United States or Namibia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The names of Mariposa, San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey can never grow mean or common. In the counties along the coast, there is scarcely a hill, or stream, or village that does not bear some melodious trace of Spanish occupation.

Then, quite suddenly, with a quiver, down she went. You could feel the boat sink, sink, down, down, would it never get to the bottom? The water came flush up to the lower deck, and then, thank heaven, the sinking stopped and there was the Mariposa Belle safe and tight on a reed bank. Really, it made one positively laugh!

If he had never trusted her. Ah, too late; too late! Secretly he had laid his well-devised mines. The judge in Mariposa is weighted down with a golden bribe. The court officials are under his orders. But who is the unknown foe counselling Natalie? He cannot fathom it. Blackmail! Yes, blackmail. In three days Hardin is at Sacramento. His satellites draw up their cohorts for the senatorial struggle.

For many a week had the young man lingered, renewing the friendship with the Mariposa cemented more than eighteen years before when his father, hindered by storms in his adventurous journey up the coast, cast anchor off the shore, the first white man to see their island. Nor was the lingering without result.

And this purely intuitive belief was suddenly strengthened by the remembrance of Marcia's embarrassment in the Park, an hour or two before, when she had involuntarily and inadvertently spoken of Mademoiselle Mariposa familiarly as Ydo. "Yes, Mrs. Oldham, I quite agree with you. As you say: 'One can not be too careful. Oh, no, I never was more interested in my life." Ydo! Ydo!

It lit up such a testimony of flame that Mariposa has never seen the like of it before or since. Then when the roof crashed in and the tall steeple tottered and fell, so swift a darkness seemed to come that the grey trees and the frozen lake vanished in a moment as if blotted out of existence.

Graceful pines afforded cover for Mariposa and Alfonso, as swift of foot, they scaled high cliffs, till the Indian girl held aloft her hand, and above in a cleft of white quartz the yellow gold shone brightly in the moon's rays. When the time came for Alfonso to leave the Yosemite Valley, one of nature's masterpieces, tears filled the eyes of lovely Mariposa.

Just out of Tehama we struck into a country whose features reminded us of the wooded tracts between Stockton and Mariposa. After two days of tulé and wild grass, Nature grew suddenly ennobled in our eyes by thick and frequent groves of the royal California oak. There was a feeling of luxury in the change, which none can know who have not had a surfeit of boundless plains.

The side of the Mariposa rushed past him like a dark wall, broken here and there by lighted ports. She was certainly making time. Almost before he knew it, he was astern, swimming gently on the foam-crackling surface. A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud. It had taken a piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was there.

Looking back on the Mariposa Whirlwind, I can never feel that it was a failure. After all, there is a sympathy and a brotherhood in these things when men work shoulder to shoulder.