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Out west
Charles Fletcher Lummis, Archaeological Institute of America. Southwest Society, ^
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The Nation Back of Usy The World in Front
Out West
A Magazine of
The Old Pacific and the New
EDITED BY AND
Charles Amadon Nloody
Volume XXX January to June, 1909
Out West Magazine Company LOS ANGELES. CAL.
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INDEX TO VOLUME XXX
America, Seeing, illustrated, George D. Heisley 193, 504
Ancient Lake of the Colorado Desert, Lake Cahuilla, Prof. Wm. P. Blake 74
Arizona (poem), Margaret Erwin 496
Atascadero, The Battle of, illustrated, Edward Cathcart Grossman 55
Basket, The Making of a, Kate T. Fogarty 176
Battle of Atascadero, The, illustrated, Edward Cathcart Crossman 55
Beach Resorts of Los Angeles, illustrated, Charlton Lawrence Edholm ' 423
Beyond the Fire-Break (story), Florence Estelle Brooks 497
Biographies and Portraits of Some of Los Angeles' Leading Citizens,
edited by Charles Amadon Moody 3r3, 420
Cahuilla, Lake, The Ancient Lake of the Colorado Desert, Prof. William
P. Blake 74
California History, An Unknown Chapter of, Charles F. Lummis 159
California Indians to Date, In Re, illustrated, Wayland H. Smith 130
Change in the Contract, A (story), Margaret Adelaide Wilson 89
Children's War, The, Adelia Bee Adams and Coo-vai-en-yu (Yuma
Indian) 83
Chips From the Workshop of History, illustrated, Charles Amadon Moody 28()
College in Southern California, The "Small," John Willis Baer, LL. D 172
Colorado Desert, The Ancient Lake of the (Lake Cahuilla), Prof. Wil- liam P. Blake 74
Echoes From the Old Courts, Willoughby Rodman 278
Fabulous, The, serial, R. C. Pitzer 466, 551
Filipino, The, and the President, illustrated, J. N. Patterson 519
5-59 (poem), Charles F. Lummis (reprinted by request) 82
Flowers of the Foot-Hills, Alice Stockton 495
Forage Supply on Overgrazed Western Range Lands — How to Increase It,
illustrated, Arthur William Sampson, A. M 538
'Forty-Niners, In the Land of the, illustrated, Sharlot M. Hall 3, 111
Mills of Sunland (poem), Charlton Lawrence Edholm 108
History, Chips From the Workshop of, illustrated, Charles Amadon Moody 289
Horseback Riding in California (poem), Florence Kiper 158
How the Forage Supply on Overgrazed Western Range Lands May Be
Increased, illustrated, by Arthur William Sampson, A. M 538
Immigrant From India's Coral Strand, The Picturesque, illustrated. Saint
Nihal Singh 43
Increasing the Forage Supply, illustrated, by Arthur William Samp- son, A. M 538
Indian Historical Fragments 83
Indians of Southern California, Saboba, illustrated, Mrs. M. Burton
Williamson 148
Indians to Date, In Re Cahfornia, illustrated, Wayland H. Smith 130
India's Coral Strand, The Picturesque Immigrant From, illustrated, Saint
Nihal Singh 43
In Re California Indians to Date, illustrated, Wayland H. Smith 130
In the Land of the 'Forty-Niners, illustrated, Sharlot M. Hall 3, iii
"La Danza" (poem), Henry W. Noyes 192
Lake Cahuilla, The Ancient Lake of the Colorado Desert, Prof. Wil- liam P. Blake 74
Land of the 'Forty-Niners, In the, illustrated, Sharlot M. Hall 3, m
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Los Angeles, Makers of, with portraits, edited by Charles Amadon
Moody 313, 420
Los Angeles, The Making of, illustrated, Charles F. Lummis 227
Los Angeles, The Seaward Suburbs of, illustrated, Charlton Lawrence
Edholm 423
Lure of the Open Road, The, Mary L. De Lange 589
Make-believe War (Atascadero), illustrated, Edward Cathcart Crossman 55
Making of Billy, The (story), Lillian H. Shuey ys
Makers of Los Angeles,' with portraits, edited by Charles Amadon
Moody 313, 420
Making of a Basket, The, Kate T. Fogarty 176
Making of Los Angeles, The, illustrated, Charles F. Lummis 227
Mount Wilson, illustrated, Joseph N. Patterson 99
Mr. Eayrs of Boston, An Unknown Chapter of California History, Charles
F. Lummis 159
Myths of the Pimas, Frank Russell 485, 571
Nepa (story) , Kensett Rossiter 180
Open Road, The Lure of the, Mary E. De Lange 589
Owens River Project, T-he Record of the, illustrated, W. S. B 259
. Picturesque Immigrant From India's Coral Strand, The, illustrated, Saint
Nihal Singh 43
Pima Myths, Frank Russell 485, 571
President and the Filipino, The, illustrated, J. N. Patterson 5^9
Pride of Jennings, The (story), Gertrude Morrison 186
Record of the Owens River Project, The, illustrated, W. S. B 259
Saboba Indians of Sotrthern California, illustrated, Mrs. . M. Burton
Williamson 148
Sagebrush (poem) , 'Gene Stone 88
School Days and Other Days on the Hassayampa, serial, Laura Tilden
Kent 69, 167, 481, 583
Seaward Suburbs of Los Angeles, The, illustrated, Charlton Lawrence
Edholm 423
Seeing America, illustrated, George D. Heisley 193, 504
"Small" College in Southern California, The, John Willis Baer, LL. D.. . 172 Suburbs of Los Angeles, The Seaward, illustrated, Charlton Lawrence
Edholm 423
Then and Now (poem), Charlton Lawrence Edholm 129
Unknown Chapter of California History, An, Charles F. Lummis 159
Wanderer Beyond the Seas, The (poem), Jessie Davies Willdy 54
Water Supply for Greater Los Angeles, illustrated, W. S. B 259
Wordless Prayer, The (poem), Delia Hart Stone 147
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•'HC NATION BACK OF US THC WORLD IN FRONT
Vol. XXX No. I January, 1909
IN THE LAND OF THE TORTY-NINERS
By SHARLOT M. HALL. If. F the brave, splendid, careless, gold-threaded story of Old California is ever told in full there will be a laugli and a sob on every page and the spirit of quenchless ){| youth and big adventure in every line. There are men yet who remember, men who were part of it all, and who know how lean the fullest record is and how wide astray the ideas of a later generation can go.
One of these "comrades of Jason'' sat under an apple-tree in his orchard, and recalled the days of his youth. The sunlight glistened on his white head and on the piles of yellow fruit; the lusty young trees that his old hands had planted when the wander- days were over were rooted down into gravel that had once been "pay dirt/' and the half-obliterated mark of long-abandoned sluice- ways scarred the slope outside the fences and ran down to the creek below in weed-grown drifts of tailings.
The pine-cloaked hills were streaked with abrupt red banks and bluflFs and deep-guttered gulches, the track of his gold-seeking and that of his comrades; and down across the basin and out among the hills wound the wagon-road he had builded when the building was called an impossible venture. Now camp after camp through the tangled mountain ranges were bound together and tied to the world outside by trails of his surveying, and the ^'giants'* of a new day in mining gnawed their way into the hills by force of the water whose first track down from the distant canons he had marked and builded.
His tall, broad-shouldered body still held the poise of some great pine, which storms may beat over and years ripen to grayness, but which not storm nor years can rob of a primeval kingliness. The keen, wise, kindly old face was like a time-mellowed parchment on which the record of a heroic era had been written. There were indeed "giants in those days," and the very wilderness must have felt them worthy comrades.
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*'It makes me laugh/' he said, **to see the sort of pictures that artists draw when they want to illustrate a story of early mining days here in California. They make the 'Forty-niners old men, bearded and wrinkled, and dressed like dime-novel heroes. Why, we were just boys, most of us, and trousers patched with flour- sacks were more common than red sashes and fancy-buttoned coats. I remember we paid thirty dollars a pair for heavy cow-hide boots to wear in the ground sluices — that was before rubber boots came along.
"The oldest man in camp here in Weaverville was short of thirty, but we called him *the Old Man,* and one of my pardners never had any name but ^Empire Mills,' because that was the brand on the flour-sack he happened to reseat his breeches with.
"We were just a lot of rip-roaring young farmer-boys turned loose in a country where we expected to shovel up gold like corn at home. We didn't come to California to stay — we didn't think it was a white man's country anyway. Every one of us expected to wash out a peck measure of nuggets, and go back home. We used to say that the best thing Uncle Sam could do was to dig out all the gold and give the country back to the Mexicans.
"Some of us had seen lively times getting across the plains. I had walked most of the way myself, and dodged Indians and Mor- mons; the Saints had it in for me and a lot more of the Gentiles, and they would have paid us off in lead if they could have got the chance. I got to California in time to be a 'Forty-niner, and in May of 'Fifty I was camped down below town on Weaver creek with three pardners.
"The placers on Trinity river had been discovered the year be- fore, but we thought we were the first prospectors on Weaver creek that spring. We made a temporary camp, and were turning the water along a little island to get at the channel and see if it would pay. Grub wasn't any too plenty, for we had packed all we had over from Redding Springs — it's Shasta now. We didn't want to cook dinner, but we knocked off for a lunch of sardines and ship- biscuit.
"When we went back to work, the water was muddy — and that meant somebody at work up stream. I took one man and went up the creek to the hills and turned across right toward where the town is now. Crossing Blue Gulch, we came on an old sailor who was rocking gravel in a log that he had hollowed out^just shaking the log and letting the mud run off and scooping up the gold out of the bottom.
"The old fellow took us for Indians for a minute, and was ready to make a run for the brush — the Diggers were thick here then and on the Watch for any stray miner — but I called down and asked
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Head of Stuart's Fork
Lake Diamond lies on the second terrace of the cliff — a tiny glacial
lake held in a cup of Ice-carved granite.
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I him if there was gold where he was at work. He said he had got all he wanted and was going out, and that the whole gulch was good.
"I asked him where we could stake a claim, and he said "any- where/ but he offered me his claim for four ounces of dust. I paid him four Spanish doubloons worth sixteen dollars each, the same value as an ounce of dust, and sent him with my pardner to bring up the men and outfit from down the creek and make a per- manent camp. I loaded up the log, and before they got back 1 had rocked out more than enough dust to pay for the claim.
"The old sailor got busy cutting a canvas shirt into pockets, and sewing them on a sort of waist-belt and harness to go over his
North Fork of Trinity River
SliowlnR: worked-out placer banks. This stream yielded much gold and is still waslied in a small way.
shoulders. The next day, when it was done, he uncovered a pile of gold hidden under the leaves and had nearly enough to fill the pockets, about all he could walk with, and he struck out across the mountains and we never heard of him again.
**\\'e worked the gulch till summer, when the water gave out and ^ve of us took an outfit and went over into the wild country to the north. Nobody knew what was there, but we expected to strike rich ground somewhere. We discovered the Salmon river and good diggings, but we had to go to Redding Springs again for tools and grub for the fall work, and when we got back we found a lot of people had followed our trail and located the best ground on the river.
"That was always the way — a few daring men struck out into
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IN THE LAND Of THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 7
the wilderness and a lot of people hanging around the towns and camps waiting for news of a strike would stampede along their trail and locate everything in sight. The men who found the best <Jiggi"gs never got the most gold. They were too restless — they always had to go on over the next range and see what was there. Some plug who could sit on one rock all day came along and made the clean-up.
"We were disgusted and made up our minds to go on further north, but we couldn't move without being watched and followed. Everyone was dead sure we knew of something rich and were trying to sneak off and work it on the sly. One day we loaded our mules and started off up a steep mountain-side without a sign
A Water-Storage Project on a Glaciai, Ivake
of a trail. As we got up higher it was about like looking down the roof of a house, and by noon the whole mountain was covered with men following us.
"It was a warm summer day and no water except what we carried in our canteens, and that was soon gone. Some of the men behind us didn't have that much, they had started in such a hurry. I never saw such suffering from thirst and heat, and some of the men gave out entirely and crawled under the brush too weak to go on or back.
"At night our party left the mules and outfit on top of the mountain and went back to the river for water. We filled all our canteens and camp-kettles and carried it up to the suffering men and pulled them through, but when we got to the top of the mountain again the mules were gone. We took their tracks at day-
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I^AKE Emerald— Looking up the Glacial Lake Sapphire and Lake
light and found them at a little spring where there was grass and water.
**From here the stragglers went back to the Salmon river camp, but we went on and in a few days came to an open, marshy place grown over with wild onions. Vegetables were a great rarity and we were all fond of onions, so we decided to camp a few days and enjoy them and kill deer and make jerkey for the trip.
**One day one of our party happened to look back the way we had come and the whole mountain-side was covered with people; the stragglers had gone back and told others and the whole outfit had started on our trail, thinking we would be at our mines by the time they caught up with us. Some of them were pretty mad, and none of them believed us when we said we had no mines and were just out for a trip to see what we could find.
"At last the ones who had no grub or horses went back and a party of 56 men and 152 animals was made up to go on toward the north. There were no trails or known landmarks ; we traveled by compass and by guess. Coming down a mountain above the valley of the Klamath river, we landed on a little bench where there was hardly standing room for us all and no way to get on down or back up. If we moved around, the animals nearly pushed us over the bluff. There was nothing to do but go on some way, so we tied the picket-ropes into a line long enough to reach to the
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTV-NINERS,
Canon at Head of Stuart's Fork Diamond Lib Abovb
bottom of the cliff, took a reef around the tail and neck of an animal and let them down one at a time till the whole outfit was landed in the valley.
"At the Klamath river a tribe of Indians came out to meet us. The chief was a fine-looking man and friendly. One of his men spoke the * jargon' used in Oregon and by the northwestern trappers, and two of our men spoke it well, so the chief was delighted and made a big speech and promised to be friends. His people had good log- and bark-houses and big salmon-traps across the river, where they got all the fish they wanted.
"They gave us fish and guided us across the country to a small stream, telling us that on the other bank we would have to be careful, for the Indians there would kill us if they got a chance. We found they were right, for the Indians on the other side fired on us almost as soon as we crossed, and killed one of our party. A few days after we had a fight and killed a lot of them, and had one of our men shot through the lungs. We got him to the river, found a canoe, and took him across and carried him right to where Yreka now stands, and laid him down — and then our trouble begun in earnest.
"There had been plenty of quarreling before; there were a lot of Yankees in the party, men from New England and along the Atlantic coast, and they didn't mix well with the Western men
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In THE Al^PS OF
from Illinois and Missouri and Iowa. It's queer, but men are a lot more clannish off in some wild country where, as we used to say, *If we didn't all hang together, we was mighty likely to all hang apart,' than they are right in a city.
"There had been plenty of threats to split up the party, and the five of us who first started out wouldn't have cared, but it wasn't safe to break up in a country lousy with Diggers on the w^ar path. The Yankees wanted to abandon the w^ounded man so we could travel faster, but the Western men wouldn't hear to it. Both sides grabbed their gims, and I guess the poor fellow thought his time had come, for he lay on the ground right between the two parties and begged us not to fight till he was dead anyway.
"We were all holding our breath and keeping our fingers on the trigger when the oldest man in the outfit knelt down between us and went to praying. He was a wrinkled-up little old man with gray hair, and w'hen he got right down to business it acted like throwing a bucket of cold water over a dog-fight. We all felt sort of sick and limp, and there wasn't any fight left in us; we camped a couple of days and fixed up our outfit and I let the wounded man ride my horse w^hen w^e started on. She was a thcjroughbred Kentucky mare that I had bought from a gambler, and she traveled like a rocking-horse.
"iUit if we had peace in camp, we had war outside, for we had
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. il
Trinity County
to fight Indians all the way back to Shasta and live on what we could find while we were doing it. We were about starved when we found a cache of dried salmon the Indians had left. It was full of worms, but that didn't count — we just knocked a salmon across a log to shake out the biggest ones and were mighty glad to get it. We lived on wormy salmon for a month and got back to Shasta without a color in our pockets and with mighty little clothing on our backs.
'* You know Ten Cent Gulch over by East Weaver Creek ? Well, just four years after I made that trip on wormy salmon, I saw the fight of my life over there on the flat between the gulch and the creek. The Trinity placers were right at their best, and a lot of Chinese had come in and scattered out over the country like geese in a wheat field. They followed along after the white miners and gleaned about as much as our harvest 1 guess. Some trouble was going at home in China, and the Trinity Chinamen divided into gangs and took it up. They slugged each other in the dark, and raided sluice boxes, and used up all the Chinese cuss-words and backhanded compliments when they met, till it got along where a general pay-day was necessary.
**There were two main gangs, the Cantons and the Hong Kongs, and one day the boss of the Cantons came into the blacksmith-shop at Weaver with a pattern for the iron head of a war-implement, a
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sort of cross between a scythe and a three-pronged fish-spear, and engaged a hundred like it. Pretty soon the boss of the Hong Kongs came along with his particular pattern of lance-head, and offered to raise the price and take two hundred if the blacksmith would take his order and throw off on the Cantons.
"They outbid each other and brought along new patterns till the shop was running day and night turning out tridents and glorified pitch-forks and brush-hooks and double-bitted meat-axes by the hundred, and the Chinamen paid the bills and carried off the war-tools before the iron was cold. They had relays of Chinamen out in the hills cutting poles about fourteen feet long and trimming them down to mount the weapons on, and the day of battle was set.
In the Trinity Ai^ps
"The sheriff of Trinity county got wind of it and served an injunc- tion on the blacksmith and was going to fine him $500.00, but at the price of lance-heads he concluded that it was cheaper to pay the fine than throw up the job. The sheriff notified the Chinamen that they must not interfere with any white man, and he appointed a lot of us boys as deputies to go from camp to camp and try to get them to make peace. The rest of the boys may have thrown some oil on the troubled waters, but I set a match to it, I guess, for I rode around and told each outfit that the other fellows were calling them cowards and sons of pirates and rat-eaters, and all the other soothing things I could think of, till the sheriff concluded his deputies had better be called off.
"Both parties drilled and paraded in the streets of Weaver, with
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS, 13
The IvITTi^e Oi,d Church at French Gulch
the understanding that if they tried any of their fancy war-tools on a white man they would all be killed. The day before the fight the Cantons paraded down the main street with all their war-paint on, red silk streamers on their pikes and swallow-tailed dragon- banners flying, giving the Hong Kongs a chance to see their strength.
**The day of the battle the miners all gathered to see the fun, but the Chinamen seemed willing to take it out in bad language and fist-shaking. About two o'clock in the afternoon they faced each other on the flat beyond Ten Cent Gulch and used up the rest of the Chinese language without coming together. About forty
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS, 15
of the Hong Kongs were armed with squirt-guns filled with vitriol, and we didn't think that was square, so we cut them out to one side and kept them out of the fight.
**That encouraged the Cantons, and I got right in the middle of the gang and urged them to sail in and lick the Hong Kongs, and some of the other boys got behind the Hong Kongs and drove them along with sticks and stones till the mix-up was worse than a dog-fight in nigger-town. The Cantons swept me right along with their charge like a commanding general, and I dodged meat-axes and pitch-forks for all I was worth till I could get out and let my noble warriors go it alone.
^'Losing their squirt-gim brigade took the courage out of the Hong Kongs and they turned and ran^ with the Cantons at their heels. Some of the miners drew their pistols and fired in the air to help out the stampede, and the Cantons jabbed and slashed at every flying pigtail till the enemy was lost in the hills outside of town.
