m ill ih^ WiflirMll ji Iff 3 m mi fi mm^ ]':[■: . Ill iiiiri.;.i:iii Class E42i2^ Book Q^j.?; ()0]pght]J°_ CDPyRIGHT DEPOSm / / OUR INLAND SEA. OUR INLAND SEA THE STORY OF A HOMESTEAD BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE ^ THE DESERET NEWS Publishers 1909 L!E-;f,3Y of CONGRESS Two CoDies Received FEB 19 ia09 Copy.;i;ril tntry ^ 'JLAS3 hich the master last quoted has warned us — "a too great admira- tion of antiquity and a loT^e of novelty/' Is this the North Cape? Dreary is the land and dreary is the sea. My hut, massive though small, its low, thick walls, built of rough, untrim- med slabs of stone, taken from the cliff by which they stand, its roof, earth-covered, its chimney starting from the ground, and almost as big as the hut itself — might be that of some hardy Lo- foten fisherman. By the distant islands, that on winter days appear like mighty bergs, by the tongues of land, resembling snow-covered floes, by the brine, more like a plain of ice than water, and by the midnight moon, with a lonely storm- ring round it, the northern feeling is further sup- plied. I rise late. Oil and drift-wood are not so plentiful that one should use unseemly hours for their burning. Slowly, O slowly, the hours creep by ! OUR INLAND SEA. 23 More trying are the silent, implacable days than are the times of uproar. I am made to con- fess that "Time is the most terrible, the most dis- couraging, the most unconquerable of all obsta- cles." For exercise, when the weather is clear, I hack at the tough, old roots of the Sarcobatus bushes, or, again, I grub among the roots of the antique sage. Already the thoughts of social in- tercourse grow strangely remote. For Christ- mas Carol, for New Year's Greeting, I hear only the shrill, sudden call of the gull, or the dry, harsh croak of the passing raven. In the still- ness, the bitter cold frets the surface of wind- drift and level, in the lengthened night, the storm-clouds hang low, or slowly big snow- flakes fall out of the sky. Sometimes the vault appears black. That is, I mean, as we sometimes see it on the mountain tops, as it is on certain noon-days when the sky is cloudless, and the near snow-fields rise against it. Black, as it really is, with a thin, scumbling of atmospheric cobalt. Then the island snow takes on the spectrum hues. The angles, flut- 24 OUR INLAND SEA. ings, waves, and mounds of wind-carved drifts catch the white light, and resolves it back into its component parts. Sometimes the distant mountain heights smoke in the dawn like tired horses, or the sun rises like a disk of copper, ruddy through the spindrift brine. There are times when, by the light of a half-wasted morn- ing moon, the new island snow appears of a wondrous lilac, or, on the jutting shoulder of The Northern Cliff, it is touched with a paly gold. On cloudy days, during the mid-winter thaw, they shrink in the breath of Chinook and grow leaden- hued, or, as some storm rolls back to the moun- tain summits, they seem bathed in a mixture of fire and blood, or, later, as the light of sunset fades along the cliff -top, they become of that cold and ghastly green, the sight of which makes one shudder. Sometimes, indeed, a feeling of awe is upon me. Often, as in the Norse Mythology, the sun comes up, all faint and wan, sick nigh unto death it seems, and languidly looks o'er the world of white. What thoughts are mine! In the dim, OUR INLAND SEA. 25 uncertain, and mysterious twilight, when all sur- rounding objects expand to the sight, I half ex- pect to see, looking upon me from out the west- ern desert, some angry deity of the Indian's for- gotten pantheon ; or, as my thoughts revert again to the olden world, to see, springing from that Nifelheim in the north, the gaunt, gray form of the Fenris Wolf, and to behold his fiery eyes as he passes onward to his terrible feast, when the Asas, Odin and Thor, and the lesser ones, too, shall become his prey in Rangnarok, the last, weird twilight of the Northern gods. On the mountains, today, a wind-storm is rag- ing. So fierce up there is the gale, one could scarcely keep his footing. The great snow-ban- ners are whirled from the crests, and grand and solemn, I know, is the sound, when the strong northern winds smite upon those harps, the pines, and when, along the mountain sides, the loosened snow is caught from the forest branches and sent madly up by crag and ravine. But see ! How the wind can revel on these waters, too ! Behold how 26 OUR INLAND SEA. they sweep over the long reaches of unbroken brine ; how they pick up the foam-dust from the waves of the Inland Sea, and, mixing it with snow-dust from the island cliffs, whirl it around and around! Yesterday the sun-dogs gleamed over the desert hills — but now ! Did Dante, as he walked with Virgil amid the shades of the In- ferno, witness more fierce commotion ? As fierce- ly as were the spirits of the carnal malefactors "hurtled" by the infernal hurricane, the sleet and snow, the foam and spray, are whirled by these winter winds. As fiercely they are hurled back again and again from the face of the northern walls. Tonight the wind roars. What care I? The louder the rumble in the spacious chimney, the brighter will burn my drift-wood fire. One must oppose his resources of mind to the blind anger of nature, and trust in the end to prevail. What to me, in this comfortable room, if the wind grows furious in its strength, and beats and clamors at window and door? No sail, I know, is out on this winter sea. What if the waves boom by the OUR INLAND SEA. 27 Northern Cliff, if the wind veer again and drive the foam far up the sands of the little bay ? There will be no need to hang out the signal lamp. The Inland Sea and the bleak, inhospitable season, will keep both my island and myself in unbroken ostracism. The sleet and the hail may lash against the window-panes, but it is only such as might have been foreseen. There must pass many and many a day ere the yacht will put forth. So stir the embers of the smoldering fire ; let the red sparks fly, remember that thy food is safe-cached, and that the hut is firm-planted and strong as the gale. BOOKS AND A RAVEN. II BOOKS AND A RAVEN. AND while I rest here, a center of gravity in the midst of chaos; while I wonder, by the simple exercise of my Homestead Right, what act I have done, here, also, are the World, the Flesh and — the Devil. What is a hermit if he lacks a devil? Pagan or Christian, cynic or saint, what ever he be, must not the hermit possess his familiar? Apropos, then, I consider this comer. He is huge, he is ancient of days. In breadth of wing, Devil spreads a full three inches beyond 31 OUR INLAND SEA. 33 raven's wounds, it may be, were but a trick. That twinkle in his eye means much. But, no, he shall not pick out these eyes of mine. He may hope to catch me some day as the demon would have caught the Theban of old. Yet this wild was not sought by me that I might escape the sex. Devil may eye my nude as he will, and I will laugh at old Burton and his Anatomy of Melancholy. Yet this is the unfriendliness rather than the sweets of seclusion. Whatever mischief the bird may have in his head remains to be seen. Be this, however, placed to the raven's ac- count. He is not without his merits. Roam as he will by day, he returns to his home at night. Always the set of sun sees him approaching the hut. "For Devils Only." From the Middle Ages, I have taken a hint — for the raven I have made a door of his own. In the morning hours the mood of the bird is frolicsome ; at noon he is keen and has paid at least one visit to each of his hid- den stores. At twilight he resents all familiarity of man or beast, and at night, if disturbed, then Devil is a devil indeed. 34 OUR INLAND SEA. For a Homesteader, these are peculiar, almost incongruous surroundings. The hut is rough on the outside but is bright and cozy within. In self- banishment, this follower of Adam's trade has kept his household gods around him. In this room there is that to both please the eye and to feed the mind. Austere thought is forced upon one by the austerity of these rigid scenes. Sack- cloth and ashes rules not in the hut, yet no place is this island for a Castle of Indolence. The great German was right. One needs a focal point of contrast. Amid the barrenness of this desert wild, the soul has need of a gentler touch. Were not the influence of nature corrected, the tendency here would be toward harshness of mind. One needs the complex — food for the desires put into the blood and brain by thousands of years of civ- ilization. A bed — a bunk, I should say ; shelving ; a table ; a rack — formed from the skull of a mountain sheep, with curved and massive horns; — a bin, and the means for cooking, these are part of my goods. On the other hand is my easel. In its OUR INLAND SEA. 35 dark mahogany case, the piano stands. There is a statuette by Danneker — Ariadne — and a Nav- ajo blanket of quaint design keeps from dust and grime my allotment of books. On the wall there is a plate after Titian — Sacred and Profane Love — a portrait with autograph attached, of a famous modem beauty, and over all, "a chain-dropp'd lamp" sheds a mellow ray. Hermits the world over must live to a purpose. Thoreau, at Walden Pond, tried a social experi- ment. Forbes watched the flow of an alpine glacier; from mistrust of mankind, Timon of Athens dwelt in a cave ; for love, Petrarch sought the quiet of Vacluse, and to fast and pray, St.. Godric lived in the Fens, and St. Berach on Ork- ney Isle. No gold lies buried in these sands, at some future day no bell or crozier will be found, near my hut. But I have my purpose, I know my place on the soil. To be of use, to redeem the barren ^waste^ to make sure in the future my daily bread: these are among my desires. Possession always gives a certain amount of contented pride, and over my 36 OUR INLAND SEA. desert acreage, whereon the vine may yet grow, I look as fondly as does ever the family inheritor of broad estates. I come here not to practice re- nunciation, but to begin a life anew. Lo,the demi-lion rampant, the ship's rudder, of which one was proud — "That 'Bar, this Bend, that Fess, this Cheverono'' Even among these democratic rocks, though he were Boone, one may proudly recall the land of his birth. With newness of action, one need not forget the ancestors' thought. Why regret the Hall, the Manor, the Hamlet, that Titheing, that parish, that chepping, the bridge, the stream, the vale, whose name one bears? Why regret the es- tate in Essex or Berkshire? Or the lands by the Cornish Sea? There are other holdings than those at Donnington, or those at the Saxon Camp, on the downs by White-Horse Hill. "Rather use than fame," Merlin's motto will serve. If coat-of-arms the Homesteader's chil- dren should need, then let it be this: On a field azure, an island, or ; in the middle chief, the gull, OUR INLAND SEA. 37 argent; on the base, a pruning-hook, sable, and, as tresson — flory and counter-flory — the grape, vert and gules. But with new thought let the transplanted branch do honor to the ancestral tree. In the veins of the Homesteader's children may flow the blood of Knights and Vikings. I turn to my books. What a comfort they are in a place like this. Here one may still have his friends around him. There they stand, the glor- ious company ; silent, it is true, but ever ready to teach or amuse. In life, some of those who stand there so calmly, were unknown to each other, or they lived, perhaps, as enemies. But now they are friendly enough. There are "the true peace society — heretic and orthodox." Side by side, they keep truce in their work of ministry. Some of those great ones wrought in solitude; some achieved their work amid the plaudits of an ad- miring world. Others, though they may have known it not, nor guessed what lay in the course of time — centuries, customs, evolutions, holding 38 OUR INLAND SEA. them apart — seem destined now to be linked as twin stars, or to shine in clusters, as Dante has grouped them in the world of shades. Who can tell where the written words shall be read? A singular place, this lonely and des- olate rock, in which to pursue the thoughts o£ the men who once trod the classic vales of Hellas, or to follow the lines of those who graced the court of Queen Bess ! Within reach of my hand are the best productions of the human mind — the work of the individual condensing the thought of the race. Of what august times they make one a citi- zen! I have to but stretch forth my arm to an- nihilate space and to roll back the ages. Those of the Book, ^schylus, Euripides, Musaeus, ^sop, the blind old man of Scios, and the voices of the other immortals, I hear. On the table lie a few de lux. There are the Decameron; the Lyrics — Beranger, — the Kele- vala, Herrick's Hesperides and Noble Numbers, the Siegfried's Saga of Tegner, and Walt Whit- man's Leaves of Grass. And among them at the moment, like pilgrims OUR INLAND SEA. 39 who have lost their way, Architecture of the Heavens, by Nichol, and Lives of the most emi- nent Painters and Sculptors of the Order of St. Dominic. Yes, I turn to my books. There, for my mood, are Caesar and Kepler, Gladstone, Webster and Paine. There are Don Quixote and the story of Faust. From Odyssey and Iliad, from the Roman iEnead, I can turn to Shakespeare and the Med- iaeval Song. When wearied by the great Ver- alum, there is the bright Montaine. There are Josephus and Augustine, Rabelais and Swift. When too much moved by the thought of Omar, the passion of Poe, there are the laughing mor- alities of Ingoldsby Legends. But, as with Bar- ham, I am best pleased in the end with the sol- emn tones of the "As I Laye — A Thinkynge," so at last, with Hood, I leave the mirthful or caus- tic satire, to follow the bitter pathos of "The Bridge of Sighs," or the self-probing stanzas of "The Haunted House." Of spectres, however, the Inland Sea has one of its own. Not one self-conjured, but one ^b 40 OUR INLAND SEA. extra* It is the grave-digger Jean Baptiste. Branded and shackled, the man, himself, was once kept, a solitary prisoner, on one of these neighboring islands. He attempted escape. By one of the river mouths, a skeleton was lately exhumed — a fetter and a link of chain were still on his ankle bone. It was the remains of Jean Baptiste. He had met his death by drowning. WILD AND WINDY MARCH. '^ ^ / ■"^^ M * - • ?n I'l^J*:^--" r^yiM WPfih III WILD AND WINDY MARCH. PRESTO! The island is changed. This might be the work of an enchanter's wand. For many days mankind and I have been strangers, but, lo ! society has come to my door. This rock once so desert has become a hive. The gloomy season is ended. I am lost in news of the world. Though welcome at this ultima Thale is the turn of the year, more welcome indeed are these human voices. There is a plenitude of shipping. Never be- 43 44 OUR INLAND SEA. fore has this port seen the like. In addition to the yacht, which arrived this noon-day with a wet deck and a tired crew, a fifty-foot schooner rides out in the bay. Another craft, too, is anchored close by, and to complete the surprise, besides these strange boats, a little sloop has parted her cable and lies half-wrecked on the island sands. Dragged up the beach, alongside of my Hope, is her broken yawl. Suddenly this island has become important. Short the time, since for the asking alone, the place had been mine. Now, as if it had become an actual beehive, a monster and animated em- blem of the state. Science, Commerce, Agricul- ture, 'EducBXion/*Ars Militans/* I might add, are contending for it. Uncared for these thou- sands of years, no sooner would I call this Home, than there comes this change. So many the changes, that I scarcely have time to note them. Here is the case : the corporation, with its mil- lions of dollars, the private company, the indi- vidual, the state, each makes a claim. There have been Government surveys, railroad section sur- OUR INLAND SEA. 45 veys, local company and private surveys. There have been issued a Government Grant, the Des- ert Entry, the Homestead Entry, and the Mineral Claim. A coveted prize this island must certainly be. Never before have such diverse accents of tongue fallen on these gray, old stones. Amer- ica, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, the Land of the Teuton — these send their number. Here we see that sudden progress that roots up pri- meval trees, to make place for the school-house, or even a gallery of art. Commerce, while I ter- race my slopes and watch my vines, will sweep with its besom these nested rocks. Out yonder the workman, busy with pick and shovel, with tripod and line, all proclaim a desire. The ques- tion is — for what? From this time on, my hermitage will be of a temperate kind. The new-comers — the perma- nent ones — and I, will live on most friendly terms. Not a hundred rods from my own, the sifters have made for themselves a home. It is 46 OUR INLAND SEA. long and narrow, and is built of rounded slabs. Within this cabin, the piled-up sacks of flour, the bags of beans, the boxes of candles, the flitches of bacon that hang from the beams, the pots, pans and kettles, as well as the many aids and imple- ments of labor, indicate that the men will make a protracted stay. In more ways than one, I am pleased with my new companions. Mutual esteem and confidence, or a dislike amounting even to animosity, one or the other, must be our attitude. Among a num- ber of men thus thrown together, there is hardly room for indifference. Here the Divine Right of Kings, as it were, and the Vox populi, are, in a way, united. We are here to fight this wild na- ture or to be assisted by it. We are here to de- rive the benefit given by co-operation, or assert our individuality. We may gather strength from such of the past as we can assimilate to our time and environments and can reject the other. We hope to rise superior to the mistakes of a bygone age, and to assert ourselves as men. "The arts which flourish," says Bacon, "when virtue is in OUR INLAND SEA. 47 the ascendant, are military; when virtue is in state, are liberal, and when virtue is in decline are voluptuous." Judged by these obvious truths— of the past at least— the island now presents a paradox. Here we have a state, a common- wealth, or whatever we may choose to call it, in which are exhibited the three stages of virtue, not separate and alone, but working in concert. Those latest comers, both the sifters and I, al- though we come here with widely divergent thought, are alike in this— we represent the time. Human beings are but figures to the landscape painter. Often from that standpoint— as a sketcher— I look at these men. Man was needed to give human interest to these waves and stones, and now he is here. This island, as it existed in solitude, was complete. It was in its way a per- fect thing. Now that former completeness is broken and gone, and there is that process going forward by which a new one will take its place. The figures, the sifters, accentuate these island scenes. That is, they do so through suggestion. 