Tenting Sketches [pp. 74-78]

1886.] Tenzting Sketclies. 75,
first impresses in its damp pathway. The the bar between the sea-washed and rugged
drifters watch the white sea birds sailing in cliffs, and wander in meditation about the
lone flight over the bar, and speak of the shore, while the "wild white horses" leap
mountain forest birds, dipping their gray upon the beach, and the thin waves chase
wings in the dark pools in the canons, and each other up the shining sands. Outside
of the quail whirring through the yellow val- the bar, lone rocks towering cliffward are
leys, where the young river broadens in its bathed with foaming spray, and far away,
pebbly bed. They see the graceful hop vine slowly and calmly, the white-sailed ships paglancing into the stream as it passes, and trol the deep.
the fragrant alfalfa spreading its evergreen II.
meadows over the rich lowlands.
Down by the sand barrier that holds the THE MERIAID'S BATH.
river back, floating in the deep, still waters IT is a wonderful ride up the coast from
under the cliff, lie groups and tangles of the forests and sunny slopes of Sonoma to
logs, refuse from the dusty mills above, which "Cool Navarro." You drive all the way
never cease to grasp and tear away the stately along the bold cliff-road, where the towns
pillars of the forest. But the river sweeps and settlements, lying down close to the
down to higher solitudes yet unscathed, coast, are shut in by the high mountain range
where it foams between precipitous and shad- from any other view. Many small creeks
owed banks, spraying the ferns that grow with high, wooded banks run down from the
under the rocks, and cooling the vines that steep range into the ocean. In order to
sway from tree-top to bank. cross these, you must often turn from a bold
But they who pitch their tents on the bit headland, looking out over the blue expanse,.
of mead by the willow grove need no mem- and drive down the shaded aisle of a dense
ories of the rarer handiworks of nature. redwood forest, which has covered and kept
There is all to satisfy. An island under a the white, foaming river allthe way from the
steep hill-slope lies like an emerald gem on misty mountain tops. Back somewhere in
the bright, sheeny surface of the lake-a this dark recess, there will be a bridge over
green and fertile farm guarded all about with a deep, clear pool of water, and the songsters
its high levee, and fringed by the tall reeds and game birds of the coast are fluttering up
and rushes that grow out of the water to rus- and down the sheltered defile. The wind is
tle against its banks. The tenters, rowing hushed into silence down among the great
across the water, making the hills echo their red trunks and deep shadows, but far above,
songs and laughter, pull through a saragossa the feathery tree-tops are swaying across
of river moss to land on its fair shores. And their canopy of blue. After hiding away
there they find a quaint, low-roofed cottage, thus, as if in the heart of the forest, you turn
hung with vines, damp, beaten paths, grass- on to a grade on the opposite side of the debodrd bak an row of man cooe fie an idn p udel ofotte