[Henry Rust Mighels, Letters from Lake Bigler, from Sage Brush Leaves (1879)]

 

LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER.

 

YANK'S, LAKE BIGLER, July 10, 1877.

            MR. EDITOR : One can make the trip, even in a very hot day, from Carson to this place, and not hurt his horses or overstrain them, if he will make up his mind to make an all-day trip of it. Say you leave Carson at 9 o'clock in the morning, you will make stage time, if you don't reach the Glenbrook until 1 o'clock. By making stage time, I mean such time as Benton's stages make—about four hours. It seems to be merciless to take less time than we took with any sort of a team, ascending the grade with a buggy and two adults and a child, as we did. The ascent is very hard. The weather is very hot. Your animals must be allowed to breathe on the bridges and other level places. Of course, the time above given is absurdly long, if one has a fast-traveling team, able to trot rapidly over level stretches. But a careful driver would restrain even a free-going team, with the Clear Creek grade before them, and the thermometer in the nineties. A rest of an hour and a half at Towle's snug little restaurant, and a baiting for the beasts when they have got cooled off and out (for every judicious traveler sees that his horses are fed every time himself is

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foddered), and man and team are prepared for the fifteen or sixteen miles to this famous hostelry. The famous ride is as delightful as ever—shaded, cool, constant in its succession of surprising glimpses of the Lake, and the air all the time redolent of resinous perfumes from the pines and heavy odors from the matted masses of what goes by the general name of the chapparal. At the Cave the non-combatants of the party found temporary entertainment, scaring a brood of young hawks, just fledging in a nest in the rocks above the entrance. At that loveliest of places, (now deserted) Zephyr Cove, paterfamilias got out of the buggy to get a cup of water from the brook which babbles across the road. Scarce had he reached the level of the little stream, when he heard a tremendous floundering in the stream. He thought he had disturbed a bull-frog or possibly a mud-turtle. It proved to be a brace of trouts who were urging their painful way up toward some spawning place, above. Some exclamations from the buggy drew his attention to the fact that the venturesome fish had crossed the road and were still struggling with the riffles and petty cataracts of the stream. They were soon espied in a shallow bay, almost stranded. Then did a valorous hand pounce down on the bigger one and seize him. The contest was fierce and determined, tho' brief, on both sides. The struggle for liberty was a success ; the hand was conscious of being attached to a wet and dripping arm ; returning sanity revealed a pair of dampened feet and a much bedraggled linen duster, and life seemed a mockery and a weary pilgrim-

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age. We drove thoughtfully to Friday's Station, and while the beasts slaked their thirsts, we prospected for the towering form and ruddy face of the landlord, but the Honorable James Small, with his usual gallantry, had volunteered to act as escort to some young ladies, visiting thereabout, and was not at home. Also, we missed the coveted draught of buttermilk, it not being churning day. We wandered through the low lying meadow lands along the lake shore, constantly reminded of the stretches of salt marshes lying about the mouths of creeks and rivers which empty into the Atlantic, and here and there catching glimpses of verdure as lush as anything under tropic skies. The forest murderers are doing a dreadful havoc among the pines. Great teams and bawling ox-drivers are as busy as men who hastily construct a fort upon the imminent vantage places where the battle lines of war are drawing close, and there are evidences of hot strife on every hand.

            The stroller is painfully reminded of his ignorance of botany by coming upon the many strange flowers which grow by every path side in these mountain ways. And each little vale and every gulch seems to have its own peculiar flora. There is a wagon-road running from Yank's to the South East or upper end of that loveliest of sheets of water, Falling Leaf Lake. After it leaves the valley of Lake Bigler, it winds around under the bluff which, cast up like an earthwork on the margin of the lake by some singular freak of nature, hides its gleaming surface from the eye of the traveler, and after passing through