**The Cantons celebrated their victory with a fine big free-for-all spree at the leading saloon in town, and the next day went out and gathered up the dead, some fifteen or so, and buried them on a little flat about a mile down the creek. There was a lot of wounded and the whole thing went to promote permanent peace, for the Hong Kongs had to lay low or leave the country."
To this day Trinity county has a Chinese situation peculiar and apart. When the easiest early placers were worked out and the white miners flocked on north to the Frazer and John Day rivers, the main body of Chinese followed or slowly scattered, and those that were left drifted into a certain citizenship which made them an unquestioned and picturesque part of the community.
In every long-abandoned camp, where the tailing dumps are overgrown with vigorous young pines and the houses are falling away to ruins, there will be some cabin with smoke curling up from the chimney and a white-headed old Chinaman with a face like wrinkled yellow wax peering out from the door or patiently picking out scant colors of dust from among the boulders. He will have the woven straw or bamboo hat of the coolie at home, and seldom more of the white man's dress than a pair of heavy shoes, and he will weigh his hoarded dust in the old Chinese gold-scales with a fiddle-shaped case of dull ebony or teak-wood and queer sliding weight.
He will date his coming in the 'Fifties, he and all his countrymen, whom an almost forgotten tide of human activity receding left like bits of strange driftwood on an alien shore. The Chinese merchants of Weaverville, respected and reckoned as rightful members of the community, have built their thick-walled, fire- proof houses of burned adobe as they were built in China a hun-
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16 OUT WEST
The Great Bank at La Grange The SIvAnting Bbd-rcx:k is
dred, perhaps five hundred, years ago, and the gorgeous gilded and painted paper joss looks down from his high niche upon such a medley of Chinese wares and delicacies and American mining tools as has met the calm gaze of his predecessors since the 'Fifties.
These Chinese citizens have their families, and their children go to school along with the other children of the town and are bright and sturdy young Californians ; and when a tenderfoot Chinaman strays in across the mountains he is met by a deputation of his pioneer countrymen and firmly told that the stage leaves for Redding on such a day — and on that day there will be an outward-bound Celestial tucked into some corner between the luggage and the other passengers. '^Trinity for the pioneers" is a motto as efficient as a close labor union.
The little joss-house, half hidden among the trees, on a tiny bench looking up to the graveyard where many a 'Forty-niner found his homestake, is a bit of old China, from the fantastic carved and painted entrance to the wooden dolphins and prayer symbols along the comb of the roof. Blue and white and red and yellow and gilt, brilliant strips of Chinese pictures on cloth-like crepe paper, and gold lettering, and carved flowers in rich red and green, make an oriental jumble of color under the rough porch and around the big doorway.
Inside, the dark, rich altar glows with curious inlayings and carven
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTV-NINEKS. 17
Sbvbn Hundred and Fifty Fkbt High Shown in Left Foreground
figures and gold-crusted embroideries and scarfs. Tall banners of heavy satin and brocade, with thick embroidery of gold and colors and glittering sequins, range along the sides on gilded stand- ards, and many tapers break the dusk with dull eyes of light. The purple smoke of the joss-sticks curls up into the musky air, and the opium-sodden priest nods silently leaning against a dim side entrance. It is China, old China, with all her atmosphere of mystery and fading tinsel.
**It seems mighty strange now to think of California running a chance of being a Slave State,'* the white-haired gold-seeker was balancing a pear as yellow as a nugget in his hands, *'but 1 re- member when all through the mines there was a strong feeling that way — and one man turned it — Frank Pixley. Frank Pixley of the ^Argonaut.' He was a great man, a great orator; when he realized what the feeling was he left San Francisco and started out to talk in every camp.
"Eggs were too dear in those days to waste even a rotten one on a public speaker, but Frank Pixley got about everything else in the way of abuse. 1 remember he came up the Trinity river on a mule. He was billed to speak at Big Bar — it was a good camp then, one of the richest gravel-banks on the river. He had a hall engaged, but the man that owned it was on the other side and went back on him. There were only two men in camp that favored him,
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and I was one of them. There was talk that he would be mobbed if he tried to speak.
"Pixley rode in about dark and tied his mule in front of the store and tried to get supper and a bed. 'Are you Frank Pixley?' the landlord asked. 'If you are, there's no place in Big Bar for you ; you can't speak here.'
"Pixley sized up the situation and walked over and asked to buy an empty box near the store. It was sold to him and he rolled it out into the road and turned it bottom side up and, jumping up on top, he shouted: 'Citizens of Big Bar, I am billed to speak here tonight for Abraham Lincoln. I had a room engaged, and the
The • 'Travki^ling Bank" at thb Union H11.1, Mine
owner refuses to let me use it. They tell me I can't speak here — that I will be mobbed if I try it.
" 'Gentlemen, I have bought this box and paid for it, and it is my property. This road belongs to the State of California. At eight o'clock tonight I shall speak from this box, and I shall say what I please — and if any man is looking for trouble let him come on.'
"No one came. Frank Pixley made the speech of his life right there on that box in the middle of the road. He had just two friends in the crowd when he begun, and every man was with him when he quit.
" 'Do you know what will happen if you fellows get your way?' he said. 'No? I'll tell you. Your gravel-bars will be worked out by slave niggers; your hills will be gutted of their gold to make some slave-holder rich. What's to hinder? Can't a nigger shovel
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 19
gravel as well as he can hoe cotton? YoiiVe blind. You'll have something worse than Chinamen in your camps. Keep this great state for white men.' He said a lot more, but that got them. The idea of slave-worked placer-diggings went home, and when they came to vote they voted right. Frank Pixley was a great man — bigger than a whole lot that have come along since and made more noise."
It is an interesting thing that the best method of working a gravel-mine had its beginning in California and still has its largest and most perfect example in Trinity county. Given enough water and grade and dump, there is nothing that will eat the heart out of
Waiting to be Unloaded
a gravel-bank as fast as the steel-blue bar of liquid fury shot through the mouth of a ''giant ;*' and yet the Torty-niners tell that the first hydraulic outfit applied to mining was a whiskey-barrel set up on a hillside under a spring, with a length of ship's hose to carry the gentle stream that helped the dirt on its way down the sluices.
This "plant" is a tradition, but it is on record that a Connecticut man with true Yankee ingenuity bought up a lot of rawhides from a local butcher, hired a sailor to sew them into a hose, and through this hose conveyed the water to his gravel-bank and discharged it through a wooden nozzle cut out by hand — and made his crude outfit pay. Edward E. ^Mattison deserves to go down in history as at least the step-father of hydraulic mining.
The next year, 1853, a miner on American Hill "went him one better" with one hundred feet of stove-pipe and a canvas hose.
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20 OUT WEST
The Alpine Meadows
Slowly by experience and experiments the science of hydraulic mining was developed and the n^ces^acy machinery invented and perfected. For some years all the hose was sewed by hand, until a machine was invented which did better and quicker work ; and as early as 1856 a San Francisco firm begun to make wrought-iron pipe for use in bringing water to the gravel-banks.
The gold-mining methods of all countries seemed to meet in the early California diggings. The pan was borrowed from Mexico, where it was only a naturalized citizen, and the rocker and Long Tom came with the prospectors from Georgia, where they had their beginning in a placer-gold discovery earlier than California and now almost forgotten. There is a hazy tradition that the rocker or *'cradle** really had its inspiration in the slow, regular swing of a baby's cradle, which suggested the rude, screen-bottomed box on rockers, that grew by natural stages to the larger "Long Tom.''
The first mining ditches along the Trinity were located to carry not so many "miner's inches" of water, but so many "Tom heads," measured by the water necessary to run one Long Tom. Out of the Tom grew sluice-boxes and the ground sluicing, but at first the ground-sluice method was looked on with contempt as only fit for Chinamen working in low-grade dirt.
In the first days, when claims were only thirty feet square and a shovel of dirt might yield more than a hundred dollars, as has been known in the Weaver diggings, the pan and rocker and Tom
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IN THE LAND OF THE TORTY-NINEKS, 21
ON STUART'S Fork
and pick and shovel and wheelbarrow were enough ; but when the cream was skimmed and the channels and lowest bars were barren, something else had to come. It was all right to shake a rocker on dirt worth two bits to the pan, and shovel into a Long Tom gravel worth half as much, but when it came down to two bits or half as much to the yard the despised ground-sluice of the Chinamen recommended itself and the more powerful hydraulic had steady development.
Here in the Trinity basin ditches were very soon taken out and the shallow bars ground-sluiced away; in the 'Fifties the water was often lifted from the river into the ditches by bucket-wheels, and some ambitious efforts to bring ditches from a long distance up stream and so secure more grade and consequent cutting and carrying power were made, and for the most part failed. The great flood winter of '62 sent most of the water-wheels into the sea, and they were never rebuilt in any number, but gradually every deep bank became the scene of some form of hydraulic mining.
One of the best known early camps was McGillivray's, between Weaver and North Fork, where in 1869 Joseph McGillivray threw a wire suspension bridge across the Trinity river and on it brought over a line of 15-inch wrought-iron pipe carrying water from a ditch 240 feet above the bridge. The little paper published in Weaverville during these years contains the advertisement of ex-
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22 OUT WEST
UNI.OADING THE LUMBER TrAIN
pert hose-sewers who were prepared to take orders for all sizes and sorts of hose, and of various kinds of nozzles ; but in 1870 the first "Little Giant" was patented, and canvas hose and all the old nozzles, brass or iron, went out of use except in the remoter places.
An interesting form of early gravel-mining common in the Trinity country was the tunnel-mining. Tunnels were driven into the gravel-banks following some "pay streak'' or channel, and were timbered and carried almost unbelievable distances till a whole bar might be honey-combed. The gravel taken out was wheeled in car or barrow to the mouth of the tunnel and washed in Long Toms or sluices, and sometimes a ditch-head of water was dropped through a shaft into the tunnel and ground-sluicing was actually carried on under ground, with the tunnel-mouth down on the bank of the stream or gulch out of which the tailings were discharged.
The weed-filled mouths of these old tunnels still yawn along the stage-road where the old, old camps fall year by year into further decay. Sometimes the road skirts round a hole where the roof has caved in and the top of a tall young tree climbs out through the opening, and again a little spring trickling down sings and ripples through the dark over the rotting fragments of old sluice-boxes. There were tunnel-mines in Bret Harte's land too, and in one of them the "Little Postmistress of Laurel Run" saw her husband buried in a cave-in while he worked to save his men from death back in the sluices.
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 23
At Lake Emerald, Stuart's Fork
In some of the gravel-mines, where more grade was needed to give sufficient dump, the ground-sluice began in a cut, which became a tunnel in which the string of sluice-boxes were set and into which the sheer bank was hurled by the "giants" and carried down to the dump at the cut's end. These old tunnels, lost and forgotten, have been found when recent working cleared away the debris of half a century, and rusted hatchets and miner's candle- sticks and old hand-barrows have been taken out of them, mute witnesses of the hope and toil of another day.
There is still one fine example of this type of gravel-mine in operation in the Trinity country — the Union Hill, a mile up the river from where Douglas City of long-forgotten fame and am- bition stands in a wide circle of torn and clifF-like red gravel-banks and wastes of barren boulders.
In early days the richness of this great bar was known, and with such ditches as could be built with the means then available the face of it was worked and long tunnels driven in the bed-rock, to be forgotten and uncovered again in a later day. But this is a strange mine — no ordinary bar. but the channel of some long-lost river; some slow, careless, primeval water-dragon that wound his slimy length far across the country and now lies buried under the tangled mountains and uplands, with only a faint hint of him show- ing now and then many miles apart.
Slim young pines with the wind singing through them cover all
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24 OUT WEST
"Giants" Playing i»
the beautiful wild park that seems meant for a little mountain-farm and is in truth the mine, the gravel deposit itself. Today this park ends sheer in a great sharp half-moon bank facing toward the creek something close to a mile away — a bank near a hundred feet high, strange, half alive, always creeping forward toward the creek, so that whether the *'giants" are at work or not big slides of earth fall away and crash down on the rough, dark circle of bed- rock and pile up and choke the sluices if the water stops.
When everything is idle and the air is still and the very pine needles scarcely rustle, a crack in the deep red bank will open and twist like a snake, and slowly some green-branched tree with all the bank on which it stood will slide and sink and slip down, swaying and reeling in protest with a human helplessness.
Just so, long ago and nearer the creek, the bank slid and crawled till it buried the tunnels and filled the sluices and drove out the early gold-seekers. And then for years it lay mostly idle till an- other generation of Argonauts challenged it with the weapons of a new day. A ditch was built and big pipe-lines laid to bring water from the Trinity river, and the powerful *'giants" have held the creeping bank in bound.
At the present time the tunnel sluiceway is more than fifty feet below the surface of the bedrock and has been driven several hundred feet through the hard blue stone that was the scaly breast- plate of the old river-dragon. Down through this big, dark channel
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 25
HEAD OF SlAJICB
the yellow water roars and rumbles and beats up in dirty foam as it hurries the boulders and mud down to the distant creek and spits them out through the long trail of boxes, *'the tail of the sluice."
At one end of the long half-moon face of the bank, the lost dragon shows his trail to the dullest eyes, layer upon layer of marl filled with fossil shells as delicately whorled and perfect as if the water had washed over them only yesterday; and in among the shells lie big bones like smooth, polished dark wood — huge ribs and joints and fragments of horns. The marl bed was a trap, and these are the river's victims, the toll he took of the prehistoric animals that came there to drink.
Beyond the marl-bed is a layer of **baby coal," crude and slate- like but true enough to burn, and beyond that a creamy-white de- posit of talcum smooth as a powder puff. The very stones in the bank show the trend of the old water-course, and the bed-rock is washed here and there into pot-holes as smooth as the odd little water-worn "tanks" in many a rocky canon today. The channel swings away from the present river and crawls under the low, forested mountains that rise around the little park, and the "giants" following it cut deeper and deeper every year, leaving the old stream-bed bare and skeleton-like.
It is a wide reach from Edward Mattison's rawhide hose and wooden nozzle and Craig's hundred feet of stove-pipe on American Hill to the most complete hydraulic gravel-mining plant in the
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26 OUT IV EST
Swinging Foot-
vvorld, at La Grange four miles across the hills from VVeaverville — and some trace of almost every step between can be found at one place or another in the Trinity country.
In front of the blacksmith's shop at Weaver, where the heavy- headed "California" picks are still turned out, is an old pipe roller, for shaping the wrought-iron pipe which came up from the coast in the big freight -wagons as flat sheets of iron and was rolled and riveted by hand when it reached the scene of its future use- fulness.
Piles of this old hand-made pipe, worn and rusted with half a century of use and weather, lie at the Hupp mine on East Weaver creek scarcely out of sight of the town. It was made in 1863, and the water it carried, discharged through a canvas hose and old- time nozzle, cut down many a yard of rich dirt and sent it through the sluices.
This mine, still worked by the sons of the Argonaut who located it so long ago, keeps, in spite ot its modern equipment, more of the old-time atmosphere than any other in the basin. Here the banks are rich but not uncommonly deep, and the gravel deposits typical rather than unusual, and the whole plant an excellent example of hydraulic mining uncomplicated by any special problems.
The road from Weaverville to La Grange is like a history in brief of placer mining. Within one sweep of the eye lie low bars
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IN THE LAND OP THE 'EORl'V-NINER:^. 27
Bridge and Fi^umk
of clean-washed tailings where pan and rocker and Long Tom reaped the first harvest and the ground-sluice gleaned all they had left ; and the bare bones of Sidney Hill, where many a man found fortune and more than one met death under the caving banks, shine yellow, overgrown with rosin-weed as bright as the old-time gold.
Here a log cabin falls to decay, half-buried in the drift of old sluices ; and here are acres of boulders laid up into regular walls, debris from the smaller claims of the past, when most of the work was done by hand. Here, too, all alone on a sheltered hillside, a ragged group of gray old apple-trees bend under loads of dwarfed fruit — trees that have outlived the hand that planted them and seem almost part of the wild forest all around.
La Grange, the king of gravel-mines, lies high across a mountain- side facing Oregon Gulch, one of the historic camps of early days. Hardly another tributary of Trinity river was worked earlier or yielded better returns, and here and there an old roof or chimney- top stands up above the flow of tailings to mark the site of the lost camp. No river-dragon shaped this wonderful mine with its gravel-banks hundreds of feet deep, but here some ice-giant, some great glacier overtaken with weariness, dropped his accumulated load of earth and boulders and gravel., and the ages since have rounded it into low mountains overgrown with Digger pines and chaparral.
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28 OUT WEST
The boulders are still scarred and scored with ice-carved lines, and smoothed as with the wash of some primeval ocean, and all sorts of tramps and wanderers from many a distant formation are flung together here as enforced companions. Perhaps the gold- harvest of Oregon Gulch was only the lost seed washed down by slow erosion from this mountain-side store-house; at least the gulch led naturally to the hill, and its richness was known to those early miners whom its size and the difficulty in getting sufficient water baffled in all their attempts to work it profitably.
La Grange today is a remarkable illustration of that bull-dog grip which man takes on the throat of nature wherever she has seeded the earth with gold. Somehow, some time, he will make her "stand and deliver," as she is delivering at La Grange after a struggle of more than a quarter of a century. The very servants that she used to build up are turned against her, and the water that locked in the gold is set like a slave to let it free again.
The mine is like some great pit scooped out by a gigantic cloud- burst— a deep-troughed cation leading down from a big curved bank, bare and sheer as a knife-slash against the face of the mountain — a bank 630 feet high and 2000 feet in breadth, the sharp top edged with green pines and little shrubs that seem to lean over and draw back with fright.
All along the canon-bottom huge piles of boulders are heaped in skeleton mountains or built into rough walls on the barren bed-rock, and the derricks with which they were lifted from the head of the sluice stand like tall spiders on stilt legs among the debris. On the left hand, facing the bank, the hard gray bed-rock slopes down like some steep roof, some "Devil's slide," almost polished in places and scored with ice-carved grooves and lines; to the right it is softer, rougher, folded into miniature caiions and ranges like a relief map, a rugged blue-gray shoulder thrust up from the mountain-core as if to hold the gravel with an eternal grip.
Down the center of the caiion-trough the sluice-boxes, six feet wide on the bottom and six feet high, riffled with railroad iron of special pattern, string their length three thousand feet, forking into a great Y at the lower part, and through them a thousand yards of gravel pours each working day to swell the earth-river in Oregon Gulch, already forty feet deep.
Three thousand miner's inches of water, and nearer four thou- sand when the season is at its full, beat down through the big iron pipes like great arteries, and, divided into the seven iron- throated "giants,*' hurl against the bank like bars of living steel.
A wide reach, this, from the first "water mine" — some little stream, perhaps the swift rush of water from some sudden storm, sweeping over gold-sown gravel and leaving shining grains in the
Digitized by
The Clean-up Cradle at La Grange
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30 OUT WEST
little hollows and depressions in its course when the earth and stones had gone on to a lower level. No one can know what far-off man stooped to wonder at those shining grains and gather them up to play with and presently to barter with his fellows. But some time long ago man learned that gold is a reluctant traveler and will stay behind if it can find any lodgement, and since that day he has set all sorts of traps for it.
The golden fleece of Jason has a parallel in the sheepskins and rawhides and blankets used to catch the gold in the first rude sluices, and the heavy iron rails in the big boxes at La Grange are only the latest step on above the sharp-edged rock in the little stream bed. Many an old-time miner took peculiar pride in his
HK RBSERVOIR at La GRANGE
riffles and smoothed the slender strips of wood and built them into a fantastic gridiron pattern in the bottom of his boxes ; but soon rough-sawed heavier timbers took their place, and later still the sawed cross-sections of pine logs, set with the stubborn grain of the tree to take the ceaseless pounding of the water-driven gravel. Here at La Grange success has come by the incessant pitting of human wits against the strength of nature. When the water closer at hand was seen to be too little, there was one recourse — to bring down a mountain stream from its source thirty miles distant, across an alpine reach of cliffs and canons and forested ranges; leading it in flumes along sheer rock-w-alls, crosshig mountain ridges with three inverted siphons, one of which has a depression of 1100 feet vertical, and on in the big ditch to a reservoir scooped out of the mountain side high above the mine.
