rafters rang. Any ship, to 
 be sure, with a hundredth part as many 
 holes in it as our barrack, must long 
 ago have gone to her last port. Up to 
 that time I had always imagined Mrs. 
 Hanson's loquacity to be mere inconti- 
 nence, that she said what was upper- 
 most for the pleasure of speaking, and 
 laughed and laughed again as a kind 
 of musical accompaniment. But I 
 now found there was an art in it. I 
 found it less communicative than silence 
 itself. I wished to know why Ronalds 
 had come ; how he had found his way 
 without Rufe ; and why, being on the 
 spot, he had not refreshed his title. 
 She talked interminably on, but her 
 replies were never answers. She fled
 
 244 "^^^^ Silverado Squatters. 
 
 under a cloud of words ; and when I 
 had made sure that she was purposely 
 eluding me, I dropped the subject in 
 my turn, and let her rattle where she 
 would. 
 
 She had come to tell us that, instead 
 of waiting for Tuesday, the claim was 
 to be jumped on the morrow. How.? 
 If the time were not out, it was impos- 
 sible. Why.? If Ronalds had come 
 and gone, and done nothing, there 
 was the less cause for hurry. But again 
 I could reach no satisfaction. The 
 claim was to be jumped next morning, 
 that was all that she would condescend 
 upon. 
 
 And yet it was not jumped the next 
 morning, nor yet the next, and a whole 
 week had come and gone before we 
 
 -I
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine. 245 
 
 heard more of this exploit. That day 
 week, however, a day of great heat, 
 Hanson, with a Httle roll of paper in 
 his hand, and the eternal pipe alight ; 
 Breedlove, his large, dull friend, to act, 
 I suppose, as witness; Mrs. Hanson, 
 in her Sunday best; and all the chil- 
 dren, from the oldest to the youngest; 
 — arrived in a procession, tailing one 
 behind another up the path. Caliban 
 was absent, but he had been chary of 
 his friendly visits since the row ; and, 
 with that exception, the whole family 
 was gathered together as for a marriage 
 or a christening. Strong was sitting at 
 work, in the shade of the dwarf ma- 
 dronas near the forge ; and they planted 
 themselves about him in a circle, one 
 on a stone, another on the wagon rails,
 
 246 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 a third on a piece of plank. Gradually 
 the children stole away up the canyon 
 to where there was another chute, some- 
 what smaller than the one across the 
 dump ; and down this chute, for the 
 rest of the afternoon, they poured one 
 avalanche of stones after another, wak- 
 ing the echoes of the glen. Mean- 
 time we elders sat together on the 
 platform, Hanson and his friend smok- 
 ing in silence like Indian sachems, Mrs. 
 Hanson rattling on as usual with an 
 adroit volubility, saying nothing, but 
 keeping the party at their ease like a 
 courtly hostess. 
 
 Not a word occurred about the busi- 
 ness of the day. Once, twice, and 
 thrice I tried to slide the subject in, 
 but was discouraged by the stoic apathy
 
 Episodes m the Story of a Mine. 247 
 
 of Rufe, and beaten down before the 
 pouring verbiage of his wife. There 
 is nothing of the Indian brave about 
 me, and I began to grill with impa- 
 tience. At last, like a highway robber, 
 I cornered Hanson, and bade him 
 stand and deliver his business. There- 
 upon he gravely rose, as though to hint 
 that this was not a proper place, nor 
 the subject one suitable for squaws, and 
 I, following his example, led him up 
 the plank into our barrack. There he 
 bestowed himself on a box, and unrolled 
 his papers with fastidious deliberation. 
 There were two sheets of note-paper, 
 and an old mining notice, dated May 
 30th, 1879, part print, part manuscript, 
 and the latter much obliterated by 
 the rains. It was by this identical
 
 248 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 piece of paper that the mine had been 
 held last year. For thirteen months 
 it had endured the weather and the 
 change of seasons on a cairn behind 
 the shoulder of the canyon ; and it 
 was now my business, spreading it 
 before me on the table, and sitting 
 on a valise, to copy its terms, with 
 some necessary changes, twice over on 
 the two sheets of note-paper. One was 
 then to be placed on the same cairn 
 — a " mound of rocks " the notice put 
 it; and the other to be lodged for 
 registration. 
 
