THE AMERICANS

[ACT I]

THE MINE

Scene: On the mountains in a timber region of north-western America. In every direction, as far as the eye can see, a wilderness of stumps with piles of brush black with age and sinking from sheer rottenness into the ground. Here and there a dead pine stands up high against the horizon. In the distance, left, cleaving the range and extending on back under an horizon of cold gray clouds, is seen the line of a river of which this whole region is apparently the watershed, for everywhere the land slopes toward it. In the remote distance, beyond the river, innumerable bare buttes, and beyond these a gray stretch of plains. Down the mountains, left, six or seven miles away, the river loops in and a portion of a town is seen upon its banks. At this end of the town, upon a hill overlooking the river, a large white mansion conspicuous for the timber about it. At the farther end, a huge red saw-mill occupies the centre of a vast field of yellow lumber piles, the tall black stack of the mill clearly outlined against the gray of the land beyond.

Back, a hundred yards or so, a road, evidently constructed years ago when the logs were being taken out, comes up on the flats from the direction of the town, turns sharply to the right and goes toward the ridge. Beyond this road, just at the curve, standing out among the stumps, an old stationary engine eaten up with rust and an abandoned logging-wagon, the hind part resting upon the ground, the two heavy wheels lying upon it. Farther back a small cabin falling into decay. Here and there patches of creeping vines and rank grass cover the ground, hiding in some places to a considerable depth the bases of the stumps. But to the left, where it is evident a steep slope plunges down, and also in the foreground, are open spaces with boulders and, scattered about under a thin loam of rotted needles and black cones, the outlines of a few flat stones. In the immediate foreground, left, a huge boulder, weighing possibly four or five tons, barely hangs upon the slope, ready at any moment, one would think, to slip and plunge down.