Читать книгу A La California - Albert S. Evans - Страница 11

​

CHAPTER IV.

PESCADERO TO SANTA CRUZ.

Down the Coast toward Santa Cruz.—The Moss and Shell Beaches of Pescadero.—A Disgusted Hunter.—A Grizzly Bear Procession.—A Mutual Surprise and Double Stampede.—The Bear Fever.—The Buck Fever and Prairie-Hen Fever.—How Jim Wheeler Killed the Buck.—How Old S. killed Three at one Shot. A Spanish-American Gentleman of Scientific Attainments and Undoubted Veracity.—View of the Bay of Monterey and the Valley and Mountains of Santa Cruz.

Pescadero numbers among its attractions a "Moss Beach," where the ladies who visit the place go to gather the beautiful, delicate, many-hued sea-mosses which are found in such abundance all along the Pacific Coast, but in highest perfection on the shores of Central California. These mosses are torn loose by the storms, and thrown ashore by the tides in great abundance in some localities, this "Moss Beach" being one of them. The ladies gather them at low tide, strip them from the glutinous, leather-like substance to which they are found adhering, and place them in salt water, to be kept fresh until they are ready to dry them. The delicate sprays, with fibers finer than any silk, are with infinite labor spread out with pliers, or other small instruments, upon the open leaves of an old ledger or other book of hard paper, and pressed carefully while ​drying. When fully dried they are taken off the paper carefully, and cleaned with a soft brush to remove any mold or other blemishes, and are then ready for use in the preparation of moss-baskets, pictures, etc., etc. Nothing can be more beautiful than the work thus produced by ladies of taste, and no special teaching or experience is required to enable them to do it well. These mosses, when dried ready for use, readily command high prices at the East and in California, the demand being always large. There is also a "Shell Beach" in the vicinity of Pescadero, where beautiful sea-shells are gathered. The finest shell on the Pacific Coast is the great abalone (pron. "ab-a-lo-ne"), a mammoth univalve, which is found most abundantly and most perfect along the shores of the Bay of Monterey, and thence southwards to San Diego. The inside of the shell is rainbow-hued and very brilliant, and when the rough outside has been ground and polished away they make beautiful ornaments for the mantel and cabinet. Belt-buckles and other jewelry, which would be "perfectly lovely" if not so cheap and common, are made from these shells.