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some gates which stand at the entrance of Lucky Baldwin's farm, it dips down toward the Northern border of the Lake ; and all along this road are magnificent views of the water and the reflected mountain side and trees. As one rides slowly along, the luxuriance and variety of the wild flowers distract one's attention from the broader and more stately scene of peak and lakelet, and here it is that one's faulty botany becomes a self-reproach. There is a little flower which is the exact counterpart in color and general appearance of the tiger-lily. We won't venture to say that it is like it in characteristics—for that would be to presume to be botany-wise and scientifical. But it is a tiger-lily in miniature. There is a white lily-like flower, or white and black rather, which has no superior in point of loveliness of structure and delicacy of tint in any garden. And the grasses seem peculiar, as also do the vines and the mosses. As to the pines, the larches, the firs and their relatives and connections, who shall tell their number and their distinctive qualities ? . . . . . . . And now about lake breezes. This Annotator stood on the wharf at Yank's on Sunday, watching, in religious mood, the wayward ways of the wind. Truly no (newspaper) man knows whence it comes or whither it goes. One moment comes a puff from the South ; the next there is a not less decided breeze from the East ; in a twinkling there comes a catspaw from the Nor'west, in the next second the surface water seems blown in two or three directions simultaneously. We had a talk with an intelligent and lake-experienced boat-builder. He said he had seen

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the wind descend upon the surface of the lake in the corkscrew form—spirally—a regular whirlwind such as no small boat, with or without sails, could stand for a moment. And he had seen a snow squall come in from the North, describe a horseshoe and then fly off at a tangent. As to himself, he had been blown clean off from a raft he was trying to navigate with a setting-pole near the shore, and but for his qualifications as a swimmer he would have been drowned. And yet Sailor Jack, the keeper at Emerald Bay, came kiting over in his keel boat, under a balloon-reefed mainsail on Sunday afternoon, at the rate of 15 knots an hour. But Jack is a water-dog, and there's no drowning the likes o' him.

__________

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT TALLAC.

YANK'S STATION, August 3, 1877.

            EDITOR MORNING APPEAL : I mounted Happy Jack (my steed, whose withers are yet unwrung), at half-past eleven o'clock on Wednesday morning (the 1st inst.), and at half-past four o'clock P. M. I stood on the summit of Mount Tallac. This ascent being one of the duties of all conscientious Lake tourists, and it being among the possibilities that there are some of the readers of the MORNING APPEAL who never made that toilsome trip, I will briefly state some of the incidents of my journey and attempt something in the way of description of what I saw and experienced : I went

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single-handed, found the trail, unaided, spent the night on the mountain, and had the famous acclivity all to myself—sharing my lonesomeness with H. J. aforementioned. The main purpose of my journey was to make two sketches, in oil, one of an afternoon view and the other of such parts of the morning scene as I might be enabled to seize upon. Suffice it to say, in this regard, that I did make the proposed sketches, and that so far as the chief objects of my undertaking are concerned, I was as successful as a very limited artistical accomplishment would permit. In this personal relation, I will only say further, that I chose for my camping place the east bank of Gilmore Lake, a sparkling little gem of mountain water lying about twelve hundred feet below the final uprise of the peak. Here I picketed my horse, here I built my camp-fire, from hence I climbed to the mountain top in the afternoon of Wednesday and with the dawning of the morn of Thursday ; and here I took what little sleep an over-tired and somewhat nervous condition would permit. As to my rough sketches, one is from the northern extremity of the peak and the other from a point about midway above the only snow banks now left upon the northern side.

            And now as to the reward which awaits him who ascends this mountain: The view, as everybody tells you, includes a sight at a certain number of lakes. This seems to be, in the mind of the average climber, the one grand attraction and wonder. And it is true--this lake-viewing statement. One can see a dozen or more

