Part 9

Another item which adds to the suggestion of the illimitable spread of sage-brush country, like the sea, is the way the sparse forests of the mountain-tops appear to be islanded by it. For the sage-brush extends on across the Great Basin, it stretches into Montana and south to Arizona and New Mexico, it works about the lower end of the Rocky Mountains and well into the great central plain. The ranges lie thick in it as ocean swells, as I have said, and stepping from crest to crest has come the fox-tail pine, _Pinus flexilis_, all the way from Humboldt Mountain to San Jacinto. A sinewy, thinly-branched species, as straight-backed as an Indian, it has little affinity for its noble congeners of the Sierra forests, but keeps to the dry and open ridges, nourished by clouds and by infrequent shallow snows. With it, but at lower levels to which the _flexilis_ will never come, is found frequently the one-leaved piñon pine, the food-crop of the wild tribes. But the piñon is a pushing sort, it establishes itself upon the slightest invitation.

There is a story told in the desert of how this grey, round-headed tree was once a very great _capitan_, who, in order that his death might be as beneficent to his people as his life had been, was changed into the foodful pine. Whether the legend is true or not, certain it is that if you sit down by a piñon, wherever found, and stay long enough, you will see Indians. They might come in the Spring looking for _taboose_, or later for willows and grasses for basketry, for seeds of sunflower and chia, to shoot doves by the water-holes or to hunt chuckwallas. A chuckwalla is a lizard, a kind of dragon in miniature, barred black and white, and as offensive to look at as he is harmless, in fact very good eating and not too plentiful. Mojaves, Shoshones, Paiutes, Pimas, all the tribes of the sage-brush country, have this in common, that they live very close to the earth; roots, seeds, reptiles, thick pads of the cholla cactus, even the grass of the field, serve them. They look, indeed, as though they had been made of the earth on the very spot that produced them, of the black rock, the brown sand, and the dark water that collects in polished basins of the wind-denuded ranges.

Very little rain gets past the heaven-raking crest of the Sierra Nevada into the sage-brush country; the most that falls is blown up from the Gulf of California along the draw created by the close, parallel desert ranges. It is precipitated usually under atmospheric conditions that produce violent drops and changes. All that the traveller is likely to find of it is in these rock reservoirs under the run-off of some bare granite cliff, or in the rare, persistent "water-holes" hollowed out by beasts or men, marked in the landscape by one lone tree perhaps, or a clump of shrubby willows. Often there will be no mark at all except the frequency along the trail of skeleton cattle or wild sheep, pointing all in one direction, as they died on their way to the far-between drinking-places. There are districts in this back-door country where evaporation from the body is so rapid that death overtakes the chance prospector even with water in sight or in his canteen across his back. For years a notorious outlaw protected himself in the Death Valley region, by filling in all the springs in a circle about the territory to which he had retreated. Beyond that waterless rim even the law could not penetrate.

And yet how the land repays the slightest moisture! Years when the Kuro-Siwa swings closer to our coast and the winds are friendly, I have seen all that country, from Tehachapi, outside the wall, to San Gorgiono, one sheet of blue and gold. Seeds of a hundred tender annuals lie in the loose sands for years between the shrubby sage, their vitality unimpaired by the delayed resurrection of a chance wet spring. Often I have sifted the sand in my fingers looking for a sign of the life-giving principle which bursts so suddenly into beauty, without finding it. Yet after years in which there is no alteration in the aspect of the country, except the insensible change of the sage tints from grey to green and grey again, the miracle takes place, the blossomy wonder is upon the world.

As a matter of fact, the sage-brush country is by no means the desert that it looks to the casual eye. Besides the social shrubs which have each their own blossom and seed time, even the driest years will afford a few blooms of crimson mallow, and in the shelter of every considerable shrub some dwarfed and delicate phacelia or nemophilia. Even out of dunes which bury its hundred old trunks to the new season's twigs, the mesquite will bear its sweet foodful pods. If you know at what hours to look for it, wild life is never absent, but it is not ordinarily to be found by white men blundering about in broad noon.

