It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the
weather superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully
fascinated with the curious new country and concluded to put off
my return to “the States” awhile. I had grown well accustomed to
wearing a damaged slouch hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants
crammed into boot-tops, and gloried in the absence of coat, vest
and braces. I felt rowdyish and “bully,” (as the historian
Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the destruction of
the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be so fine and so
romantic. I had become an officer of the government, but that was
for mere sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I had
nothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to his
majesty the Secretary and there was not yet writing enough for
two of us. So Johnny K——and I devoted our time to amusement.
He was the young son of an Ohio nabob and was out there for
recreation. He got it. We had heard a world of talk about the
marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally curiosity drove us
thither to see it. Three or four members of the Brigade had been
there and located some timber lands on its shores and stored up a
quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a couple of
blankets on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started—for
we intended to take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become
wealthy. We were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to
go horseback. We were told that the distance was eleven miles. We
tramped a long time on level ground, and then toiled laboriously
up a mountain about a thousand miles high and looked over. No
lake there. We descended on the other side, crossed the valley
and toiled up another mountain three or four thousand miles high,
apparently, and looked over again. No lake yet. We sat down tired
and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to curse those
people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presently resumed
the march with renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on,
two or three hours longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us—a
noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet
above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad
mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher
still! It was a vast oval, and one would have to use up eighty or
a hundred good miles in traveling around it. As it lay there with
the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its
still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the
whole earth affords.
We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and
without loss of time set out across a deep bend of the lake
toward the landmarks that signified the locality of the camp. I
got Johnny to row—not because I mind exertion myself, but
because it makes me sick to ride backwards when I am at work. But
I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the camp just as the
night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and wolfishly
hungry. In a “cache” among the rocks we found the provisions and
the cooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down
on a boulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and
cooked supper. Many a man who had gone through what I had, would
have wanted to rest.
It was a delicious supper—hot bread, fried bacon, and black
coffee. It was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles
away was a saw-mill and some workmen, but there were not fifteen
other human beings throughout the wide circumference of the lake.
As the darkness closed down and the stars came out and spangled
the great mirror with jewels, we smoked meditatively in the
solemn hush and forgot our troubles and our pains. In due time we
spread our blankets in the warm sand between two large boulders
and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of ants that
passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our persons.
Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had been
fairly earned, and if our consciences had any sins on them they
had to adjourn court for that night, any way. The wind rose just
as we were losing consciousness, and we were lulled to sleep by
the beating of the surf upon the shore.
It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we
had plenty of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a
muscle all night, but waked at early dawn in the original
positions, and got up at once, thoroughly refreshed, free from
soreness, and brim full of friskiness. There is no end of
wholesome medicine in such an experience. That morning we could
have whipped ten such people as we were the day before—sick
ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go to
“water cures” and “movement cures” and to foreign lands for
health. Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an
Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite
like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies,
of course, but the fresher ones. The air up there in the clouds
is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t
it be?—it is the same the angels breathe. I think that hardly
any amount of fatigue can be gathered together that a man cannot
sleep off in one night on the sand by its side. Not under a roof,
but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summer
time. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure
of it. He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He
had no appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on
the future. Three months later he was sleeping out of doors
regularly, eating all he could hold, three times a day, and
chasing game over mountains three thousand feet high for
recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, but weighed part of
a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His disease was
consumption. I confidently commend his experience to other
skeletons.
I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast
we got in the boat and skirted along the lake shore about three
miles and disembarked. We liked the appearance of the place, and
so we claimed some three hundred acres of it and stuck our
“notices” on a tree. It was yellow pine timber land—a dense
forest of trees a hundred feet high and from one to five feet
through at the butt. It was necessary to fence our property or we
could not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to cut down
trees here and there and make them fall in such a way as to form
a sort of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down
three trees apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we
decided to “rest our case” on those; if they held the property,
well and good; if they didn’t, let the property spill out through
the gaps and go; it was no use to work ourselves to death merely
to save a few acres of land. Next day we came back to build a
house—for a house was also necessary, in order to hold the
property.
We decided to build a substantial log-house and excite
the envy of the Brigade boys; but by the time we had cut and
trimmed the first log it seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate,
and so we concluded to build it of saplings. However, two
saplings, duly cut and trimmed, compelled recognition of the fact
that a still modester architecture would satisfy the law, and so
we concluded to build a “brush” house. We devoted the next day to
this work, but we did so much “sitting around” and discussing,
that by the middle of the afternoon we had achieved only a
half-way sort of affair which one of us had to watch while the
other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be
able to find it again, it had such a strong family resemblance to
the surrounding vegetation. But we were satisfied with it.
We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within
the protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our
residence on our own domain and enjoy that large sense of
independence which only such an experience can bring. Late the
next afternoon, after a good long rest, we sailed away from the
Brigade camp with all the provisions and cooking utensils we
could carry off—borrow is the more accurate word—and just as
the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing.