From Pescadero to Santa Cruz is thirty-six miles, by the road which winds along the coast past Point Año Nuevo and Pigeon Point to the Bay of Monterey, and thence southeastward, through a rich and highly-cultivated farming region, to the old Spanish Mission on the hill, below and around which the modern town, one of the most beautiful and thriving in California, has grown up within the past ​fifteen years. What a glorious gallop we—Chirimoya and I—had over the clean, hard, undulating road on that autumn morning after I left Pescadero! Californians will understand me and pardon my enthusiasm, possibly sympathize with me in it; but you of the older and more staid and conventional East cannot do so, and I pass the description, as you would inevitably pass it if you came upon it in print. Passing over a pine-clad spur of Santa Cruz mountains, which here come close down to the coast, we halted for a time to rest and look about. This is a famous place for gathering the pine-cones, with fragments of which ladies are wont to construct elaborately wrought picture- frames and other "ornamental" work, very ugly, and very effective as dust-catchers, but excellent things for presents to religiously inclined friends, who are thereby brought to a realizing appreciation of the force of the scriptural maxim, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." A hunter, who had followed a deer down from the heights above, toward the coast, but lost him, joined me as I reclined upon the warm, dry ground upon the hill-side, enjoying the delicious sense of quiet and absence of care and life's petty annoyances which comes with solitude, mountain air, and autumn sunshine, and we swapped stories of forest and mountain life and adventure, in this and other lands, for an hour or two. He told me with infinite gusto, and a true frontiersman's rude but hearty appreciation of the grotesquely humorous, how a friend of his, who was, and is, a sort of ​Mr. Toots in sportsmanship and woodcraft, came down here once from San Francisco in pursuit of game, and wandering out into the woods upon this same hill, fell asleep one delicious summer afternoon beneath a shady tree. When he awoke it was almost sunset, and the coolness of evening was coming on. He sat up, looked about aim, rubbed his eyes, wondered like Rip Van Winkle how long he had been lying there, and how long it would take him to walk back, empty-handed as he was, to his hotel. Just then a rustling and cracking noise, from a clump of chaparral about a hundred yards away, attracted his attention. Out walked a grizzly bear, a monarch of his kind, yawned, ran his red tongue lazily over the outside of his jaw, humped his back as if to test the condition and pliability of his vertebrae, then advanced directly toward the tree under which the astonished but hardly delighted San Franciscan sat, evidently without having noticed him and blissfully unconscious of his presence. His grizzly majesty had hardly advanced twenty yards when a female of the same species, and but a little less in size, followed in his wake and went through almost the same calisthenic exercises. The first bear's appearance made the man of "Frisco" gasp for breath, the second sent the blood back to his heart in a torrent, the force of which almost caused that organ to jump out of his breast. It never rains a third bear followed the second, licked his chops, humped his back, gave a half growl, half whine of satisfaction and advanced in the same direction at a slow, shambling pace. Every word he had ever spoken in any ​near or remote sense disrespectful of bald-headed men flashed through our hero's mind in an instant. "Now I lay me down to slee——" the forward bear was already within thirty yards of him, and before the prayer could be half finished would be upon him. Something more energetic and positive had to be done immediately. Springing to his feet in frantic despair, the San Franciscan hunter threw his arms wildly aloft, and uttered one loud, long, terrific, unearthly yell, such as an able-bodied Irish banshee might have given on a particularly rough night, when a particularly bad scion of a particularly noble house was passing in his checks at the termination of a particularly long and infamous life. The effect was instantaneous and striking. The foremost bear, startled out of his seven senses by the yell, sprang about ten feet—more or less—into the air, knocked his nearest companion off her pins as he came down, rolled over her, gathered himself up, and bolted "like forty cartloads of rock going down a chute" straight for the chaparral again, his companions following close at his heels, and never turning to see what it was which had stampeded them. As they went bouncing and crashing away into the undergrowth, our friend, utterly oblivious from the first that he had a gun within reach of his arm, turned and ran the other way with such speed as Jackson or the Deerslayer never achieved, reaching his hotel, some miles from the spot, with his garments soaked with perspiration, hair wildly disheveled, and eyes almost bursting from their sockets, only to tell the marvelous story of his adventure to ​a party of practical hunters, who, with the true California instinct, scouted the entire statement as "too thin," affirmed that there never was a bear seen within ten miles of there, hinted that he had been frightened by a drove of cattle, winding up with an intimation that he had doubtless been drinking a little too freely of late, and if he did not want to have an attack of the "jim-jams" he had better switch off right then and there, turn over a new leaf, and reform his vicious not to say criminal habits at once and forever. Adding insult to injury was literally boiled down in this case, and our hero of "the three bars," as he was derisively termed, went to his bed that night in a frame of mind easier to be imagined than described. Next morning a small Spanish boy—who had been posted in advance by the party—rode out on a mustang to the scene of our hero's misadventure, brought back his gun, which was found lying on the ground just where he had left it, and on being closely questioned as to the "sign" he had seen, swore by all the saints in the calendar that there was nothing there save a few fresh hoe tracks. This last straw broke the camel's back, and our Nimrod packed his traps and started for San Francisco by the morning stage, cursing in the bitterness of his heart the whole human race, and devoutly praying that the bears which the hunters affected to disbelieve in the very existence of might catch and devour them all. It is but just to add that the bears were there, and the hunters knew it all the time. They only wanted their little joke. Everything had occurred just as he had stated it, and in ​the frenzy of his terror he had done the wisest thing imaginable, and taken in fact the only feasible and proper course to get himself well out of a bad scrape.

