|
July 4. The air beyond the
flock range, full of the essences of the woods, is growing sweeter and more
fragrant from day to day, like ripening fruit.
Mr. Delaney is expected to
arrive soon from the lowlands with a new stock of provisions, and as the
flock is to be moved to fresh pastures we shall all be well fed. In the mean
time our stock of beans as well as flour has failed - everything but mutton,
sugar, and tea. The shepherd is somewhat demoralized, and seems to care but
little what becomes of his flock. He says that since the boss has failed to
feed him he is not rightly bound to feed the sheep, and swears that no
decent white man can climb these steep mountains on mutton alone. "It's not
fittin' grub for a white man really white. For dogs and coyotes and Indians
it's different. Good grub, good sheep. That's what I say." Such was Billy's
Fourth of July oration.
July 5. The clouds of noon on
the high Sierra seem yet more marvelously, indescribably beautiful from day
to day as one becomes more wakeful to see them. The smoke of the gunpowder
burned yesterday on the lowlands, and the eloquence of the orators has
probably settled or been blown away by this time. Here every day is a
holiday, a jubilee ever sounding with serene enthusiasm, without wear or
waste or cloying weariness. Everything rejoicing. Not a single cell or
crystal unvisited or forgotten.
July 6. Mr. Delaney has not
arrived, and the bread famine is sore. We must eat mutton a while longer,
though it seems hard to get accustomed to it. I have heard of Texas pioneers
living without bread or anything made from the cereals for months without
suffering, using the breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind
they had plenty in the good old days when life, though considered less safe,
was fussed over the less. The trappers and fur traders of early days in the
Rocky Mountain regions lived on bison and beaver meat for months.
Salmon-eaters, too, there are among both Indians and whites who seem to
suffer little or not at all from the want of bread. Just at this moment
mutton seems the least desirable of food, though of good quality. We pick
out the leanest bits, and down they go against heavy disgust, causing nausea
and an effort to reject the offensive stuff. Tea makes matters worse, if
possible. The stomach begins to assert itself as an independent creature
with a will of its own. We should boil lupine leaves, clover, starchy
petioles, and saxifrage rootstocks like the Indians. We try to ignore our
gastric troubles, rise and gaze about us, turn our eyes to the mountains,
and climb doggedly up through brush and rocks into the heart of the scenery.
A stifled calm comes on, and the day's duties and even enjoyments are
languidly got through with. We chew a few leaves of ceanothus by way of
luncheon, and smell or chew the spicy monardella for the dull headache and
stomach-ache that now lightens, now comes muffling down upon us and into us
like fog. At night more mutton, flesh to flesh, down with it, not too much,
and there are the stars shining through the cedar plumes and branches above
our beds.
July 7. Rather weak and
sickish this morning, and all about a piece of bread. Can scarce command
attention to my best studies, as if one couldn't take a few days' saunter in
the Godful woods without maintaining a base on a wheat-field and gristmill.
Like caged parrots we want a cracker, any of the hundred kinds — the
remainder biscuit of a voyage around the world would answer well enough, nor
would the wholesomeness of saleratus biscuit be questioned. Bread without
flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea
also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all
I need, —not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to
enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind
of nourishment. That this may be accomplished is manifest, as far as bodily
welfare is concerned, in the lives of people of other climes. The Eskimo,
for example, gets a living far north of the wheat line, from oily seals and
whales. Meat, berries, bitter weeds, and blubber, or only the last, for
months at a time; and yet these people all around the frozen shores of our
continent are said to be hearty, jolly, stout, and brave. We hear, too, of
fish-eaters, carnivorous as spiders, yet well enough as far as stomachs are
concerned, while we are so ridiculously helpless, making wry faces over our
fare, looking sheepish in digestive distress amid rumbling, grumbling sounds
that might well pass for smothered baas. We have a large supply of sugar,
and this evening it occurred to me that these belligerent stomachs might
possibly, like complaining children, be coaxed with candy. Accordingly the
frying-pan was cleansed, and a lot of sugar cooked in it to a sort of wax,
but this stuff only made matters worse.
Man seems, to be the only
animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like
bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet
as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash. And, as we
have seen, the squirrels in these resiny woods keep themselves clean in some
mysterious way; not a hair is sticky, though they handle the gummy cones,
and glide about apparently without care. The birds, too, are clean, though
they seem to make a good deal of fuss washing and cleaning their feathers.
Certain flies and ants I see are in a fix, entangled and sealed up in the
sugar-wax we threw away, like some of their ancestors in amber. Our
stomachs, like tired muscles, are sore with long squirming. Once I was very
hungry in the Bonaventure graveyard near Savannah, Georgia, having fasted
for several days; then the empty stomach seemed to chafe in much the same
way as now, and a somewhat similar tenderness and aching was produced, hard
to bear, though the pain was not acute. We dream of bread, a sure sign we
need it. Like the Indians, we ought to know how to get the starch out of
fern and saxifrage stalks, lily bulbs, pine bark, etc. Our education has
been sadly neglected for many generations. Wild rice would be good. I
noticed a leersia in wet meadow edges, but the seeds are small. Acorns are
not ripe, nor pine nuts, nor filberts. The inner bark of pine or spruce
might be tried. Drank tea until half intoxicated. Man seems to crave a
stimulant when anything extraordinary is going on, and this is the only one
I use. Billy chews great quantities of tobacco, which I suppose helps to
stupefy and moderate his misery. We look and listen for the Don every hour.
How beautiful upon the mountains his big feet would be!
