“Do you get much patronage here besides meals?” we asked.
“In the hunting season we do,” he replied, “It’s a famous hunting ground. We could go up on yonder mountainside and start a dozen deer in an hour.”
“You ought to have plenty of venison at your hotel,” we ventured.
“Not a bit of it,” he replied in disgust. “The game law forbids serving it for pay and you are not even allowed to have any portion of a deer’s carcase on hand longer than ten days; you can’t sell it or ship it out of the county—there isn’t much sport in killing the poor brutes under such conditions. Still, hunters come here and kill the limit of three bucks, but most of the venison goes to waste.”
When we resumed our journey our passenger, with considerable rambling talk, expressed his willingness to continue with us to San Francisco and even intimated that we might get a slice of the great fortune he had in prospect there; he evidently did not object to the car or the company and was quite willing to become a permanent member of our party. We succeeded in making him understand that we were not running a stage and that we felt we had done our share in the thirty-five-mile lift we had given him. We offered him a little financial assistance, if needed, but it was indignantly declined. He would soon have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. And so we bade him a glad farewell, with the mental resolve that we would pick up no more unknown pedestrians. We were afterwards hailed by one or two knights of the road who, no doubt, thought us stingy snobs as we sailed past them in sublime indifference—but we had had our lesson. We saw added reason for such a course when we read later in a San Francisco paper that an autoist had been held up and robbed in the mountains by two foot pads whom he had generously given a ride.
Leaving the inn, we followed the yellow road which we could see far ahead, zigzagging up the rough mountainside before us. It led to another seemingly endless climb over steep, stony grades along the edge of precipitous slopes. A short distance from the hotel we saw a doe eyeing us curiously from the chaparral a few yards from the roadside. She seemed to realize that a lady deer is safe in California, even in the hunting season, for she showed little signs of fear. Had she been legitimate game we might probably have killed her with the Colt.
The climb over a stony road—enough to try every rivet in any car—continued for several miles. On coming to the summit, we did not immediately descend, but continued for many miles, with slight ups and downs, along the crest of the Cascades—or is it the Coast Sierras?—the ranger said the point is still in dispute as to where one ceases and the other begins. It was a narrow, precarious trail that we followed, with only thin shrubbery to screen the forbidding slopes at its side—but what a magnificent and inspiring vista it opened to our delighted vision! Beneath us lay a vast, wooded canyon, thousands of feet in depth, and beyond it stretched an infinite array of pine-clad summits, seemingly without end, for the day was clear as crystal and only a thin haze hid the distance. They are building a new highway that will supersede this mountain trail and future tourists will gladly miss the thrills of the precarious road, but they will also miss much of the grandeur and beauty; to see the mountains one must climb the mountains to their very crests. We shall always be glad that we saw the wild and inspiring vistas from many of these old-time roads which will pass into disuse when the improved highway comes.
Again we angled slowly down into a vast valley and climbed two more ranges before the cool, fresh ocean air struck our faces. To tell of the beauty and charm of the scenes that presented themselves to our eyes would be continual repetition; they were much like those we had encountered ever since entering the mighty hill ranges.
We were conscious of a sudden and overpowering change when we came within a dozen miles of the destination of our day’s run. Here we entered the Del Norte redwoods and many were the exclamations of wonder excited by the majesty and loveliness of these virgin forests. Glorious individual trees, ten to twenty feet in diameter, towering two to three hundred feet above us, crowded up to the roadside, standing so thickly that it was impossible to see ahead for any considerable distance. But most wonderful was the rank—almost tropical—appearance of the undergrowth. The ground was green with velvet moss, and huge ferns with fronds several feet in length, intermingled with the metallic green of the huckleberry bushes. Many other shrubs and plants unknown to us joined to make up this marvelous tangle of greenery, the like of which we had never before seen. Occasionally we came upon a fallen tree cast down by storms of perhaps a century ago, but the dead giant had become the abode of riotous life, for every foot of his great trunk was covered with a rank growth of fern and shrub. We even saw good-sized trees springing out of these long-dead redwoods. We had seen the redwoods of Tuolumne, Santa Cruz, and Mariposa, larger trees but utterly lacking the beauty of the riotous greenery of the groves of Del Norte.
A clear, green river spanned by a high iron bridge served to enhance the charm of the scene. We paused to drink of the ice-cold waters of a little roadside waterfall and to felicitate ourselves that we had not been dissuaded from the Crescent City road. It is a rough, steep, and dangerous road, we may admit, but this glorious forest repays one a thousand times. The accumulation of leaves and pine needles deposited through the centuries had made the soil beneath the trees a deep, soft mould, and to make the road passable it had been “corduroyed” for several miles with redwood slabs, which slowed the car down to a snail’s pace. This was no hardship, however—surely one who does not expect to pass over the road again would never wish to hasten through such delightful scenery.