Page:A La California.djvu/274

226 the forest and mountain streams, got up a supper that a prince might envy. Did you ever roll a mountain trout in wet paper or green leaves and roast him like a potato in the hot ashes? If not, you have yet to learn the first lesson in gastronomic enjoyment. Soyer was a fool! I will match a California mountain trout so cooked against all the "made dishes" he ever produced, and trust to any jury on earth for a verdict in my favor; no, in favor of the trout, I mean. After supper, when we had made up our quarters for the night and gathered ourselves comfortably around the blazing camp-fire, the fun commenced. Few of the stories brought out on such occasions will bear the test of repetition in print. It wants the mountain air, the wild, romantic surroundings, the jolly companionship and good fellowship to give them the hearty zest which makes them so enjoyable at the moment. How quickly the "forty-niners" go back to the mining-camps and the wild scenes of those early days, and live over again the life of the pioneer gold-hunters, who poured in a torrent over the Sierra, and, in an almost incredible space of time, searched every cañon, nook and crevice of the mountains for the precious metal, tore up the soil of every hillside from Siskiyou to Fresno, marring and disfiguring the whole face of nature for all time, and then leaving their cities and villages, which had sprung up like Jonah's gourd in a single night, to fall to decay and slowly disappear from sight, and almost from memory even, scattered far and wide over the whole earth, little dreaming of the true wealth of El Dorado