ldt. Its plan and architecture
were the acme of simplicity. There were three rooms tandem, each with a
door in the exact middle, so that if all the doors were open a bullet
would be unimpeded in passing through. To add to the social atmosphere,
a front porch, open at both ends, extended across the whole front. A
horseman could, and in fact often did, ride across it. My brother and I
occupied a chamber over the post-office, and he became adept in going to
sleep on the parlor sofa every night and later going to bed in the store
without waking, dodging all obstructing objects and undressing while
sound asleep.

We were quite comfortable in this joke of a house. But we had no pump;
all the water we used I brought from a spring in the edge of the woods,
the one found by the Gregg party on the night of Christmas, 1849. The
first time I visited it and dipped my bucket in the sunken barrel that
protected it I had a shock. Before leaving San Francisco, being a
sentimental youth and knowing little of what Humboldt offered, I bought
two pots of fragrant flowers--heliotrope and a musk-plant--bringing them
on the steamer with no little difficulty. As I dipped into the barrel I
noticed that it was surrounded by a solid mass of musk-plants growing
wild. The misapprehension was at least no greater than that which
prompted some full-grown man to ship a zinc house to the one spot in the
world where the most readily splitting lumber was plentiful.

One of the sights shown to the newcomer was a two-story house built
before the era of the sawmill. It was built of split lumber from a
single redwood tree--and enough remained to fence the lot! Within a
stone's throw from the musk-plant spring was a standing redwood, with
its heart burned out, in which thirteen men had slept one night, just to
boast of it. Later, in my time, a shingle-maker had occupied the tree
all one winter, both as a residence and as a shop where he made shingles
for the trade.

We had a very pleasant home and were comfortable and happy. We had a
horse, cows, rabbits, and pigeons. Our garden furnished berries and
vegetables in plenty. The Indians sold fish, and I provided at first
rabbits and then ducks and geese. One delicious addition to our table
was novel to us. As a part of the redwood's undergrowth was a tall bush
that in its season yielded a luscious and enormous berry called the
salmon-berry. It was much like a raspberry, generally salmon in color,
very juicy and