At present, however, a nation of little owls possesses the uncultivated acres, and ground squirrels hold the land from them on fief, paying, no doubt, in their vassalage a feudal tribute of their plump, well-nourished bodies. To right and left lies spread out an immense prairie-dog settlement, deserted now, however; and beyond it, on either side, a belt of pretty timbered land stretches to the coast range, which we see far away on the right, and to the foot-hills—the "Sewaliks" of the Sierra Nevada,—which rise up, capped and streaked with snow, on the left.
Wise men read history for us backwards from the records left by ruins. Why not do the same here with this vast City of the Prairie-Dogs that continues to right and left of us, miles after miles? Once upon a time, then, there was a powerful nation of prairie-dogs in this place, and they became, in process of years, debauched by luxury, and weakened by pride. So they placed the government in the hands of the owls, whom they invited to come and live with them, and gave over the protection of the country to the rattlesnakes, whom they maintained as janissaries. But the owls and the rattlesnakes, finding all the power in their own hands, and seeing that the prairie-dogs had grown idle and fat and careless, conspired together to overthrow their masters. Now there lived near them, but in subjection to the prairie-dogs, a race of ground-squirrels, a hard-working, thick-skinned, bushy-tailed folk; and the owls and the rattlesnakes made overtures to the ground squirrels, and one morning, when the prairie-dogs were out feeding and gambolling in the meadows, the conspirators rushed to arms, and while the rattlesnakes and the ground-squirrels, their accomplices, seized possession of the vacated city, the owls attacked the prairie-dogs with their beaks and wings. And the end of it was disaster, utter and terrible; and the prairie-dogs fled across the plains into the woodland for shelter, but did not stay there, but passed on, in one desolating exodus, to the foot-hills beyond the woodland. And then the owls and the rattlesnakes and the ground-squirrels divided the deserted city among them. And to this day the ground-squirrels pay a tribute of their young to the owls and the rattlesnakes, as the price of possession and of their protection. But they are always afraid that the prairie-dogs may come back again some day (as the Mormons are going back to Jackson County, Missouri), to claim their old homesteads; and so, whenever the ground-squirrels go out to feed and gambol in the meadows, the rattlesnakes remain at the bottom of the holes, and the owls sit on sentry duty at the top. Isn't that as good as any other conjectural history?
And then Madera, with its great canal all rafted over with floating timber, and more indications, in the eating-house, of the neighbourhood of the Big Trees and Yosemite. For this is the point of departure now in vogue, the distance being only seventy miles, and the roads good. But of the trip to Clark's, and thence on to "Yohamite" and to Fresno Grove—hereafter. Meanwhile, grateful for the good meal at Madera, we are again smoking the meditative pipe, and looking out upon Owl-land, with the birds all duly perched at their posts, and their bushy-tailed companions enjoying life immensely in family parties among the short grass. Herds of cattle are seen here and there, and wonderful their condition, too; and thus, through flat pastures all pimpled over with old, fallen-in, "dog-houses," we reach Fresno. This monotony of fertility is beginning to exasperate me. It is a trait of my personal character, this objection to monotonous prosperity. I like to see streaks of lean. Thus I begin to think of Vanderbilts as of men who have done me an injury; and unless Jay Gould recovers his ground with me, by conferring a share upon me, I shall feel called upon to take personal exception to his great wealth. And now comes Fresno, a welcome stretch of land that requires irrigation to be fruitful, a land that only gives her favours to earnest wooers, and does not, like the rest of California, smile on every vagabond admirer. Where the ground is not cultivated, it forms fine parade-ground for the owls, and rare pleasaunces for the squirrels. But what a nymph this same water is! Look at this patch of greensward all set in a bezel of bright foliage and bright with wild flowers! In mythology there is a goddess under whose feet the earth breaks into blossoms and leaves. I forget her name. But it should have been Hydore. And now, as the evening gathers round, we see the outlines of the Sierras, away on the left, blurring into twilight tints of blue and grey—and then to bed.
California is blest in the olive. It grows to perfection, and the result is that the California is no stranger to the priceless luxury of good oil, and can enjoy, at little cost, the delights of a good salad. How often, in rural England, with acres of salad material growing fresh and crisp all round me, have groaned at the impossibility of a salad, by reason of the atrocious character of the local grocer's oil! But in California all the oil is good, and the vegetable ingredients of the fascinating bowl are superb. But in America there is a fatal determination towards mayonnaise, and every common waiter considers himself capable of mixing one. So that even in California your hopes are sometimes blighted, and your good humour turned to gall, by fools rushing in where even angels should have to pass an examination before admission. A simpler salad, however, is better than any mayonnaise, and once the proportions are mastered, a child may be entrusted with the mixture.
