Part 6 (2/2)
CHAPTER XX.
THE DEVIL'S GRIST-MILL.
The above name has been given to one of the geysers of California, that group of boiling springs, now famous. Indeed, the whole region has been baptized with Satanic nomenclature.
The guide showed us what he called the ”Devil's Mush-pot,” the ”Devil's Pulpit,” the ”Devil's Machine Shop,” and, hearing a shrill whistle in the distance, we were informed it was the ”Devil's Tea-kettle.” Seeing some black water rus.h.i.+ng from a fountain, from which the people of the neighborhood and tourists dip up genuine ink, we were told it was the ”Devil's Ink-stand.” Indeed, you are prepared for this on the Pacific Railroad, as your guide book points you to the ”Devil's Gate,” and the ”Devil's Slide,” and the ”Devil's Peak.”
We protest against this surrender of all the geysers to the arch demon. All the writers talk of the place as infernal. We do not believe this place so near to h.e.l.l as to heaven. We doubt if Satan ever comes here. He knows enough of hot climates, by experience, to fly from the hiss of these subterraneous furnaces. Standing amid the roaring, thundering, stupendous wonder of two hundred spouting water springs, we felt like crying out, ”Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord G.o.d almighty!”
Let all the chemists and geologists of the world come and see the footstep of G.o.d in crystals of alum and sulphur and salt. Here is the chemist's shop of the continent. Enough black indelible ink rushes out of this well, with terrific plash, to supply all the scribes of the world. There are infinite fortunes for those who will delve for the borax, nitric and sulphuric acid, soda, magnesia and other valuables. Enough sulphur here to purify the blood of the race, or in gunpowder to kill it; enough salt to savor all the vegetables of the world. Its acid water, which waits only for a little sugar to make it delicious lemonade, may yet be found in all the drug stores of the country. The water in one place roars like a steamboat discharging its steam. Your boots curl with the heat as you stand on the hot rocks, looking. Almost anywhere a thrust of your cane will evoke a gush of steam. Our thermometer, plunged into one spring, answered one hundred and seventy-five degrees of heat. Thrust in the ”Witch's Caldron,” it a.s.serted two hundred and fifteen degrees. ”The Ink-stand” declared itself two hundred degrees. An artificial whistle placed at the mouth of one of these geysers may be heard miles away. You get a hot bath without paying for it. The guide warns you off the crust in certain places, lest you at the same moment be drowned and boiled. Here an egg cooks hard in three minutes.
The whole scene is unique and incomparable. The Yosemite makes us think of the Alps; San Francisco reminds us of Chicago; Foss, the stage driver, hurling his pa.s.sengers down the mountain at break-neck speed, suggests the driver of an Alpine diligence; Hutchings' mountain horse, that stumbled and fell flat upon us, suggested our mule-back experiences in Tete Noir Pa.s.s of Switzerland; but the geysers remind us of nothing that we ever saw, or ever expect to see. They have a voice, a bubble, a smoke, a death-rattle, peculiar to themselves. No photographist can picture them, no words describe them, no fancy sketch them.
You may visit them by either of two routes; but do not take the advice of Foss, the celebrated stage driver. You ought to go by one route, and return the other; yet Foss has made thousands of travelers believe that the only safe and interesting way to return is the way they go--namely, by his route. They who take his counsel miss some of the grandest scenery on the continent. Any stage driver who by his misrepresentations would shut a tourist out of the entrancing beauties of the ”Russian Valley” ought to be thrashed with his own raw-hide. We heard Foss bamboozling a group of travelers with the idea that on the other route the roads were dangerous, the horses poor, the accommodations wretched and the scenery worthless. We came up in time to combat the statement with our own happy experiences of the Russian Valley, and to save his pa.s.sengers from the oft-repeated imposition.
And thus I have suggested the chief annoyance of California travel. The rivalries of travel are so great that it is almost impossible to get accurate information. The stage drivers, guides and hotel proprietors, for the most part, are financially interested in different routes. Going to Yosemite Valley by the ”Calaveras route,” from the office in San Francisco where you buy your ticket to the end of your journey, everybody a.s.sures you that J.M. Hutchings, one of the hotel keepers of Yosemite, is a scholar, a poet, a gentleman and a Christian, and that to him all the world is indebted for the opening of the valley. But if you go in by the ”Mariposa route,” then from the office where you get your ticket, along by all the way stations and through the mountain pa.s.ses, you are a.s.sured that Mr.
Liedig, the hotel keeper of Yosemite, is the poet and Christian, and that J.M. Hutchings aforesaid is a n.o.body, a blower, a dead beat, the chief impediment to the interests of Yosemite--or, to use a generic term, a scalawag.
The fact is that no one can afford in California to take the same route twice, for each one has a glory of its own. If a traveler have but one day for the Louvre Gallery, he cannot afford to spend it all in one corridor; and as California is one great picture gallery, filled with the masterpieces of Him who paints with suns.h.i.+ne and dew and fire, and sculptures with chisel of hurricane and thunderbolt, we cannot afford to pa.s.s more than once before any canvas or marble.
