aple; he showed me the
crested mountain quail; he showed me where some young redwoods were
already spiring heavenwards from the ruins of the old; for in this
district all had already perished: redwoods and redskins, the two
noblest indigenous living things, alike condemned.

At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign
upon it like an inn. "The Petrified Forest. Proprietor: C. Evans," ran
the legend. Within, on a knoll of sward, was the house of the
proprietor, and another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum,
where photographs and petrifactions were retailed. It was a pure little
isle of touristry among these solitary hills.

The proprietor was a brave old white-faced Swede. He had wandered this
way, Heaven knows how, and taken up his acres--I forget how many years
ago--all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits in his
pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, useless years of seafaring
had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick. Without doubt he
had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good from that; without
doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life of Jack ashore. But at
the end of these adventures, here he came; and, the place hitting his
fancy, down he sat to make a new life of it, far from crimps and the
salt sea. And the very sight of his ranche had done him good. It was
"the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains." "Isn't it handsome,
now?" he said. Every penny he makes goes into that ranche to make it
handsomer. Then the climate, with the sea-breeze every afternoon in the
hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the sciatica; and his sister
and niece were now domesticated with him for company--or, rather, the
niece came only once in the two days, teaching music the meanwhile in
the valley. And then, for a last piece of luck, "the handsomest spot in
the Californy mountains" had produced a petrified forest, which Mr.
Evans now shows at the modest figure of half a dollar a head, or
two-thirds of his capital when he first came there with an axe and a
sciatica.

This tardy favourite of fortune--hobbling a little, I think, as if in
memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I can remember of the
sea--thoroughly ruralised from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up
the hill behind his house.

"Who first found the forest?" asked my wife.

"The first? I was that man," said he. "I was cleaning up the pasture for
my beasts, when