48 OUR INLAND SEA. They are as much in harmony, too, with these bird-haunted rocks, as are the samphire-gather- ers to the old world cliffs. Emphasis they give to these scenes, such as the landscape painter lOves. Take the present moment: The storm of the Vernal Equinox which tore the sloop from her fastenings and still strews the beach with huge globes of foam, has partially cleared. Three of the sifters are engaged in the task of passing guano-dust through sieves, and putting it into sacks, whilst others dig among the ancient bird- deposits. Leaning against the wild March wind, their rustic clothing flapping in as wild disorder, and a cloud of brown, snuff-like mineral hovering around them, or being carried by the fitful gusts, far beyond the sieves, the men make extremely picturesque figures. One of the sifters will dwell here permanently, and I expect to put him into many a sketch. He is a Hercules in strength and of brawny stature. He moves from place to place all unconscious, as of course uncaring, of his pic- torial value to me. In spite of the season, and OUR INLAND SEA. 49 the kind of day, his head is bared to sun and wind ; his feet are encased in coarse, brown sack- ing, and, as I write, he is, with that exception, naked. He is carrying a plank to two of his fel- low laborers, and these latter men are at work on the recently stranded boat. The man's yellow hair, his ruddy fiesh-tints, his athletic form, focus a natural picture in which the broken sloop, the big, black schooner, the white hull of the yacht, the blue waters of the Inland Sea, the warm, gray tones of the island cliffs, with the reeling clouds above them, are the splendid components. Only to realize the effects of this momentary scene upon the beholder, he who describes it, must not omit the sounds. Besides the wild noise of the wind and waves, there is the clatter- ing of hammers made by the workmen over-haul- ing the wreck. Devil makes himself heard, the dogs yelp, and these united noises bring shrill, harsh, cries from the island birds. These are an- swered by a loud and indignant cackle from the sifters' score and two of newly-brought and as- tonished barn-yard fowls. REDEEMING THE WASTE. IV REDEEMING THE WASTE. WHAT a surprise it might be to us, could we but sometimes read the thoughts of our fellow men. Stranger than that, it may be, could one but know the impression wrought upon the comprehensions of the lower animals. Cosmopolitan, surely, is the group of men that is here — but the other life ? Among the sifters, one is a Pole and another a Russian. One of the Englishmen has sailed on St. George's Channel, and been to the guano-islands off the Coast of Brazil. One has doubled the Capes, and crossed the waves of the German Ocean, and still another has seen the palms of the Hawaiian Isl- 53 54 OUR INLAND SEA. ands, and the smoking crater of Mauna Loa. And this is besides a Scotchman who talks of the Med- iterranean as well as of Arthur's Seat. There is my man, too, "the Drudge." He has watched for weary months on the mountain tops. The im- pression made by these men upon each other must be varied indeed. But more varied it must be among the animeils. But what thought Devil? It has been but an armed truce, as it were, that has existed these months between the bird and my dogs. The raven has been ever alert, nor are the dogs at their ease in the presence of Devil. With an air of suspi- cion, he looked askance at the new arrivals. The domestic fowls, in their turn, received an impres- sion. Whatever that impression was, it taught them, at least, a profound respect for the raven. The sifters are prompt. Already the pits and trenches, the numerous outworks make their part of the island appear like a fortified camp. "Veni, vidi, vici!" as one voice they might exclaim. As for me, although a believer with Socrates, "a OUR INLAND SEA. 55 man may live in a cabbage-garden and dream of Paradise," better would it be for me could I make the boast of the Roman.* See how it stands. It is easier to gather than it is to create. The sifters, wise men, profit them- selves by things of the past ; while my reward, if any, is to be the result of things to be. I repre- sent the material side of things, also. But with a difference. "Circumstances and the animal wants of man," are represented by my labors on the soil. But there is the higher purpose. My vineyard follows the island lines. It is high above the present beach. I have taken advantage of the narrow flats, those that mark a pause in the shrinkage of ancient Bonneville. On the nearest slope and along the flats, the posts and trellis stand. Here are stones enough and to *I still call the island mine, although, strictly speaking, I should but claim a portion. Of a total area of 155.06 acres, my Homestead Entry covered 78.35 acres, the re- maining part being divided between a railway grant and a State School Section. The Northern part of the isl- and — mine — is the one that is grand with cliff and bay. The State School Section — 7.50 acres, comprise a low promontory; great blocks of stone and wave-washed boulders. 56 OUR INLAND SEA. spare, and of these I have built my retaining walls. The August sun will bake these rocks, and, as I have already seen, the snows of winter drift over them. But I shall see more. Grapes, most excellent grapes, have been grown on yon- der mainland. Like the blast of a trumpet may sound the wind; it may howl round my hut, but so, I know, it does there. There the trellis is built and there the vine is set. Over that alluvial soil, the grapes have hung thick. While from season to season, the blue-furred berries of the native dwarf, ripened amid its prickly leaves, the alien plants grew big and strong. Would that these cuttings might do as well. Let me profit by the wisdom of others. This may be a question of will. Then let me endure. Perhaps this is a game of patience, and my part is but to watch and to wait. A work of redemption is a work that proves slow, yet did one but know that labor must always meet with its sure success then what brave thoughts we might have of the future. As to whether one shall play a part in the beginning or ending of empire, a thousand OUR INLAND SEA. 57 miles of distance may be the same as a thousand years of time. A Homesteader's vines, Uke a Homesteader's heart, must be filled with cour- age. From many lands, then, have come these men. And from many lands have come my vines. In the widest meaning, this guano-dust is scattered to the winds of heaven, but long will it be before my vineyard shall be accomplished. My plants are here to take root in an untried soil, and to brave the rigors of this island climate. Some- what lost the transplanted vines must feel ; exiles without hope of return. For these vines it must be victory or it must be death. From my father I have inherited these — a love for an island and a love for the vine. Two good reasons, it appears to me, why, in the present venture, I may hope to succeed. Perhaps one may possess a genius for the rais- ing of vines and the making of wine. If so, then I think that my father possessed that genius. On a plot containing one hundred square rods of ground, the variety and weight of grapes that he 58 OUR INLAND SEA. brought to perfection, was quite remarkable. He conquered into a generous wine the juice of the wild grape, and here, I think, would have forced this soil to his will and triumphed where I may fail. Water must be made to bubble from amid these stones. Without water where is my chance of success? Water, water, or poor starvlings my grapes will be! O for the smallest stream, the most unnoticed rivulet on yonder Wasatch! With the means of irrigation, my task which will be so difficult, would be made quite easy. Salt and draught are my vineyard's foes, and to keep alive the vines which my hand has planted, how many gallons of water has been carried from the rain-filled tanks? To assure a continuance of life in these now healthy plants, I must probe into the earth. Currents of fresh water continue to flow, it is believed, under the hardpan beneath this sea. Can I reach one of those? There is a flowing well on Fremont Island, and a natural spring on Church. But the latter island is high and the OUR INLAND SEA. 59 water seeps from its hills. I know not yet what lies beneath these rocks. As bread cast upon the waters, I have planted these vines. May these rocks yet be christened with their own yielding of wine; may they re- spond in echo, to the laughter of woman and children ! Can the will accomplish — then it shall be so. SNOW- WAVES AND FLOWERS. SNOW- WAVES AND FLOWERS. THE Hanging Gardens are in my thought. As did the work of Nebuchadnezzar, my vineyard has resulted from love. Unlike the Median queen, however, one need not here sigh for a glimpse of the wooded hills. Soon, on yonder heights, will be hanging-gardens of na- ture's own. I trust, too, that not through pride, shall I be brought to the eating of grass as was the great Chaldasn King. St. Augustine enjoyed his laugh. The learned confessor showed that over two hundred deities — of Pagan mythology — would be necessary to 63 64 OUR INLAND SEA. the creation of a flower. He describes, too, eleven gods or goddesses who presided over the birth of corn. How many of the Pagan gods, then, were necessary to the growth of the vine? "Behold a sower went forth to sow;" "And now also the axe shall be laid at the roots of the tree," "Those who go down to the sea in ships." Unexpectedly, by the sloop's mishap, I look upon one of those scriptural subjects to sketch. Two, however, of those distinctive happenings of March, I shall not witness — the felling of tim- ber, the sowing of the soil. I may exercise a faith in the setting of vines, but here no tree makes ready to burst into leaf; in this rocky soil reposes no seed of food-bearing grasses. Skirt my island as often as I will, I shall not look on such things as these. Let the winds of the Vernal Equinox drive the waves never so fiercely, they but leave bare these rocks and rsands without casting up either weed or shell, or ever those heaps of kemp and tangle so dear, elsewhere, to the sketcher's eye. OUR INLAND SEA. 65 Spring on these western plateaus, should be personified with a stalwart figure. A handsome youth, a red Sigurd, perhaps, such as I conceive to have been the aboriginal thought. I cannot imagine a Flora coming across these heights. Never among the Wasatch snows, do I picture the shivering nudity of some mountain flower- goddess. Spring, as it moves northward across the island meridian, does it find more unlikely soil? Upon the face of this broad land, is there another place more stubborn to resist its benefi- cent influence ? Carrion of some kind has drifted ashore. On the lesser "Cub," Devil, with his kin, is busy about it. His cousins, the crows, too, are making their claim. But what of the spring? Spring- time is shown in the countless white wings of the nest-seeking gulls. "A continuous residence, with the right of leaving for business or visiting; not for labor or hiring out." The latter clause, in the Rules for the Homesteader's Guidance, I have not broken. 66 OUR INLAND SEA. nor of the first have I taken advantage. Being wingless, I cannot pass and repass, as do the gulls. The birds, however, live a life of unre- straint. I ever see them depart from the island shores, and return again, in a swift, unwearied flight. Here the gull has nested for ages. Of the In- land Sea, this is the most picturesque island, and there is not another within its bounds whose somber features are so enlivened with a multi- tude of noisy life. In the season this is the nest- ing ground, and the bays are then inhabited by crowds of screaming sea-fowl. The island, too, was the home of pelican and heron, but perhaps the presence of man will now keep these shy birds away. On the top of the Sarcobatus bushes stand huge and deserted nests. These once be- longed to the herons, and, where the waters of East and West Bays suddenly shallow upon a half-circle beach of oolitic sand, the homes of the pelicans were made. Upon Hat Island, a satellite of Carrington, the broad-winged birds are con- gregated by the scores and hundreds. They have ■"■ M^y^'^^m -S^''3v-' I'M/:'' '' n't'M ' OUR INLAND SEA. 67 found a new place of abode ; but not so the gulls. Now that man has come the smaller but more valiant birds appear little disposed as formerly to give up their natural rights. In the village orchards, the trees — the peach, the plum, the apple and the pear — are covering their branches with clouds of predictive bloom, and there the island gulls are disputing with the blackbirds for spoil in the wake of the plow. On yonder heights how beauteous will be the season's prime ! There will be great star-dashes, circles, and wavering belts of brilliant flowers. All the orders of the mountain flowers will be there. The heights will know Ranunculus, Sax- ifraga, Primula, Rosacae, Felices and Lycopodi-^ aceae. Along the bench-land of old Lake Bonne- ville will open the spotted Sego, and that great,, white primrose which the unlettered call the mountain-lily. On the Wasatch will be troops of Pentstemons, the Mimulus, Phlox, Aconite, Col- umbines, Asters, geraniums, forget-me-nots, Merthentias. There also will be Pedicularis, the 68 OUR INLAND SEA. stone-crop, Clematis and wall-flower. There will be orchids, Ivesia. By the well-heads of the stream will grow Parry's Primula, the shooting- star, and a million buttercups will carpet the un- even ground. On my island, what? Nature appears to be just as content, just as busy, drifting these sands, and so changing the shapes of the dunes, as she does to bring forth the endless forms of verdure. My vines will sprout, I hope ; a cactus or two will unfold their fleshy blossoms; the moss and lich- ens may take on a brighter hue. While the changing waves of flowers follow the ebbing waves of upper snows, the island Artemesia will throw out new shoots ; the grease-wood and thorn will thrust out spiky leaves, the salt-weed come up by the shore, the apoloptus tufts will mark each line of crevice, and the bunch-grass green for a while the slant of the cliffs. Here also may be a thistle or two ; the serrated disc of a desert primrose, and I may see, perchance, some hith- erto unknown, some pungent smelling and name- less flower. Hardly enough this, when one re- OUR INLAND SEA. 69 members the exuberance of the season else- where, and longs to witness once more, the full miracle of the spring's return. Yet I have compensations. Would I have come, and would I remain here, did I not know that such would be given? I shall see the great phenomena of nature, although their manifesta- tions may be affected by local conditions. In the clear, dry air above the Inland Sea, the vast white cone of the Zodiacal light streams up over my island cliffs at twilight, far more brilliantly than I have seen it elsewhere. Like a wondrous torch, Venus bums amid the fading glow, and, unobscured by fog or mist, Orion, in golden splendor, sinks beyond the edge of the solitary desert. We all know of the false dawn. It is seen more fully in the lands of the East. Here, at the coming of March, was that delusive appearance which might fitly be termed a false Spring. A wind treacherous and soft, caressed the land. As if made of burnished silver, shone the passing 70 OUR INLAND SEA. clouds. Lovely tints of pale, turquoise blue, lay- on the placid water, and the mountains, like vast crumpled foldings of cream-colored silk, stood shimmering along the horizon. I would have thought that the time was truth itself. Look where one would was a seeming presence of spring. All of this, and yet once more the wild March blizzards come out of the north. The salt spray is whirled across my island; the wet sleet clings to the face of the rocks; the waves break over the backs of those twin islets, the Cubs, and the foam leaps half way up the breast of the Lion — the great Northern Cliff. A CRUISE ROUND MY HOME. VI A CRUISE ROUND MY HOME. AFTER these many days, I have just seen my island. Hitherto, I have been too near. Gun- nison suggests the truism — "It is much eas- ier to descend from the whole to a part, than it is to ascend from a part to the whole." Like life itself, an island, to be rightly known, needs sometimes to be seen from without. It needs to fall some- what into the retrospect, and its parts, like events in a life, to be seen when not out of proportion through the law of perspective. To appreciate 73 74 OUR INLAND SEA. this place, as a piece of rude and sterile, yet at the same time, attractive scenery, one should view it from a boat's deck, and at a considerable distance from its shores. A rude and unarranged mass — that the Gun- nison certainly is. But from the water it is something more. It is a rock, a rising of the par- tially submerged Desert Range of Mountains; a summit of black limestone with longitudinal traversements of coarse conglomerate. Parts of the island are low, its mean height, something like a hundred feet, but at its northern end it stands two hundred, eighty-four feet above the surrounding sea. Three miles would probably exceed the length of its shore line, yet five min- ature bays indent its irregular plan. Seen from the south, its mass assumes most symmetrical proportions. Square, rocky headlands, bulwarks at either end, are joined by a low flat causeway, over which one sees, pyramidal in shape, the main peak of the island. On a limited scale, it has beetling cliffs, sandy beaches, walls, mounds, old molars of rock, fantastic forms innumerable. OUR INLAND SEA. 75 One might believe that the Gunnison was de- signed to show the wild and stern in the pictur- esque. A couchant lion; such is the outline of the Northern Cliff. Though the outlines of Stans- bury's and Church Islands are quite of the grandest, and these two islands are much larger and higher, in the boldness of its skyline, Gunni- son exceeds them both. As one approaches the upper end of Gunnison Island, going from west to east, there lies the beast. His massive head is turned eastward, his monstrous paws rest on the lower shelves. Below him the water is deep, and, today, is richly blue. The islets, called the "Cubs" and joined just below the surface of the sea, to the main island by a projection of the living rock, add materially to the wildness of the surrounding scene. Under the gloomy heights of the Northern Cliff, and between the islets, we ran our yacht. As we startled the birds with our repeated shouts, from the stony breast of the watching monolith, the sound of our voices came back in far-heard echoes. 