SADDLE AND MOCASSIN
BY FRANCIS FRANCIS, Jun.

AUTHOR OF
"IN A LONDON SUBURB," "WAR, WAVES, AND WANDERINGS."

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL,
Limited.
1887.
[All rights reserved.]

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE LATE FRANCIS FRANCIS
(AUTHOR OF "A BOOK ON ANGLING," ETC., ETC., ETC.),
AN OLD-FASHIONED SPORTSMAN
"SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE."

PREFACE.

The following sketches were made at different times and during various cruises in the States. The earlier ones are fairly close records of the scenes and incidents which they profess to describe. My movements in the country referred to in the two latter were, however, too desultory to admit of similar treatment; in some cases I traversed the same ground two or three times, and remained for weeks without gleaning anything that would be of interest to the ordinary reader. In the trips detailed in this part of the book, therefore, I have occasionally introduced characters and materials that do not strictly belong in the situations assigned to them. In fact, my object has been rather to present two characteristic studies of local colour than bare records of the travels that afford a pretext for them.

CONTENTS

SADDLE AND MOCASSIN.

CHAPTER I. THE YELLOWSTONE PARK.[1]—I.

"Wal, sir, I tell you that that thar Yellowstone Park and them geysers is jest indescribable—that's what they are, sure!" said all the packers, teamsters, and prospectors whom we consulted on the subject.

A greater measure of truth characterised this statement than is usually contained in eulogistic reports of scenery.

We were advised at Ogden that pack trains or waggons could be hired at various points on the "Utah Northern" branch of the Union Pacific Railway; in order to economise time, therefore, my companion preceded me to contract for transport, whilst I remained behind to conclude arrangements in connection with the commissariat department. These completed, I followed him. He met me at Dillon with a history of woe. No "outfits" were to be obtained elsewhere at so short a notice, and here the demands for them were exorbitant. No regard was taken of current rates; the teamsters seemed inclined to regard us as legitimate spoil. I ventured to expostulate with one man:

"What you ask would pay you in three weeks more than your 'outfit' cost."

"Oh, horses is dear in this country!" he remarked irrelevantly.

"Quite so; but we don't want to buy any."

"Wal, it ain't much for them as has the means and wants to 'go in.'"

I am afraid that, to use a miner's expression, we did not "pan out" as well as was anticipated. A little diplomacy eventually secured us the services of a Mormon freighter named Andrews, his boy, a waggon, and twelve mules and horses, upon reasonable terms. We engaged a cook, and with Dick (the guide we had brought from Ogden) the "outfit" was complete.

Dick was an old soldier, and a first-rate fellow. True, the Dillon whisky proved too much for him when we were starting, but ordinary poison had been a mild beverage by comparison with it, and we were so glad that it did not kill him outright that we excused his temporary indisposition. Besides, even beneath its influence he displayed the most charming urbanity, and the greatest anxiety to get under way.

"All I wants, Mr. Francis, is to make a start, to get away—beyond the pale of civilisation, as you may say—beyond (hic) the pale," he repeats meditatively.

"Beyond the pail or the cask, Dick?"

"Beyond the pale," replies he dubiously, after a thoughtful pause.

Dick was hearty in his endeavours to engage an "outfit."

"Say! you! look here, now!" he would explain to a native; "these here men don't want none of your —— —— snide outfits, but jest good bronchos, and a waggon, and strong harness."

"Wal, can't yer find no waggons?"

"Waggons! ——! waggons 'nough for a whole army! But, —— —— it, these fellows all propose to make independent fortunes out of us in a single day. Why, they want jest as much to hire out one broncho for a week as'll buy whole team."

Swearing is prevalent among these fellows. The reply given to us by a teamster that we met and consulted about the distance of a certain day's journey, concerning which it appeared that we had been misinformed, was by no means exceptional. "Thirty-five miles, —— —— it! Why —— —— it, it ain't a —— —— bit more than twenty-five —— —— no! ——!"

Our man, Andrews, was rather gifted in this line. He was to be heard at his best in the early morning, when engaged in catching the hobbled mules and horses. Amongst the more innocent titles conferred by him upon certain members of our stud were, "the yaller, one-eyed cuss," "the private curse," "the bandy-legged, hobbling, contrary son of——" etc., etc.; here following contumelious references to both the animal's remote ancestors and immediate progenitors. Frantic with rage, he usually concluded by hysterically imploring us to assist him in hanging them, or driving them into the river with a view of drowning them. Brown, our cook, one of the quietest, gentlest, and best old fellows in the world, rather enjoyed these scenes. His cooking, which really left nothing to be desired, so far as camp cookery was concerned, met with severe criticism at the hands of this unwashed Mormon. The meekest cook would have resented this.

"Yes," he said one day, as he turned the antelope steaks in the frying-pan, and listened to the voice of the teamster, softly swearing in the distance, "yes, Mormons always do swear ter'ble, and the women as well, and the children, too—and smoke. I guess they smokes more, and stands for the swearingest people as there is anywhere. And they're all alike."

We took no tent, but relied entirely on fine weather and buffalo robes. For the first few days the track lay through a gameless and uninteresting alkali country. The dryness of the atmosphere was remarkable. Moist sugar became as hard as rock; discharged powder left nothing but a little dry dust in the gun-barrels; our lips cracked, and our fingernails grew so brittle that it was impossible to pare without breaking them. As we proceeded, the scenery grew wild, and in places fine. On many slopes the pine forests had been swept by fire, and skeleton trunks, from which the bark had fallen away, stood out in ghostly array from the yellow, red, and russet undergrowth, or looked with ascetic asperity upon the bright belt of light-leaved willow bushes, whose boughs danced gaily in the sunlight on the foot-hills.

At length we surmounted a low divide at the head of the Centennial Valley, and caught our first glimpse of Henry's Lake. In the purple haze of an autumnal sunset it lay below us; and the ripples that dwelt there, waked from their midday slumbers by the evening breeze, sparkled, and glittered, and tossed, and laughed, whilst they restlessly compared their blue, and gold, and violet reflections, and chased each other to the shores of emerald islands out on the silver bosom of the waters. Time was when only the sun came up and looked in upon the solitude of this beautiful sheet of water, dreaming its time away in the still heart of the mountains. At most an occasional Indian wandered thither, to hunt antelope on its grassy shores, wild fowl in its reedy fringe, or spear, by torchlight, the noble trout that haunt its crystal depths. Now it is in a fair way to become a summer resort. Already a log hotel has been tried there, and jam-pots and empty meat-tins lie around it in profusion. Fortunately, for some reason it has been deserted. So the pelicans, the swans, and geese that dot the lake's wide surface, the ducks and flocks of teal that sail there in fleets, or skim in close order to and fro, the grouse in the willow thickets, and the wary regiments of antelope upon the slopes, have yet a respite of comparative security to enjoy before civilisation drives them from their patrimony.

We frequently camped near a trout stream. The trout, although proof against the persuasive influence of the artificial fly, were generally amenable to the seductions of the grasshopper, the butterfly, or grub. Dick's disgust at fly-fishing was amusing. One day B. lent him a rod, and I gave him some flies. He was absent about an hour, and then returned, with but little more than the winch and the butt of the rod.

"Well, Piscator, what luck?" inquired B.

"Why, these durned fish don't piscate worth a cent. Guess I'll go and catch some with a pole and a 'hopper, or there won't be any fish for supper."

The identification of trout was one of sundry points upon which the teamster and I agreed to differ. Trout vary considerably in their markings in these mountain streams; still, a trout is unmistakable.

"That's a pretty trout," I said one day.

"He ain't no trout. That thar's a chub."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"A chap told me so."

"I should call it a trout."

"Wal, they call it a chub down at the terminus,[2] and I reckon the boys there know something. Anyway, he's a chub in this country."

With this conclusive argument Andrews always crushed me. We were at issue upon several questions of this and other natures. Only one, however, threatened to result unpleasantly.

Andrews had a boy. He was a surly, flat-faced boy, with a nose like a red pill. His name was Bud, or Buddy. The father thought all the world of Bud. He was one of the many "smartest boys in the States." Naturally his proud spirit brooked no restraint. On all subjects he considered himself the best-informed person in the party. Although only twelve years old, his education was complete, and he possessed, together with great experience and implicit self-reliance, a shot-gun, a rifle, and a racing pony. Bud from the commencement had assumed command of the expedition; he seemed to labour under the impression that we had come from England on purpose to accompany him.

Whenever the trail was well travelled, he would drive our spare stock a few yards ahead of us, so that we were thoroughly annoyed by the dust. This amused him. Expostulation being without avail, I was forced to insist upon his taking his amusement in some other way. Bud declared that "he would be dog-durned if he was going to run his interior" (he called it by some other name) "out a-driving the stock any further ahead—durned if he would." However, he was induced to change his mind, and although the teamster expended a great deal of energy in bold talk and gesticulation, the moment an opportunity was offered him of displaying his prowess, he collapsed. The matter was, therefore, settled amicably. Thenceforward Bud was more circumspect. He used to overeat himself. When just retribution overtook him, his devoted parent, in an agony of fear, would declare his intention of returning to the terminus in quest of a doctor. On two occasions we hung for awhile in the greatest anxiety upon Bud's languid responses to inquiries concerning his health; and we questioned him as if we loved him—which we didn't. We all doctored him, too. Yet he lived! Evidently his constitution was strong. Once, in a fit of meddlesome benevolence, I restrained his father from giving him a powerful aperient for diarrhœa. Like most acts of officious good-nature, it was often a source of regret afterwards.

It is a fatal mistake to allow a boy to accompany a party of this kind, the more especially one of these ill-conditioned, never-corrected, western frontier cubs. They seem to think it incumbent upon them to air their smartness and impertinence at the expense of strangers. Dogs, in camp, are apt to lead to trouble, too, in the West. A dog is regarded there with somewhat the same feelings that he would excite in a Mussulman household. Our dog was the cause of annoyance on several occasions. Once the men mutinied in a body, because I collected some scraps after supper, and gave them to him on a plate.

Those who dwell in the neighbourhood of the Yellowstone National Park, love enthusiastically to term it Wonderland, and not without reason. Within its boundaries (one hundred miles square), there are over 10,000 active geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, solfataras, salses, and boiling pools. Of these, over 2,000 are found in the small area comprising the Upper, Middle, and Lower Geyser Basins. Sulphur mountains, an obsidian mountain, a mud volcano, a so-called blood geyser, and various other remarkable phenomena add to the interest of this extraordinary region, whilst there is scenery here that, for grandeur and grotesqueness, may challenge comparison with the world's most striking features. Proceeding at once towards the Upper Geyser Basin, we pass the Lower Basin with its so termed "paint pots," or "cream pots," boiling vats of a semi-silicious clay, which varies in colour from creamy white to pink or slate, some fine geysers, and the intermediate "Hell's half-acre," and adjoining pools. These are at once the most impressive and beautiful pools in the Park. I turned aside twice to them—once on my way to the Upper Basin, and once on my return; seeing them on these occasions under completely diverse aspects, for on the first day a thunderstorm darkened the wonted serenity of the sky.

They are situated in a desolate expanse of white, formed by deposits from the numerous springs that bubble up on all sides. The first pool is of comparative unimportance. The second (whence the locality derives its name) considerably exceeds half-an-acre in size. It has but recently assumed its present dimensions. These are daily increasing, apparently, and it bids fair, if its devouring energies continue unabated, to unite with its fellow pools, and form a lake some acres in extent. Numerous cracks and fissures scallop its edges, indicating the direction of future encroachments, and it is with feelings of some misapprehension that the stranger to these infernal regions cautiously approaches to windward of the stream, to gaze into the awesome gulf below him. The boiling hiss and roar of many waters issues unceasingly from its depths, but heavy clouds veil them from view, and the miniature cliffs that plunge precipitously down are speedily lost in steam. A breath of wind sweeps past, and through a rift in the swelling billows of vapour a glimpse of the seething surface is obtained. It is a sight that alone repays the labour of a journey thither. And seen as I first saw it, when thunder rolled overhead, and the heavens were rent from time to time with the flash of lightning, the wild character of the scene was enhanced.

Unlike "Hell's half-acre," the third and largest pool is brimful, and overflows its edges, forming, with the minerals that its waters contain in solution, a succession of steps and tiny ledges, which entirely surround it. It is impossible to conceive anything more beautiful than the colouring here presented. The water is of the purest, brightest cerulean hue, but near the shallow edges it takes its tone from the enclosing rocks, and the glorious azure is lost in yellow, pale green, or red, whilst chemical deposits, in exquisite arrangements, such as the genius of Nature alone can suggest, of écru and ivory, lemon and orange, buff, chocolate, brown, pink, vermilion, bronze, and fawn encircle the pool, or paint with ribbon-like effect the tiny streams that trickle from its overflow. Nor is this all. In the transparent curtain of languid steam—an airy tissue of impossible delicacy, that is gently wafted across the pine-wood landscape—dim reflections of all these wondrous colours, slowly dissipating and fading from sight, are visible. Alas, that anything so lovely should ever fade! The sleepy stillness, the appearance of profound depth, and the moist brilliancy of colouring in this pool defy description. The brush of the greatest artist, the pen of the finest writer would alike be laid aside in despair, and the genius of man forced to bow before the power of Nature, were it tasked to convey a faithful picture of the fantastic beauty of this unearthly scene.

Passing on through a pine forest, seared and blackened by recent fires, and through the Middle Geyser Basin, with its columns of steam, its subterraneous rumblings, its hollow echoing of our horses' trampling, its hissing craters, and its bubbling springs (lying sometimes within a few feet of the track), we entered the Upper Basin towards evening. Imagine the head of a valley walled in by pine-clad hills, and threaded by a stream that rushes through a bottom of desert white, dotted by clumps of pine-trees, from amidst which dense columns of steam rise on all sides and tower into the heavens. All evidences of the storm had cleared, and sinking amidst gold and purple clouds, the sun shed a fiery glow through the trees upon the ridges, that caused each twig—almost I had said each pine-needle—to stand out clearly against the sky. As we crossed the stream and mounted the opposite bank, a vast body of steam, followed by a jet of water 160 feet high, shot up into the air at the further end of the basin.

"There goes 'Old Faithful'!" exclaimed Dick; "the only reliable geyser in the Park. You can always bet on seeing him every sixty-five minutes."

Already encamped here, we found a large party of ladies and gentlemen from Boston, who were travelling through the Park. They informed us that the "Giantess" (perhaps the finest, but certainly the most capricious geyser of all) was expected to play in the morning, and the "Castle" to perform the next evening. There are nine principal geysers, namely, the Giant, Giantess, Castle, Grand, Beehive, Comet, Fan, Grotto, and Old Faithful. With the exception of the Grotto (which simply churns and makes an uproar), one or other of these tremendous fountains may be expected to cast a stream of water from one to two or even three hundred feet high into the air at any moment.

All geysers have not the same action, and most of them, in style of action, in the duration of their eruptions, and in the intervals that elapse between them, are apt individually to vary. Some play with laboured pumping, others throw a steady jet, some wear themselves out in a single effort, others subside only to commence again repeatedly. Thus an eruption may extend from two to twenty minutes—the approximate time occupied by the Grand—or even to one hour and twenty minutes, a period that the Giant has been known to play.

The colours that tinge the edges of some craters, and stain the courses of the streams which they send forth, are indescribably beautiful. The snowy whiteness of the grounding is relieved by dainty buffs, pale pinks, and softest écrus, deep yellows shot with brown, orange streaked with vermilion, or straying into crimson, chocolate merging into black, and interlined with lemon—by colours, in fact, run riot, and all glistening wet beneath the clearest crystal water, that in the centre of the crater deepens into a heavenly blue. From such brilliancy it is a relief to turn to the sullen pines upon the hills.

Extinct domes and craters overgrown by flourishing trees, or mounds still bare, and even steaming, with otherwise only their immense size to attest the mighty power that formed and has capriciously deserted them, are found here and there amongst those known still to be active. Some of the more modern craters are surrounded by the skeleton trunks of trees that their eruptions have killed, and which, under the action of their mineral waters, are rapidly becoming petrified; whilst in the conflict betwixt desolation and verdure, which, owing to the frequent variation of the centres of action, is constantly in progress, the lowly bunch-grass steals ground wherever it dared draw a blade.

Of the geysers whose eruptions we witnessed, the Grand was, I think, one of the most interesting. It played each evening at a regular hour. We were thus enabled to get comfortably into front seats, focus our glasses, and discuss the programme, as it were, before the performance commenced. This it did very abruptly, although the activity displayed at a small vent-hole, and the furious bubbling in another orifice connected with it, might be accepted as premonitory symptoms. Suddenly, with a single prefatory spurt, a vast column of water, over 200 feet high, was shot into the air. For a few minutes the pressure was maintained with unrelaxed vigour, then as suddenly it ceased, and the waters shrank back out of sight in the crater. Meanwhile the vent and cauldron were still furiously labouring, and subterraneous thunder shook the ground on which we stood. After a minute's cessation, the water burst forth again without warning, and with even greater violence. This continued until nine successive pulsations had occurred, the later efforts, however, perceptibly diminishing in grandeur.

It was a marvellous sight. The maddened rush of scalding water breaking free for a moment from its mysterious captivity, the gigantic columns of dense vapour, the showers of wreathed spray and crystal darts, forming, as they fell, screen upon screen of dazzling trellis-work, the lance-like jets pennoned with puffs of steam, the underground reports, the wondrous effects of the evening sun upon the silver spears that with lightning rapidity flashed forth and were shivered, broke and reformed again, the rainbow that shone through the slowly drifting masses of gauzy mist, the glitter and softness, passion and repose, formed a scene in which majestic fury was oddly mingled with the frailest loveliness. The packers and teamsters were right: "The Yellowstone Park and them geysers were jest indescribable." Over and over again was the admission forced from us, and not least heartily when, in the dim valley at night, the ghostly columns of vapour were seen winding from amidst impenetrable shadows and invading the silent heavens, whilst the rush and splashing of those mighty fountains from time to time broke the stillness of the breathless hours.

Slightly removed from the main group here is one of minor importance, containing, nevertheless, objects of considerable interest. Chief amongst these is the Golconda spring. In some respects this is one of the most striking features in the Upper Basin. It lies in the hollow of banks that form an exact representation of an inverted horse-hoof. By tiny terraces (the creation of deposits contained in its heavily charged waters) the stream issues from the frog of the hoof, and spreads over a large surface on its shallow course to the river. There is a strange fascination in striving to pierce the profound, pellucid, and brilliant depths of this extraordinary spring. Somewhat akin the feeling is to that which impels us to gaze and gaze into some deep ravine. One could stand for hours here, tracing the ivory cliffs bathed in what seems to be a pool of melted sapphires—down, down, down to where the gleaming waters grow black and awesome, and the creamy rocks contracting, lose their fantastic imagery, and mass in mystery to form the gloomy portals of a lower world.

As a game country the Yellowstone Park is a mistake. You may kill a few antelope, an occasional elk, or deer; it would not be impossible to happen on a stray bear or bison; but to go there merely for game is to court disappointment. Besides which, hunting is restricted in the Park. Beyond its boundaries, good game countries are easy of access; within them, summer tourists have scared away all the game.[3] Nevertheless, it is always possible to kill enough birds and antelope to vary the camp fare. It is a delightful climate there in summer, and a glorious country for gipsying. He must be hard to please who would tire soon of those cool, dim pine woods and grassy glades, where the chipmunk and squirrel curiously reconnoitre you, and the odour of pine-sap is heavy on the air; where the breeze from without penetrates only in softened and saddened murmurous tones, that, in rising and falling, seem to come from so far away, to linger so short a while near you, and to die so slowly away in the unexplored aisles of the forest.

On we used to ride silently over the thick carpet of pine-quills, smoking pipe after pipe whilst we chatted unrestrainedly, or travelled back lazily over the past and its scenes in thought. From time to time we would halt, till the waggon wheels were heard creaking in the distance, and then pass on again ahead of the men. Occasionally the scene changed for a stream-threaded valley, full of beaver-dams, near which a few ducks sailed idly, in security, to the intense excitement of the wise-looking retriever, "Shot," who would glance from them to us with unmistakable meaning. Here the pine yielded place to the aspen, and the chipmunk and squirrel were succeeded by gorgeous butterflies, and red-winged grasshoppers that sprang away with a noisy clapping of wings from every tuft of grass beneath our horses' hoofs. At night, round a blazing camp fire, Dick, old Brown, B., and I would sit talking through many a pleasant hour, till the flames waxed low and red, and the vociferous snoring of the teamster and his cub warned us to turn in. Brown then "got off" his last tale or joke, and with a hearty "good night" we sought our couches of springy pine-tops and buffalo robes, where we slept the calm sleep of a natural life. What silver-lit skies spread above us; what a marvellous blue their fathomless depths embosomed; and how exquisitely delicate was the tracery of pine-boughs betwixt us and the late-rising moon! "Good night, good night!" And with a lazy yawn "Shot" would coil himself up close to me, and make himself comfortable for the night also.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Appeared originally in the Nineteenth Century.

[2] The "terminus" is whichever village on the railway the speaker happens to frequent.

[3] This was written in 1882. Since then hide hunters have completed their ruthless destruction of game in the western country, and the chance of finding any anywhere is now very small. I believe also that the Park has become a regular tourist resort, furnished with railways, hotels, etc., and hunting there is now altogether forbidden.

CHAPTER II. THE YELLOWSTONE PARK.[4]—II.

Quitting the geyser basins, we turned towards the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone River. Since the new track thither was not yet (1882) finished, and it was impossible for anything on wheels to approach it, our waggon was despatched by another route, to await our arrival at the Mammoth Hot Springs, whilst we, accompanied by Dick, proceeded in light marching order.

"Deep i' the afternoon," we approached the Upper Falls. Through a gorge, redeemed only from utter desolation by patches of red and yellow moss, and a few shaggy pines, the broad river forced its way. Through whirlpools and narrow gates, formed by the jutting out of buttresses of rock, and by isolated crags in mid-stream, a succession of ledges led it on with gathering force. Its sunny ripples became wild and black, the veins of white that streaked them spreading fast until, in the last narrow bend through which it whirled, but for the green lights in one glassy wave, the rugged surface was a sheet of foam. Then came the grand plunge. Freed from restraint, the whole body of the stream overleapt the sheer precipice before it, and fell, draped in white, clinging lace. A hundred and thirty-five feet below, it was lost to view in clouds of mist, through which the transient gleams of water lightnings and of flashing rocks were visible occasionally. Anon it issued from this silver shroud, tranquil and temporarily tamed.

To describe the Yellowstone Cañon with any degree of justice is an almost hopeless task; nor do the following lines pretend to convey even a glimmer of its real magnificence.

Some of the most marvellous effects and harmonies in colour that the world can show are displayed here, and that too on a scale of such grandeur, and in a mood of such majestic calm, that it is difficult in their presence to shake off the paralysis of simple wonder—to grasp the scene, and coin it into words.

The rocks are of volcanic origin. Here their prevailing hue is that of old ivory, contrasted with warm tones of dead-leaf red, or purple masses of a hundred shades, and enriched by carmine and softest orange, till the cliffs glow like a sunset in that sunset home, the Sierra Nevada. Yonder russet and ruddy bronze kindle, and melt into buffs, cairngorms, and faded greens—all tints, in short, that autumn wears, mingled and scattered, intermixed and woven, like the wreckage of summer on a forest floor, are lavished here. Further still, a reach of pearly gray is shot with écru and crimson lake, faint veins of white, or scars of sullen black. This scenery endures for miles; and as if a tour de force in colour were not enough, equal variety in form is exhibited in conjunction with it. Everywhere the rocks have eroded into quaint shapes. Forests and turreted castles, spires and cathedral domes, towers, monuments, and minarets, forts, forms, and faces are interspersed amidst a wilderness of pinnacles, boulders, and bluffs that have no likeness in the works of art.

It is as though the earth had yawned asunder not long since, for pine-trees, with all the appearance of having been but lately separated, fringe the sharp edges of the cañon, and nod for old acquaintance' sake at one another, in measured unison with cadences of wind, that idly chase each other down its solitudes. Through dreamy distances of chequered light and tangled shadow, the glance travels under a sort of spell, and unconsciously the fancy grows that you are gazing through the aisles of a vast cathedral illuminated by myriad and wondrously stained windows—not a cathedral wrought by the hands of man, nor one whose stillness was ever broken by his feverish tread, but the ruins of a colossal judgment hall, or place of worship, created by some long-gone superhuman race, of whose existence we retain no record.

Great hawks and kingly eagles hang upon level pinions in mid-air deep in the abyss beneath, and scarcely seem of greater consequence than jays. Three thousand feet below rushes the dwarfed river that a short while ago was on a level with us; and it looks like a slender chain of jewels linked in silver; its boiling rapids, losing their thunder in a thousand echo-haunts, send only the drowsiest murmur upwards to join in the musical breathing of the pine woods.

The frosted and ever-falling silver of the great fall itself, a giant mass of festooned spray, knit into one Titanic column (397 feet high), the clouds and clouds of hoar mist that float veil behind quivering veil, and fill the rounded chasm into which it is hurled, form, without reference to the surroundings, a picture of most impressive loveliness. Where the great stream abruptly drops, trembles a bar of emerald from bank to bank. For a space, as if stunned, the current clings together, and is still; then, shuddering, it awakes and plunges on, mightily, irresistibly, grandly, an ever-changing avalanche of sifted snow, beaded with flashing diamond-dust and scattered pearls, guarded by sheaves of slim-shafted water lances to its bed of foam, in a dim, lichen-gilded cradle.

No more glorious symbol of power could be conceived. There is about it that which rivets the attention. Willing or not, you must pause and watch it. And, arch-dissenter though you may be from the worship of Nature, this scene will, nevertheless, compel your admiration.

Go and sit by those falls at evening, and watch the rosy glow of sunset settle with softening influence upon the upper cliffs, whilst below all is already steeped in mystery. Listen to the ceaseless roar of waters, till, to the half-stunned ear, it grows dull and dreamily monotonous, as if far away. Or stroll along the verge of the cañon, where the air is redolent with the exhalations of the pine-trees, and hearken to their vespers, which, as if chanted by errant spirit-choirs, steal slowly up from unknown forest cloisters, loiter a moment over the abyss to join in the river's song, and, rustling, pass away, as another choir draws nigh. And smile not if such things have no effect upon you, for you have missed truer pleasures than may be found in the imitations of art, or the monotonous music of civilisation.

Leaving—with how much regret!—the Grand Cañon, we passed on by the curious and beautiful Tower Falls, and not less lovely cascades of the Gardner River, to the Mammoth Hot Springs. They lie upon the flanks of the White Mountain, and have gradually added to it a distinct spur, which, in the distance, shines amidst the neighbouring pine woods like a breadth of white satin in a mantle of pile velvet. These springs are many hundreds in number. With the calcite their waters contain in solution, they have built for themselves cup-shaped fonts, that stand in rows and terraces in regular formation, and present the appearance of having been hewn and polished in the finest marble. In all directions the glistening white and ivory is stained by combinations of brilliant and delicate tints, such as only the laboratory of Nature can produce. Each pool is a mirror. In its pure depths the fleecy clouds reflected sail slowly by, the dainty biscuit-work of the fountain's edges is faithfully reproduced, and the beholder himself, as he gazes therein, is photographed with a clearness that is at first sight startling.

A few days we lingered here, and then set forth again.

We were trekking quietly along one afternoon, when a riderless cavalry horse cantered towards us. With some difficulty it was caught, and a picket-rope, a coat, a pair of boots, and some saddle-bags were found attached to the saddle. No owner appearing, Dick took charge of the truant. He also took charge of the saddle-bags, which contained a cake of tobacco and a love-letter, or, as he styled them—"a chunk of 'baccer, and some durned gush from a gal who's got mashed on the owner." He learnt the letter by heart, and delighted in making apposite quotations from it. Two mornings later, however, a claimant appeared in the person of a smart little Dutch trooper belonging to the cavalry escort of a surveying party. It seemed that, after breaking loose, the horse had travelled back eighty miles on his tracks. Our visitor, a cheery little fellow, stayed to breakfast with us.

"I can only give you back half that chunk," said Dick reflectively, when he was leaving. "I'm a bit short of 'baccer myself."

"All roight, partner, I got plenty. Py golly, ven I start out anyvers, I alvays go repairet" (prepared?).

"Is that so? Wal, your head's level. By the way" (expectorating meditatively), "there was a letter...."

The Dutchman's animation was arrested for a moment, then, looking quizzically at his interlocutor, he said: "You reet dat letter?"

"You bet yer! I wanted to see who that tearing war-horse belonged to. What shall I tell your gal when we get down Ogden?"

Again the Dutchman looked serious.

"You know dat gal?"

"I should smile," replied Dick, with hopeless melancholy.

"Vell—vell—vell: you tell dat gal I bin on vilt goose chase after mine dam olt hoss, vat run vays mit her letter. And py golly, partner, joos take care and don' get on inside track of dat gal. Eh? Vat? You nee'n't tell her vat else. I finish der tale ven I kom." And again profusely thanking us, the errant lover trotted away with his steed in tow.

One evening we camped below a likely-looking ridge for hunting, and, leaving the waggon next morning at "sun-up," set out in search of game, intending to bivouac a night in the upper woods. Elk had already begun to descend from the summits of the loftier ranges, whither, owing to the persecution of flies, they are forced during summer to retreat. It was necessary, therefore, to advance with caution even on the foot-hills.

We had worked our way up through a belt of fallen timber into a forest of magnificent pines interspersed with grassy glades and willow bottoms, and were slowly proceeding, when a low whistle from Dick attracted my attention. He had halted to the left of me, and with furious gesticulations was indicating something in front of him. As I turned, an elk sprang up. Uncertain whence danger threatened him, for a second he paused, but a bullet from my Express rifle settled his deliberations. When my broncho, scared by the report, had concluded his part in the performance, I was able to inquire the effect of the shot.

"Is he down, Dick?"

"You bet yer. He's a daisy! You've shot him in the couplings, and broke his back. I guess I'll finish him," and Dick put a bullet through its head.

A few yards from where we had first seen him lay the elk in the bracken, a magnificent fellow, with a fine head, only unfortunately two of his points were broken.

"How many poets gild the lapse of years!" May we not paraphrase it, and write for "poets" pictures?—for scenes such as these are like frescoes in the galleries of memory. The hollow that we bivouacked in. The sleepy willow bottom where our bronchos were picketed. The afternoon hunt afoot, marked by glimpses of an elk and four white-tailed deer. The evening vigil on an elk-trail in the dim forest twilight, when the winds slumbered, the earth was dumb, and even a falling leaf created quite a stir. The calumet and chat, with our mocassined feet to the camp fire, the light from which playing upon the giant trunks around, made them seem like pillars in some mysterious hall; the cheerful glow anear, the sombre gloom beyond. Is it not all photographed and laid aside to beguile us of idle hours hereafter? He who has no ambition in the future should create a pleasant past.

At daybreak we climbed the highest peak in the ridge. Soft distances, with hills of violet and lapis-lazuli, stretched to the far-off horizon, where hung low-lying clouds. Nearer, half-hidden beneath coverlets of mist, still valleys slept, and broke, together with a tortuous, silver-gleaming trout stream, the vast expanse of sombre pine forest and bronze prairie. Miles and miles away to the south, keen-edged and transparent, loomed up the beacon towers of the Tetons. And on their centre peak, caught by a wreath of last year's snow, there played a lambent flame of roseate fire—a thing of inexpressible delicacy—the wraith of a long-lost old-world colour stolen forth from its rest in the sun.

Although tracks were fairly numerous, we saw no game. Still, if rewarded by occasional success, it is sufficient to feel that game is in the neighbourhood. To note fresh spoor, to find in grassy glades, upon the edge of willow thickets, the scarce deserted beds of elk and deer, to see the trees they have "used," rubbing the velvet from their antlers, to chance upon a bison wallow, or on the trunks of pines that have been barked by bears, even to watch the chipmunk and squirrel—Cobweb and Peaseblossom, "hop in your walks and gambol in your eyes"—and hear the blue grouse drumming on the trees, is a pleasure. The charm of hunting lies not entirely in finding.

