CHAPTER II—­THE PETRIFIED FOREST

We drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in the afternoon.  The sun warmed me to the heart.  A broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, laden with perfume.  Up at the top stood Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed spurs, and radiating warmth.  Once we saw it framed in a grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line and colour a finished composition.  We passed a cow stretched by the roadside, her bell slowly beating time to the movement of her ruminating jaws, her big red face crawled over by half a dozen flies, a monument of content.

A little farther, and we struck to the left up a mountain road, and for two hours threaded one valley after another, green, tangled, full of noble timber, giving us every now and again a sight of Mount Saint Helena and the blue hilly distance, and crossed by many streams, through which we splashed to the carriage-step.  To the right or the left, there was scarce any trace of man but the road we followed; I think we passed but one ranchero’s house in the whole distance, and that was closed and smokeless.  But we had the society of these bright streams—­dazzlingly clear, as is their wont, splashing from the wheels in diamonds, and striking a lively coolness through the sunshine.  And what with the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of foliage tossing in the breeze, the glimpses of distance, the descents into seemingly impenetrable thickets, the continual dodging of the road which made haste to plunge again into the covert, we had a fine sense of woods, and spring-time, and the open air.

Our driver gave me a lecture by the way on Californian trees—­a thing I was much in need of, having fallen among painters who know the name of nothing, and Mexicans who know the name of nothing in English.  He taught me the madrona, the manzanita, the buck-eye, the maple; he showed me the crested mountain quail; he showed me where some young redwoods were already spiring heavenwards from the ruins of the old; for in this district all had already perished:  redwoods and redskins, the two noblest indigenous living things, alike condemned.

At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign upon it like an inn.  “The Petrified Forest.  Proprietor:  C. Evans,” ran the legend.  Within, on a knoll of sward, was the house of the proprietor, and another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum, where photographs and petrifactions were retailed.  It was a pure little isle of touristry among these solitary hills.