The Silverado Squatters | Page 6

dumb. But, indeed, I think we all belong
to many countries. And perhaps this habit of much travel, and the
engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of
ancient nations.
And the forest itself? Well, on a tangled, briery hillside--for the pasture
would bear a little further cleaning up, to my eyes-- there lie scattered
thickly various lengths of petrified trunk, such as the one already
mentioned. It is very curious, of course, and ancient enough, if that
were all. Doubtless, the heart of the geologist beats quicker at the sight;
but, for my part, I was mightily unmoved. Sight-seeing is the art of
disappointment.
"There's nothing under heaven so blue, That's fairly worth the travelling
to."
But, fortunately, Heaven rewards us with many agreeable prospects and
adventures by the way; and sometimes, when we go out to see a
petrified forest, prepares a far more delightful curiosity, in the form of
Mr. Evans, whom may all prosperity attend throughout a long and
green old age.

CHAPTER III
--NAPA WINE

I was interested in Californian wine. Indeed, I am interested in all
wines, and have been all my life, from the raisin wine that a
schoolfellow kept secreted in his play-box up to my last discovery,
those notable Valtellines, that once shone upon the board of Caesar.
Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch with dread the shadows falling on
the age: how the unconquerable worm invades the sunny terraces of
France, and Bordeaux is no more, and the Rhone a mere Arabia Petraea.
Chateau Neuf is dead, and I have never tasted it; Hermitage--a

hermitage indeed from all life's sorrows--lies expiring by the river. And
in the place of these imperial elixirs, beautiful to every sense, gem-hued,
flower-scented, dream- compellers:- behold upon the quays at Cette the
chemicals arrayed; behold the analyst at Marseilles, raising hands in
obsecration, attesting god Lyoeus, and the vats staved in, and the
dishonest wines poured forth among the sea. It is not Pan only;
Bacchus, too, is dead.
If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white
dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing
their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences--for a bottle of
good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect--if wine is to
desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions,
and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties,
where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even
the schoolboy "took his whack," like liquorice water. And at the same
time, we look timidly forward, with a spark of hope, to where the new
lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green with vineyards.
A nice point in human history falls to be decided by Californian and
Australian wines.
Wine in California is still in the experimental stage; and when you taste
a vintage, grave economical questions are involved. The beginning of
vine-planting is like the beginning of mining for the precious metals:
the wine-grower also "Prospects." One corner of land after another is
tried with one kind of grape after another. This is a failure; that is better;
a third best. So, bit by bit, they grope about for their Clos Vougeot and
Lafite. Those lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the
precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and soft fire; those
virtuous Bonanzas, where the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to
something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry: these still lie
undiscovered; chaparral conceals, thicket embowers them; the miner
chips the rock and wanders farther, and the grizzly muses undisturbed.
But there they bide their hour, awaiting their Columbus; and nature
nurses and prepares them. The smack of Californian earth shall linger
on the palate of your grandson.
Meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine; the best that I have tasted
better than a Beaujolais, and not unlike. But the trade is poor; it lives
from hand to mouth, putting its all into experiments, and forced to sell

its vintages. To find one properly matured, and bearing its own name,
is to be fortune's favourite.
Bearing its own name, I say, and dwell upon the innuendo.
"You want to know why California wine is not drunk in the States?" a
San Francisco wine merchant said to me, after he had shown me
through his premises. "Well, here's the reason."
And opening a large cupboard, fitted with many little drawers, he
proceeded to shower me all over with a great variety of gorgeously
tinted labels, blue, red, or yellow, stamped with crown or coronet, and
hailing from such a profusion of clos and chateaux, that a single
department could scarce have furnished forth the names. But it was
strange