blackberries, strawberries, and thimble-berries which grew so profusely.
And ever we caught peeps, far down, of steam schooners loading lumber in
the rocky coves; ever we skirted the cliffs, day after day, crossing
stretches of rolling farm lands and passing through thriving villages and
saw-mill towns. Memorable was our launch-trip from Mendocino City up Big
River, where the steering gears of the launches work the reverse of
anywhere else in the world; where we saw a stream of logs, of six to
twelve and fifteen feet in diameter, which filled the river bed for miles
to the obliteration of any sign of water; and where we were told of a
white or albino redwood tree. We did not see this last, so cannot vouch
for it.

All the streams were filled with trout, and more than once we saw the
side-hill salmon on the slopes. No, side-hill salmon is not a
peripatetic fish; it is a deer out of season. But the trout! At Gualala
Charmian caught her first one. Once before in my life I had caught two
. . . on angleworms. On occasion I had tried fly and spinner and never got
a strike, and I had come to believe that all this talk of fly-fishing was
just so much nature-faking. But on the Gualala River I caught trout--a
lot of them--on fly and spinners; and I was beginning to feel quite an
expert, until Nakata, fishing on bottom with a pellet of bread for bait,
caught the biggest trout of all. I now affirm there is nothing in
science nor in art. Nevertheless, since that day poles and baskets have
been added to our baggage, we tackle every stream we come to, and we no
longer are able to remember the grand total of our catch.

At Usal, many hilly and picturesque miles north of Fort Bragg, we turned
again into the interior of Mendocino, crossing the ranges and coming out
in Humboldt County on the south fork of Eel River at Garberville.
Throughout the trip, from Marin County north, we had been warned of "bad