Soon after breaking the camp from which we made this trip, we reached Henry's Fork of the Snake River, the prettiest trout stream that I ever saw. General Sheridan and a large party, numerously escorted, camped just above us on the evening that we reached its banks, and Dick, who was of a social disposition, soon made the acquaintance of an old Irish sergeant in the escort. Being anxious to acquire any information to be had concerning routes, etc., he asked him which track they proposed to follow thence.

"Sure," replied the sergeant, "an' the dhevil of a whon of us knows at all, but ould Phil (the general) himself, and he dhon't expriss his moind very freely."

A good tale is current concerning certain Grand Dukes and personages of their world, who were taken through the Yellowstone country about this time. I give it as it was given to me, without vouching for its truth.

It seems that the party had with them an ample supply of what are known in the field as "medical comforts." Of these they not only partook freely themselves, but largely distributed them amongst the members of their escort. The consequence was that, as the day wore on accidents occasionally happened. The officer in command of the escort was jogging along quietly by himself one afternoon, when a private rode up and saluted him. The man was reeling in his saddle, and had the greatest difficulty in maintaining his balance. "Well, what is it?" inquired his superior sharply. "Please, sir (hic), worre them ki-kings 'as fallenoff's 'orse." The native of the great republic had, as I have often found in men of his class out West, very hazy notions about eastern titles.

Gradually we worked down stream, shifting camp from day to day. I generally travelled on a pine-log raft with Dick, fishing as we floated on the current.

"Dick," I would say, whilst affixing a new fly, "this is very lazy work."

"Thet's so," he would respond, disposing the steering pole under his arm whilst he bit a fresh quid off the Dutchman's "chunk." And after chewing the quid and the reflection with equal gusto for some moments in silence, he would add: "Thet's what I like about it."

The happy-go-lucky manner in which the raft drifted on to boulders, and hung there whilst we caught fish until it drifted off again, the perfect ease of the motion, the beauty of the river scenery, the excellence of the sport, the health, the harmony, and simplicity of it all, rendered these sunny voyages extremely delightful.

B. followed the gentle art on horseback. Furnished with strong tackle, he used to ride into the water, hook his fish, put the rod over his shoulder, and ride ashore again. Then he would shout to the infamous Bud to come and take the fish off. Bud generally took himself off instead, and after a while the fish would do likewise. As a rule it happened that, when the fish was there, the boy was not, and when the boy came the fish had gone. Considered under the influence of daily contact with Bud, infanticide came to appear an admirable institution; but fortunately nothing disturbed B.'s equanimity.

Dick's temperament was not so well regulated. Seeing him one day engaged in playing an unusually good fish, the boy ran up from behind shouting: "Oh, Dick! get on your meule, and ride him out."

Failing to catch the gist of the remark, Dick turned to see what was wanted of him and lost the fish. It is needless to transcribe his remonstrance; powerful as it was, however, it had no effect upon the imperturbable infant.

"Wall," he persisted with bewitching gaiety, as he moved away again; "ef ye'd only got on yer meule, yer might a' fetched him out."

Dick was still too furious to be reported; by degrees, however, he subsided into a grumble. "Get on my meule and pull him out! Get on my meule! ——! I only wish I had him glued on that meule for a fortnight, and me driving it on a rough trail."

"I guess I'd better kill him," said old Brown, very gently. He had walked across from the camp fire to watch the sport, and was now absently stropping a big meat-knife on his thigh, "he'll do better, maybe, in Abraham's bosom."

"The other bosomites couldn't stand him," said Dick hopelessly; "they'd fire him out, sure! Abe'd yank him out of that himself."

Any day in this stream from forty to fifty brace of trout, averaging two pounds apiece, might have been caught. Sketching and shooting, however, divided the time, and my best day's sport was nineteen brace and a half, most of which were returned to the water. Prettier, gamer, or better-flavoured fish could not have been found, and the days we spent in this valley will always be a source of pleasant recollections.

Scarcely less pleasant, though, were the evenings when hoarse-noted swans, pelicans, and herons winged their slow flight above the water's course; geese in a wedge, or ducks in line, sped past on their rapid way; and, later on, the curlew came, and swift, piratical night-hawks flitted to and fro in the filmy crepuscule. Through the dusky foliage then flashed the fire of moonlight, and the golden orb rose and rose until she hung above a pine-tree spire "comme un point sur un i," whilst her first-fallen beam, a lost diamond lately on the dark pavement of the waters, grew into a thread of quivering light that stretched across a shifting tracery of swirls and eddies. Soon all sounds were hushed, save those of fish rising, the occasional whirr of ducks' wings, or the fitful nocturnes played in the river reeds by silken winds which only made the stillness seem deeper, the serene spell of night more powerful.

As we descended the stream, the fishing deteriorated; some memorable evenings amongst the ducks and geese were recorded, however, and these were varied by excursions into the hills after elk and deer, which, although not always successful, were sufficiently so to keep our interest in the quest alive, and our larder replenished.

One day the summer vanished. It had been one of the loveliest daybreaks during the trip, and after bivouacking a couple of nights in the hills, we were returning to camp when it commenced to rain. As we were crossing the plains, the clouds that had suddenly enveloped the mountains drifted partially away, and, looking back, we saw that the peaks and ridges we had hunted but a few hours before, and had left sunning their rich tints in the autumn sunlight, were blanched by the first fall of snow.

For the next three days and nights it rained incessantly, and when at length the fog lifted, even the lower spurs appeared cloaked in their wintry mantles. Our limit of time, however, was nearly exhausted, and already our faces had been set towards the railway.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Appeared originally in the Nineteenth Century.

CHAPTER III. QUAIL SHOOTING IN THE SIERRAS.

If the reader has ever undergone the Ordeal by Baggage at an American railway station in the middle of the night, he will appreciate our feelings when we learnt that we should not reach Emigrant Gap until 1 a.m.

Emigrant Gap is situated near the summit, or the highest point attained by the Central Pacific Railway in its passage of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. En route for San Francisco we had arranged to halt there for some quail shooting, and in due course the train deserted us, half asleep, upon a little wayside platform in the middle of a snow-shed. I have a hazy recollection of being introduced to a friend of my companion's, who met us there, a Western giant named Shin, who greeted me as cordially as if, instead of being a stranger, I was a rich relation. In a few minutes, comfortably installed in his cottage, we were sleeping soundly.

Next morning, when I awoke, a flood of golden sunlight was streaming in at my bed-room window, and through the open door was thrust a Velasquez head in a broad, black sombrero, which shaded bronzed features, a crisp black beard, and a curly upturned moustache. There was a careless, genial air about the face, and a twinkle of humour in the dark eyes that was as infectious as it was irresistible. It was Shin, come to wake me.

"Thought I'd just see if you were right before I went to bed," he said.

I blinked at the dazzling window.

"That's only our Sierra moonlight," he continued imperturbably. "You'll get used to that; but if it keeps you awake, I'll pull the blind down."

Here a burst of laughter from an adjoining room interrupted us.

"Oh, pshaw!" cried B.'s voice. "Don't listen to that coon; you get up."

"Coon?" repeated my visitor attentively. "Coon!..."

But here his head was abruptly withdrawn and an amusing colloquy ensued in the next room.

I turned out and soon joined them. Shin and B. were old friends; both, too, were "old Californians." The conversation of an old Californian is generally amusing. And so, another cup of coffee, and another yarn; and another yarn, and yet another cup of coffee, prolonged breakfast far into the morning.

Our plan of campaign was to drive slowly to Soda Springs and back, halting to shoot when and wherever we heard quail calling. Early in the afternoon, a buggy drawn by two horses appeared at the gate; and, lighting our pipes, we started. Scarcely had we left the outlying cottages a hundred yards behind us when:

"Quails!" said B.

"H'm—quails, sure!" coincided Shin judicially.

I said, "quails!" also, although without any very definite reason for doing so.

We pulled up.

"Hush!" whispered B.

"Hush!" repeated the giant.

I also said, "hush!" The driver made the same pertinent observation—the only remark he contributed that day. Then we all "hushed" in chorus, which started the horses, and quieted the quails. (Par parenthèse, may I inquire if you ever hush, when told to do so? Systematic experiments upon all sorts and conditions of people have led me to conclude that the impulse to "hush" back at once is one that human nature cannot resist.)

Silence being restored, we listened. Soon the quails' calling burst forth again away up the hill-side, and, hastily alighting, we plunged into the forest and followed them.

In a few minutes a bird suddenly rose before me, and vanished behind a bush. Whilst debating in my own mind whether it were a quail or not, another bird rose and whisked round another bush. I shot the bush. And then another bird got up, and I shot another bush. And then another bird got up, and there being no bush in its immediate vicinity, I stopped it, and proceeded to pick up my first Californian mountain quail.

What a pretty bird it is, with its long drooping top-knot, and its mottled breast and thighs! Of the sad-coloured birds, few can excel it in beauty of shape or marking. It has that symmetrically prosperous, that æsthetically fastidious, confidently reposeful, felicitously demure appearance, only to be observed in perfection in wealthy, wicked, and juvenile widows. Shin, an exquisitely bad shot (so bad indeed that he rarely succeeded in killing a quail, unless he caught one sitting for its photograph), used to assert that: "They would roll about on the granite boulders with their heels in the air, and laugh till they moulted, when they saw him coming with a gun." I cannot say that I myself ever witnessed in the quail any so striking an example of their just appreciation of the humorous as this; but my informant was a man of thoughtful habits, keen powers of observation, and unimpeachable veracity. Moreover, it is well known that certain birds do laugh, and that, too, under less provocation than Shin's quails experienced. To the curious collector of ornithological data I can, therefore, commend this instance.

Having bagged a couple more birds, a sugar-pine, and a granite boulder, I rejoined the buggy, where the others soon met me, and, remounting, we drove slowly on again. In a few minutes the same proceedings were re-enacted, and this continued throughout the afternoon. It was the easiest sport that I ever enjoyed. Quail shooting after this fashion has all the attractive simplicity of vice. It induces that pleasurable exultation which, until detection supervenes, always, I believe, attends an infraction of the law. Enjoyment of such kind seldom fails to stimulate even the jaded appetites of the wicked, but more especially doth it afford a relish to those who, never having impaired their moral palates by intemperate indulgence in crime, are still able to sin with the sentiments of novelty and zest that ever reward moderation. Need I say that our moral palates were yet susceptible of these delightful impressions.

At length the driver pulled up on the summit of a grade. The shadows had grown longer and deeper, the day had waxed old and weary, rich in colour and in gilded glory, but in breathing faint and low. Both near and far away the granite peaks were lurid with purple and with blood-red lights, as if the sun shone on them through stained glass. The crests of the ridges had become fringed with a lace-work of coruscated fire, that glittered through the dark pine-quills, and shot soft, luminous rays and ways down into the delicately pencilled pools of twilight in the bottoms, whose leafy edges seemed like pebbled shores. And at one point, where the hidden trout stream, winding on its course, had widened for itself a resting-place, deep in a wilderness of foliage and shade there gleamed a strange hieroglyphic in thread of gold, that flashed upon the shifting eddies of the water-node, as though some magic beetle circled there.