But whatever route you choose for the ”Hot Springs,” and whatever pack of stage driver yarns you accept, know this--that in all this matchless California, with climate of perpetual summer, the sky cloudless and the wind blowing six months from the genial west; the open field a safe thres.h.i.+ng floor for the grandest wheat harvests of the world; nectarines and pomegranates and pears in abundance that perish for lack of enough hands to pick; by a product in one year of six million five hundred thousand gallons of wine proving itself the vineyard of this hemisphere; African callas, and wild verbenas, and groves of oleander and nutmeg; the hills red with five thousand cattle in a herd, and white with a hundred and fifty thousand sheep in a flock; the neighboring islands covered with wild birds' eggs, that enrich the markets, or sounding with the constant ”yoi-hoi,” ”yoi-hoi,” of the sea-lions that tumble over them; a State that might be called the ”Central Park” of the world; the gulches of gold pouring more than fifty million of dollars a year into the national lap; lofty lakes, like Tahoe, set crystalline in the crown of the mountain; waterfalls so weird that you do not wonder that the Indians think that whosoever points his finger at them must die, and in one place the water plunging from a height more than sixteen times greater than Niagara,--even in such a country of marvels as this, there is nothing that makes you ask more questions, or bow in profounder awe, or come away with more interesting reminiscences than the world renowned California geysers.
There is a bang at your bed-room door at five-o'clock in the morning, rousing you to go up and explore them; and after spending an hour or two in wandering among them, you come back to the breakfast prepared by the model landlord of California, jolly, obliging, intelligent, reasonable. As you mount the stage for departure you give him a warm shake of the hand, and suggest that it would be a grand thing if some one with a vein of poetry in his mind and the faith of G.o.d in his heart would come round some day, and pa.s.sing among the geysers with a sprinkle of hot steam, would baptize them with a Christian name.
Let us ascribe to Satan nothing that is grand, or creative, or wise. He could not make one of these grains of alum. He could not blow up one of these bubbles on the spring. He does some things that seem smart; but taking him all in all, he is the biggest fool in the universe.
If the devil wants to boil his ”Tea-kettle,” or stir his ”Mush-pot,” or whirl his ”Grist-mill,” let him do it in his own territory. Meanwhile, let the water and the fire and the vapor, at the lift of David's orchestral baton, praise the Lord!
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CONDUCTOR'S DREAM.
He had been on the train all day, had met all kinds of people, received all sorts of treatment, punctured all kinds of tickets, shouted ”All out!” and ”All aboard!” till throat, and head, and hand, and foot were weary. It would be a long while before we would get to another depot, and so he sagged down in the corner of the car to sleep. He was in the most uncomfortable position possible. The wind blew in his neck, his arm was hung over the back of the seat, he had one foot under him, and his knee pressing hard against a bra.s.s hinge. In that twisted and convoluted position he fell asleep, and soon began to dream.
It seemed to him, in his sleep, that the car was full of disagreeables.
Here was a man who persisted in having a window up, while the rain and sleet drove in. There was a man who occupied the whole seat, and let the ladies stand. Here sat a man smoking three poor cigars at once, and expectorating into the beaver hat of the gentleman in front. Yonder was a burglar on his way to jail, and opposite a murderer going to the gallows.
He thought that pickpockets took his watch and ruffians refused to pay their fare. A woman traveling alone shot at him a volley of questions: ”Say, conductor, how long before we will get to the Junction?” ”Are you sure we have not pa.s.sed it?” ”Do you always stop there?” ”What time is it?”
Madam, do keep quiet! ”None of your impudence!” ”How far from here to the Junction?” ”Do you think that other train will wait?” ”Do you think we will get there in time?” ”Say, conductor, how many miles yet?” ”Are you looking out?” ”Now, you won't let me go past, will you?” ”Here! conductor, here! Help me out with my carpet bag, and band-box, and shawl, and umbrella, and this bundle of sausage and head-cheese.” What was worse, the train got going one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and pulling the connecting rope, it broke, and the cars got off the track, and leaped on again, and the stove changed places with the wood box, and things seemed going to terrible split and unmitigated smash. The cities flew past. The brakes were powerless. The whistle grew into a fiend's shriek. Then the train began to slow up, and sheeted ghosts swung lanterns along the track, and the cars rolled into a white depot, which turned out to be a great marble tomb; and looking back to see his pa.s.sengers, they were all stark dead, frozen in upright horror to the car backs.
Hearing by the man's snore, and seeing by his painful look, he was having an awful dream, we tapped him on the shoulder and said, ”Conductor! Turn over that seat, and take my shawl, and stretch yourself out, and have a comfortable nap.” ”Thank you, sir,” he said, and immediately sprawled himself out in the easiest way possible. He began his slumbers just as an express train glides gracefully out of Pittsburg depot; then went at it more earnestly, lifted all the brakes, put on all the steam, and in five minutes was under splendid headway. He began a second dream, but it was the opposite of the first. He thought that he had just stepped on the platform of his car, and a lady handed him a bouquet fresh from the hot house. A long line of railroad presidents and superintendents had come to the depot to see him off, and tipped their hats as he glided out into the open air.
The car was an improvement on Pullman's best. Three golden goblets stood at the end, and every time he turned the spigot of the water cask, it foamed soda-water--vanilla if you turned it one way, strawberry if you turned it the other. The spittoon was solid silver, and had never been used but once, when a child threw into it an orange peeling. The car was filled with lords and d.u.c.h.esses, who rose and bowed as he pa.s.sed through to collect the fare.
They all insisted on paying twice as much as was demanded, telling him to give half to the company and keep the rest for himself. Stopped a few minutes at Jolly Town, Gleeville and Velvet Junction, making connection with the Grand Trunk and Pan-Handle route for Paradise. But when the train halted there was no jolt, and when it started there was no jerk. The track was always clear, no freight train in the way, no snow bank to be shoveled--train always on time. Banks of roses on either side, bridges with piers of bronze, and flagmen clad in cloth-of-gold. The train went three hundred miles the hour, but without any risk, for all the pa.s.sengers were insured against accident in a company that was willing to pay four times the price of what any neck was worth. The steam whistle breathed as sweetly as any church choir chanting its opening piece. n.o.body asked the conductor to see his time-table, for the only dread any pa.s.senger had was that of coming to the end of its journey.
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