76 OUR INLAND SEA. Here Ruskin would live in dolor. Hardly could the "Art Seer" be expected to comprehend the love that might come to one through the exer- cise of those two most American of American privileges — the Homestead Entry and the Squat- ter's Right. Yet this place is. On such a spot as Gunnison burns "The Lamp of Truth," if not "The Lamp of Memory." The homesteader and the squatter, they, more than another, should look to the future. Up in the Hidden Valley grew flow- ers the like of which, for endless generations, have been dear to the old world heart and brain. And others, too, that had bloomed upon the self- same spots, century beyond century of the past, unseen by human eyes. The aconite recalled the skill of old -ffisculapius, the sun-disk of Helian- thus, the worship of Phoebus Apollo ; the crane's bill reminded one of the cloak of Mahomet; a Brodia — Star of Bethlehem — brought to mind the wonder of Christ's nativity; and there, too. Ranunculus Navalis — like a tiny Passion Flower — suggested Gethsemane Garden and Calvary Hill. Here on Gunnison the ancient sage recalls OUR INLAND SEA. 77 great Artemis; and the planets and constella- tions, as they roll overhead, bring with them a presence of the heathen gods and Him of Holy Writ. This the new world owes to the old ; but amid this newness of thought and action, as upon the mountain heights, there burns a lamp, and one of clearest flame. This is one not included among the Seven of Architecture — The Lamp of Hope. And while the scenery to landward had kept our attention, th?re was, across the wide reaches of moving waters, ever-shifting panoramas of is - lands and mountains, but never once was there the flash of a rival sail. From the beginning to the end of our cruise, not a sign of life met our gaze. The island huts, a group of sifters, came almost as a surprise after the lonely seascape and otherwise deserted shores. The sun fell. In the east the dead moon came up, and stared like a ghost at the acrid waters of a dead sea. Girding the far horizon, the western mountains appeared like the outermost land of 78 OUR INLAND SEA. earth resting on molten gold. The Dome of Ma- lad, the old city — the turret-like squares, the broken walls of the denuded rocks on the desert rim — were consumed in fire. When the sun touched the verge, it was as though one looked into a furnace of ruby flame. On the western front of the great Northern Cliff, and on the wings of the gulls that soared so high, the strange light rested. "Behold the fowls of the air ; for they sow not Neither do they reap, nor gather into bams." Not inappropriate either, as we passed beneath that ruin — that pile of nature's upbuilding — seemed the words of the prophet: "But the cormorant and the bittern shall pos- sess it ; the owl also, and the raven shall dwell in it; and He shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness." The Hidden Valley — I should like to describe that place. OUR INLAND SEA. 79 Two deep canons of the Wasatch range begin on the sides of a central peak. Almost parallel in their courses, there stands between these neigh- boring passes, a stupendous barrier of mountain wall. Leading up to this, and to peaks still higher — set like watch-towers along its way — are wind- ing ridges, with knifelike edges, and overlook- ing deep ravines, ragged and grizzly with thick- set spears of fractured stone. On the north side, especially, the wall is exceedingly grand. From time to time, its already tremendous strength is augmented by mighty bastions, the tops of which, seen from the canon below, appear to be the crests of the peaks themselves. To be exact, however, there are two rows of these bastions, one set above and back of the other, so that be- hind the tops of the lower row, and the base of the other, at an elevation of some ten thousand feet, there lies a long and narrow space. This is the Hidden Valley. As now I sometimes turn my glass towards the heights, so when there, with this samie glass, I made out amid the distant waters, this desert home. 80 OUR INLAND SEA. A man may be known by the game that he fol- lows. Thus we may judge of a Columbus, a Na- poleon, a Cromwell; and Tyndall and Darwin. The Order of Things — Cosmos — these men knew, is everywhere to be found. The great games, they are easy to understand. But if one cannot subdue a people, he may subdue a soil; if he cannot discover a continent, he may dis- cover an island. A lake-hunt led me to the Hid- den Valley, and there was a double purpose in coming to Gunnison. One must rest content, if it be his fate, in achievements in a lesser scale. In the Hidden Valley, what pleasure has been mine! There I have known the explorer's zeal. The approach to Gunnison is across the broad waters, open on every side, but Hidden Valley has a secret entrance. Its narrow door-way — at the top of a long, steep glen — is between two monster boulders. The heights above the Sis- ter Lakes, looking up the valley, are pyramidal in form, but looking down the valley, the reverse is true. The view is then bounded by dome forms, the interior shelves crescented, so that OUR INLAND SEA. 81 some of the cliffs appear as vast flights of steps, each step curve-fronted. The runnels that feed the lakes, etch lines of ink across wastes of ice and snow, lave club-mossed boulders of granite, or storm-loosened fragments of porphyry, dizzily poised, or banks rainbow-tinted with mountain flowers. Lakes Gog and Magog, Mary and Martha, Lackawaxan (Glacier), Storm-Cloud, those around the base of Lone and Twin Peaks — I love them all. Above the groups is that mas- sive peak, that rock the first to rise, of all these western heights, above the waves of the pri- meval ocean — that purple-gray peak, that now looks over the canon heads, though it was once an island, the haunt of aquatic wild birds that looked at the sun through the mists of the world's morning. The Hidden Valley and this Northern Cliff of Gunnison are, of this land, my favorite scenes. THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE. ■K' VII THE TWENTY-FIRST OF JUNE. THE twenty-first day in the Month of Roses — June ! Now thunders in each canon the mountain stream; now touches the flood- tide on these highest sands. Flushed with the colors of June, the distant mountain heights are beautiful in the borrowed hues of this Month of the Rose. **Tempora Mutantur/* Yes, and we change with them. Five years ago, I was in the Hidden Valley. Along the northern sides of the Sister Lakes, the terra-cotta ledges were clear of snow, 85 86 OUR INLAND SEA. but a mass, the depth o£ which one could hardly guess, still lay by the mighty wall. On the hearth-stone of the cabin, which my (to me pre- historic) friends had left, I laid great logs. The deserted room was damp and mouldy. Ferns grew between the unadzed timbers, and the fal- len pine-cones sprouted on the unused pathway. On that Mid-summer Day, the strip of untrod- den meadow in front of the cabin was intense in greenness, and forget-me-nots made its surface beautiful as the Elysian Fields. In all the wild disorder there was still an order. Not yet the Monk's-hood had bloomed, but in the upper glen made ready troops of the solemn yet beau- tiful flower. Thousands of purple asters waited by the lakes. The Pentstemons were already like azure clouds, and on the heights the lesser flowers, too (P. humilis) clustered like gems on the glacier rocks. Sweet, at dawn, from grass- hidden larks, came bubbles of melodious sound. Among the groves the hermit-thrush and the purple-finch uttered their soft love-warblings and tender calls, and, in the gloaming, as Hesperus OUR INLAND SEA. 87 hung above the craggy walls, the Vesper-spar- row sung its tuneful song. Ah, the unstained granite, the pallid snow-banks, weeping, drop by drop, into the lake's translucent depths ! O, how hushed and fragrant the aisles among the pines ! Below the snow-line, the slopes were fairly aglit- ter with a thousand rills. High above one's head, all that could be seen, perhaps, of a mile of hur- rying water, were flashings as of a fall of dia- monds. On another declevity could be seen a succession of snowy and miniature cataracts. With the winds from the heights, there came a soothing sound, almost like the hum of bees. **SalmoferfO,(_the common trout)." That, per- haps, of my work was the best. To carry, in a large tin pail, and up a steep and broken trail, a score or more of the live infant fish, and from the lowest mountain lake, deposit them in one much higher, was no easy task. Perhaps it was an act that was also commendable. This was be- fore I dwelt in the cabin, and the transplanted fish, while I journeyed here and there, forgetting 88 OUR INLAND SEA. them quite, have lived and thriven. Once, at the upper lakes, never a ripple from a fish jump, broke the glassy stillness of the mountain mir- rors. Then the lower bodies of water swarmed with innumerable trout, but now the reverse is true. The lower lakes are almost depopulated. Of late, trout weighing four pounds have been taken from the higher waters, and, although I have never cast line or net there, the flesh of those fish — in imagination — has been sweet in my mouth. So changes come. On Alpine pastures, where fed the herds of wary deer, is now the flock of sheep. The savage grizzly gave place to the peaceful cow. Already the nomadic ruminant has climbed the Wasatch glen, and found the Hidden Valley. Soon is superceded the native denizen of the wild. In the Hidden Valley, who- soever my predecessors were, they were, at least, the pioneers. They may have been loggers ; min- ers, perhaps. A saw-mill in the canon beneath, the remains of a slippery wood track, would seem to say the first; but those holes, those burrows. i \' Z'^.v, •«^iS;- il^^S%4^^ ^'/•^;? OUR INLAND SEA. 89 where, with weapons of steel and blast of pow- der, men had broken into the stubborn rock, would seem to say the second. Be that as it may, pioneers were the trout. Transplanted a thous- and feet or more above their native haunt, the enforced fish-emigrants, however, were more at home in that aforetime tenantless lake, than are now these domestic fowls brought to this island, and beginning to struggle at odds against the native sea-birds of the wild. The American is the most strenuous of men. In his practicality, he is the most tolerant, we may say, of the ugly. Little time has he for the merely aesthetic. And yet, often under his busy life, there is hidden a true vein of the deeply po- etic. That the poetry of nature can be ; or rather was, felt by those who lived closest to it, wit- nessed the American red-man. The Arapahoe and Sioux, with all their Eastern brothers are gone, but the Zuni and the Apache remain. The latter amid the mesas of his sun-scorched land, is ever keen to the desert beauty. And I have conversed with him too often, not to know the 90 OUR INLAND SEA. appreciation o£ the cow-boy, and the pride in his surroundings of the pioneer. Which be the more solemn, which be the more beautiful, I do not know! Once I watched the mid-summer moonlight in the Hidden Valley. To see the vast basin of Lake Blanche — as the crim- son alpen gild ebbed from off the Wasatch — flooded with a greenish light was a wondrous spectacle. So, too, was the moving shadow of the mighty gnomon — a jut of quartzite, five hun- dred feet in height — that measured the passing hours as on a lunar dial. An aged cedar that stands on the high ledge of Lake Florence, gave to those central waters, as the moon glinted through the outstretched branches, and illumined a foamy cas- cade, a peculiar interest. On the shore of Lake Lillian lies a monster boulder. Square, purple- black in hue, metallic-hard, glacier-brought to the place of its present rest, and ice-scratched, too, it holds legends of frost and fire. Strange, from that Wasatch stone, to see the light of the orb on the giant walls, the silent woods, the sleeping lakes ! OUR INLAND SEA. 91 Now I watch the luminosity, the moon laying a pathway across the lonely and midnight wave. And the moonlight is rare. If ever in man- hood's strength, one could bring back his child- hood's belief in enchanted valleys and magic isl- ands, it would be in such a valley as that in yon Wasatch, or on such an island as this. All around is crystalline pure. The island peak, and even the nearer rocks appear cerulean. The slopes and ridges, the sleeping water, the far-off moun- tains themselves, are wrapped in tender blue. And through earth's shadow-cone, are shot the moon rays of ruddy gold. Dig, ye men of muscle; toss the brown bird- dust through the iron sieves ! This is the Month of the Rose. Not of roses do the sifters dream ; they think not of roses, neither those of the gar- den, nor those of the mountains. But I know a path where the garden roses cluster, and on the heights, by the side of Rose-Malva, the wild- rose is queen. The quarryman knows not into what forms of beauty the marble he loosens may 92 OUR INLAND SEA. be carved, nor do the sifters, good men, think into what future forms of loveliness the mineral they dig may be turned. Yet, dig, there is poetry in the ancient stuff ! This gift of the long ago, a million roses of the future may make more fair. UNDER THE DOG-STAR. VIII. UNDER THE DOG-STAR. MY days of trial are here. The King of Suns, the mighty Sirius, the fiery Dog- Star of the ancients, rules the sky. My eyes ache. O, the insufferable brightness! O,. the glare of light upon the waters of the Inland Sea! Like polished steel gleams the briny sur- face; and across it, the sun's path is like that same steel at molten heat. My brain seethes. Through the smallest aperture, sun-arrows pierce into the darkened room. In the tanks the water 95 96 OUR INLAND SEA. keeps pure, but too quickly it shrinks away. These are the days when the temper becomes un- certain, when indolence and passion hold equal sway. Now the heat of that distant star gathers in the veins and the blood boils. We are made the playthings of combustion taking place innu- merable miles away. Now the poet's eye is in a fine frenzy rolling ; the musician hears the mu- sic of the spheres. Now men of nobleness en rapport with steller fires, are moved to great achievements, or those of lower instincts are moved to deeds of crime. Now, when too bit- ter the wormwood in the cup of sorrow, one must cry out like John in the wilderness, or the deli- cate brain gives way to madness in the fierce disquiet of the time. "The heart-sick," says Poe, "avoid distant pros- pects. In looking from the summit of a moun- tain one cannot help feeling abroad in the world. Grandeur in any of its moods, especially in that of extent, startles, excites — and then fatigues. For the occasional scene, nothing can be better — for the constant view — nothing can be worse. OUR INLAND SEA. 97 And in the constant view, the objectional phase of grandeur is that of extent, the worst phase of extent that of distance." The words of Poe are true. Unless I fear not to invite the pain of dejection, I keep away from the peak. I have discovered for myself that on the summit of the cliff, I cannot escape from the feeling "abroad," of which the poet speaks. Not only is dejection there invited, but also is added thereto, the irony, as it were, of publicity. Strange to relate, the farther I see away from my place of exile, the more unhappy I become. Melancholy, impossible to turn aside, steals over me at sight of those vast stretches of briny wa- ters and those endless miles of arid land. In the brooding, mid-day calms, too, the sad- dening nature of my surroundings is most strong- ly felt. Yet it is not the character merely of the sea and landscape that works a depression, its causes take a deeper root in the soul. Perhaps, too, I have reached the stage in my island life when what was a stimulant gives place to an- tipathy. As I stand in the crow's nest, erected 98 OUR INLAND SEA. by Stansbury, my island lies around me like a map in relief. Beyond the waters are the end- less mountains; beyond the mountains the open sky. There are mountains near and mountains distant. There is limitless recurrence of slope and peak and gorge. Range behind range, the heights culminate in dreary levels, in curve and dome, or in jagged saw-tooth edges along the horizon. A hundred miles of the Wasatch Mountains occupy but a fragment of the vast cir- cumference. There gape the canons, there are a hundred wan and nameless ravines leading into the inmost recesses of the stony hills. Tremu- lous through heat-haze shows the receding white of the Western Desert. There are low, rocky hills, flat-topped and sable, the old broken cliff- lines of ancient Bonneville ; and there, too, far to the south, the level escarpments of vanished La Hontan. Vastness and strangeness are the lead- ing features of the tremendous landscape, and worse than those to the mind, are the powers of memory and assimilation. To the inner eye, this enlarges the horizon a hundred fold. Rather than OUR INLAND SEA. 99 be a slave too long to the infinite in the finite, one tries to concentrate his attention upon some petty object, to shrink into one's self, and to find rest for a moment in anchoring the mind to some near rock or shrub. But all in vain. Instinctively, as through a resistless fascination, the gaze wan- ders once more. No rest, no ceasing. Again one looks, around and around, across and across the unfriendly waters. At last, against all efforts of will, a plunge into the deep, the alluring and dreadful blue. Bird-voices grow monotonous. I am berated from morning to night. The gulls scream de- fiance. In every nook and corner of this disputed island, go where I will, the untired birds greet my presence with cries of resentment. Not con- tent with this, they await not my coming, but come themselves to my very door. There they utter their querulous and insulting notes. It is painful to be so very unpopular. The sifters and I — we act the part of usurpers. Truly the island belongs to the gulls by right of inheritance. They 100 OUR INLAND SEA. are the original possessors. Then why should they not give us the words of ejectment? "Thanks. What's the matter, you dissentious rogues?" Are your throats never weary? Why watch you my every action? I am not the keeper in the limbo for birds. The creatures are not unmindful of favors; they dash for whatever bits of food may come from my table. But they love me, trust me, alas ! none the more. Do gulls never sleep? For the third part of a year now, I have listened to their ceaseless clamor. Their cries greet the dawn, they fail not at eve, neither are they absent at the noon of the day, nor the mid of the night. My dogs may bay at the moon, the owl on the cliff may scatter demoniac laughter, but they cannot outnoise these obstreperous gulls. The birds are clannish; there are duels to the death. Then what frenzied accompaniments of wing-flashings and inarticulate sounds of sexual OUR INLAND SEA. 101 ire. I witness, perhaps, some detail of natural selection. Perhaps this day's war was over some winged Helen, some Isolde, or it may be some Guinevere of the gulls. This colony, no doubt, is as ancient as Tyre, its laws unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians. Primitive order still holds good along its lanes and streets. Often the male birds may be seen in separate groups, and then I try to pick out whose may be the guiding will in this "Parlament of Fowles." Who is the Democratic Cincinnatus? Who is the lordly Agamemnon, the Ajax, Menaulus, the sage Ulysses, or the aged Nestor of the convocation? Ha!