A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.. William Bartlett
of the Novarro River, not so much for its wildness as because it was the most accessible spot unfrequented by the tourist. It will be hard to miss the Russian River Valley in getting there, and harder still not to linger for a day or two to look at such pictures as no artist has quite succeeded in putting on to his canvas.
There was the mid-day repose of St. Helena, taking on a royal purple as the day advanced; the droning sound of the reapers in the valley, as the rippling wheat bowed to a sort of rural song of Old Hundred! and the very cattle, which, for aught I know, have figured in a dozen pictures, standing under the trees, with their identical tails over their backs. Even the great fields of corn, which rustled and snapped under a midsummer sun, were toned a little by the long column of mellow dust which spun from the stage-wheels and trailed for a mile in the rear. The artists caution against too much green in a picture, and so this brown pigment was needed to give the best effect; and there was no lack of material to "lay it on" liberally, anywhere in that region. With the dropping down of the sun behind the low hills on the west, the shadows fell aslant the valley, and light and shade melted together into the soft twilight. It might have been a favorable time for sentiment. But just then the stage-coach rounded a low hillock, and a farm-house was brought suddenly into the foreground. A cosset, a flock of geese, a windmill moving its fans indolently to the breath of the west wind, a dozen ruminating cows – what more of pastoral simplicity would you have for the fringe of such a landscape? But you see it was slightly overdone. The stout young woman milking the roan cow rather heightened the effect, to be sure; she really ought to have been there. But did any feminine mortal ever administer such a kick to the broad sides of a cow before? There was a dull thud, a quadrupedal humping, an undulation along the spine of that cow – and the stage-coach was out of sight. O, for the brawn and muscle to administer such a kick! It was more gymnastic than esthetic, more realistic than poetical. You will never find Arcadia where such a powerful feminine battery is set in motion on so slight a provocation. A cow might survive; but you need not describe the fate of any man on whom such a force were expended. And seeing that so large a part of this world needs a healthy kicking, more is the pity that there should have been such a needless expenditure of force. By what mental law are grand and ridiculous scenes associated together? I cannot summon the towering majesty of St. Helena, the golden ripple of the harvest fields, the receding valley, softened by the twilight, but ever in the foreground is this kicking milkmaid and that unfortunate cow. If a house-painter had dabbed his brush of green paint on your Van Dyke, you might be stunned by this very audacity, and turn your pet picture to the wall. But the house-painter and Van Dyke would from that time forth be associated together. So I turn this picture to the wall, only wishing that the kicking milkmaid and St. Helena had been a thousand miles apart.
The Russian River Valley "pinches out" at Cloverdale, a pretty little town, set down in a bowl with a very large rim – so large, that unless new life should be infused into the town, it will not be likely to slop over. Thence, you reach the head of Anderson Valley, by a jaunt of thirty-two miles, in a northwesterly direction, over a series of low mountain ridges, and through canyons, sometimes widening out into "potreros" large enough for a cattle ranch, and handsome enough for a gentlemen's country-seat. Here the affluents of the Novarro River are drawn together like threads of lace; and the first trout stream leaps and eddies in the deep defiles on its way to the ocean. There is no use of fumbling in an outside pocket for fish-hooks. The stream has a fishy look; but that band of rancheria Indians, who have gone into summer camp on a sand-bar, will settle the trout question for the next ten miles. They pop their heads out of a round hole in one of the wigwams like prairie dogs, and seem to stand on their hind legs, with the others pendent, as if just going to bark. These are the aboriginal Gypsies, fortunate rascals, who pay no house-rent, who want nothing but what they can steal, or what can be got from the brawling stream, or the wooded slopes of the adjacent hills.
