Primitive in the extreme, the life must nevertheless have been delightful; and, given congenial companionship and the perfect climate of a Californian summer, one can imagine no more blissful experience than 'roughing it' in that sheltered cañon on the mountain side with the ravine close below, and the most marvellous stretch of earth, and sea, and sky, hill and plain, spread out like an ever-changing picture before the eyes, while to the ears there came no sound more harsh than the shrill notes of the woodland birds. There came also the noise of the rattlesnake very often, Mr Stevenson says, but they did not realise its sinister significance until almost the end of their sojourn there, when their attention was drawn to it, and certainly no evil befell them.
_Silvarado Squatters_, like _The Vailima Letters_, shows to perfection how simple and how busy, with the most primitive household details, the Stevensons often were on their wanderings, and how supremely happy people, whose tastes and habits suit each other, can be without the artificial surroundings and luxuries of society and civilisation that most folk consider well-nigh necessary to their salvation.
One of the most beautiful descriptions of nature in all Mr Stevenson's books, is that of the sea mist rising from the Pacific, and seen from above, like a vast white billowy ocean, by the squatters on their mountain ledge. Bret Harte, for whom and for whose works Mr Stevenson had a sincere admiration, also alludes graphically to the curious scenic effects of the mist rising from the Pacific. Very interesting, too, are the papers on wine and wine-growers, and the two vineyards on the mountain side; and Scotch hearts, warm even to the Scotch tramp who looked in at the door, and to the various fellow-countrymen who arrived to shake hands with Mr Stevenson because he was a Scot and like themselves, an alien from the grey skies and the clanging church bells of home.
'From the dim sheiling on the misty island Mountains divide us and a world of seas, Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland,'
'And Highland and Lowland all our hearts are Scotch.'[5]
One last notice of his prose is connected with Edinburgh, and very probably with a church charity, for to help some such sale as churches patronise he wrote _The Charity Bazaar: a Dialogue_, which was given to me by its author at 17 Heriot Row one day very long ago, and which, rather frayed and yellow, is still safely pasted in my Everyday Book with the initials 'R. L. S.' in strong black writing at the end of it.