-ha! — Ha!-ha! There are those who laugh. Then, there must be among them, a Thersites; some ^sop, too. Plaintive the voices can grow. "H-e-l-p ! h-e-l-p !" With almost human distinct- ness comes at times a piercing call. In the dead of the night, as the wild appeal comes, now from one corner of the island, now from another, and each and every time with an intensity of sound as from a soul in pain; one might fancy that the spooks were abroad, or, as a nearer cry is fol- 102 OUR INLAND SEA. lowed by a whispering, like voices suppressed in expectation, that some evil creature were trying to lure one over the edge of the cliff. But it is only the gulls. But a month since, and the downy young gulls were my best of friends. As I lay on the sands they came chirping towards me. Often has the lapel of my coat sheltered the little chicks and in the tunnels of its sleeves they crept and hid. On a time, they nestled in perfect confidence against my hand, or they cuddled my cheek, or dozed be- neath my hair. But now they are fearful, they are filled with a dark mistrust. In my presence they watch and cower. Or, with soft, plaintive cries, and faint flutter of half-formed wings, they run in crowds on the sand before me. When guided into some cul de sac of the cliffs, there is something uncanny in the stare of their yellow eyes. How they wheel and scream — those parent gulls! They put to my nocturnal wanderings a frightful din. Do you think I will harm them? Scream your loudest, if such you desire; yet, as OUR INLAND SEA. 103 regards me, your progeny is safe. How like a white, fallen cloud, appear your hosts on the star- lit water! Or, indeed, as I retrace my steps to the hut, I could think you, as slov/ly again you approach the dim shore, a fleet of tiny gondolas ; messengers unknown from an unknown shore. Beauty may become so perfect that there is left no room for peace. There is delirium in these lustrous nights as well as in these torrid days. Too closely the shining orbs wrap one around; too multitudinous they reflect in the shining wave! There is a degree of beauty that is restful, and there is one that excites. "There is a nakedness in beauty," thought Ambrose. "Beauty may be- come maddening when it removes veil after veil," he says, "and we seem about to stand in the un- clothed presence." "Is it the climate! Is it the marvelous sky?" Hugo exclaim.ed so, when he learned the death of Count Bresson. "A brilliant and a joyous sky mocks us! Nature in her sad aspects resembles us and consoles us. Nature when radiant, im- 104 OUR INLAND SEA. passive, serene, magnificent, transplendent, young while we grow old, smiling while we are sighing, superb, inaccessible, eternal, contented in its joyousness, has in it something oppressive." "People," says Amiel, "talk of the temptations to crime connected with darkness, but the dumb sense of desolation which is often the product of the most brilliant moments of daylight must not be forgotten. Man feels lost and bewildered, a creature forsaken by all the world." In the heart of these crystal days there lurks an awful thought. Today the same as yesterday ; that like the day before ; tomorrow but to carry forward the monotony of pain. In this guise, O life and beauty and infinity, you are scarcely to be borne ! A GUEST IN THE VINEYARD. v/' IX. A GUEST IN THE VINEYARD. CONCENTRATE in one creature, all that is ugly, all that is detestable in the sur- rounding desert; take the hues of the mud- flats, of the oozing alkali, the mottled herbage, the lava, the scoriae, animate it with malevolent and envenomed life, and there it is— the fanged and deadly "rattler." And this horror on my island, too ! Of what avail, then, around my homestead, this girdle of waters? O nature, little did I think you would send me this ! Yet all reptiles swim. Almost all snakes move 107 108 OUR INLAND SEA. through water with as much ease and rapidity as they move on land. Rattlesnakes, for instance, are much given to swimming. They cross rivers and wide stretches of placid water. This ex- plains, in connection with another fact, the pres- ence of the navigator among my vines. On the mainland, yonder, I have met the infant viper. That offspring of evil raised its tiny head, and although it might have been, as yet, unarmed with poison, it gave me proof indeed, and not unheeded, that it knew its natural weapon. And this monster, too, this hideous creature that has come to these shores, it, also, was quick to strike. This is a counter invasion. There is no mis- taking what this incident means. The desert re- taliates, it puts into operation the natural law of self-defense. In this presence among the vines there is a lesson to learn. Here is an enigma. Can I be "Happy among the Rattlesnakes?'* Can I defy that taunt, and with a full understand- ing, too, of its deeper meanings? Never in the slightest degree does my dread of OUR INLAND SEA. 109 the rattler lessen. Never, be it ever so little, have I conquered that loathing the creature inspires. I have heard what all apologists have said. But I fear and hate it no less. Familiarity only in- creases my stock of abhorrence. To the mental- physical operation of watching the vines, this visitant was an awful shock ; but after my dreams in the hut, my communings with hope, to the inner senses much more so. Hateful enough anywhere, but doubly hateful that creature on my homestead grounds ! In such a presence, the very light of the sun appears to change. Nature appears to be less beneficient ; something more sinister and malefic ; something more to be feared. One seems to stand, with such a life before him, on the edge of a terrible gulf ! More hideous, too, it appeared to me, was that rattler than any I had heretofore seen. But that thought, of course, must have its root reaching to some special feeling. Twelve rattles and a button ; this snake was, I suppose, in the heyday of life. What black deeds stand to its life account? no OUR INLAND SEA. What deeds might it not have done in the fu- ture? Now is the rattlesnake most active; now is the period of its greatest muscular strength; in this month, it is most quick to strike, and now are its deadly fangs most terribly envenomed. Hideous in the midst of those gleaming coils, was that low-poised head, the cold glitter of those watchful eyes. Hideous was that rattle — a music of hell! I do not know if the description, in Beeton's Natural History, of the American wood or har- vest mouse can be applied to the mountain mouse of this land. But I think it can. The mice that inhabit the island, and strangely enough, too, unless they can live without water, must be the same. In color they are a reddish-brown and that answers, in that point, to the description of both species. Was the rattler in search of prey? Of course he was. Many such trips had prob- ably been made by the huge old sinner. Perhaps he came from off the western desert; but quite as likely he came from off the southern mainland. He may have shortened the way of the water trip OUR INLAND SEA. Ill by coming over Strong's Knob. The rodent thieves of the island have annoyed me greatly. Nothing to them is sacred. They play havoc in my bin, and my sketch-book has not escaped them. And yet, I do not like to think of the re- counter between the mice and the snake. The cliff -owl probably remains here for the same pur- pose as brought the rattler, but the owl's seeking of his natural food does not fill me with the same disquiet, or the same compassion for the mice, as does the picture of that other. Why? To lie, all but invisible, at the foot of an orch- ard tree, or in the dust of the village school-path, to coil amid the settler's corn, to sun itself upon the Homesteader's door-step, aye, even to creep below the blanket, spread upon the ground, of the lonely herdsman or sleeping prospector — these are ways of the rattler. The beaver that leaves a trail of white upon the darkness of a Wasatch lake, the gray old badgers that run, with that squat, stealthy motion of theirs, across the moun- tain debris, but add the finishing touch to a pic- 112 OUR INLAND SEA. ture of solitude. To see the freshly made rents upon the silver bark of the trembling aspen, the mark of the claws of the savage grizzly, or to come upon its v^rallow, just deserted, in some t>oggy spot amid the pines, may make the heart beat quicker for a moment, as it will to hear that cry infernal which comes at twilight from the wild-cat's jaws. But although the rattlesnake is just as much a natural outcome and fitting inhab- itant of these deserts, I cannot but shudder at it. Once, on an Oquirrh summit, I met with an adventure with birds. A pair of eagles — the bald — inhabited the peak. I had crossed the lower slopes near Black Rock — where the warning note of the rattler was in my ears — and climbed the steeps at the northern end of the range. There the mountain slopes so that one may climb and it is clothed with woods, but, on the southern front, the rocks fall sheer ; there is a precipice of awful height. As I emerged from a grove of pines, suddenly the ground seemed to drop from beneath my feet, and while I stood for a moment there, bewildered, dizzy, the eagles — mindful of OUR INLAND SEA. 113 the eaglets — made their attack. With wild screams and fiend-like working of talons, they dashed in my face, and all but caused my fall. For a moment I looked into the eyes of death. Incarnate, yes, incarnate! Evil is not merely negation. Beset by those wrathful birds, with that void in the earth below me, with the dread expectancy of falling blindly through space, to be crushed upon the rocks below, even that was not so horrible as to look into the hell-lit eyes of my unwelcome visitor. "There is in fact no evil." So says the poet. But the homesteader what? And this creature — where may be his wife and children! The in- stinctive action, the swiftly-hurled stone,and that poison-armed reptile, that heap of coils, and with severed head, dying amid the vines — such was the answer to that. "The Survival of the Fittest." Ah ! there the homesteader finds solid ground. Civilization, the progress of the race, implied, and still implies, the extinction of certain beasts and reptiles, no, evil is not merely negation. With 114 OUR INLAND SEA. the Elemental around me, here, if anywhere, I may test the thought. It is but a fair hope that all the waste places of the earth shall yet know a civilization superior to any that has gone be- fore. But first comes the destruction of odious creatures. Soon only traditionally, will Europeans be able to take interest in wolf and boar hunts. As now in America, the buffalo hunt is a thing of the past, so will it soon be in Africa. Civilization ex- tends its bounds on every hand. As from civilized Europe and the British Isles, the bear has gone, so in this western land, his kind must go. The pi- oneer is sort of god. He meets the Lernaean hydra and the birds of Lake Stymphalis. Still the serpent comes out of the dragon's blood, and is bred in marsh and fen. The lions that prowl adown the palace steps of Persepolis; the vul- tures that perch upon the voluted columns of Tadmor, or the foxes that creep on the spot where Elis stood, these animals occupy — to civ- ilization — an antipodal position to that repre- OUR INLAND SEA. 115 sented by the wild beasts here. In a hundred years from now, it is computed, the king of beasts will be extinct. If that be true, then the great bronze lions which Sir Edwin Landseer modeled for the monument in Trafalgar Square, are likely to outlast their living prototypes. And the rude nature-carving of this island cliff? How long will it last? Perhaps outlive the British civiliza- tion itself. Aye ! already old these thousands of years, it may — if greed does not blast the rock away — outwatch the growth and decay of this young giant, this awakening nation of the west- ern world. Tonight, with verse, I find that my words give utterance to another vein of thought. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER, I matter love for that which breathes it through, The palpable to sense of touch and sight, Filled with the beauty of the power of light, Substance made symbol by its form and hue. 116 OUR INLAND SEA. I matter fear for that whence power it drew, The deadly hates that at love's being smite, The subtle poison that the pure can blight, O, rivals, meeting on life's avenue ! This blameless soil opposing force will sow, The butterfly and serpent share this clod; Roses and lilies, tares and thistles grow. Evil and good emerge from this dull sod; Therein we may the Prince of Darkness know, And who dares limit how we shall see God ! CONTENTS OF A CAIRN. CONTENTS OF A CAIRN. A HUMAN skull! Where, then, shall one tread, and not on the dust of man? These arid hills are but cemeteries. In these sur- rounding lands — Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado — the graveyards are found. Jurassic reptiles, mailed creatures of terrible power, lie there em- bedded. The feet of the shepherd, the hunter's and the cowboy's pony, have stumbled against great bones. The huge remains formed a feature 119 120 OUR INLAND SEA. in the desert landscape.* Around my horizons are lands that have been submerged in water, that have been earthquake shaken, and over which glaciers have crept in the by-gone days; lands that were once the bottom of ancient seas ; that cover the remains of forests below forests, and beneath whose soils there are secrets hidden. In Utah cairns and mounds have been lately opened. Remains of the dead have been found therein. To the south of Strong's Knob, within yonder mass of black limestone crags, bones, cave-entombed, have been brought to light. So ancient were they, those bones, that ere the smoke of the miner's blast had cleared away, they crumbled to dust on the cavern floor. Science will never know to what kind of creatures those bones belong, nor will it ever be able, perhaps, to ascribe an age to this skull. *This is a literal fact. In Wyoming the "finds" of fos- sils were so made. This was in the dry-washes, among those frayed, crumbled, honey-combed rocks near the Green River and Church Buttes country. In Colorado, the herdsmen had built the foundation of a shelter cabin with the great round vertebra of the disjointed monsters. OUR INLAND SEA. 121 Eastward I see a dim range of hills. Along the flanks of those Wasatch spurs, there was once a battle fought. In the distant past, the dead from that aboriginal strife were buried in the conglomerate caves. Here, also, are to be found similar cave-like openings; but the relic came not from either of these. It was found by my man. On the south slope of the Northern Cliff, under a ledge, and at the end of my high- est vineyard trellis, with his mattock, the Drudge unearthed the skull. Devil has strutted over that spot, I know not how many times. But his sharp, prying eyes did not see. Under that very ledge the raven had made a cache, and within a few inches of the dome of the skull. His curiosity is not small, so his instinct must have been at fault. Otherwise, surely, he would have found the prize. How was the skull placed there? Bonneville's beating waves, rounded and polished the ledges of Strong's Knob, long after those creatures, whatever they were, had been entombed in the 122 OUR INLAND SEA. hollow rock. So long had those bones been in that place, that the living creatures themselves existed and died ere Lake Bonneville fell or was. And the skull? Whatever its age, whatever was the remote period of time when its owner was a living man, I hardly expect, now, the bones to crumble. By some preservative process it has been made as hard as ivory, and as softly- browned toned as a piece of old ivory, too. From out those sockets, the eyes, that once were there, looked last — on what? Was that man's last glimpse of earth this surrounding scene? Did the Inland Sea look then, as it does this day? Did the mountains stand so? To the skull I may put the scornful command, "Say what ancestors were thine !" But no answer shall I get. No voice will come from the silent past. Little indeed could the owner of that piece of mortality have conceived of the coming race! Much less was his power to look forward to our day, than for us to look backward to his. That man was a fighter. Low, indeed, and flat is that cranium arch. It is broad at the base, and the frontal area 8 <3 OUR INLAND SEA. 123 is small and it slopes, but large and thrust for- ward are the supra-orbital ridges. What has my island known? Has it, too, been a battlefield? In the days gone by, it may have been a secret stronghold — a place of retreat. I have been led to believe that the native Indians have kept away from these islands, as they did from the mountain tops ; but this skull may have belonged to an older race, perhaps to a paleolithic man. It may be that the man was contemporary with those whose mummies were found in the room beneath the Payson Mound. His relatives may have planted the grain or have gathered the kernels which were found in that old stone box. If so, then this disinterred warrior would recognize the wheat — that wheat I mean, a kind hitherto unknown and which is now grown in many of these arid valleys from that ancient seed. Perhaps he was contemporary with the making of that earth-fort among the Oquirrh foothills. He may have aided in or directed the building of 124 OUR INLAND SEA. that pile, that mound of oolithic sand, which stands a mystery on yonder plain. There are some strange speculations aroused by the sight of this skull. Did that human being, its owner, poison his arrow tips? If so, perhaps he took the poison from the forerunner of my unwelcome guest. He may have sent such another creature with a mes- sage to his god, as do the desert Indians to this very day. In life, did the man look on any such creature as those whose bones still project from the soil? It may be that this skull is as old as are the remains of that long extinct race, those people, which are found in the sepulchral chambers high among the red rocks of the San Juan — the cliff- dwellers in the southern part of the State. Here, then, was the secret — the island, al- though it has probably been a fort, a battle- ground, has also been a place of supulcher. As we dug amid the earth and stones, how surprised were we! OUR INLAND SEA. 125 A short distance from the spot where the skull was found, we exhumed more bones. There were a broken scapula, a clavicle, parts of a hu- murus, fragments of a spinal column, but no more. And, unlike the skull, these bones were in an