BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Decorative graphic A NEW IMPRESSION WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY JOSEPH D. STRONG LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1906 “Vixerunt nonnulli in agris, delectati re sua familiari.  His idem propositum fuit quod regibus, ut ne qua re agerent, ne cui parerent, libertate uterentur: cujus proprium est sic vivere ut velis.” — Cic. , De Off. , I. xx. In the Valley : I. Calistoga 13 II. The Petrified Forest 24 III. Napa Wine 34 IV. The Scot Abroad 48 With the Children of Israel : I. To I

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 bro

It is difficult for a European to imagine Calistoga, the whole place is so new, and of such an accidental pattern; the very name, I hear, was invented at a supper-party by the man who found the springs. The railroad and the highway come up the valley about parallel to one another.  The street of Calistoga joins the perpendicular to both—a wide street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there a verandah over the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and there lounging townsfolk.  Othe

We drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in the afternoon.  The sun warmed me to the heart.  A broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, laden with perfume.  Up at the top stood Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed spurs, and radiating warmth.  Once we saw it framed in a grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line and colour a finished composition.  We passed a cow stretched by the roadside, her bell slowly beating time to the mo

I was interested in Californian wine.  Indeed, I am interested in all wines, and have been all my life, from the raisin wine that a schoolfellow kept secreted in his play-box up to my last discovery, those notable Valtellines, that once shone upon the board of Cæsar. Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch with dread the shadows falling on the age: how the unconquerable worm invades the sunny terraces of France, and Bordeaux is no more, and the Rhone a mere Arabia Petræa.  Château Neuf is dead, and I

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 som

One thing in this new country very particularly strikes a stranger, and that is the number of antiquities.  Already there have been many cycles of population succeeding each other, and passing away and leaving behind them relics.  These, standing on into changed times, strike the imagination as forcibly as any pyramid or feudal tower.  The towns, like the vineyards, are experimentally founded: they grow great and prosper by passing occasions; and when the lode comes to an end, and the miners mov

We were to leave by six precisely; that was solemnly pledged on both sides; and a messenger came to us the last thing at night, to remind us of the hour.  But it was eight before we got clear of Calistoga: Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, a friend of theirs whom we named Abramina, her little daughter, my wife, myself, and, stowed away behind us, a cluster of ship’s coffee-kettles.  These last were highly ornamental in the sheen of their bright tin, but I could invent no reason for their presence.  Our carri

Next morning we were up by half-past five, according to agreement, and it was ten by the clock before our Jew boys returned to pick us up.  Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, and Abramina, all smiling from ear to ear, and full of tales of the hospitality they had found on the other side.  It had not gone unrewarded; for I observed with interest that the ship’s kettles, all but one, had been “placed.”  Three Lake County families, at least, endowed for life with a ship’s kettle.  Come, this was no misspent Sund

There were four of us squatters—myself and my wife, the King and Queen of Silverado; Sam, the Crown Prince; and Chuchu, the Grand Duke.  Chuchu, a setter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a rough life.  He had been nurtured tenderly in the society of ladies; his heart was large and soft; he regarded the sofa-cushion as a bed-rook necessary of existence.  Though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in ladies’ laps; he never said a bad word in all his blameless days; and if he

There is quite a large race or class of people in America, for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in England.  Of pure white blood, they are unknown or unrecognizable in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically ignorant, but with a touch of wood-lore and the dexterity of the savage.  Whence they came is a moot point.  At the time of the war, they poured north in c

A change in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning.  By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to marvel how the qualities could be combined.  At an earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured, but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts in the canyon already glowed with sunlight in a w

The Toll House, standing alone by the wayside under nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-tank; its backwoods, toll-bar, and well trodden croquet ground; the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw; a glimpse of the Chinese cook in the back parts; and Mr. Hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend or borrow books;—dozed all day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep.  There were no neighbours, except the Hansons up the hill.  The traffic

In our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum.  The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick; and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a cottage on the green.  By that time we had begun to realize the difficulties of our position.  We had found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our red canyon; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts to get a China-boy

No one could live at Silverado and not be curious about the story of the mine.  We were surrounded by so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, like mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the old din and bustle haunted our repose.  Our own house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, the rails, the windlass, the mass of broken plant; the two tunnels, one far below in the green dell, the other on the platform where we kept our wine; th

I must try to convey some notion of our life, of how the days passed and what pleasure we took in them, of what there was to do and how we set about doing it, in our mountain hermitage.  The house, after we had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in some of the doors and windows with white cotton cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant dwelling-place, always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor perfumes of the glen.  Within, it had the look of habitation, the human look.  You had on