THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS




The scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There are,
indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. It is no
place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who
lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of
interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Californian
Coast Range, none of its near neighbours rising to one-half its
altitude. It looks down on much green, intricate country. It
feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks. From its summit
you must have an excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the
south, San Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte
Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the open
ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick tule swamps of
Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific railroad begins to
climb the sides of the Sierras; and northward, for what I know, the
white head of Shasta looking down on Oregon. Three counties, Napa
County, Lake County, and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy
shoulders. Its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred
feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the
soil, where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar.

Life in its shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks, and bears, and
rattle-snakes, and former mining operations, are the staple of
men's talk. Agriculture has only begun to mount above the valley.
And though in a few years from now the whole district may be
smiling with farms, passing trains shaking the mountain to the