years of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless
and sick. Without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and
got no good from that; without doubt he had loved the bottle, and
lived the life of Jack ashore. But at the end of these adventures,
here he came; and, the place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make
a new life of it, far from crimps and the salt sea. And the very
sight of his ranche had done him good. It was "the handsomest spot
in the Californy mountains." "Isn't it handsome, now?" he said.
Every penny he makes goes into that ranche to make it handsomer.
Then the climate, with the sea-breeze every afternoon in the
hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the sciatica; and his
sister and niece were now domesticated with him for company--or,
rather, the niece came only once in the two days, teaching music
the meanwhile in the valley. And then, for a last piece of luck,
"the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains" had produced a
petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest figure of
half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital when he first
came there with an axe and a sciatica.

This tardy favourite of fortune--hobbling a little, I think, as if
in memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I can remember
of the sea--thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to
escort us up the hill behind his house.

"Who first found the forest?" asked my wife.

"The first? I was that man," said he. "I was cleaning up the
pasture for my beasts, when I found THIS"--kicking a great redwood
seven feet in diameter, that lay there on its side, hollow heart,
clinging lumps of bark, all changed into gray stone, with veins of