Stewart Edward White

The Mountains Stewart Edward White

Six trails lead to the main ridge. They are all good trails, so that even the casual tourist in thelittle Spanish-American town on the seacoast need have nothing to fear from the ascent. In somespots they contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop sheer away;elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more hair-raising than the last, or fill todemoralization with loose boulders and shale. A fall on the part of your horse would mean amore than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall. The major premise stands: even thecasual tourist has no real reason for fear, however scared he may become. Our favorite route to the main ridge was by a way called the Cold Spring Trail. We used toenjoy taking visitors up it, mainly because you come on the top suddenly, without warning. Thenwe collected remarks. Everybody, even the most stolid, said something. You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy and gradually ascending creek-bed of acañon, a half hour of laboring steepness in the overarching mountain lilac and laurel. There youcame to a great rock gateway which seemed the top of the world. At the gateway was a BadPlace where the ponies planted warily their little hoofs, and the visitor played "eyes front," andbesought that his mount should not stumble. Beyond the gateway a lush level cañon into which you plunged as into a bath; then again thelaboring trail, up and always up toward the blue California sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, andredwood chaparral into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the creamy yucca, and the fineangular shale of the upper regions. Beyond the apparent summit you found always other summitsyet to be climbed. And all at once, like thrusting your shoulders out of a hatchway, you lookedover the top. Then came the remarks. Some swore softly; some uttered appreciative ejaculation; someshouted aloud; some gasped; one man uttered three times the word "Oh,"-once breathlessly, Oh! once in awakening appreciation, OH! once in wild enthusiasm, OH! Then invariably theyfell silent and looked. For the ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems, cañons, little flats, and gentle ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the riverbelow.