The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-07-31
JOAQUIN MILLER,
HAMLIN GERLAND DESCRIBES A
VISIT TO HIM,

Slerras"--His Fountain and Mile of
Roses.
a hundred times on my journey
across the continent / quoted JOAQUIN
Miller. His lines upon the plains and
mountains rose again and again to nv
lips, SO apt are his descriptions. so
comprehensive his moods. From the
time we struck out upon the rising,
fresh green slopes that lead to the
Rocky Mountains till 1 reached the
regions of st. Helena, with her wild.
unmeasured miles of wood, and Mount
Hood, with its terrible heights, rising
like a tower of roses and violet marble,
l found in Songs of the Shutdown
Seas the constant expression of what
/ saw.
At the foot of Mount Shaster I under
stood his line of the "cool white
rivers" and / understood at last the
depth and tenderness of his apostrophe
to the Sierras after seeing a thousand
miles Of their eternal tents of snow
that flash DER battlements of noun
tains." One of the great pleasures 1
promised myself was a visit to the poet
himself. I knew the man who could
write such virile and lofty nature songs
could not but be an admirable and in
teresting personality at the bottom.
because great streams do not rise from
desert sands.
He lived in Oakland, 1 was informed,
and at my first opportunity 1 took the
ferry, with the entire afternoon before
me, in which to find him. It was well
I started early. In the Oakland direc-
tory I found this inscription: &c. II.
Miller, Fruit Grower, Residence on the
Heights"
1t made me- aware at once of the
mans peculiar personality and made
me think of rugged John Burroughs,
with his garden on the Hudson. 1 IN
CURED where the Heights were and of
the poet. Everybody seemed to know
Miller, but nobody seemed to know
where to find him.
I met a young man in my walk
C4NAOGS w q SOOOL O0A "a 444AOs
He said: Eyes, I know Miller; he's a
rough old fellow-wears boots" This
was the most remarkable thing about
Miller in his mind.
After leaving the horse-car, which
ran within two miles Of the house, I
started toward the mountains.
walked along a rising road bordered
with ecalyptus trees, with their shin
ing blue green leaves, intermingled
with the beautiful feathery frontage
of the Australian acacia. The road
soon began climbing the foothills and
the city sank slowly into the deeping
distance. The walking was not IN
pleasant, but the foothills GIANT green
and dotted with brush) grew sleeper.
The air was still and soft and spring.
like.
The road was lonely and I had no
guide to the lines wherein he said:
BE my reward
Some little place to pitch my tent:
Some tee or vine
Where | may sit above the sea
And drink the wind as drinking wind"
I knew 1 had not yet reached the
altitude which he would seek; there
was not enough of the sea and the sky
within the sweep of the eye.
I came at length to a little log hut,
which recognized. 1t was almost the
last house on the road.
looked first at the four or five little
cottages which stood in a row on the
hillside amid a carefully terraced and
abundantly watered fruit farm. The
houses were hardly more than Dakota
claim shanties. Roses stood about,
though it was Christmas week. Small
olive and orange trees, trout ponds,
beds of flowers, a team blowing in the
background-these were the salient OBJ
jects at first view.
Then I turned to the valley. Oak
land lay below, fattened and remote,
while afar in the haze of the western
sum-, across the bay where ferry-boats
shuttIed to and fro, San Francisco rose
on it's hill, and on the great Pacific far
beyond shone sails of ships that seemed
to u and wait, indecisive and hest
tating. 1t was a spot such as a poet
would settle upon-a place of wide
range and pure air, with just enough
of aloofness, though not out of reach
of the city, which is, after all, civiliza-
ton as it exists to day, good or bad;
| all vices and virtues finding there full
est development in these hot beds
At the door of one of the little houses
the noet's mother met me. She told