 Rufe watched me, silently smoking, 
 till I came to the place for the locator's 
 name at the end of the first copy ; and 
 when I proposed that he should sign, 
 I thought I saw a scare in his eye. " I
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine, 249 
 
 don't think that'll be necessary," he 
 said slowly ; " just you write it down." 
 Perhaps this mighty hunter, who was 
 the most active member of the local 
 school board, could not write. There 
 would be nothing strange in that. The 
 constable of Calistoga is, and has been 
 for years, a bed-ridden man, and, if I 
 remember rightly, blind. He had more 
 need of the emoluments than another, 
 it was explained ; and it was easy for 
 him to " depytize," with a strong accent 
 on the last. So friendly and so free 
 are popular institutions. 
 
 When I had done my scrivening, 
 Hanson strolled out, and addressed 
 Breedlove, " Will you step up here a 
 bit } " and after they had disappeared 
 a little while into the chaparral and
 
 250 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 madrona thicket, they came back again 
 minus a notice, and the deed was 
 done. The claim was jumped ; a 
 tract of mountain-side, fifteen hundred 
 feet long by six hundred wide, with 
 all the earth's precious bowels, had 
 passed from Reynolds to Hanson, and, 
 in the passage, changed its name from 
 the " Mammoth " to the " Calistoga." 
 I had tried to get Rufe to call it after 
 his wife, after himself, and after Gar- 
 field, the Republican Presidential can- 
 didate of the hour — since then elected, 
 and, alas! dead — but all was in vain. 
 The claim had once been called the 
 Calistoga before, and he seemed to 
 feel safety in returning to that. 
 
 And so the history of that mine 
 became once more plunged in dark-
 
 Episodes in the Story of a Mine. 251 
 
 ness, lit only by some monster pyro- 
 technical displays of gossip. And per- 
 haps the most curious feature of the 
 whole matter is this : that we should 
 have dwelt in this quiet corner of the 
 mountains, with not a dozen neighbors, 
 and yet struggled all the while, like 
 desperate swimmers, in this sea of fal- 
 sities and contradictions. Wherever a 
 man is, there will be a lie.
 
 TOILS AND PLEASURES.
 
 TOILS AND PLEASURES. 
 
 I MUST try to convey some notion of our 
 life, of how the days passed and what 
 pleasure we took in them, of what there 
 was to do and how we set about doing 
 it, in our mountain hermitage. The 
 house, after we had repaired the worst 
 of the damages, and filled in some of the 
 doors and windows with white cotton 
 cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant 
 dwelling-place, always airy and dry, and 
 haunted by the outdoor perfumes of the 
 glen. Within, it had the look of habita-
 
 256 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 tion, the human look. You had only to 
 go into the third room, which we did 
 not use, and see its stones, its sifting 
 earth, its tumbled litter; and then re- 
 turn to our lodging, with the beds made, 
 the plates on the rack, the pail of bright 
 water behind the door, the stove crack- 
 ling in a corner, and perhaps the table 
 roughly laid against a meal, — and 
 man's order, the little clean spots that 
 he creates to dwell in, were at once con- 
 trasted with the rich passivity of nature. 
 And yet our house was everywhere so 
 wrecked and shattered, the air came and 
 went so freely, the sun found so many 
 portholes, the golden out-door glow 
 shone in so many open chinks, that we 
 enjoyed, at the same time, some of the 
 comforts of a roof and much of the gay-
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 257 
 
 ety and brightness of al fresco life. A 
 single shower of rain, to be sure, and we 
 should have been drowned out like 
 mice. But ours was a Californian sum 
 mer, and an earthquake was a far likelier 
 accident than a shower of rain. 
 
 Trustful in this fine weather, we kept 
 the house for kitchen and bedroom, and 
 used the platform as our summer parlor. 
 The sense of privacy, as I have said 
 already, was complete. We could look 
 over the dump on miles of forest and 
 rough hilltop ; our eyes commanded 
 some of Napa Valley, where the train 
 ran, and the little country townships sat 
 so close together along the line of the 
 rail. But here there was no man to in- 
 trude. • None but the Hansons were our 
 visitors. Even they came but at long
 
 258 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 intervals, or twice daily, at a stated hour, 
 with milk. So our days, as they were 
 never interrupted, drew out to the 
 greater length ; hour melted insensibly 
 into hour; the household duties, though 
 they were many, and some of them labo- 
 rious, dwindled into mere islets of busi- 
 ness in a sea of sunny day-time ; and it 
 appears to me, looking back, as though 
 the far greater part of our life at Silver- 
 ado had been passed, propped upon an 
 elbow, or seated on a plank, listening to 
 the silence that there is among the 
 hills. 
 