The squirrels and the chipmunks had vanished. No longer did the challenge of the doughty quail call us to arms. It was that transient interlude betwixt the minstrelsy of day and night. Dumb stillness had fallen upon all the forest, and not a breath of wind wooed any flower, nor whispered round any cone, till, with one long, low sigh, like a lost, lonely note of music singing to seek its fellows in the brown whorls of curléd leaves—those forest shells of daintiest biscuit-work—the dirge of day stole through the valley and passed on. There was only the murmur of the rock-embosomed stream, and from afar off, the fitful tinkling of a wether-bell came faintly down our way.

"Hence, thou lingerer, light!

Eve saddens into night."

"Drive on to Campbell's—we'll stay there to-night. It is getting too late to shoot," said Shin.

The wheels grated once more on the stony track, and on we went to Campbell's hostelry.

Very many of the pleasantest days in life are the most poverty-stricken in regard to incident. In all this week, only one episode occurred which would make you really laugh, and that, I regret to say, Shin would not like me to relate. Do not infer though, that, because the current of the trip was placid, it necessarily was dull. So far from such being the case, we did not pass a single dull half-hour. An exhilarating freshness, an evanescent crispness is in this mountain air, which absolutely defies dulness. Moreover, we had started in that state of helpless good humour in which anything serves as food for laughter. It was not recorded that any one made a sensible remark during the whole drive; we talked pure nonsense exclusively. In this congenial spirit we were encouraged by the fact that, our wooden-visaged, saturnine driver—an eminently matter-of-fact and sensible man—preserved, throughout, impenetrable reserve. He sat on the box-seat in dignified silence, a mute protest against the egregious imbecility of human nature as exemplified in ourselves. Evidently he had been designed without any reference to the rules of risible acoustics. He was angular and flat all over. People constructed on this principle are not adapted for the expression of merriment. If he ever had laughed, the displacement of solemnity would have been so tremendous, that he would never have recovered his centre of gravity, and would probably have died mentally upside down, and mad. He only made one spontaneous observation during the excursion. We were talking of chipmunks and squirrels.

"Chipmunks——" he ejaculated. And then he paused and thought for a while. "Chipmunks," he resumed, later in the day, "is alegant food."

Up the hill we were slowly toiling towards Campbell's, when a ragged boy in a broad-leafed hat, seated upon a ragged pony, whose tail coquetted with his heels, came jogging on the down-grade towards us.

"Say!" exclaimed Shin, "now when this fellow passes, we'll all take off our hats to him. Don't say anything; just bow and watch him."

Accordingly, when the boy drew near we greeted him with three sweeping bows. Probably he had never seen any one bow before; evidently he was not familiar with this form of salutation. He pulled up, and was staring after us in dumb astonishment, when, a thought seemed to strike him. Removing his own hat, he carefully examined it. But there was nothing the matter with that, and he rammed it on again with an air of dogged perplexity. Anon, he shouted something—our inability to catch which was perhaps not to be deplored; and when, some minutes later, we turned a corner and lost sight of him, he was still where we had left him, gazing after us.

À propos des bottes: this unkempt, young mountaineer possessed aquiline features of the purest type; and it appears to me, as a superficial observer, open to correction, that these will distinguish the American of the future. The fusion of races in America is remarkably rapid. Distinctive physical peculiarities vanish not less swiftly than do national idiosyncrasies in character. And the mould in which these disappear is one that bears a striking resemblance to that formerly prevalent among the higher class Indian nations of the continent. The typical American is aquiline-featured, stern or impassible in expression of countenance, spare of frame, chary of speech, impassive in demeanour, endued with unusual self-control and determination. But these traits—which, if further example were necessary, could be multiplied—were all once distinctive of the Indian; and that they should reassert themselves thus uniformly in the descendants of the divers alien races settled in America, opens a physiological problem of unusual magnitude and interest. Doubtless, in process of time, the citizen of the republic will become tinged with copper. A tone of brass is already noticeable occasionally.

Next morning saw us early under way; and during all the forenoon the road led through rocky passes, or was blasted in the steep sides of sombre valleys. On we drove amidst a network of crumbled light, whose shadowed meshes were cast by the vast trunks of cedars, sugar and yellow pines, red and silver firs, tamaracks, and spruces. Nothing in the forest races can match the stately beauty of these straight-limbed giants, clad in dark plumes. They are an order of knights, a dynasty of kings amongst trees. Where they have fallen, they lie like vanquished Titans, and seem even grander stretched out beneath clinging palls of moss than when upreared, archetypes of strength and grace, they toss their quilled foliage in the winds, and tower majestically above the earth.

Ever and anon the continuity of their solemn crypts and corridors was interrupted by some still glen, a cache of dreams and summer beauty. And here—scattered amidst enormous boulders, or gray and grim, or worked with gorgeous blazonry in lichens—red-leaved sumachs, golden-foliaged aspens, and masses of flushed flowers blent in the rich arabesque of purple, brown, and russet bracken, had writ an idyl in a silent language, whose words were colour, and whose characters were leafy tracery, delicate and ever new. Yonder, by the lucent gleam of sunbeams, its tinted poetry was touched with fire, and there in the pearly shadows of midday it was yet coolly sleeping.

Long must have been the list of killed and wounded in the Quail Gazette after that morning's work. At times the forest rang and re-echoed like a choice covert in England. Towards noon, having finished a beat before the others were ready, I walked on ahead of the buggy to a turnpike gate to ask for a glass of water. Instead of a crusty old gate-keeper I was agreeably surprised to see, tripping bare-headed from the neighbouring cottage, a pretty dark girl with black eyes, a "peart" air, and a smart sang de bœuf bow under her chin. In the course of some conversation which ensued I mentioned that Mr. Shin was on the road, and inquired whether she knew him. A smile rose immediately on her cherry lips.

"Shin? Well, you'd better believe I do; he's pretty well known around. Say, Alice! d'ye hear?" she cried, raising her voice, "Shin's coming 'long."

A merry laugh from the interior of the log-house greeted this announcement.

"There ain't another just like Shin from here to Panama," explained the damsel. "He's a genius. He's bound to be foolin' all the time, and he looks so sad with it—like he'd got a pain somewhere, or was making up poetry. Oh! Shin's a whole show, and he plays the music himself."

We lunched here, the gate-keeper's daughter kindly undertaking to cook quails for us if we would pluck them. Shin "played the music."

In the afternoon we set forth again through the forest, and its clearings, and its old deserted villages, that had flourished when the route we were following was the high-way betwixt Sacramento and Virginia City, when placer mining was carried on in the district, and before the railway had usurped the traffic. Now, owing to neglect, and to the destruction caused by heavy rains, the track appears to have lain disused for centuries instead of for little more than a decade. Many a yarn had Shin and B. to relate of the days when this same dried watercourse was a well-kept road, and they rattled up and down its steep grades on the mail-coach. One, and not the least curious of the wayside features, is the still standing trunks of pine-trees that were sawn off twenty and thirty feet from the ground, when the snow lay that deep on the Sierras.

We had come in our old weather-stained hunting garments, and, in order not to burden the buggy, had brought with us very little extra clothing. During the day's work the dust had accumulated upon us, until it almost seemed as if we were fulfilling the biblical prophecy and returning to the original component of man. It was anything but comforting, therefore, to hear Shin remark, as we turned off the main road in the direction of Soda Springs, that it was the time of year when visitors were numerous there. He, however, was right. When, in due course, we issued from the forest, and crossing a rustic bridge drew up before the hotel, we found its verandah full of pretty faces and well-dressed men.

Soda Springs is a summer resort, consisting merely of a hotel, a few outhouses, and a private cottage, all prettily situated in a valley. A dashing trout stream runs hard by, and there is some fair shooting in the neighbourhood.

To visit Soda Springs without ascending Tinkler's Nob was to incur an everlasting stigma of reproach. Nevertheless, as I sat smoking in the verandah next morning (Sunday), eyeing askance that most uncompromisingly perpendicular mountain, my heart opened towards the stigma. It was so hot. I suggested this to B., he merely remarked that it was nothing to what we should experience half-way up the Nob. B. had determined that I should go up. I indulged in another long and careful survey of the disagreeable eminence with the cacophonious appellation. It looked more inaccessible than ever. I observed that, the farther you were from mountains the finer they looked; that when once you had scaled a mountain you seemed to lose all respect for it; and that I had a reverence for Tinkler's Nob which I should be loth to disturb.

But I had to deal with one of those energetic men who love to get to the top of everything. I confess to a preference for the base end, at any rate, of mountains and high places. It is shadier and safer, and not so far off where I generally am. However, after exhausting a variety of excuses, Tinkler's Nob and the path of duty still lay directly in front of me, B. was still sternly pointing at them, and the thermometer was still rising.

Shin did not accompany us. We reluctantly left him with a cool drink, a long cigar, and a newspaper in the verandah. He said that the only thing he had promised his parents when he left Kentucky, twenty years before, was, "to sit around and reflect on Sunday mornings;" that the more he sat around and reflected, the more he became convinced that there was "something in it;" and that as soon as he "struck a Bonanza," he meant to sit around and reflect on week-days too. He said, moreover, that he didn't believe mountains were ever intended to be ascended, or they would have been arranged somehow differently, perhaps bottom upwards—he wasn't sure; the question was too deep a one to go into on so warm a morning.

We started without a guide, and when half the ascent was completed, lost the track. After some time spent in vainly seeking it, we laid the reins upon our horses' necks, and commended ourselves to their sagacity. They did not immediately bear us to our destination without guidance, although they must have known every pebble in the route; they started straight down hill, fast. With some difficulty we put them about, and eventually invented a way of our own to the summit.

I had carefully abstained from spoiling the effect of the final coup d'œil by studying the panorama in detail as we ascended. Lavishly was my patience rewarded. Far as the eye could reach on every side stretched a confused sea of keen-crested rocky billows. Ridge behind rugged ridge rose up, and bluff behind leonine bluff appeared like mountains couchant. Peak towered over peak, from the vast iron helmets near at hand to the thin, blue, palpitating spectres of hills upon the verge of the horizon; from Devil's Point and Fremont's granite roof away to Imperial Shasta "diademed with circling snow," queen of them all. And grim as sentinels, keeping a silent watch throughout all time over the pine-shut valleys, they reared their furrowed brows far up above the clouds that sought to veil their majesty, but only lay a wreath of snowy fleece about their mighty shoulders. The world lay below us. What solitudes were there not there, what distances, what joyous mood, what melancholy, what fields of light, what cloud-cast drifting wastes of shadow! Beside hollows of lapis-lazuli, brimming with golden haze, might be seen gulfs of sullen gloom; through the mantle of purple pines showed flanks of naked stone. Even summer noon but half beguiled the scene of its savage character.

"There was wide wandering for the greediest eye."