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lakes and lakelets, and they dot the vast landscape like so many bits of crystal. All these bodies of water seem to be supplied from Tallac itself, whose south side (up which you climb), is richly covered with verdure kept alive and vigorous by innumerable springs. These lakes are all tributary to Lake Tahoe. But it seems to me that the glory of the scene is that which lies southward. This embraces Round Top, a vast mountain (much higher than Tallac), whose bare granite sides hold great fields and deep banks of snow, even at this late day, in the summer-time. This bald peak, seeming bare of all vegetation, is flanked on either side with other huge mountains, and when the setting sun casts the shadow of their peaks in great slanting belts across their darkening sides, the view is very grand. The light of the rising sun, when it first gets above the high horizon, covers these peaks with a warm mellow light which is very beautiful. Further toward the east there is what I cannot better describe than a great procession of mountains, stretching afar. This last is the most distant seeming part of the panorama, tho' it is an illusion of the rare perspective which makes it appear so ; for the outlook over Tahoe gives you a sight of the peaks of the Sierra far beyond the rim of mountains which encircle the Lake. As to this sheet of water, it lies before you like a map. The view embraces it all. Seen from the northern end of Tallac, it is exceedingly picturesque.

            To reach the top of Tallac mountain, one takes the wagon road along the margin of Falling Leaf Lake to

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Gilmore's Soda Springs. From the Springs one's way is up a trail which is all steep and rugged, and for short reaches, quite blind. The real terminus of this trail is at Lake Gilmore,—my camping place. Any safe-footed tractable saddle-horse used to mountain trails, can readily make the trip ; and it is quite feasible to ride within a few yards of the extremest summit. (I chose to make camp where I did, for, in the first place, I did not know if I could find water and grass for my horse further up,—though I found to my astonishment that the bunch-grass grows rank and lush 'way to the very summit, and that there are many springs bubbling out of the mountain side.) I discovered the fact that the pines and firs do not grow on the upper bench or uprise of the peak, but that those highest lands bear many cedars, tho' the prevailing tree is the tamarack, hackmatack or larch, as it is variously called. Does this illustrate that these last named trees are hardier than the pines or firs? Also I note that the tamarack grows upright and straight, on even the highest grounds, while the cedar is twisted and bowed as if yielding to the forceful action of the mountain tempests. As I have remarked, the bunch-grass grows very rank and in surprising abundance. I should say that this seems to be, in its limits, the finest range for cattle and horses I have ever seen on any mountains. Indeed it would be difficult to find better anywhere, for summer pasturage. (I noticed as I came down from my clambering on Thursday morning a band of Gilmore's horses and they were what the stock men call "rolling" fat.)

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            Near my camp are the ruins of two cabins and some dilapidated implements of the butter-maker—the wreck of a churn and some hopeless remains of old milk-pans. I quote as follows from some brief notes taken as I sat by my camp-fire in the gloaming of Wednesday:

ABOVE THE CABINS, DIMPLE LAKE.*

Mt. Tallac, August 5, 1877.

            Left "America" for California this day 27 years ago.

            The night wind breathes its strength thro' the trees.

            Should think " Dimple" might he spanned by a two-mile race course.

            The wild pennyroyal of California grows in great abundance here, also the pink daisy or frost flower, the wild pea and a great variety of delicate and beautiful flowers whose names are unknown to me.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

            Here's what's the matter with the Muse :

                        Yon twisted cedars tell thy tale, Tallac,

                        Of rifting storms and winds unlimited,

                        And all the force and life of the free elements,—

                        And forceful Nature in her strongest moods.

                        Your hard, black beetling brow has seen

                        For thousands upon thousands years,

                        The seasons come and go,—

                        Whitening the lesser and the taller peaks

                        Which belt you round about, and seem

________________________________________________________________________

*I named this sweet little lakelet " Dimple" before I had been told that it was named after its discoverer, Mr. Gilmore.

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                        To move in one grand far procession

                        Toward a wild and limitless Beyond.

                        And you have seen the lakes and cataracts far and near,

                        The old and all the tender trees,

                        And all the laughing brooks and swift descending avalanches,

                        And seen the granite crumble and break

                        Since the Infinite Force lifted ye up

                        Out of the peaceful land and into the warring air, etc.

            (Make the meter, oh reader, to suit yourself,—my " feet" are too tired to observe the rules of scanning.)

            This, as follows, comes nearer the gait of my halting muse:

                        Oh, merciless Tallac,

                        After many a thump and whack.

                        I'm astride your rugged back,

                        And I am blue and black,

                        And limp as any sack.

