Beyond this we began the ascent of Mount St. Helena, famed in Stevenson's stories of the "Silverado Squatters." Of it he wrote,
"There was something satisfactory in the sight of the great mountain enclosing us on the north; whether it stood robed in sunshine, quaking to its topmost pinnacle in the heat and lightness of the day or whether it set itself to weaving vapors, wisp after wisp, growing, trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue."
It overtops everything else in the vicinity; its great bold summit, rising to a height of forty-five hundred feet, is a cairn of quartz and cinnabar. Its slopes, now so quiet and sylvan, were alive in an early day with mining camps and villages. But the mines failed long ago and the army of miners departed, leaving deserted towns and empty houses behind them. These fell into decay and their debris has been hidden by the rank growth of young trees. On St. Helena, Stevenson and his wife spent some time in a deserted mining camp in the summer of 1880 in hopes of benefiting his health and while here he planned and partly completed the story of Silverado. There are many descriptions of the scenery and his step-daughter declares that the passage describing the morning fog rolling into the valley as seen from his camp is one of the very finest in all of Stevenson's writings.
Out of Middletown the road begins a steady ascent over rolling grades ranging up to fifteen per cent and winding through the splendid forests which so charmed the Scotch writer. Redwoods, oaks, firs, cedars and magnificent sugar pines crowd up to the roadside. Star-white dogwood blossoms stand against the foliage, the pale lavender spikes of the mountain lilac, the giant thistle with its carmine blooms, the crimson gleam of the redbud, the brilliant azalea, and, above all, the madrona, a great tree loaded with clusters of odorous pale pink blossoms. Its red trunk, gleaming beneath its glistening green foliage and gay flowers, inspired the oft-quoted fancy of Bret Harte:
"Captain of the western wood,
Thou that apest Robin Hood,
Green above thy scarlet hose
How thy velvet mantle shows.
Never tree like thee arrayed,
Oh, thou gallant of the glade."