 My work, it is true, was over early in 
 the morning. I rose before any one 
 else, lit the stove, put on the water to 
 boil, and strolled forth upon the plat- 
 form to wait till it was ready. Silverado
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 259 
 
 would then be still in shadow, the sun 
 shining on the mountain higher up. A 
 clean smell of trees, a smell of the earth 
 at morning, hung in the air. Regularly, 
 every day, there was a single bird, 
 not singing, but awkwardly chirruping 
 among the green madronas, and the 
 sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. 
 It did not hold the attention, nor inter- 
 rupt the thread of meditation, like a 
 blackbird or a nightingale ; it was mere 
 woodland prattle, of which the mind was 
 conscious like a perfume. The fresh- 
 ness of these morning seasons remained 
 with me far on into the day. 
 
 As soon as the kettle boiled, I 
 made porridge and coffee ; and that, 
 beyond the literal drawing of water, 
 and the preparation of kindling, which
 
 26o The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 it would be hyperbolical to call the 
 hewing of wood, ended my domestic du- 
 ties for the day. Thenceforth my wife 
 labored single-handed in the palace, 
 and I lay or wandered on the platform 
 at my own sweet will. The little cor- 
 ner near the forge, where we found a 
 refuge under the madronas from the un- 
 ■ sparing early sun, is indeed connected 
 in my mind with some nightmare 
 encounters over Euclid, and the Latin 
 Grammar. These were known as Sam's 
 lessons. He was supposed to be the 
 victim and the sufferer ; but here there 
 must have been some misconception, 
 for whereas I generally retired to bed 
 after one of these engagements, he was 
 no sooner set free than he dashed up 
 to the Chinaman's house, where he had
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 261 
 
 installed a printing press, that great 
 element of civilization, and the sound 
 of his labors would be faintly audible 
 about the canyon half the day. 
 
 To walk at all was a laborious busi- 
 ness ; the foot sank and slid, the boots 
 were cut to pieces, among sharp, un- 
 even, rolling stones. When we crossed 
 the platform in any direction, . it was 
 usual to lay a course, following as much 
 as possible the line of wagon rails. 
 Thus, if water were to be drawn, the 
 water-carrier left the house alono; some 
 tilting planks that we had laid down, 
 and not laid down very well. These 
 carried him to that great highroad, the 
 railway ; and the railway served him as 
 far as to the head of the shaft. But 
 from thence to the spring and back
 
 262 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 ao[ain he made the best of his unaided 
 way, staggering among the stones, and 
 wading in low growth of the calcanthus, 
 where the rattlesnakes lay hissing at his 
 passage. Yet I liked to draw water. 
 It was pleasant to dip the gray metal 
 pail into the clean, colorless, cool water ; 
 pleasant to carry it back, with the water 
 lipping at the edge, and a broken sun- 
 beam quivering in the midst. 
 
 But the extreme roughness of the 
 walking confined us in common practice 
 to the platform, and indeed to those 
 parts of it that were most easily acces- 
 sible along the line of rails. The rails 
 came straight forward from the shaft, 
 here and there overgrown with little 
 green bushes, but still entire, and still 
 carrying a truck, which it was Sam's
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 263 
 
 delight to trundle to and fro by the 
 hour with various ladings. About mid- 
 way down the platform, the railroad 
 trended to the right, leaving our house 
 and coasting along the far side within 
 a few yards of the madronas and the 
 forge, and not far off the latter, ended 
 in a sort of platform on the edge of the 
 dump. There, in old days, the trucks 
 were tipped, and their load sent thun- 
 dering down the chute. There, besides, 
 was the only spot where we could ap- 
 proach the margin of the dump. Any- 
 where else, you took your life in your 
 right hand when you came within a 
 yard and a half to peer over. For at 
 any moment the dump might begin to 
 slide and carry you down and bury you 
 below its ruins. Indeed, the neighbor-
 
 264 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 hood of an old mine is a place beset 
 with dangers. For as still as Silverado 
 was, at any moment the report of rotten 
 wood might tell us that the platform 
 had fallen into the shaft ; the dump 
 might begin to pour into the road 
 below ; or a wedge slip in the great 
 upright seam, and hundreds of tons of 
 mountain bury the scene of our en- 
 campment. 
 
