AMERICAN writers on wild life are happier than their English
cousins, for they have a continent for a country, and without leaving their own shores can pitch their camp in the woods of the North, or on the prairies of the South and West, or explore with a pack-train any one of the long ranges of the Pacific coast. Mr. White, who in a former book took us far up into the secret waterways of Canada, now lifts his eyes to the hills and bids us follow him over the coast ranges and across the Barren Lands to the great central mountain system of Cali- fornia. Like all true lovers of the wilds, he is very much in earnest. His is no record of easy days, relieved by flamboyant descriptions of scenery and weather. He travels hard and lives bare, and if the reader is worthy of it, will tell him all he need know to guide him in similar adventures. But to be worthy the reader must, properly speaking, belong to the same totem. He must want to learn how to tie packs and shoe horses and stalk game; how to take animals over mountain passes which seem more fit for a rock-climber than a horse ; how to cook and make camp, and all the thousand-and-one devices which are the lore of the wilderness. For travel, as Mr. White knows it, is not an idyllic saunter through sunset meadows. It is a hard, rough fight with Nature, far harder than a man's proper profession, and it is only by thus getting back to the elements that one can reconstruct the delights of pioneering. You may not enjoy it at the time ; cold, wet, and weariness are not pleasure ; there are easier purgatories than to carry a pack all day through a breathless heat, or to be smothered with alkali dust, or to light your fire and unloose your snow- shoes with aching back and numbed fingers on some bitter upland, or to sleep out night after night in dripping woods till the rain seems to have soaked through to your bones. But if, remembering all this, you discount it in the retrospect, and think only of the other things—the big trout in unfished waters or the fragrant dusk among the pines—and are perpetually looking out flies and thinking of the road, then you are manifestly of the totem. And whether you have followed the trail in Labrador or Norway, or Central Africa or Kashmir, Mr. White's book will be one after your heart.
This particular trail began in the coast ranges, and led over them to the Barren Lands, and then up through the foothills to the great backbone of the Sierras. Mr. White gives much sound advice about equipment, which in these parts has its own fashions,—a coat, for example, is never worn, a buckskin waistcoat or an extra sweater taking its place ; and for mountain travel a tarpaulin is better than a tent. But the main thing is the horses, which must be as sure-footed as goats, since they have to climb up granite crags and balance themselves on narrow ledges. Their welfare must always be your first consideration. "As long as they have rest and food, you are sure of getting along ; as soon as they fail, you are reduced to difficulties. So absolute is this truth that it has passed into an idiom. When a Westerner wishes to tell you that he lacks a thing, he informs you he is 'afoot' for it." A hard life develops many subtleties of equine character, and Mr. White gives us amusing sketches of the merits and drawbacks of his outfit. The coast mountains were all brown with a curious ripe colour which meant sunburn rather than aridity, but the air was fresh and water plentiful, till the cavalcade dipped over them and came down to the Barrens. It was a weary eight days through that desert, with the thermometer as
" The Mountains. By Stewart Edward White. London : Hodder and Stoughton. [7s. Gd.3
high sometimes as one hundred and twenty in the shade. "Sir," said an old cowboy in describing the arid lands, "in this country there is more cows and less butter, more rivers and less water, and you kin see farther and see less than in any other country in the world." But gradually the path began to rise, in a pause of the heat-haze snow mountains were seen, the dry river-courses became torrents, the foot- hills were reached, and the way thereafter was among the high ridges. Incidentally Mr. White has a definition of the art of finding game which is worth repeating. It is the art, he says, of "eliminating the obvious." A skilled hunter "pays no attention to the main features His eye passes over them as unseeing as yours over the patch of brown or grey that represents his quarry. His attention stops on the unusual, just as does yours, only in his case the unusual is not the obvious. He has succeeded by long training in eliminating that ; therefore he sees deer where you do not."
Once in the mountains, you may travel for weeks in unknown places, sometimes on the snow-line, sometimes dipping into the river gorges, or crossing huge forests of pines, and except for a rare prospector you will be alone in the world. Mr. White found a canon with a noble trout stream, shut in on all sides by rock-walls, which took the horses at the easiest place seven hours to descend. There be camped for some time, with deer and fish in plenty, among green meadows and forests, and to him there appeared the Lonely Prospector, who is one of the most attractive figures in the book. He was skilled at his work, and had followed it with small result for thirty years, the prospector being the advance guard of the mining industry who clears the ground but does not reap the profits. Yet he was content ; it was not the wages he cared for, but "the mountains, and the life of his slow, deep delight and his pecking away before the open doors of fortune." He had the gift of vivid metaphor which is inseparable from his breed. " I ran onto a she-bear and cubs that way once. Didn't have nothin' but my six- shooter, and I met her within six foot.' He stopped with an air of finality. 'Well, what did you do ? ' we asked- ' Me 9' he inquired, surprised. Oh, I just leaked out of th' landscape.'" From him they heard of the golden trout, which is the romance of all Western fishermen. Later Mr. White found the spot and the fish, which is a true trout, of a bright satiny gold, living in enormous numbers, but only in the one stream. By and by in their wandering they came to the main ridge of the Sierras, and had that Pisgah view which is only to be seen from the great "divides." One day they dropped into the Yosemite Valley, filled with tourists and guides, and, scared by this irrelevant civilisation, fled with haste to the ridges again. They passed huge forests of the giant sequoia, which give material for some admirable descriptions, and they consorted on equal terms with the men of the uplands, who have the taciturnity of speech and the long-sighted eyes of dwellers in great spaces. But on the whole the book is less a record of things seen than of the manner of seeing them. Like its predecessor, The Forest, it is a guide to true wandering, where civilisation ceases to coddle, and a man has to match his wits and hardihood against Nature. To those who are of the same totem all the details of camp life, from packing mules to cooking venison, will have the interest of professional secrets. And they may be tantalised, but they will also be made grateful, by such a picture as this :— " About dusk you straggle in with trout or game. The camp- keeper lays aside his mending or his repairing or his note-book,. and stirs up the cooking-fire. The smell of broiling and frying and boiling arises in the air. By the dancing flame of the camp-fire you eat your third dinner for the day—in the mountains all meals are dinners, and formidable ones at that. The curtain of blackness draws down close. Through it shine stars, loom mountains cold and tuistlike in the moon. You tell stories. You smoke pipes. After a time the pleasant chill creeps, down from the eternal snows. Some one throws another handful of pine-cones on the fire. Sleepily you prepare for bed. The pine-cones flare up, throwing their light in your eyes. You turn. over and wrap the soft woollen blanket close about your chin. You wink drowsily and at once you are asleep. Late in the night you awaken to find your nose as cold as a dog's. You open one eye. A few coals mark where the fire has been. The mist mountains have drawn nearer, they seem to bend over you in silent contemplation. The moon is sailing high in the heavens With a sigh you draw the canvas tarpaulin over your head. In- stantly it is morning."
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