                        And yet I'm in the track

                        Of a most infernal pack,

                        Of mosquitoes who attack

                        My neck about the back,

                        And while my fire-logs crack,

                        A smoke quite thick and black

                        Puts me almost on the rack,

                        But don't "smudge" the 'skeeters back

                        From their riotous attack !

            Getting too dark to write any more, so I must take a look at Happy Jack, say my prayers, and turn in.

            It only remains to be said at the end of this long letter, that to the energy of Mr. Gilmore is due the fact that there is any sort of trail making this magnificent peak accessible. He is in all respects the pioneer of this

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region, and tourists owe much to him and his courage and enterprise. As to the wonderful Soda Springs discovered and made known by him, they have already been described in the APPEAL.

            I might relate many more incidents and observations of my trip, but what I might say will keep, and if it never gets into print, little's the matter, God knows. M.

__________

YANK'S STATION, August 8, 1877.

            EDITOR APPEAL : The air hereabout is decidedly Fallish these nights and mornings, and the days are superb. Everywhere else the air is a compound. Here it is pure—all oxygen and nitrogen—or whatever first elements the atmosphere is made of. Elsewhere it is part dust, part lint from superabundant old clothes, part particles of fever, scurvy, mumps and other ills to which flesh has fallen heir, and a good part the breath of duns, liars, book-peddlers and like afflictions and impertinences. Here there are no distillations, no exhalations, no second-hand vapors, no infinitesimals of corruption and disease. All you can do is to catch a cold in your head and wheeze like an asthmatic locomotive. And speaking of asthma, here is a gentleman close at hand who cannot manage to live in San Francisco, so much is he oppressed with his phthisic, who makes nothing of a ten-mile row in his skiff, or an all-day walk up and down hill and dale. Moreover, your " bear," here, is a genuine

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character—not a disagreeable imitation of the dog in the manger with a masquerading, fantastical, borrowed name but a shaggy, savage, cow-eating, calf-devouring, bull-defying monster. The other day a dweller at Meeks's Bay (midway between Emerald Bay and Sugar Pine Point), informed me that he had been out in the high mountains to the west, all the day before hunting grizzlies. He said that he and his companions had come upon the " sign " of Messieurs Bruin, and had seen where they had seized and squeezed and dragged to death the poor, struggling frightened heifers. "They catch a cow by the nose," said he, "and drag her off to where they and their cubs can devour her." There's something awfully tragic about this. It is little enough to say that these bear hunters came back without the game they were looking for. I don't think I ever was told before that the grizzly would attack live stock and make way with it in cannibalistic fashion. I had a notion that he was more ruminant —a sort of half-swinish root-digger and possibly honey-pirate. But he seems a thorough savage beast and as bloodthirsty as a very tiger of the jungle. There are few, if any, deer in this rim of mountains about the Lake—on the Lake-slopes I mean. Twelve or fifteen miles to the west'ard, yonder, the black-tail deer is abundant. A keen old deer-stalker told me the other day that the ridge of mountains dividing our side from the Sierra Valley marked the bounds of two distinct kinds of deer. This side it is the black-tail ; on the other, it is the " mule " deer. The mule deer is so called because of his immense ears. Also

LETTERS FROM LAKE BIGLER. 245

he differs from the black-tail in size, being much larger and heavier. Now what is the " mule " deer ? Is he at all related to the caribou of British Columbia ? There are no elk in the mountains. These frequent the foothills and valleys. At hand are many campers. The peripatetic schoolmarm is also about—likewise the smaller scientist with wisdom on his face and spectacles on his nose, he may be seen astonishing the lesser and tenderer with his learning. The glacial theory finds many expounders. It is very instructive. One set of young fellows who are having a very hearty time of it, (among them are some young gentlemen from Virginia City), tell me they caught no less than eighty dozen trout in and about Hope Valley. That is, by as much as seventy dozen, too many. At this rate of slaughter there will soon be a complete annihilation of the native mountain trout. Why not, oh sportsman, see to it that once a year, there is a thorough replenishment of all clear cold streams with spawn and young fish ? In China, or somewhere else, (China is as good a name as any other for the purpose), when a man cuts down one tree he plants the seeds for several. So, when an angler catches a dozen trouts he should take steps toward the sure planting of enough of the ova of that fish to make up for the waste. But eighty dozen, my lads ! Eighty dozen is the pot-fullest kind of pot-hunting. As well shoot a sitting grouse on her eggs or a brood of quail with her little flock. I took a trudge yesterday to Cascade Lake—I and the boys. We went by Yank's new wagon road which takes you, direct, to that lovely little