It is only when you meet, in the midst of great open valleys wherein there is nothing growing higher than the knees of your horse, and nothing moving bigger than the little horned toad under the cactus bush, bands of Indians well fed, cushiony with fat of mesquite meal and chia, that you understand how little you know of the land in which you move.

There is a Paiute proverb to the effect that no man should attempt the country east of the Sierras until he has learned to sleep in the shade of his arrows. This is a picturesque way of saying that he must be able to reduce his wants to the limit of necessity. Those who have been able to do so, and have trusted the land to repay them, have discovered that the measure is over-full.

A man may not find wealth there, nor too much of food even, but he often finds himself, which is much more important.

INDEX

_The illustrations are indexed in italics._

Alcatraz, 112

Alviso, 112

Angels, 138

Antioch, 112, 119

Arbolado, 84

"Arroya," definition of, 30

Bakersfield, 129, 132, 133

Berkeley Hills, 108, 114

_Blue Lake, Lake County_, 155

Buena Vista, 122

Cabrillo, 49, 108

Cahuenga, 47, 48, 67

Calaveras, 139

Camulas, 41

_Cañon in the Sierra Madres_, 49

Carmel, 74, 77, 80, 83

Carmel River, 76

Carmel Valley, 78

Carquinez, 112

Carquinez Strait, 107, 119

_Castle Crag, Rattlesnake Cañon_, 136

Castro, 66

Catalina, 49

_Cemetery, The, Santa Barbara Mission_, 56

Cession of California from Mexico, 48

_Clear Lake, Lake County_, 134

"Coasts of Adventure, The," 47-60

Colorado River, 166

Contra Costa, 117

Coronado, 23

Coronel, Don Antonio, 48

Corta Madero, 116

Coso, 165

Coulterville, 139

_Cypress Point, near Carmel_, 75

Death Valley, 166, 172

_Donner Lake_, 142

Donner Lake, 140

Drake, Sir Francis, 9, 43, 108

Eagle Rock, 47

Emigrant Gap, 140

_Eucalyptus Grove, A_, 33

Exeter, 135

Faralones, The, 113

Farmington, 139

Fort Point, 67

Francis of Assisi, 10, 108

Franciscan "Frailes," 9, 12

Frémont, 66

Fresno, 135

Fuca, Juan de, 108

_Glendale, Valley of the San Gabriel_, 40

Golden Gate, 107

_Golden Gate and Black Point_, 107

Gulf of California, 161, 171

_Half Dome, The, Yosemite_, 166

Hamlin, Jack, 137

Harte, Bret, 137, 138

Hetch Hetchy Valley, 159

"High Sierras and the Sage-Brush Country, The" 149-174

Hôtel Del Monte, 76

Humboldt Mountain, 170

Indian Wells, 166

Inyo Valley, 162

Jackass Hill, 139

Jimtown, 139

Jumping Frog, the, 139

Kaweah Mountain, 133

Kaweah River, 129

Kern River, 129, 132, 134, 155

King's Mountain, 159

King's River, 129

King's River Cañon, 137

Klamath River, 143

Kuro-Siwa Current, 49, 172

Laboratory Point, 68

Lake Mono, 165

Lake Tahoe, 165

_Lake Tahoe_, 158

"Land of the Little Duck, The," 107-124

_Laurel Lake, Upper Sacramento_, 145

Lindsay, 135

_Looking down on Monterey and the Bay_, 65

Lopez, Francisco, 47

Los Angeles, 29, 35

Los Angeles River, 30

_McCloud River_, 139

Madera, 135

Maldonado, 108

Mare Island, 116

Mendocino Country, 141

Merced River, 129, 135

_Mill Valley_, 113

_Mirror Lake, Yosemite_, 129

Mission Dolores, 108

Mission Point, 69, 81

Mission River, 17

Mission of San Carlos Borromeo, 76, 78

Mission San Fernando, 47

Missions, ruins of, 19