 I have already compared the dump 
 to a rampart, built certainly by some 
 rude people, and for prehistoric wars. 
 It was likewise a frontier. All below 
 was green and woodland, the tall pines 
 soaring one above another, each with 
 a firm outline and full spread of bough. 
 All above was arid, rocky, and bald. 
 The great spout of broken mineral, that
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 265 
 
 had dammed the canyon up, was a crea- 
 ture of man's handiwork, its material 
 dug out with a pick and powder, and 
 spread by the service of the trucks. 
 But nature herself, in that upper district, 
 seemed to have had an eye to nothing 
 besides mining ; and even the natural 
 hill-side was all sliding gravel and pre- 
 carious boulder. Close at the margin 
 of the well leaves would decay to skel- 
 etons and mummies, which at length 
 some stronger gust would carry clear 
 of the canyon and scatter in the sub- 
 jacent woods. Even moisture and de- 
 caying vegetable matter could not with 
 all nature's alchemy, concoct enough 
 soil to nourish a few poor grasses. It 
 is the same, they say, in the neighbor- 
 hood of all silver mines ; the nature of
 
 266 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 that precious rock being stubborn with 
 quartz and poisonous with cinnabar. 
 Both were plenty in our Silverado. 
 The stones sparkled white in the sun- 
 shine with quartz ; they were all stained 
 red with cinnabar. Here, doubtless, 
 came the Indians of yore to paint their 
 faces for the war-path ; and cinnabar, 
 if I remember rightly, was one of the 
 few articles of Indian commerce. Now, 
 Sam had it in his undisturbed posses- 
 sion, to pound down and slake, and 
 paint his rude designs with. But to 
 me it had always a fine flavor of poetry, 
 compounded out of Indian story and 
 Hawthornden's allusion : 
 
 " Desire, alas ! desire a Zeuxis new, 
 From Indies borrowing gold, from Eastern skies 
 Most bright cinoper . . ."
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 267 
 
 Yet this is but half the picture ; our 
 Silverado platform has another side to 
 it. Though there was no soil, and 
 scarce a blade of grass, yet out of these 
 tumbled gravel-heaps and broken boul- 
 ders, a flower garden bloomed as at 
 home in a conservatory. Calcanthus 
 crept, like a hardy weed, all over our 
 rough parlor, choking the railway, and 
 pushing forth its rust}^ aromatic cones 
 from between two blocks of shattered 
 mineral. Azaleas made a big snow- 
 bed just above the well. The shoulder 
 of the hill waved white with Mediter- 
 ranean heath. In the crannies of the 
 ledge and about the spurs of the tall 
 pine, a red flowering stone-plant hung 
 in clusters. Even the low, thorny 
 chaparral was thick with pea-like bios-
 
 268 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 som. Close at the foot of our path 
 nutmegs prospered, dehghtful to tlie 
 sight and smell. At sunrise, and again 
 late at night, the scent of the sweet bay 
 trees filled the canyon, and the down- 
 blowing night wind must have borne it 
 hundreds of feet into the outer air. 
 
 All this vegetation, to be sure, was 
 stunted. The madrona was here no 
 bigger than the manzanita ; the bay was 
 but a stripling shrub; the very pines 
 with four or five exceptions in all our 
 upper canyon, were not so tall as my- 
 self, or but a little taller, and the most 
 of them came lower than my waist. 
 For a prosperous forest tree we must 
 look below, where the glen was crowded 
 with green spires. But for flowers and 
 ravishing perfume, we had none to
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 269 
 
 envy ; our heap of road-metal was thick 
 with bloom, like a hawthorn in the front 
 of June; our red, baking angle in the 
 mountain, a laboratory of poignant 
 scents. It was an endless wonder to 
 my mind, as I dreamed about the plat- 
 form, following the progress of the 
 shadows, where the madrona with its 
 leaves, the azalea and calcanthus with 
 their blossoms, could find moisture to 
 support such thick, wet, waxy growths, 
 or the bay tree collect the ingredients 
 of its perfume. But there they all grew 
 together, healthy, happy, and happy- 
 making, as though rooted in a fathom 
 of black soil. 
 