The lettuce, by long familiarity, has come to be considered the true basis of all salad, and in its generous expanse of faintly flavoured leaf, so cool and juicy and crisp when brought in fresh from the garden, it has certainly some claims to the proud position. But a multitude of salads can be made without any lettuce at all, and it is doubtful whether either Greece or Rome used it as an ingredient of the bowl in which the austere endive and pungent onion always found a place. Now-a-days however, lettuce is a deserving favourite, It has no sympathies or antipathies, and no flavour strong enough to arouse enthusiasm or aversion. It is not aggressive or self-assertive, but, like those amiable people with whom no one ever quarrels, is always ready to be of service, no matter what company may be thrust upon it, or what treatment it has to undergo. Opinions of its own it has none, so it easily adopts those of others, and takes upon itself—and so distributes over the whole—any properties of taste or smell that may be communicated to it by its neighbours. An onion might be rubbed with lettuce for an indefinite period and betray no alteration in its original nature, but the lettuce if only touched with onion becomes at once a modified onion itself, and no ablution will remove from it the suspicion of the contact. The gentle leaf is therefore often ill-used; but, after all, even this, the meekest of vegetables, will turn upon the oppressor, and if not eaten young and fresh, or if slaughtered with a steel blade, will convert the salad that should have been short and sharp in the mouth into a basin of limp rags, that cling together in sodden lumps, and when swallowed conduce to melancholy and repentance. The antithesis of the lettuce is the onion. Both are equally essential to the perfect salad, but for most opposite reasons. The lettuce must be there to give substance to the whole, to retain the oil and salt and vinegar, to borrow fragrance and to look green and crisp. It underlies everything else, and acts as conductor to all, like consciousness in the human mind. It is the bulk of the salad so far as appearances go, and yet it alone could be turned out without affecting the flavour of the dish. It is only the canvas upon which the artist paints.
How different is the onion! It adds nothing to the amount, and contributes nothing to the sight, yet it permeates the whole; not, however, as an actual presence, but rather as a reflection, a shadow, or a suspicion. Like the sunset-red, it tinges everything it falls upon, and everywhere reveals new beauties. It is the master-mind in the mixed assembly, allowing each voice to be heard, but guiding the many utterances to one symmetrical result. It keeps a strong restraint upon itself, helping out, with a judicious hint only, those who need it, and never interfering with neighbours that can assert their own individuality. I speak, of course, of the onion as it appears in the civilized salad, and not the outrageous vegetable that the Prophet condemned and Italy cannot do without. Some pretend to have a prejudice against the onion, but as an American humourist—Dudley Warner—says, "There is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt not all men and women love the onion, but few confess it."
In simplicity lies perfection. The endive and beetroot, fresh bean, and potato, radish and mustard and cress, asparagus and celery, cabbage-hearts and parsley, tomato and cucumber, green peppers and capers, and all the other ingredients that in this salad or in that find a place are, no doubt, well enough in their way; but the greatest men of modern times have agreed in saying that, given three vegetables and a master-mind, a perfect salad may be the result. But for the making there requires to be present a miser to dole out the vinegar, a spendthrift to sluice on the oil, a sage to apportion the salt, and a maniac to stir. The household that can produce these four, and has at command a firm, stout-hearted lettuce, three delicate spring onions, and a handful of cress, need ask help from none and envy none; for in the consumption of the salad thus ambrosially resulting, all earth's cares may be for the while forgotten, and the consumer snap his fingers at the stocks, whether they go up or down. There is no need to go beyond these frugal ingredients. In Europe it is true men range hazardously far afield for their green meat. They tell us, for instance, of the fearful joy to be snatched from nettle-tops, but it is not many who care thus to rob the hairy caterpillar of his natural food; nor in eating the hawthorn buds, where the sparrows have been before us, is there such prospect of satisfaction as to make us hurry to the hedges. The dandelion, too, we are told, is a wholesome herb, and so is wild sorrel; but who among us can find the time to go wandering about the country grazing with the cattle, and playing Nebuchadnezzar among the green stuff? In the Orient the native is never at a loss for salad, for he grabs the weeds at a venture, and devours them complacently, relying upon fate to work them all up to a good end; and the Chinaman, so long as he can only boil it first, turns everything that grows into a vegetable for the table.
But it would not be safe to send a public of higher organization into the highways and ditches; for a rabid longing for vegetable food, unballasted by botanical ledge, might conduce to the consumption Of many unwholesome plants, with their concomitant insect evils. Dreadful stories are told of the results arising from the careless eating of unwashed watercress; and in country places the horrors that are said to attend the swallowing of certain herbs without a previous removal of the things that inhabit them are sufficient to deter the most ravenously inclined from taking a miscellaneous meal off the roadside, and from promiscuous grazing in hedge-rows.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Carlyle of vegetables—The moral in blight—Bee-farms—The city Of Angels—Of squashes—Curious Vegetation—The incompatibility of camels and Americans—Are rabbits "seals"?—All wilderness and no weather—An "infinite torment of flies."