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.