 Nor was it only vegetable life that 
 prospered. We had, indeed, few birds, 
 and none that had much of a voice or
 
 270 The Silvei^ado Squatters. 
 
 anything worthy to be called a song. 
 My morning comrade had a thin chirp, 
 unmusical and monotonous, but friendly 
 and pleasant to hear. He had but one 
 rival : a fellow with an ostentatious cry 
 of near an octave descending, not one 
 note of which properly followed another. 
 This is the only bird I ever knew with 
 a wrong ear; but there was some- 
 thing enthralling about his performance. 
 You listened, and listened, thinking 
 each time he must surely get it right; 
 but no, it was always wrong, and always 
 wrong the same way. Yet he seemed 
 proud of his song, delivered it with ex- 
 ecution and a manner of his own, and 
 was charming to his mate. A very in- 
 correct, incessant human whistler had 
 thus a chance of knowing how his own
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 271 
 
 music pleased the world. Two great 
 birds — eagles, we thought — dwelt at 
 the top of the canyon, among the crags 
 that were printed on the sky. Now and 
 again, but very rarely, they wheeled 
 high over our heads in silence, or with 
 a distant, dying scream ; and then, with 
 a fresh impulse, winged fleetly forward, 
 dipped over a hill-top, and were gone. 
 They seemed solemn and ancient 
 things, sailing the blue air; perhaps 
 coeval with the mountain where they 
 haunted, perhaps emigrants from Rome, 
 where the glad legions may have 
 shouted to behold them on the morn 
 of battle. 
 
 But if birds were rare, the place 
 abounded with rattlesnakes — the rat- 
 tlesnake's nest, it might have been
 
 272 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 named. Wherever we brushed among 
 the bushes, our passage woke their 
 angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in 
 the wood-pile, and sometimes, when 
 we came for firewood, thrust up his 
 small head between two logs, and 
 hissed at the intrusion. The rattle has 
 a legendary credit ; it is said to be 
 awe-inspiring, and, once heard, to stamp 
 itself for ever in the memory. But 
 the sound is not at all alarming; the 
 hum of many insects, and the buzz of 
 the wasp convince the ear of danger 
 quite as readily. As a matter of fact, 
 we lived for weeks in Silverado, coming 
 and going, with rattles sprung on every 
 side, and it never occurred to us to be/ 
 afraid. I used to take sun-bath5~^d 
 do calisthenics in a certain pleasant
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 273 
 
 nook among azalea and calcanthus, 
 the rattles whizzing on every side like 
 spinning-wheels, and the combined hiss 
 or buzz rising louder and angrier at any 
 sudden movement ; but I was never 
 in the least impressed, nor ever at- 
 tacked. It was only towards the end 
 of our stay, that a man down at Cal- 
 istoga, who was expatiating on the 
 terrifying nature of the sound, gave 
 me at last a very good imitation ; and 
 it burst on me at once that we dwelt 
 in the very metropolis of deadly snakes, 
 and that the rattle was simply the com- 
 monest noise in Silverado. Immedi- 
 ately on our return, we attacked the 
 Hansons on the subject. They had 
 formerly assured us that our canyon 
 
 was favored, like Ireland, with an entire 
 18
 
 2 74 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 immunity from poisonous reptiles ; but, 
 with the perfect inconsequence of the 
 natural man, they were no sooner found 
 out than they went off at score in the 
 contrary direction, and we were told 
 that in no part of the world did rattle- 
 snakes attain to such a monstrous big- 
 ness as among the warm, flower-dotted 
 rocks of Silverado. This is a contribu- 
 tion rather to the natural history of 
 the Hansons than to that of snakes. 
 
 One person, however, better served 
 by his instinct, had known the rattle 
 from the first ; and that was Chuchu, 
 the dog. No rational creature has ever 
 led an existence more poisoned by 
 terror than that dog's at Silverado. 
 Every whiz of the rattle made him 
 bound. His eyes rolled ; he trem-
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 275 
 
 bled ; he would be often wet with 
 sweat. One of our great mysteries 
 was his terror of the mountain. A 
 little away above our nook, the azaleas 
 and almost all the vegetation ceased. 
 Dwarf pines not big enough to be 
 Christmas trees, grew thinly among 
 loose stone and gravel scars. Here 
 and there a big boulder sat quiescent 
 on a knoll, having paused there till 
 the next rain in his Ions: slide down 
 the mountain. There was here no 
 ambuscade for the snakes, you could 
 see clearly where you trod ; and yet 
 the higher I went, the more abject 
 and appealing became Chuchu's terror. 
 He was an excellent master of that 
 composite language in which dogs 
 communicate with men, and he would
 
