Chapter 6

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white-hot sands. Birds, humming-birds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of the night-singing mocking bird. If it be summer and the sun well down, there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksey things dart across the open places, or sit motionless in the conning towers of the creosote.

MARY AUSTIN, in _The Land of Little Rain._

JUNE 13.

EL CAMINO REAL.

_El Camino Real_--"The Royal Road," is the poetic name given to the original government road of Spanish California that joined the missions from San Diego to San Francisco de Solano. The route selected by the Franciscan Fathers was the most direct road that was practicable, connecting their four Presidios, three Pueblos and twenty-one Missions. By restoring this road and making it a State Highway with the twenty-one missions as stations, California will come to possess the most historic, picturesque, romantic and unique boulevard in the world.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Missions and Landmarks._

JUNE 14.

Because we have such faith in the charms of California; because we have such faith in the future of our city that we believe that once strangers come here they will remain in it, as of old the hero remained in the land of the ever-young; because we believe that this state can support ten, aye, twenty times its present population, we extend an invitation to all home-seekers, no matter where found. Come to California! Its valleys are wide open for all to come through and build therein their homes of peace. Its coasts teem with wealth. The riches of its mountains have not been half exploited. We believe that all that is necessary to fill this State with a great and prosperous population is that the people should see the State and know it as it is.

FATHER P.C. YORKE, in _The Warder of Two Continents._

JUNE 15.

EL CAMINO REAL.

It's a long road and sunny, and the fairest in the world-- There are peaks that rise above it in their sunny mantles curled, And it leads from the mountains through a hedge of chaparral, Down to the waters where the sea gulls call. It's a long road and sunny, it's a long road and old. And the brown padres made it for the flocks of the fold; They made it for the sandals of the sinner-folk that trod From the fields in the open to the shelter-house of God.

* * * * *

We will take the road together through the morning's golden glow, And will dream of those who trod it in the mellowed long ago.

JOHN S. MCGROARTY, in _Just California._

JUNE 16.

Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different colored spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled with square mission bricks; but many were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for unwary feet.

MARAH ELLIS RYAN, in _For the Soul of Rafael._

JUNE 17.

Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before, had called the Californias their own; living a life of Arcadian magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates clad in silk and lace, _botas_ and _sombreros_, mounted upon steeds as gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of their lives--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and consequence today.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _The Californians._

JUNE 18.

The house was a ruinous adobe in the old Mexican quarter of Los Angeles. The great, bare, whitewashed room contained only the altar and a long mirror in a tarnished gilt frame; one, the symbol of earthly vanity; the other, the very portal of heaven. All the carved mahogany furniture had long since gone to buy food and charcoal or a rare black gown.

AMANDA MATHEWS, in _The Old Pueblo._

All sorts of men came here in early days--poor men of good family who had failed at home, or were too proud to work there; desperadoes, adventurers, men of middle life and broken fortunes--all of them expecting everything from the new land, and ready to tear the heart out of any one who got in their way. * * * Of course, there are Californians and Californians.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _A Whirl Asunder._

JUNE 19.

Beneath the surface--ah, there lie a numerous host, sad relics of bygone times. In our cities in poverty, wretchedness, and, alas! too often in dissipation, or, happier fate, in canyon or on hillside where woodman's axe is heard, one may find men wearily, sadly, often faithfully performing their daily labor who were born heirs to leagues of land where ranged mighty herds of cattle and horses--men who as boys, perhaps, played their games of quoits with golden slugs from the Indian baskets sitting about the courtyard of their fathers' houses.

HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI, in _Some of Our Spanish Families._

JUNE 20.

Jameson's cord led out to the Spanish quarter. Some old senoras, their heads covered with shawls, their clothes redolent with the smell of garlic, from time to time shambled across his pathway. They were heavy old women, in worn flapping slippers and uncorseted figures. * * * With them, this saying, "It is time to be old," to throw down the game like some startled player, and cast one's self on the mercies of the Virgin, had come twenty years or so before it should.