My hunter friend was just a little soured in spirit by a misadventure of his own that morning. In company with a young man from the city, who came well recommended as a good shot and energetic hunter, he had started out at daybreak into the mountains in search of deer. They were going up a narrow trail along the bottom of a thick-wooded canon, when a deer, startled by their footsteps, sprang up within ten feet of them and darted away with tremendous bounds through the bushes. The young man, startled out of his seven senses by the sudden appearance of the deer, had been seized with the "buck fever," and discharging his rifle at random without the slightest idea what he was about, came within an ace of blowing his companion's head off. For this he had received a blessing, and an intimation that thenceforth their paths were separated, and the more widely the better.

This "buck fever" is one of the most violent diseases which ever attacked the human system. The story of the Southern planter who placed his negro servant in ambush, and then, ordering him to fire the moment he got a fair sight at the deer, drove a fine buck directly down the ravine past him, is familiar, I presume, to most of my readers. As the buck dashed past him the negro rose to his feet, when the frightened animal made a tremendous bound, clearing a clump of bushes and a fallen tree-top, ​and was out of sight in an instant. "Why in thunder didn't you fire, Sam, as I told you?" "Fire, massa? Gully mighty, massa, I didn't tink 'twas any use! He jump so almighty high, I was done gone sure he'd break his back falling, massa!" was the trembling darkey's quick-witted reply.

I once knew a man out in Illinois named Wheeler. He had been engaged in farming on Fox River for years and never fired a gun. But one winter when a light snow covered the ground, he heard the boys talking so much about the fun they were having at deer-hunting of that his ambition became excited, and he determined to borrow a gun and start out himself. He did so. That night he came back with a magnificent buck, shot square in the middle of the forehead. Wheeler said little about his achievement, but got the credit of being a crack shot, which he enjoyed for years. But on an evil day he visited the village of St. Charles, on the occasion of the visit of a circus to the place, and getting unusually full of ginger-pop and such mild stimulants, in an unguarded moment let out the secret and blasted that glorious reputation in an instant. He had seen a doe drinking out of a creek at the foot of a bluff some twenty feet in height, and in the wild excitement of the moment got the rifle to his shoulder, shut his eyes, set his teeth like a child in a fit, and pulled trigger. To his utter astonishment he saw the doe bound away untouched, and at the same instant a glorious buck pitched headlong from the top of the bluff into the creek, shot dead as a door nail by a bullet through the head. The buck had ​been looking down on the doe, and Wheeler had never seen him at all. That let him out as a deer-huntist.

