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The Silverado Squatters-Part3_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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the tangled wildwood. Stout, smiling Mrs. Schram, who has



been to Europe and apparently all about the States for

pleasure, entertained Fanny in the verandah, while I was



tasting wines in the cellar. To Mr. Schram this was a solemn

office; his serious gusto warmed my heart; prosperity had not



yet wholly banished a certain neophite and girlish

trepidation, and he followed every sip and read my face with



proud anxiety. I tasted all. I tasted every variety and

shade of Schramberger, red and white Schramberger, Burgundy



Schramberger, Schramberger Hock, Schramberger Golden

Chasselas, the latter with a notablebouquet, and I fear to



think how many more. Much of it goes to London - most, I

think; and Mr. Schram has a great notion of the English



taste.

In this wild spot, I did not feel the sacredness of ancient



cultivation. It was still raw, it was no Marathon, and no

Johannisberg; yet the stirringsunlight, and the growing



vines, and the vats and bottles in the cavern, made a

pleasant music for the mind. Here, also, earth's cream was



being skimmed and garnered; and the London customers can

taste, such as it is, the tang of the earth in this green



valley. So local, so quintessential is a wine, that it seems

the very birds in the verandah might communicate a flavour,



and that romanticcellar influence the bottle next to be

uncorked in Pimlico, and the smile of jolly Mr. Schram might



mantle in the glass.

But these are but experiments. All things in this new land



are moving farther on: the wine-vats and the miner's

blasting tools but picket for a night, like Bedouin



pavillions; and to-morrow, to fresh woods! This stir of

change and these perpetual echoes of the moving footfall,



haunt the land. Men move eternally, still chasing Fortune;

and, fortune found, still wander. As we drove back to



Calistoga, the road lay empty of mere passengers, but its

green side was dotted with the camps of travelling families:



one cumbered with a great waggonful of household stuff,

settlers going to occupy a ranche they had taken up in



Mendocino, or perhaps Tehama County; another, a party in dust

coats, men and women, whom we found camped in a grove on the



roadside, all on pleasure bent, with a Chinaman to cook for

them, and who waved their hands to us as we drove by.



CHAPTER IV - THE SCOT ABROAD

A FEW pages back, I wrote that a man belonged, in these days,



to a variety of countries; but the old land is still the true

love, the others are but pleasant infidelities. Scotland is



indefinable; it has no unity except upon the map. Two

languages, many dialects, innumerable forms of piety, and



countless local patriotisms and prejudices, part us among

ourselves more widely than the extreme east and west of that



great continent of America. When I am at home, I feel a man

from Glasgow to be something like a rival, a man from Barra



to be more than half a foreigner. Yet let us meet in some

far country, and, whether we hail from the braes of Manor or



the braes of Mar, some ready-made affection joins us on the

instant. It is not race. Look at us. One is Norse, one



Celtic, and another Saxon. It is not community of tongue.

We have it not among ourselves; and we have it almost to



perfection, with English, or Irish, or American. It is no

tie of faith, for we detest each other's errors. And yet



somewhere, deep down in the heart of each one of us,

something yearns for the old land, and the old kindly people.



Of all mysteries of the human heart, this is perhaps the most

inscrutable. There is no special loveliness in that gray



country, with its rainy, sea-beat archipelago; its fields of

dark mountains; its unsightly places, black with coal; its



treeless, sour, unfriendly looking corn-lands; its quaint,

gray, castled city, where the bells clash of a Sunday, and



the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and beat. I do

not even know if I desire to live there; but let me hear, in






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