a ridiculous dummy, which looked not unlike an old-fashioned tavern
store on its beam-ends, with an elbow in the air. At the mill, it was
sawed into eighty thousand feet of marketable lumber.

Reaching the forest, on our way to the Mills, we found the river had
risen so that ten miles from the mouth we were obliged to climb upon the
wagon-seats, and hold our luggage above high-water mark.

At Duncan's, on the home stretch, we made our final pilgrimage, to a
wild glen over the Russian River, where, a few weeks before, the
Bohemian Club had held high jinks. The forest had been a scene of
enchantment on that midsummer night; but now the tents were struck, the
Japanese lanterns were extinguished, and nothing was left to tell the
tale but the long tables of rough deal, where we had feasted. They were
covered with leaves and dust; spiders had draped them with filmy robes.
The quail piped, the jay-bird screamed, the dove sobbed, and a slim
snake, startled at the flight of a bounding hare, glided away among the
rustling leaves. So soon does this new land recover the primeval beauty
of eternal youth.

INLAND YACHTING

When your bosom friend seizes you by the arm, and says to you in that
seductive sotto voce which implies a great deal more than is confessed,
"Come, let us go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great
waters," you generally go, if you are not previously engaged. At least,
I do.

Much has been said in disfavor of yachting in San Francisco Bay. It is
inland yachting to begin with. The shelving shores prevent the
introduction of keel boats; flat and shallow hulls, with a great breadth
of beam, something able to battle with "lumpy" seas and carry plenty of
sail in rough weather, is the more practical and popular type. Atlantic
yachts, when they arrive in California waters, have their rigging cut
down one-third. Schooners and sloops with Bermudian mutton-leg sails
flourish. A modification of the English yawl is in vogue; but large
sloops are not handled conveniently in the strong currents, the chop
seas, the blustering winds, the summer fogs that make the harbor one of
the most treacherous of haunts for yachtsmen.

Think of a race when the wind is blowing from twenty-five to
thirty-five miles an hour! The surface current at the Golden Gate runs
six miles per hour and the tide-rip is often troublesome; but there is
ample room for sport, and very wild sport at times. The total area of
the bay