advanced stage of decay. Just below them we came upon the top of a slab, that covered the tomb. There, as it had reposed through the ages, was a skeleton complete. For an infinite time it must have lain in that narrow home. A weapon of stone — a huge, round battleax — lay by his side. Also there were many arrow-heads — of agate and jagged obsidian — also there were many round agates, which I supposed to be beads. Once the owner was a man of note. About the remains in the cave-dwellings of the San Juan County, archaeologists differ. What is their age? Those air-dried mummies may be of any age. Five thousand years, twenty-five thou- sand, the estimate ranges from one great gulf of time to that of another. And this memento mori, this island tomb ? I believe it to be as ancient as 126 OUR INLAND SEA. any. Very much in the arrangements of the stones, the slab which formed the cover, those of the sides and floor, this tomb resembles the most ancient ones found beneath the barrows or crom- lechs of the old world. These remains and this resting-place may be older than the skeletons and the tombs which contain them, which are found in the lowest excavations below Nippur. It is indeed, then, an old proprietor who makes manifest his prior claim to my home. There was, I think, at one time, an entire skel- eton, also, in the earth above the tomb. If so, it must have occupied an oblique position, feet downward toward the slab. What caused the lower parts to crumble? And why did they dis- integrate so much more rapidly than did the upper? Why did we not find either ulna or ra- dius; a rib-bone, nor anything of the skeleton as low as the pelvis? And why was this — the skull removed so far from the rest of the bones? But most of all, what relationship of events, if any, existed between the two sets of remains? Just now I am likely to receive no answer. OUR INLAND SEA. 127 What have we found ? Of a spear-head, similar to this one of mine, Russell has the following re- marks: "The fossils from the La Hontan basin (within my sight) that will be considered by both geologists and archaeologists as of the greatest interest, is a spear-head of human workmanship. It was associated in such a manner with the bones of an elephant, or mastodon, as to leave no doubts as to their having been buried at ap- proximately the same time." Among my curios, there lies this trio of relics : a spear-head, within a fraction of four inches in length, and made of flint ; a circular piece of stone — one and three-quarters inches in diameter, one half inch in thickness, and with a shallow central perforation on either side; and a most singular elongated piece of circular stone, two and one- quarter inches in length; both of the last-named being made of the same material — a red gray- stone, and highly polished. The flint came from a Wasatch canon, where it was found in a bank of the stream. The other pieces are from the hillside in the same vicinity, and are certainly pre- 128 OUR INLAND SEA. historic. The remains we have just found, and the face ornaments, as I believe the pieces of stone to be, impress me as being equally old. During the excavations in Arizona, among the burying-places of the ancient people of the petri- fied forests, the evidence of old time tragedies were not to be mistaken. Among the orderly burials, were found a heap of calcined and broken bones. The marks of the implements used in cracking the bones were still traceable. It was, says one who describes the "find," the first ma- terial proof of cannibalism among the North American Indians. What do we see? Perhaps we have unearthed, in that skull and those up- per bones, the evidence of some dark, mysteri- ous rite, some cruel superstition of the long ago. The discoveries of the last few days have given me questions to ponder. OLD AND NEW DEATH. XL OLD AND NEW DEATH. "W HOSO sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Hardly had I time to think over the old law and to connect it with those scenes of the past, than there comes this sequel — this deed that sprinkled new blood stains on the isl- and sands. Red-handed — . Not yet shall the miracle of Life give approval to my work, but upon it shall be stamped the seal of Death. O inscrutable mystery; how quickly man falls 131 132 OUR INLAND SEA. to the depths, how slowly he climbs to the heights ! Once more the law of force. Once more, the notes of The Grim Musician, and even in this wil- derness, one hears the riot of the Dance Mac- abre ! More terrible, perhaps, more ghastly, appears that dance to us — the moderns — than it did to the people of the Middle Ages. More grotesque, more fantastic, even, as we view it through the naturalist's labors. We see the human death- dance mingled, as it were, with that of the long procession, the millions of years of the lower cre- atures, and the death-dance of the world's, too, by the light of modern science. Everywhere is the mark of Death ; everywhere sounds the passing bell. Death and brute force, back from this hour to the act of Cain ! Clinging to the bones of the mammoth and the mastodon, I have seen the bright grains of placer- gold. I know not if there be any gold of prom- ise clinging to these old remains. Battles there OUR INLAND SEA. 133 have always been; battles of many kinds. Through the geologic ages, with claws and horns, with teeth that cut and tore, the primeval creatures foretold the wrath of man. And still there is strife. "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword," the warning contained in those words is ever fulfilled. But do we move on- ward to a time when war shall be no more ? When murder shall be unknown, when the desire to kill shall no longer be inherent in the human race ? What need to look backward to the time of the poisoned arrow, to the age when battleax smashed skull and brain. The smaller ones among my arrow-heads — agates, not more than the half of an inch in length, are notched for the holding of poison, but do we need the like this day? Conformed, no doubt, were those skulls we have found to the conditions and needs amid which their owners lived. The human forehead has been lifted since then — But the brute is still in man. At the very sight of crime one feels himself de- 134 OUR INLAND SEA. based. That which is in the individual is in the race. In a humble way, my island shows the ad- vance of the human kind. Here may be seen re- sults ; here may be read a history. Now comes a day, and as sure as the bones we have exhumed show our physical nearness to primitive man, so sure, also, the late deed of hate and rage shows how near we may be to him in mind. Picture- writing (in one of the western bays) exists on Promontory. Hieroglyphics of the rudest char- acter, adorn the cliff-fronts. But the "represen- tations of man, of animals and birds; the foot- prints and handmarks; the symbols that might stand for the sun or moon, together with the cir- cle, parallel, straight or undulating lines, the spots and other unintelligible characters" upon the Pictographic Rocks — what do they tell? Nothing that I, at lease, may read. As light, up- on the mystery of this mortuary find, there is nothing in those scratched or chiseled marks and fading colors. Religion began, some one has said, with the care of the dead. Veneration was bom, one OUR INLAND SEA. 135 might add, when man first raised the mound or built the cairn. The records on the rocks may be a boast. They may tell of personal prowess, of tribes subdued or of warriors slain. The heaped up earth, the piled up stones were for another purpose. And grief? Here it has been. Perhaps there gathered around this unsealed tomb, some such primitive beings as once I saw by the Gila. Per- haps here, also, sounded such another chant as then I heard. Such shrieks and wails as came from those aged mourners ; those gaunt and wolf- eyed hags, those very dregs of a race, as, with withered hands, they beat upon withered breasts, and on their scant, white hair poured the desert sand. But what of that — the death and sepulture of those tons of horrid life ? What is the extinction of those races of creatures of mighty strength, those first crude thoughts in the creative power, compared to the death of one human being. How far less terrible, also, seems to us, the fierce and cruel rage of those products of primeval slime, 136 OUR INLAND SEA. than does this act — this outburst of brutal pas- sion, this deed by a being who holds intelligence, and enshrines the soul ! Herbert Spencer has made a prophecy. In ten thousand years, emotion in the human race will be dead. Intellectual automata will take the place of emotional man. To inspire a far-off dram- atist, if such there be, there will be no Hamlet or Lear; no Juliet or Ophelia. To impress the his- torian there will be no voluptuary or bigot; no Sardanapalus or Philip II. As no Boadicea of Britain, there will be no Catherine of Russia, no Paris, no Helen — not in the future such ones as of the past. In that day, slaughter, such as probably this island has seen, shall be unknown. So, too, there shall be no Hastings, no Agincourt, no Actium, no Salamis. No more the clash of arms, the flow of blood, the light of flames. Nimrod, Xerxes, Belshazzar, Alexander or Caesar, shall be as im- possible as the petty chief who laid here. Fan- aticism shall bring forth not another Mahomet, OUR INLAND SEA. 137 or Tamerlane, or Zingis Khan. The years will put as great a gulf between a Napoleon and the future hero, as between the Corsican and this old fighter of the tribes. And then adieu to the emotional-cyclonic, to the mental volcano. Adieu to such outbursts of ungovemed passion, as this from which we turn away our eyes. THE HARVESTS OF TIME. XII. THE HARVESTS OF TIME. A HEAVY judgment, it is said, awaits on those who covet dead men's riches. Not greed, however, has made me take the treasures of that ancient man, the weapons of flint and stone, the potsherds, the wealth of beads that now are mine. Anthropology, the knowledge of the palaeon- tologist, how little interest I have taken in these. 141 142 OUR INLAND SEA. When pacing the museums, the animal life of re- mote ages but engaged my eye for moments. I have rather avoided etnographic exhibits and I have looked with a sort of angry surprise at the huge remains of Dinosaurs, Uintatheriums, the Atlanto-saurus, and the diminutive or colossal bones of the primal horse. But here, ah ! here how different ! Here the old bones, the fossils, the remains of beast and man, hold fast the mind. All in keep- ing are these things — this time of flame, the sun- scorched land, the dazzling brine, the skull, the bones, the contents of the ancient cairn, and those great earth-skeletons themselves — the jagged vertebra of denuded mountains. Seventy-seven thousand pounds, that was the estimated living weight of a fossil saurian. That one, I mean, but recently exhumed , found among the sedimentary rocks in the Wyoming Bad Lands. Recent, indeed, in comparison with the natural graveyards of the western Lais, are the cemeteries of man. These desert conditions which prevail around me, and in the south, where the OUR INLAND SEA. 143 cave-dwellers lived in the cliffs of the broken plateaus — the Rock-Rovers' Land — denote the approach of old age in our planet, but evidently they were the same in the infancy of the race. What are the vast cities where, enclosed in their clay coffins, sleep the dead of Ur, the catacombs of Rome, the charnel houses of Mount Sinai, the Necropolis of Thebes, or even the mummy-pits of Memphis? Insignificant when we think of the rock-tombs of this western land. There is no doubt that the kind of legend gives the true character of a place. The associations that take root and cling to a place are in harmony with its appearance. This is a truth that was known to the ancients as well as it is to the mod- erns. We see it in the Greek Drama. It is shown in the fables of Olympus and Parnassus; of the Cyclops, Prometheus and the crags of Caucasus, and many others. That in the differ- ent appearances of nature there is the legend al- ready made we feel as strongly in the stately classics, as we do in Shakespeare, and the later 144 OUR INLAND SEA. writings of the modern school. And this is true, the ugly place suggests the ugly crime. Here, then, the savagery of place and the deed are one. "There is a size," thinks Thomas Hardy, "at which ghastliness begins." There are gulfs of time in which terror lies. Far deeper gulfs than those indeed to which the cairn belongs. Can one but shudder as he looks into the depths where the "Gorgons, and hydras, and Chimeras dire," are seen, and, to make a foreground, pri- meval man, scarcely less monstrous than the life beyond. Surely this land had its legends already made. The scenery of these deserts, the mountains and plains, the heaps of stone, presupposed the sav- age tribes. There already is whatever of ro- mance is in the Ute and the Zuni, the Apache and the dweller on the cliffs. Must the proud Cau- casian draw some disturbing augury from his re- lationship with the red, the yellow, the brown and the black races. Are these indeed his brothers? Behold the Esquimaux and the native of Terra OUR INLAND SEA. 145 del Fuego ! I have looked with a feeling akin to contempt upon the Digger Indian, and I believe I have shuddered at sight of that rock, in the depths of yonder canon, where the Ute had bound and tortured his white captive. But, al- though the white man has not built a fire upon the breast of his foe and let the red coals con- sume the flesh to the heart, has he not committed deeds as cruel? And claw and talon; the envenomed tooth and that strength which rent and tore? Such was the law. The dragon's scales give place to the coat of mail, the armour chased or inlaid with gold. And now? Among man, the battle-ax, or the blade of tempered steel, or the weapon which lies near my hand. Degree more than kind. But all the land is but a legend of de- parted seas, and all the life that dwelt around or in them.* ♦The old lake La Hontan w^3 named in honor of Baron La Hontan, one of the early explorers of the head-waters of the Mississippi, and was the compliment of Lake Bonne- ville. The former, situated mostly within the area now forming the State of Nevada, filled a depression along the 146 OUR INLAND SEA. The Harvests of Time ! The gaudy ephemeral, the terrible-prolonged! -SEons after aeons, and the work goes on. Yon archaean peak, snow- crowned, has roots in nether fire. Over and over, sown and gathered, gathered and sown. Behold the sedimentary rocks — strata below strata, tier above tier, the remains of a thousand fields ! Hor- rible crops! Like that which sprang from the dragon's teeth, creatures that fought and de- stroyed each other. Eocene, Miocene, Pleiocene — stored in the solid rock, beneath the sub-soils; scattered again in desert sands, the harvests lie. Beast and bird and reptile, and still there is no end. And the mighty birds? The Ichthyorius, and the Hesperorius? The reptile-birds and the western border of the Great Basin, at the base of the Sierra Nevada; the latter embraced almost entirely the present State of Utah, occupying a corresponding position on the east side of the Great Basin, at the foot of the Wasatch Moxintains. Lake Bonneville was 19,750 square miles in area and had a maximum depth of about 1,000 feet. Lake La Hontan covered 8,422 square miles of sur- face, and in the deepest part, the present site of Pyramid Lake, was 886 feet in depth. Russell, in Report of U. S. Geological History, 1885. OUR INLAND SEA. 147 bird-like reptiles? Their rule is past. Ended in the west is the dynasty of the toothed-birds. Far away, and it seems that the birds and the reptiles were one. Across the lands and waters they stalked or paddled. And now the Jurassic seas are dry. Their creatures are gathered to the har- vests of time. Have the gulls come down from those? With graceful wing-motion, the white gulls beat the air. With piercing cries they wheel up to the highest cliff -line and there they hover. They drift past the trellis, and among my vines. And there came the snake. The reptile with en- venomed tooth, the birds with perfected wing. And there the result of the parted ways. "They were human beings" — that is the point. What are my struggles, my trials in redeeming the waste, compared to those aboriginal beings? My man has a hundred resources not possessed by the first inhabitants. When did they discover the use of corn? From whence came their wheat? The instruments which Caliban wields are as much superior, too, as are his resources of mind. 148 OUR INLAND SEA. His mattock, his spade, his pick and his hoe, how far removed in effectiveness they are from those of palaeolithic art. Already moss-grown is the mill-wheel of the pioneer. The first grinding-stones for the alien miller were quarried from the native hills. And so were the grinding-stones that were taken from the pre-historic mounds. I have listened to the pioneer stories of the white-headed miller, but how I should have liked to hear the legend of those beings who bent over the primitive mills. And the harvests to be? The future stretches out into the white mists of the unknown, as the past sinks back into the blackness of the long for- gotten. A sun-stroke — why not? The thunder mut- ters; the cumuli appear; the mighty clouds grow to a toppling height. Afar in the land may be seen the quiver of diffused lightning, or the jag- ged bolt strikes to the earth without rain. Dark from excess of brightness in the August sky, the denuded mountains take on that solemn hue that OUR INLAND SEA. 149 tells of middle summer. Why falls not the moisture from yonder heavens? Can one's thought on these days be sane? There are mo- ments when one feels the motion, the whirling of our planet through space; when one grows dizzy with it, exhilarated; capable, it seems, of swift, immeasurable flight — of instant transfer- ence beyond the suns ! The Plesiosaurus, the Pterodactyl, the Ich- thyosaurus, the mighty Iguanodon? Besides hav- ing seen those fossil remains, have I not, also, seen the living creatures themselves? Their very presence, as it were, in the fever nights of Aug- ust? What are fever-dreams but the heat-loos- ened images of transmitted memories? Our earliest ancestors may have been contemporary with the Chinese dragon. How like to those stony remains, in its grotesque hideousness, is that national emblem. Blaze forth, O sun! Scorch with thy beams this shadeless isle ; make flash again this shining sea! In millions of wombs life quickens ; in countless graves the dead decay. "Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty !" 