The narrow-gauge of the N.P.C.R.R. crawls like a snake from the ferry on the bay to the roundhouse over and beyond the hills, but seven miles from the sea-mouth of the Russian River.  It turns very sharp corners, and turns them every few minutes; it doubles in its own trail, runs over fragile trestle-work, darts into holes and re-appears on the other side of the mountains, roars through strips of redwoods like a rushing wind, skirts the shore of bleak Tomales Bay, cuts across the potato district and strikes the redwoods again, away up among the saw-mills at the logging-camps, where it ends abruptly on a flat under a hill.  And what a flat it is!—­enlivened with a first-class hotel, some questionable hostelries, a country store, a post-office and livery-stable, and a great mill buzzing in an artificial desert of worn brown sawdust.

Here, after a five hours’ ride, we alighted at Duncan’s Mills, hard by the river, and with a girdle of hills all about us—­high, round hills, as yellow as brass when they are not drenched with fog.  In the twilight we watched the fog roll in, trailing its lace-like skirts among the highland forests.  How still the river was!  Not a ripple disturbed it; there was no perceptible current, for after the winter floods subside, the sea throws up a wall of sand that chokes the stream, and the waters slowly gather until there is volume enough to clear it.  Then come the rains and the floods, in which rafts of drift-wood and even great logs are carried twenty feet up the shore, and permanently lodged in inextricable confusion.

I remember the day when we had made a pilgrimage to the coast, when from the rocky jaws of the river we looked up the still waters, and saw them slowly gathering strength and volume.  The sea was breaking upon the bar without; Indian canoes swung on the tideless stream, filled with industrious occupants taking the fish that await their first plunge into salt water.  Every morning we bathed in the unpolluted waters of the river.  How fresh and sweet they are—­the filtered moisture of the hills, mingled with the distillations from cedar-boughs drenched with fogs and dew!

Lounging upon the hotel veranda, turning our backs upon the last vestiges of civilization in the shape of a few guests who dressed for dinner as if it were imperative, we were greeted with mellow heartiness by a hale old backwoodsman, a genuine representative of the primeval.  It was Ingram, of Ingram House, Austin Creek, Red Woods, Sonoma County, Primeval California.  It was he, with ranch-wagon and stalwart steeds.  The Artist, who was captain-general of the forces, at once held a consultation with Ingram, whom we will henceforth call the Doctor, for he is a doctor—­minus the degrees—­of divinity, medicine, and laws, and master of all work; a deer-stalker, rancher, and general utility man; the father of a clever family, and the head of a primeval house.