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 31
When at last the captured water leaps out through the "giant's*' jaws, it seems no longer, liquid — a compound velocity of nearly 1800 feet a second has turned it into a rigid bar of living force that tears at the huge banks savagely. It snarls and roars like some great maddened beast as it springs, and tons of earth crash down and melt away into the foaming ground-sluice that sweeps into the boxes like a mill-race or the swirl of a landward tide in a narrow channel.
A stone of tons' weight is a plaything tossed up and down and hurled aside like a ball from the player's hand; a man would be no more than a fly in front of that gracefully fluted steel-blue stream that flings cascades of foam and rainbow spray off like sweat-drops
Cleaning up the Bi^ocks in the Sluice- Boxes at La Grange
as it toils. The very iron "giant'' seems to thrill with life. It re- sponds to a hand touch, left, right, up or down, as the man at the lever wills, and when the w^ork goes swiftest he springs on its back and rides as on some armored stallion of war.
The great yellow bank quivers and reels to its full height with that furious force; whole avalanches of gravel loosen and crash down, and along the top the pines stagger and bend and seem to clutch at the sky in protest before they topple over and plunge headlong to their end. It is awesome, Titanic, as if the old earth- forces were let loose in some wanton play. The wet rocks gleam and glisten like nuggets, the water in the sluiceway boils and foams, and the boulders swept along in it crunch and grind and pound on the iron rifiles as they pass.
As the "giant" is raised and aimed at some more distant part of
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32 OUT WEST
Stbkl-rails Used as Riffi^es at La Grange Mine
the bank, the long curved arch of rushing water takes on jewel colors^ in the sun; a dim golden mist enfolds it; it seems like the bridge Bifrost over which the Norse gods journeyed to Asgard — a beautiful, wonderful play of primal forces, not the mere battle of man with the earth for her gold.
Yet it is that. All along the 3000 feet of sluice-boxes the gold is lagging behind and falling of its own weight to the bottom and settling into the spaces between the iron riffles. Here the quick- silver finds it, that restless, shimmering metal that is like molten moonlight and that shepherds the particles of gold into lumps of silvery amalgam in every corner and crevice of the whole length
Sluice- BOXES with Fuli* Pipe Head
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The L/A Grange Ditch Covkrkd Flume Ci^eaned of Snow
Deep with Snow
Digitized by
bit of metal that goes in will be found before the clean-up is over, and small coins are sometimes dropped in anjl recovered later to please the curiosity of some visitor.
Slowly the amalgam is separated from the sand through all the length of the boxes, and the harvest is over — a harvest of heavy, dull-silver particles, greasy to the touch with the quick- silver. And now what water has gathered fire is set to purify.
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 35
Siphon Crosses Stuart's Fork
Every old prospector who has ground-ski iced in some little hill- giilch knows the trick of retorting in a potato, and from this crude camp-use to the furnace and retort-room at La Grange is the full gain that mining has made since the day of the Torty-niner.
The washing-out of the gold seems always a triumph of physical force, of quick wit and strong hand ; but there is something of the mystery and fascination of alchemy in the retorting. It seems as if a baser metal were being transmuted into gold before one's eyes. The amalgam, squeezed dry of all the "quick" it will give up, is packed into the thick iron retort and the heavier cover put on and sealed fast with fire-clay. There is one opening, a long iron tube leading down to a vessel in which, as the furnace heats and the quicksilver vaporizes, it will condense again into silvery globules ready to shepherd the gold down the boxes of another "run."
Deep in the furnace, where the fire glows like gold itself, the retort grows hotter and hotter till at last it is lifted out with big tongs and a dull-glowing cake of gold, clean of "quick," turned out into a pan and weighed and broken into pieces convenient for the melting which will make it in truth pure gold, or nearly so.
If the fascination of alchemy hangs round the retorting, the melting has all the weird mystery of the Rhine-gold mingled with the fine accuracy of science. The graphite crucible is filled with the dull, rough, broken gold from the retort and shut into the
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36 our WEST
"Giants" Ci^kaning the
oven, where the clear white heat leaps out and strikes the face like a blow and dazzles the eyes like a lightning bolt.
Slowly, yet not so slowly, the rough mass sinks and settles and reddens and flows suddenly into liquid fire, a deep flame like the heart of some great star. It bubbles and shudders and heaves, and the heat beats on, relentless, searing, till the air in the melting room seems to swim with waves of mirage like the desert in August. The big iron mold is made ready, the men wait with strong tongs, their hands in thick woolen gloves which they wet over and over in cold water.
At last! The crucible seems full of molten jewels. It glows all over like some huge fire-hearted gem as it is lifted out. No easy task this, lifting a more than white-hot mass. The tongs grow hot, the woolen gloves steam dry, but thie lip of the crucible is over the edge of the mold. The glowing mass leaps and sputters a mo- ment as it strikes the metal, and boils and bubbles as it flow^s down, streaked with ruby and green and yellow gleams of light.
It heaves like a pulse and glows duller, the surface wrinkling and breaking into pitted bubbles like miniature craters, till it smooths and settles and the waves of color die to blurred gold. The '*dust*' is melted, the bar is poured ; and presently, sewed into a stout canvas cover, this gold, so lately an inconsiderable part of a wild and beautiful mountain-side, will travel away to swell the mass of the world's wealth — to be coin with which comfort is bought, or rings for some loved hand, or a drinking-cup for a king.
A great mine is a kingdom in itself. Its needs create other in- dustries and draw the natural products of other parts of the country to its own service. Because there is gold in the great
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 37
Head of the Boxbs
gravel-banks at La Grange, there are saw-mills away in the deep mountain canons cutting the tall pines into lumber, and the water of distant snow-peaks is turned from the channel it has cut for itself and led away to work or be idle as its captors will. Little lakes lying deep in the heart of remote mountains are set to fill fuller their glacier-carved bowls that there may be a longer *'run," where already **the topography is being sent down the sluiceway at the rate of about three million cubic yards a year."
It is one more witness of the splendid daring and keen perception of the Argonauts that they, too, tried to build a way across the mountains for the water of Stuart's Fork ; and if the great siphon pipe which they hauled by wagons and packed on mules and by hand collapsed with the first intake of water, and the ditch line swung along deep mountain-sides is now only a pack-trail, it is still a monument to courage that refused to be beaten without a fight.
Stuart's Fork of the Trinity river, out of which the most per- manent water comes for the mine at La Grange, is one of those rare spots of beauty which nature loves to make inaccessible that they may be kept for the joy of friendly eyes — a wild and lovely Sierra-hedged canon, leading back to the ice-carved peaks and pinnacles and glacial lakes of a miniature Switzerland; an alpine land, remote and rugged, austere and almost solemn in its calm grandeur.
The wagon road from Weaverville goes less than half way up the canon, which deepens mile by mile. There are a few little ranches, the fields shut in by forest ; and here, as everywhere in the Trinity country, old, old homes deserted and falling to ruin, and
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38 OUT WEST
long-abandoned log cabins hewn and dove-tailed together with the precision of an artist in wood, the work of some ship's-carpenter turned gold-hunter.
The road dwindles to a trail climbing high along *'hog-back" ridges above the canon, following the grade of the old ditch over- grown with bracken and thimble-berry vines and poison oak and tall tiger-lily clumps, with old-time "scouring rushes" and lance-leafed flag where the little springs trickle down.
The forest changes with every mile. Firs and spruce mingle with the yellow pine, and giant oaks make a green dusk down in the stream-bed where vine-maple and black-alder crowd, and the rose-red seeds of the dog-wood and wine-dark bear-berries and big red rose-haws gleam among the leaves.
The earth is lost and hidden in a tangle of undergrowth so dense that the trail seems like a green tunnel cutting through it and the
Main Strret, Weavkrvii^lk
trees rise as out of a many-hued velvet carpet. Slender vines reach up the rough-barked trunks, and brilliant moss cloaks them to the topmost branches, each tree in its own fashion ; big patches of brown-green plush on the oaks, yellow and black and gray-green fringe on the shaggy spruce and clean-barked pine, and fairy carpets of deep-piled green on every fallen trunk.
Always the way grows wilder, great boulders crowding the clear water into pools and narrow channels ; up above, against the very sky-line, cold, clean granite cliffs rise out of the forest green. The moss and tall sword-ferns divide to let silver threads of water slip through, and one wild spring glides down the groove of a huge log where the bark has rotted away, and leaps laughing into the creek below.
Through the primeval beauty, the clean, balsam-sweet air, the forest silence broken only by an infrequent bird note and the swift, shy scamper of some wild thing among the leaves, the whistle of a steam engine cuts with strange clearness, and just
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fN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS, 39
ahead a little saw-mill sits on the creek-bank, spitting like a wild- cat as it saws the big sweet spruce-logs into lumber and heavy timbers for flume and bridge and the dams at the lakes above.
There is a jingle of bells on the trail ahead and a mule-train swings in, such a train as brought the mill itself and will distribute the lumber wherever it is needed. The Trinity country is still a packer's country, and no more is thought of loading a saw-mill on a dozen mules and setting it up in some canon twenty miles from wagon-road than one would think of packing a suit-case for a week's trip. All sorts of things are packed on mules — cook-stoves, hydraulic pipe, parlor-organs, everything that is worn or eaten or used in many a settlement in the hills.
Trinity county has several times as many miles of pack-trail as it has county roads, and they are kept up by public fund as the roads are. There are settlements fifty years old that still reach the outside world by trail alone, and people who have never seen wagon or railroad train.
"You get a mighty lot of respect for mule sense,'* said an old head packer. '* Between mules and folks Td bet on mules most of the time. Mules don't get a square deal in this world, only some- times by accident.
*'I knew a mule had one of the biggest funerals in Weaverville though. He was one of the city fathers, you might say, along when the camp was starting. Any fellow that wanted to move his tent and rocker over to another bar always borrowed old Jack, and paid him off in the slap-jacks left from dinner, or a handful of sugar. Jack naturally thought he had a right to anything he could get away with, and he could get away with most anything that wasn't red-hot or nailed down.
**Us boys didn't begrudge Jack his vittles, but we did get the habit of keeping the sugar-sack tied up under the head of the bunk. You might have found a grizzly around here them days without looking much, and Jack give us a good many scares prowling around after provinder at night. He prowled once too often, for some tenderfeet that didn't know his habits took him for a bear and blew a hole in him big enough to drive a pack-train through.
'*There was grief in camp, I tell you ; and as we couldn't bring Jack to life, we give him the best send-off we could. We dug a right good hole and rolled him in and covered him up like a white man. There was a fellow in camp that started out as a lawyer, and he give old Jack a send-off a long way ahead of anything I expect to get when I'm planted. It made us boys feel so bad we went uo to the saloon and took about all we could carry to cheer ourselves up. We fixed up a pine slab for a head-board too, and the lawyer wrote a fancy motto on it : 'Here lies the body of Sir William Jackass, who lost his life in a raid on the camp of the Philistines who knew him not.' "
The trail above the saw-mill is rougher with every turn and the canon more beautiful, walled with gray granite cliffs and bare peaks ice-carved and weathered into fantastic shanes. Everywhere the mark of the old ice-war is clear — grooves and lines gouged out of the stubborn stone, a boulder-niled moraine across the canon bottom, a great **cirque" cut out of the high cliffs sharp as a knife- slash, and long talus-sweeps far down the mountain-sides.
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Ahead, the mules step carefully over the broken stone in the trail. Each one is loaded with heavy timbers for the dam at the lake above — timbers twelve feet long and weighing 300 or 350 pounds to the load, balanced with the utmost nicety on the pack- saddle and lashed with ropes to hold them in place. They reach out in front over the ears of the patient beasts, who grunt and groan as they pick their way over the boulders and along steep hillsides.
Every foot of trail rises sharply ; the peaks, saw-toothed and sharp against the sky, are 9000 feet above the sea, and the deep green lake that flashes in sight around the topmost turn of the trail lies 6000 feet above sea water. Lake Emerald — there could hardly have been another name, in English speech at least, for the water lies in the clean white bowl of granite like a great emerald in a silver setting. The granite cliffs rise straight and high on every side, with pines and spruce and tamarack trees clinging in the crevices and on every bench.
In the jaws of the canon, where the clear green water slips over into Stuart's Fork, the dam is building, and the mules stop one by one and grunt and sigh with relief as their loads are loosened and lifted off. They have carried every stick of timber in the dam that runs straight across from one granite reef to the other and seems a work of wonder in this untracked mountain solitude. A row- boat, packed up in sections on mule back, rocks in the waves which a sudden wind sends running across the lake; there is a rugged granite cliff beyond the lake, and still higher cliffs and peaks against the farthest sky, closing in the head of the canon in a deep circle.
The water parts like glass under the prow of the boat, every stone is clear below, every leaf and branch broken from the pines above, every blade of the water-grass clinging to the bottom : only when the very depth shuts out the light, it is like rowing over polished jade. There is a trail up the farther cliff among, the service-berries and rich-tinted poison oak and gorgeous toyon bushes. Blasting powder has left a raw scar along the granite, but there are scars older, remote as the forces that carved the clean white bowl of the lake — ice-scars where the long lost glacier fought his way.
A miniature glacier still lies under the farthest cliff against the sky-line, where year by year the new snow meets the old and blends with it into a big white arrowhead in the curve of the talus-sweep. And there below — the gleam of shimmering water ! Lake Sapphire, blue as the sky above, the little waves dancing up gold-edged in the sharp mountain wind. Here in the dip of the cliff, where the water finds its way to the lake below, a second dam is growing and the water-level of both lakes will presently rise some feet up the rim of granite.
Lake Sapphire lies 6600 feet above the sea, and the crystal water has the temperature of an ice-bath. Here, too, is a row-boat carried up the trail on the shoulders of men and anchored in the lee of a big slab of granite fallen from the cliffs. It is half a mile, perhaps, to the farther end, where the long marsh-grass makes a green meadow over the little level of broken granite and the blue berries and velvet red sumac shine like flame against the cliffs.
Here the sheer walls of granite make a ragged and saw-edged sky-line far above, and midway up, where a cluster of furry looking tamarack trees huddle on a rocky bench, a shining, silver stream of
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IN THE LAND OF THE 'FORTY-NINERS. 41
water leaps out and beats into dazzling spray along the cliff and loses itself in the green below, the overflow of Lake Diamond set jewel-wise at the very head of the canon. Only the tall-crested blue-jays, and the hawks and eagles, and perhaps some bear-mother seeking a safe home for her cubs, know well the beauty of this last wild lake which the mountain wears like a diamond brooch. Now and again some human intruder climbs up and looks, and slides down with thankfulness for unbroken bones crowding out the memory of that glorious picture.
These beautiful lakes have been known less than twenty years, even to the wilderness men who penetrated most corners of the hills. Until the storage of water for La Grange led to the building of trails they were all but inaccessible, and the Baron La Grange nearly lost his life in trying to reach Lake Sapphire. From No- vember to May they lie lost under snow that whirls over the great cliffs and fills the narrow, sunless gorge to great depth, and makes the lonely cafion indeed akin to the high Alps of Switzerland.
When winter falls in the Trinity mountains, all high trails are buried till spring. Remote cabins are stocked with food for snow- bound months, and the crew on the big La Grange ditch begin a winter's fight to keep the water running. Here the snow may bank over a flume till the sheer weight wrenches it from the walls of the cliff; an avalanche may wipe out yards of ditch or pack it full of snow as solid as stone; a bank may freeze and crack and let the whole ditch-head plunge headlong down a mountain-side.
There is one deep-scarred canon-side where two ditch-tenders disappeared together in such a break and were never seen again, lost under tons of debris. But again the snow will pack and pile above and the water keep its way clear below and flow through a pure white tunnel till the winds of spring set it free. Always the snow is welcome, for much snow means plenty of water in the spring. In the old days this meant that every little gulch would be staked by some miner and worked with rocker and Long Tom.
In 'Fifty-two Weaverville had such a winter and no one had expect- ed it ; the only properly provisioned establishment was the camp liv- ery-stable, whose foresighted owners had gotten in a big stock of bar- ley. They sold barley at forty cents a pound, and the staple food was barley ground in coffee-mills and made into bread and mush. Long before the trails were open a pack train was reported at Lewiston on its way in with supplies. The barley-weary citizens turned out and shoveled open about twenty miles of train — to find the incoming train loaded to the last pound with whiskey and rocker-iron for the spring boom.
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43
THE PICTURESQUE IMMIGRANT FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRAND
WHO HE IS AND WHY HE COMES TO AMERICA.
By SAINT NIHAL SINGH jF ALL immigrants who drift to North America, none \ surpasses the Hindu in picturesqueness. He usually lands at one or the other of the large Pacific ports — San Francisco, Seattle, Victoria or Vancouver — although stray members of the fraternity have been known to enter the continent by way of New York, New Orleans and Mont- real. He comes clad in countless curious styles. Yards upon yards of cotton, calico or silk are swathed about the head of one, forming a turban, cone-shaped or round like a button-mushroom, with a wave or point directly in the middle of the forehead or to the right or left, as variable as the styles of American women's pompa- dours— some with a long end hanging down from the back, grace- fully and somewhat coquettishly dangling over one shoulder ; others with the end securely tucked into the twisted rolls that twine round and round the head. A scarlet Turkish fez tops the head of another, while a third wears an ordinary cap or hat, and a fourth goes about bare-headed.
A smart English military uniform, with the front plastered over with metal medals, a voluminous turban and a bristling beard, dis- tinguish the tall, lanky Sikh soldier who has served in King Edward's native army in India and elsewhere. The man with the fez is usually a Mahometan and is apt to wear a long-flowing coat reaching almost to his ankles and leaving partly visible his pajamas, which fit tightly around his shins. He is sockless, and the toes of his slipper-like shoes curve fantastically over the top of his feet. The man with the Western cap wears clothes of pseudo-Occidental style, which he fondly believes to be up-to-date, measured by West- ern standards; but the sleeves invariably are too short and end nearer the elbow than the wrist, while the coat and nether garments are tight where they should be loose, and baggy where they should be tight. As a rule, the clothes are dilapidated in appearance and frequently second-hand, and the whole combination is grotesque except in the eyes of the newcomer himself. These specimens of the Hindoo genus homo are almost invariably workingmen or peasant-laborers.
The bare-headed Hindoo is without a coat. A longish shirt, re- sembling an artist's apron, reaches nearly to his ankles. He wears long stockings like a woman's and rope-soled half-shoes. Circling his left shoulder and waist like a marshal's sash, is a daupata, a strip of cotton cloth, a handsomely-embroidered piece of silk or a long, soft shawl. In many cases, instead of the long shirt, the
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man drapes around his legs and trunk a sheet of cotton or silk known as a dhoti. Again, the dhoti is worn in combination wath the shirt, the trunk covered by the shirt, reaching just below the thigh, and the dhoti loosely wound around the legs. This type of Hindoo is usually a religious missionary intent on spreading his cult on the Western Hemisphere.
Some there are in the group straggling across the gang-plank with whose dress even the most fastidious American could find no fault. Their clothes are of the latest approved style in cut, color and material. The well-dressed East-Indians are merchants, students or men of means who are traveling merely for the sake of pleasure.