150 OUR INLAND SEA. Shall we so exclaim? Or shall we watch the Fates gather in the stars? Blaze forth, O sun! In the heart-furnace the fever is high as thine. FROM LIFE TO LIFE. XIII. FROM LIFE TO LIFE. IT is since the advent of man, that this moun- tain peak became an island. The island be- longs, in the words of science, to the Psycho- zoic Era. While butte and gully, cliff and plain, of the surrounding mainlands, tell of the mam- mals of every age, I connect the island only with the race of man. "In all previous ages," says the common text- 153 154 OUR INLAND SEA. book, "there rules both brute force and ferocity. In this age alone — Psychozoic — Reason appears as ruler. The order of nature must be adjusted to this keynote. Therefore, the great ruling mam- mals of the previous age must become extinct, and the mammalian class must become subordin- ate; noxious animals and plants must diminish, and useful ones be preserved." Contemporary with the mammoth and the mastodon, and the great cave bear, a triple fight, then,had my man of the cairn. He must fight with the beasts; he must fight with man, the equal- ly savage foe, and he must fight with nature, on his upward way. And besides those there was that other fight,that fight we have with ourselves. That fight is with savage, perhaps, as well as it is with civilized man, the strangest fight of all. "Man a tool-using animal" — there it lies. Age of Bronze, and Age of Stone; the rugged flints the first of all. A weapon, not a tool, is the great stone battle-ax, but a tool was the rock with which it was made ; the rock which the old savage once held in his hands. OUR INLAND SEA. 155 Back of the altars in the Kivas, or ceremonial chambers of the cHff-dwellers, we see deep pits. There is the symbol. There is the thought of the Indians. We are children of earth ; creatures who have struggled — to the music of the gods, strug- gled — from out the darkness of the underworld. Science, then, and the theology of primitive man, are in accord. "The Garden of Eden, the Sun standing still in Gideon ! Who cares what the fact may be," cries Emerson, "when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign?" But let us dream with Truth. In the history of the earth prior to the advent of man, I do take concern. I am as Milton makes the gardener Adam — one who desires to know. But I love the dreamer just the same. This unearthed crudity tells what, in time, all crudities must be. But in the Indian legend is there not a truth? We would climb to the light. I see the once-time reptiles, that spread their snowy wings. But it is to the infinite that man would climb. 156 OUR INLAND SEA. Its black limestone strata tilted at a sharp an- gle, the white tufa twisted into its lower crevices ; with its great round boulders, its cliff, its oolitic sands, my island is pictorially fine. But what does it tell? Now the island is more than a piece of scenery. It has become a mystery, it is identified with the past, with the development of human life. This ground was prepared to receive the vines, and as I take concern in the island before that time, I take concern in the world before the advent of the race. A mighty drama — the Nature show ! Wonder- ful the scenery, ever shifting, and wonderful the actors, ever shifting, too. Mountains and forests, seas and deserts, all different from ours. Imag- ination brings up the scenes. The surrounding landscape as it exists today is but the wreck and ruin of those that have gone before. Bring man upon the scene and the sound of strife is increased. The warfare is changed. Still there is blood, but for background there is the light of flames. No need to imagine, either, pre- historic or later Europe. No need to see, after OUR INLAND SEA. 157 the primeval man and his lineage, the Saracen and the Turk, following the Mede and the Per- sian ; or to see the countless battle-fields from the plains of Lybia to those hyperborean snows that over-top the world. There has been warfare here. The cattle browse over the fields of strife; the plow turns up the ancient arms. And here on the island is that which has lain beneath my feet. A somber picture, if we see but the darker side. No vision of a Golden Age, but the forces of na- ture at work, the bestial fury, and the struggles of man. One terrible race succeeds another. The strong overcome the weak, or changed conditions, makes the latest evolvement the fittest to live. But the human species is single. Yet, like a^ house divided, the race has warred. As for the- dead fighter, his seed is destroyed. It is as thought his tribe had never been. Instead of the New America, it may be the Old. Unlike the invader of olden Europe, the Homesteader destroys not one civilization to make room for another, but sup- plants the beast and the barbarian. He brings civilization where it was not before. 158 OUR INLAND SEA. But Old or New; from Eden or no, the fight goes on. Though the cliff-dweller and all who dwelt up and down this land were of another race one touch of nature makes the world akin. How differ the living on this island, from that dead man of the cairn? Advanced in knowledge, of course, but that flash of the knife is still in my mind. Just as we found them, lie the bones in the cairn. Perhaps I will again seal the tomb. Why not close down the lid and replace the soil? Why not, as of yore, let its occupant sleep on? Yet if there be death, also there is life ; if there be crime on the earth, above there is the glorious sky. Over that grave hang the fresh, green leaves ; down by the shore, the blue waters spar- kle. As I look around my island, I might imagine at this hour, that death and crime had never been. Shall I stand appalled at the endless tragedy? Shall I listen, a universal mourner, to the eternal dirge? The Seer has forward-gazing as well as introspective eyes. OUR INLAND SEA. 159 The condition of primitive man, so science de- clares, was simply the condition of the lower ani- mals. Yet relieved, it goes on to tell, by a germ instinct or capacity of progress which has carried the development of the human race from a low to successively higher stages, from a rude and bar- baric phase to a more refined civilization. And therefore — For an hour I lay on the cliff-top. "Let the dead bury the dead." Have I seized the thought? There can be no rest. How deep strike the roots of my vines? I have strange misgivings that they may be fed at an undesirable source. O, this flesh, this earth, this clay ! O, the flowers, the fruit, the withered grass and tree ! Legends of the growth of Eden, the golden apples of Hesperides — what do they mean? In that therefore there opens an endless vista. With the germ of immortality, man is everything, without it, nothing. Never will nature repeat her work. Never again on this planet, will she evolve those forms of the past. Is it not clear to sight and under- standing, that nature moves constantly onward 160 OUR INLAND SEA. to higher ideals? The face of the land is changed? the life of the past is gone. Far, indeed, those days when those human remains that lie in the cairn stood up and walked. And longer, too, the time one need look backward to reach that other, that period, I mean, when life was in those bones; when roamed those monsters, whose stony joints now sprawl amid the rocks. All things are dif- ferent now from that which once they were, and yet — It is possible now for one's self to be. I have uprooted the thorn and destroyed the cactus. I have seen those things which made of this place a morgue. I have seen this island, which I homesteaded for life, homesteaded, as it were, for death. But, lo! why should I faint? The sun that bleaches the bones of mountain or man, reddens the blood in the homesteader's veins. And I come to this untouched soil, de- stroy this coarse herbage of the desert for what? To make way for that companion of civiliza- tion — the vine. THE PAGEANTS OF HISTORY. •••«< XIV. THE PAGEANTS OF HISTORY. FOR the study of History, I like those mod- ern charts, in which the course of the na- tions is represented as parallel but ever- changing streams. Better than books are these to teach the correlations. With a chart before us — actual or mental — we feel history as a whole. Then the words London, Peking, St. Petersburg, Ispahan, are more than names. We realize upon 163 164 OUR INLAND SEA. humanity the effects of the Caucasus, the Sahara, or the Kirghiz Steppes. We understand Hanni- bal upon the Alps ; how man makes now the First or the Eleventh Crusade, and the varying for- tunes of India, from the invasion of he of Mace- don, to the time of the English Conquest. And how those streams of the nations change ! Like a Nile or a Ganges we see them come down from their source. Now they swell into mighty rivers ; the augmentive power is shown of a Ram- eses II, or the Hun, Attila, As nature, man has his periods of slow activity, now his bursts of sud- den passion. We see the triumphant nations pur- sue their lengthened course, or fail; dwindle or be lost like the Rhine in the sands of Holland, or be merged like the Amazon, in the greater sea. As banners to an army, so are portraits to his- tory. There is history on the canvasses of the great masters, as on the pages of Tacitus or Juve- nal. But history must be re-written. With a wider view, we must grasp the deeper law. Am I a Homesteader on a desert island, and not know that? The present is but an adjustment between OUR INLAND SEA. 165 the stories of the old world and the hope of the new. The Northern Cliff, what happened that time its tiers were laid? In the history of the human family — nothing. Long ere man, the architect, nature, was busy with this rugged work. Ages before the pyramids of Cheops, the Tower of Babel, this work went forward. Here nature quarried, split and carved. Before the race this cliff was built. That natural column, supporting the living rock, stood thus ere was conceived the Doric. This island was fashioned, ere were be- gun the rock temples of Elephanta, or at Aboo Simbel, and the mighty monolith on its top lay there, ere was carved the twin colossi — the vocal Memnon and his silent companion, that have watched, now, for a million times, the sunrise on the marshy plain of Thebes. A different source I would need to learn the na- ture-epic of this, my home. That archaeological activity of these our days; that restlessness of spirit which makes men exca- 166 OUR INLAND SEA. vate through the layers of earth gathered above the remains of deserted cities of Europe and Asia ; scoop away the sands of Africa from about the statue's feet, or fell the trees that shroud the ruined buildings in the woods of Yucatan, what is it? Is it other than the natural accompani- ment of the modern scientific thought and the de- sire to look forward into the far unknown? The lonely watch-towers that stand on the rocks to the south of this land, do they not tell that war- fare has been carried on between the race who peopled them and those who dwelt in the cliffs? Pageants there have been around them, but not those of history. Give up your secrets, O island walls of stone ! Ere the cairn was built, may have fallen yon rock. It may have gathered lichens ere primal man walked naked the earth. As now it lies, it has lain through the ages ere the leaf or the skin of beast was used as a covering of shame. While the race has learned to serve its pride with other OUR INLAND SEA. 167 than that which we found in the cairn ; while the bead of flint, and the face ornaments of stone gave place to the polished gems and while that shaggy covering from creatures as fierce as themselves, gave place to the richest product of loom and mine. Of this island what could the old block tell? Perhaps in our work we destroyed good evi- dence. The sifters and I have been to blame. The surveyors, too, have done as much. In the clearing of ground, in the building of walls, and in the piling up of stones to serve as boundary lines, we have obliterated history. What a fast- ness is the Northern Cliff! Scale its front who could? It is inaccessible, save from one point, and that is up the narrow depression where the skull was found. There grew my vines and from there I have removed the stones. How stupid I have been ! With my new light, how easily it is for me to see. Those stones were placed with instinctive cunning. Certain of the arts are primeval. I doubt if a modem engineer 168 OUR INLAND SEA. could have placed those simple means of defense to a better advantage. Where they had lain so long, I replace, mentally, the stones. Thereby I learn the skill of the ancient man. From the cliff-top, how well one might hurl rocks upon a foe beneath ! These round boulders and stones, what missiles they are. How they would leap and bound, and destroy all life in their path. I know, now, the reason of those globes on the island crest, and why they were carried there from the Southwest Bay, and also why so many lay scattered at the foot of the cliff. So they have, or had lain, for what ages, since the end of a battle? I close my eyes and see all the sickening de- tails of an old time slaughter. Women and chil- dren have been thrown from this height. The island has resounded with the shriek of despair. I hear yells of triumph and see the arrows fly. The owner of the skull may have fallen in single combat, or during some general melee. Perhaps he defended, in some hand to hand struggle, each foot of the slope. He may have died covered OUR INLAND SEA. 169 with wounds, a primitive and unchronicled hero. Why not a savage Hector or Achilles here? An Ajax? The tribe may have known its Cas- sandra, too. But on this island might have been reversed the siege of Troy. The cairn might be that of some victorious Priam. Perhaps long before the Trojan days, those who sought refuge here drove back their savage foes. The be- sieged on this pile of rock, had they supply of food and water, might have laughed at a besieg- ing force. But this slab, on which I have sat to read — might it not have slipped from its place, that time the printing-press was being invented. Here is one whose fall might correspond in date to that auspicious Friday on which Columbus discov- ered a new world; perhaps the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers : and this other, whose fractured edges are still so bright, the entry of the Pio- neers into this western valley. Very different is the study of history from the making of history. To contemplate the events of 170 OUR INLAND SEA. the past, and to be one in the shaping of those of the present bring about every opposite con- ditions of mind. To be spectator merely instead of actor, even in the present, is to view history from very different standpoints. And to contem- plate the certainty of past time and to imagine the possibilities of the future is to know the very poles of thought. Will either of these mountain passes be a sec- ond Thermopylae? Will either of these canons be a Pass of Glencoe? The spectacles of war have had their day, and what need of another St. Gothard, a Schipka, or western Gettysburg? As one mountain peak may centralize quite an- other set of landscapes than does another so in the ages, with history, some peak-like man. But with the warrior? O pass away such scenes of the modem world. Such scenes as those to which the island massacre was but a prelude ! What will be the names of the yet unfounded cities? Or those that stand, through what course will they run? What far-off moralist shall look on their decay? They will have their Marius OUR INLAND SEA. 171 and Petrarch as did Carthage and the City of the Seven Hills. Some one will fill a part to them, such as imagination conjured up in the New Zealander seated upon the broken stones of Lon- don Bridge. These mountains look down and wait. The croak of the raven I shall hear no more. For all his tricks Devil has paid the debt. An: extra amount of spite and sullenness foretold the end. Perhaps the unfortunate bird carried with- in his body, an unextracted shot, and, old as he: was, this may have fretted his life away. Devil's, or Raven's Mound will be a new island landmark^ AND LO! THE PLAGUES. i^'.\ "L XV. AND LO ! THE PLAGUES. ATAT anguis in herba." Yes, that is true. But here my foes come out of the dust. Air and water, too, are filled with the ministers of pain. It is remarkable, the number of lizards that have so quickly appeared. Among volcanic or tufa rocks, so hot these days that they almost blister the hand if touched, they absorb com- fort and happiness and everywhere the erratic 175 176 OUR INLAND SEA. tracks of the numerous reptiles make strange hieroglyphics upon the burning sands. Twice within the week, I have met that terrible Arach- nid, the black tarantula. He lives in the crevices of these rocks. Nor is this all. An incredible number of gnats infest the shore, and where a few stunted bushes stand near the water's edge, they are covered thick with a veil of cobwebs; the big, fat spiders making the beach there a place to avoid. I have decided on a scorpion hunt. The first thing which I saw on awakening in my hammock this morning, was one of the half-grown crea- tures. As the villainous intruder passed across a corner of my bamboo pillow, and but a few inches from my face, it was a startling sight. Yes- terday one of the same objectionable neighbors climbed to a place at the board. A wicked ap- pearing scamp he was, as he afterward lay, a pris- oner and with sting erected, at the bottom of a china bowl. The guano-sifters will join in the sport. They, too, have received similar and re- peated visits. Our brotherhood sympathies with OUR INLAND SEA. 177 the natural owners of this island do not lead us so far as to make us willing to risk a poisonous stab in the dark. Hard is the Homesteader's lot these meridian days. And thirst? This sea of brine would let one die of thirst. "Ropy," is the description that my companions give of the water in their covered barrels, and but little succor would there be, if my supply of fresh water failed, in the small con- densing apparatus that foresight made me bring. The large percentage of salt in this surrounding sea, would make of condensation a difficult mat- ter. Within the circle of horizon visible from my door-step, there have been happenings. O, those poor sheep that perished on Fremont Isl- and ; that castaway on Church ! More bitter, in- deed, this sea, than the Wells of Marah. Years ago, but the bones are there. The silt and tifa half cover them and, in time, they may become fossils too. There is a spring on Fre- mont Island, or at times there is. It flows forth 178 OUR INLAND SEA. amid rock beneath a steep bank on the northern shore, and, as at certain seasons the island also bears an abundance of fine, sweet bunch-grass, the sheep had been left there for winter pastur- age. The change in the sea's surface varies at times, and the spring is often buried beneath the waves. The poor sheep, victims of a short-sight- ed shepherd, thus died a death of torture. The "rise" had mingled the fresh water of the spring with that of the brine. Had it not been for the depredations of a wild beast, the castaway, on Church Island, would have perished as did the sheep. Thrown on the western shore, his boat driven upon the rocks and