Yonder was Emerald Bay; the Sacramento Valley there; there ran the railways, covered in for miles and miles by snow-sheds. Elsewhere two forest fires headed by columns of smoke crept on their devastating march. And in the distance, in the midst of all this wild scenery, like a great opal upon the iron bosom of the Sierras, slept crystal Tahoe beneath hazy curtains, its gray and silver ripples shivering in cold light, and winking through the atmospheric dimness with countless rapid flashes.

Here, reader, upon the extreme summit of Tinkler's Nob, I purpose to abandon you: you must find your own way down. Shin met us when we returned half baked to the verandah. He said that he had changed his mind about going up, and if we cared to turn round and repeat the ascent, he would now come with us.

What followed was but a repetition of what had gone before. On the next day we started to return to Emigrant Gap, and parting there from Shin, the pleasantest of companions and hosts, sped on to San Francisco.

CHAPTER IV. A GLIMPSE OF SONORA.

"At what time does the stage start for Magdalena?" I inquired of the bar-tender at the "Metropolitan Hotel," Tucson, where the Southern Pacific Railway had just landed me.

"Magdalena?" he drawled. "Well, guess you'll have to wait here till Saturday now. Stage went out this morning at eight o'clock."

It was nine o'clock on Tuesday. En route from the station I had seen quite enough of Tucson to put my ill-luck in its strongest light. But the bar-tender did not seem to realise that there could be any misfortune in a delay of four days there.

"Take a drink?" said he. "There's worse places than Tucson; there's places where you can't get a drink."

I took a drink, in which my new acquaintance joined me.

"Is Mr. Maroney in?" I asked. Mr. Maroney was the proprietor of the hotel, and I had a message of introduction to him.

"Mr. Maroney ain't long gone to bed. The boys was having a little game of 'freeze out' last night. I guess he'll be around at midday."

A bed-room, or rather a loose-box, was assigned me in the quadrangle at the back of the saloon, and after breakfasting I strolled out to enlarge my acquaintance with the town.

Until twelve months previously, Tucson had been an unimportant adobe village; now it was growing rapidly. Edifices of brick were springing up in all directions. Practically it is the gateway between Mexico and the far Western States of America, and as such its future is assured.

Under the shop awnings in the main street loitered a crowd of handsome, bearded, bronzed miners from the neighbouring mining districts. To and fro flitted a few busy store-clothed store-keepers and clerks, and here and there a knot of men might be seen examining some specimen of quartz. A couple of leather-overalled cowboys, ostentatiously "heeled" or armed, rode down the street on their Mexican-saddled bronchos; a Chinaman stole swiftly and silently by; a half-breed led a lame horse along; a couple more "greasers" seated one behind the other went past on another equine scarecrow; sundry dogs—one dragging a swollen run-over leg after him—loafed about; and a chain-and-ball gang of convicts slowly advanced, sweeping the dusty road.

The town was gay with the bunting displayed in the store signs, advertisements, and invitations to "walk in."

The "Head Quarters" store is "selling out at cost price," boots, shoes, bacon, lard, flour, stores, hardware, etc., with all intermediate articles, forming the stock to be sacrificed. A Saddle and Harness manufactory, outwardly rich in signs and specimens of its work, is followed by a "Nobby Clothing" store that even surpasses it in its ticketed display of "pants" and "vests." Inside, a customer, with his feet on the counter, leans back in his chair and chats to the shopman, who is perched on his own cask. "Ladies' Dress Goods," "Fancy Goods," "Gents' Furnishing Goods," "Stores and Tinware," "The Alhambra Billiard Saloon," "The Tucson Restaurant," "Markets," "Estate Offices," diagrams of gouty-looking boots, swollen loaves, gigantic pipes, guns, bottles, etc., etc., without end, in black upon a white linen ground, invite attention everywhere.

In a town of this kind, next to the drinking saloons, the barber's shop is the chief place of resort. The barber, in importance, ranks second only to the artistic mixer of cool drinks. He is hail-fellow-well-met with every one. Especially cheery and amusingly ceremonious is Figaro if he happen to be a coloured man. His memory is prodigious. Men enter that he has not seen for months, and with whom he is perhaps only slightly acquainted; yet he resumes the conversation precisely where it terminated when they parted. He reminds his visitor of what he has said, and of what his projects were when he last was shaved there, and he persistently inquires how far those assertions have been verified, and those intentions fulfilled. Having posted himself up to the latest date in all that concerns the victim of his curiosity, he proceeds, in return, to furnish him with biographical sketches of such later passages in the lives of his friends as may have escaped his knowledge.

In the barber's shop that I entered the three chairs were all occupied. A slender, graceful, "interesting young man," of an Italian type of face, dressed in a blue shell-jacket bound with yellow, a good deal of loud jewellery, and a "dandy-rig" generally, operated on one customer; a "wooden-mugged down-Easter," with bushy eyebrows, and quick, twinkling eyes, who sang over and over again, absently, though still with heart-wrung pathos, "Oh, my little darling, I love you! Oh, my little darling, yes, I do!" had the second in charge; the third was at the mercy of a black man, who was cross-questioning him very closely as to a recent trip to Tombstone.

I fell to the hands of the dude, and was sheeted and soaped by him with a theatrical flourish that led me to anticipate the rest of the performance with interest. Three various strops were necessary to put an edge on the razor that was to execute me. The first, a rough one, scraped like a file; the second made the razor ring like a bell beneath the reckless strokes of its dashing manipulator; over the third it slid like soap. I was prepared for some fancy shaving, and was not disappointed. After a few false starts the young man, at one fell swoop, slid the razor through the stubble on my face from one end of the cheek to the other. For a little while he sliced about in a fashion that irresistibly reminded one of cutlass drill, and then settled down to more delicate work. Certainly he had a sure and dainty touch, but to be shaved by him often would take years off a nervous man's life. Even when the rougher work was finished he was sufficiently alarming. Running his fingers over my chin he would discover a hair that had escaped him, and, as if he were flicking a fly off a wall with a whip-lash, sweep down upon it and smooth it off at one fell stroke. As for the coloured gentleman, he arrayed himself in magnificent clothing and went out; the "down-Easter," having finished his task, took up a guitar and croaked a few amorous ballads in a decayed voice.

Returning to the hotel, I found that Mr. Paul Maroney had arisen. I also found a card of invitation from (I think it was) the "Union Club" awaiting me. Being dubious with regard to the nature of a club in Tucson, I interrogated Maroney on the subject.

"Do you want to play monte?" he asked, weighing the card between his finger and thumb.

"No."

"Well...."

That "well" drawled out and sustained, with the look that accompanied it, told me quite as much about the Club as I desired to know. Paul and I christened our acquaintance with cocktails.

Conversation at any time, on any topic, or with any person in Tucson (as elsewhere on the frontier), invariably led to this ceremony. Cocktail drinking has a charm of its own, which lifts it above drinking as otherwise practised. Your confirmed cock-tail drinker is not to be confounded with the common sot. He is an artist. With what exquisite feeling will he graduate his cup, from the gentle "smile" of early morning, to the potent "smash" of night! The analytical skill of a chemist marks his unerring detection of the very faintest dissonance in the harmony of the ingredients that compose his beverage. He has an antidote to correct, a tonic to induce every mood and humour that man knows. Endless variety rewards a single-hearted devotion to cocktails, whilst the refinement and ingenuity that may be exercised in the display of such an attachment, redeem it from intemperance. It becomes an art; I am not sure that it ought not to be termed a science. It is drinking etherealised, rescued from vulgar appetite and brutality, purified of its low origin and ennobled. A cocktail hath the soul of wit, it is brief—it is a jest, a bon-mot, happy thought, a gibe, a word of sympathy, a tear, an inspiration, a short prayer. A list of your experienced cocktail drinker's potations for the day constitutes a complete picture of life, and the secret joys and sorrows that he hides from all the world may almost be said therein to stand betrayed to the eye of a brother scientist.

The four days' waiting passed at length, and seated in the corpulent old coach, with its team of four wheelers and four leaders, we rumbled slowly out of Tucson.

The passengers were a Mexican dame with a baby, a Mexican, an American miner, and myself. A sort of second whip sat beside the driver, armed with a short but heavy weapon, with which he made excursions from the box-seat to the ground, and whilst the coach was still in motion fought it out with any refractory member of the team, as he ran beside him. Collecting a pocketful of the wickedest stones that he could find, he would then return, and pelt the bronchos from his former elevation. Another of his duties was to disentangle the team, when, as not unfrequently occurred, so many of the leaders faced the wheelers that further progress was impossible. It also fell to his lot to tie the coach together with thongs and string when its dissolution appeared imminent. In the performance of his various duties this individual displayed considerable agility, ability, and resource.

The Mexican woman was frightful, the infant very like her, only by no means so quiet. Mother and child left us at the end of the first stage. The Mexican slept all day; towards evening he awoke and reduced himself to a state of complete intoxication with mascal. The miner never opened his lips until the following morning just before entering Magdalena, when we happened to see a jackass rabbit.

"Next jackass rabbit we see, I'll be durned if I don't shoot him," he said.

He forthwith produced and cocked a long Colt's revolver. But, as we saw no more rabbits, I missed this exhibition of his skill.

From the pace at which we proceeded during the night, I presumed that the Mexican's bottle of mascal was not the only one we had on board. The jolting was terrific. Besides encountering the ordinary ruts and irregularities in the ground, we struck every now and then, when going at full gallop, against a loose boulder, or the projecting corner of a rock, the shock of which brought our heads in stunning contact with the brass-capped nails that studded the roof of the coach. I was sometimes in doubt a moment whether my neck were broken or not. When Magdalena was reached my scalp was raw, and every angle of my body bruised.

Stage travelling in Mexico, if this were a fair sample of it, is neither luxurious nor speedy. Owing to the irregularity with which the service is conducted, it is impossible for relays to be in attendance. Not until the coach arrives is a peon sent out to drive in fresh horses from the country. As they roam free over the broad vegas, they may be miles from home; consequently it is no unusual thing for the best part of a day to be wasted before they are found. Outward bound, we were singularly fortunate in this respect. On the return journey, our delays were all prolonged, in some cases exceeding even five or six hours. The wattled sheds and huts at which these intervals were passed were of the filthiest description.

Some of our teams were curiously mixed. One consisted of three donkeys, two mules, and three bronchos. Most of them were partly composed of mules. Some were poor, others were remarkably good. Particularly noteworthy was the performance of a level team of sturdy bronchos, that we picked up late in the afternoon, and that of a fine team of mules that took us into Magdalena on the following morning. The stages were about sixteen and eighteen miles respectively, but with the exception of a few short stoppages, caused by trouble with the harness, were covered at full gallop; notwithstanding which, the teams pulled up almost as fresh as they had started.