All the Hindoos who come to America have hair varying in hue from brownish-black to purplish or an intense raven-black. The entire gamut of styles of hair-dressing is run by these visitors from the land of Ind. Some of them are shaved so closely that not a hair is visible on their faces or heads. Others have the hair cut in various lengths and styles; while many have every hair with which Nature endowed them, just as Providence let it grow, without the intervention of scissors or razor. Their long, luxuriant locks are tightly braided and doubled up like a horse's tail in muddy weather, being held in place by the turban. Some let their long hair flow, unbraided, at full length over their shoulders and back. A few have iongish wavy hair, carefully parted and combed like a mulatto barber's, while the locks of others are stiff and straight, almost like horse-hair in texture. A number of the Hindoo immi- grants have kinky hair like a negro's wool.
The hide of the Hindoo varies from the dull, pale, sallow-brown of a Mexican to the extreme black of an African. The man who hails from the highlands of northwestern Hindustan is a shade darker than olive. A few coming from Kashmir have fair skins, light hair and blue eyes. Those who come from the low plains have darker complexions and an extremely sun-burnt appearance.
In stature and physique the East-Indian immigrants differ as materially as they do in their style of dress. Representatives of the soldier clans, such as Sikhs, Rajputs and Mahrattas, possess fine, athletic bodies and are usually tall and "well set-up." The peasants from the Punjab and contiguous districts are less athletic in build, but possess hardy frames, capable of great endurance. The people from the lowlands of Bengal and Deccan are somewhat shorter and slighter than the men from the North ; but starvation and sun have weathered them so that they are able patiently to un- dergo pinching poverty and privations of every sort.
In cast of features almost all East-Indians look alike. They have intelligent faces, keen eyes, compressed lips and determined chins.
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THE PICTURESQUE IMMIGRANT. 45
This type of countenance is distinctly Aryan, as all the Hindoos who come to the land of the Stars and Stripes are descended from the same branch of the human family as the Anglo-Saxons.
One of the chief points of difference between the emigrant from India and those hailing from Europe lies in the fact that the European brings along with him his family — his wife and children and perhaps aged parents and grandparents — when he emigrates to America. Only one sex is represented among the Hindoo im- migrants. Probably the greater percentage of them are married — for Hindoos marry young — but they leave their wives and children behind them and venture alone to find a fortune in the West. There is only one Hindoo woman on the North American continent. She lives with her husband, a doctor of Vedic medicine, in Vancouver, B. C. So far as can be learned, only one Hindoo — the writer of this article — has married an American woman.
The East-Indian immigrants possess many forms of religion. He may be theist, atheist, agnostic or idol-worshiper. He may be- lieve in the unity of God, or be a Christian and profess faith in the Trinity, or be a worshiper of thirty-three millions of gods.
The dusky immigrants belong to diflferent grades and castes of society. The newcomer may be of the Brahmin caste (the priestly caste), the Kshatrya (soldier), Vaisha (merchant) or Sudra (ser- vant) caste. This, however, makes little diflPerence, as wedging outside influences have broken the back-bone of caste and are crumbling the institution into dust. The immigrants, despite their origin and hereditary caste-prejudices, are usually willing to make common cause with each other and do any kind of work they may be able to secure.
The students, merchants and missionaries hailing from India's coral strand are invariably equipped with a thorough knowledge of the English language, and are able to talk with the fluency and directness of a native-born American; but the average immigrant has merely a smattering of English at his command, just enough to enable him to explain his needs in broken language.
Motives diverse and complex bring the Hindoo to North America. He may come to the United States with the intention of arousing the American mind, gone mad in the dollar-chase, to a sense of his higher self. He may be in the West with a view to enlisting the people's sympathy in the uplift of the East-Indian masses. He may come to the land of the free and the home of the brave to equip himself at a University to be of service to his country. Haunted by the howls of the hunger-wolf, he may emigrate to these shores hoping to be able to live in America, by hard work, in comparative comfort.
America first became aware of the presence of the Hindoos in
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A Typical Hindoo Student
the United States during the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Swami Vivekananda, a dusky man with a masterful mouth, prominent nose, large eyes and a massive forehead, lectured to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago and conquered a critical (al- beit provincial) audience in a single speech. He may have been preceded by some East-Indian teachers and students, but they were not great enough to make any lasting impression upon the Ameri- can people. The silver-tongued Swami served for Hindustan in the capacity of a John the Baptist, and his proved to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
The first batch of Indian workingmen landed on the North American continent somewhere between 1895 and 1900. It is
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THE PICTURESQUE IMMIGRANT. 47
A DKAHIM DRIEST
more than likely that the pioneers came from Burmah, Malay Straits Settlements and China rather than directly from India. They were a group of enterprising men, discontented with the life they had been leading and desirous of settling in a new land where they would be able to find better opportunities. They came singly, or in very small groups, the main current directing itself to the Canadian rather than the American West.
The early settlers had no difficulty in finding plenty of work at good wages. They worked as unskilled laborers in factories and mills, tending gardens, clearing ground of stumps and preparing it for agricultural or building purposes. Gratified with their success, and not meeting with any resistance or opposition from the people
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amongst whom they had settled, the pioneers wrote optimistic letters to their friends and kinsmen in India and other Oriental countries. The glowing accounts of golden opportunities in Amer- ica influenced others to come to the Occident, and a stream of Hindoo immigrants came pouring into British Columbia. The largest proportion of the immigrants came from the rural districts of the Punjab, and represented the Sikh, Mahometan and Hindu communities. By the middle of the year 1903, probably 2,500 Indian immigrants had settled in Vancouver, Victoria and neighboring territory.
The British Columbians looked upon the swarthy men from India with contemptuous indifference so long as they came to the country in straggling groups ; but when they commenced to arrive by every steamer in knots of twenty or more, the white residents became alarmed and conceived the notion that Hindoo hordes were about to mvade British Columbia by way of the Pacific Ocean and thrust them out of the way.
The spirit of antagonism did not express itself forcefully until the latter part of 1906, when a Hner of the Canadian Pacific Rail- road and Steamship Company brought a ship-load of Indian im- migrants to Vancouver. The city authorities prevented the immi- grants from landing for three or four days. When they were finally allowed to debark, the difficulties of the bewildered East- Indians were intensified by the inadequate housing accommodations provided for them by Vancouver. They also met with considerable opposition in securing employment.
Disgusted by the treatment accorded them, the Hindoos left Canada and came to the United States, drifting to Everett, Bell- ingham, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and other Western cities. Almost immediately they real- ized that instead of coming to a haven of rest, they had literally jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. The Canadian agitators contented themselves with the mere putting of obstructions in the way of the Indian immigrants to prevent them from securing lodgings and work. The American hooligans treated the peaceful Hindoo with absolute violence. A riot took place at Bellingham, Washington, and the immigrants were forced by the mob to cross the line and once more enter Canada.
Some of the immigrants sought to become naturalized citizens of the United States, believing that better treatment would be ac- corded them if they became citizens. Their applications were re- jected. Protests were made, but the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney General of the United States, issued a ruling debarring them from citizenship upon the grounds that the statute authorizing naturalization applied only to "aliens being free white persons, and
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A Sikh and a Mohammbdan
to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent." The sun-browned, sometime kinsmen of the American Anglo-Saxons were refused their papers because they were too much darkened by the sun and simoon of the tropics to pass for "white," and they were not negroes. The opposition encountered by the immigrants has given a rude set-back to Hindoo immigration and effectually stopped the incoming tide.
The East-Indian religious teachers and students have received better treatment than the Hindoo laborers. Of all men from India who have visited the United States, the late Swami Vivekananda stands pre-eminent. He seems to have won an instant way into the hearts of American men and women, and his personality today
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is very much alive in the hearts of thousands of Americans of the highest intellect and culture. His reputation and influence in no sense are merely local. They extend from one end of the United States to the other. In every large American city, Vivekananda's name is familiar to those who aspire to know something regarding the highest self, and his memory is respected and revered by all who met him.
Since the days of Swami Vivekananda, a number of learned Hindoos have visited the United States. Most of them have con- fined their efforts to delivering itinerant addresses in the country, but a few of them have started schools and classes endeavoring to spiritualize materialistic America. In fact, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and New York City have become vital centers of Hindu culture, and the effort is being made to introduce the wedge of East-Indian spiritual ideals into American lives.
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Besides the teachers of religion and philosophy, there are other educated Indians in America engaged in commerce and professional business. Their number is limited, but it is rapidly increasing, as the chances for making money and building up a reputation are plentiful and tempting.
Among the immigrants settled in the Pacific Coast States, some peddle wares from door to door. They buy the goods at whole- sale prices and make fairly large profits, which they re-invest, con- stantly adding to their capital and their stock in trade. Some of the shrewder ones have evolved from the chrysalis to the butterfly stage and are opening stores.
The Hindoo fortune teller in America is a bird of passage, flitting here, there and everywhere, evading those States where it is a criminal offence for him to follow his profession. He travels all the time, from town to town, county to county, State to State and coast to coast. He plies his trade wherever he can, and usually makes a success of it, for there is a mystical charm attached to him in the eyes of credulous people seeking to peer into the future. It is sufficient for them that he comes from the **East.'' It must follow that he is a "Wise man."
Indian students are attracted to the United States in order to obtain practical training. Some seek a professional education, chiefly medical, surgical and dental. Commercial or trade training appeal to a few. Engineering and agricultural studies attract a number. One or two have shown an inclination to join the Ameri- can army and learn to handle fire-arms and become expert soldiers.
When the Indian student first sets his feet in the United States, his slow gait, limp, listless ways, lifeless, inert talk, tranquil looks and distinctive dress attract the attention of people amongst whom he is thrown. The din and noise, the turmoil and constant hurry of American cities jar upon the nerves of the newcomer. The harsh tones and nasal twang of the Americans grate upon his ear. Woe betide the Indian student who, in addition to a swarthy face, has curly, intensely black hair. He is certain to be mistaken for a negro, and treated contemptuously, in many cases insultingly. Many Hindostanees, on account of this color-prejudice, find it dif- ficult to secure entrance to lodging houses, restaurants, cafes and society in general. Some of them have met with heart-rending experiences on this account.
In order to attain their individual ambitions the students pursue diflferent courses. The large majority enter a technological insti- tute or the medical, technical or agricultural department of some prominent university. Some continue to study in the educational institutions until they secure their diplomas. Others merely gather a rudimentary knowledge and quit their Alma Mater.
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East-Indian students in America have friends everywhere in the country. American friends of East-Indians in New York and Boston have formed themselves into organized societies to assist them in the United States. The associations are endorsed and supported by men and women of national reputation. Good care is taken of the student during his sojourn in America — so much so that, in a short time, he ceases to look upon himself as an exile trom home.
No matter to what station of life he may belong, or what cul- ture he may possess, the East-Indian immigrant, when he leaves America, takes home with him a dynamic love of liberty and senti- ments of democracy. America sandpapers his caste-exclusiveness and instills within his heart a sense of brotherhood and co-opera- tion. The Hindoo is led by his American associations to cast off his slavishness of disposition. His ideas of political and social government undergo a radical change. The American-returned East-Indian is a reformer to the core, and proves an invaluable asset for the renaissance of India. Cambridge, III.
THE WANDERER BEYOND THE SEAS
By JESSIE DAJ'IES IVILLDY.
THE sun shines ever warm on alien lands. And rare flowers bloom beneath soft alien skies ; And on the waves of blue Italian seas. The far sails drift, like wdiite-winged butterflies.
(Across a shimmering sea of poppy-gold. The slanting evening sunlight lingering falls. With drooping petals, wet by ocean mist. Sweet roses sway beside the Mission walls.)
The grey-green olive groves gleam in the sun. And purple grapes cling to the trailing vines ; And monastery vespers softly chime. Within the shadows of the Apennines.
(Beneath the far Sierra's forest pines. Azaleas tremble in the Western breeze ; And redwoods whisper in a minor strain. To one who lingers long beyond the seas.)
Tho' sweet the boat-songs of the gondoliers, 'Midst rhythmic splashing of their oars' white spray ; Yet sweeter is the music of the waves. That wash the rocky shores of Monterey. Wichita, Kansas.
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55 THE BATTLE OF ATASCADERO
By EDWARD CATHCART GROSSMAN. FAINT streak of grey appeared over the low hills to the eastward. A sleepy sentry, muffled in his olive-drab overcoat, raised his head from his half doze over the muzzle of his rifle, and, bringing the weapon to the right shoulder, mechanically, began to pace his post. In front of him stretched the line of the railway, its position marked only by the faint outline of the telegraph poles paralleling the rails. The grey streak turned to silver, and objects began to take form. It looked like the slow developing of a Velox print. Along the railway ran row after row of little "pup-tents," the small size of the shelters making it easy to understand where the name originated. Hardly more than two feet high, it did not seem possible that they actually sheltered men ; they were smaller than a comfortable kennel.
A sergeant came hurrying down the line of the railroad, stopping at the head of each little row of shelters to shake the occupant of the first tent of each row, give the aroused man low-voiced in- structions, and then repeat the shaking process at the next street of tents. Men began to crawl out of the tents, sleepily rubbing their eyes and muttering. At the head of every company street, fires began to sparkle in the gloom of the early morning. From the hillside above the camp came the shrill neigh of a horse.
As the light grew stronger and the shadows under the live-oaks on the hillside began to lighten, the park of the artillery began to take form — the grey, lean, ugly guns and the ponderous caissons with the long line of horses tied to the picket-line back of the guns themselves.
Still further along the hillside lay the cavalry camp, the cold, half-asleep dragoons fumbling with the halter-ropes of their mounts with numb fingers and muttered oaths. A moment later the four hundred cavalry horses were plodding down the hill in a long column, bound for the spring and the water. Right on their heels came the battery-horses, great, ponderous, heavy-limbed fellows, built just for the one purpose of hauling heavy loads be- hind. The tents had disappeared over at the infantry camp. Snugly rolled up with the blankets, each man was to carry away his house on his back, snail-like. The fires were surrounded by groups of soldiers, waiting for their turn at the fire to fry their allowance of bacon or to fill their cups with the hot, comforting coffee.
Mess over, the brown ranks began to form. On the hillside the artillery batteries stood harnessed and ready. A squadron of cavalry went trotting down the road to be lost in the fog. The army was ready to move, but not a sound of a bugle had broken
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the stillness. An enemy three hundred yards away across those low live-oak-studded hills would have been entirely unconscious of the presence of the thousands of brown-clad men in the valley, had they depended on their ears to give them warning.
Far down the line of the railroad and the company after com- pany of blue-shirted men, paralleling it, rang a sharp command. The leading regiment fell in, the rifles swung to the shoulders of the eight hundred men and silently they marched across the steel ribbons of the railroad, to fade gradually away into the fog. An- other regiment followed close at their heels. Sandwiched in between the second long column of men and the one following, marched a strange organization, half a dozen men on horses and then thirty or more mules, each with a burden on his back that clanked and
Battery of Artillery on thk March
swung with every movement of the beast. A soldier on foot led each mule. A murmur ran through the ranks of the regiments standing, waiting for orders, as the strange mixture of mules and men plodded by, ''The machine-guns.'' Another regiment of men went swinging down the road after the machine-guns, still another followed, then close after them came the rumbling, jolting, ponder- ous artillery, the grey gims threatening and ugly, even m their mufflings of canvas. Mile after mile the long blue-shirted column of men swung along. The cavalry had clattered by shortly after the army had left the bivouac, to disappear in the fog that wrapped the hills ahead and which might hold any number of potential enemies. On either side of the road were the rolling hills, covered with the live-oaks and preventing any view except down the narrow valley which the road followed. Somewhere over those hills lay the enemy.
Four miles from the bivouac by the railway the order came to
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THE BATTLE OF ATASCADERO 59
halt, and the men thankfully leaned on the muzzles of their brown rifles to ease, in a measure, the weight of the blanket-rolls slung across their shoulders. By the side of the road, lying in the dust and ground out of sight in places, lay a black, heavy wire. Thou- sands of men had trod upon it, the cavalr>' horses had thundered over it, and the wheels of the heavy artillery caissons and guns had driven it into the dust, but it was unbroken. Far up the road, at the head of the column a man with a telephone receiver sat listening to the messages which came thrilling over that black nerve, repeating them to the commanding officer near him.»
The column was strangely quiet. The loud laughs, the horse- play and the buzz of talk that usually makes the presence of a
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column of soldiers at rest known for half a mile, was missing. The ^ men were quiet and subdued. It was but a play, a lesson in the war-game that they were at Atascadero to learn, but a little of the grim, reality of war had crept in, a little of the feeling that comes over a soldier as he stands waiting for the order that is to send him in to face the storm of bullets awaiting him. The play had too much the appearance of reality to be enjoyable.
An hour passed by without a move. Along the level stretch be- side the road a continual procession of automobiles, filled with gay people, and rigs of every imaginable sort, buzzed and trotted and jolted along. The countryside was up and anxious to see the fight as long as real bullets were not to fly nor real shrapnel to howl over their heads.
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A messenger galloped down the long line of waiting troops to where the batteries stood waiting for orders. JThe first battery turned out of the line and went clattering and jolting down the column. At the head of the column the battery turned out and headed diagonally across the valley for the hills on the further side. A buzz of voices ran from regiment to regiment, ** Something doin' purty soon.'' The men strained their eyes to follow the rumbling guns on their way across the valley, but the fog swallowed up the battery and only an occasional faint rumble came back to mark their progress.
Suddenly, through the fog, seemingly right at hand, came the
"Stuffing" Yb War-correspondent
ugly, menacing "Boom" of a field-gim. It was muffled by the fog, but it seemed to be not more than half a mile away. A rustle ran down the long line of men, the stragglers leaped for their places in the ranks, the batterymen leaped to the backs of their horses without command, and the gunners scrambled up to their seats on caisson and gun like so many acrobats. Another hollow boom came down through the fog. It had a peculiar sound, entirely different from the ordinary, sharp, vicious roar of a field-gun. The ranks straightened up without command, the battery horses pricked up their ears and snorted eagerly, while here and there an officer fidget- ed nervously. Five minutes passed, seeming like so many hours, punctuated by the dull, heavy, sodden "Booms'' that came over the
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hills. Suddenly the leading infantry regiment began to move. ''Double time'* rang the command, audible even to the extreme end of the long column standing in the road. A gust of wind suddenly puffed down the little valley, the fog rolled up as though pulled out of the way by some familiar mechanism of the theater, and at last the surrounding country was in sight. Ahead, the road ran up through a pass in the hills, not more than a quarter of a mile away, and disappeared on the further side — the side from which came the steady pounding of the guns. The regiment of infantry broke into a run, the companies swung out until the regiment covered the valley from side to side. The long line spread still more until the eight hundred men were trotting along the road and the open
Heavy Marching Order
spaces on either side in line of skirmishers, each man with his rifle carried loosely by his side, and peering keenly to the front for a sign of the enemy. Before they reached the divide and went out of sight, a new sound suddenly broke out, sharp and clear and more thrilling than all the heavy roars of the field-guns — the crackle of the infantry rifles. The regiment in front were still in sight; the fire did not come from them. Either the enemy had reached the outposts of the blue-shirted army or some of the blue cavalry had run foul of the advance guard of the "Reds," somewhere over there across those blanketing hills.
At the very top of the pass the long line of skirmishers suddenly dropped flat to the ground, out of sight and out of harm's way.