FRANCES CHARLES, in _The Siege of Youth._

A JUNE WEDDING.

The sweetheart of Summer weds today-- Pride of the Wild Rose clan: A Butterfly fay For a bridesmaid gay, And a Bumblebee for best man.

CHARLES ELMER JENNEY, in _Out West, June_, 1902.

JUNE 21.

They went to a one-room adobe on the plaza. A rich, greasy odor came out from it with puffs of the onion-laden smoke of frying things which blurred the light of the one candle set in the neck of a bottle. * * * In the centre of the floor a circle of blackened stones held a fire of wood coals, on the top of which rested a big clay griddle. Cakes of ground corn were frying there, and on the stove were _enchiladas_ and _tamales_ and _chili-con-carne_ being kept warm. The air was thick with the pungent, strong smells.

GWENDOLEN OVERTON, in _The Golden Chain._

JUNE 22.

The homely house furnishings seemed to leap out of the darkness; the stove, the littered table, and the couch, the iron crucifix, and the carved cradle in the corner--all his long life Juan will see them so--and 'Cencion turned; the dusky veil was blown and rent like the sea mist, revealing--Holy Mother of Heaven! her father, Cenaga, the outlaw! Juan Lopez fell on his knees below the window, the smoking rifle clattered from his broken grasp, and the missile sped, aimless and harmless, high into the adobe wall.

GERTRUDE B. MILLARD, in _An Outlaw's Daughter, S.F. Argonaut, Nov._, 1896.

IN HUMBOLDT.

Dim in the noonday fullness, Dark in the day's sweet morn-- So sacred and deep are the canyons Where the beautiful rivers are born.

LILLIAN H. SHUEY, in _Among the Redwoods._

JUNE 23.

The glow of the days of Comstock glory was still in the air. San Francisco was still the city of gold and silver. The bonanza kings had not left it, but were trying to accommodate themselves to the palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous--men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of Roman empresses.

The sudden possession of vast wealth had intoxicated this people, lifting them from the level of the commonplace into a saturnalia of extravagance. Poverty, the only restraint many of them had ever felt, was gone. Money had made them lawless, whimsical, bizarre. It had developed all-conquering personalities, potent individualities. They were still playing with it, wondering at it, throwing it about.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _Tomorrow's Tangle._

JUNE 24.

Menlo Park, originally a large Spanish grant, had long since been cut up into country places for what may be termed the "Old Families of San Francisco!" The eight or ten families that owned this haughty precinct were as exclusive, as conservative, as any group of ancient families in Europe. Many of them had been established here for twenty years, none for less than fifteen. This fact set the seal of gentle blood upon them for all time in the annals of California.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _The Californians._

JUNE 25.

John Bidwell, prince of California pioneers, was my chief in a memorable camping trip in the northern Sierras. What a magnificent camper was Bidwell! What a world of experience, what a wealth of reminiscence! What a knowledge; what unbounded hospitality! Not while life lasts can I forget the gentle yet commanding greatness of this man, whose friendships and benefactions were as broad as his spreading acres of Rancho Chico.

ROCKWELL D. HUNT, in _Camping Out in California, Overland Monthly, September_, 1907.

JUNE 26.

The average stage-driver merits one's liveliest gratitude. He is the essence of good nature and thoughtfulness. His stories, tinctured by his own quaint personality, ward off the drowsy wings of sleep and materially shorten the long hours of the night. * * * To the households scattered along his route he is the never-failing bearer of letters, and newspapers, and all sorts of commodities, from a sack of flour to a spool of cotton. His interest in their individual needs is universal, and the memory he displays is simply phenomenal. He has traveled up and down among them for many years, and calls each one by his or her given name, and in return is treated by them as one of the family. He is sympathetic and friendly without impertinence, and in spite of your aching head and disjointed bones, you feel an undercurrent of regret that civilization will soon do away with these fresh and original characters.