In one instance a deficiency of stock necessitated the lassoing and breaking in of a horse that had never been used before. He fought gallantly for nearly half-an-hour, and several times was thrown half-strangled on the ground, when the lasso was loosened and he was given a few minutes to recover. Eventually he allowed himself to be harnessed, and once in the team had to go with the rest. I must do our driver the justice to say that he handled the ribbons with admirable skill and boldness.

To add to the interest of the trip, it was expected that we should be stopped by cow-boys. These gentlemen had lately "gone through" the coaches with great regularity, and, in anticipation of trouble, our whip and second whip were armed to the teeth. Fortunately, the journey was without incident of this kind.

With demoniacal yells, and a furious cracking of both whips, we dashed into Magdalena, and pulled up in the plaza. It was Sunday. The good people were just issuing from church. Mexican maidens, in white or brilliant robes, trooped out in twos and threes, and hand in hand went laughingly homewards. And here I feel the scribbling traveller's temptation to romance. A fanciful picture of some dark-eyed beauty, with proud Castilian features, and bewitching dignity and grace of manner, would fit my tale so well. Besides, in a Mexican sketch, one expects a pretty woman, even as one looks for lions in African, and elephants in Indian scenery. But I was so disgusted in this respect myself, that it will be of some satisfaction to me to have you disappointed also. Expect, therefore, no glowing description of female loveliness from me. Good-looking women doubtless exist in Mexico; but, in the few miles that I went over the border on this occasion, I saw none. A hazy recollection of flowers in connection with this scene of church-going damsels haunts me, but whether they were worn in the hair, or in the dress, or simply carried, I no longer remember. Men in their coloured zarapas, and broad-brimmed hats, chatted and smoked the eternal cigarette. Old women in black robes loitered in knots (very like old wives elsewhere) and gossiped. The commandante and a few officials sat on one of the old, carved stone seats. A few miners loafed before the "American Hotel," kept by a plump, jovial, masterful American woman, and her subdued matter-of-fact English husband, by name Bennett. Here I breakfasted, and in the afternoon rode out, twenty-three miles, to the mine of a friend of mine, whom I had come down to visit.

Past the Sierra Ventana (so called on account of the hole that completely perforates one shoulder of it), and over wave after wave of rolling country, sparsely covered with mesketis-bush, my guide and I rode on towards some hills in the distance; and dusk had fallen and night had come when we ascended the spur on which the mine was situated. The stalwart form of my friend (whom I will call by his local sobriquet, Don Cabeza) appeared at his cottage door as I drew up, and, not expecting me, in the dark he took me to be a new hand in quest of work.

"Buenas nochas, señor, said I.

"Buenas nochas."

"Habla V. Castellano?"

"No hablo so much as all that comes to."

Then I burst out laughing.

"Why——! If it isn't Francis!"

What a warm-hearted greeting he gave me! How hospitably he spread the best of everything before me, and even would he have relinquished his own bed to me had I allowed it. I had a big budget of news from San Francisco about mutual friends, but much as he wished to hear it, he insisted on its narration being deferred until I had slept and rested.

It was odd. When I had last seen and known Don Cabeza, it had been in an atmosphere of clubs and drawing-rooms, where his wit, good-nature, geniality, and a certain old-fashioned thoughtfulness and courtesy of manner had made him one of the most popular men in a pleasant circle. Here, with that adaptability to circumstance which is so marked a characteristic of Americans (when they choose to exert the faculty), he had shed the drawing-room air, and appeared, for the time being, as a bluff, light-hearted, practical miner. The white linen, patent leather, and general fastidiousness of speech and taste, formerly so marked, were temporarily laid aside for the flannel shirts, top boots, Western slang, and sublime indifference to fare and comfort peculiar to the dweller in a mining camp. And yet he had not changed either. There is a tinge of old world chivalry in the character of those who came in early days to California. They are lost in a crowd of a different type and of later date now; wherever you do find one though, you find a large-hearted, generous man, with nothing small or mean in his whole composition. In the better type of old Californian, there is less of the snob than in any man in the world; and in supporting what he thinks is manly and unselfish, he is as fearless of what others may think, as of what they may do. Animated by the love of adventure, the Don had left a luxurious home in the East to come in early times to California, and had there "toughed through" all those scenes and times that now read like pages from a fascinating romance. And a fine type of "old Californian" he was.

The Santa Ana was a new purchase that he had come down there to prospect. It promised well, but was not as yet worked on a large scale.

Those were pleasant days up at the mine. Lazy? Well, yes; I fancy everything in Mexico is more or less lazy. We were so entirely out of the world; the trip, moreover, was so utterly disconnected with anything that came before or followed it, that it stands out now in solitary relief.

An adobe cottage, of three rooms, had been built for the Don and his foreman, and here we lived. Below us, in wattled huts, dwelt the Yaqui miners and their families. A little removed from the adobe was an open arbour, with wattled roof, in which we took our meals. Near it was a stunted tree, that served for various purposes, besides being shady and ornamental. Lodged in the first fork was our water-barrel. The coffee-grinder was nailed to its trunk. In a certain crevice the soap was always to be found. Upon one bough hung the towels, the looking-glass depended from another. One branch supported the long steel drill, that, used as a gong, measured with beautifully musical tones the various watches of the miners. Amidst the exposed roots the axe in its leisure moments reposed. Our tree, in short, was a kind of dumb waiter, without which we should have been lost.

The country teemed with quail and jackass rabbits. We bought an old Westley Richards shot-gun in Magdalena, and did great slaughter amongst them. Deer were reported to be numerous, but during my stay we saw none. A good deal of our time was spent in cooking. The "China-boy," nominally chef, was so wondrously dirty, that one day we rose against him, and degraded him to the post of scullion, and being, both of us, proud of our culinary skill, we undertook the preparation of our meals ourselves. Jerked beef, bacon, quails, jackass rabbit, beans, rice, chilies, and potatoes were the articles that we had to work upon.

Don Cabeza mixed the introductory cocktail, and took sole charge of the jerked beef and beans; the quails and jackass rabbit fell to my care, the remaining items were mutual property, with the exception of the rice, which the Celestial was still permitted to boil. Most elaborate (at least in titles) were the menus we produced. One Mexican dish that the Don used to prepare of jerked beef, pounded and fried to a crisp in butter, with a few chopped chilies, was worthy of note. Jerked beef and jackass rabbit! We laughed as we compared these frugal meals with the extravagant dinners and breakfasts of the year before, at the "California," "Marchands," and the "Poodle Dog," in San Francisco. And, by-the-way, if you are known at either of the above restaurants, you can be served there in a style that neither "Voisin's" nor "Bignon's" could easily excel.

Every now and then, some Yaqui men or women would come up from their little colony below to purchase something from the store room, which, owing to the distance that we were from town, it was necessary to keep for their convenience; and great was their mirth to see Don Cabeza and me cooking. They said we were "loco," or mad. Good-tempered creatures they were, and certainly easily pleased, for they regarded it as a signal compliment if I sketched either of them.

I never could understand why time sped so rapidly here. There was really no occupation for us. Yet morning had scarcely broken fairly, it seemed, before evening approached, and what evenings they were!

In the rear of the cottage, the spur on which we lived led up to rocky cañons and gaunt ridges before it, vast vegas stretched like a sea away to a far-off horizon of mountains, that, in the distance, looked as soft as low-down clouds. Behind these purple veins betwixt sky and landscape, the sun—a molten mass of palpitating fire, was lost at night. And as it passed away, swift shadows fell and dimmed the scenery, knitting its distances together with imperceptible process, and shrouding the intervals in mystery and obscurity. Soon only the deceptively near sky-line was clearly visible, and above it the glow of orange deepening into red still suffused the heavens with subdued illumination. Thus, on the one hand might be seen, high set in fathomless blue, amidst glittering hosts of stars, or far or near, twinkling or fixed, blue, and white, and red, and yellow, the silver beauty of a crescent moon; on the other, the lingering glory of the vanished sun. The effect was curious.

The foreman went early to bed, and was early abroad. Not so Don Cabeza and I. When the mocking-bird in the mesketis-bush had ceased its plaintive song, and save for the sound—like dropping water—of crickets, silence fell upon the land, we would light our largest pipes, endue us in our easiest garments, and sit (he on a carpenter's bench, I in a barrow) smoking and yarning, yarning and smoking, without thought of time, through the still watches of those enchanting southern nights. Many a swift and pleasant hour did we spend thus! But then Cabeza possessed a fund of crisp wit, and an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, experiences, quaint theories, and views.

Occasionally we went into Magdalena for stores and letters. Magdalena can boast a past of some prosperity; a more important future lies before it. At present it bears a stamp of dilapidation, poverty, and squalor. Probably not a dozen of its inhabitants are unencumbered with debt; nevertheless, everybody, even to the beggar in the street, possesses from two or three to ten or a dozen mines. It sounds absurd to hear a fellow in rags discoursing glibly about "his mines." Still more ridiculous does it seem when you know that many of them are of great value. The iron safe, however, is only to be opened by a golden key, and a coined dollar in Magdalena is worth a fortune underground. Little doubt exists that, when the railways, now (1882) entering from the States, are completed, and capital and energy pour into the country, enormous wealth will be found hidden in its quartz. The hills around Magdalena give evidence of gold, silver, and galena ore in every direction. Nor is gold wanting in the river beds and valleys. All that is required is a little capital and systematic industry.

The area of country suitable for cultivation is circumscribed by reason of the scarcity of water, but where this is obtained and utilised, its effect is magical, and the fertility of the land becomes almost incredible. Not a tithe of that which is eligible is cultivated, for the indolence of the natives is remarkable. Even such ordinary vegetables as potatoes and onions are extremely difficult to obtain. A zarapa, a handful of beans, and a little tobacco, suffice for all the Mexican's requirements. If his vocabulary were limited to "Porque?" and "Poco tiempo," it would not greatly inconvenience him.

Northern Sonora derives its chief support from cattle. In most instances the ranches are of large extent, but poorly stocked. Formerly, they were in better condition, but they suffered severely from Apache raids, from which they are said never to have entirely recovered. The Indians drove off or killed all but the poorest animals, and the ranches have been restocked by the slow process of breeding from those that they left. Latterly a few bulls and stallions of a better class have been imported from the States.

One day the Don and I came into Magdalena with the avowed intention of hiring a cook. The foreman had been despatched once or twice, unsuccessfully, on the same errand; but Cabeza was undiscouraged, and said that "He guessed, if we went ourselves, and they saw how real nice we were, they would all want to come." Accordingly we enlisted all the store-keepers in the place in a search for "a real way-up cook, who could make chile-con-carne, tamales, and all the best Mexican dishes, besides understanding American cookery." "And say," Cabeza would conclude, in giving his directions, "she's got to be a beautiful woman, too, because we're good-looking ourselves, and we don't like to see homely women about the place."

Having posted our requirements in the various stores, we went off to the American hotel, where, by dint of making desperate love to the plump hostess, we succeeded in obtaining a sack of potatoes and half a sack of onions—part of a consignment that she had lately received from Hermosillo. She had just been engaged in a battle royal with the waiter, whom she had demolished with the kitchen coal-shovel. She was inclined, therefore, to be very affable, and even volunteered, for a consideration, to come out to the mine and cook for us herself.