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A sharp command, and another regiment of infantry went swinging forward to support the skirmishers on the ridge, the men instinctive- ly unfastening the buttons of their belts, which contained the clips of brass cartridges for their rifles. The remaining battery of artillery clattered and rumbled and jingled by, increasing their pace to a run as they cleared the marching infantry. Up the road they went, the horses laying down to their work as though they under- stood the need for hurry, their eyes gleaming, their ears back like so many mad things. Behind them the guns leaped and pounded over the uneven road, while the gunners hung grimly to the hand- rails and the hand-straps running around the caissons and the limbers. Up the hill, almost to the line of skirmishers they went, and then turned off on top of the ridge.
The "Reds,'' camped far to the southward, had taken -advantage
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of the heavy fog to sneak their batteries forward to a commanding position, and not more than a mile away were covering the advance of the "Red" infantry, trying to find and drive back the inVading force of the "Blues." The tale would be different when the Blue batteries got into action.
Suddenly, from over to the right front, where the first Blue bat- tery had disappeared into the hills half an hour before, came the roar of a field-gun, very near this time and with the vicious sound of a field-gun, free from the muffling fog. Again came the thunder of the guns, faster and faster until the hills shook and the echoes wore themselves out trying to send back the steady roar.
The crackle of the rifles from ahead increased in volume until the individual cracks of the rifles could no longer be distinguished in the steady roar. It reminded the listener of the noise which salutes the rising sun on a Fourth of July morning, but no Fourth of July celebration ever had the peculiar, penetrating, ugly quality of this crackling thunder of sound.
The line of skirmishers disappeared from the summit of the pass, running forward half bent, like so many hunters on the trail of game. The second regfiment of infantry reached the top of the ridge and disappeared from sight, and the third coltunn of foot- soldiers followed after them with a five-hundred-yard interval. At last the enemy was in sight. From the top of the ridge, the valley of Atascadero Creek was in sight, with the high hill of Round Mound over to the right. Down in the valley, half a mile away, the glasses showed the thin brown-clad line of the "Red" advance-guard, coming forward through the live-oaks, dropping to earth like a base- runner trying to slide to the home plate, firing a few rounds, and then dashing forward again for another 50 yards. Behind them, a mile away, were dense masses of brown-clad men, the "Red" main force, while between them and the skirmish-line were the support and the reserve of the Red skirmish-line. Closer at hand the "Blue" advance-gfuard was advancing cautiously through the trees, lying down and firing a few rounds, and again trotting forward to meet the long thin line of the "Reds" six hundred yards away. ' Over to our right, although out of sight of the enemy, we could see a Blue battery snugly concealed behind a hill, hurling fictitious shrapnel over the top of the hill and down into the ranks of a "Red" regiment of infantry in close order, a ipile or so away. It was a tactical blunder of the Red commander, marching his regiment in close order within range of the Blue battery, and the Blue battery commander was making the most of it, while his guns, using "Indi- rect Fire!' by trigonometry over the top of the hill, were snugly out of harm's way.
The advance of the Red skirmishers stopped, and then little by
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little they began to pve ground as the stronger Blue forces pressed them. Over on their left flank the battalion of Arizona militia were rushing forward, and they would be flanked shortly unless they abandoned their position. Back they went, fighting stubbornly for every inch of the ground they had so lately taken, but still giving way st€ftidily. The Blue regiments were pushed forward into the fight as the force of the Reds became apparent, and the Blue skir- mishers drove the sullen Reds back without a pause. As we watched, a battery of Blue artillery suddenly appeared not two hundred yards away from us through an opening in the hills. The line of g^ns and caissons suddenly swung sharply to the right, the cannoneers tumbled off the caissons and limbers and guns like mad, the limbers were uncoupled in a jiffy and the half-wild horses with the limbers attached tore off to the rear like a flash. The cannoneers pushed the guns around to point in the direction of the enemy, and the cais- sons, full of ammunition, were wheeled up beside them, ready for action. Before we had quite realized the presence of the battery, the horses were out of sight to the rear and the g^ns were ready to fire.
On a little hill, to the right of the direction of the guns and overlooking the valley below, the battery commander and his lieuten- ant stood, the commander squinting through a peculiar telescope on a tripod, at the enemy, and his lieutenant reading off the angles. Below, the battery stood waiting, the guns and the crews out of sight of the enemy and with nothing in sight but the blank hillside in front of them, although they knew that just on the other side the fight was raging. The battery commander straightened up suddenly and seized his megaphone, lying beside him. The battery were to receive the directions which were to enable them to drop their shrapnel on the invisible enemy. The clear voice of the commander came over to us, far away as we were.
"Range twenty-one hundre-e-e-ed. Deflection, fifty-one, left pla- toon aiming platoon, decrease by te-e-ens." The slim grey muzzles crept up to the required range, the gunners squatting down behind the bullet-proof shields of steel, running across the guns, the pointer peering through a peculiar sort of telescope that raised itself up and peered over the steel of the shield, although the eye-glass was out of sight and harm's way. The deflection was read off the ver- nier of their delicate sighting-apparatus, the grey guns swung over just a trifle and they were aimed at the proper angle to drop their shrapnel over on to the enemy. The heavy breech-blocks at the rear of the guns swung open, a long, three-foot cartridge, looking like some giant's rifle ammunition, was slid into the g^n, the breech- block of each gun clanked home again, and the g^ns only awaited the command. A sharp command rang out, the left gun cracked
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like a load of lumber falling to a hard pavement, and the other three guns followed suit. The fire of the Red batteries slackened and died away under the pounding of the Blue guns. With the glasses we caught a Red battery, limbered up and creepmg cautious- ly back to a new and safer position further to the rear. Half a mile further on they unlimbered and went into action. They opened fire on a battery of machine-guns traveling slowly along the hills, and the machine-gun men, leading their laden mules, hastily made for shelter. They disappeared, and the fire of the battery in their direction ceased. The machine-gun commander, however, had ideas of his own. He swept around the intervening hill which sheltered him from the observation of the battery, gained the rear of the guns, crept along the hillside to a point four hundred yards above them on the slope. Then they halted, the machine-guns came off the backs of the mules, so fast the eye could not follow the different operations, the gvms were set on their tripods, the belts inserted, and then —
A vicious, evil, deafening, ugly crackle of fire broke out in the very ears of the unsuspecting batterymen. It sounded like the fire of three or four regiments of infantry. The gunners were caught like rats in a trap. In a real fight they would have all been killed in the first moment of fire, with four guns firing 600 shots per min- ute trained on them. The battery was ruled out of the fight, the gunners were "Dead" in the eyes of the umpires, and the machine- gun battery continued on its way rejoicing, seeking other unsuspect- ing victims not familiar with the terrific powers of the new weapons.
With the glasses we could see the Reds concentrating at the steep hill of Round Mound, overlooking Atascadero Creek. It was evi- dent they intended to make a stand there, to endeavor to check the invading advance-guard of the Blue army at this point or die. The crest was alive with the brown-clad enemy, and the hillside was cov- ered with the riflemen. We could see the masses of the Blues, and ahead of them the skirmishers, running forward, half bent over, taking cover like so many Indians, firing a few rounds and then dashing forward again in their progress toward the foot of the hill.
Modern warfare, with magazine rifles and machine-guns, does not countenance the old frontal, helter-skelter attack up into the very steel of the enemy's bayonets. The showy part of fighting is gone. In the hills to our right the Blue batteries pounded the enemy on Round Mound pitilessly, steadily, like a blacksmith driving a piece of iron into some desired shape. The Blue infantry ad- vanced slowly, waiting for the shrapnel of the batteries to do its work. The machine-guns, safely hidden behind any little projection that offered itself, or hidden in shallow holes scooped out of the ground, poured a shower of bullets — mythical — on the harassed
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foe on the steep hill. Human nature could not stand such a fire — according to the umpires — the fire of the Reds slackened, and the Blue infantry began to work their way up the fire-speckled slope of the Round Mound. A great cheer went up, coming plainly to our ears across the pretty tree-studded valley. The enemy had been driven oflF the Mound and were in full retreat for the trenches to the southward.
Right down in front of the camp they were pushed, resisting stubbornly and ever and anon putting some reckless squad or com- pany of the Blue out of commission for foolishly getting too close or attacking across some open stretch of ground innocent of cover.
The batteries limbered up, and we could follow them trotting along parallel to the course of the retreating Reds, stopping to pound them whenever they refused to continue their retreat, or when some good chance offered itself for a few shots at masses of the foe. In the rear of the Blue army the signal-corps men followed with their carts and reels of wire, supplying the nerves connecting the different members of the Blue army with the brain far in the rear.
The rattle and roar began to die away, breaking forth now and then in a fresh burst of sound, and then dying away. The fight was nearly over. Far to the south, half a dozen miles away, were the strong entrenchments of the Reds, and all they desired was to gain them. The Blues had proven too strong to be resisted. The problems given to both the Red commanders and the Blue officers had been solved, the fight was over for the day. From the front, where a few shots still spluttered forth now and then, came the sweet notes of an infantry bugle, "The Recall." It was caught and repeated by the other buglers, some nearer to us and others on the furthermost skirmish line, until the last call came to our ears like a mere echo. The firing ceased — the Blues had won the day.
The regiments came swinging back to camp, the men tired and dirty but happy. Their ranks were undiminished, the hospital corps had no wounded to patch up, nor was the field dotted with the dead.
Otherwise the fight might have been a real battle, from all that an onlooker could have told.
Los Angeles.
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SCHOOL DAYS AND OTHER DAYS ON THE HASSAYAMPA
By LAURA TILDEN KENT.
II.
THR PICNIC.
SABEL and Johnny had been going to school for about
two months when Mrs. Dean announced, one morning,
that she would read to the school the story of "The
Boston Tea Party." Isabel had a swift vision of little
short-skirted maidens with curly hair and blue ribbons —
a vision followed by keen disappointment and then by passionate
pride in her country, and, it must be confessed, by passionate scorn
and hatred for anything English.
The Fourth of July was nearing, and that fact had called out this reading and the talk that followed. The Camp was going to cele- brate the day with a picnic and the night with a dance, Mrs. Dean said, and the school children were to have a part in the picnic program. There must be songs by the school, recitations by in- dividual members of the school, and, most important of all, one of the girls, chosen by vote to represent the Goddess of Liberty, would have the rare privilege of sitting on a throne on the platform to be gazed at by all the picnic crowd. Mrs. Dean passed slips of paper about to the children and explained the method of voting for the Goddess.
There was a great stir all. through the room. Pencils were dili- gently sharpened, necks were craned, brows were wrinkled. And nobody was more puzzled than Isabel. She wanted to vote for Teacher's little girl; she wanted to vote for little May, who had beautiful golden curls. You could vote for only one person 1 It was a hard matter to decide — and after you had decided it was dreadful to have to wait until Teacher counted the votes 1
"Isabel Thome is our Goddess of Liberty 1"
Positively that is what Mrs. Dean said after examining the votes 1
Isabel was suddenly more embarrassed than she had ever been before. And how glad she wasl Between the two feelings, she could do nothing but blush and blush and laugh and then put her head down on her desk so that she needn't see the school all staring and smiling at her as they clapped their hands.
How glad she was! — ^until as the clapping grew feebler another sound smote on her ears and brought her face up quickly. Gene- vieve Dean had her face on her desk, too, and Mrs. Dean was bending over her. The room grew very still, and, across the still- ness,
"They don't like me! I had only two votes! I want to be Goddess of Liberty myself! Boo-oo-hoo-o-o."
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Mrs. Dean's reply was not audible, but Genevieve sat up instantly and smiled, and Isabel, who had begun to feel miserable, cheered up again too.
After this exciting day came other stirring times. Recitations and songs must be practiced every afternoon. The children must learn the march that they were to exhibit on the great day. Two young ladies, possibly as much as fifteen years old, began to come to school, and though they had lessons in the mornings, it must be admitted that their principal interest seemed to center in the pro- gram in which they were condescending to assist. In fact, every- body was more interested in the Fourth of July than in the twentieth or the twenty-first or the twenty-second of June. Isabel and Jennie, who were seat-mates, and who had been very good before, whis- pered a good deal now, encouraged by the conduct of the young ladies who sat directly behind them.
From these girls came information, too, as to the celebration. Every day Jennie and Isabel heard whispered conversations.
"I should say I ami What do you take me for? Think Fd miss a dance?"
**Mama *n' I are makin' it now. Blue lawn with bunches of pink and yellow roses — shirred here — so, you see — and here, and here — and with kind of a low neck. — My neck ain't so bad, \il do say so. — Wide lace . . . Ribbon bows. . . . Let's both have 'em! — tied so — 'n' when we dance, the ribbons '11 fly out !"
"Oh ! won't that be nice !"
"He! he!— Mr. C. goin' to take you, I s'pose?"
"Aw, Mary! Don't you wisht you knew?"
"He! he! he!"
"He ! he ! — I just thought you'd be askin' me some fool question like that!"
"He ! he !— I het I know, though. Didn't I see—"
"Aw, Mary ! Shut up. Don't tell the whole country about what you think you seen !"
" 'The buffalo girls will dawnce tonight, dawnce tonight, dawnce tonight.' "
"Aw, quit!"
"Ma's made a fruit cake — "
"Banana cake—"
"Cream pie—"
"He! he! he!"
"Pink satin waist, 'n' black silk skirt."
"Mr. C— he! he! he!"
"Aw, Mary! HtX he! he! he!"
In her secret soul, Isabel thought those two big girls exceedingly
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silly, but they helped with other things to keep up her interest in the great day.. And it came at last !
Mr. and Mrs. Thome were going to the picnic, and as Isabel well knew, some grown-up people are not so eager to set out to celebra- tions as they might be. Isabel was in a fever all the morning.
"Do hurry! Isn't Baby Dot dressed yetf—0\i\ do let's hurry! ril spoil it, if I'm not on time! I'm the Goddess of Liberty! I've got to be there! Do hurry, please f
Then, "long before there was any need of it," as Isabel's mother said, they were all oflF, looking very grand indeed in their holiday clothes. Papa had even been persuaded to wear a stiff collar, though it was in Arizona! And Mama had a new dress with a parasol to match. Isabel's own dress was the pride of her heart.
The family walked to the picnic grounds. There was first a hill to climb, since they must get out of the canon, and then, at The Divide, it was necessary to take a trail to the scene of festivity — a trail that plunged abruptly down into another and narrower cafion — down and down between steep mountain-walls dark with firs and pines, down through the stillness and the coolness — for there is coolness to be had even in Arizona, and on the Fourth of July, if one knows where to find it.
How peaceful it was! A tiny thread of water slipped quietly below them at the right of the trail, and on its little banks were white violets and delicate ferns. Even restless Isabel almost forgot her impatience as she and Johnny gathered flowers for Mama.
Then there came faintly on the little breeze a sound, not of the birds or the bees or the wind.
"What is it ?" Isabel asked wonderingly.
"Is it a violin ?" inquired her mother.
"Oh, let's hurry! We're late!" There was no more peace for Isabel. Suppose the program had begun, and she not there ! And she was the Goddess of Liberty !
A sharp bend in the trail brought the family suddenly within sight of the grounds. The quiet gulch, widening here, was trans- formed. Flags of all sizes floated from every bush and tree. Women flitted about in frantic efforts to pack the lunch away in places sufficiently cool — and safe. Somebody was merrily "running" an ice-cream freezer. Small boys were ecstatically whooping and excitedly firing off whole bunches of crackers. Women were spreading white cloths on the long, rough, board tables manufac- tured for the occasion. Buggy-loads and wagon-loads of people were streaming in from afar. "Teacher," with the help of one small girl, was feverishly endeavoring to get one of the several platforms properly decorated for that very program which had been filling Isabel's anxious thoughts. A "smart" young man came tearing
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into the midst of the confusion on a half-terrified horse. And in the very center of things, on one of the rough platforms, were several hilarious couples waltzing to the sound of that violin which Isabel had heard afar. The fiddler, seated in a chair on another and smaller platform, was bent nearly double over the instrument and was keeping time vigorously with his foot.
The music ceased as the Thomes came up, and immediately there was a great clapping of hands and stamping of feet.
"Give us another!" "Aw! G'onl" "Don't be bashful!" cried the dancers. The fiddler again collapsed over his "gourd," with the remark that he could "raise 'em that same tune agin !"
Off behind some bushes, and quite close to Isabel's side as they paused to have one look at this picture of mirth, was a group whose actions attracted the small girl's attention. In a small crowd of gorgeous, snickering young men and giddy, giggling young ladies she recognized the very youthful teacher of a neighboring school. The young people were drinking a foaming stuff from queer glasses, and the teacher's shrill voice reached Isabel easily.
"Great Scott ! Ain't I setting an awful example before the young! Anyhow — he ! he ! — 111 keep behind these bushes an* hope that none o' my teetotaler kids' parents '11 notice me ! Haw ! haw ! — he ! he ! How much of it do you s'pose I can drink without getting under the influence?"
Isabel, who had supposed that nobody but wicked men drank beer, was frozen with horror at these words, and was very thankful to be seized by Genevieve Dean and borne away into the midst of the firecracker crowd, where she could forget them. The crowd was all boys, else, but what did they care for that? They had no fire- crackers when they joined the group, but a man who seemed to be wantonly dispensing loads of such luxuries supplied them both — ^and Isabel entered so far the valley of oblivion that she had actually forgotten that she was to be Goddess until her mother came and seized her.
She was rushed away between Mrs. Dean and the smallest woman in camp, who took them to her house and lent to Isabel one of her own white skirts. This was fastened under Isabel's arms over her own dress, her shoulders were much draped with flags, a white handkerchief with a red-and-white border was made into a liberty- cap, and a tiny flag was stuck in the front of it at an effective angle. Isabel's long hair was loosened and let down around her, the cap was set upon her head, and Mrs. Dean stepped off to admire her work.
"Ah ! Isn't she sweet ! Isn't she the dearest Goddess of Liberty !" Mrs. Dean thus went into raptures over the results of her own labor, and her praises of the beauty of the Goddess were echoed
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more faintiy by the other woman. Isabel was allowed one tanta- lizing look in the glass, and was hurried once more to the grounds, where she was instantly surroimded by a swarm of children all clamoring for the honor of marching with her in that beautiful march.
Then the program went off, and Isabel, even when others were performing, felt herself to be the center and almost the circumfer- ence, too, of the whole perfect affair. Nothing was wanting to this auspicious occasion. There was even an Englishman in the aud- ience to feel cheap when he heard Jennie reciting "Paul Revere's Ride!" Isabel exultantly pictured his feelings when Jennie de- claimed in a fine, loud voice :
"You know the rest, in the books you have read — How the British regulars fired and fled, How the farmers gave them ball for ball From behind each fence and farmyard wall. Chasing the red-coats down the lane."
Oh ! it was glorious !
"Jennie, FU bet that Englishman wouldn't have come today if he'd known what piece you were going to speak!" whispered the Goddess ecstatically as Jennie passed by the foot of her throne.
When it was ended, she still sat on her gorgeously draped seat and received the compliments of the crowd. Even when lunch was served on the long tables, Isabel still sat on that throne and was waited upon by various excited small boys, a few admiring girls and one or two women who were thoughtful enough to see that she should have a fitting assortment of the good things to eat.
And how Isabel did thrill with the importance of her position! What a queen she felt herself as she saw five boys, her loyal subjects, bearing down upon her, at one and the same time, each laden with a large dish of ice-cream !
"Aw! take mine, Isabel!" "/ brought her this dish!" "Here, Goddess of Liberty!" "Hold on, you! I was first!" "Anyhow, I'm goin' to fetch you the next dish !" "Me third !" "Here, Isabel ! this is the best cake ! I sampled every last one to be sure."
And the Goddess held high her queenly head and handled her tin spoon with a truly regal grace, little knowing that her reign would be so short, and that, this bounteous repast over, her subjects would be charmed away by other allurements and that she would be left in solitary state to look wistfully at the women who cleared the tables, and then rather amusedly at the dancers, who shortly began to make use of the platforms again.
