# California Inter Pocula/Chapter 1

CALIFORNIA
INTER POCULA.
CHAPTER I
THE VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA.
Hortensio peace, thou knowest not gold's effect.
— Taming of the Shrew.
Drunk! aye, drunk with avarice! Behold the picture ; CaK\liforiiia in her cups!
Once long ago sailors thought to hold in their embrace 'the god Bacchus, whom they carried to sea in the form of a beautiful boy while sleeping; but when the god awoke he caused vines to twine themselves about the ship, and tigers to appear amongst the branches, while the sailors went mad and drowned themselves. So it was with thousands who came early to California, thinking to ensnare her, and rob her of her treasures, but were themselves taken cap- tive, falling on destruction.
Yet swiftly as this chaff of immigration was swept away, mercilessly as California frowned on many, she was not so much to blame, although for a brief space she played the bacchante, for she was badly treated, worse than Pentheus, who from making open war on Dionysius became the devotee and laughing-stock of ​the avenging deity, and bereft of sense was led through the city in female apparel, stricken with mania, with a double sun and a double Thebes before his eyes, finally to be torn to pieces by women. First of all she was made to reveal her mystery, held sacred to the memories of time; for which extortion, like another Pythia, she was placed upon a tripod over the chasm Cassotis, and for a Delphic temple choosing the snow-powdered Sierra, and for the mephitic exhalations the less offensive incense from odorous pines.
Native to sublimated airs and all-engendering sunshine, her intoxication partook more of youthful revels than chronic intemperance; nevertheless, thou wast drunk, California, as thou well knowest; as drunk as Agave when tearing in pieces her own son whom she took for a lion's cub. Thine hills were drunk from the fruit of their own vines; and in the great valley was heard the sullen roar of hell echoing hollow on the ear. All this was exceedingly disgraceful, and especially repulsive in young and lovely woman; whereat, toward the immaculate east, conventional spinsters of untried chastity blushed and hung their heads, though never refusing to receive the fruits of sin.
Between two mountain systems stretches the valley of California, an elliptical, trough-like plain, five hundred miles in length by seventy-five in width; a vast amphitheatre, from whose arena circling terraces rise up to the lofty canopy of a pearl and beryl sky—colossal benches, whereon the gods might sit and watch the strange doings of men below.
Although not gods we some day may be; all gods were once men, or something worse. Therefore come sit with me upon the plateau-shelf up over the hill Mokelumne, near the source of the Stanislaus, where sometime sat Nemesis, eyeing the pilgrims as they entered the Golden Gate, and measuring out to them ​
    mountain systems. 3
their several portions of invented woe. Five thous- and feet below, and far as eye can reach, spreads out a periscope of beauty such as makes us loath to put off humanity even to be gods, lest mayhap as gods we should have no sympathy with scenes like this. Often have I thout>:ht when standincr entranced before entrancing nature, what a pity it was we could not alwa3^s have her scenes before us; and as for heaven, give it to those who are dissatisfied with earth. Only exterminate north winds, nervousness, and all rascal- ity, and I could rest contented yet awhile here upon this bench, though not a god.
Walled in on every side, without loop-hole or portal save by passes to the plateau regions of Utah and Arizona, and the bay of San Francisco, which across the concave from where we sit, and midway between its north and south extremes, parts the Coast Kange, whose green and grizzly hills it crowds back, and paves the way through the Golden Gate to the Pacific, we have before us what was once broad ocean, then an inland sea, afterward a hedged-in Eden, God- given to a thrice happy race, and later converted into a nineteenth-century coliseum, wherein was destined to be performed a play entitled The New Greed- struo-orle of the Nations. Time enouoh however, to talk about that to-morrow. Sit still awhile and we shall presently see, out here upon this holiday of creation, elves and fays, if any there are left for these new Arcadian vales. We can offer them whereon to sport ground which one day will be as classic as that of Greece, plains up-swelling beneath their feet, and slopes of evergreen and sweeps of forest. Then there are warm inviting knolls under star-lit skies, and enchanted groves where heaven's witchery might wanton regardless of irate ocean on one side or shadowless deserts on the other.
When this mighty Sierra was a-building, this grand up-lift, with its fluted sides flushed with never​
dying foliage, its white-cushioned benches, and long serrated summits, its rocky pinnacles whose alabaster crests glisten lustrous to mariners a hundred miles away, when its crevices were being filled with molten gold, a sea of sorrow was about to roll at its base, for the squabble for tliis treasure that is presently to come will be pitiful to see.
Split a feni-stalk and place it in a dish with the thick ends together, and the leafy sides both lying toward the east, and you have mapped the drainage system of the California valley. The stalks are the two rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, which, rising respectively at either end of the great valley, graciously receive their tributaries as they wind through oak and poplar vistas; then rolling slowly on, ever slowly, once bright and clear with happy contentment, but presently opaque in sullen shade, on to their junction, and thence together to the sea.
