Sportsman's Paradise.—Looking back at the Golden City.—Yesterday and To-day.—Along the Bay of San Francisco.—The Valley of San Andreas.—Harry Linden's Speculation in Oats.—Good Resolutions and what came of them.—A Dream of Tropic Life.—An Evening on the Mountains.—A Scene of Wonderful Beauty.—The Avalanche from the Pacific.—Descending the Mountain by Moonlight.—The End of my Pasear.
Stretching away southward from the Golden Gate, at the northern point of the peninsula of San Francisco, through San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties, in Alta California, and thence on down through the entire peninsula of Lower California to Cape St. Lucas, on the border of the tropics, is an almost unbroken range of mountains, known at different points by different names, and presenting the wildest variety of scenery to be found in any mountain range in North America. Just back of the Mission Dolores, on the southern boundary of the city of San Francisco, they rise from low hills into minor mountains, and are known as the Bernal Heights, and Mission Mountains. Farther southward they increase in height, and become clothed in forest. Twenty miles south of San Francisco they form a majestic sierra, and thence, for some distance, are designated as the Sierra Morena. Still farther south they are known as the Coast Range of Santa Cruz, and farther yet as the Gabilan Mountains. Along this range, in San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties, is one of the largest, if not the largest, of the redwood forests of California. This forest-belt is from ten to twenty miles in width from east to west, and from thirty to forty miles in length from north to south, and contains timber enough to build twenty San Franciscos. The redwoods nowhere come down to the Pacific coast, and the traveler on the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad catches so few glimpses of them that he would never dream of the existence of such a forest; while from the decks of passing steamers one sees only small patches of them in the canons, miles back in the interior. The giant redwood—to which family the big trees of Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Mariposa Counties belong—flourishes best at a hiorh elevation and in a warm, moist atmosphere. This great forest, like that of Mendocino, crowns the mountains with tropical luxuriance, and is watered by the mists which, rising for a considerable part of the year from the bosom of the Pacific, are driven inland by the trade-winds and condensed on the mountain slopes, keeping the rank vegetation which clothes them almost perpetually dripping. The redwoods themselves rise to a height of one to three hundred feet or more, and attain immense size. Beneath their shade springs up an almost impenetrable undergrowth of flowering shrubs and trees—California lilac, tea-oak, pine, ceonotus, laurel, or the fragrant bay, buckeye, manzanita, poison-oak, the giant California honeysuckle, which, half bush, half vine, rises to a height of ten to twenty feet, and from its thousands of trumpet-shaped flowers, tinted like the wild crab-apple blossoms, loads the atmosphere with a delicious perfume; and last, but not least, the madrono, pride of the forest, and fairest of all the trees of earth. These woods are for the most part in a native state. Here and there the axe and saw-mill have made sad havoc, but in the more mountainous and least accessible localities the forest stretches unbroken for miles and miles, and silence reigns supreme. Horse trails are few, and the dense undergrowth and the ruggedness of the country make traveling almost impossible. Here the grizzly bear hides in security, and from his mountain fastnesses sallies forth at intervals to forage on the flocks and herds, orchards and gardens, that dot the lowlands. Here also the California lion, wolf, fox, mink, raccoon, wild-cat, lynx, deer, eagle, and great vulture abound, within hearing of the whistle of the locomotive which sweeps through the valley of Santa Clara, and almost within reach of the echoes of the guns of Alcatraz, and the bells of the Golden City. It is still, to the great majority of the residents even of San Francisco, a terra incognita, and for years to come will be a veritable hunter's paradise. Quail, doves, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels, hares, and other game, are found everywhere, and the pure mountain streams swarm with the beautiful spotted trout of California. Parties of ladies and gentlemen from San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Jose, Santa Cruz, and Pescadero, skilled in woodcraft and wise in the ways of adepts with the gun and rod, make excursions into this tangled wilderness, camp out, hunt, fish, picnic, and enjoy themselves for weeks at a time annually; but to the general tourist and the great world at large the country is as little known as the savage and inhospitable wilderness of central and northern Australia.
Between this forest and mountain country, and the shore of the Pacific, there is a narrow but productive farming and grazing country, but seldom visited by travelers, as it lies off the main lines of communication, though quite readily accessible from San Francisco. This too has its attractions for the tourist who is not sight-seeing by the guide-book, and much that is novel, curious, and enjoyable may always be found there.
The Spanish language has many words and terms having no equivalent in the English tongue, which are so identified with the geography and every-day life of California that they have become engrafted upon our local vernacular, and must forever form a part of it. Among the most expressive of these is the paseár. Literally it means to walk, or to take out upon a walk, but conventionally it is a journey devoid of business object, a quiet pleasure jaunt, a trip for rest, relaxation from care and toil, for recreation. When the lazy clays of summer come, you ask for your San Francisco friend the doctor, the lawyer, clergyman, or merchant, and the chances are that you will be told "he has gone on a paseár" to the Yosemite, to Lake Tahoe, to the springs, or to the mountains where the trout-streams abound.
The country of which I have been speaking is just the country for an enjoyable paseár, and many times, when incessant toil in a close, dark office, or the too bracing winds of San Francisco had worn me down, and made rest, recreation, and a change of air imperative, I have shouldered my gun, mounted my horse, and galloped away to these mountains, there to find refuge from care, anxiety, and exhausting labor, purer air, lighter spirits, a better appetite, and, in the end, perfect health again.
It was a bright September afternoon when I started on my last paseár out toward the Sierra Morena, mounted on brave old Don Benito, a veteran campaigner in Algiers and Mexico, who had borne me many a weary mile over the hot sands of the desert, up and down the red mountains, and through the Apache-haunted wilds of Arizona. My son and namesake,—I would say heir, were it not that it would seem like A. Ward's last joke, in view of the present extent of my landed estates and the condition of my exchequer,—as bold a rider and skillful fisherman as any boy of twelve may be accompanied me, mounted on his plucky and spirited little California mustang, his pet and companion for years. Out through the dusty streets of the city proper, and through the Mission Dolores, we rode at a gallop, and only paused, at length, to allow our fretting horses a moment's rest, and look back upon the city we were so gladly leaving behind us, from the heights beyond Islais Creek. It is, after all, a goodly city, and a goodly sight to look upon from these hills ; and as we look down upon it, and upon the ancient mission which stood there, as it stands to-day, when the site of San Francisco was a trackless, uninhabited waste, the beautiful lines of one of California's most gifted writers, Ira D. Colbraith, come vividly to our memory:
"Little the goodly Fathers,
Building their Mission rude,
By the lone untraversed waters,
In the western solitude,
"Dreamed of the wonderful city,
That looks on the stately bay
Where the bannered ships of the nations
Float in their pride to-day;
"Dreamed of the beautiful city,
Proud on her tawny height,
And strange as a flower upspringing
To bloom in a single night.
"For lo! but a moment lifting
The veil of the years away,
We
