Jack London
On Board Roamer,
Sonoma Creek,
April 15, 1911

FOUR HORSES AND A SAILOR

“Huh!  Drive four horses!  I wouldn’t sit behind you—­not for a thousand dollars—­over them mountain roads.”

So said Henry, and he ought to have known, for he drives four horses himself.

Said another Glen Ellen friend:  “What?  London?  He drive four horses?  Can’t drive one!”

And the best of it is that he was right.  Even after managing to get a few hundred miles with my four horses, I don’t know how to drive one.  Just the other day, swinging down a steep mountain road and rounding an abrupt turn, I came full tilt on a horse and buggy being driven by a woman up the hill.  We could not pass on the narrow road, where was only a foot to spare, and my horses did not know how to back, especially up-hill.  About two hundred yards down the hill was a spot where we could pass.  The driver of the buggy said she didn’t dare back down because she was not sure of the brake.  And as I didn’t know how to tackle one horse, I didn’t try it.  So we unhitched her horse and backed down by hand.  Which was very well, till it came to hitching the horse to the buggy again.  She didn’t know how.  I didn’t either, and I had depended on her knowledge.  It took us about half an hour, with frequent debates and consultations, though it is an absolute certainty that never in its life was that horse hitched in that particular way.

No; I can’t harness up one horse.  But I can four, which compels me to back up again to get to my beginning.  Having selected Sonoma Valley for our abiding place, Charmian and I decided it was about time we knew what we had in our own county and the neighbouring ones.  How to do it, was the first question.  Among our many weaknesses is the one of being old-fashioned.  We don’t mix with gasolene very well.  And, as true sailors should, we naturally gravitate toward horses.  Being one of those lucky individuals who carries his office under his hat, I should have to take a typewriter and a load of books along.  This put saddle-horses out of the running.  Charmian suggested driving a span.  She had faith in me; besides, she could drive a span herself.  But when I thought of the many mountains to cross, and of crossing them for three months with a poor tired span, I vetoed the proposition and said we’d have to come back to gasolene after all.  This she vetoed just as emphatically, and a deadlock obtained until I received inspiration.

“Why not drive four horses?” I said.

“But you don’t know how to drive four horses,” was her objection.

I threw my chest out and my shoulders back.  “What man has done, I can do,” I proclaimed grandly.  “And please don’t forget that when we sailed on the Snark I knew nothing of navigation, and that I taught myself as I sailed.”