NINETTA EAMES, in _Overland Monthly, January_, 1888.

JUNE 27.

When the June sunshine gladdened the Sacramento Valley, three little bare-footed girls walked here and there among the homes and tents of Sutter's Fort. They were scantily clothed, and one carried a thin blanket. At night they said their prayers, lay down in whatever tent they happened to be, and, folding the blanket about them, fell asleep in each other's arms. When they were hungry they asked food of whomsoever they met. If anyone inquired who they were, they answered as their mother had taught them: "We are the children of Mr. and Mrs. George Donner." But they added something which they had learned since. It was: "And our parents are dead."

C.F. McGLASHAN, in _History of the Donner Party._

JUNE 28.

This cart was gaily decorated with a canopy which was in fact an exquisitely embroidered silken bedspread. The background was of grass-green silk, embroidered over the entire field with brightest red and yellow, pink and white roses, with intertwining leaves and stems, making the old _carreta_ appear to be a real rose-bower blooming along the King's Highway. From the edges hung a rich, deep, silken knotted fringe. Beneath the heavy fringe again hung lace curtains.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._

A half-naked beggar will find a dirty ribbon out of an ash-barrel to ornament himself, if he happens to be a she. * * * We women are such striking guys without our first little aids to the ugly.

MIRIAM MICHELSON, in _Anthony Overman._

JUNE 29.

During this unsettled period (1849), the "judge of first instance," or alcalde, sat each day in the little school-room on the plaza of San Francisco, trying cases, and rendering that speedy justice that was then more desirable than exact justice, since men's time, in those early days of 1849, was worth from sixteen dollars to one hundred dollars per day. The judge listened to brief arguments, announced his decision, took his fees, and called up another case; hardly once in a hundred trials was there any thought of an appeal to the Governor at Monterey.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, in _Mining-Camps._

JUNE 30.

Like the senators Cineas found at Rome, they were an assembly of kings, above law, who dealt out justice fresh and evenly balanced as from the hand of the eternal. In all the uprisings in California there has never been manifested any particular penchant on the part of the people for catching and hanging criminals. They do not like it. Naturally the law detests vigilance because vigilance is a standing reproach to law. Let the law look to it and do its duty.

HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, in _Popular Tribunals._

AMONG THE MARIPOSA BIG TREES.

Older than man or beast or bird, Ancient when God first spake and Adam heard-- We gaze with souls profoundly stirred And plead for one revealing word. But the great trees all are silent.

BENJAMIN FAY MILLS.

JULY 1.

VINTAGE IN THE GOLDEN LAND.

O fruit of changeless, ever-changing beauty! Heavy with summer and the gift of love-- Caressingly I gather and lay you down; Ensilvered as with dew, the innocent bloom Of quiet days, yet thrilling with the warmth Of life--tumultuous blood o' the earth! The vital sap, the honey-laden juice Dripping with ripeness, yields to murmuring bee A pleasant burden; and the meadow-lark With slow, voluptuous beak the nectar drinks From the pierced purple.

* * * * *

How good it is, to sense the vineyard life! To touch the fresh-veined leaves, the straggling stems, The heavy boughs that bend along the ground; And like a gay Bacchante, pluck the fruit And taste the imperial flavors, beauty-wild And singing child-songs with the bee and bird, Deep in the vineyard's heart, 'neath the open sky-- Wide, wide, and blue, filled with sun-flooded space And the silent song of the ripening of days!-- Eternal symbol of the bearing earth-- Harvest and vintage.

RUBY ARCHER.

JULY 2.

Whatever you believe when you are alone at night with the little imp of conscience seated on the bedpost and whispering to you what to do, whatever you believe to be best for yourself and best for your city at that time, you do that thing and you won't be far wrong.

ANDREW FURUSETH.

JULY 3.