It is not absolutely necessary that the game in sight should be a buck or doe, to give a green hunter the "buck fever." Prairie-chickens suddenly starting up around a man for the first time will not unfrequently produce a severe attack. I remember with a tender regard my old hunting friend and companion of other days, Len Huegunin, of Chicago, one of the gamest sportsmen I have ever known. He shot his left arm off gunning for ducks in the Calumet Marshes, but his right never forgot its cunning, and years thereafter he was one of the crack shots of the Garden City. One day Len was persuaded against his better judgment to go out on the prairie and initiate a green Bostonian in the mysteries of prairie-chicken shooting. When the dog took up the scent of the first covey, Len followed upon one side of an Osage orange hedge and his companion on the other. The chickens were concealed in the grass on the Bostonian's side of the hedge, and in an instant they were all off at once, flying, bur-r-r-r-r-r-r, bur-r-r-r-r-r, bur-r-r-r-r-r-r, up from around his feet and skurrying off right and left in all directions. Without the remotest idea of what he was doing or wanted to do, the startled Bostonian fired both barrels into the air at random, and with one of them bored a hole about the size of a saw log through the hedge and perforated old Len's coat, vest, and pants, to say nothing of his hide, with about ten thousand—more or less—No. 7. ​Now Len was a man of few words but prompt action. As quick as a flash his gun was at his shoulder, and bang, bang, it went in less time than I can write it. The Bostonian jumped about three feet high as each barrel was discharged, and yelled, as soon as he could get breath, "Why, confound you! what the d—l are you doing? You have peppered me all over with shot, and hang me if I don't believe you meant it! If I had some buckshot here, blame me if I wouldn't give you a dose, if that is your little game!" Len's reply came quick from between teeth set hard on a wire cartridge, the mate to which he was jamming down into the gun, which he held upright between his knees, having but one hand to work with. "Well, d—n you, that is my game, and if you are on it, the quicker you get about it the better! I'm loading with buckshot cartridges already!" The timely arrival of a mutual friend saved the Bostonian from a dose of "BB"; but Len had enough of that chicken-pie, and went home at once full of wrath and small shot, the most disgusted man on the continent of America. To this day—if Len is still in the land of the living—you have but to ask Len to go out with a green Bostonian on a chicken-hunt, to get up a first-class fight on the instant. Len was three weeks at work with his fingers, a jack-knife, and a pair of tweezers digging out those shot, swearing a blue streak all the time, and the Bostonian went home with his body so full of lead that he never dared take a swimming bath from that day forth.

It is a painful fact, but a fact nevertheless, that ​hunters will lie, occasionally; I have hunted somewhat myself, and I know it. Old S. used to keep a hotel and drive stage on the San Mateo and Pescadero road. He had hunted more or less all his life. One day he was telling a party of tourists about a big deer-hunt he had a few years before. Warming up with his subject, he pointed out with his whip a steep bluff on the hill-side above them, and thus concluded his narration: "Well, you see, gents, I had just got down in that little canon there, when I seen a deer standing right by that big redwood, and went for him. I didn't see but one deer when I fired, but that deer just gin one leap and come crashing down inter the bush thar as dead as a door nail, and blast my pictur' ef three more didn't come jumpin' over arter him, each one shot so dead that he never kicked. That was jest the strongest shootin' gun you ever seed in yer lives, gentlemen. I never seed its ekal, and I've seen some in my time, I kin tell yer! But the curiousest thing about it was, that the fust deer I fired at was shot right through the side of the head, jest above the eye, and through the off hind foot, jest above the huff. Fact, gentlemen!" "Through the hind hoof and head at the same shot!—how the deuce could that be?" exclaimed one passenger. "Look here, S., don't you think that is drawine it a little strong?—four deer at one shot, and only saw one of them!" said another. "Well, as fur the bullet going through the hind foot and head at the same time, yer see he was jest scratchin' his ear with the huff when I fired. That's easy enuff counted fur; but the hittin' of four on 'em one after ​another, that always did puzzle me a leetle; howsumever, I'll take my affadavy it's a fact, and what is more, there's the hill right in front on yer, gentlemen, and yer can see it fur yerselves! There ain't no gettin' over that, gentlemen!" This logic silenced the doubters, and S. remained master of the situation. The similarity of the experience of S. and Wheeler in some particulars may strike the hypercritical reader: only another proof that history has a tendency toward repeating itself in all ages and countries; nothing more, upon my honor.

These and many similar anecdotes we exchanged, my hunter friend and I, while Chirimoya amused himself munching the dry grass which grew in scattered tufts among the bushes, and from time to time varied the entertainment a trifle by essaying the feat of kicking a fly off the top of his rump with his hind feet,—a thing which cannot be done successfully. I have studied equine anatomy thoroughly, and have done my best, laboring long and earnestly with a club, to convince that noble brute that the thing is a physical impossibility; but it is all of no use; he will persist in trying it, I suppose, and setting all my counsel and instruction at naught, until he disjoints his back, turns himself inside outwards, or is promoted to a position in the shafts of a sand-cart, where he cannot lift his heels. The perversity of men and Spanish horses is something beyond my comprehension.