And it is along this eastern side, where the branches and leaves and leaflets rest on the edges of the dish, and form labyrinths of ridges, and subordinate valleys upon which are flung in infinite disorder, bluffs, chasms, and smoothly rounded stone-waves heaped almost mountain high, that we have the Sierra foot- hills, already abnormally classic. Aside from the petrified sentinels left standing adown the centuries, there is ample evidence of what Plutus was hammer- ing at hereabout. Left, after laying the Sierra foun- dation, were the dead volcanoes which we see, and their trachyte spurs flanking dark green forests, all intermingled with lavender and buff lava beds and scoriae; blistered ashen slopes, whose vegetation is stunted and ill-tempered, and fire-riven hills of purple rock, loose and crumbling, to which cling blasted pines and wind-smitten oaks. Over many of her deformities nature spreads a seemly covering, hid- ino|; what were otherwise the bare bones of an un​
m THE COAST RANGE. 5
sightly skeleton. Many of these foundation-hills, and particularly the little valleys between them were fin- ished in her happiest mood. Many of these cinders of spent forces have been well fleshed with soil, w^ell watered, made fragrant with gums and odorous plants, and toned in healthy glistening green.
But it is down into the valleys that you must go, into the valleys of the Coast Range, and that too be- fore man has mutilated everything, if you would see what nature has done for this strip of seaboard. There are natural meadows arabesque with tawny wild-oats, blossoming pea, and golden mustard, interspersed with indigenous vineyards, and fruit-bearing thickets. There are flower-gardens laid out in patterns by the deft fingers of nature, stars and crowns and chaplets of yellow, purple, white, and red. Scattered over broad park-like plains, and rising from tall wavy grass are oaks of various forms and species, some high with broad branches, and many scraggy and storm-bent. Here and there trees cluster in groves, and clumps of under-growth gather round to keep them company. Rising from the broad plain are solitary buttes, w^ith cloud-entangling crests, sharp and high; and all around the borders bluff promontories, and tongues of uplifted land timbered with beech and birch, ash, myrtle, and laurel, shoot out into the valley, some- times sudsiding in small round hills covered with tulips, wild onions, hemp, flax, and prickly chaparral. Now bring down through rocky canons the clear dancing water; lead it round in winding courses v/here it will best moisten the surface, broadening it occasionally mto lakes, locking it in lagoons, or leav- intj it in slug^o-ish slouo-hs; then go out while the morning is fresh and gray, just as the sun begins to pour a sensuous warmth into the air, to refine the mists and give lustre to the foliage, and to set life glowing under a blue and purple haze, and if the e^^es shine not with gladness, and the breast swells not ​
with gratitude, then the heart is hard indeed, and the breast but Httle better than a flint.
You say that such a region should teem with ani- mal Hfe, and so it does. You can see there pehcans and sea-gulls fishing together in the bays; seals and soa-lions barking on the islands; wild fowl thickly clustered on lake and tule-marsh ; fish darting amid the waters; and beasts of many several sorts roaming the forests. On the tangled hillside is heard the soft note of the curlew ; you may listen also to the rust- ling of the pheasant, the chirrup of the blackbird, the whistling of the partridge, and the sweet songs of the robin and the lark. And they all rest content ; they are not driven by intense heat or cold to long migrations, their little journeys between valley and mountain being scarcely more than an afternoon's ramble. Nor need they take much thought for the morrow; even the prudent bee often leaves neglected the honey-bearing flower, and fails to lay in a winter's store. To elk and antelope, deer and bear, hill and plain are one, and that whether scorched by summer's sun or freshened by winter's rain. Bounteous nature plants the fields, brings forth the tender verdure, cures the grass, and stores the acorns. Little of frozen winter is here, little of damp, malarious sum- mer ; cool invio-oratino^ nig^hts succeed the warmest days. Ice and snow banished hence sit cold and stolid on distant peaks, whence are reflected the impotent rays of the sun.
Where then is winter ? November drops its gentle rain upon the sun-burned ground, closing the weather- cracks, freshening the Lydian air, and carpeting the late gray hills and vales in green; and this is winter. Spring comes warm and wanton, and nature is clad in holiday garb. Summer, dry and elastic, and trem- bling in amethystine light, is fragrant with the odor of dried grass, cypress, wild bay, and juniper. The heat of summer is seldom enervating:, and the thick sullen fogs that creep in from the ocean are not ​
unhealtliy. The climate of California is reliable; though her women may be fickle, her winds are not. Rain she sends at rain-time, and this having passed prayers are of no avail.
Thus along the centuries seasons come and go, while over all diurnally sweeps the half-tropic sun. In the broad arch float flocks of light clouds, or spread out in long fleecy folds between which at night silently sails the melancholy moon. From the sparkling white on alpine domes the gray and golden sunlight smiles across the amphitheatre, enfolds the lustrous clouds which send shadows crawling along the mountain- side and over the plains, nods with its earliest rays to sleepy ocean, dances back from sea to snow-peak; then, palpitating in purple, it rises from violet-banks and grizzly hills, and mingles with the russet haze of the horizon, or creeps in tenderer tones through evanescent mists into deep canons and murky ravines, and glows warm and tremulous over the sombre shades below.