Above an elevation of four thousand feet timber is quite abundant. Along the river-bottoms and low grounds the sycamore is found as clean-limbed, tall and stately as elsewhere. The cottonwood, too, is common, though generally dwarfed, scraggy and full of dead limbs. A willow still more scraggy, and having many limbs destroyed with mistletoe, is often found in the same places. The elder rises above the dignity of a shrub, or under-shrub, but can hardly be found a respectable tree. Two varieties of oak are common, and the alder forms here a fine tree along the higher water-courses.

T.S. VAN DYKE, in _Southern California._

JULY 4.

A WESTERN FOURTH.

Here, where Peralta's cattle used to stray; Here, where the Spaniards in their early day Rode, jingling, booted, spurred, nor ever guessed Our race would own the land by them possessed; Here, where Castilian bull-fights left their stain Of blood upon the soil of this New Spain; Here, where old live-oaks, spared till we condemn. Still wait within this city named for them-- We celebrate, with bombshell and with rhyme Our noisiest Day of Days of yearly time! O bare Antonio's hills that rim our sky-- Antonio's hills, that used to know July As but a time of sleep beneath the sun-- Such days of languorous dreaming are all done!

MARY BAMFORD, in _Fourth of July Celebration, Oakland_, 1902.

JULY 5.

THE LIVE-OAKS.

In massy green, upon the crest Of many a slanting hill, By gentle wind and sun caressed, The live-oaks carry still A ponderous head, a sinewy breast, A look of tameless will. They plant their roots full firmly deep, As for the avalanche; And warily and strongly creep Their slow trunks to the branch; A subtle, devious way they keep, Thrice cautious to be stanch. A mighty hospitality At last the builders yield, For man and horse and bird and bee A hospice and a shield, Whose monolithic mystery A curious power concealed.

RUBY ARCHER, in _Los Angeles Times._

JULY 6.

FATE AND I.

"Thine the fault, not mine," I cried. Brooding bitterly, And Fate looked grim and once again Closed in and grappled me. "Mine, not thine, the fault," I said, Discerning verity, And Fate arose and clasped my hand And made a man of me.

HAROLD S. SYMMES, in _The American Magazine, April_, 1909.

JULY 7.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF TREES.

Dear brotherhood of trees! With you we find Robust and hearty friendship, free from all The laws of petty gods men travail for. No wrangle here o'er things of small avail-- No knavery, nor charity betrayed-- But comrade beings--'Stalwart, steadfast, good. You help the world in the noblest way of all-- By living nobly--showing in your lives The utmost beauty, the full power and love That through your wisdom and your long desire Thrill in your vibrant veins from heart of earth. Open your arms, O Trees, for us who come With woodland longings in our pilgrim souls!

RUBY ARCHER.

JULY 8.

The scene was a ravine that had been cloven into the flank of a mighty mountain as if by the stroke of a giant's axe. For about half a mile this gash ran sharp and narrow; but at the upper end, the resting place of the travelers, it widened into a spacious amphitheatre, dotted with palm trees that rose with clean cylindrical boles sixty to eighty feet before spreading their crowns of drooping leafage against the azure of a cloudless sky--a wonderful touch of Egypt and the East to surroundings typical of the American Far West.

EDMUND MITCHELL, in _In Desert Keeping._

The noblest life--the life of labor; The noblest love--the love of neighbor.

LORENZO SOSSO, in _Wisdom for the Wise._

JULY 9.

THE LIVE OAKS AT MENLO PARK.

The road wound for some half mile through a stretch of uncultivated land, dotted with the forms of huge live-oaks. The grass beneath them was burnt gray and was brittle and slippery. The massive trees, some round and compact and so densely leaved that they were impervious to rain as an umbrella, others throwing out long, gnarled arms as if spellbound in some giant throe of pain, cast vast slanting shadows upon the parched ground. Some seemed, like trees in Dore's drawings, to be endowed with a grotesque, weird humanness of aspect, as though an imprisoned dryad or gnome were struggling to escape, causing the mighty trunk to bow and writhe, and sending tremors of life along each convulsed limb. A mellow hoariness marked them all, due to their own richly subdued coloring and the long garlands of silvery moss that hung from their boughs like an old, rich growth of hair.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _Tomorrow's Tangle._

JULY 10.

