The Silverado Squatters | Page 2

the entire absence of any
human face or voice--these are the marks of South Vallejo. Yet there
was a tall building beside the pier, labelled the Star Flour Mills; and
sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close along shore, waiting for their
cargo. Soon these would be plunging round the Horn, soon the flour
from the Star Flour Mills would be landed on the wharves of Liverpool.
For that, too, is one of England's outposts; thither, to this gaunt mill,
across the Atlantic and Pacific deeps and round about the icy Horn, this
crowd of great, three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing nothing,
and return with bread.
The Frisby House, for that was the name of the hotel, was a place of
fallen fortunes, like the town. It was now given up to labourers, and
partly ruinous. At dinner there was the ordinary display of what is
called in the west a TWO-BIT HOUSE: the tablecloth checked red and
white, the plague of flies, the wire hencoops over the dishes, the great

variety and invariable vileness of the food and the rough coatless men
devoting it in silence. In our bedroom, the stove would not burn,
though it would smoke; and while one window would not open, the
other would not shut. There was a view on a bit of empty road, a few
dark houses, a donkey wandering with its shadow on a slope, and a
blink of sea, with a tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. All about
that dreary inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus.
Early the next morning we mounted the hill along a wooden footway,
bridging one marish spot after another. Here and there, as we ascended,
we passed a house embowered in white roses. More of the bay became
apparent, and soon the blue peak of Tamalpais rose above the green
level of the island opposite. It told us we were still but a little way from
the city of the Golden Gates, already, at that hour, beginning to awake
among the sand-hills. It called to us over the waters as with the voice of
a bird. Its stately head, blue as a sapphire on the paler azure of the sky,
spoke to us of wider outlooks and the bright Pacific. For Tamalpais
stands sentry, like a lighthouse, over the Golden Gates, between the bay
and the open ocean, and looks down indifferently on both. Even as we
saw and hailed it from Vallejo, seamen, far out at sea, were scanning it
with shaded eyes; and, as if to answer to the thought, one of the great
ships below began silently to clothe herself with white sails, homeward
bound for England.
For some way beyond Vallejo the railway led us through bald green
pastures. On the west the rough highlands of Marin shut off the ocean;
in the midst, in long, straggling, gleaming arms, the bay died out
among the grass; there were few trees and few enclosures; the sun
shone wide over open uplands, the displumed hills stood clear against
the sky. But by-and-by these hills began to draw nearer on either hand,
and first thicket and then wood began to clothe their sides; and soon we
were away from all signs of the sea's neighbourhood, mounting an
inland, irrigated valley. A great variety of oaks stood, now severally,
now in a becoming grove, among the fields and vineyards. The towns
were compact, in about equal proportions, of bright, new wooden
houses and great and growing forest trees; and the chapel bell on the
engine sounded most festally that sunny Sunday, as we drew up at one
green town after another, with the townsfolk trooping in their Sunday's
best to see the strangers, with the sun sparkling on the clean houses,

and great domes of foliage humming overhead in the breeze.
This pleasant Napa Valley is, at its north end, blockaded by our
mountain. There, at Calistoga, the railroad ceases, and the traveller who
intends faring farther, to the Geysers or to the springs in Lake County,
must cross the spurs of the mountain by stage. Thus, Mount Saint
Helena is not only a summit, but a frontier; and, up to the time of
writing, it has stayed the progress of the iron horse.

PART I--IN THE VALLEY

CHAPTER I
--CALISTOGA

It is difficult for a European to imagine Calistoga, the whole place is so
new, and of such an accidental pattern; the very name, I hear, was
invented at a supper-party by the man who found the springs.
The railroad and the highway come up the valley about parallel to one
another. The street of Calistoga joins the perpendicular to both--a wide
street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there a verandah over
the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and