She had been watching a fat, gray-haired man, whose long coat- tails were flapping wildly, whose high silk hat was kept at a perilous angle over one ear, and who was swinging his partners about in a reckless, jovial fashion quite wonderful to see, when her mother and another lady came up, saying that it was a pity to keep a child sitting still for so long a time ; and she was hastily divested of her royal robes — half to her relief and half to her regret, since she did look so well in them!
She was free to play with the rest of the children for a surprisingly short time, however, since her father and mother were almost in-
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stantly suggesting that they must go home. Johnny, who had had a more active day than Isabel, was ready to go, but the Goddess felt otherwise.
"Not yetl not yetl" she was begging.
And then Mrs. Dean appeared.
*'rm going to take Genevieve home now," she said, "but she is crazy to go to the school house tonight to see the dance there, and I'm going to take her for a few minutes. Mayn't Isabel stay with her tonight, and go too?"
"Oh, mama! — please!" breathed Isabel.
"Why, she's seen the dancing today," replied her mother, "and I'm afraid she'll be too tired if she stays — "
"Ah ! but she won't have the long walk home," coaxed Mrs. Dean. "And I'll make them both rest now. I shouldn't let them stay late, of course — only a little while ! — and the dance this evening will be so different — so much nicer than the one today I Only the rougher people have danced much on these horrid platforms 1 — And they say that there's to be a really good violinist there tonight. Gene- vieve is wild to hear him. Oh ! they'd enjoy it so much, I'm sure !"
All the while Mrs. Dean was presenting her arguments, Genevieve was pulling at Mrs. Thome's gown and begging, too.
"O Mrs. Thorne! Dear Mrs. Thome! — please, please, please! Oh! 1 won't love you if you don't! Please!''
And Isabel, almost despairing of a favorable reply, yet begged in every pause, "Please, Mama !"
It was a joyful surprise to hear her mother give her consent and to know that the blissful celebration was not yet over for her.
Maxton, Arizona.
LAKE CAHUILLA
THE ANCIENT LAKE OF THE COLORADO DESERT.
T a meeting of the Cosmos Club of Tucson, the following com- munication was read by Mr. William P. Blake, Professor of Geology Emeritus, University of Arizona:
The ancient sheet of water which in comparatively recent geologic time filled the basin of the Colorado Desert, below the sea level, and left the records of its occupation of the valley by deposits of travertin upon its rocky shores, by lines of desert beaches, by deposits of lacustrine clays holding myriads of fossil fresh-water shells, and all at the level of the Gulf of California or below it, were for the first time recognized and described by me in the year 1853.
In the San Francisco newspaper, edited by J. D. Whelpley; and after, in the Report of Geological Reconnaissance in California, 4 to 1855; and in Vol. V of United States Explorations and Surveys from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
The outline of the lake, its length, breadth and depth, its relations to the Colorado River and the Gulf, its origin and history, were fully described at that time, and these descriptions and theory of origin have since been con- firmed and sustained by later explorations;
Public attention has of late been directed towards the region by reason of its partial submergence and the destruction of the salt beds at Salton, in the lowest part of the valley. This new sheet of water, which does not rise to the ancient lake level, is known as the "Salton Sea," and is appropriately named.
As the original discoverer and describer of the ancient lake, I claim the right to give it a name, and propose "Lake Cahuilla" — Cahuilla being the tribal name of the aboriginees who were found living in and about the valley and whose descendants are still there.
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75 THE MAKING OF BILLY
By LILLIAN H, SHUEY. |R. TRUMBULL and his daughter had stopped for a night and a half day of rest at French's Station, a stage house fifty miles from the railroad. At noon Miss Stacy Trumbull stood on the porch almost in Dave Godell's way as he sprang down from the stage. She had often heard Will Curry speak of him, and the landlady at French's had not stinted her praises of Dave when she told Stacy that it was he who would drive her and her father the re- maining twenty miles of their journey to that spot in the high Sierra of California known as Lost Ledge.
While the landlady's talk of Dave's gallantry, his manliness, and fitness to be something higher than a stage driver, was not espe- cially interesting to Stacy, yet it made it easier for her to speak to him. She had been compelled to sit in the coach the day before, and she wanted to take the last picturesque twenty miles in the outside seat.
"Mr. Godell, 'first come I' Won't you put me up in the front seat now?"
"Certainly." He handed up the neat figure in tan duck, and she wasted a smile on him as she settled herself.
Her father, two commercial men, and the wealthiest Chinaman in Plumas County made a smoking parlor of the inside of the stage. A little later Godell unwound the lines from the brake, the four fresh horses threw up their heads, and they were off. The cool breeze played with the plumes of Stacy's hat and brought bright color to her cheek. She glanced at Godell, noting his clear gray eye, and self-possession.
"This is a better stage than the one I rode in yesterday," she remarked, wondering if he spoke good English.
"It ought to be; it's a new one," he said, putting on the brake and watching the steep road ahead, but not oblivious of the pure, sweet face and fluttering veil near him.
Stacy's questions came eagerly, two or three at once.
"Yes, it's twenty miles to Lost Ledge," he explained, "and there's fine scenery, lots of it — not many houses, but there is a mining camp not far away whenever there is a mail box by the road — Do you see that one?"
"It looks like a pigeon-house," answered the girl.
IJe smiled, and she was openly admiring his masterly handling of the reins, when they heard a shout from the rear. Godell wound up the lines and went back of the coach.
"I've got to put another driver on in my place," he said, returning. ^'They've sent for me to bring up an extra from Gold Bar to the
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dance at French's tonight. This man. Bird, is one of our best drivers, but they call him 'Talkative Tommy/ and he'll probably talk you to death before you get there."
He looked up with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, and was gone; she heard the clatter of a galloping horse, while Bird was seating himself, and they were off again.
Alert, wiry, weather-bronzed, corduroy trousers, red handker- chief, fur-topped driving-gloves — the real mountain stage-driver was with her. Beginning with a dry laugh, he gave her no time to formulate a question.
"Ha! that's a good one, pulling Dave Godell off this chariot; m bet he's kicking himself all over. We don't have lady passen- gers every day. You never been to Lost Ledge? It used to be a town years ago. Dave and me live there, and it knocks the spots off living nowhere; now Dave, he likes it, ha, ha!" the driver seemed overcome with a humorous idea, "but he'll quit liking it before long — nobody can win out over our Billy. How large is it? Well, there's Jones's Hotel, put there some time in the sixties, a store and post-office, and we've got a school and a school marm — What do you think of that for a camp that's been dead for thirty- five year? The blacksmith's got six children, and the North Fork mine sends seven. Miss Whitman, she come up to teach her first school when she was eighteen and she's been here seven summers. She brings her mother up with her, and they keep house. Her friends come up camping, and we wouldn't have no town without Miss Whitman.
"She's the one that got Billy Curry to go off to the University — she's the making of him, and he don't forgfit her for a minute."
Miss Trumbull clasped the seat-strap with a convulsive grip, and a sudden color lit her face.
"Never mind that fool horse, Miss," said Bird. "He shies at that rock three hundred and ninety times a year. When Miss Whitman came here, Billy thought he was grown up, and he'd gone to work in the tunnels. The teacher boarded with his mother, and the first thing we knew Billy was going to school, and he was almost as old as the teacher. We all knew Billy was bright as a whip, but we didn't think much of him sitting around studying Latin books. His mother, she owned a meadow and half of the Lost Ledge Mountain. Way back in the sixties, John Mackey — you've heard of him, Miss — used to be round here prospecting. One day he came down that mountain, and he had some quartz shot with gold, and he said there was a good ledge up there. But Lord I nobody fooled with ledges in them days. After a while, when the creek gravel gave out, everybody went hunting for Mackey's ledge, but there'd been forest fires and stock tramping over it, so
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we called it the Lost Ledge. In ^90, Billy's father bought the land for pasture. We've got no mine, but we've got Billy Curry; he's out at the University now, and the hull county's proud of him."
Bird glanced around at his listener, quizzically.
"Maybe you came from thereabouts, and perhaps you've heard of Billy? They say he brought home a trunk full of degrees — whatever they be."
Miss Trumbull did not try to avoid the issue.
**Yes," she said, smiling faintly. "I know him quite well."
The stage clattered across a bridge over a deep rock-bleached river-bed, and started on the winding way of a mountain grade. On either side a forest of slender pines and heavy spruce trees afforded the travelers a sense of protection from the dangers of mountain climbing., The horses settled down to steady pulling, and Bird returned to his story.
"We're going to send Billy to the legislature," he said. "We can't let him shovel dirt with all that education. His mother, she sold the meadow to send him to Berkeley, and Miss Whitman, she sent him money right along. I guess we'll have to let her have Billy to pay the bill. That's the talk, anyhow."
Bird was touching up the leaders with his long lash, unconscious of the change in Miss Trumbull, her expressionless pallor and lowered eyes. But presently, noticing her drooping attitude as she gathered her veil about her face, he said sympathetically :
"When we git to the top, I'll stop and let you oflF to rest. You can get a look at Lost Ledge down at the foot of the mountain."
Stacy stood with her father on a shelving rock and overlooked a vast panorama of ridges, gulches, table-land and forests.
"Why don't you say things ?" asked Trumbull.
She was fussing with her glove — she had removed a ring from her finger and slipped it into her purse.
"I'm tired through and through," she said. "I'm going to bed as soon as we get there."
When the driver wound the lines on the brake in front of the hotel, Billy Curry was on the left lifting his hat to Stacy, but she gave her arms to Bird and was handed down on the other side. Billy followed her into the parlor, while her father went on to the office.
"Stacy, it was so good of you to come."
She had to let him take her cold hand.
"I always go with father in the summer," she explained, "to do his t)rping."
"I engaged two rooms for you," he went on, "when your father wrote ,that he would come. You're tired, aren't you ? But here's Mrs. Jones."
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"Good night, Mr. Curry/' Stacy said as she darted forward to meet the landlady,
Trumbull was a mining expert and promoter, and he had come at the call of Curry to examine a reported discovery. After supper he went with the young man to his home, a steep-roofed gabled house with hop-vines over the windows and a prim garden of an- nuals in front.
In the morning he found his daughter on the upper balcony.
"Daughter, this won't do. You're not going to be sick ?"
"No, Father," she said from the depths of a big rocking chair, "I wouldn't spoil your trip for anything — I'll go to breakfast."
In the dining-room, when busy Mrs. Jones had left them alone, he told her his news.
"I think we've found the lost ledge," he said. "Curry's been blasting, and we're going up to look at it. You must take an alpen- stock and go too. It's interesting. Curry's been sighting lines and making cuts for a month, and found nothing; but the school teacher was up there digging lily bulbs, and she brought down a stringer of gold out of rotten quartz. That's luck. She's the making of Curry all right, and me too, for he's made me an offer. The teacher's going up with iis. She'll be company for you."
Stacy walked a little unsteadily to her room. She was thinking over the incidents of her friendship with Billy Curry. They had been much together without appointment or planning. At the last, one night after a little supper at her home to a number of her friends, when the others had gone, he had said, as he slipped a little wire of a ring on her finger :
"This is just for memories — all my hopes are in a lost ledge." He had looked in her eyes intently, and they said good night as usual — but had she misunderstood it all?
In her room she faced her mirror, and showed herself how bravely she could smile. This Mary Whitman — he had often spoken of her. She was one of those women who do things in the world. She had earned Billy — he was hers by right of discovery and con- quest. She laughed aloud at her facetious thought, and snatching up her tan veil, but forgetting her gloves, ran downstairs.
Curry came to meet them, wild-eyed with excitement.
"You look rested," he said, taking her hand. "You are going?"
"I must have an Alpine stick I" she said.
He was gone, and she turned to take the outstretched hand of Mary Whitman. Her clasp was warm, her hazel eyes winning, her full features expressed sincerest cordiality.
"I have heard so much of you," she exclaimed, "of your hospital- ity and kindness to our Billy. I need no introduction — ^ypu are Stacy Trumbull."
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"I am delighted to meet Mr. Curry's friend," murmured Stacy.
"And so nice to have you go with us," said Miss Whitman.
Curry was coming back. "Get two sticks," she called to him.
He disappeared, came in sight with two, disappeared again and appeared with four.
"Billy isn't himself this morning," said Miss Whitman with a merry laugh.
The men walked ahead, conversing earnestly; the teacher di- rected Stacy's attention to the points of interest.
"This is Dry Creek, a torrent in winter. On the south is Bald Mountain. When we have crossed the meadow we begin our climb to the lost ledge. I was so glad Billy knew your father so we could send for him. You'll like the meadow, it's a carpet of flowers."
Stacy did like it. She went down on her knees in beds of flower- ing mint, and swarms of butterflies fluttered over her head; then the lilies in the open and the lupines on the banks detained her.
Up the mountain the men dropped into a gully and were out of sight. Curry had made a dozen openings, and the matter was very plain to Trumbull. He sought a rock-seat in the shade, mo- tioned Billy to his side, and made notes as he talked.
"It's agreed, is it, Mr. Curry?" he said. "I am to exploit the mine, put up such a mill as we need to begin on, for one-third in- terest, you and your mother have one-third, who is to have the other third?"
"The discoverer," said Billy promptly, "All I am I owe to Miss Whitman."
Trumbull made his notes, and then showed Billy where to run his tunnel to strike deep in the vein.
When the girls came, Billy took charge of Stacy and told her all about the dip and incline and many other things of which she understood little. Suddenly she missed her father and hurried after him; Billy could only follow her leading all the way to the hotel. She remarked that she had to write for her father after lunch, and he explained that he had to go back up the mountain to put some men to work.
When he came down from the mine in the afternoon he found Miss Whitman in her garden in the rear of her house.
"Mary!" he exclaimed joyously, "everything is O. K. Trumbull is going to put in thousands to open up the mine and build a road, and you are to have a third interest by right of discovery."
"And must I accept it?" she said, laughing, hoeing her strawberry bed.
"Yes, and I owe you a lot of money besides. It doesn't pay for what you have done for me, not by a good deal. Before you came up here, I used to win money at cards in saloons, and by
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cheating, too. You made a man of me and presented me with a rich mine; I ought to give you anything you'd ask — I'm going to pay the debt."
She leaned on her hoe and looked at him, the wind blowing her soft hair from her brow.
"I'd like to know just how grateful you are," she said.
"Test me !" he returned, taking her by the arm and leading her to the shelter of a hop-vine over the rear porch. "Make your re- quest and it shall be granted."
She thought a moment, her chin in her hand.
"Promise me that you will go into politics and carry honor with you."
He took her hand. "Then you are to go with me," he said. "Be my wife — you can make me governor of the State."
"Billy," she said, her lustrous eyes looking into his, "do you want me for what I can do, or because you love me?"
He was silent so long that she pulled his hand into her arm.
"Billy!" Her tone was joyous.
He spoke deliberately, low-voiced.
"Mary, I want you because you are the best woman in the world, because I love you, and because I want all the world to know I don't shirk my obligations."
She held his lax hand tightly in hers. "Because I'm the best — that isn't a very good reason, Billy, but I'm proud of you. Oh, I'm so glad you're true. You're no sneak, are you, Billy dear?"
He sat down on the door-step; she stood by, her hand on his shoulder.
"IVe got a problem for you," she went on. "Call it conic sec- tions, or, more plainly, broken hearts. If you were a woman, would you marry a man unless you were sure he loved you enough to make some sacrifice for you — as, for instance, changing his business?"
"I've been following your orders for seven years," broke in Billy.
She touched him caressingly on the forehead.
"If I've been the making of you, Billy," she said, "I'm proud. I'm so glad I made you on the principle of the square ; but I did not refer to you in my question. And I have another one to ask."
"Ask," murmured Billy. "Make it mathematical, if you want to."
"Have you thought about a superintendent at the mine? Don't you think Dave Godell would make a good one?"
"Dave shall have the place at his own price," answered Billy. "I'll make him take it. Now my question, please! Let's settle it, Mary. I must know today."
She drew him to his feet.
"Billy, the best woman in the world refuses to marry the most
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honorable man in the world, because, because — why, your idea is purely romantic "
"Then you positively refuse me because you want to?"
"Yes, dearest Billy. If you can't succeed without my help now, my work is bad."
He kissed her firm red cheek.
"Mary, I love you jusc as much — I love you more!" he cried.
"You old blunderer," she said, "you told it to me in spite of yourself. I've known for a year where your heart was. You go over and see her now. Talkative Tonmiy drove her up. There's no telling what he said, and she's a sensitive plant."
Billy ran out of the yard.
In sight of the hotel, through the tree branches in front, he caught a glimpse of a white dress on the upper balcony. He noted that Trumbull was in the office.
He pushed open the French windows from the upper hall.
"Stacy!"
She smiled from the depths of the rocker, with contentment in her eyes.
He pushed away the table and t)rpewriter, and took the chair near her.
"Why, there is the ring!" he said joyously. "You didn't have it on this morning." She laughed musically, while he took her hand and examined the ring as if he had never seen it before.
"I've heard some interesting news," she said with a little shake in her voice. "Mrs. Jones informed me at lunch that Miss Whitman is to marry Dave Godell."
Billy sprang up and paced the floor, laughing. "What! Dave! he said. "Well, well, I have been so stupid 1 Oh, it's all right, it's fine!"
He came and bent over Stacy's chair.
"But I'm transparent, you know. Just a moment ago she in- formed me that my heart was over here with you." He took her hands, lifting her, and the "sensitive plant" gave tremulous lips to Billy.
Oakland, Cal
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5.59
(Reprinted by reqneet) By CHAS. F. LUMMIS.
HA ! There whistles Number One !
And down the tingling grade she grows. Tossing her cloud of tresses dun
Back on the twilight's ^ading rose.
A mile — a moment — and my Kate From years, and half a world, apart.
But now we'll snap our thumbs at Fate And keep our Kingdom of the Heart.
And — eh? The world is drowned in steam — A volleying, billowing, deafening cloud —
And men there run as in a dream, And through the thunderous fog they crowd.
"An open switch," I heard one say : An op — But that's a wreck! And she
A half a hundred yards away! Oh, God ! How ill from Fate we flee !
How cursed leaden drag my feet —
And yet the rest are far behind — On thro' the misty winding-sheet,
My — Heaven! I know not what — to find.
Ugh ! That I trod on moved and cried !
Ah! There she is! My Kate! My Kate! Unscratched ! Nor any soul beside
Is lost, of all that living freight.
But while the grumbling travelers hie To crowd the station with their fret. Here, Sweetheart, step a little by To thank the savior they forget.
Nay, not in words — that dull ear cranes
Not even to your music, Sweet; For that poor chap in greasy jeans
There come the stretcher and the sheet.
But of your pure heart's purest give To him the hungry Death that spied
Timely himself to leap and live,
But stayed — and stopped the train — and died!
And yon dumb dinger to the dead —
Aye, weep for her who cannot! She Upon the morrow should have wed
With him that brought you safe to me. Scribner's Magazine, October, 1890.
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THE CHILDREN'S WAR
By ADELIA BEE ADAMS and COO-VAI-EN-YU (Yuma Indian).
jEFORE the time of Comustomho, the great sage, the different tribes of Indians were as one. There was harmony among them all ; they roamed over the whole western continent just as if they were of one body and one mind. This roving band of Indians, was composed of twelve tribes, namely: Cumya (Diegueiios), Yava-pi-awhats (Apaches), Yava-pi (Yuma Apaches), Hat-pa (Pimas), Hat-pa- enya (Maricopas), Qua-chan (Yumas), Whoala-pi (Wallapais), Chem-a-weve (Chemawevas), Cocapa (Cocopas), Hem-ac-have (Mojaves), Ha-quech (Missions), and a tribe now almost extinct — Ca-whan. At this day the Ca-whan, Cum-ya and Hem-ac-have tribes speak in almost similar tongues.