In the warm, hospitable
Sierra, shepherds and mountain men in general, as far as I have seen, are
easily satisfied as to food supplies and bedding. Most of them are heartily
content to "rough it," ignoring Nature's fineness as bothersome or unmanly.
The shepherd's bed is often only the bare ground and a pair of blankets,
with a stone, a piece of wood, or a packsaddle for a pillow. In choosing the
spot, he shows less care than the dogs, for they usually deliberate before
making up their minds in so important an affair, going from place to place,
scraping away loose sticks and pebbles, and trying for comfort by making
many changes, while the shepherd casts himself down anywhere, seemingly the
least skilled of all rest seekers. His food, too, even when he has all he
wants, is usually far from delicate, either in kind or cooking. Beans, bread
of any sort, bacon, mutton, dried peaches, and sometimes potatoes and
onions, make up his bill-of-fare, the two latter articles being regarded as
luxuries on account of their weight as compared with the nourishment they
contain; a half-sack or so of each may be put into the pack in setting out
from the home ranch and in a few days they are done. Beans are the main
standby, portable, wholesome, and capable of going far, besides being easily
cooked, although curiously enough a great deal of mystery is supposed to lie
about the bean-pot. No two cooks quite agree on the methods of making beans
do their best, and, after petting and coaxing and nursing the savory mess, —
well oiled and mellowed with bacon boiled into the heart of it, -- the proud
cook will ask, after dishing out a quart or two for trial, " Well, how do
you like my beans?" as if by no possibility could they be like any other
beans cooked in the same way, but must needs possess some special virtue of
which he alone is master. Molasses, sugar, or pepper may be used to give
desired flavors; or the first water may be poured off and a spoonful or two
of ashes or soda added to dissolve or soften the skins more fully, according
to various tastes and notions. But, like casks of wine, no two potfuls are
exactly alike to every palate. Some are supposed to be spoiled by the moon,
by some unlucky day, by the beans having been grown on soil not suitable; or
the whole year may be to blame as not favorable for beans.
Coffee, too, has its marvels
in the camp kitchen, but not so many, and not so inscrutable as those that
beset the bean-pot. A low, complacent grunt follows a mouthful drawn in with
a gurgle, and the remark cast forth aimlessly, "That's good coffee." Then
another gurgling sip and repetition of the judgment, "Yes, sir, that is good
coffee." As to tea, there are but two kinds, weak and strong, the stronger
the better. The only remark heard is, "That tea's weak," otherwise it is
good enough and not worth mentioning. If it has been boiled an hour or two
or smoked on a pitchy fire, no matter, — who cares for a little tannin or
creosote? they make the black beverage all the stronger and more attractive
to tobacco-tanned palates.
Sheep-camp bread, like most
California camp bread, is baked in Dutch ovens, some of it in the form of
yeast powder biscuit, an unwholesome sticky compound leading straight to
dyspepsia. The greater part, however, is fermented with sour dough, a
handful from each batch being saved and put away in the mouth of the flour
sack to inoculate the next. The oven is simply a cast-iron pot, about five
inches deep and from twelve to eighteen inches wide. After the batch has
been mixed and kneaded in a tin pan the oven is slightly heated and rubbed
with a piece of tallow or pork rind. The dough is then placed in it, pressed
out against the sides, and left to rise. When ready for baking a shovelful
of coals is spread out by the side of the fire and the oven set upon them,
while another shovelful is placed on top of the lid, which is raised from
time to time to see that the requisite amount of heat is being kept up. With
care good bread may be made in this way, though it is liable to be burned or
to be sour, or raised too much, and the weight of the oven is a serious
objection.
At last Don Delaney comes
doon the lang glen — hunger vanishes, we turn our eyes to the mountains, and
to-morrow we go climbing toward cloudland.
Never while anything is left
of me shall this first camp be forgotten. It has fairly grown into me, not
merely as memory pictures, but as part and parcel of mind and body alike.
The deep hopper-like hollow, with its majestic trees through which all the
wonderful nights the stars poured their beauty. The flowery wildness of the
high steep slope toward Brown's Flat, and its bloom-fragrance descending at
the close of the still days. The embowered river-reaches with their
multitude of voices making melody, the stately flow and rush and glad
exulting onsweeping currents caressing the dipping sedge-leaves and bushes
and mossy stones, swirling in pools, dividing against little flowery
islands, breaking gray and white here and there, ever rejoicing, yet with
deep solemn undertones recalling the ocean — the brave little bird ever
beside them, singing with sweet human tones among the waltzing foam-bells,
and like a blessed evangel explaining God's love. And the Pilot Peak Ridge,
its long withdrawing slopes gracefully modeled and braided, reaching from
climate to climate, feathered with trees that are the kings of their race,
their ranks nobly marshaled to view, spire above spire, crown above crown,
waving their long, leafy arms, tossing their cones like ringing bells —
blessed sun-fed mountaineers rejoicing in their strength, every tree
tuneful, a harp for the winds and the sun. The hazel and buckthorn pastures
of the deer, the sun-beaten brows purple and yellow with mint and
golden-rods, carpeted with chamcebatia, humming with bees. And the dawns and
sunrises and sundowns of these mountain days, — the rose light creeping
higher among the stars, changing to daffodil yellow, the level beams
bursting forth, streaming across the ridges, touching pine after pine,
awakening and warming all the mighty host to do gladly _their shining day's
work. The great sun-gold noons, the alabaster cloud-mountains, the landscape
beaming with consciousness like the face of a god. The sunsets, when the
trees stood hushed awaiting their good-night blessings. Divine, enduring,
unwastable wealth. |