Before descending to the more practical affairs of life in this region, I might point you out some of the so-called wonders of the arena-rim ; though I may say to jou that long since I arrived at the conclusion that there is in heaven or earth no one thing more wonderful than another. With whatsoever we are un- familiar, that to us is wonderful when seen ; wonder is but the exclamation of ignorance.
Yonder at the northern end, lonely and white, stands Mount Shasta, girdled by lesser volcanic peaks that look like pigmies beside the monarch of the north which lifts its front so proudly above the solemn forest- sea that beats in mournful monotones upon its base. To one not cradled amid such sio-hts its awful orandeur beside our puny life is crushing. Standing in the clear atmosphere, unrivalled and apart, like Orion it catches from over the eastern ridofe the first ravs of morninof, and flashes them far down the vista; while at evening ​
its frosty diadem gleams with the glances of the departing sun long after the shades of night have overs}3read the surrounding hills.
Before us at the portal two sentinels, Helena and Diablo, guard either side, with Tamalpais picketed near the entrance ; while far to the south, over the Tulare lakes and meadows, from the cold starlit ether or glowing in the roseate hues of day, the tall obelisks and stately domes and bristlhig minarets of mounts Brewer, Whitney, and Tyndall look down in grave guardianship. Proud immutability ! Yet whether dripping with slimy sea-beds, or being graven by glaciers, or smoothed into forms of comeliness by tempest, these mighty ministers to needful lowlands do nevertheless slowly crumble in decay, and with their dust feed forest aijd flower. So man is laid low, and mind.
A little to our left, and almost hidden by granite- waves and conoidal domes that rise out of broad fir- planted snow-fields, yawns the plateau-rent of Yosem- ite. It lies in the Sierra foothills, nearly at right angles to their trend, and consists of a trough-like erosion, or sink, about a mile in jierpendicular depth, six miles in length, with a flat bottom from half a mile to a mile in irregular width. Angles and square recesses press into walls of light gray granite, bril- liantly white under the reflection of the sun's rays, in places reddened by moss, fantastically carved, or stained with vertical parallel stripes of brown and black. Over these smooth white walls the Merced and its tributaries leap in wavy silver threads, and dashing in dusty foam upon the chasm floor, intone eternal hallelujahs. Any one of the scores of domes, and peaks, and perpendicular channels, and lichen- covered precipices that here present themselves taken apart constitutes of itself a study.
Climbing up the outer side of the basin, and emer- ging from the level forest that covers the thick flat rim and veils the approach to the chasm^ the tourist ​
of later times sharply reins in his steed — if so be that the jaded cayuse requires it — dismounts, and stands on Inspiration point, a rocky eminence com- manding a partial view of the valley. Here every one who writes a book stands spell-bound as if in the presence of the almighty, beholds a new heaven and a new earth, feels the omnipotence and majesty of the infinite, attempts in vain to give his vision utter- ance, indulges in a sublime fit of rhapsod}^, and then drops into mesmeric silence. Old life and ordinary emotions are suspended, and a new tide of feeling rushes in upon the soul. The mortal part of man shrinks back, and the immortal prostrates the beholder before this apparition of majesty and desolation.
Entering at the lower end by the Mariposa trail, a general view of the valley is obtained, which displays first, on the left, the granite-block El Capitan, a smooth seamless battlement, rising clearly cut 3,300 feet in height; and on the right the Bridal Veil fall, a white cascade of fluttering gossamer, leaping from the western edge of Cathedral rock 630 feet, when striking the heaped-up debris at the base of the cliff, it continues in a series of cascades 300 feet perpen- dicular to the bottom, where it flows off" in ten or twelve streamlets. Summer dries the Virgfin's Tears that fall opposite the Bridal Veil, for their source is not the eternal snow of the high sierra. When the stream that feeds the fall runs low, nearly all the water is dissipated, by the wind, which first sways, then scatters it, and finally breaks it into quivering spray, which the tardy sun, when it appears, gilds with rainbows.
Over the floor of the enclosure is spread a varie- gated carpet fit for a palace of the gods. Meadows of thick grass are interspersed with flowers and flowering shrubs, and fringed with thickets of manzanita, alder, maple, and laurel, and groves of oak, cedar, and fir, with occasional moss-covered rocks, marshes, and patches of sand; while high up on the battlement, ​
clinging to crevice and shelving rock, are tall grace- ful ferns, with branches of the most delicate tracery, which from their dizzy height look like tiny shrubs. United with grandeur are sweet freshness and melody ; mingling with iris-hued mists is the fragrance of flowers, and with the music of the waters the songs of birds. Receiving and giving rest to the troubled waters after their fearful leap is still the Merced river, which winds tlirough the valley in sharp angu- lar bends, strikino- first one side and then the other. It IS some seventy feet in width, and as transpar- ent almost as air; indeed, so deceivingly limpid is it, that the unwary tourist who steps into it is soon beyond his depth. So too in regard to everything in and around this region of vastness ; dimensions are so stupendous that judgment is confounded ; the in- experienced eye cannot measure them. Distance is cheated of its effect; until perhaps, one toils in vain all day to accomplish what appears to be no difficult task, when the mistake is discovered and the eye is strained no longer.