MADRONA.

No other of our trees, to those who know it in its regions of finest development, makes so strong an appeal to man's imagination--to his love of color, of joyful bearing, of sense of magic, of surprise and change. He walks the woods in June or July and rustles the mass of gold-brown leaves fresh fallen under foot, or rides for unending weeks across the Mendocino ranges--and always with a sense of fresh interest and stimulation at the varying presence of this tree.

W.L. JEPSON, in _Trees of California._

JULY 11.

THE WOODS OF THE WEST.

Oh, woods of the west, leafy woods that I love. Where through the long days I have heard The prayer of the wind in the branches above, And the tremulous song of the bird. Where the clust'ring blooms of the dog-wood hang o'er-- White stars in the dusk of the pine, And down the dim aisles of the old forest pour The sunbeams that melt into wine!

* * * * *

Oh, woods of the west, I am sighing today For the sea-songs your voices repeat, For the evergreen glades, for the glades far away From the stifling air of the street, And I long, ah, I long to be with you again And to dream in that region of rest. Forever apart from this warring of men-- Oh, wonderful woods of the west!

HERBERT BASHFORD, in _At the Shrine of Song._

JULY 12.

The Mohave yucca is a remarkable plant, which resembles in its nature both the cactus and the palm. It is found nowhere save in the Mohave Desert. It attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and the trunk, often two or three feet in diameter, supports half a dozen irregular branches, each tipped with a cluster of spine-like leaves. The flowers, which are of a dingy white color, come out in March and last until May, giving off a disagreeable odor. The fruit, however, which is two or three inches long, is pulpy and agreeable, resembling a date in flavor.

ARTHUR J. BURDICK, in _The Mystic Mid-Region._

JULY 13 AND 14.

Throughout the coast region, except in the extreme north, this Live Oak is the most common and characteristic tree of the Coast Range valleys which it beautifies with low broad heads whose rounded outlines are repeated in the soft curves of the foothills. Disposed in open groves along the bases of low hills, fringing the rich lands along creeks or scattered by hundreds or thousands over the fertile valley floors, the eyes of the early Spanish explorers dwelt on the thick foliage of the swelling crowns and read the fertility of the land in these evergreen oaks which they called Encina. The chain of Franciscan Missions corresponded closely to the general range of the Live Oak although uniformly well within the margin of its geographical limits both eastward and northward. The vast assemblage of oaks in the Santa Clara Valley met the eyes of Portola, discoverer of San Francisco Bay, in 1769, and a few years later, Crespi, in the narrative of the expedition of 1772, called the valley the "Plain of Oaks of the Port of San Francisco." Then came Vancouver, Englishman and discoverer. Although he was the first to express a just estimate of the Bay of San Francisco, which he declared to be as fine as any port in the world, nevertheless it is his felicitous and appreciative description of the groves of oaks, the fertile soil (of which they were a sign), and the equable climate that one reads between his lines of 1792 the prophecy of California's later empire.

W.L. JEPSON, in _Silva of California._

JULY 15.

Huge live-oaks, silvered with a boar of lichen, stretched their boughs in fantastic frenzies. Gray fringes of moss hung from them, and tangled screens of clematis and wild grape caught the sunlight in their flickering meshes or lay over mounds of foliage like a torn green veil. * * *

For nearly two miles the carriage drive wound upward through this sylvan solitude. As it approached the house a background of emerald lawns shone through the interlacing branches, and brilliant bits of flower beds were set like pieces of mosaic between gray trunks.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _The Pioneer._

JULY 16.