CALIFORNIA INTER POCULA. CHAPTER I. THE VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA. Hortensio peace, thou knowest not gold's effect. DRUNK ! aye, drunk with avarice! Behold the picture; California in her cups! Once long ago sailors thought to hold in their embrace the god Bacchus, whom they carried to sea in the form of a beautiful boy while sleeping; but when the god awoke he caused vines to twine themselves about the ship, and tigers to appear amongst the branches, while the sailors went mad and drowned themselves. So it was with thousands who came early to California, thinking to ensnare her, and rob her of her treasures, but were themselves taken captive, falling on destruction. Yet swiftly as this chaff of immigration was swept away, mercilessly as California frowned on many, she was not so much to blame, although for a brief space she played the bacchante, for she was badly treated, worse than Pentheus, who from making open war on Dionysius became the devotee and laughing-stock of CAL. INT. Poc. 1 the avenging deity, and bereft of sense was led through the city in female apparel, stricken with mania, with a double sun and a double Thebes before his eyes, finally to be torn to pieces by women. First of all she was made to reveal her mystery, held sacred to the memories of time; for which extortion, like another Pythia, she was placed upon a tripod over the chasm Cassotis, and for a Delphic temple choosing the snow-powdered Sierra, and for the mephitic exhalations the less offensive incense from odorous pines. Native to sublimated airs and all-engendering sunshine, her intoxication partook more of youthful revels than chronic intemperance; nevertheless, thou wast drunk, California, as thou well knowest; as drunk as Agave when tearing in pieces her own son whom she took for a lion's cub. Thine hills were drunk from the fruit of their own vines; and in the great valley was neard the sullen roar of hell echoing hollow on the ear. All this was exceedingly disgraceful, and especially repulsive in young and lovely woman ; whereat, toward the immaculate east, conventional spinsters of untried chastity blushed and hung their heads, though never refusing to receive the fruits of sin. Between two mountain systems stretches the valley of California, an elliptical, trough-like plain, five hundred miles in length by seventy-five in width; a vast amphitheatre, from whose arena circling terraces rise up to the lofty canopy of a pearl and beryl sky-colossal benches, whereon the gods might sit and watch the strange doings of men below. Although not gods we some day may be; all gods were once men, or something worse. Therefore come sit with me upon the plateau-shelf up over the hill Mokelumne, near the source of the Stanislaus, where sometime sat Nemesis, eyeing the pilgrims as they entered the Golden Gate, and measuring out to them MOUNTAIN SYSTEMS. their several portions of invented woe. Five thous and feet below, and far as eye can reach, spreads out a periscope of beauty such as makes us loath to put off humanity even to be gods, lest mayhap as gods we should have no sympathy with scenes like this. Often have I thought when standing entranced before entrancing nature, what a pity it was we could not always have her scenes before us; and as for heaven, give it to those who are dissatisfied with earth. Only exterminate north winds, nervousness, and all rascality, and I could rest contented yet awhile here upon this bench, though not a god. Walled in on every side, without loop-hole or portal save by passes to the plateau regions of Utah and Arizona, and the bay of San Francisco, which across the concave from where we sit, and midway between its north and south extremes, parts the Coast Range, whose green and grizzly hills it crowds back, and paves the way through the Golden Gate to the Pacific, we have before us what was once broad ocean, then an inland sea, afterward a hedged-in Eden, Godgiven to a thrice happy race, and later converted into a nineteenth-century coliseum, wherein was destined to be performed a play entitled The New Greedstruggle of the Nations. Time enough, however, to talk about that to-morrow. Sit still awhile and we shall presently see, out here upon this holiday of creation, elves and fays, if any there are left for these new Arcadian vales. We can offer them whereon to sport ground which one day will be as classic as that of Greece, plains up-swelling beneath their feet, and slopes of evergreen and sweeps of forest. Then there are warm inviting knolls under star-lit skies, and enchanted groves where heaven's witchery might wanton regardless of irate ocean on one side or shadowless deserts on the other. When this mighty Sierra was a-building, this grand up-lift, with its fluted sides flushed with never |