Mokelumne River, 140

Monterey, 11, 18, 35, 55, 60

"Monterey, the Port of," 63-84

Monterey Cypress, 72

"Mothering Mountains," 27-24

Mount Oppapago, 160, 162

Mount Shasta, 5, 143, 150

_Mount Shasta_, 161

Mount Whitney, 6, 137, 150, 159, 162

Mount Williamson, 159

Napa, 118

Noriega's, 134

Olancha, 165

"Old Spanish Gardens," 87-103

Pacific Grove, 75

Padre Jayme Bravo, 7, 17, 18

Padre Lausan, 66

Padre Serra (Junipero Serra), 11, 76, 78

Paiute Indians, 96

Pajaro, 54, 93

Pajaro river, 64

Pala, 19

"Palatingwas," 20

Palo Corona, 80

Panamint, 165

Pasadena, 34

Paso Robles, 56

_Patio, The, Old Spanish Residence_, 88

_Pescadero, Monterey Bay_, 72

Pieoras Blancos, 83

Point Conception, 67

Point Lobos, 71, 81, 84

Point of Pines, 67

Point Pinos, 70, 81

Point Sur, 70

Portersville, 135

Portola, Don Gaspar de, 11, 55, 93, 108

_Redlands_, 16

_Redwoods_, 131

"Rio," A, 30

Riverside, 33, 39

Sacramento, 112, 123

Sacramento River, 107, 127, 135, 140

"Sage-Brush country," meaning of term, 163

Salinas, 83

Salinas River, 64

Salton Sea, 166

Sausalito, 116

San Antonio, 57

"San Antonio," the, 10

San Bernardino, 7, 33, 39, 149, 166

San Carlos, 79

San Clemente, 48

San Diego, 22, 78

San Diego, Bay of, 9

_San Diego, looking towards Point Loma_, 9

San Emigdio, 128

San Fernando, 41, 128

San Francisco, 67, 107, 108, 110

San Francisco, Bay of, 112

San Gabriel, 36

San Gabriel Valley, 27, 33, 40

San Gorgiono, 41, 172

San Gorgiono, Pass of, 6

San Jacinto, 5, 27, 149, 166, 170

San Joaquin, 128, 132, 139, 166

San Joaquin River, 107, 112, 123, 127, 129, 130, 140, 150

San Joaquin Valley, 162

San Jose, Señor, 10

San Juan, 83

San Juan Bautista, 65, 66

San Juan Capistrano, 18, 48, 50

San Luis Rey, 19

San Pablo, 112

San Pablo Bay, 116

San Quentin, 116

San Raphael, 116, 118

Santa Barbara, 58

Santa Catalina, 48

Santa Clara, 54

Santa Cruz Coast, 74

Santa Cruz Mountains, 55, 64

_Santa Cruz Mountains, the Coast Range_, 78

Santa Inez, 48, 58

Santa Margarita, 56

Santa Rosa, 48

Sequoia, origin of name, 155

_Shasta--Snow Clouds_, 168

Sierra Madre, 27, 28, 37, 40, 42, 44, 149

Sierra Nevada, 128, 163, 171

Sierra Nevada, origin of name, 149

Sierras, the, 4

Solano, 78

Sonoma, 107, 118, 144

Sonoma County, 92

Sonora, 138, 140

"Sparrow-Hawk's Own, The," 3-23

Squaw Creek, 139

Stanislaus River, 137

Stockton, 123

Suisun, 112, 119

Sur, 80, 83

_Sycamores, a Coast Range Cañon_, 59

Table Mountain, 138

_Tall Chaparral, Santa Cruz_, 62

Tamalpias, Mount, 109

_Tamalpias_, 110

Tasajara, 83

Tehachapi, 128, 150, 172

Tehipite Valley, 159

Tejon, 129

Tejon Pass, 89, 128, 132

Temblors, The, 128, 133

_"Three Brothers, The," Yosemite_--_Frontispiece_

Tiburon, 112, 116

Trinity River, 143

Truthful James, 138

Tulare, the, 120

Tule River, 129

Tuolumne River, 129

Turlock, 139

Twain, Mark, 138, 139, 165

"Twin Valleys, The," 127-146

_Valley of the Yosemite_, 163

Visalia, 129

Viscaino, Sebastian, 9, 63, 76, 108

_Waiting for Duck--Los Baños_, 120

Walker's Pass, 150

Warner's Ranch, 20

Yerba Buena, 108

_Yosemite Falls_, 152

Yosemite Valley, 135, 137, 157, 159

THE END

_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.