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sheet of water, in about three miles of very passable " going." Our camping neighbors swarmed there, in time and " made the waters which they beat to follow taste as amorous of their strokes ;"—and it may be said, further that as to their singing, "it beggar'd all description." I shall probably go to Emerald Bay to-morrow as Sailor Jack's guest.

__________

EMERALD BAY.

HOLLADAY COTTAGE, Emerald Bay,

Lake Tahoe, August 9, 1877.

            EDITOR APPEAL : This is as queer a world as any man ever saw with mortal vision. When, in the course of human events, a man is born and dandled, and measled and teethed, and vaccinated and mumped, and fetched up to manhood, and so on and so on—say he was brought into light and learning and morality and romance and all that, away off in Maine, by what method of an imaginative calculus or ratiocination might he, could he or would he see himself, all alone at night in such a place as I am in now, as much a solitaire (an Emerald solitaire), as Robinson Crusoe or the Man in the Moon ? I am Sailor Jack's guest—I and the boys—and Jack has gone to Yank's on some sort of business and so here am I under the shadow of these tall cliffs beside these gentle waters, mine ears greeted with the

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sound of laughing brooklets, the boys asleep in a soft bed, yonder, and the blessed dogs, Lulu and Major, nestled down for the night. I suspect that I feel something romantical, and of a sentiment-emitting turn ; but I have let myself be laughed out of it. By whom, do you suppose ? By nobody less able to do that good turn than our mutual and very welcome friend, William Makepeace Thackeray. These hermit-like cabins are rare places for the accumulation of old stockbooks. Prowling round among Jack's store of readables, I find his shelves duly stocked with these familiar, beetle black books, sent out by a lavish government, entitled Message and Documents, State Dept., 18—, also Patent Office Reports, a copy of Walker's Dictionary, Mason's tract on Self-Knowledge (religious), Fred. Law Olmstead's American Farmer in England, None's Complete Epitome of Practical Navigation, (London edition), and—a volume of Thackeray's writings, including the Shabby Genteel Story and the Professor—" Professor Dandolo." If it is funny that one should fetch up in such an odd, out of the world nook as this, how equally funny it is to meet Thackeray here and have him talk just as he has in libraries and clubs and parlors all the world around, this almost or quite half a century. I could not help contrasting my surroundings with the scenes of the Professor's first introduction to the reader—the Young Ladies' School in Hackney, London. Mark the title on the impressive brass door-plate :

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" BULGARIA HOUSE.

SEMINARY FOR YOUNG LADIES FROM THREE TO TWENTY.

By THE MISSES PIDGE.

(Please wipe your shoes.)"

            I say I could not help contrasting my snug but sequestered lodging place with this establishment where one must wipe his shoes before entering in. I have said that I suspect myself of something of a sentimental turn ; and I have acknowledged that the genial satirist has laughed it out of me. Hear him as he describes the predicament of love stricken Adeliza Grampus : " Love! Love ! how ingenious thou art ! thou canst make a ladder of a silken thread, or a weapon of a straw ; thou peerest like sunlight into a dungeon ; thou scalest, like forlorn hope, a castle wall ; the keep is taken !—the foe-man has fled !—the banner of love floats triumphantly over the corpses of the slain." I must confess that ere the briny tears of sympathy had gathered in my eyes at the reading of those touching lines, I was fortunately attracted to a note at the foot of the page which punctures the rising bubble of pathos thuswise, as follows : " We cannot explain this last passage, but it is so beautiful that the reader will pardon the omission of sense, which the author certainly could have put it in if he had liked." This is worth finding all alone under the moaning pines, ain't it ?