Speaking of hitting flies reminds me of a trifling incident, occurring about the commencement of our late civil war, on the Rio Grande. I saw an old, ​one-eyed Mexican vaquero hitting flies, one by one with a long rawhide whip, as they crawled up the side of a wall, and took occasion to compliment him on his dexterity. His broad sombrero was off in a moment, and with many low bows and protestatory shrugs and gestures he replied, in good Castilian, substantially as follows:

"Yes, your Excellency, I have made it the study of my life, and have achieved some small measure of success in my efforts, as you do me the infinite honor to remark. I can now hit a fly and knock him off the side of a mule without disturbing the mule, or I can hit the mule and knock him out from under the fly without disturbing the fly. I am quite at your Excellency's service; which will you do me the honor to order me to do?"

I ordered him to go and take a drink, and he demonstrated the soundness of my judgment and his title to my confidence by going and doing so without further parley. To the' credit of the Spanish Americans I will say that my confidence has seldom been abused by them, or proved to have been misplaced. I wish I could say as much for some of my own countrymen!

This part of the coast of San Mateo and Santa Cruz is subject to periodical visitations of various kinds of fish, some of which are almost unaccountable and very peculiar indeed. The baracouta, a species of sea-pickerel greatly valued by the Italian and French cooks for soup and chowder, sometimes swarms in the waters close in shore, and is taken by cartloads. At other times the shore is literally ​covered with "horse-mackerel," and the whole population turns out to enjoy the sport of gathering them in. It has never been my good fortune to witness one of these grand fish-battles, but I find one described as follows in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

"We reached the fishing-grounds about twilight,—here the pen fails to do justice to the scene. It was low tide; the sea here forms a continuous, almost level beach, five or six miles long, and an average width of one hundred and fifty yards at low tide, with a hard, smooth bottom, and not a pebble nor a sea-weed visible the whole distance; probably there is no nicer nor finer drive in the State for the same distance: the ever-changeable bluff some one hundred feet in height, all the estuaries filled in with drift-wood, accumulating for years. Now imagine some four hundred people arriving between twilight and dark, the fine carriages, the omnibuses, two-horse teams, four-horse teams, six-horse teams, ox teams, carts and California go-carts, all filled with persons who have the highest expectation of making a big haul. The high piles of dry drift-wood, set ablaze for the distance of five miles, the moon shining with brightest rays on the silver sand and phosphorescent water. Men, women, and children taking their positions at equal distances, awaiting the coming of the fish, which occurs when the tide is on the point of coming in. The theory of the fish coming ashore I imagine is something like this: the bay, at present, is full of a small fish similar to anchovies, the natural food of the mackerel, which, being a very voracious fish, follows the ​anchovy into the breakers, when, the incoming tide being stronger than the fish is used to, it deposits him through the breakers, often casting great numbers of them high and dry, but most generally depositing them just through the breakers, into from three to six inches of water, which causes them to flounder and squirm to regain their element; then the real sport commences, men and boys roll up their trowsers, ladies tie their dresses around their waists, and also pitch in to secure the prizes; when the fish flounders he is both seen and heard, as he makes a great commotion; the cry is given, 'There he goes!' when all those in the immediate neighborhood make for the hapless wight. Then look out for collisions; but here woman gets her rights; she has as good a right to the fish as her would-be superior, especially if she catches fish herself. But to cut a long story short, five of us caught over five hundredweight, and got home by six o'clock in the morning. Horse-mackerel is considered a very game and edible dish."

The afternoon was far advanced when I bade adieu to my hunter friend, took a parting drink from his canteen, rode down the hill into the open country bordering on the Bay of Monterey, and saw the grand panorama of the Valley of Santa Cruz, and the shores of the historic bay, with the deep, dark, wooded mountains, with majestic old Loma Prieta towering high above them all in the background, unfold itself before me in beauty to which tongue or pen can do no justice.