Now and then a huge boulder, breaking from its long resting-place, comes crashing down the precipice, thundering in loud reverberations throughout the chasm. Sometimes in spring a flood bursts on Yosemite, when there is a tumult of waters, and high carnival is held in the valley. Scores of newly- born streams and streamlets fall from the upper end, and along the side roar a hundred cataracts whose united voices might waken Endymion. Pyramids of mist stand on the chasm floor, and ribbons of white waters twenty or thirty feet apart hang against black walls, or fall like comet's tails side by side, with jets shooting out from either side like arrows, weaving gauzy lace-work and forging fairy chains.
In May and June the streams are flush, and the monotone of falling waters is broken by crash and boom like angry surf striking the shore ; but as au- tumn approaches, the roaring cataracts dwindle to ​
mere threads, which are shattered to mist in their descent, or disappear entirely. Frost dispels a portion of the summer haze, and the air of whiter is clear and cold. The granite walls glisten in a net-work of ice, and the frozen vapor whirls through the canon, smit- ing the cliffs, and overspreading the domes in layers of white, which, as they thicken, loosen their hold, slide off in huge masses, and striking upon the debris piles, break into powder, and fill the gorge to the brim with fine particles of frozen mist, which sparkle like diamond dust.
Further upward in the valley, just beyond the Bridal Veil, is Cathedral rock, and still a little further, shooting up in graceful pinnacles. The Spires. Then on the left come the Three Brothers, called by the natives Pompompasus, or Leaping Frogs; and pro- jecting from the opposite side the obelisk-formed Sen- tinel rock, which rises from the river, like a watch-tower, over three thousand feet. Across the valley from Sentinel rock, and fed exclusively by melting snows, is the great Yosemite fall, the largest in the world, if height and volume both be considered, being fifteen times as high as Niagara, and most indescribably grand. Springing from the verge of the- chasm, over a smoothly polished, perpendicular wall of fifteen hun- dred feet, and swaying in the wind like a scarf of lace, the water strikes upon a rough, inclined shelf, over which, ragged with foam, or spread out in transparent aprons, it rushes in a seiies of cascades equal to 625 feet perpendicular to the verge, when, with a final plunge of 400 feet, this most magnificent of half-mile leaps is consummated. No small portion of the water which drops from the top, and which widens and scatters in its descent, is dashed into spray before reaching the bottom; yet enough is left, even in the dryest part of the season, to send a deep, hoarse roar reverberatino; throuo;h the canon.
Two miles above the Yosemite fall, the valley splits into three canons, at the head of the middle one of ​
which tumbles the Merced, here a fleecy mass of foam. Down the canon to the left flows the Yenaga, and down the one to the right the Illilouette. Here, at the upper end of the valley proper, where the river branches with the branchino; chasm, in the outer anole of Yenaga canon, we find the Washington Column, and the Koyal Arches, and back of these the North Dome, a rounded mass of overlapping, concentric, granite plates. On the opposite side of Yenaga canon are the Half Dome and Cloud's Rest, and in the canon, Mirror lake.
Ascending the Merced through the middle canon, besides two miles of cascades in which the river de- scends over two thousand feet, we find two magnificent falls, surrounded by the grandest scenery, — Vernal fall, which makes up in volume and impressive beauty what it lacks in height, and the Nevada fall, with the Cap of Liberty near it. The Illilouette branch of the Merced also has a beautiful fall.
Thus, amid sentinels of granite, and mighty battle- ments, and musical cascades, and roaring cataracts, with its verdure-clad floor, and its time-worn walls curtained in orlistenino; g^ossamer, cold in its colors though they be of dazzling brightness, wrapped in veils of silvery mist round which in drapery of pris- matic hues Iris dances, or illuminated with airy clouds of frozen spray, Yosemite sits enthroned. Above and be3^ond, cold, silent, and white, stretches the great range on whose summit lies the snow that, melting, tunes the viols of a hundred cataracts. A fitting play-ground for the state, truly! A wonder worthy of California ! Travel the world over and you will find no counterpart; there is no wonder like our wonder. Even a Yosemite rivulet may boast its sheer half-mile of precipice. All here is grand and unique ; all of characteristic bigness except water, but Californians were never specially partial to water!