The harmony existing in the original band was finally disturbed through the influence of the witch-doctors (ma-teech-e-thav) and the medicine-men and ghost-doctors of the various tribes. After Comustomho's death, the band decided to seek new camping- grounds, having first observed the usual mourning feasts and fasts alternately, with religious ceremonies, which it was their custom to practice at the death of a gjeat man. Having cremated their venerated sage, they buried his ashes at a spot twenty miles east of Yuma, surrounded by low rounded hills which are remarkable for a peculiar awesome beauty which enwraps them at the hour of sunset, each knoll being strangely illuminated by a wonderful rosy light. While the burial-place is unmarked by any apparent sign, yet it is said all the Indians of today know the exact spot where the great one's ashes lie; though undoubtedly, if questioned by a casual white inquirer, the majority of them would stolidly deny any knowledge of the entire subject. They do not discuss their dearest memories and traditions with the white man.
During their journey along the Colorado river in quest of Na- ture's best offerings of fruits and roots and land and water, each of the aforementioned "doctors" announced that he had been au- thorized by his controlling spirits to proclaim that his tribe was to rule all the others. The influence of these men was potent among their people, who believed them to be possessed of great occult powers bestowed upon them by celestial spirits inhabiting certain stars and terrestrial spirits inhabiting certain mountains, and these proclamations of their oracles caused some dissension among them, though they still kept together as one band. But the leaven of discontent spread, so that eventually they separated and traveled in separate groups.
On such joumeyings they took with them the animals of various kinds, for at that time there was harmony between man and beast,
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and all animals were tame. There was no such thing as a wild and savage animal, nor had the Indians then made practice of kill- ing the animals for food. There are legends telling of how the animals first separated from and became antagonistic to man. This came about through the growing cruelty of the people. The first animal to become unfriendly to man was the snake. The children of the tribes, in rough sport, took to using the snakes as whips with which to lash each other. Of this cruelty a serpent com- plained one day to the Great Spirit, who told him to bite the next person who should use him so wantonly. This he did, and immediately glided away from the camp and never returned.
After a time some of the restless youngsters of different groups began to pelt each other with stones. This they found such in- teresting sport that they continued in it lustily for many days, when some of the older ones joined in the game, which after a time be- came so strenuous and so persistent that it took on a serious aspect, so that the old and wise ones of the different tribes became alarmed and begged the gamesters to desist ; but the young ones had grown so lustful for revenge that they paid no heed to the entreaties of their elders. The latter put their heads together to form a plan by which harmony might be restored between their offspring, and at length, to disrupt the fight, they formed in line and walked in close file between the opposing forces; but the blankets of bark with which they had taken precaution to cover their heads and bodies were too short to cover their feet and ankles, so that the stones which the reckless gamesters did not hesitate to cast against them, for their interference, struck those unprotected members with full force, and they in turn, becoming infuriated by the pain, turned upon their assailants and joined in the fray with vim. Thus it was that what began as children's sport eventually became a savage battle; the first (so says tradition) among the Indians.
That battle was the beginning of a warfare fought with stones, which continued even into the years ; after which the tribes drifted apart, gradually separating and scattering in various directions over the continent. The Wallapais, Mojaves, Chemawevas, Yuma Apaches, Dieguens, Yumas, and Ca-whans remained loyal to each other. The Apaches were the first to desert their fellows; then those now called Missions ; the Maricopas and the Pimas went to- gether; and then the Cocopas withdrew from the others.
After many years of wandering the Maricopas and Pimas settled in Arizona, and from there they came on the war-path to attack the Yumas. But they used no weapons in their warfare, other than their tongues. They appeared at the enemy's camp day after day, and they "howled, and howled, and howled." Then they returned to tell their people they had been engaged in war with the Yumas. This
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method of fighting they actually practiced for several years. At last a man among the Yumas — a hermit — invented some weapons. One night while this hermit slept, a war-spirit appeared to him and took him to an unknown land where he was shown strange races of people, of such as he had no knowledge, warring upon each other. He was shown their weapons, and comprehended how they were made. When he awoke, he set about making such weapons — spears, bows and arrows, and all such as have since been used in warfare by any Indians. It is believed by the Indians that the weapons then made by the hermit-seer were the first known to the Indians of America.
When the Maricopas again appeared and began to howl, the hermit jimiped on his horse* and began to chase them. The sur- prised warriors of the East did not stand on the order of their going, and so confused were they that their pursuer had easy opportunity to pierce their bodies with his weapons as he rode against them. They made no attempt to fight, evidently considering that he who runs away lives to fight another day; and they did return to fight at a later day, armed with similar weapons to those used by the seer ; apparently having gained possession of enough of those he had made to use for patterns.
After this the tribes who controlled the Colorado river were all armed with weapons, and real fighting frequently occurred between the Yumas, Wallapais, Mojaves, Chemawevas, Yuma Apaches, Diegueiios, and Ca-whans, on one side, and the Apaches, Maricopas, Pimas, and Cocopas, on the other.
The Missions were not a warring race and were never known to invade the territory of others. A pitiful story is told, that Missions encamped at the place now called Indio and on the San Jacinto Mountain were once attacked without warning and massacred by Yumas, who were scouring the country for Cocopas. The remain- ing Missions, filled with revenge, gathered a fair number of their young braves and sent them in pursuit of the murderers ; but after a few weeks' absence, two alone of their number returned and reported that, having traveled into unfamiliar desert country and finding no water, the others had perished of thirst. Few Indians meet with such fate. It is claimed that the Yumas, if need be, can bring rain to earth by occult power ; and Coo-vai-enu, who furnishes the chief incidents of this story, has seen his father apparently bring
^Though historians have averred that no horses were found among the Indians at the time of the advent of the white people in America, the Indians claim among themselves thftt horses were in use among them long before that time. There are spirit horses in many of their "ghost-stories." — Author.
This proves the recent date of the story. There were no horses, even in ghost-stories, until the Spanish Conquest. — ^Editor.
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down rain by incantation or prayer, when, in company with himself and another son during a trip across the desert, the elder man found that all of the party were suffering from thirst, with no water in sight and no apparent sign of rain in the sky. ^
For many years all the allied tribes of the Colorado river remained loyal to each other, except the Ca-whan, which through much war- ring and occasional epidemics had become nearly extinct. Children of this tribe and some Yuma children, while bathing one day in the Colorado river, engaged in the war game, ta-whes-o-whes, which is practiced by placing a bit of half-dry mud against the end of a tough g^een stick and with a peculiar motion throwing it against the op- ponent, whom it stings with such penetrating force that usually he is stimulated to retaliate with prompt energy. The children became so enthusiastic over the sport that they went at it again the following day, and then again the next day, and the next, and so they con- tinued until it seemed as if the game was to be prolonged indefi- nitely. Each day the opposing sides were re-enforced by new mem- bers, and the game waxed more and more furious. Soon the blood of some of the young men rose to the sport and they joined iri the g^me with the youngsters ; then the parents began to take part with their children, after which the situation began to look serious. At length the old and wise ones tried to separate them by walking in close file between the opposing forces, but the blankets which they had drawn over their heads and bodies did not extend to their feet, and these the then infuriated warriors did not hesitate to batter with their stinging missiles ; so that the peace-makers, becoming enraged with the pain from the blows upon their bare flesh, finally turned upon both parties and there was a frightful hand-to-hand melee. Thus did history repeat itself; the children of the later-day people bringing on war and feud between the tribes as their ancestors had done in the past. The chief men of both tribes interfered, and the fight was stopped, but there remained a bitter feeling between the two tribes afterward, though the Yumas tried to conceal their enmity. The Ca-whans proceeded secretly to prepare for war.
The word "friend" is exactly similar in the languages of the two tribes, but in the Ca-whan means also the throat, or the swallower; so when a Yuma saluted a Ca-whan as "My Friend," the Ca-whan would reply flippantly, "Yes, my throat," or, "My swallower" — with a contemptuous and ambiguous meaning impossible to translate. One day this tribe attacked the Yumas treacherously, without warn- ing, and killed many of the men and carried oflF many maids and women to enslave them. It is believed that this attack was due to the advice of an old woman of the Ca-whans who incited her people thereto by telling them they were destined to become a great people, and that she had been appointed by war-spirits to lead them away
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from the place where they were, and to lead and direct them ever afterward in their battles. The attack occurred at sunset, and was a savage one. Among the Yumas who escaped was a young girl who afterward became grandmother to the narrator, Coo-vai-enu. It is not recounted that the old lady who incited the attack ever became a distinguished amazon.
The Ca-whans joined the Maricopas, who, however, regarded them not as friends, but as treacherous enemies; and in the fights in which the Maricopas engaged, they forced the wretched Ca-whans to the front of their ranks to take the brunt of the battle. It is even said that during such battles the Maricopas frequently shot them from the rear.
The Yumas hammered away at the Ca-whans until the various tribes were brought to terms of peace through the encroaching civ- ilization of the whites. Some years ago the Ca-whans were visited by an epidemic that nearly completed the work of extermination begun by the Yumas and their allies. The remnant left of the tribe, now living in the Maricopa cotmtry, consists of a half-dozen families.
Many and fearful have been the encounters resulting from the long-standing feuds between various tribes. Among the most ferocious of these encounters was one that took place not much more than a half century ago, near Yuma, between the Yumas and the Maricopas. The latter had planned to surprise the Yumas, but they, learning of their enemies' intention, prepared to receive them. They sent some of their young men to meet them, who addressed the enemy suavely, pointing out to them the shallowest parts of the river, over which they were to cross to reach the Yuma camp ; then when their visitors were well across the stream, the young bucks showed them their heels, and returned to their own settlement with great forthwithness.
The battle that followed was fought with clubs alone, and must have been arranged between the two parties with some system, de- spite the attempt at surprise by the Maricopas. The opposing forces lined up for the fight, face to face. On the Yuma side the women fought also, being ranged closely behind the men. One woman who fought with a child strapped to her back, covered with a woven basket to protect him, afterward became grandmother to the nar- rator, Coo-vai-enu, the child having become his father, who is now identified with the Yumas. The Yuma warriors, when opportunity oflfered, seized the opposing warriors and passed them back to the women, who clubbed them to death.
The enmities long existing between differing tribes, with the savage warrings which reduced the entire Indian people in numbers and strength, leaving them unfit to cope with other invading powers, may be said to be the direct result of that ancient and at first appar- ently inconsequential event of the Children's War.
Garvanza, Cal.
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SAGEBRUSH
By 'GENE STONE.
I OLEMN hush of sunset-time. Far oflF, crimson-tinted west, Faint blue mountains, clear, yet far, Their ragged peaks just amber-kissed.
Soft the tender twilight sky.
Blue as eyes beloved of old
Save where farther southward there,
A touch like hair of burnished gold.
'Neath the sky, across the plain — The grey, old plain of countless age — I linger on the color-tone. The green-g^ey velvet of the sage.
Onward toward the silent hills Where the twilight shadows fall. Bush on bush and rank on rank They march to scale the mountain wall.
Sheltered by the tangled growth, Wild things start, and peer, and glance; Bright-eyed rabbit, dove, and quail. Haunt the quiet grey expanse.
Lids half-shut, across the brush I gaze, and 'mid the soft light's play Catch the dainty overtones Of violet, sweet as fading day.
Can the burdened heart go forth. Weighed with toil or haunting pain. Brood on this untroubled calm And listless wander on again? Carson City, Nev.
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A CHANGE IN THE CONTRACT
By MARGARET ADELAIDE WILSON, |E might have known her for a heroine at first sight. The very way in which she stepped oflF the stage, com- posed and alert, yet with the unmistakable air of one awaiting events, distinguished her at once from the dusty commonplaceness of the other passengers.
In our year's sojourn at the little Santa Rosalia hotel, Peyton and I had come to know the general run of travelers pretty well — ranchers, established or prospective; cowboys on their way to the desert ranges; bored "drummers** in the implement line whose chief topic of conversation was the horrors of the thirty-mile stage- ride across the mountains. Feminine travel, always in the small minority, was made up for the most part of ranchers' wives and daughters going to and fro on their annual shopping tours to the little railroad town of Uplands.
But the newcomer was a stranger to the valley. Moreover, she was English. This we guessed from her accent, as well as from the fact that her forehead was covered with a very elaborate fringe which almost veiled her snapping black eyes. Our conjectures were verified by an examination of the hotel register, where we learned that she was a Miss Rose Greenfield, from some little town in Devonshire whose name I have since forgotten.
"An English spinster," observed Peyton. "Hm! Queer place for her to turn up in. What do you suppose she's come for?"
"Haven't an idea. Unless she has a father or brother in the valley— or a fianc6," I added as an afterthought.
"Greenfield?" ruminated Peyton. "No Greenfield in the country that I know of. And if it's a lover, one would have thought he would be here to meet his lady."
"There she is at our table," I whispered as we reached the dining- room door. "Now's your chance to find out all about her."
It was against the usual custom to put a stranger at our table, the good-natured Lena generall} arranging it so that Peyton, the little school-teacher and 1 should dine undisturbed by the chilling presence of any transient. We felt somewhat aggrieved at the sight of a fourth, in spite of our curiosity about the newcomer.
Miss Walton, however, seemed rather pleased than otherwise with the addition. She had apparently been pining for the com- panionship of another young woman. As we took our seats she introduced us to Miss Greenfield with the air of an old acquaintance. Peyton merely bowed, leaving it to me to murmur politely of our pleasure in the meeting. The young lady's look of flattered surprise made this common formula take on an embarrassingly personal note.
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"Thank you so much/' she said. "You Americans are all so hospitable." She spoke in a high voice, rather pleasant in spite of a scarcely noticeable omission of the aspirate before the word "hospitable."
She was not hard to get acquainted with, it seemed. Before dinner was over she had given us a brief outline of her family history, her life on a Devonshire farm, the exact amount of a legacy left her the year before by an obliging aunt — everything, in fact, except a clue to her presence in this out-of-the-way spot. The omission naturally aroused our curiosity. Peyton's interest was pricked to the point of trying a leading question.
"You are staying in the valley long?" he asked politely.
"Oh, yes," Miss Greenfield assured him. "I already count my- self quite one of you. I have come prepared to like it, you know." She paused, as if contemplating further confidences. She appeared to be the most ordinary, matter-of-fact young woman, yet she had a way of leading one to expect something exciting around every turn in the conversation. Her eyes fell, as if by chance, on Peyton's careless garb. He had to go back up the canon after dinner and was still in his riding-clothes.
"And I am not at all disappointed," she went on at last. "The way you gentlemen dress is quite what I had looked for — so com- fortable and picturesque."
She seemed unaware of the fact that Peyton was blushing furiously under her scrutiny. And the next moment found her bestowing equally frank admiration on the peppers that drooped graceful over the verandah outside. The subject of their pic- turesqueness was not yet exhausted when the entrance of the stage-driver with her trunk-checks created a diversion. The trans- action that followed left us with a high opinion of Miss Green- field's commercial abilities.
"They told me I should have to look sharp in traveling in your country," she observed, as she deposited her purse in some mys- terious pocket of her petticoat. "But I think," she added com- placently, "that I 'aven't been 'soaked,' as you call it, so far."
She said " 'aven't" quite plainly this time, which may have been what irritated Peyton. "I don't think we do call it 'soaked,' " he contradicted bluntly, and I am afraid untruthfully.
"Really?" she cried with good-natured interest. "Why, I thought that was quite the American way of saying it. We envy you your picturesque phrases, you know."
We rose from the table with rather confused impressions of Miss Greenfield. Miss Walton was the only one who stood up for her unreservedly. "There's a lot to her in spite of her little lapses of
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aspirates/' she asserted stoutly. "And I like her frank apprecia- tion of ever3rthing that's new and "
"Don't say picturesque," groaned Peyton. "That word has got on my nerves horribly this last hour. As if a ready-made mind like hers could recognize a picturesque object when it saw it I"
Miss Walton laughed. "That's because she found you pic- turesque," she said mischievously. "And you're irritated because you can't be here to see what happens this evening. But never mind! We'll tell you tomorrow."
We had nothing worth reporting, however. No one turned up to claim Miss Greenfield; and evidently she expected no one, for she retired at an early hour.
For several days she occupied the fourth seat at our table, in- terested and affable, but seemingly without any excuse for staying on. She gave us no further information about herself, except to reiterate now and then the assurance that she intended to live in the valley.
One evening, however, as Peyton and I were enjoying the cool hour before dinner on the verandah, Miss Walton joined us, her gray eyes alight with news.
"I've been up in Miss Greenfield's room ever since I got out of school," she began. "She asked me up to look at her trunks. You guessed right," she said, nodding at me.
"What about?" I asked stupidly.
"Why, about her being engaged, of course. Those trunks are full of the loveliest silver and table-linen — and oh, such gowns!" She sighed with gentle feminine envy.
"But Where's the bridegroom?" asked Peyton.
"That's just what I'm coming to. After she had showed me everything she asked me if I thought the clothes were the thing for this valley, for she said, as I had probably guessed, she had come out here to be married. It's to some man she knew slightly ten years ago, back in England. She hasn't seen him since he came out here, but about six months ago he began corresponding with her. He said he had thought a great deal about her since he had been away from home. He told her all about his ranch-life here, and Miss Greenfield said that it sounded so romantic that when he finally asked her to come out here and marry him she didn't hesitate long before accepting. Her family were awfully against it, it seems, but fortunately her aunt's legacy made her quite independent."
"Who is the happy man?" I asked, as Miss Walton paused to take breath.
"She didn't tell me after all," said Miss Walton. "She just said he had to be away from the valley on business, but that she
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expected him to meet her here ahnost any day. He told her to stay at the hotel till he came."
"And you never asked his name?"
"But I kept thinking she would tell me," confessed the little school-teacher. "You see she was so interested in the romance of the thing that she forgot everything else."
"Probably the husband was only a secondary consideration any- way," observed Peyton sarcastically. Miss Walton had time for one reproachful "Oh!" when the coming of the stage distracted our attention. As it swept up to the steps, a solitary passenger alighted.
"It's that horrid Mr. Goring," she whispered. "Who do you suppose is in trouble now?"
Goring was a man whom we had come to regard as a bird of ill-omen. He had once lived in the valley, and still owned a rancli up Sage Cafion. But money had flowed in too slowly for his ambitious soul and he had disappeared for a time, only to turn up again, smug and prosperous, smilingly eager to lend money to any old friends whom the dry years had pinched. His knowledge of the valley gave him admirable accuracy in gauging the amount of revenue to be squeezed out of each victim. He made his head- quarters in the railroad town of Uplands, feeling, perhaps, that life would be pleasanter at a distance from the scene of his operations.
We had hoped that he would not notice us, but his eye lit upon us at lonce.
"Fine year for the valley," he observed as he greeted us effusively. No chill of manner ever seemed to affect him.
"You look at it with a professional eye," retorted Peyton. "I'm afraid it will take a finer year than this to pull the poor ranchers out of the hole."
"So it will, so it will," agreed the impervious Goring. "I was a ranchman myself, you know, so I am pretty well acquainted with the ups and downs of the business. Mostly downs — ^ha, ha!" The fact that he was alone in appreciating his pleasantry did not disturb him in the least.
"I suppose you are wondering what brought me up so soon again," he went on expansively.
There was no direct reply to this, but Miss Walton looked un- comfortably around. "I am sure it is dinner time," she murmured. "I wonder where Miss Greenfield can be." She moved off, Peyton and I following unceremoniously in her wake.