 276 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 assure me, on his honor, that there 
 was some peril on the mountain ; ap- 
 peal to me, by all that I held holy, to 
 turn back ; and at length, finding all 
 was in vain, and that I still persisted, 
 ignorantly foolhardy, he would sud- 
 denly whip round and make a bee- 
 line down the slope for Silverado, the 
 2:ravel showerino; after him. What 
 was he afraid of? There were admit- 
 tedly brown bears and California lions 
 on the mountains ; and a grizzly vis- 
 ited Rufe's poultry yard not long 
 before, to the unspeakable alarm of 
 Caliban, who dashed out to chastise 
 the intruder, and found himself, by 
 moonlight, face to face with such a 
 tartar. Something at least there must 
 have been : some hairy, dangerous brute
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 277 
 
 lodged permanently among the rocks 
 a little to the north-west of Silverado, 
 spending his summer thereabout, with 
 wife and family. 
 
 And there was, or there had been, 
 another animal. Once, under the broad 
 daylight, on that open stony hillside, 
 where the baby pines were growing, 
 scarcely tall enough to be a badge for a 
 MacGregor's bonnet, I came suddenly 
 upon his innocent body, lying mum- 
 mified by the dry air and sun : a pigmy 
 kangaroo. I am ingloriously ignorant 
 of these subjects ; had never heard of 
 such a beast; thought myself face to 
 face with some incomparable sport of 
 nature ; and began to cherish hopes of 
 immortality in science. Rarely have I 
 been conscious of a stranger thrill than
 
 278 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 when I raised that singular creature 
 from the stones, dry as a board, his 
 innocent heart long quiet, and all warm 
 with sunshine. His long hind legs were 
 stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched upon 
 his breast, as if to leap ; his poor life cut 
 short upon that mountain by some un- 
 known accident. But the kangaroo rat, 
 it proved, was no such unknown animal ; 
 and my discovery was nothing. 
 
 Crickets were not wantinor. I thouo-ht 
 I could make out exactly four of them, 
 each with a corner of his own, who used 
 to make night musical at Silverado. In 
 the matter of voice, they far excelled 
 the birds, and their ringing whistle 
 sounded from rock to rock, calling and 
 replying the same thing, as in a mean- 
 ingless opera. Thus, children in full
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 279 
 
 health and spirits shout together, to the 
 dismay of neighbors ; and their idle, 
 happy, deafening vociferations rise and 
 fall, like the song of the crickets. I 
 used to sit at night on the platform, and 
 wonder why these creatures were so 
 happy ; and what was wrong with man 
 that he also did not wind up his days 
 with an hour or two of shouting ; but I 
 suspect that all long-lived animals are 
 solemn. The dogs alone are hardly 
 used by nature ; and it seems a mani-"'^^ 
 fest injustice for poor Chuchu to die in / 
 his teens, after a life so shadowed and , 
 troubled, continually shaken with alarm, \ 
 and the tear of elegant sentiment per- j 
 manently in his eye. 
 
 There was another neighbor of ours 
 at Silverado, small but very active, a
 
 28o The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 destructive fellow. This was a black, 
 ugly fly — a bore, the Hansons called 
 him — who lived by hundreds in the 
 boarding of our house. He entered by 
 a round hole, more neatly pierced than a 
 man could do it with a gimlet, and he 
 seems to have spent his life in cutting 
 out the interior of the plank, but 
 whether as a dwelling or a store-house, 
 I could never find. When I used to lie 
 in bed in the morning for a rest — vve 
 had no easy-chairs in Silverado — I 
 would hear, hour after hour, the sharp 
 cutting sound of his labors, and from 
 time to time a dainty shower of sawdust 
 would fall upon the blankets. There 
 lives no more industrious creature than 
 a bore. 
 
 And now that I have named to the
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 281 
 
 reader all our animals and insects with- 
 out exception — only I find I have for- 
 gotten the flies — he will be able to ap- 
 preciate the singular privacy and silence 
 of our days. It was not only man who 
 was 'excluded : animals, the song of 
 birds, the lowing of cattle, the bleating 
 of sheep, clouds even, and the variations 
 of the weather, were here also wanting ; 
 and as, day after day, the sky was one 
 dome of blue, and the pines below us 
 stood motionless in the still air, so the 
 hours themselves were marked out from 
 each other only by the series of our own 
 affairs, and the sun's great period as he 
 ranged westward through the heavens. 
 The two birds cackled a while in the 
 early morning ; all day the water tinkled 
 in the shaft, the bores ground sawdust
 
 282 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 in the planking of our crazy palace — 
 infinitesimal sounds ; and it was only 
 with the return of night that any change 
 would fall on our surroundings, or the 
 four crickets begin to flute together in 
 the dark. 
 