These funnel-shaped willow baskets, lodged here and there along the banks, are the salmon traps of the Indians, which have done duty until the spring run was over. When the salmon has once set his head up stream, he never turns it down again until he has reached the extreme limits of his journey and accomplished his destiny. The Indians understand this; and these long willow funnels, with a bell-shaped mouth, are laid down in the spring – a clumsy contrivance to be sure; but the salmon enters and pushes his way on, while this willow cylinder contracts until it closes to a small nozzle. There is daylight ahead; the stubborn fish will not back down, and he cannot "move on." When an Indian gets hungry, he pulls up this willow trap, runs a spit through his fish, holds him over the fire a little while, and his dinner is ready.
There is no fish story which one may not believe when in a gentle mood. And thus, when farther down the stream, a settler showed us a wooden fork such as is used to load gavels of grain, with which, in less than an hour, he pitched out of this same stream a wagon-load of salmon – why should we doubt his veracity? No lover of the gentle art is ever skeptical about the truth of a fish story. Faith and good luck go together. How was our faith rewarded soon afterward, when, taking a "cut-off," at the first cast under a shelving rock, a half-pound trout was landed! It was a grasshopper bait, and another grasshopper had to be run down before another cast. It is wonderful what jumps this insect will make when he is wanted for bait, and the run is up the hill. Another trout snapped illusively, and we had him – larger by a quarter of a pound than the first. It was getting interesting! No doubt the settler pitched out a load of salmon with a wooden fork. A kingdom for a grasshopper! There they go in all directions – and the rascals have wings! The clumsy stage-wagon is creeping far up the hill. A beetle is tried; it won't do – no decent trout ever swallowed a beetle. A dozen splendid game fish were left in that swirl under the rock. Was there too much faith in that wooden fork story, or not enough? There was a hitch somewhere. But it was all right when the passengers dined that day on fried bacon, and we on mountain trout. If the grasshoppers had not been too lively, there would have been trout for all.
Anderson Valley is about eighteen miles long, and half to three-fourths of a mile wide. The hills on the left are belted with a heavy growth of redwood, in fine contrast with the treeless hills on the right, covered with a heavy crop of wild oats, all golden-hued in the August sun. The farms extend across the valley, taking a portion of the hills on either side. There has not been a Government survey made in the valley, but every man was in possession of his own, and did not covet his neighbor's. Land-stealing requires a degree of energetic rascality and enterprise wholly wanting here. So near, and yet so remote! It is as if one had gone a two-days' journey, and had somehow managed to get three thousand miles away. I heard of a man in the valley who took a newspaper, and was disposed to sympathize with him in his misfortune. Why should the spray of one of the dirty surges of the outside world break over into Arcadia? Everybody had enough, and nobody had anything in particular to do. The dwellings had mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside, and an occasional bake-oven garnished the back yard. At the little tavern, such vegetables as strangers "hankered for" were procured at the coast – a distance of twenty-six miles. An old man – he might have been seventy, with a margin of twenty years – had heard of the rebellion, and lamented the abolition of slavery – a mischief which he attributed to a few fanatics. The world would never get on smoothly until the institution of the patriarchs had been restored.
Oh, venerable friend, dwelling in Arcadia! there is much broken pottery in this world which is past all mending; and more which is awaiting its turn to go into the rubbish heap. All that was discovered in the interior of a Western mound was a few fragments of earthenware; for the rest, Time had beaten it all back to the dust. The images, whether of brass, wood, or stone, could not be put together by any of the cohesive arts of our time. It is appointed for some men to go through the world, club in hand, and to break much of the world's crockery as they go. We may not altogether like them. But observe that the men who are stoned by one generation are canonized by the next. There was the great ebony image set up and so long worshipped by the people of this country. How many sleek, fat doctors climbed into their pulpits of a Sunday, to expatiate on the scriptural beauties of this image, and the duty of reverencing it as something set up and continued by Divine authority! It took some whacking blows to bring that ebony idol down; but what a world of hypocrisy, cruelty and lies went into the dust with it! Was there ever a reformer – a genuine image-breaker – who did not, at one time or another, make the world howl with rage and pain? Now, truth is on eternal foundations, and does not suffer, in the long run, by the world's questionings or buffetings.