I say Yosemite has no counterpart — I should rather ​
say outside of California. Here we have others, so that if the great chasm of chasms should ever be lost to us, we still should not be without our wonder. There is the Little Yosemite valley above the Nevada fall, with its concentric granite structures, and the same river flowing: throuoh it in beautiful cascades; and there is the Hetch-hetchy valley, which, if a little less grand than the Yosemite, would answer well enough in place of it. The Hetch-hetchy chasm walls the Tuolumne river about sixteen miles north-west from Yosemite. It is three miles in length, from an eighth to half a mile in width, with walls not quite so high as those of the Yosemite, though the volume of water flowing into it is much greater. It extends in the same direction as Yosemite, has a perpendicular blufl* — the counterpart of El Capitan, a large stream fed by the melting snows which fall over a clifl" 1,000 feet in height; has in the Hetch-hetchy fall, 1700 feet in height, the counterpart of the Yosemite fall, with its Cathedral rock, 2,270 feet in height ; finally, at its upper end, it splits into two canons instead of three as at Yosemite. All alono; the base of the Sierra, and mounting upward to its summit, are innu- merable valleys, meadows and springs, lakes, water- falls, and cascades, eroded canons, polished domes, and volcanic spindles, finger posts of the early gold-seekers, obelisk groups, table mountains, kettles, chests, forts, caves, bridges, sugar-loaves, cathedral-peaks, and uni- corn peaks ; the which, if they should be described every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Many mighty chasms we have on this Pacific slope beside the Yosemite canon of the Merced, and the Hetch- hetchy canon of the Tuolumne. There is the Amer- ican river with its north and south forks down two or three thousand feet in hard slate. The Columbia and the Fraser rivers have their fifty miles and more of gorges several thousand feet deep ; and grander yet, the KincT river canon, with its hard granite walls ​
from three to seven thousand feet deep. Then, grand- est of all is the grand canon of the Colorado, 300 miles long, and from 3,000 to 6,200 feet in depth, also the result of erosion.
There are likewise many other noted wonders in California, as Bower cave near by, with its cleft, per- pendicular chamber walls and subterranean lake, clell, grotto, and grove; the Alabaster stalactite cave of El Dorado on our right ; the Calaveras cave of skulls in which, when discovered, were found human skeletons coated with carbonate of lime; the Santa Cruz cave, and numerous natural bridges. Bower cave, situated in Mariposa county, consists of a crevice in the lime- stone hollowed out by water; hence it is open at the top but widens out cave-like beneath the surface. It is 133 feet long, 109 feet deep, and 80 feet wide. Three maple trees grow within it, sending their branches out through the split roof, and the water on the bottom is so transparent, that the deep cavities which are worn on either side above and below, may be distinctly followed beneath the surface to a depth of forty feet. Alabaster cave, in Placer county near Auburn, is a large canity, discovered by lime-burners while quarrying. There are two chambers, one 100 by 200 feet, and the other 25 by 100 feet, and from 4 to 20 feet in depth. Brilliant stalactites of various shades and shapes hang in irregular rows, interspersed with spaces stained with a sort of grotesque graining. One of the chambers, called the Cr3^stal Chapel, looks like an embowered arctic region petrified. Over a branch of the Trinity river nature has thrown a ledge of rocks 300 feet wide and 150 feet thick, under which runs the stream through an arch 80 feet wide and 20 feet high. Among others, Coyote creek, in Tuolumne county, is spanned by two natural bridges.
To these scenes of grandeur and beauty vegetation contributes its quota. Among twenty clusters of mammoth trees, there are eight principal groves, of ​
which the Mariposa and Calaveras are chief. The euca- lyptus of Australia is a taller tree than the sequoia gigantea of California — Wellingtonea gigantea these trees were once called ; but this could not be tolerated in a land where is celebrated the 4th of July, and so the name was changed to Washingtonea ; but lately, arborists say simply sequoia gigantea. Taking height, bulk, and numbers together, if not the tallest and old- est, we have here the grandest groups of forest trees upon this planet.
The Mariposa grove, which, with the Yosemite valley was given by congress to the state of California for public use and recreation, is situated thirty miles from Yosemite, and contains, scattered amono- smaller trees, over 200 which are more than twelve feet in diameter. Sixty of them, measured six feet from the ground, have diameters of from 27 to 67 feet, and in heio-ht are from 187 to 270 feet. The Grizzlv Giant measures on the surface 93 feet in circumference. Through the hollow of a prostrate trunk, two horse- men ride abreast for a distance of 100 feet. One hundred feet above the ground, a trunk which is there twenty feet in diameter, puts out a branch six feet in thickness. The trees are straight, with gracefully tapering trunks, fluted bark of a light cinnamon color, and small coniform tops. In the Calaveras grove there are about 100 trees of the larger sort, thirty of which measure from 230 to 235 feet in height, and from 30 to 45 feet in circumference six feet from the ground. Five men occupied twenty -two days in felling one of them, which was accomplished by bor- ing through the trunk with pump-augers. After it was completely severed, wedges had to be driven in on one side to overturn it. This tree is estimated to have been 1,300 years old; its bark was a foot and a half thick, and upon its stump, which six feet from the ground has a diameter of twenty-seven feet, after squaring and smoothing it, was erected a pavilion for dancing and pleasure parties. ​
We will now turn to quite a different scene Kound St. Helena, once a bellowing crater, and the chimney of infernal furnace-fires, the earth's crust softens, steams with internal heat, and appears with its comliness marred so as to expose the mysteries of unadorned earth ; for terraqueous nature, as well as human nature, has its unseemly side, its infirmities, and sinks of corruption. On one side of St. Helena are the steaming sulphuric springs and boiling mud of Calistoga, and on the other that pit of Acheron, the Geysers. Surely the balance of power must be pre- served, the heaven of California must have its hell; aye, let nature boast her abnormities, nor be outdone by that hungry human horde which rushed in hither and lined the streets of every mining camp with scores of hells.
