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For it is certain that the sight of the land of these islands, as well of the mountains and sierras and waters as of the plains where there are rich rivers, is so beautiful, that no other land on which the sun shines can appear better or as beautiful. "Item.
A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it. And it did. The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake.
He went up into the mining region near Grass Valley in the Sierras where he had already studied with Waldemar Lindgren, and became a regular miner, a boy-man with pick and shovel working long hours underground or sometimes on the surface about the plant. But always he had his eyes wide open and always he was learning.
To them, these early days will be as unreal as the misty wreaths clinging around the Sierras. The romance of the Gilded Age! Each decade throws a deeper mantle of the shadowy past over the struggles of fresh hearts that failed in the mad race for gold. Their lives become, day by day, a mere disjointed mass of paltry incident. Their careers point no moral, even if they adorn the future tale.
It pained Denasia to see Roland a willing aid to their foolish pastime. She had no fear that her husband would wrong her, but the pretence pained and humbled her. It was a wearisome seven months, a nightmare kind of life, unrelieved by even a phantom show of success. Men in the Sierras, out on the great Western plains, knew not the sea. They could not be roused to enthusiasm.
Where the great highway of the Sierras nears the summit, and the pines begin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files, there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if the weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turned aside for rest and breath again.
"There you go again," said the head of the forest, "there's other things to be thought of besides timber." He turned to the boy. "You don't know the trees of the Sierras, I suppose?" "I think I know them pretty well now," answered Wilbur. "I had to learn a lot about them at school, and then Rifle-Eye has been giving me pointers the last few days."
A lovely land to-day. No axe rings in its forests. No steamboat threads the rivers. Not an engine is harnessed to man's use in this silent, lazy realm. The heart of the Sierras is inviolate. The word "Gold" must be whispered to break the charm. The sun climbs to noon, then slowly sinks to the west. It dips into the silent sea, mirroring sparkling evening stars.
He searched for the trespasser in vain, and told "the boys" that if they called that joking it had grown tiresome. One night he loaded his rifle, and, from a convenient nook, he watched for the intruder. The tamaracks crooned in the wind, the Yuba mumbled in the canon, the Sierras lay in a line of white against the stars.
"Some very remarkable purples to-night, I admit, Your Majesty, without any intention of giving you too good an opinion of yourself; but otherwise, you are not up to your mark. There must have been a downpour in the rainy world on the other side of the Sierras that moistened your pigments. Next thing we know you will be turning water-colorist!" he was saying, when he heard Jack's voice.
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