Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water. Ethel Gwendoline Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ to them convulsively, for to say that we jolted and bumped would be to give no adequate idea of the violent exercise we went through. We collided with one another, and slipped up and down the seat, we were thrown up in the air to come down again with a thud that jarred the whole system. In vain we grasped the front seat, or clung round the iron standards, planting the feet firmly on the footboard, determined not to go up with the next bound of the coach. It was all to no purpose, and by the end of the first hour we were sore and aching, looking at each other in blank dismay, with the knowledge of the seventy miles' coaching to be gone through that day. I remember that it was our shoulder-blades that suffered most, and that it was impossible to keep the air cushions we tried, as a relief, in their place. It was not the pitching of the coach, though we often saw it rise up above the leaders and then descend till the wheelers were visible again, that we dreaded, but the large stones over which the wheels passed with a relentless jar which communicated itself to the whole nervous system.

      But the most trying thing of all was the dust, which under the twenty-four hoofs of our six horses, rose in clouds around us. Sometimes for a moment we were so enshrouded as to be invisible to each other, and then as it cleared off, and we drew breath freely again, mouth and nostril were full of the fine sand which we tasted and smelt. It was, too, of a peculiar red colour, imparting its ruddy tinge to everything we wore; in fact, our things never recovered that expedition, and for long afterwards, notwithstanding the vigorous brushings, which I gave with an unstinting hand on our return, we used to detect its traces and say, "Some of the Yosemite dust!" A soft woollen shawl which we had with us, absorbed such an immense quantity, that it even now responds to a gentle shake by giving forth a little cloud of dust. We used to arrive each night at our destination enshrouded in a film of the same, and there was difficulty amongst the passengers in claiming their small hand-baggage from amongst a pile of dust-smothered luggage.

      We began our journey by crossing over a flat plain, and our curiosity was excited by a wooden aqueduct running parallel with the road. We kept it in sight for many miles, and never really lost it throughout the whole day, passing it again late in the afternoon. It was a plane or wooden trough, constructed on a slight incline, filled with a stream of water, flowing at the rate of five miles an hour, and down which lumber was floated a distance of seventy miles. This ingenious contrivance is the means of utilizing much of the splendid timber that lies rotting in the mountain forests, useless because of the enormous labour and expense of transporting it to the abode of man. Several experiments were necessary before the "flume" was perfected, the V shape being adopted, as it was found in the square troughs that the lumber in floating down would be driven transversely, and so occasion a block. We presently exchanged the prairie-like plain for a more hilly country abounding in a stunted undergrowth of dwarf oak, cork, myrtle, and ilex trees, freely interspersed with large masses of rock, in such isolated positions, that we could not help wondering how they ever came there. The blue range of mountains that we were to cross later in the afternoon were becoming more distinct. At a very early hour in the morning the sun had become powerful; we were hungry after our five o'clock breakfast, depressed at the prospect before us, and by eleven o'clock, when we made our first halt to change horses, we had reached a pitch of great misery.

      There were some tame rattlesnakes shedding their skins outside the inn, and we were able to get a large cornucopia of sweet white grapes to refresh us.

      The Californian coach-drivers are famed for their skilful driving; they are hardly worked with four days a week, driving continuously seventy miles, but they receive high pay, ranging from seventy to eighty dollars a month. It is nice to watch their care and interest in the horses; knowing the peculiarities of each one, husbanding their strength, and frequently stopping to water them from the iron pail that clanks in the boot behind. They are well known on the road, and it is amusing to hear their various merits discussed. They need to be careful and experienced men when you think of the sharp corners turned at a hand gallop, and the roads, which for the most part are made overhanging the precipice. More danger might be feared from the footpads, or "road agents" as they are called, who have frequently stopped the coach and robbed the mails. This occurred only last year, and no traces have ever been found of the robbers.

      Another three hours of growing discomfort brought us to Coarse Gold Gulch, where we rested for luncheon. We were received by the German daughters of the house in the cool trellised verandah covered with vines, with long feather brooms, and the outer layer of dust was prudently removed before we were allowed to enter the house. We waited a weary while for the coach returning from the valley, and when it did arrive it was comforting to see others in a condition as bad as ourselves; to hear that we had got over the most scorching and dusty bit of road; to be told of the glories of the valley by those still under its influence; and to be given advice on the best way of spending our one afternoon there.

      We discovered at once a passenger booked like ourselves for the Australia, Mr. Davidson, of Edinburgh, who proved, in our subsequent journeyings together, such a pleasant and intelligent travelling companion.

      We began gently ascending again, when we continued our journey, for the most part through a shady ravine, till we crossed what was apparently an outlying spur, and began the tedious climb of the larger range. At times the horses seemed hardly to make any progress, and they crawled along with the coach lumbering and creaking after them. Then for the first time we saw specimens of the Sequoia Gigantea, that wonderful genus peculiar to California. Presently we were passing through miles of its forests, their purple and pink-streaked stems, straight and slim, reaching to an enormous height before striking out into long branching arms, which interlace to form a feathery network against the sky. This closely packed array of mighty giants, stretching away into long vistas of upright stems in the dim distance, gives one a feeling of being surrounded by conscious though inanimate beings; they give a feeling of strength in repose, increased by the stillness and silence of all around; for the wheels move noiselessly over the thick carpet of fir needles, and there is only a rustling murmur of the breeze in the pines overhead.

      There are no singing birds here, and the only sign of animal life is a ground squirrel darting across the road, and scampering up the nearest tree.

      Here and there we emerged into sunlight from the cool depths of the forest, to see the range of mountains forming part of the great Coast Range, looking thin and hazy in the warm afternoon sun. Fire had wrought destruction amongst many of the trees, leaving charred and blackened stumps, decaying into curious and weird forms, Sometimes the trunks and branches, scathed by the fire, remain a beautiful silver grey; in others the trunks would be completely hollowed, and yet still able to support an immense framework above. In one case I remember a pine was burnt through at the base, hollowed out so as to form a perfect V shape.

      There appear to be two theories as to the origin of these forest fires; some say that the trees fire themselves in the fall from extreme dryness; the other, which would seem the more probable, that the mischief originates from a spark of the woodman's pipe, or perhaps a brand left burning from the camper's fire. There is no doubt that this is sometimes the cause of the terrible devastation wrought, and it is no uncommon thing to see far away the blue wreaths of smoke curling up from the very heart of a forest that betokens one of these conflagrations.

      It is very difficult to convey any idea of the gigantic height of the sequoias by simple measurement or figures, but I know that many of them took root in the ravine so far below, that we in the coach overhanging the precipice, and leaning over, could not trace their origin; whilst the tops would just be on a level with the road. But all this time we were toiling upwards, and the shades of evening were beginning to close around us in gloom, surrounded as we were by the dark pines. We reached the top about 6 p.m. Just one view of a grand, white mountain, with dark, purple shadows lying on its jagged peak touched with a few last rays of light, and we began a mad rush, wild and headlong, down into the valley in the gathering darkness. The horses swung round the zigzag turns at a gallop, the leaders all but over the precipice to allow of room for the remaining four, and for the coach to graze round the corner. Ten, twelve, fifteen miles an hour, the speed gradually increasing, until, breathless and unconscious, save of flying through the air, you gave up at last the anxious watch on СКАЧАТЬ