 Indeed, it would be hard to exag- 
 gerate the pleasure that we took in 
 the approach of evening. Our day 
 was not very long, but it was very 
 tiring. To trip along unsteady planks 
 or wade among shifting stones, to go 
 to and fro for water, to clamber down 
 the glen to the Toll House after meat 
 and letters, to cook, to make fires and 
 beds, were all exhausting to the body. 
 Life out of doors, besides, under the 
 fierce eye of day, draws largely on the 
 animal spirits. There are certain hours
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 283 
 
 in the afternoon when a man, unless 
 he is in strong health or enjoys a va- 
 cant mind, would rather creep into a 
 cool corner of a house and sit upon 
 the chairs of civilization. About that 
 time, the sharp stones, the planks, the 
 upturned boxes of Silverado, began to 
 grow irksome to my body ; I set out 
 on that hopeless, never-ending quest 
 for a more comfortable posture ; I 
 would be fevered and weary of the 
 staring sun ; and just then he would 
 begin courteously to withdraw his coun- 
 tenance, the shadows lengthened, the 
 aromatic airs awoke, and an indescrib- 
 able but happy change announced the 
 coming of the night. 
 
 The hours of evening, when we were 
 once curtained in the friendly dark,
 
 284 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 sped lightly. Even as with the crick- 
 ets, night brought to us a certain spirit 
 of rejoicing. It was good to taste the 
 air ; good to mark the dawning of the 
 stars, as they increased their glittering 
 company ; good, too, to gather stones, 
 and send them crashing down the 
 chute, a wane of light. It seemed, in 
 some way, the reward and the fulfil- 
 ment of the day. So it is when men 
 dwell in the open air; it is one of the 
 simple pleasures that we lose by living 
 cribbed and covered in a house, that, 
 though the coming of the day is still 
 the most inspiriting, yet day's depart- 
 ure, also, and the return of night re- 
 fresh, renew, and quiet us ; and in the 
 pastures of the dusk we stand, like cat- 
 tle, exulting in the absence of the load.
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 285 
 
 Our nights were never cold, and they 
 were always still, but for one remarka- 
 ble exception. Regularly, about nine 
 o'clock, a warm wind sprang up, and 
 blew for .ten minutes, or maybe a quar- 
 ter of an hour, right down the canyon, 
 fannins: it well out, airinsf it as a , 
 mother airs the night nursery before ' *^ 
 the children sleep. As far as I could 
 judge, in the clear darkness of the 
 night, this wind was purely local : per- 
 haps dependent on the configuration 
 of the glen. At least, it was very 
 welcome to the hot and weary squat- 
 ters; and if we were not abed already, 
 the springing up of this liliputian 
 valley-wind would often be our signal 
 to retire. 
 
 I was the last to go to bed, as I was
 
 286 The Silverado Squatters. 
 
 still the first to rise. Many a night I 
 have strolled about the- platform, taking 
 a bath of darkness before I slept. The 
 rest would be in bed, and even from the 
 forge I could hear them talking together 
 from bunk to hunk. A single candle in 
 the neck of a pint bottle was their only 
 illumination ; and yet the old cracked 
 house seemed literally bursting with the 
 lio-ht. It shone keen as a knife throuo;h 
 all the vertical chinks ; it struck upward 
 through the broken shingles ; and 
 through the eastern door and window, it 
 fell in a great splash upon the thicket 
 and the overhanging rock. You would 
 have said a conflagration, or at the least 
 a roaring forge ; and behold, it was 
 but a candle. Or perhaps it was yet 
 more strange to see the procession mov-
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 287 
 
 ing bedwards round the corner of the 
 house, and up the plank that brought us 
 to the bedroom door; under the im- 
 mense spread of the starry heavens, 
 down in a crevice of the giant moun- 
 tain, these few human shapes, with their 
 unshielded taper, made so disproportion- 
 ate a figure in the eye and mind. But 
 the more he is alone with nature, the 
 greater man and his doings bulk in the 
 consideration of his fellow-men. Miles 
 and miles away upon the opposite hill- 
 tops, if there were any hunter belated or 
 any traveller who had lost his way, he 
 must have stood, and watched and won- 
 dered, from the time the candle issued 
 from the door of the assayer's office till it 
 had mounted the plank and disappeared 
 again into the miners' dormitory.
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON'S WORKS. 
 
