Page:A La California.djvu/386

332 pick and the drill, and the loud reports of the blasts let off to disengage the rock which hid from the eager eyes of the miners boundless stores of imaginary wealth. It is all over now and silent as the grave, save when a wandering party of pleasure-seekers penetrates here, as we have done, or the hunter climbs the rocky peaks in search of deer or a stray grizzly bear, and awakes the mountain echoes with the sharp crack of his rifle. Here, at Deer Flat, a comfortable house had been erected, and the superintendent of a mine, a Mexican, had made his headquarters. A vegetable-garden, run to weeds and climbing vines, a held of volunteer barley—into which we turn our panting horses without a question—and a trellised arbor, covered with sweet peas and climbing plants in full bloom, which a woman's loving hand must have planted and trained, tell of the industry and taste of those who once made their home in this wild mountain eyrie. A drink of cold water from a running spring, with the chill taken off it by an admixture of pisco, is heartily enjoyed after the hard ride, and we are soon ready for another climb. Up a steep hillside, past tall pine trees, like those of the Sierra Nevada, along a steep, narrow "hog-back" of crumbling, shelvy stone, running through a waste of the bitter, worthless chemisal, a plant which grows only on land too barren to support anything else; then up another sharper and more stony hill, and we pass through a scrubby thicket, and suddenly emerge on the summit of the mountain.

We stand for a moment in silence, looking down