The Silverado Squatters

by Robert Louis Stevenson
THE scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There

are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline.
It is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter;

but to one who lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon
becomes a centre of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one

section of the Californian Coast Range, none of its near
neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on

much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time
many splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an

excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San
Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte

Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the
open ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick tule

swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific
railroad begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and

northward, for what I know, the white head of Shasta looking
down on Oregon. Three counties, Napa County, Lake County,

and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy shoulders. Its
naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet

above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the
soil, where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar.

Life in its shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks, and
bears, and rattle-snakes, and former mining operations, are

the staple of men's talk. Agriculture has only begun to
mount above the valley. And though in a few years from now

the whole district may be smiling with farms, passing trains
shaking the mountain to the heart, many-windowed hotels

lighting up the night like factories, and a prosperous city
occupying the site of sleepy Calistoga; yet in the mean time,

around the foot of that mountain the silence of nature reigns
in a great measureunbroken, and the people of hill and

valley go sauntering about their business as in the days
before the flood.

To reach Mount Saint Helena from San Francisco, the traveller
has twice to cross the bay: once by the busy Oakland Ferry,

and again, after an hour or so of the railway, from Vallejo
junction to Vallejo. Thence he takes rail once more to mount

the long green strath of Napa Valley.
In all the contractions and expansions of that inland sea,

the Bay of San Francisco, there can be few drearier scenes
than the Vallejo Ferry. Bald shores and a low, bald islet

inclose the sea; through the narrows the tide bubbles, muddy
like a river. When we made the passage (bound, although yet

we knew it not, for Silverado) the steamer jumped, and the
black buoys were dancing in the jabble; the ocean breeze blew

killing chill; and, although the upper sky was still
unflecked with vapour, the sea fogs were pouring in from

seaward, over the hilltops of Marin county, in one great,
shapeless, silver cloud.

South Vallejo is typical of many Californian towns. It was a
blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is

still such a young place by the scale of Europe, it has
already begun to be deserted for its neighbour and namesake,

North Vallejo. A long pier, a number of drinking saloons, a
hotel of a great size, marshy pools where the frogs keep up

their croaking, and even at high noon the entire absence of
any human face or voice - these are the marks of South

Vallejo. Yet there was a tall building beside the pier,
labelled the STAR FLOUR MILLS; and sea-going, full-rigged

ships lay close along shore, waiting for their cargo. Soon
these would be plunging round the Horn, soon the flour from

the STAR FLOUR MILLS would be landed on the wharves of
Liverpool. For that, too, is one of England's outposts;

thither, to this gaunt mill, across the Atlantic and Pacific
deeps and round about the icy Horn, this crowd of great,

three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing nothing, and
return with bread.

The Frisby House, for that was the name of the hotel, was a
place of fallen fortunes, like the town. It was now given up

to labourers, and partly ruinous. At dinner there was the
ordinary display of what is called in the west a TWO-BIT

HOUSE: the tablecloth checked red and white, the plague of
flies, the wire hencoops over the dishes, the great variety

and invariable vileness of the food and the rough coatless
men devoting it in silence. In our bedroom, the stove would

not burn, though it would smoke; and while one window would
not open, the other would not shut. There was a view on a

bit of empty road, a few dark houses, a donkey wandering with
its shadow on a slope, and a blink of sea, with a tall ship

lying anchored in the moonlight. All about that dreary inn
frogs sang their ungainly chorus.

Early the next morning we mounted the hill along a wooden
footway, bridging one marish spot after another. Here and

there, as we ascended, we passed a house embowered in white
roses. More of the bay became apparent, and soon the blue

peak of Tamalpais rose above the green level of the island
opposite. It told us we were still but a little way from the

city of the Golden Gates, already, at that hour, beginning to
awake among the sand-hills. It called to us over the waters

as with the voice of a bird. Its stately head, blue as a
sapphire on the paler azure of the sky, spoke to us of wider

outlooks and the bright Pacific. For Tamalpais stands
sentry, like a lighthouse, over the Golden Gates, between the

bay and the open ocean, and looks down indifferently on both.
Even as we saw and hailed it from Vallejo, seamen, far out at

sea, were scanning it with shaded eyes; and, as if to answer
to the thought, one of the great ships below began silently

to clothe herself with white sails, homeward bound for
England.

For some way beyond Vallejo the railway led us through bald
green pastures. On the west the rough highlands of Marin

shut off the ocean; in the midst, in long, straggling,
gleaming arms, the bay died out among the grass; there were

few trees and few enclosures; the sun shone wide over open
uplands, the displumed hills stood clear against the sky.

But by-and-by these hills began to draw nearer on either
hand, and first thicket and then wood began to clothe their

sides; and soon we were away from all signs of the sea's
neighbourhood, mounting an inland, irrigated valley. A great

variety of oaks stood, now severally, now in a becoming
grove, among the fields and vineyards. The towns were

compact, in about equal proportions, of bright, new wooden
houses and great and growing forest trees; and the chapel

bell on the engine sounded most festally that sunny Sunday,
as we drew up at one green town after another, with the

townsfolk trooping in their Sunday's best to see the
strangers, with the sun sparkling on the clean houses, and

great domes of foliage humming overhead in the breeze.
This pleasant Napa Valley is, at its north end, blockaded by

our mountain. There, at Calistoga, the railroad ceases, and
the traveller who intends faring farther, to the Geysers or

to the springs in Lake County, must cross the spurs of the
mountain by stage. Thus, Mount Saint Helena is not only a

summit, but a frontier; and, up to the time of writing, it
has stayed the progress of the iron horse.