A La California. Albert S. Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ lot after all, and Harry, as I found, was a boarder and a petted member of a pleasant and refined social circle, not the solitary tenant of a comfortless lumberman's or ranchero's cabin, as I had fancied him. We left the ladies sitting under the trees, and went in to supper. Harry has always been fancying himself a farmer, and many is the good joke that has been perpetrated upon him in the agricultural line. At that time he had been doing a big thing in that way. An enthusiastic farmer of Alameda County had imported, for seed, from Scotland, at great expense, a quantity of black Scotch oats, such as are used for making oatmeal in the "land o' cakes." He was very choice with them; would only part with them at one dollar per pound, and, in his anxiety to introduce them as ​widely and generally as possible among the farmers of California, had made a positive rule to sell only one pound to any one individual. Harry, not a whit less enthusiastic than himself, and, if possible, a little more public-spirited, determined to have a field of those oats which would astonish the natives. So he went around among his friends, and got them to go one at a time to his importing friend, and purchase a pound of the precious oats, each on the pretext of desiring to plant them in their gardens to raise seed for hypothetical ranches in the country for next season. His virtue and perseverance were fully rewarded. He succeeded in getting together, in this manner, fifty-seven pounds of the coveted oats, which he proceeded to sow in a nicely prepared field of goodly extent. He had sown many a field with oats of the wildest variety in his younger days, but never had he regarded the expected crop with such blissful anticipations as in this case. He watched and waited. Days grew into weeks, and weeks into months, and still no green sprout showed itself above the surface of that promising field. Painful doubts began to oppress his bosom. He dug down and found some of the oats; they were just in the condition in which they were first put into the earth. Sore afflicted in mind, he waited yet a little longer, tried them again, and with the same result. Then he hurried away to his friend, the public-spirited importer, and sought an explanation of the mystery. It was easily given. He, the importer, had written to a friend in Edinburgh for "One thousand pounds of black oats such as are ​best liked in Scotland for making oatmeal, clean and thoroughly dry before packing for shipment." The order had been filled conscientiously. The best ones for making oatmeal are of course kiln-dried, and to insure their coming in good condition the shippers had taken the precaution to have them dried in an extra hot kiln. They would have made oatmeal, a single pound of which would have kept a Scotchman on the scratch for a year; but for agricultural purposes he might as well have sown so many hailstones or shoe pegs. Had he written that he wanted them for seed, the matter-of-fact Scotch shippers would have sent him seed oats; but he wrote for best oatmeal-producing oats, and they sent them. The joke had just got out, and we discussed it at supper with hearty relish, and one joke and story brought on another until the waning hours admonished us it was time to retire for the night.

      No one ever had a larger stock in trade, in the shape of good resolutions, than myself. I allow nobody to beat me in that line, whatever may be my short-comings in other matters. After a glorious night's sleep I awoke with the warm sunlight pouring in at my window, and the sweet song of wild birds falling on my ears. As I have said, I had come into this inexpressibly lovely and secluded valley to hunt wild game, and fish for mountain trout, and I arose with the firmest resolution to swallow a hasty and early breakfast, saddle up, and be off into the hills without the loss of a moment's time. The matter of breakfast was soon disposed of, and I went out into the open air and the sunshine. Great

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      spreading buckeyes and California laurels, the fragrant bay, stood in groups all around the house; and between two gnarled tree trunks, in the fragrant shade, I saw a hammock swinging temptingly. There was a world of romance and dreamy remembrances of other days and tropic climes in the sight, and—shall I say it?—the cherished daughter of the house, she of the soft rippling hair, and great brown eyes, sat near the hammock, in the shade, with an open book before her. To see how it would seem to swing in a hammock in the shade once more, I stretched myself therein, and, to complete the reproduction of my dream of the tropics, drew out a bunch of fragrant cigarritas,—genuine Havanas, from the factory of "the Widow of Garcia,"—rolled one, lighted it, and engaged in conversation with my fair young friend. I found her highly educated, refined, accomplished, a glorious conversationalist, entertaining, and companionable. The smoke of that cigarrita, and another, and another, and another, went curling up in blue transparent wreaths, and floated lazily away. The sunlight filtered through the leaves in rippling streams of golden glory, and the soft autumn breeze fanned my cheek and played caressingly with the locks upon my forehead, grey and harsh no more, but curly and raven-hued again, "in my mind's eye, Horatio." The view down the valley, between hills on one side clad in deepest green, on the other in brightest gold, to the great Canada del Raymundo and the high, forest-crowned mountains of Santa Clara, enveloped in, and glorified by the soft blue haze of the September morning,

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      A DREAM OF THE TROPICS

      ​was poetry itself; and, beggar that I am, I swung in that hammock, smoked the fragrant cigarritas, and talked of books and poetry and travel in foreign lands, with that fair daughter of the Golden Land, until four o'clock in the afternoon.

      I ought to say that I am ashamed of myself; but I am not. I glory in my shame! I would do it again, and think none the less of myself and my fellow-man—and woman—for so doing. And so would you, my reader, or you are no friend of mine,—a blockhead, an idiot, a confirmed misanthrope, or something worse. If you do not sympathize with me in this feeling, drop the book right here, and never take it up again; you and I will not do to travel together.

      All earthly things end sometime and somewhere, and my siesta followed the rule. At four o'clock I saddled up old Don Benito, who had been neighing and manifesting his impatience to be off for hours, and, with Linden, rode up a long, winding pathway in the cañon, through the thick, overhanging forest of laurel, madrono, live-oak, tea-oak ceonotus, buckeye, and wild cherry, to the summit of the high hill range, above the valley upon the west. Doves, and pretty, tufted California quail rose up and whirred away into the thickets as we rode along, and rabbits and hares ran before us in the pathway, affording us abundant opportunity for using our guns.

      On the summit of the range was a fine wheat-field of two or three hundred acres, and there the birds fairly swarmed. We used our guns until the sport became such no longer, and then threw ourselves ​down upon the grass under a tree to admire the quiet beauty and subdued grandeur of the scene, and talk of old times and plans for the future. Eastward, miles away beyond the valley of San Andreas, the lower hill range and the wide marshlands, but seemingly at our very feet, lay the blue Bay of San Francisco, flecked here and there with the white sails of ships. Beyond this lay a bank of semi-transparent vapor, which had drifted in through the Golden Gate and over from the city of San Francisco, and grown coralline and roseate-hued with the warm rays of the setting sun. This vapor half concealed the shores of Alameda and Contra Costa, on the eastern side of the bay, and made the high hills of those counties appear to come down bold and precipitous to the very water's edge, the intervening valley, miles in width, having wholly disappeared. High above these hills, magnified and lifted up as it were, and made to look far higher than he really is, loomed, like a thunder-cloud against the deep blue sky, the dark head of Mount Diablo.

      Looking westward, at our feet was a deep cañon, beyond which was another range of hills, or more properly mountains, the real coast range, shutting out the view of the sea. These mountains are covered with a dark, redwood forest at the summit, kept dripping wet by the mist from the Pacific which rolls up over them in an unceasing torrent, white as an Alpine avalanche, all day long. An effect is here produced of which I despair of being able to give anything like an adequate description. The white vapor came rushing over to the eastward ​towards us, with a current like that of a thousand Niagaras rolled into one, and the beholder expects every moment to see it come down the slope, cross over the intervening СКАЧАТЬ