34 THE FORESTER. February, 



TO CRESCENT CITY BY STAGE. 



By R. T. Fisher. 



Division of Forestry. 



IF you take the stage at Grant's Pass in That was my first experience of staging 



southwestern Oregon, and travel west- in northern California, and its successors 



ward two days across the high spurs were no less interesting. I know now that 



of the Siskiyous towards the Pacific Ocean, I should have been hungry at the time, 



you will come, on the afternoon of the having been bumping breakfastless since 



second day, to the edge of that marvelous the early hour of two, but as it was, my 



strip of vegetation known as the Redwood thoughts were otherwise occupied. It ap- 



Belt, which stretches southward over in- peared the stage driver had a wife and 



numerable ridges and gulches and streams child back in Oregon, and he seemed to 



for four hundred miles along the sea, north- be under the impression that the faster he 



ward some thirty miles to its upper limit drove, the sooner he would " get to see 



on the Chetco river, and which harbors them." The fact that he was heading di- 



in the remote clearings of its forests, com- rectly away from them, and that neither 



munities as strange to eastern ears as towns end of his route was within a hundred 



in Australia. The actual margin, at least miles of their abiding place, did not ap- 



by this approach, is about ten miles from pear to move him. So, whenever there 



the ocean in the hills beside Smith River, was a down grade, and the slim road, 



but it seemed to me when I made the trip without rail, barrier, or space of any kind 



in early June that the wonders of the coast between the wheel track and emptiness, 



region really began twenty miles farther was winding along slopes that you hardly 



back, at the time the stage driver and I, dared look down, he would set his pace for 



alone in a rickety buckboard, crossed the home ; and in the worst places, on turns 



bald divide of the mountains, and saw the that ran straight off into the air, some 



infinite blue ridges stretching off south- tender reminiscence would occur to him, 



westward. That was at seven in the morn- and he would roll his big honest eyes on 



ing, after we had toiled since two A. M. me and relate it. Being then unaware 



back and forth up the eastern slopes, fol- that the mountain stage has succeeded the 



lowing the narrow scratch of shelf called drunken man in the favor of Providence, I 



a county road. From that moment we was not a sympathetic listener. I expected 



were in another world. Instead of the some kind of a surprise, and the thing 



still, frigid air of the canyons we had left, that happened never entered my head, 



the dampness of a little sea breeze struck At one of our speediest moments the 



on our faces, and the growing things were tongue came off the axle on the wrong 



thickening at every turn. Miles of vast side of the road, and the old rattle-trap 



almost precipitous hillsides showed pink buckboard went over the grade, horses and 



and white and yellow with azaleas and brake notwithstanding. Before we had 



rhododendrons. A few Pines stood about time to do anything heroic we brought up 



in clumps, but generally the shrubs clothed in a bunch of scrubby Pines. "I'm late 



the ground in every direction; and as we already," said the driver, picking himself 



clattered down from the sunlit summits to out of the twigs. I righted the crazy ve- 



the shadowed hollows beyond, we came hide and he unhooked the patient horses, 



into an atmosphere of concentrated fra- We roped them to the hind axle, and, one 



grance a sort of vast reservoir of per- steering by the drooping pole, the other 



fumes. Apparently the odors of the bios- driving, hauled the wagon up again onto 



soms, which had been accumulating un- the grade. Then the driver walked back a 



disturbed through the night, had pervaded ways and found the missing bolt, rammed 



all the air in the valley. it into place, and battered the end with a 



