the whole place is
so new, and of such an Occidental pattern; the very name, I hear, was
invented at a supper-party by the man who found the springs.

The railroad and the highway come up the valley about parallel to one
another. The street of Calistoga joins them, perpendicular to both--a
wide street, with bright, clean, low houses, here and there a veranda
over the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and there lounging
townsfolk. Other streets are marked out, and most likely named; for
these towns in the New World begin with a firm resolve to grow larger,
Washington and Broadway, and then First and Second, and so forth, being
boldly plotted out as soon as the community indulges in a plan. But, in
the meanwhile, all the life and most of the houses of Calistoga are
concentrated upon that street between the railway station and the road.
I never heard it called by any name, but I will hazard a guess that it
is either Washington or Broadway. Here are the blacksmith's, the
chemist's, the general merchant's, and Kong Sam Kee, the Chinese
laundryman's; here, probably, is the office of the local paper (for the
place has a paper--they all have papers); and here certainly is one of
the hotels, Cheeseborough's, whence the daring Foss, a man dear to
legend, starts his horses for the Geysers.

It must be remembered that we are here in a land of stage-drivers and
highwaymen; a land, in that sense, like England a hundred years ago. The
highway robber--road-agent, he is quaintly called--is still busy in
these parts. The fame of Vasquez is still young. Only a few years ago,
the Lakeport stage was robbed a mile or two from Calistoga. In 1879, the
dentist of Mendocino City, fifty miles away upon the coast, suddenly
threw off the garments of his trade, like Grindoff, in _The Miller and
his Men_, and flamed forth in his second dress as a captain of banditti.
A great robbery was followed by a long chase, a chase of days if not of
weeks, among the intricate hill-country; and the chase was followed by
much desultory fighting, in which several--and the dentist, I believe,
amongst the number--bit the dust. The grass was springing for the first
time, nourished upon their blood, when I arrived in Calistoga. I am
reminded of another highwayman of that same year. "He had been unwell,"
so ran his humorous defence, "and the doctor told him to take something,
so he took the express box."

The cultus of the stage-coachman always flourishes hi