 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES. 
 
 With a Frontispiece Illustration by Walter Crane. (Paper 
 
 cover, 50 cents.) i6mo. $1.00. 
 Mr. Stevenson's journey in the Cevennes gage. He was deplorably ignorant, neither 
 is a bright and amusing book for summer knowing how to pack his load nor drive his 
 reading. The author set out alone, on donkey; and his early experience forms a 
 foot, for a twelve days' journey over the ridiculous record o£ disaster. — Pyovidence 
 mountains, with a donkey to carry his lug- Jourtial. 
 
 AN INLAND VOYAGE. i6mo. ^i.oo. 
 
 Unlike Captain Macgregor, of " Rob 
 Roy " fame, Air. Stevenson does not make 
 canoeing itself his main theme, but de- 
 lights in charming bits of description that, 
 in their close attention to picturesque 
 detail, remind one of the work of a skilled 
 "genre" painter. Nor does he hesitate, 
 from time to time, to diverge altogether 
 from his immediate subject, and to indulge 
 in a strain of gently humorous reflection 
 
 that furnishes some of the pleasantest pas- 
 sages of the book. ... In a modest and 
 quiet way, Mr. Stevenson's book is one of 
 the very best of the year for summer read- 
 ing The volume lias a very neat design 
 for the cover, with a fanciful picture of the 
 " Aretlnisa-" and " Cigarette," the canoes 
 of the author and his companion. — Good 
 L iterature. 
 
 THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS. With a Frontispiece 
 
 by Walter Crane. i6mo. 
 
 Mr. Stevenson is an invalid, and in 
 search of health he went to Mount Saint 
 Helena, in California, and high up in its 
 sides took possession of a miner's cabin 
 fast falling to ruin, — one of the few rem- 
 nants of the abandoned mining village of 
 Silverado. There, with his wife and a 
 single servant, considerable time was spent. 
 The interest of the book centred in the 
 
 $1.00. 
 
 graphic style and keen observation of the 
 author. He has the jiower of describing 
 places and characters with such vividness 
 that you seem to have made personal 
 acquaintance with both . . . Mr. Steven- 
 son's racy narrative brings many phases of 
 life upon the western coast before one with 
 strikmg power and captivating grace. — 
 New York IVorld. 
 
 TREASURE ISLAND. A Story of Pirates and the Spanish 
 
 Main. With 28 Illustrations. i2mo. (Paper covers, 50 cents.) 
 
 $1.25. Cheaper edition. i6mo. $1.00. 
 
 At a time when the books of Mayne details the stirring adventures of an Eng- 
 
 Reid, Ballantyne, and Kingston are taking lish crew in their search for the immense 
 
 their places on the shelves to which well- treasure secreted by a pirate captain, and 
 
 thumbed volumes are relegated, it will be 
 with especial delight that boy readers wel- 
 come a new writer in the literature of ad- 
 venture. In "Treasure Island," Robert 
 Louis Stevenson takes a new departure. 
 
 it certainly has not a dull page in it. Yet 
 the author has contrived to keep the sym- 
 pathy on the side of virtue and honesty, 
 and throw upon the pirates that odium and 
 detestation which their nefarious courses 
 
 and writes one of the jolliest, most read- deserve ; and the book is one heartily to 
 able, wide-awake tales of sea life that have be commended to any sturdy, wholesome 
 set the blood tingling in the veins of the lad who is fond of the smell of the brine 
 boys of at least the present generation. It and the tang of sailor speech in his read- 
 is decidedly of the exciting order of stories, ing. — Boston Courier. 
 yet not of the unhealthily sensational. It 
 
 PRINCE OTTO. A Romance. i6mo. $1.00. 
 
 Whatever Mr. Stevenson writes is sure is so charming in every page this author 
 
 to be interesting and even absorbing ; and has published, and so unhackneyed that 
 
 to this " Prince Otto " is no exception. It one knows not what to expect from any 
 
 is a graceful and unusual romance, full of one paragraph to the next. — Boston 
 
 surprises, full of that individuality which Courier. 
 
 s,^d every-iu/u'ye- Postpaid hy Publishers, 
 
 ''• ROBERTS. RP OTHERS. Boston,
 
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