"Greenfield, did you say?" I heard Goring ask with irrepressible interest as we left him.
We welcomed Miss Greenfield's presence at our table that night, for on the occasion of his former visit Goring had insisted on ap- propriating the vacant seat. It made even Peyton feel actually
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friendly toward her, though up to this time he had nursed a linger- ing resentment at having our congenial little trio broken up. Con- versation sped merrily until the second course came on. Then, in a lull, we heard the voice of the waitress at the next table.
"Coffee, Mr. Goring?" she was saying.
Miss Greenfield started. Her usually high color deepened.
"Is that gentleman's name Goring?" she whispered, leaning across to Miss Walton.
"Why, yes," said Miss Walton with innocent surprise. "Do you know him?"
Miss Greenfield did not answer directly. A shade of disappoint- ment crossed her face as she inspected the unconscious Goring. "But he doesn't look at all as I expected," she murmured.
We were seized with a sudden inkling of the truth.
"You don't mean to say that he is the one!" cried the school- teacher in frank dismay.
Miss Greenfield nodded. • "I am afraid you will think me shock- ingly romantic," she went on after a pause, embracing us all in a confidential smile, "coming this great way to marry a gentleman I had not seen for ten years. Just fancy ! I was quite a girl then, you know. And it isn't as if I hadn't had good offers at home. But there was something quite like a story-book about coming way out here to live on a ranch. I couldn't resist the idea."
There was something so naive about her enthusiasm that I know we all felt sorry at the thought of the disillusionment awaiting her. We were spared the embarrassment of a reply, however, by the approach of Goring himself.
"Miss Rose Greenfield, I presume?" he inquired blandly, and as the young woman gave rather a fluttered assent, he held out his hand with an unctuous smile.
"I've come — er — according to contract," he announced.
It was certainly not the speech one would expect a lover to make to the lady who had come five thousand miles to keep tryst with him, and Miss . Greenfield looked completely taken aback by its coldness. She recovered herself quickly, however, and rose to join him.
"You will excuse my leaving you, I am sure," she said as she took his arm. "Mr. Goring and I shall have a great many things to talk over, you know."
"And she has come all this way to marry that odious creature," exclaimed Miss Walton under her breath. "Poor girl !"
"Certainly not much food for romance about him," said I. "And she doesn't seem to have got it through her head that ranching isn't his regular occupation."
"Just like his crooked ways not to tell her," growled Peyton.
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"According to contract," he murmured as we stopped by the hall door to light our pipes, "Great Scott! Fd break the engagement on the strength of that one sentence if I were a girl."
Miss Greenfield seemed contented enough, however, when we met her on the verandah as we came out from a si^ o'clock break- fast next morning. She was looking very fresh in her neat sailor- hat and white dress, and greeted us radiantly.
"Mr. Goring is driving me over to the ranch this morning," she began at once. "You can't think how impatient I am to see it. And he must be too, for he tells me it is quite a time since he has been home. It seems that he has business which keeps him part of the time in the city. I did not understand that from his letters."
Her innocent surprise showed us the extent of Goring's hypocrisy. Yet it did not seem quite in our province to set her right.
He appeared at this juncture, and seemed downright uneasy at finding us in conversation with Miss Greenfield. His greetings lacked their usual effusiveness; and I could see that he untied his horse as if in a hurry to be oflF. His fiancee eyed his well padded g^ay suit and patent leather boots with open disapproval.
"Why ever are you wearing those clothes out to the ranch ?" she asked, as he helped her into the runabout.
"They are the ones I am in the habit of wearing," replied Mr. Goring stiffly. One could see that he had felt more than satisfied with his appearance.
"But they do not seem at all the thing," insisted Miss Greenfield. "I quite expected " Her voice trailed off in high-keyed disap- pointment as they drove away.
"Poor Goring!" chuckled Peyton maliciously. "That will be a dash to his vanity right enough. By the way, do you know if anyone's living on his place now ?"
"Someone said Ned Clark had it on shares."
"That handsome young good-for-nothing from the desert? But what in the world can he do with it? He didn't stay at surveying more than a week. Good pay, too."
"At any rate he'll furnish a little picturesqueness for the place. It probably needs it badly enough."
We found a good thirty hours' work cut out for us when we reached the reservoir that morning. A trial stream had been turned in the night before to test the banks, and it was discovered that a gopher with a taste for engineering had tunnelled right through the lower embankment, very nearly ruining our year's work. ^^^ We gof back the next evening, tired and hungry. Miss Walton
was the only one left in the dining-room when we came down. She lent a sympathetic ear to the tale of our disaster, imtil we be- came greatly contented with ourselves for having deserved so
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much of her pity. In this generous frame of mind I remembered to ask after Miss Greenfield.
"Oh, it's too dreadful/' cried Miss Walton. "I'm afraid all her happiness is destroyed!" Then while we ate our dinner she told us the events of the day before, as retailed to her in the evening by the heartbroken Miss Greenfield ; how that young lady had soon become suspicious of Mr. Goring's evasions as to his business and his plans for the ranch; and how, when they got out there, something Ned Clark said convinced her that he had no intention of really living there.
"And then, on top of that, she found out what his real business was. She said it might not have seemed so bad if she had known before, but when she had come out here with such different ex- pectations it disappointed her beyond words. She went out under the trees and cried and cried. She showed her character, though, by breaking off the engagement on the spot."
"And how did our friend Goring take that?" I inquired.
"Oh, he made a fearful scene — so bad that she wouldn't come back with him. That kind-hearted Mr. Clark drove her home in his cart."
Peyton whistled. "Poor Goring," he grinned. "But are you sure it's permanently off?"
"Perfectly sure," said the little school-teacher firmly. "Mr. Goring went away on the stage this morning. How hateful he looked too!"
"But what on earth made him so keen about her ?" asked Peyton. "His first remark that night he came struck me as anything but loverlikc."
"Maybe he'd heard about the aunt's legacy," suggested Miss Walton. "Miss Greenfield told me he had a sister about her age who was a great friend of hers."
"That's probably it. It would account for any amount of eager- ness on Goring's part. Beastly cad!"
"Never mind. There are as good fish in the sea," I began flip- pantly, but Miss Walton silenced me with a reproachful look. We had hard work to prevail on her to come out on the verandah a little while. Her tender heart felt that her place was with the stricken Miss Greenfield.
We made for a comer where there was a hammock and comfort- able chairs for the weary. To our chagrin, low murmurs came from that direction, and we could see the shadowy outlines of two figures in the hammock. One was undoubtedly Miss Greenfield; her profile with its unvarying fringe came out sharply in the moonlight. The other was a man's figure, clad in a loose flannel shirt. And as they turned at the sound of our footsteps I caught the unmistakable clank of spurs.
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"Did you see?" whispered Peyton as we beat a hasty retreat. "That was Ned Clark with her."
We established ourselves in silence at the other end of the porch. Miss Walton seemed busy readjusting her ideas. Peyton laughed softly to himself now and then.
*1 don't care," cried Miss Walton indignantly, after one of these manifestations of inward glee. "I think you're jumping at con- clusions."
"What conclusions?" asked Peyton sweetly. Miss Walton did not deign to answer. There was silence again, till Miss Green- field and her tall escort appeared out of the shadows.
"How cosy you look," she observed in her high voice, its cool- ness rippled now with an undercurrent of excitement. We offered our chairs, and greeted Ned Clark. I had always found something very winning about this reckless youth, though as chain-man on our surveying gang he had been most trying. But after the first desultory remarks on the weather, we seemed to have exhausted our store of small talk. It was the courageous Miss Greenfield that broke an embarrassing pause.
"Mr. Clark very kindly came in to talk over the ranch," she explained hesitatingly.
"You are not going to live there, after all !" exclaimed Miss Wal- ton in bewilderment. Miss Greenfield caught her up with relieved haste.
"I am, though," she said with a conscious little laugh. "I don't know what you will think of me for being so changeable. But you know I had so set my heart on the ranch. And when I saw that little loe cabin under the live-oaks it was so exactly what I had hoped tor, so picturesque, you know, that I could not bear the idea of giving it up. But of course I should have had to, shouldn't I, if it had not been for Ned's — Mr. Clark's kindness."
"Kindness! Rot!" exclaimed Mr. Clark with bashful fervor. "You've made me the luckiest fellow in Santa Rosalia. I only wish I weren't so confoundedly broke," he added in a burst of childlike frankness.
"But money isn't the most important thing," said Miss Green- field earnestly. There was a new softness in her voice. "And with that two thousand pounds my aunt left me we shall do tidily, I am sure."
It slowly filtered through our understanding that Miss Green- field was trying to convey to us the fact that she was consoled for the loss of Mr. Goring. I record with pride that I was the first to collect my wits and offer congratulations. The little school- teacher was the tardiest of all, but she atoned for the delay manfully.
"I don't care," she affirmed afterwards, apparently to some imaginary disputant, for Peyton and I had made no comment whatever on the affair. "She's a nice girl, and deserves to be happy. It isn't as if she had known Mr. Goring awfully well."
"Merely a little change in the contract," said Peyton teasingly. "Very satisfactory all around, I am sure. If I don't mistake, Goring will get a good slice of the two thousand pounds in the end. And the fair Miss Greenfield has certainly captured the picturesqueness."
Portland, Ore.
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Vol. XXX No. 2-3 FEbRUARY-MARCH. 1V09
MOUNT WILSON
By JOSEPH N. PATTERSON.
S THE home of the great Carnegie Institute Solar Obser- vatory, Mt. Wilson has gained wide distinction in the world of science, but its greatest service to humanity is in relation to the vast area of homes, whose scintil- lating fairyland of lights this sentinel of the Sierra Madre nightly overlooks.
A greater variety of mountain, valley and ocean views is probably offered by no other mountain of the world, but it is the extreme accessibility of Mt. Wilson to the vast area of homes, outspread, in such plain sight from its pine-clad summit, and the remarkable climatic and physiographic change from the semi-tropical valley beneath, that gives it a place of special value in the family of mountains.
In the great cities of the East an all-day's journey by rail is necessary to reach an altitude and a climatic change not half so great, as the resident of Los Angeles can attain on any moonlight evening after supper.
A plunge in the Pacific, with snow-balling and coasting before night and even a snow rub-down at sunrise is a variety that excites no wonder with the residents of this favored region, though they ail gasp with surprise when at night they first look upon the inverted heaven of electric lights, spread for a radius of fifty miles beneath their feet.
The man on the mountain-top can scarcely credit the distinct spots of yellowish glow as the incandescent lighting of the resort buildings at the beaches, nearly fifty miles removed by trail and rail, and the fact that he was walking there but a few hours previous never grows quite comprehensible. The long-suffering and slow-moving burro has been called many names in the history of his patient and efficient, if somewhat deliberate, service to man- kind, biit he will always be associated in the minds of thousands of
niustrations from photographs by Ferdinand Ellerman, Cameffie Institute Solar Observatory
CO^VNIOHT 1908. av Out WC«T MAaAZINKCO. all RiaHTS Rescnvkd
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Mt. Wilson pleasure-seekers as the agent of the surprising transition from the dry, brown desert country to the refreshing greenness of the Little Santa Anita canon.
A change from the high speed of the Pacific Electric at the old foot-hill town of Sierra Madre to the ridiculously different locomo- tion of the "Burro Pacific/' and one has scarcely been sped laugh- ingly on his way by the guides of the Mt. Wilson stables before he enters the deep canon and hears the cascading waters of the Little Santa Anita.
One who has gazed at the bare face of the mountain from the valley beneath, and possibly postponed a trip to Mt. Wilson for years, because, with no better information than his own conclu- sions, he pictured the trail ascending a dry and hot mountain-face, is completely captured by the deep woodland wildness of the canon trail.
Here the steep canon sides and trunks of the trees are alike green with moss; solid banks of ferns grow higher than a man's head: live-oak, maple, sycamore, pine and spruce refresh his memory of forests; the tumbling of the stream, hundreds of feet beneath at the canon's bottom, sings a continual jubilation to one who has lived in a country where running water is a luxury to the soul ; and, as the trail winds along the canon side, here and there one looks down upon waterfalls and rapids, strikingly set in white granite.
At frequent points on the journey up the Mt. Wilson trail, looking back, out the deep-cut gap of the canon's mouth, one sees the resplendent color-scheme, and all-compelling peacefulness of the orange and grape-growing country, stretching from Sierra Madre to the Puente Hills.
The green and brown checker-board effect of the cultivated floor of the broad-sweeping San Gabriel valley assumes an Arcadian softness in the rich light of the evening sun, and is backed by the peculiar crinkled brownness of the desert foot-hills, while beyond this low-lying Puente range, shimmers the broad expanse of the blue Pacific, with Catalina Island in the distance.
With an immediate foreground of jagged spruce-trees looming between the triangular framework of the canon gap the traveler gasps for adjectives, the painter sighs over the limitations of his brush, and the photographic plate of the mind receives one of the pictures that will last.
W^hen the summit of Mt. Wilson is reached, a panoramic vista of unexampled variety unfolds itself to the eye, which now transfers the imagination from the immediate loveliness of the shaded canon to the heroic grandeur of mountain, valley and ocean in almost endless expanse.
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Southward and a little to the west, Pasadena flashes in the sun's rays, the large buildings of the **Crown City'' being easily dis- tinguishable at eight miles' distance. The broad, flat valley, with Los Angeles just beyond Pasadena, and the beach towns in the distance, sweeps from the Santa Monica mountains on the west to the coast region of La Jolla and San Diego on the left, while inside San Jacinto and some lower-lying mountains the valley extends to the region of Pomona and Ontario.
Out across Los Angeles appears the. blue Pacific, and in the seasons of clear weather not only the twin peaks of Catalina, but the islands of San Clemente, San Nicolas and Santa Barbara are plainly discernible at a range of 100 miles and over.
On the clearer days the vessels in the harbor of San Pedro can be seen from the peak, the creeping breakers on the beach are easily distinguished, and when atmospheric conditions are exceptionally fa- vorable, the sunlight breaking through the clouded heavens and fall- ing upon the town of Avalon, Catalina, like a powerful searchlight, has enabled the guests of the Mt. Wilson hotel to pick out the larger buildings with the naked eye at an air-line distance of over forty-six miles.
The panoramic view to the north from Mt. Wilson, across the deep valley of the West Fork of the San Gabriel, presents range after range of rugged mountains rising to an altitude of over 10,000 feet and with the 3000-foot altitude of the valley as a base, presents a gigantic wall of five to seven thousand feet as they stand between the eye and the Mojave desert beyond.
Away to the east the looming whiteness of San Antonio has, as a foreground, the magnificent watershed of the San Gabriel river, so all-important to the fruit-growing country which it waters. Far- ther to the east San Gargonio, San Bernardino and San Jacinto are prominent landmarks.
Directly back of Mt. Wilson to the north one looks down into the deep valley where the West Fork of the San Gabriel finds its source. From Mt. Wilson, where the rush of the tumbling waters is heard, the steep ridges and contributing caiions of the mountains across the valley form themselves into a succession of half bowls of gigantic amphi-theater effect, and when softened by the gentle touches of the rising or setting sun, this valley of over 3000 feet depth forms a picture not soon forgotten, and one irresistibly appeal- ing to the tired city worker, but a few hours removed from his desk in Los Angeles.
It is little wonder that the "call of the wild" results each year in an increasing army of seekers after a real vacation in the back country of the West Fork and the rugged mountains to the north.
Except for such remarkable patches of trees on high, undulating
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ridges as Barley Flats and Pine Flats, and hidden growths in the deep canons, these gigantic heaps of brownness look as dry and barren as the desert, but there are ever-flowing springs on the highest ridges, and rough mountain-trails lead through the most impossible-looking regions.
Here the sure-footed burro assumes an importance far out of proportion to his size, and his moods and gaits are in absolute com- mand of the situation, while the engineering of his speed, and the packing and unpacking of his royal dictatorship are the most serious problems of the careless life.
As absolutely lost to all the reminders and luxuries of civilization as though in the wilds of Alaska, the jaded business-man swears at the burro by day and stares at the starry canopy from his couch at night, and knows better how to throw a diamond-hitch on the burro pack than how to dictate a letter to his stenographer by the time he returns to his desk.
Such is the state of happy, healthful carelessness attained, that the story is told of one leading Los Angeles attorney w-hose un- shaven, tramp-like disguise was refused admittance to the hotel at Mt. Wilson on his return trip to civilization ; and of another, whose wife would not kiss him nor admit him to the presence of friends in the parlor, when he returned home under the cover of darkness.
One of the most enticing views from the series of beautiful trails about the top of Mt. Wilson is offered by Barley Flats, the favorite destination of the summer-campers as their first stop in the back- country.
A beautiful grove of sugar-pines covers a gently rolling tableland, watered by two constant springs and covered w^ith a plentiful crop of wild barley, at an altitude of over 6000 feet. So different is this green carpeted woodland from the barrenness of the surrounding moimtains, and so close and alluring does it seem to the hotel guest in the soft, slanting rays of the evening sun, that the imagination is well prepared for the story of the band of horse-thieves who in the early days of California's gold excitement are said to have operated between San Francisco and the Mexican line, and to have used Barley Flats as one of their camping and feeding stations, thus accidentally sow-ing the crop of barley which now delights the meek burro of the hotel company, pastured there.
The peaceful-looking Barley Flats also has its tragedy of the modern civilization, as well as its romance of the past, for here during the record seven-foot snowfall of 1907 the hotel company lost a dozen patient burros, that starved to death before the relief expedition could break its way through the snow^-drifts.
One of the views most sought-for by the excursionists to Mt. Wilson is found when the sea of fog is hiding the sun from the valley beneath, but revealing the adjacent mountain peaks as islands in a vast ocean.
It is then hard to recall as a reality the far-sweeping valley pano- rama of but a few hours previous, but those especially who have never before been above the clouds are well content with the beauti- ful novelty of the floor of billowy whiteness, which reaches from their feet as far as the eye can see. When these clouds, as they often do, rise close about the peak and. drifting at the very feet of the
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tourist, are tinted with the rich colors of the dying sun, the sight is indeed a rare one.
Again, in the thralls of the air-currents, the clouds will pour over the ridges from one valley into another like waterfalls and rapids, and drifting back over the Sierra range into the valley of the West Fork form great lakes, nestling between the high ranges of the mountains.
The world-traveled tourist stands amazed at the unexpectedness and surprising grandeur of the night view from Mt. Wilson, when the sparkling splendor of millions of electric lights outdoes the very heavens in brightness, and is one sight at least so astounding that it never disappoints the imagination in being less than was expected.
Pasadena, eight miles distant in an air line, spreads the scintil- lating splendor of her northern boundaries almost to the foot of the mountain, while Los Angeles, just beyond, is connected with her sister city by strips of light marking the smaller settlements along the two car-lines.
The location of the ocean is distinctly marked by the nearer beach towns of Venice, Ocean Park, and Santa Monica, while Long Beach, San Pedro, and Huntington Beach are plainly seen, and a total of over thirty towns and cities can be located by their lights.
With such a variety of views, such a novelty of attainment, such a bracing change in temperature, altitude and environment, so quickly and inexpensively realized, there is small wonder that the visitor from the East grows enthusiastic over the rare advantages always at the elbow of the dweller of the Los Angeles region.
Sierra Madre, Cal.
HILLS or SUNLAND
By CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM.
'^^HIS land, the well-beloved of the sun,
^^ Is garbed in flowers mirroring his rays,
When Dormidera* wakes in spring, a blaze
Of gold her breast! No queen in Babylon,
Xot Sheba's Queen or Egypt's, nay