from tinware.  The larger ranchmen did things in better style.  They brought rocking chairs, big tents, chinaware, camp stoves and Japanese servants to manipulate them.  The women had flags and Chinese lanterns with which to decorate, hammocks in which to lounge, books to read, tables at which to sit, cots and mattresses on which to sleep.  No difference in social status was made, however.  The young people undertook their expeditions together:  the older folks swapped yarns in the peaceful enjoyment of the forest.  Bob found interest in all, for as yet the California ranchman has not lost in humdrum occupations the initiative that brought him to a new country nor the influences of the experience he has gained there.  To his surprise several of the parties were composed entirely of girls.  One, of four members, was made up of students from Berkeley, out for their summer vacation.  Late in the summer these four damsels constructed a pack of their belongings, lashed it on a borrowed mule, and departed.  They were gone for a week in the back country, and returned full of adventures over the detailing of which they laughed until they gasped.

To Bob’s astonishment none of the men seemed particularly wrought up over this escapade.

“They’re used to the mountains,” he was assured, “and they’ll get along all right with that old mule.”

“Does anybody live over there?” asked Bob.

“No, it’s just a wild country, but the trails is good.”

“Suppose they get into trouble?”

“What trouble?  And ’tain’t likely they’d all get into trouble to once.”

“I should think they’d be scared.”

“Nothin’ to be scared of,” replied the man comfortably.

Bob thought of the great, uninhabited mountains, the dark forests, the immense loneliness and isolation, the thousand subtle and psychic influences which the wilderness exerts over the untried soul.  There might be nothing to be scared of, as the man said.  Wild animals are harmless, the trails are good.  But he could not imagine any of the girls with whom he had acquaintance pushing off thus joyous and unafraid into a wilderness three days beyond the farthest outpost.  He had yet to understand the spirit, almost universal among the native-born Californians, that has been brought up so intimately with the large things of nature that the sublime is no longer the terrible.  Perhaps this states it a little too pompously.  They have learned that the mere absence of mankind is ‘nothing to be scared of’; they have learned how to be independent and to take care of themselves.  Consequently, as a matter of course, as one would ride in the park, they undertake expeditions into the Big Country.

Many of these travellers, especially toward the close of the summer, complained bitterly of the scarcity of horse-feed.  In the back country where the mountains were high and the wilderness unbroken, they depended for forage on the grasses of the mountain meadows.  This year they reported that the cattle had eaten the forage down to the roots.  Where usually had been abundance and pleasant camping, now were hard, close lawns, and cattle overrunning and defiling everything.  Under the heavy labour of mountain travel the horses fell off rapidly in flesh and strength.