One night Wilson loaded his rifle and waited for his nightly intruder. Hearing a noise he started to follow it up.
What was that on yonder tree, which glowed with a phosphorescent light? Wilson crept nearer. There, tacked on a big tree, was a notice, “D. B. his mine. Hands off.”
A moment later the notice was gone. As he passed on he heard the water flowing through the sluice and the sound of a pick in the gravel. There stood Dick Brown. Wilson raised his rifle and fired. A yell, and the ghost of Dick Brown came flying after him as he ran down the hill.
The next morning a pick and shovel were found by the roadside bearing the initials “D. B.” cut on the handle of each. Wilson deserted the claim, but the sluice on Misery Hill ran on for many years.
CHAPTER XVII HERE AND THERE ON THE COAST.
Leaving San Francisco, a sail of twenty-five miles brings us to the grimly fortified island of Alcatraz, the watch dog of the Golden Gate.
Forty miles inland lies the beautiful Napa Valley. Farm houses and villages dot the landscape. Orchards, vineyards and fields of waving grain heighten the natural beauty of this Rasselas Valley, rich in groves of oak trees from which depend festoons of mistletoe, meadows and running brooks.
At the head of this valley stands Mount St. Helena, once a center of volcanic action. Wasnossensky, the Russian naturalist ascended to its summit in 1841, and named it in honor of his empress, leaving on the summit a copper plate bearing the name of himself and his companion.
The Russians, with a view to commercial and political aggrandisement, did a great deal of exploring in California in the early days of her history.
By stage we travel through the Napa Valley to the geyser fields. On either hand are groves of redwood trees, cousins of the Giant Sequoias. In the springtime the odor of the buckeye fills the delicious morning air, just now the handsome eschscholtzias, commonly called the California poppy, brighten the meadows. Here and there lichen stained rocks lend a deeper tone to the landscape.
Through this valley of strange wild beauty we arrive at the Devil’s Cañon. The nomenclature of this weird place is something audacious and one wishes that he might change it. Here the hero of the cañon has his kitchen, his soup bowl, his punch bowl, and his ink pot. In this spring you might dip your pen and write tales of magic that would rival those of India.