torn apart, this solitary voyager, not know- ing the island to be inhabited — on its eastern side — was in a sorry plight. He passed the day, fol- lowing the wreck, in searching for water along the western shore; a shore where not a drop of fresh water is to be found. By the merest chance he was rescued from a painful death, not on the first day, however, but on the second, when he was in an exhausted and delirious condition. A OUR INLAND SEA. 179 wild-cat had committed repeated trespass upon the poultry of the Island Farm, and a couple of young men were in quest of the thief. Their as- tonishment at finding an unknown man — a cast- away — lying alone on the hills, apparently in a dying condition, was as great as their appearance upon the scene was fortunate. As for the sifters, they have made some char- coal. A stranded cedar and some Gunnison clay were the means. Prevention is better than cure, and it is better late than never. Generous boon ! My place of refuge is in "The Tub." I enjoy to the full the delights of the bath. When on land it seems that one must suf- focate, that in the intolerable noon-day the rocks must melt, there is comfort in the cooling waves. Even the strength of the brawny sifter succumbs to this. Like myself he lives as much in the wa- ter as he does on the land. What a great sani- tarium this sea must become ! Let the sun scorch never so, let the acrid waters shrink up the grass 180 OUR INLAND SEA. and herbage ; let it breed the gnat, or strew the beach with offensive larvae, yet in its embrace there is renewed strength, a tonic for mind and body. To the tired limbs it brings a rest, and to the weary brain repose. And here is "The Tub:" distant from the hut, some five hundred yards or so, at the base o£ a square piece of masonry, an abutment of the Northern Cliff, where, when the sea is rough, and the wind from the north, the eddies swirl, there is worn in the rock a smooth, round basin. Other basins of a similar kind are to be found along the shore, but this one remains my favorite. It is some twenty-five feet across, and about five feet deep, and the bottom is covered with a layer of white and shining sand. A delicious place ; one that annuls the physical sufferings of these trying days. There I go, and there I sport at my ease. The strong brine of the sea has a tendency to float one's limbs to the sur- face, so that the sensation produced when one is in the water is always as novel as pleasant. When the sea is in any wise calm, it is an easy matter to OUR INLAND SEA. 181 recline thus for an indefinite length of time ; but when the sea is rough, it is very difficult to make headway in swimming against even the smallest of waves. I enjoy the bath. Somnolence broods over land and sea. The hot air swoons ; the motionless water lies pale and unsullied ; not a troublesome gnat is abroad from the shore. The gulls, whom I dis- turbed as I walked through their colony, have sunk back to their nests; some ten score or more of the startled birds who took flight to the bay, now float with heads below wings. A couple of lizards come out from under a stone, and, sleep- ing, bask on the sands. What is this? Across the distance there comes a change. The horizon is melted away; the mountains are blurred; the hills and promon- tories swim in air. The farthest chains of moun- tains appear to part, to become peaked islcinds. The sky seems water, the water sky. Substance and shadow are indistinguishable. Do I wake or dream? It is the beginning of a noon-day mirage. THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX. XVI THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX. RAIN, rain ! Once more a troglodyte. In- cessantly the water runs off the roof. Now one can know the gloom of mind in which the cave-dweller passed the long winter months, and with what reluctance he relinquished the companionship and wild sports of his fellows, and retreated, like the lower animals, to his rocky den. Like a wetted pebble is the rain-drenched 185 186 OUR INLAND SEA. island. The bushes drip, the porous ground is dark and softened, the sands of the beach are white and shining. Rain, rain ! Ever the rush of the lateral rain. What a deluge is this ! A grand phenomenon — the coming of the clouds, the exalted parts of the earth levelled, torn down by the omnipotent sea, and carried to rest for aeons, ere by earth- quake shock, or the slow upheaval — the balanc- ing of things — it may be again thrown up, new ranges of Sierra Nevada or Wasatch Mountains, to be again denuded, worn down into decrepti- tude, like the old, old hills, that lie between the Canadas, and the Northeastern states. Did such rainfalls precede the sinking of lost Atlantis? These down-pours of water are often accompan- ied along the coast by earthquake shocks which cause a trembling of the earth for thousands of miles. Despite my crotchets, and they are not a few, I am much indebted to my friends, the sifters. To enliven the tedium of these days is a task not OUR INLAND SEA. 187 easy. Not without weariness are clouds, how- ever grand, to be watched forever. Man is natur- ally a gregarious animal, and such weather as this, if nothing else, would drive him to social intercourse. The sifters, wise men, pass a merry time. The day of their departure is close at hand. Their work for the season is ended, and at any moment the schooner may appear, and then an end to all diversion. In the meantime, their up- roarious mirth makes the rafters ring. Some new Ostade (the elder), might find sub- jects for his pencil in the sifters' cabin. A fol- lower of the pupil of Hals, or Van Schendel would paint well those scenes. A most pictur- esque phase of labor I have seen here daily, and no less interesting are the men in idleness. The: out door labor removed the men from vulgar commonplace, and now the night scenes of pas- time are quite as good. Nature composes in the sifters' cabin, a hundred pieces, each one better than those of the Little Masters. The sturdy or lank forms of the men; their eager faces, those who play the game, the onlookers, the drowsers, 188 OUR INLAND SEA. the candle flame — of such are the pictures made. And in the background, the ruddy reflections on the smooth rim or bottom of pan or kettle, the shining of tin or copper against the brown black- ness of bituminous shadow. Grand are the statements of science. Take, for instance, the weather forecast. This is a phase over the Inland Sea of "a storm that is to shake the western mountains and strew the At- lantic coast with wreck." The Wasatch, loftiest of all these surrounding mountains — Place where the adverse winds meet and where lie In wait the thunder-clouds — have bred upon their summits, or attracted toward them, the greatest number of local or wandering storms. A station of vantage this! The Alpha and Omega of many a storm I see, and how the mountains turn pale or dark by turns, as the sun OUR INLAND SEA. 189 and storm alternate across the expectant land. It is a commonplace, a simile worn out, to compare a sky-storm to a human battle. Who, indeed, on seeing the strife, can escape the thought. There is a passion in the clouds them- selves. In the Hidden Valley, when the sky above was clear, I knew of approaching storms by infallible signs. There was the soft clashing of those green and silver shields, the leaves of the aspens; or there were the dog-fish congregated in groups along the lake shores, their black, ugly muzzles resting upon some half-sunken log, or bit of shale, as with their stupid eyes they stared up at the blue. Then rose the clouds. The cumuli, those giants of the summer sky, looked over the mountain walls. With their mighty shadows, they threw deep gloom over pine forest and lake, they darkened the birth-place of a hundred streams. Then the thunder crashed, the light- ning bridged the high valley from side to side, and, anon, came the rush of the wind and rain. Here I mark the coming of the storms; the 190 OUR INLAND SEA. progress of the clouds along the parallel or fore- shortened ranges. I mark the grand charges, the objective points. Across the valleys sweep armies of cloud, they rush along the crests and through the canons, or whole battalions sink into cross ra- vines. The hosts of cloud assault the mountain bulwarks, as the hosts of men attack some huge redoubt. I see some height taken, lost, retaken, and lost again — the contention around the cores, the central clusters of highest peaks. Separate storms pass not, but live and die on the place of their birth. Now the Wasatch and the Onaqui, stand white. Here and there, also, some ambi- tious peak of the Raft River and lower ranges has caught the snow. The great branches of the Rockies have first gathered the autumn clouds on their crest, and then passed them eastward to drench with their storms the far-gradients and plains. Dramatic those clouds and spectacular, too. After passing from the Pacific waves, over the sands of Arizona, and the mountains of the coast, the storms of the equinox, arrive here with a dif- OUR INLAND SEA. 191 ference. These rains, warm at the Gulf, or out on the western main, are cold and sleety here through contact with the Sierra peaks. Like a mighty wall, as if one of these mountain ranges should suddenly come forward, they come — the clouds — hurried by the west winds from the sea. Only the cloud-wall is higher, steeper, even, than these mountains of stone. One looks upward, on their near approach, at an angle of sharp per- spective along their awful front — how grandly carved — to the vast facade. Sometimes the move- ment is made en masse. The sky is left clear be- hind the storms without leaving such clouds as now I see, exhausted, dead in the hollow twi- light, along each mountain range. These reactionary storms, where have they been? From the west to the east, from the east to the west ! From the plains they return to the heights. There is grandeur in recurrence; grandeur in the swing of the pendulum. Back from the Rockies, they come. Back from the Great Divide. Back from the Wind River peaks ; 192 OUR INLAND SEA. from the Sangre de Christo, the Medicine Bow^ the Uinta Range. Back again from the Was- atch to the neighboring Oquirrhs; back to the Onaqui, to the Tintic ; across the Raft-River, the Humboldt, the Sierra Nevada, and so once more to the western main. Wasting their strength from day to day, here a little, there a little, but keeping ever onward; along the course of the Platte, over the Black Hills, the high plateaus and the sky-hung valleys. A retreat grand as that of the ten thousand Greeks. A storm ad- vance that covered a continent; a retreat from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. A certain average, I have forgotten what, in a hundred years, the geologists say, the Wasatch are lifted up. So much again the denuding agen- cies waste them down. Two months only — ^July and August — that snow has not flown on the range. This snow of the later equinox, will be al- most as transient, no doubt, as was that of June. That new covering of white will have disap- peared ere the snow that is to remain will fall. Never, I believe, are the ravines in the upper OUR INLAND SEA. 193 Wasatch free from snow; the waters follow the tracks of the ancient glaciers. There rush the waters still. Under the clouds and unceasing rain, every ravine has its roaring stream. Across the canon roads is piled the loos- ened rock. Though the clouds may open now and again, they close once more. Motionless is the water of the sea, seen across the wet rock tops and the puddled sands. Nor is there hope yet for a change to fair skies. Under the ridges of iron-gray stone ; by banks and slopes of crumbling shale; through narrow gates, giving scarce room for the augmented streams and the mountain trail; by isolated peaks, girt with rocky belts, or misty with groves of pine; beneath strangely twisted mountains, broken by craggy glens, and by stooping cliffs, I picture the waters come. I see them sleep in the lakes and plunge down the mighty slopes ; Where the bald-eagle, dweller mid the scene, With ruffled breast and wings aslant, serene Rises to meet the storm ; 194 OUR INLAND SEA. and where in dizzy swiftness, too, they tear across smooth slabs of granite, or are themselves overhung by valley trees, or time-worn boulders of colossal size — the Weber, the Cottonwoods, the Bear, the Provo (Timpanogas), and all the rest of them. MY HOMESTEAD HORIZONS. XVII. MY HOMESTEAD HORIZONS. A MIGHTY drowsiness is on the land. The Harvest-Moon — the Indian's Moon of Falling Leaves — has supplanted the Moons of Fire. Dream-like has become my island. Ruddy, like a weary and belated sun, comes up the Autumn moon, and like a vast Koh-i-noor, the sun itself is blurred and yellow. Haze-enwrapped are the distant Wasatch; through deepening 197 198 OUR INLAND SEA. shades of saddened violet, the Onaqui lapse into melancholia. The western headlands, the jutting promontories, appear as if cut from dim, orange crape, or maroon-colored velvet. Wistful and vague stand the peaked islands, and shell-like is the gleam of the far-stretched brine. One more turn, and the present richness of the time will be gone. This heavy lassitude, this vol- uptuous sadness, this wondrous effect of sensuous color, comes not entirely from a local cause, but comes as much from the low, autumnal sun. In the heavens there is a transfiguration, and the transfiguration extends to earth. Always there are the same great stretches of water around, al- ways the same dreary and monotonous hills ; ever the same strange walls of rock, and ever the same wild peaks in clustered multitudes. But how the seasons and the great sun play with them ! They are ever the same, yet never the same ; eternal yet evanescent, playthings with time and the ele- ments. How the whole scene glows! Through my glass, I bring near such especial spots of bright- OUR INLAND SEA. 199 ness, as attract the eye, and find them to be lone- ly aspens or spring-fed maples. From this spot I watched the spring climb up the heights, and now I have seen the autumn come, as it were, from the sky. One peculiarity of my position here, is to find myself within a circle of changing colors, and to see the distant landscape smolder with ruddy tones, and then, so it seemed, the flames burst forth. The high foliage changed its hues in an hour, the circle of frost-made colors, ever ex- panded downward and around. Now it kindled the chaparral on some mountain side or a highest hill-top. It crowded down through the canons, those ways of the hills, and paused only when it had invaded the lower valleys and reached the water's edge. Nowhere in Europe can one see among the trees that abandon to glory, that ostentation, that carnival, that very Saturnalia of color, which may be seen in autumn among the American woods. Autumn is to the seasons, as twilight to the 200 OUR INLAND SEA. day. Both work a similar effect on the mind. Objectively the artist sees nature; subjectively the poet sees it; and the philosopher, perhaps, sees it both ways. Rather "1' Allegro," than "II Penseroso," of landscape should be seen by the pioneer. The morning phase of intellect, rather than that of evening, should be possessed by him who would begin "The Course of Empire." But, at times, the splendor of the American woods, is a sort of paean, a glorification — an apotheosis of the year, that leaves no place for sadness. I recall a wood : Primeval trees were there ; oaks so vast that each one seemed a grove. And stubborn hickories, too, the noble walnut, and the high-reaching pecan. Mighty grape-vines made their fantastic coils amid the tree trunks, shot straight into the dense, drooping masses of foli- age, or hung in swing-like loops. There at noon- day, one heard the sleep-inducing snore of the tree-toad ; beheld at sundown the myriad, drifting fire-flies, or heard, amid the dusky shadows, the Whip-poor- Will, or that wild, shrill music, the twilight clamor of the Katy-dids. OUR INLAND SEA. 201 One felt in that wood the gloom, as well as the glory, of the autumn time. How chilly the sap that flowed downward again through the rugged trunks and limbs; returning with the loosened leaves whence it had been drawn — where the progenitors of the aged trees mouldered to touch-wood in the virgin soil, or decayed in gath- ered slime, beneath the surface of the pools. Contrasted with that lowland growth, how meagre this mountain foliage. I miss, too, the Alleghanies, the huge, old beech trees, the hem- locks and tamaracks of the eastern hills, or, in the absence of these, the live oaks and madrones that fret with their roundness the Sierra slopes. In autumn all the resplendence of the sunset skies lie on the woods. But, ah ! it must be confessed, it wants in spirituality. It no longer makes us think of the Cherubim, the wings of archangels, but rather of the earthly garments of prelates and kings. Up in the mountain hollows, there is now a wonderful sight. It is the frost-stricken leaves of 202 OUR INLAND SEA. the aspens. Backed by dark spruce, or sub-alpine fir, nothing can be more lovely. Seen in the groves, each tree is a perfect thing, a picture in itself. The eye takes cognizance of each silver- white shaft, each erratic branch, the mottlings of rent and lichen, and each separate gold leaf, as it quivers against the firs. But now I see from the synthetic standpoint. Soon all that brilliance will be stripped from the trees and made sodden upon the ground. The rocks at the entrance to the ra- vines and glens, and at the canon mouths, will be covered a foot thick with the drifted leaves. It was through its pictures of autumn that American art was first noticed abroad. I love the pomp and splendor of the Eastern woods, but quite as well I love this Western sight. I love to see the autumnal sun send its rays parallel down some tree-crowded glen, and fill the hosts of leaves with resplendent light. Then they seem akin to the radiant clouds. The great woods are doomed. Famed Sher- wood, the haunt of Robin Hood, is no more leg- OUR INLAND SEA. 203 endary than are most of the great woods of the Eastern and Middle States, that were the haunt of the Huron and the Iroquois. They exist only, as their inhabitants, on the pages of the early his- torian and the novelist. And the woods on the heights? Much longer, I suspect, before the mountains are robbed of their woody splendor. Indeed, in the nature of things, that time may never come. A thousand years from now, and on the mountains the au- tumn colors may be the same. The foliage may be taking on the selfsame kind of glory that it. wears this day. And then not a tree of all the Eastern forests is likely to stand. Take from America's most noted poets those passages referring to autumn, and what a loss were there! Gone would be the more original matter in the National literature. "That time of year thou mayest in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon these boughs which shake against the cold." 204 OUR INLAND SEA. Always there is with the poets of Europe, in their descriptions of autumn, a tone of lament, a tone of sorrow. Sorrow, I mean, without a corre- sponding pride in the beauty of the thing de- scribed. Keats, with his leaf; Hood, with his gathered gold; Scott, with his "shroud of rus- sett," are as plaintive as Shelley. Only Words- worth, with his mountain ash, and Tennyson, with his "hills and scarlet-mingled woods;" ap- proach in the least, the American feeling. Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant and Holland: America's poets do not see autumn as those of the British Isles. Less and less, as we leave the modern verse and go back into the past, do the poets exult in the Month of Color. So in the Greek and Roman, the Hebrew, and in Shake- speare; and for scriptural thought, we have the lament of Solomon. We find the moralizing, but not the note of triumph. There is not the boast, as it were, over the magnificence of the autumn color — "The autumn blaze of boundless woods" — that we find in Bryant's sonnet. OUR INLAND SEA. 205 The winning of bread; that was the original text. Let the warrior or poet do as he may, the basis of civilization, is he who tills the soil. "The Romans at heart were farmers." From the lands of unchanging customs, civilization moves on- ward to the lusty west. Behold the new grain lands of the world — Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Da- kota, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Nebraska! Four thousand, five hundred feet above ocean level — the valleys of Utah are overly high for grain. Yet the squares of light or dark — golden or russet with stubble — tell where the husband- man is redeeming the waste. I can see peaks that stand to the east of Cache Valley, and others at whose feet are the fields of San Pete. There, I know, are alpine fields that are sown and reaped, and gleaned as carefully as any of Tyrol, or that one of Palestine where Boaz met Ruth ! Another day's harvesting done, and another day gathered to the harvest of Time ! ON SLOPE AND ON SHORE. XVIII ON SLOPE AND ON SHORE. THE Month of Vintage, the Month of Wine ! Now flows the juice of the grape, now is gathered the fruit of the vine. After the plow and the sickle, come the sheaves of wheat and the Harvest Home ; after toil in the vineyard, come the purple clusters and the Vintage Song. Could Pyne, that old classic thinker, be here with me now, he might see around him, on gigan- tic scale, his chromatic star. Here are his grouped 209 210 OUR INLAND SEA. triads; here are the primaries, the secondaries, the tertiaries and the quadrates. In nature's warp, the reds, the yellows, the green, the orange and the purples, are shot through with the cit- rines, the russets and olives. All the hues are here except the blue, and that is supplied by the deeps of the sky. Even on this lonely spot the frost found some leaves to change, and made rich hues upon the vineyard slopes. Shall my island know a Poem of the Vine? The Dryads, the Oreads, the Hamadryads — shall I hear them dance in mad joy, reckless with the juice of the grape, will the nymphs and fauns, wanton here to the notes of seven-reeded Syrinx, frenzied by the earth-power in the music of Pan? "Lured by his notes, the nymphs their bowers forsake ; From every fountain, running stream and lake ; From every hill and ancient grove around. And to symphonious measures strike the ground." OUR INLAND SEA. 2 1 1 Ah, no! Not here Silenus nor Bacchus. Dead are the vine-crowned gods, and in life they came not so far. Whence came the vine? Vague is its genesis; lost, we are told, in the darks of antiquity. The far East, of course, was — in cultivation — its orig- inal home. If we are to judge by the standards of today, the finest wines of the ancients came, I read, from the islands of the ^gean and Ionian Seas. That is Chios, Lesbos, Thasos and Crete. But neither of these nor Rhodes, nor Cyprus, nor any famed spot of the Mediterranean, any more than this poor island of mine, was the orig- inal home of the fruit. On this matter, as a late commentator shows, the elder poets are dumb. Neither the lives of iEchylus, nor Homer nor Euripides ; neither the advice of Timothy, nor the questions of Psalms; no, not even the admoni- tions of Solomon, throw any light on the origin of the vine. Shall I yet be a vintner. Though, as yet I have neither tun nor amphorae, what will my vintage 212 OUR INLAND SEA. be? Shall it resemble the African, the Persian, or the Indian Wines? It may be that they shall duplicate those of the Chinese, the Russian or the Turk. Perhaps those of France or Spain. There is Portugal, too. And Switzerland, Italy and Hungary, these are all, or in part, lands of the vine. Shall my vintage resemble the vintage of those lands? Shall it know a furmarium? Shall I ever plunge a bottle of wine made from the isl- and grapes, to cool in the Wasatch snow? Will my wines be a Claret, a Burgundy, a Tokay, a Champagne? If I wish them to resemble these present sleepy cays of October, then there must be thrown into them the heads of poppies, as into the Russian wine.* These vines of mine are aris- tocratic. There is naught of relationship be- tween these cuttings, and the Concord, or any crossed or domesticated wild-grapes of the Amer- ican woods. These vines knew not of Vinland, *The above diary entries were not made entirely in a spirit of irony. The luscious fruit that the writer has eaten, fruits that were raised on land that had been de- clared utterly irreclaimable, made him hopeful of a good result. OUR INLAND SEA. 213 nor of Lief, the Lucky. I have learned their pedi- gree. The Black Hamburgs themselves are ex- clusive. But the others? If after the flood, Tu- bal, the son of Japheth,was the first man to settle in Spain, then these vines, the Isabellas, are of most ancient stock. Indeed, as through my ad- visor I learn, they are then related — direct — to those cuttings which Noah himself had not neg- lected to place in the ark. That the grape, wild or cultivated, is not a na- tive of these islands, should be no drawback. The vine must fight its way. It must, like the human being, grow acclimated. My experiment is based on these, the soil — fallow for how many thou- sand years — the glowing suns. Italy, Spain, Switzerland, there is something of all these coun- tries in these western lands and skies. Caliban, with his mattock and spade, turns up the virgin soil. The parts of the grape are there ; but the question is, can I be the Prospero who shall work a change ? Three steps removed — by this time the vines should know. From their native East, the par- 214 OUR INLAND SEA. ents were brought to this western land. Ten years they stood, aliens, on this primal soil. Then, for one year, their children — these cuttings — put forth their roots and then they themselves were exiled to these island slopes. Of the grapes raised on the high benches by the dry farming method or by that process which, in this land of irriga- tion ditches, is known as "without water," the Sultana Seedless and the Purple Damascus, has come nearest to being success. But of my one thousand vines, the Agawanas — only too few — have best stood the test. They have shown the more hardihood. They are better qualified, per- haps, for this struggle than those of illustrious names. But this comes to me. In that Indian name — Agawana — there lies a thought. Perhaps, after all, my belief was at fault. There may have been a romantic marriage. Some old-world princess of grapes, nurtured in a vineyard of Andalusia, may have been wedded to a sturdy vine of the primeval woods. That would be less strange than the wedding of Pocahontas. OUR INLAND SEA. 215 But there is no romance about the labor my vineyard requires. What is to come? Walls, dykes, causeways, embankments, or whatever the various devices should be called ; one of three miles in length, one of some ten or twelve miles, and another of about eight miles — these were included in the plan of a French engineer to metamorphose the Inland Sea. From the mainland across the narrow strait, between that and the south end of Church Island, from the northern end of the same island, to the south end of Fremont, and then across the chan- nel to the Rocks of Promontory, that would be the course of the walls. Will this work be done ? The first care of the pioneer is the log stockade or the wall of defense. Upon the mainland, such a wall exists, or partly so. It is made of conglom- erate, that is of earth and pebbles and is among the earliest work of the Pioneer. At certain spaces were set room-like openings with port- holes in the walls and a few of these "forts" yet stand. The old wall intimidated the red-man or 216 OUR INLAND SEA. kept away the packs of famished wolves. Many years must intervene between that work of the early engineers and this monster enterprise to be some day. And yet another plan, the locomotive is to come this way. Instead of over the high hills to the northward (Promontory Range), the lines of steel are to be carried across the water on tres- tles, or the mountain rock, or the sea's heaped- up sands. To the south of my island — Strong's Knob — will be the objective point, and from thence to Lucin, across the level of the open des- ert. What will this do for Gunnison? Should the northwest arm of the Inland Sea, to the north of the proposed cut-off, be allowed to dry up, then my island will stand in a plain of salt. Carry out the Frenchman's plan, and such must be the re- sult. Salt-strangled vines must fall to my lot. The terrible sterility of the western desert would advance this way, and at last surround the island shores. If the dykes are built, however, the fresh water area will include the whole length of the OUR INLAND SEA. 217 brine, that is from the eastern shores of the eastern islands, to the mainland of the eastern shore. Willows, rushes, orchards and fields will come down to the water's edge, and the many- bladed grass take place of the pebbles and sand. But the mystery, the ancient poetry of the Inland Sea will be gone. But O, ye leaves, that I have watched so fond- ly, that have sprouted so greenly, that grew so bravely, that lived thy allotted days and now hang transformed on the parent stem — shall ye be the last of a race? O, in the future, grow pur- ple my grapes like these autumn hills; be golden like this mellow sun; be wan with the October frost touch like the haze-paled stars ! VOICE OF THE SWAN. XIX. VOICE OF THE SWAN. WITH shortened days and a lowered tem- perature, there has been ushered in a time of subdued and gloomy splendor. For more than a month now huge smoke col- umns have stood along the horizon, and by night, from the conflagrations among the leaves and needles of the mountain oaks and pines, there has been reflected across the waters a dull red glow. On my island, the tall, coarse grasses, 221 222 OUR INLAND SEA. scorched stiff by past heat, or beaten by the rains, are white each morn with a heavy rime. Long since the old and the gray-winged gull have flown. There is silence around, but from the sky there falls, softened by distance, the disson- ant clang of migrating geese, and once I heard a sound to stir the blood as one listened, the long, rich call of the southward-flying swan. From the frozen north the swan has come. He has left, amid the piney regions of British Co- lumbia, his summer haunts. He has seen the Flathead and Yellowstone Lakes; he has rested, perhaps, by the source of the Missouri, the head- waters of the Lewis and Henry's Forks, and the streams of the Couer d-Alene. What sights the bird beholds! Since first he winged his flight, how changed the scene! In that past year, no roads he saw; no quarries that gash the hills; he saw not below him the city with its thousand lamps ; the smelter with its glare of furnace fires. And how dim to the swan must appear the light at my window, and how small the hut and my toy OUR INLAND SEA. 223 of an island, the island itself but a speck in the Inland Sea. And where has "the Drudge" not been? Like the bird of passage, he is now in the north, now in the south. The life of "my man" has been most varied. He has lived by land and sea. He would be useful on either of these desert islands. He might split slates on Carrington ; watch sheep on Fremont; cattle on Stansbury or Church. He has dug in the guano-beds and watched my vines. When "the Drudge" and I part company, there will be regret on one side, at least. No life without ambition; no life without ro- mance. Who does not like to see a reserve in strength. Added to the Drudge's giant-like body and limb, are unexpected qualities of heart and head. Some of these I have learned to admire. Sorrow and disappointment have found out my man as many another, and in his slow mind he has been com- pelled to work out for himself a solution to the problems of life. Talkative or tactiturn, one or 224 OUR INLAND SEA. the other, so I find those who have lived much alone. The drudge is a happy medium. . I have listened to his words and I know his troubles. It is not without a bit of quiet vanity that the man sees himself so often an occupant of my island sketches, nor need I a better critic than the Drudge has sometimes been. Extremes meet. It is the truly cultured and the rough, unlettered who give a valuable judgment. The lesson comes often when we least expect it, and not without gratification, not unmixed with irony, did the maker of the sketches themselves see in his animate subject the same thoughts at work that passed through his own brain as he pursued his different task. To-day the Drudge found a piece of wreck. Boats seldom come here, and this piece of timber, bleached into perfect whiteness by exposure to heat and brine, must have floated for many a year. Cached among the stones that form the base of the crow's nest, on the summit of the Northern Cliff, there is a metal cylinder. It con- .ti- 1 , 1 ■ ?' ;i \ ■:'k . „. OUR INLAND SEA. 225 tains the names of boats and their crews who have touched here from time to time. The num- ber is small ; but five boats mentioned and one of these is my own. Yet wrecks there have been. Perhaps this relic which the Drudge has found, is a bit of the Pioneer* It may have come from the Star of the West; or it may be from the Plu- bustdhf or the Saltcomia. At least its age seems to say that it came from one of those initial craft of poetic or uneuphonious name, that were first to sail on the Inland Sea. His palace or his prison," so Kingsley declared, England to him must be. My island life has been the antithesis of travel. From the day of my ma- rooning until now, my adventures, if such they be, have all transpired within the confines of this one scene. The spectacles of nature which I have witnessed, though novel in themselves, have all been over these familiar outlines of foreground and distance. It has lacked one pleasure of travel — surprise. Whether or no one can derive the same degree of profit from a daily observation of 226 OUR INLAND SEA. the scenes around a given point, under the chang- ing phases of the day and year, and with none or a few companions, as he can from a rapid survey, in constantly changing company, of widely dis- similar scenes, it were difficult to tell. The possi- bilities lie in the conditions of mind. Perhaps one must be more analytic in his seeing, to enjoy the former method of looking at nature and man- kind, in preference to the latter. During my watching what happenings have been! Events fraught with importance to the race have tran- spired. But I have been taking concern in the changes wrought within the bounds of this small place; have been intent upon the doings of a mere handful of men, or watching the unfolding of a few green leaves. Yet in the pleasure de- rived from such a life my island has been made to me more a palace than a prison. Now comes the end of autumn. The last cold' rain has frozen as it fell. In sheets and ice-em- bossings it gleams on the island rocks. There is a tone of menace, or a moan-like sound as the OUR INLAND SEA. 227 night-wind moves through the narrow space be- tween my hut and the cliff. "The suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief." Dark stand the somber hills, brown under their chilly glaze. Still there lingers at eve a crimson glow on the eastern heights, and deeply yellow — aureolin-tinted, dashed with cadmium — are the western skies. Along the horizons, the moun- tain chains — their slopes still marked with some former color, and on their summits the white of the newly-fallen snow — show luminous through the ambient air. The autumn passes, yet it passes in specious mien. Long since the old and the gray-winged gulls have flown. There is silence around. But once more there falls from out the sky, and softened by distance, the dissonant clang of migrating geese. Once more I hear, a sound to stir the blood as one listens, the trumpet call of the southward flying swan. A LAST DRIFT-WOOD FIRE. XX. A LAST DRIFT-WOOD FIRE. MY friends are here; my household goods are piled aboard the yacht. The boats of the sifters departed ere this one arrived ; the Gunnison for a time, will be given over to solitude again. These 36,806,400 seconds; 613,440 minutes; 10,224 hours; 426 days, 60 6-7 weeks, these 14 231 232 OUR INLAND SEA. months ; or, to bring the calculation to a finer di- vision, and one of nature's own, 42,940,800, one- sixtieth part of those heart-beats that go to make up man's allotment of three score years and ten — these since my roof-tree was placed. Now my homesteading is done and I am free to depart. So many heart-beats while I lay asleep, so many passed in action, so many in reverie; so many given to this and so many to that, and the time has slipped away. Can it be that fourteen months have elapsed already. Not so long ago it seems as yesterday since the yacht, that now waits to bear me from hence, entered with its unusual cargo, this desert port. Short now seems the time since we embarked with our boat's sails set wing to wing ; since we passed one by one the ter- minal peaks of the Desert Range, and opened out the bays and straits, as slowly we came from the south, and so, by the jutting rocks and black head of Strong's Knob, came at last to these island shores, and I began my now completed vigil. One of the strange things in life is this — there is no experience one would care to have missed. OUR INLAND SEA. 233 I mean when once that experience is passed and gone. So it is with this one — / should dislike to part ivith it noiu* What I had done, had I not performed this act, who can tell? This is not an arc to determine my circle and yet — Under certain conditionst a place becomes a part of us; zue ozun it* We absorb it into our lives* It cannot be taken from us* It is ours, and without title or deed. We are associated with a certain spot of earth, we have our lives shaped by it, or, if that be not the case, Jve stamp the place