lode comes to an end, and the miners
move elsewhere, the town remains behind them, like Palmyra in the
desert. I suppose there are, in no country in the world, so many
deserted towns as here in California.

The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena, now so quiet and sylvan,
was once alive with mining camps and villages. Here there would be two
thousand souls under canvas; there one thousand or fifteen hundred
ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of comfortable houses. But the luck
had failed, the mines petered out; and the army of miners had departed,
and left this quarter of the world to the rattlesnakes and deer and
grizzlies, and to the slower but steadier advance of husbandry.

It was with an eye on one of these deserted places, Pine Flat, on the
Geysers road, that we had come first to Calistoga. There is something
singularly enticing in the idea of going, rent free, into a ready-made
house. And to the British merchant, sitting at home at ease, it may
appear that, with such a roof over your head and a spring of clear water
hard by, the whole problem of the squatter's existence would be solved.
Food, however, has yet to be considered. I will go as far as most people
on tinned meats; some of the brightest moments of my life were passed
over tinned mulligatawny in the cabin of a sixteen-ton schooner,
storm-stayed in Portree Bay; but after suitable experiments, I pronounce
authoritatively that man cannot live by tins alone. Fresh meat must be
had on an occasion. It is true that the great Foss, driving by along the
Geysers road, wooden-faced, but glorified with legend, might have been
induced to bring us meat, but the great Foss could hardly bring us milk.
To take a cow would have involved taking a field of grass and a
milkmaid; after which it would have been hardly worth while to pause,
and we might have added to our colony a flock of sheep and an
experienced butcher.

It is really very disheartening how we depend on other people in this
life. _Mihi est propositum_, as you may see by the motto, _idem quod
regibus_; and behold it cannot be carried out, unless I find a neighbour
rolling in cattle.

Now, my principal adviser in this matter was one whom I will call
Kelmar. That was not what he called himself, but as soon as I set eyes
on him, I knew it was or ought to be his name; I am sure it will be his
name among the angels. Kelmar was the store-keeper, a Russian Jew,
good-natured, in a very thriving way of busin