Is it any wonder that I forestalled the time, and was a day and a night distant before inquiring friends discovered my flight? Is it any wonder that the shrieking and swaying train seemed slow to me, for already my spirit had folded its swift wings in the nest-like village of Heartsease? I had, moreover, by this brilliant manoeuvre, left the bitter cup of parting untasted—but nothing more serious than this—and seemed to have won a whole day from the clutches of Time, who deals them out so stingily to the expectant and impatient watcher.
San Francisco faces the sunrise, but there is a broad glittering bay and a coast range with brawny bare shoulders between them: I sailed over the flashing water, rode under the mountains and threaded three tunnels before I began to realize that I was a fugitive from home. It was midsummer; the car-windows were half open; whiffs of warm wind blew in upon me scented with bay-leaves and sage. For a moment I forgot Heartsease and the home of my youth, and turned tenderly to take a last farewell of the beloved land of my adoption. The corn was cut and stacked in long dusty rows: it looked like a deserted camp; the grain was down; small squirrels skipped lightly over the shining stubble, whisking their bushy tails like puffs of smoke. It seemed to me that no fairer land ever baked in summer's sunshine. Even the parched earth, with its broken and powdered crust, was lovely in my eyes. Small day-owls sat in the corners of the fences, when there were any fences to sit in, and nodded to me from behind their feather masks: all the birds of the air taunted me with heads on one side and drooping wings. I might escape trusting humanity and steal away betimes, but these airy messengers waylaid me and chirped a sarcastic adieu from every field we crossed.
In the compulsory solitude of travel a man is thrown back upon himself: at any rate, I am, and with waning courage and a growing regret I sank into a corner of my seat by the window, and glowered at the interminable slices of landscape that slid past me on both sides of the rocking train. Have you ever noted the refrain of the flying wheels as they hurry from town to town? There is a sharp shriek from the locomotive, and a groan from one end of the train to the other, as if every screw were rheumatic and nothing but a miracle held it in its place. Then the song begins, very slowly at first, and in the old familiar strain: "Ko—ka—chi—lunk, ko—ka—chilunk, koka—chilunk, kokachilunk," repeated again and again, varied only when the short rails are crossed, where it adds a few extra syllables in this style: "Kokachilunk—chilunk, chilunk," growing faster and faster every moment until the utmost speed is attained: it then soars into this impressive refrain: "Lickity-cut, lickity-cut, lickity-cut, lickity-cut," repeated as often and as rapidly as possible. All the world goes by in two dizzy landscapes, yet the song is unvaried until you approach a town with a straggling and unfinished edge, where the houses are waltzing about as if they had not yet decided upon any permanent location. Here you slacken speed and drop into a third movement, as monotonous as the others and far more drowsy, for it suggests all that is soothing and nerve-relaxing and sleep-begetting. It is "Killi-kinick, killi—kinick, killi—kin—nick; eh! ah! bang!" A long groan from the wheels, a deep sigh from the locomotive, and you are stockstill at some inland hamlet that knows no emotion greater than that occasioned by your arrival.
To this dull accompaniment I climbed out of the golden lowlands, the basins of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento, into the silver mountains where the full moon was just rising. The train seemed to soar through space; we passed from cliff to cliff, above dark ravines, on bridges like spider-webs; we whirled around sharp corners as if we had started for some planet, but thought better of it and clung to earth, with our hair on end and half the breath out of our bodies. We were continually ascending; the locomotive panted hideously; every throb of the powerful machine sent a shudder through the whole length of the train.
Again and again we paused: it seemed that we could not go farther without rest. Sometimes we hung on the edge of a chasm in whose fathomless shadow were buried a forest and a stream, both of which sent upward to us a fragrant and melodious greeting; sometimes we rested under a mighty mountain, whose adamantine brow scowled upon us, and we were glad when we once more resumed the toilsome ascent of the Sierras and escaped unharmed from that giant's lair.
Once we tarried on the brink of a wild cañon. Midnight and silence seemed to slumber there: the moon flooded one half the mysterious gulf with light, revealing a slender waterfall whose plash was faintly heard: it served only to make the silence more profound. Near at hand the torn and ragged earth, robbed of its treasure, looked painful even in that softening light. On the dark side of the cañon, in among the trees, a flame danced. I saw the gaunt forms of rough-clad men gathered about the camp-fire, and beyond them a rude cabin of un-barked logs, looking cheerful enough in the rosy light.
There was nothing lovelier than this or more characteristic in the glorious ride over the Sierras—not even the lake, above whose green shores we rushed with half a mountain between us; nor the ice-gorges, nor the black forests, nor the chaos of rock and ravine that has defied the humanizing touch of time. I felt the burden of the mountains then, and it is for ever associated with a memory of the high Sierras, caught and fixed as we swept onward into the wild, wide snow-lands.
The burden of the mountains: There shall come a day when the ravine for the silver is drained and the gold-seekers turn from thee disconsolate, but thy years are unnumbered and thy strength unfailing: the grass shall cover thy nakedness and the pine-boughs brood over thee for ever and ever; the clouds shall visit thee and the springs increase; the snows shall gather in the clefts of thy bosom; thy breasts shall give nourishment, thy breath life to the fainting, and the sight of thy face joy. The people shall go up to thee and build in thy shadow; their flocks shall feed in peace: out of thy days shall come fatness, and out of thy nights rest, for thou hast that within thee more precious than silver, yea, better than much fine gold.
When the burden was past I looked out into the night. A soft wind was stirring; I scented the balsam of the piny woods; the moon had descended beyond the crest of the mountain, and above me the sky was flooded with pale and palpitating stars. We slid out of the mountains into the broad Humboldt desert one cloudless day: it was like getting on the roof of the world—the great domed roof with its eaves sloping away under the edges of heaven, and whereon there is nothing but a matting of sagebrush, looking like grayish moss, and a deep alkali dust as white and as fine as flour.
There were but two features in the landscape on which to fix the eye, and these were infrequent—the dusty beds of the dead rivers and the wind-sculptured rocks. It was the abomination of desolation: the air was thin, but spicy; the sky was bare. When we had followed with eager glance the shadow-like gazelle in his bounding flight, and brought the heavy-headed buffalo to a momentary stand, with his small evil eye fixed upon us, he wheeled suddenly and disappeared in a cloud of dust; and we were alone in the desert.