Three miles away one hears the puff and roar as of ocean steamers, and sees the ascending smoke and steam. In the approach there is no Point of Inspira- tion; but Hog's Backs, and steep, angular glades, down which Jehu drives with such headlong speed as makes the timid passenger to shiver, and prepares the tourist for the enjoyment Plutonic pleasures. To one gazing from the mountain brow upon this monstrosity of nature, God is not in all his thoughts, but Satan and his hissing emissaries ; here is no new heaven and earth, but a nether realm, with sty- gian odors that offend the nostrils.
He who first discovered the beauties of Yosemite was struck speechless as at the portal of paradise. The hunter Elliots, who in 1847 chased a bear into the valley of the Pluton, spying the Devil's canon turned and fled, and on reaching his companions ex- claimed: " Boys I I have found hell I "
Around the cool deep crystal waters of Clear Lake are numerous soda springs, sulphur banks, and borax deposits. Down the western slope of the western ridge that bounds this region, in the heart of a tangled forest once we.l stocked with game, flows the Pluton river, a ​
merry tumbling stream from twenty to thirty feet in in width, formerly almost alive with trout, and shaded by the foliage of overhanging vines and branches. At rio'ht anoles to the Pluton canon, from its northern side, is a gorore about half a mile in leno^th, and but a few rods in unequal width, with steep walls rising from 50 to 150 feet. This little off-shoot is called the Devil's canon. From its entrance at the Pluton canon its uneven surface rises, and at the upper end it divides in two, and mingles with the hills. A little creek with minia- ture falls and cascades runs through it, whose waters at their source are pure and cold, but which as they descend soon become contaminated by their surround- ings. Sometimes a partial footpath winds by the stream, between the rocks and mobile earth, but often it is undermined or sw^ept away. The entrance is but a narrow rocky pass, roofed by fallen, but yet grow- ing trees, adorned with fantastic roots, and partially covered with debris and creeping plants. This en- trance is called Proserpine's Grotto, and be^^ond it the canon widens a little.
The scene within is barren and ghastly. Bottom and sides are skinned of every sign of vegetation, and scoriated with sulphur, salts, and slimy deposits. Around the upper portion of the sides, the earth assumes a reddish hue, below which it is marbled with the ghastly colors of festering flesh, patches of pale ashen and white, patches of green and slaty stain, yellow sulphur snow and black sulphur root, with all the intermediate shades of death and dissolution. Hot springs burst forth from hot ground, spitting, sputtering, hissing, and panting in unmanageable wrath. Through whistling steam and sickening sul- phur, yawn horrible mouths like the gates of Aver- nus. It is as utterly infernal a place as can well be imagined, lurid and murky, and sickening with heavy vapor. In every hole and corner this model Pande- monium seems inhabited by shadowy fiends, and every fiend to be doing his best to render his little ​
crevice the particular hell of the place. On the bottom and along the sides are two hundred grinning mouths spurting liquids of every hue. Into this sewer of desolation and dire combustion, midst hissing vapor and the stench of decomposing drugs, vomit white blue and black sulphur springs, boiling alum, epsoni salts, and magnesia springs ; iron and soda springs; conglomerate and nondescript medicated mixtures, until the little rivulet, nauseated by the vile compound, turns whejash in color, emits a faint gurgle, tosses feverishly on its rocky bed, and then slinks along its slimy way. Round stinking pools that fill the air with their fetid breath, are incrusta- tions of iron, tartaric acid, copperas, and verdigris. The clammy ground, crispy with sulphuric crystals, rough with scoriae, quakes and sends forth noxious gases. Waves of sulphuric seas thump against the thin crust of the seemingly hollow earth ; jets of liquid black leap hissing from blue-vitriol mud, and a cavernous roar echoes through the pitchy glen. Nature, sick with sore boils, eaten by acids, palsied and jaundiced, is smothered with alopathic abomina- tions.
Pass Proserpine's Grotto and ascend the canon. Pick your way carefully and plant your feet in the footprints of the guide, else your legs may suffer for the neglect. First there is an Iron and Alum spring, with a temperature of 97° Fahrenheit ; then the Medicated Geyser bath, containing iron, sulphur, epsora salts and magnesia; Eye Water spring, om- nipotent against ophthalmia ; and in the order men- tioned Boiling Alum and sulphur spring, Black Sul- phur spring, Epsom Salts spring, Boiling Black sulphur spring. The largest spring is the Witches' Cauldron, situated two-thirds of the distance up the canon, and the loudest the Steamboat Spring at the head of the canon. The Witches' Cauldron is a hole or sink six or seven feet in diameter, of unknown depth, and with a temperature of 292° Fah ​renheit.