"You want a boss cook and a beauty, Don Cabeza, eh? Well, I guess, I'm both. What'll you give me to come out to the mine and cook?"

"Mrs. Bennett," we said, "if we got you out there we should lose the only pleasure we have to look forward to—the only ray of golden sunlight that illuminates our desolate path in life. We should no longer have the treat of coming in here to see you. We mustn't kill the goose that——I mean, we mustn't be greedy, of course."

The subdued condition of Bennett, and the bandaged head of the waiter, were not happy auguries for the peace of any household that Madame Bennett took charge of. And we probably should not have borne our chains as philosophically as did her husband. Bennett's dry, matter-of-fact spirit was aptly illustrated in a story that I heard here. A miner named Hess was recounting the following incident in his career as a soldier during the North and South war to him.

It appeared that at Bull's Run Hess had a difference with the colonel of his regiment, and, refusing to fight, went off and sat on a rail by himself. A corporal's guard was sent to bring him into action, but Hess said that he "scared the filling out of them durned quick." A sergeant and a file of men then came, but he "got away with them, too." A lieutenant and half a company was despatched in search of him, but he "cleaned them out." A captain and a full company appeared, but this brave man "made them get." Finally half the regiment came down, and the invincible Hess did not hesitate to say that, he "stood them off." Old Bennett heard him to the end without a smile. Then he said: "Hess, I never hurt you any, did I?" "No." "Will you do me a favour, then?" "Why, cer'nly, if I can." "Well, I've got a bet of ten dollars, with Mike Sheppard, that Doc Brown is the biggest liar in Sonora, and if ever you tell that tale in public I shall lose the money, sure." And Hess said that he would not tell it again.

In the principal square of Magdalena stood the old church, near which were the ruins of a still more ancient edifice. To the latter, called the church of San Francisco, a legend was attached. I give it as it was given to me by a miner.

"Yer see, this here San warn't always a saint, San warn't. They do say as he was 'customed to go on a scoop—on a bend, occasionally, as it were. However, he took a pull in time, and caught on to this preaching racket, and finally he came to be a bishop. Right here was all in his claim. Wal, happened once when he was prospecting around jest to see that the sky pilots under him was keeping at it, that the outfit banked up here for the night. Next morning, when they was all hitched up and ready for a start, and come to hoist old San on his meule, they couldn't prize him up anyhow. They put on fresh hands and tried all they durned knew. But San, he'd kinder taken root, and thar he sot, like the sawed off stump of a Sierra pine, and jest about as nimble too. 'Boys,' says he, at last, 'let up hauling! ye can quit that soon as ye please' (Independent as a clam at high tide the old cuss was even then). 'Guess I'll stay right here,' says he. 'Waltz in and put up a church right away.' And that's how this church and town come to be built—least, so folks say hereabouts." Then he added reflectively after a pause: "But they do lie here, too."

After the dusty and dirty town we returned to the prettily situated adobe cottage at the mine with renewed pleasure.

At length the time came for me to depart. The horses were driven in from the vega; the near fore-wheel of the cart (which, when not in use, was invalided, and kept in water to prevent the wood shrinking from the tire) was fixed on, the old waggon lined with hay and blankets, and, one night after dinner, we started to drive into Magdalena for the last time.

The day had been oppressive, but now there was a refreshing coolness in the air. At every pace, as we jogged along, hares lolloped across the road, or played amidst the scattered mesketis-bush on either side of it. Occasionally the howl of a distant coyote might be heard. Night-hawks and owls flitted silently to and fro, and "shard-borne beetles" hummed drowsily as they wheeled in the dreamy welkin. The stars, the stillness, and the silken winds combined to work a charm. Night wore her richest jewellery, sang low her softest melody, whispered her sweetest poem, and showed her beauty all unveiled even by the lightest fleece of cloud. Until I saw these Mexican skies I never knew how much more beautiful night was than day. For every star dimly distinguishable in Europe a thousand are clearly visible there. Their number and refulgence are astonishing. Were I to live in Mexico I should be strongly tempted to rise at sundown and go to bed at dawn.

Once more the corpulent coach looms in view. Once more am I uncomfortably ensconced therein. With a torrent of Spanish invective, and a terrific cracking of whips, we slowly start. The coach turns round a corner, and I catch a last glimpse of Don Cabeza, with his hat off, in the road, waving a kindly adieu to me.

CHAPTER V. THE WINCHESTER WATER MEADS.

Note.—The following sketch has, locally speaking, no place in the present collection. But since it is somewhat similar in its nature to the others, since it describes a day's fishing with the well-known angler to whom the book is dedicated, and since, moreover, it serves to mark the interval which elapsed between the time when the foregoing and succeeding sketches were written, I nevertheless introduce it.

There is a wind which belongs only to spring mornings and they are chary of it. Soft, and yet fresh, if winds were subject to the condition of age, this one might be supposed to be in its first sunny childhood. It has no care nor business. If it blew with all its strength it could never stir a mill-sail, or set a ship in motion. A butterfly rides out its silken gales, and its boldest blast, like the whispered secret of a child, beguiles you of an involuntary smile. Imagine such a breeze fitfully exploring the Winchester Water Meads. Now it hesitates, now lingers, now pauses altogether; anon with a dainty tinkling of herbage resumes its progress. And a fair march it has.

Once more the sumptuary laws of winter have been repealed, the fashions of a new régime adopted. The time has come when "the fields catch flower." Tall buttercups, and dandelions, and knots of the great marsh marigold strew the thick grass with ingots of gold. Myriads of daisies and "milkmaids" powder it with snowy flakes. "Welshman's buttons" and anemones fill every sheltered nook, and stud the borders of each turf-cut drain. Here and there an early plume of sorrel shows like a vein of rust in this floral mosaic work, and each blade or flower, still wet with dew, flashes brilliantly in the sunlight as it trembles in sweet air.

On all sides the air is thrilling with the full melody of larks. A couple of plovers, that are nesting in the neighbourhood, wheel and turn with plaintive cries aloft; and a solitary cabbage butterfly, the melancholy forerunner of its clan, wanders away across the water towards Winnal moors in quest of fellows.

But marigolds and "milkmaids," larks and solitary butterflies aside! The Itchen and its trout are at hand, the rod is ready, and the momentous question is: "The fly?"

The swifts and swallows are ranging high, or at any rate totally ignoring the stream, sufficient proof that there is but little of entomological interest for them on the water.

"There's a rise!" ejaculates my companion, however, "and there's another. But they are only feeding on larvæ."

Fish are rising occasionally without absolutely breaking the water, and it is evident that their attention is devoted not to the casual insects floating on the surface, but to the larvæ ascending from the river bed, which they seize before they reach the upper world. We catch a specimen of the full-fledged fly (a Light-Olive), and, having matched it closely in the fly-book, commence operations.

It is ticklish work, this Hampshire trout fishing. Long education has developed in the natives of these waters a degree of sagacity that is almost supernatural. Their appreciation of the faintest nuance of exaggeration in colour of wing or body, in the artificial flies offered them, is unerring.

Time was, when to take six or seven brace of fish was a common occurrence. But in the memory of chalk-stream habitués there has been a gradual and steady diminution in angling averages; and now, unless the trout have a silly interval, a brace and a half or two brace is a good day's sport, and to catch these demands far greater knowledge, and the exercise of far more skill and patience than was formerly dreamt of. Then men walked boldly along the river bank, and fished with ordinary tackle and a wet fly. Now, albeit the flies used are miracles of diminutive workmanship, the gut a filament of fineness, that, with any consideration for its strength, can scarcely be reduced, to stalk and capture a two-pound trout necessitates the use of a dry fly, and a degree of caution and address scarcely less than is required for successful moose hunting.

As the best fly-fisherman in Hampshire said to me: "You want to put the exact fly just over your fish the first time, if he doesn't take it he doesn't mean to. By changing flies, and sticking to him half the day, you may worry him into an indiscretion, but it is a hundred to one that you are only educating him."

What fishing will eventually become in these streams it is difficult to imagine, for the decrease in sport arises from no reduction in the stock of fish, which are more numerous now than they ever were.

To-day I am not wielding the rod, but act merely as gillie for a master of the art, on whom the mantle of old Isaac Walton has descended. Gradually we work up stream, trying to convert these Winnal incarnations of perversity from their unholy appetite for larvæ, with exquisite imitations of various Olives and of the Red Quill. But they remain obdurate. They come, but come short. They roll up and leisurely inspect the fly, and with not less contemptuous deliberation turn tail upon it.

At length a far cast under the opposite bank is followed by a slight break in the water, a quick tension of the line, and a good fish is in difficulty. But almost immediately the point of the rod flies up, and, owing to the knot attaching the gut to the eyed hook having drawn, the fish escapes.

"None do here

Use to swear,

Oaths to fray

Fish away."

And yet, methinks, with the "poetry of earth," something is mingled now that sounds not like the music of waters, the song of birds, or the fluttering of a butterfly's wings—no, nor was it a hymn in praise of tackle-makers' carelessness. Let us hope that the "recording angel" for the day was once a keen sportsman, and appreciated, therefore, the extenuating circumstances of the case. Eventually the fly is replaced, and the campaign continued.

By lunch-time we reach one of the wooden shanties, with which it is becoming the custom on these streams to provide for temporary shelter. There is not a fish moving, and for the present it is useless to flog the water. Sandwiches and a pipe fill the interlude; and by-and-by the keeper, a shrewd, wooden-visaged, terrier-looking countryman, suddenly drops upon us (after the fashion of keepers), as it were, from the clouds. Locke, in his way, is a type, and his utterances occasionally have a refreshing dryness.

"Marning sir, marning sir," he says cheerily, laying a six-pound jack on the grass to leeward of the hut (for wind spoils the look of fish), and depositing his "rod," a bamboo pole furnished with wire noose, beside it. "Have you caught anything?"

"No, nothing; it's too bright."

"It is so; 'sides, the rise was over afore you come. I eyed you coming with my glass. There was a few fish feeding 'tween nine and ten this marning. I wish you'd been here."

"We came in for the tail of the rise. How did you get the jack?"

"I noosed un, sir, I allus nooses 'em. You can't get 'em out with the net, they's too artful. They lies right close on the ground, and lets the net rub over 'em."

Incited to continue, Locke plunges into a dissertation on the art of snaring jack, against which he is very naturally the sworn foe. He proudly recounts how he one day removed eighteen of these cannibals from his water, and, on another occasion, snared a leviathan of nineteen pounds eight ounces. Every now and then producing from an inner pocket a small telescope, the lens of which he polishes on his velveteen cuff, he pauses to reconnoitre suspiciously some distant figures in Nun's Walk, near which he has a small backwater full of "store" trout, that cause him a good deal of anxiety.