22. CHAPTER XXII.
IT was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the
weather superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully
fascinated with the curious new country and concluded to put off
my return to "the States" awhile. I had grown well accustomed to
wearing a damaged slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants
crammed into boot-tops, and gloried in the absence of coat, vest
and braces. I felt rowdyish and "bully," (as the historian Josephus
phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the destruction of the Temple).
It seemed to me that nothing could be so fine and so romantic. I
had become an officer of the government, but that was for mere
sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I had nothing to do
and no salary. I was private Secretary to his majesty the Secretary
and there was not yet writing enough for two of us. So Johnny
K—and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of
an Ohio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had
heard a world of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe,
and finally curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four
members of the Brigade had been there and located some timber
lands on its shores and stored up a quantity of provisions in their
camp. We strapped a couple of blankets on our shoulders and took
an axe apiece and started—for we intended to take up a wood ranch
or so ourselves and become wealthy. We were on foot. The
reader will find it advantageous to go horseback. We were told
that the distance was eleven miles.
We tramped a long time on level ground, and then toiled
laboriously up a mountain about a thousand miles high and looked
over. No lake there. We descended on the other side, crossed the
valley and toiled up another mountain three or four thousand miles
high, apparently, and looked over again. No lake yet. We sat
down tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to
curse those people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we
presently resumed the march with renewed vigor and
determination. We plodded on, two or three hours longer, and at
last the Lake burst upon us—a noble sheet of blue water lifted six
thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled
in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full
three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval, and one would
have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling around
it. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly
photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the
fairest picture the whole earth affords.
We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and
without loss of time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward
the landmarks that signified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny
to row—not because I mind exertion myself, but because it makes
me sick to ride backwards when I am at work. But I steered. A
three-mile pull brought us to the camp just as the night fell, and we
stepped ashore very tired and wolfishly hungry. In a "cache"
among the rocks we found the provisions and the cooking utensils,
and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on a boulder and
superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked supper.
Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted
to rest.
It was a delicious supper—hot bread, fried bacon, and black
coffee. It was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles
away was a saw-mill and some workmen, but there were not
fifteen other human beings throughout the wide circumference of
the lake. As the darkness closed down and the stars came out and
spangled the great mirror with jewels, we smoked meditatively in
the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and our pains. In due time
we spread our blankets in the warm sand between two large
boulders and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of ants
that passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our
persons. Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had
been fairly earned, and if our consciences had any sins on them
they had to adjourn court for that night, any way. The wind rose
just as we were losing consciousness, and we were lulled to sleep
by the beating of the surf upon the shore.
It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we
had plenty of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a
muscle all night, but waked at early dawn in the original positions,
and got up at once, thoroughly refreshed, free from soreness, and
brim full of friskiness. There is no end of wholesome medicine in
such an experience. That morning we could have whipped ten
such people as we were the day before—sick ones at any rate. But
the world is slow, and people will go to "water cures" and
"movement cures" and to foreign lands for health. Three months
of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to
his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do
not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher
ones. The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing
and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?—it is the same the angels
breathe. I think that hardly any amount
of fatigue can be gathered together that a man cannot sleep off in
one night on the sand by its side. Not under a roof, but under the
sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summer time. I know a
man who went there to die. But he made a failure of it. He was a
skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had no
appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future.
Three months later he was sleeping out of doors regularly, eating
all he could hold, three times a day, and chasing game over
mountains three thousand feet high for recreation. And he was a
skeleton no longer, but weighed part of a ton. This is no fancy
sketch, but the truth. His disease was consumption. I confidently
commend his experience to other skeletons.
I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast
we got in the boat and skirted along the lake shore about three
miles and disembarked. We liked the appearance of the place, and
so we claimed some three hundred acres of it and stuck our
"notices" on a tree. It was yellow pine timber land—a dense forest
of trees a hundred feet high and from one to five feet through at
the butt. It was necessary to fence our property or we could not
hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to cut down trees here and
there and make them fall in such a way as to form a sort of
enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down three trees
apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we decided to
"rest our case" on those; if they held the property, well and good; if
they didn't, let the property spill out through the gaps and go; it
was no use to work ourselves to death merely to save a few
acres of land. Next day we came back to build a house—for a
house was also necessary, in order to hold the property. We
decided to build a substantial log-house and excite the envy of the
Brigade boys; but by the time we had cut and trimmed the first log
it seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate, and so we concluded to
build it of saplings. However, two saplings, duly cut and trimmed,
compelled recognition of the fact that a still modester architecture
would satisfy the law, and so we concluded to build a "brush"
house. We devoted the next day to this work, but we did so much
"sitting around" and discussing, that by the middle of the afternoon
we had achieved only a half-way sort of affair which one of us had
to watch while the other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we
might not be able to find it again, it had such a strong family
resemblance to the surrounding vegetation. But we were satisfied
with it.
We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and
within the protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up
our residence on our own domain and enjoy that large sense of
independence which only such an experience can bring. Late the
next afternoon, after a good long rest, we sailed away from the
Brigade camp with all the provisions and cooking utensils we
could carry off—borrow is the more accurate word—and just as the
night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing.