The Silverado Squatters | Page 5

Robert Louis Stevenson
sense
of woods, and spring-time, and the open air.
Our driver gave me a lecture by the way on Californian trees--a thing I
was much in need of, having fallen among painters who know the name
of nothing, and Mexicans who know the name of nothing in English.
He taught me the madrona, the manzanita, the buck-eye, the maple; he
showed me the crested mountain quail; he showed me where some
young redwoods were already spiring heavenwards from the ruins of
the old; for in this district all had already perished: redwoods and
redskins, the two noblest indigenous living things, alike condemned.
At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign
upon it like an inn. "The Petrified Forest. Proprietor: C. Evans," ran the
legend. Within, on a knoll of sward, was the house of the proprietor,
and another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum, where
photographs and petrifactions were retailed. It was a pure little isle of
touristry among these solitary hills.
The proprietor was a brave old white-faced Swede. He had wandered
this way, Heaven knows how, and taken up his acres--I forget how
many years ago--all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits
in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, useless years of
seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick.
Without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good
from that; without doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life of
Jack ashore. But at the end of these adventures, here he came; and, the
place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make a new life of it, far from
crimps and the salt sea. And the very sight of his ranche had done him
good. It was "the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains." "Isn't it

handsome, now?" he said. Every penny he makes goes into that ranche
to make it handsomer. Then the climate, with the sea-breeze every
afternoon in the hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the
sciatica; and his sister and niece were now domesticated with him for
company--or, rather, the niece came only once in the two days,
teaching music the meanwhile in the valley. And then, for a last piece
of luck, "the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains" had
produced a petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest
figure of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital when he first
came there with an axe and a sciatica.
This tardy favourite of fortune--hobbling a little, I think, as if in
memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I can remember of the
sea--thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up
the hill behind his house.
"Who first found the forest?" asked my wife.
"The first? I was that man," said he. "I was cleaning up the pasture for
my beasts, when I found THIS"--kicking a great redwood seven feet in
diameter, that lay there on its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark,
all changed into gray stone, with veins of quartz between what had
been the layers of the wood.
"Were you surprised?"
"Surprised? No! What would I be surprised about? What did I know
about petrifactions--following the sea? Petrifaction! There was no such
word in my language! I knew about putrifaction, though! I thought it
was a stone; so would you, if you was cleaning up pasture."
And now he had a theory of his own, which I did not quite grasp,
except that the trees had not "grewed" there. But he mentioned, with
evident pride, that he differed from all the scientific people who had
visited the spot; and he flung about such words as "tufa" and "scilica"
with careless freedom.
When I mentioned I was from Scotland, "My old country," he said;
"my old country"--with a smiling look and a tone of real affection in his
voice. I was mightily surprised, for he was obviously Scandinavian,
and begged him to explain. It seemed he had learned his English and
done nearly all his sailing in Scotch ships. "Out of Glasgow," said he,
"or Greenock; but that's all the same--they all hail from Glasgow." And
he was so pleased with me for being a Scotsman, and his adopted

compatriot, that he made me a present of a very beautiful piece of
petrifaction--I believe the most beautiful and portable he had.
Here was a man, at least, who was a Swede, a Scot, and an American,
acknowledging some kind allegiance to three lands. Mr. Wallace's
Scoto-Circassian will not fail to come before the reader. I have myself
met and spoken with a Fifeshire German, whose combination of
abominable accents struck me
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