The wild things were startled and much distressed by such unaccustomed tumult, but their feeble protests failed to disturb the serenity of the human contingent secure in a might-made right to be the over-lords of all less gifted creatures. When they arrived at the point which is now occupied by the city of Stockton, the entire party disembarked, and, taking to the saddle, pushed on with as little delay as possible.
Who can describe springtime in California? From Yuma to the Klamath what waving of leafy banners, what marvelous music of bird-song, what conquest of grass-blades, what routing of first usurpers!
Mystical California! Where the Ice Age never came, and where the magnetism of pre-historic times still lingers to attract race skandhas which shall begin the upward spiral of a new sub-race great in psychological possibilities!
The days of peonage have passed forever. The cavaliers and the padres were oppressed by the Aztec; he, in turn, suffered at the hands of the Argonaut.
Over the surface of placer and quartz mines, vines, fig-trees and olives hide the scars made by sturdy miners, and dispute prestige with the golden grains which have been the staff of life to many alien born, and the end is not yet.
The California of Cabrillo’s day was a continuous flower-garden from north to south. It must have been fair to view before mission sheep and horses tramped down the hills, where once only the grizzly bear and deer roamed unafraid long after the memory of Atlantis itself had been lost in accumulating centuries.
The early mariners of our dispensation called the southern hills the “Land of Fire,” because of the blaze at poppy-time—the copo del oro of the padre and cavalier, the Yankee gold-cup, the Russian eschscholtzia. Then as now the yellow lupines, loved by the rag-tag-and-bobtail of the insect world, flourished beside the blue and purple blossoms of more pretentious claims, flirting with daintier bees and butterflies.
The mints are a family of pedigree, and with all their kith and kindred they camped in clans about field and wood. Sage, thyme, and savory have always been well spoken of for yeoman service, while rosemary and lavender are beloved of the poets.
California has both white and purple sweet wild mint, and her sage-bushes yield to the bees honey next to that made from clover for richness and whiteness. Everywhere on the trail Yermah’s companions found the Yerba Buena, which name in later years was applied to their beloved Tlamco.
There were no quartz or gravel mines in those days. The battea of the Mexican and the horn-spoon of the “forty-niner” had no place in the pack-train—for the auriferous gravel had not been thrown to the surface in great ridges, and the blue veins which are the natural beds for gold were in some instances thousands of feet below the surface.