A few days were all that I could spend in the valleys that lie between the Sierra and the Contra Costa Range, basking in a rich sunlight, and unsurpassed in the world for climate, scenery, and soil. This single State—one of forty-five—has twice the area of Great Britain, the most fertile of known soils, and the sun and sea-breeze of Greece. Western rhapsodies are the expression of the intoxication produced by such a spectacle; but they are outdone by facts.
For mere charm to the eye, it is hard to give the palm between the cracks and canyons of the Sierra and the softer vales of the Coast Range, where the hot sun is tempered by the cool Pacific breeze, and thunder and lightning are unknown. To one coming from the wilds of the Carson Desert and of Mirage Plains, the more sensuous beauty of the lower dells has for the eye the relief that travelers from the coast must seek in the loftier heights and precipices of the Yosémite. The oak-filled valleys of the Contra Costa Range have all the pensive repose of the sheltered vales that lie between the Apennines and the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona; but California has the advantage in her skies. Italy has the blue, but not the golden haze.
Nothing can be more singular than the variety of beauty that lies hid in these Pacific slopes; all that is best in Canada and the Eastern States finds more than its equal here. The terrible grandeur of Cape Trinité on the Saguenay, and the panorama of loveliness from the terrace at Quebec, are alike outdone.
Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find scenery; but neither need they go to California, or even Colorado. Those who tell us that there is no such thing as natural beauty west of the Atlantic can scarcely know the Eastern, while they ignore the Western and Central States. The world can show few scenes more winning than Israel‘s River Valley in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or North Conway in the southern slopes of the same range. Nothing can be more full of grandeur than the passage of the James at Balcony Falls, where the river rushes through a crack in the Appalachian chain; the wilderness of Northern New York is unequaled of its kind, and there are delicious landscapes in the Adirondacks. As for river scenery, the Hudson is grander than the Rhine; the Susquehanna is lovelier than the Meuse; the Schuylkill prettier than the Seine; the Mohawk more enchanting than the Dart. Of the rivers of North Europe, the Neckar alone is not beaten in the States.
Americans admit that their scenery is fine, but pretend that it is wholly wanting in the interest that historic memories bestow. So-called republicans affect to find a charm in Bishop Hatto‘s Tower which is wanting in Irving‘s “Sunnyside;” the ten thousand virgins of Cologne live in their fancy, while Constitution Island and Fort Washington are forgotten names. Americans or Britishers, we Saxons are all alike—a wandering, discontented race; we go 4000 miles to find us Sleepy Hollow, or Kilian Van Rensselaer‘s Castle, or Hiawatha‘s great red pipe-stone quarry; and the Americans, who live in the castle, picnic yearly in the Hollow, and flood the quarry for a skating-rink, come here to England to visit Burns‘s house, or to sit in Pope‘s arm-chair.
Down South I saw clearly the truth of a thought that struck me before I had been ten minutes west of the Sierra Pass. California is Saxon only in the looks and language of the people of its towns. In Pennsylvania, you may sometimes fancy yourself in Sussex; while in New England, you seem only to be in some part of Europe that you have never happened to light upon before; in California, you are at last in a new world. The hills are weirdly peaked or flattened, the skies are new, the birds and plants are new; the atmosphere, crisp though warm, is unlike any in the world but that of South Australia. It will be strange if the Pacific coast does not produce a new school of Saxon poets—painters it has already given to the world.
Returning to Placerville, after an eventless exploration of the exquisite scenery to the south, I took the railway once again, for the first time since I had left Manhattan City—1800 miles away—and was soon in Sacramento, the State capital, now recovering slowly from the flood of 1862. Near the city I made out Oak Grove—famed for duels between well-known Californians. Here it was that General Denver, State Senator, shot Mr. Gilbert, the representative in Congress, in a duel fought with rifles. Here, too, it was that Mr. Thomas, district attorney for Placer County, killed Dr. Dickson, of the Marine Hospital, in a duel with pistols in 1854. Records of duels form a serious part of the State history. At Lone Mountain Cemetery near San Francisco, there is a great marble monument to the Hon. David Broderick, shot by Chief Justice Terry, of the Supreme Court, in 1859.
A few hours’ quiet steaming in the sunlight down the Sacramento River, past Rio Vista and Montezuma, through the gap in the Contra Costa Range, at which the grand volcanic peak of Monte Diablo stands sentinel watching over the Martinez Straits, and there opened to the south and west a vast mountain-surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate, past the fortified island of Alcatras, and spending themselves in the opposite shores of San Rafael, Benicia, and Vallejo. At last I was across the continent, and face to face with the Pacific.
CHAPTER XXI.
LYNCH LAW.
“CALIFORNIANS are called the scum of the earth, yet their great city is the best policed in the world,” said a New York friend to me, when he heard that I thought of crossing the continent to San Francisco.