Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1878-02-15
Evening in the California Mountains.

Mrs. Mary Hallock Foose, the artist,
writes as follows in .Scribner for Febru-
ary:
Toward the close of the dry season,
when brown and dusty August turns in
to browner, dustier September, keen
remembrance of all cool, watery joys
takes possession of ones thoughts. The
tapping of ripples IN pebbly coves, the
steady thump of oars in row. locks, the
smell Of apple blossoms on damp spring
evenings old mill-races mOssy and drip
ping, the bleating Of frightened lambs at
a sheep-washing and the hoarse, stifed
complaints of their mothers mingled
with the rushing of the stream-all
these once common sounds and sights
haunt the memory. Every day the dust
cloud grows thicker in the valley, the
mountains fade almost out of sight
against sky which is all glare without
color; dry wind searches over the bare,
brown hills for any lingering drop of
moisture the sun may have left there;
but the morning and the evening
still keep spell which makes one for
get the burden of the day. At sunset
the dust-cloud in the valley becomes a
bar of color stretching across the base
Of the mountains, deep rose and orange
shading by soft gradations into cool blue
remember one sunset especially. The
clouds Of dust rolling up from the val
ley below were transformed by the light
into level bars of color like horizontal
rainbow sweeping across the entire val
lay; above it the mountains rose; a
wonderful variety of constantly chang
ing hues made them look like something
unreal. Then there came sudden dark
cning OF the lower part of the mountains
so that the sun-lit peaks seemed to float
in the air above the bars of sun-colored
dust, with a strip Of cool shadow be-
tween. All is quiet; as in the morning,
no birds chirrup and twitter themselves
to sleep; stiffness is only broken by the
dull throbbing Of the engine like a
stihed breath in the distant shaft
| house.
Every evening repeats this silent
symphony of color, and every day it
seems like something one has dreamed
Of. The rose and orange and blue have
faded into the same dull, gray pail,
which, to the valley stretched beneath.
is never anything more; only those who
see it from the hills know that some
times this pail is robe of glory.
| We rode home one evening across the
low, bare hills beyond the Mexican
camp. 1t was during the ''earth-shock
weather Gas the miners call those last,
dry, lurid weeks before the early rain
, falD, and one of the dull, red sunsets,
peculiar to that season, had been fam
ing on the sky and mountains; its lin
gering glow colored the edge of the early
moonlight. The soil here has a vermil-
ion tinge, which is stronger after sun
down; it was intensified that evening by
the flush in the sky. There was no pos
tive light or shadow, only pink glow
spreading over all the wide landscape,
except where the canon held its glooms,
and above it young moon slowly
frightened in sky of twilight blue. 1t
was in sentiment like William Morris
poetry. | always think of it as the
land east of the sun, and west of the
moon. While the moon is young and
her light faint and pale, one can scarcely
mark the time when the lingering twi-
light passes into the soft, dim radiance
that spreads like spell over the valley,
across part of which lies the shadow of
a mountain. We connot see the moon
itself, only its light The mountains
opposite remain always shrouded in 81
lence and mystery. But when nights
come for the full moon the place is a
paradise; in the foreground the winding
trails with black masses of shadow from
the clumps of live-oak crossing them
the dark mountain lines rising grandly
on every side, the mysterious depths OF
the canons, the lights of the Mexican
camp scattered over the hills, the closer
clustered lights of the Cornish camp or
the lower range, the wide, dim valley
below, and the far-otf barrier of noun
tains.