THE WONDERLAND OF CALIFORNIA 



63 



ings up and down the coast. Where 

 your knee touches the worn face of a 

 rock at a bend, there is a thrill in the 

 thought that it was once touched by Juni- 

 pero's robe. 



Apart from these interesting historical 

 associations, however, the trail is worth 

 following for its own sake. For miles it 

 runs like a narrow ribbon around the 

 spurs and canyons at 1,000 feet elevation, 

 almost perpendicular, above the blue sea. 

 At no place is it wider than a mule's 

 tread; wherefore pack-animals must be 

 loaded carefully, for a scrape on the 

 landward side has sent many a one down 

 to its death on the surf-washed rocks 

 below. 



Next it climbs 4,000 feet to the crest 

 of the range and lays at your feet, if not 

 the whole world, at least a good slice of 

 California — mountains and valleys on the 

 one hand ; on the other the vast blue sea. 

 Then it drops again and enters the first 

 of the redwoods ; winds among pillar- 

 like trunks in rose-brown shade, leaps 

 silver streams, and so by wood, sea, and 

 mountain comes presently to the Valley 

 of the Sur, where the sunlight breaks in 

 golden rain down through lacing alders 

 and the river sings for you the same old 

 song it gave to Junipero Serra. 



From one thing to another, it leads on 

 till the Carmel Mission heaves into view 

 across a blue arm of the sea ; and if you 

 are in luck the mellow tone of a bell may 

 come drifting across, spacing the roar of 

 the surf, for services are sometimes held 

 there. 



HUNTING GRIZZLIES WITH STRYCHNINE 



In a perfectly unfair and unkindly, yet 

 quite natural, way, by liberal use of 

 strychnine, the rancheros of the last gen- 

 eration wiped out the grizzlies. But the 

 lynx is still plentiful. The mountain- 

 lion quite often leaves his sign-manual in 

 the form of a fresh-killed steer. The 

 country abounds in deer. So many they 

 are and hunted so little, they are very 

 bold. Often they have followed me 

 along the Spanish trail, and one night 

 they came in droves to nibble fallen ap- 

 ples in the orchard of an abandoned 

 farmstead where I had pitched my camp. 



Trout are to be had in the streams in 



numbers that tempt one beyond the limit, 

 and if you yearn for a change of fishing, 

 a whale may be seen spouting offshore 

 almost any day ! What use you would 

 have of him, supposing you caught him, 

 is another question. 



Sea-otter, however, is more practica- 

 ble. Once in a while a pair will be seen, 

 rolling in the surf or lying on their backs, 

 playing with seaweed or bits of flotsam 

 and jetsam like sportive kittens. So hu- 

 man they are that to kill one savors of 

 murder ; but dry salted, the skin brings 

 from one to two thousand dollars on the 

 market, and this goes a long way toward 

 balancing sentimental regrets. 



I suppose that Padre Serra, in the 

 comfortable fashion of his day, spent at 

 least a week covering the distance be- 

 tween Santa Barbara and Monterey. 

 The railroad covers it in a few hours and 

 offers second choice of route up the San 

 Joaquin Valley, the great central valley 

 of California. It averages from 40 to 50 

 miles wide and runs for 500 miles and 

 lies, a great level lake of sunshine, be- 

 tween the towering, richly colored walls 

 of the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range. 



GEOGRAPHY THE SERVANT OF FICTION 



Queer how closely geography is linked 

 with fiction ! Just as "Kipling" spells 

 "India" for the majority of folks, so, by 

 virtue of "The Octopus," Frank Norris 

 owns the San Joaquin. Nowadays, how- 

 ever, he would find it hard to recognize 

 his own, for gone, gone forever are the 

 enormous wheat ranchos that filled the 

 valley between the mountains with roll- 

 ing seas of grain and furnished the mo- 

 tif for his story. 



Yet the change is for the better. 

 Chopped into a thousand vineyards and 

 orange groves, the old ranchos now sup- 

 port populations of five or six thousand, 

 where previously they gave employment 

 to a hundred or two of nomad laborers 

 for a short period of the year. 



It is a wonderful country, this — rich, 

 fat-soiled, laced with shining rivers that 

 reverse the usual order of things and 

 dwindle from good beginnings, where 

 they issue from the Sierra canyons, into 

 sterile river beds. Led through a thou- 

 sand canals and ditches out to the thirsty 



