Dutch Flat—A Retrospect 163 
tramp over the mountains. This very day the 
red dust underfoot and the dazzling blue over- 
head have evoked a faint memory of that exag- 
gerated sense of unresponsibility with which 
I started upon my travels, my sole tangible 
possessions a knapsack, a little money, and a 
large cheap pistol of the “Bulldog” type 
which occasioned thrills of satisfaction as it 
was surreptitiously fingered from time to 
time; but possessed of, or by, a state of mind 
that made one monarch of all one surveyed 
and as free as the wind in the pines of the 
Sierra. It seems now that the mountains are 
not so high as then, nor the world so large, 
nor anywhere in it one sofree, Yet perhaps 
there are adventurous stripplings setting forth 
to see the world, with ‘‘Bulldog”’ pistols in 
their hip pockets, to whom the mountains 
are as wonderful and life as free as it was to 
me in that day. 
Then followed days in the open, wandering 
at will throughout the summer, ever the 
dazzling blue overhead, ever the red dust or 
the ties underfoot; a mind possessed by rest- 
less gypsy thoughts and life an intoxication, 
the road beckoning onward through the silent 
forest and the everlasting hills. For it isnot 
the part of Youth to reveal to us that at the 
