SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.
SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.
Whether in the Russian River Valley, Napa, or the smaller valleys of the Clear Lake country, St. Helena is in such friendly proximity that all sense of isolation is destroyed. Looking toward the south from its shoulder, there was an endless succession of stubblefields and vineyards; the faint clatter of threshing machines could be heard; sacks of wheat stood bolt upright in the fields, like millers in convention. A train of cars, diminished by the long perspective, was creeping with serpentine undulations up the valley, and trailing a thin vapor against the sky. Farther south was the bay; white sails of little schooners, outlined by the glass, appeared to split the salt meadows open, as they crept toward the little town of Napa. St. Helena was grandly lifted up on that autumnal morning, and all the little mountains seemed to be rendering homage to the king.
There is no country under the sun where a vineyard is more picturesque than here. If there were an interminable perspective of green clothing and coloring all the hillsides, there would be no fitting border for the picture. But when there is not a fresh blade of grass by the wayside, and the tawny hills touch the yellow stubble-fields, we have a broad golden frame for some picture which ought to be worthy of it. And what more so than a sixty-acre vineyard, set within this mitred framework of mountains? The border is a very generous one, certainly—five or six miles of slope on either side, and this square of emerald in the centre. It is all worked in with true artistic effect, except those straight lines of vines, crossing at right angles. A poet or a painter, setting this vineyard, would have curved the lines, or secured an orderly disorder—enough, at least, to have destroyed the association with a schoolboy's rule and plummet.
Observe that the vines are not tied to clumsy, stiff stakes; nor are the leaves plucked off in part, to prevent mildew. The runners reach out and interlace, resting gently on the ground. The leaves droop a little in the hot sun, making a complete canopy for the clusters, the largest of which rest on the ground. How much more fitting this growing revelation—this discovery, step by step, of hidden clusters—than to see all this wealth at once, as one might do if the vines were trained bolt upright, and held in bondage by stakes!