Seething and swashing like a troublous witches broth stirred by subterranean imps, with no visible outlet, its thick black liquid bubbling sometimes to a height of three or four feet, the bank near by begrimed like a chimney-back and just above blooming with beauti- ful sulphur crystals, Dante himself could not conceive a more perfect stygian pool. This black vapory pit has been called also the Devil's Punch Bowl. It is an insult to his Majesty, who knows full well how to brew good punch.
Every spring has its voice, its own peculiar strain ; its busy babble, or surly grumble, or hollow moan, or impotent sputter, or testy hiss, or angry roar, or wild shriek, its vain spoutmgs or gleesome gurgle, and throuo;hout the ao-es the infernal choir ceases not to deliver its united and discordant strains. But loud above all voices and high above all sounds are the puffmgs and roaring pulsations of the Steamboat Geyser, which sends from the hillside in several fitful volumes, through orifices from an inch to a foot in diameter, columns of hot vapor to heights of from 50 to 200 feet. The sounds of which the name is expressive, are like those proceeding from the escape pipe of an engine. The roar is continuous, though broken by puffs and louder bursts, while all around from tiny holes in the spongy ground jets of hot steam shoot upward, with a force and fury significant of the contending elements beneath the surface. Then there is the Intermittent Geyser, which belches boiling water spasmodically, sometimes fifteen feet and again only three or four feet; the Devil's Ink- stand, which emits through a small aperture a black liquid that may be used for writing, and whose stain is indelible; the Devil's Grist-mill with its sputtering clatter ; the Devil's Kitchen, the Devil's Bake-oven, the Devil's Wash-tub, the Devil's Tea-kettle, the Devil's Pulpit, and the devil knows what else. All along the banks of this Lethe stream, as you climb, fainting with the heat and smells, between slippery rocks and ​
over the seething uncertain ground, your blistering feet perhaps ankle deep in mineral deposits, and lift- ing themselves spasmodically from the heated earth, 3^ou may see pools of slaty swash exhaling a dock- mud stench, steam whizzins; thro'uo'h fissures, and black compounds belching from slag and clinker- rimmed holes ; at which strange doino;s Helena ixroans afresh, and fallen forest trees ten miles distant shudder and turn to stone.
Here, as everywhere in dealing with the unknown, men speculate upon the causes of these phenomena, some holding that they are produced by volcanic action, others by purely chemical forces. Side by side, only a few inches apart, are hot springs and cold springs, boil- ing springs and springs whose waters are undisturbed. An iron pipe terminating in a whistle inserted in one of these steam orifices, sends forth a shrill shriek. On the Pluton is the Indian spring, whither the na- tives, who feared to enter the Devil's canon, have re- sorted from time immemorial to bathe in its healing waters. There they erected a sweating-house, and thither they carried their sick. Near the hot black sulphur bath, which they have made, flows a stream of clear cold water, into which, after their fashion, they plunge alternately. On one side of the Devil's canon is the Mountain of Fire, honey-combed with dead geysers, and stratified with sulphur, epsom salts, copperas, nitre, ammonia, tartaric acid, cinnabar, magnesia, and yellow ochre. Near by are the vent holes of a crater from which the steam whistles with great force. In early morning, before the overhang- ing vapors are dissipated by the rising sun, the gorge is filled with steam, which rolls ofl" in huge banks be- fore the wind. Above and beyond the edges of this Tartarean pool, round which struggle pale sickly trees, in the valley of the Pluton, and sometimes ap- proaching coyishly to the very verge of the heated waters, mountains, hills, and ravines are overspread with a covering of fresh verdure and wild flowers. ​
made all the more luxuriant and charming by the warmth of tliese infernal fires ; and to complete the picture, at sunrise a weird rainbow, refracted from sulphuric vapor, hovers in clear prismatic hues over the canon, and loses itself in the glistening emerald at either end. Turn then away, happy in the thought that nature inflicts on man few such insio-hts into her sorceries, but rather veils in beauty the mysterious chemical processes of her laboratory.
The great sink in the Coast Range, which lies before us near the border of the ocean, and into which the waters of the entire valley are drained, is another marvel of nature, though utilized and made common by man. But for the Golden Gate fissure or cleft, which abruptly cuts in two the continuous coast line, large areas in the interior would be perpetually under water. Were the channel throuoh this bluff-bound gateway less deep, so that the ocean's ebb and flow should not be felt within, San Francisco bay would be a lake. But better far as it is, a lake-like and well- nigh land-locked harbor, larger than Rio de Janeiro, and fairer than Naples; with all the glowing haze and delicious sweetness of the famous Neapolitan air, but without its subtle softness and enervating lano-uor.
Mount some warm misty morning to the top of Yerba Buena island, which stands midway between the cove to which it gave its name and Oakland point, and the prospect thence will scarcely fail to kindle the eye, to swell the heart, and awaken long- ings for other scenes. From this island's base spreads out a mimic ocean, shaped like an arrow-point, sixty miles in length by four or five in width, whose radiant waters flhig blick the rays of the morning sun, or ripple under the influence of wind and tide, and from whose borders, wavy hills roll up, smooth and round as the bust of Canova's Venus, or dimpled like a merry school-girl's face. These, interspersed with gen​
tier slopes, and radiating valleys and ridges, and minia- ture plains, through which thread numerous stream- lets, were not long since the home of the prowling panther and marauding coyote, of wild-cat, bear, and deer. Myriads of wild-fowl and sea-birds fished in these waters, and quarreled, filling the air with their shrill cries; while within the bay and without the por- tal, and for 3000 miles along the shore, were seal-rocks, with crawling monsters barking, enjoying their siesta, or holding conference like sinful souls in purgatory.
Northward there is a maze of undulating elevations, domes ridges and peaks, their outline toward the ocean delicately penciled against the sky, and further inland in the distance is a background of nebulous mountains, the landscape lighted in places by unseen waterSj and all painted in soft aerial colors of varied depth and tone. Toward the south the ridges on either side recede; the water broadens at first, then narrowing, melts away in hazy perspective. Beyond is the great sea, smiling in azure or fretting in impa- tient green and white, with its silence-breathing surf singing ocean lullabies to the sleepy hills, or rolling in from the horizon huge waves, which, dashing them- selves aofainst their shore-limits, fall back foamino; at their own impotency.
Thus sculptured in the heart of the Coast Range, some parts of the bay are narrow and deep like a highland loch, with bluffs and promontories ; in otlier parts the water spreads out, and encircles large islands, ■ — Angel, Alcatraz, and Yerba Buena, — or washes a diminutive beach. Its seaward shore is splintered into points and estuaries; on the opposite side are coves and graceful crescents ; while round the northern end, where empties the Sacramento, are bays carved within bays, straits and deep- flowing channels, and sentinel islands and embankments.
The northern side of the Golden Gate is a steep, dark, reddish wall, six or eiq-ht hundred feet in heiglit. From the top of this wall the hills mount and roll off ​
in warm yellowish-green surges round Tamalpais, deepening into purple as they rise in graceful alpine outline and mingle with the clouds. Opposite this bank the waters of the bay and ocean are separated by a ridge of argillaceous sandstone, severed at the Golden Gate so as to form a peninsula some six miles at the northern end, and broadening into open high- lands toward the south. Upon these so lately sand- blown hills, freckled with tough, wind-defying shrubbery, beneath whose branches quail and rabbits loved to hide, and birds and rivulets sana* too-ether, is now being planted the commercial metropolis of the Farthest West; while all around this favored bay, blustering in its strength and radiant in its beauty, and already white with the sails of every ocean, in- dustries are springing up, towns and cities are being built, and a race of men and women developing which some clay will make the nations marvel. The bay of Kieselarke has been called golden because of its shin- ing sands; but far more proper may our beautiful sheet which from the first so gladdened the hearts of the followers of St Francis rejoice in that name, for not only are its shores golden, but its hills and skies, its commerce and its industries, its towns and people are orolden.
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Fair California ! clad in verdant spring vesture or resting in arid robes under a metallic sky ; voluptuous in thy half-tropic bed, in thy sunlit valley warmed with the glow of bronze and rosy lustre, redolent with wild flowers, and billowy with undulating parks and smooth corruoated mounds and sWellinof heio-hts, with wavmg grass and fragrance-breathing forests, capti- vating the mhid, and ravishing the senses with thy bewitching charms, and smiling plenty in alternate seasons of refreshing rains and restful dryness; with thy lofty snow-capped peaks, and metal-veined Sierra, and amethystine smooth-browed hills bathed hi purple mists and musical with leaping streamlets and so ​ngs
of birds; with tliy corridors of sundered stone, and glacier valleys silvered with moonlit lakes, and cool refreshing basins filled with transparent blue; with thy boisterous alpine streams, and quiet lowland rivers, and sluofofish waters wandering- throuo-h char- rcterless sloughs; with thy scraggy scattering oaks, and tangled undergrowth, mirrored in crystalline pools, and flowering shrubs, and mighty sable forests; with thy sunlight soft and hazy, and air sea-scented and sparkling yet mellow, stimulating yet restful, and pure and sweet as that which blows from Araby the Blest, yet strong withal, wooing the sick and care-laden, cooling the vein-swollen brow, thrilling the blood with ocean's stimulants and giving new life, not stifling it; with thy native men and beasts, and birds and fishes, and fields of native grain, all hitherto unmarred by man, all fresh as from the hand of the creator revel- ling in primeval joy and fragrance, while the valley murmurs its contentment, and the forest cypress nods its sable plume; crimson purple and violet in thy blushing beauty veiled in misty gauze that rises fresh and glistening from the sun-beaten ocean, and fills the heavens thick with spray or whirls off* in eddying clouds round the mountain tops, breaking from mina- ret and spire into long streamlets edged by burnished sunlight ; voluptuous thus, or fierce in thy wild unrest, in th}' lashed energies fiery as Achilles, whatever be thy mood or circumstance, thou art a song of nature ringing an ever changing melody, thou art the smile that lit Jehovah's face when he saw that it was good !