            I took passage this morning at Yank's wharf with Martin Silva—as thorough a boatman and as honest a man as ever found his way from the sweet Western Islands

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into the heart of this new land. We ran over in an hour or a little more and were greeted by Jack's quickly-hoisted American flag, and then by my hearty friend Jack, himself, who came down to the little wharf to meet us. Oh ! how lovely this place is by the early morning light. Oh, indeed, how lovely it is in all its nooks and paths and vistas at any and every moment. And oh ! what a dauber the cleverest painter that ever touched a brush is and always will be in the face of this gorgeous foliage, so impossible of imitation. One hears of the despair of artists. Here, in these trails, among the lovely vines and ferns and grasses ; here under speckled shadows and dancing gleams of golden sunlight ; here where the tinted earth and many-hued hillsides shame all the carpets and all the dyes and all the pigments ever made or devised, may art confess itself baffled and her votaries made humble. I don't stand even among the ranks of respectable amateurs in the painting way ; but I know what I am talking about—my feet yet damp from a trudge through these delicious paths and beneath these incomparable lights and shadows.

            But my candle gets short. It remains to be said that Sailor Jack has treated me and my bairns like a prince. Oh ! (how I do " Oh !" to-night)—Oh, what a sea-stew Jack set us down to for our four o'clock dinner. It was a chowder, such as no man but an able seaman with the holy cross tattooed in his arm can make. I never had such a splendid meal, never ! I feel like going aloft and reefing a sky scraper ! I must have eaten at least seven or eight pounds. I am the gratefullest man living !

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CAP'N DICK'S DEATH.

YANK'S STATION, El Dorado Co., Cal., August 12, 1877.

            EDITOR APPEAL : I have a notion that my last letter was dated one day ahead of its actual time of writing. I seem to have had the extra day and spent it : and as one can't have his pudding and eat it too, I suppose I must content myself with having Father Time make his own terms, whatever the consequences may be to me, unduly anticipative and hasteful. There is all the less excuse for my mistake, inasmuch as I have been making Westing and not the gainful Fasting of a far cruiser, seawards. But my logarithms got mislaid and my sextant was afoul. And yet, if any man is to be excused for tampering with the movements of the planetary system, it is the man who seeks to hold the mirror up to nature by such brief limning and coloring as he may command withal. The shades and lights of the fast-fleeting sun are all too evanescent for him who would catch the rich effects of mellowed rays and broadened, deepened and long-slanting shadows. One may, if the arrows of his wit be swift, sharp-pointed and well-aimed, " Shoot folly as it flies," and one's hands must be not less skilled and one's fingers not less nimble to impart, with even moderate success, the transient and ever-changing effects of the inexorable and never-waiting sun . . . . My last letter was dated (or antedated), at Sailor Jack's cottage, Emerald Bay. That was Thursday night. On Friday, Jack rowed me and the

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boys over to Cap'n Dick's Island and left us there to our investigations and our studies. This island rises, in its highest part, something over (or under) two hundred feet above the surface of the Bay. It is a huge granite boulder cracked and split in many places and much of its material detached, here and there, and piled up in great jagged heaps of rocks. There are many precipices, and a few hardy pines and cedars have got a foothold. Also the undeniable chaparral asserts itself wherever it can find a clinging place—and its powers of tenacity are exceeding keen. So, that, with its greys and its browns and its greens and sudden shades, this famous little island is very picturesque. It is nigh by the stony apex of this island that Cap'n Dick excavated his burial-place and erected over it the little white cross-tipped house which is seen by all voyagers who enter Emerald Bay and explore its charming recesses. The tomb is a narrow cell, just of a size to admit one coffin. The excavation is " timbered up " as the miners say ; and the lagging or roof being covered with earth, the top of the place of sepulchre is the flat earth floor of the little white house aforesaid. Cap'n Dick was a tough old mariner; and like all old sea-dogs he had an undisguised contempt for all lakes and puddles and other fresh water demonstrations and ambitious imitations of the great ocean. Thus he made his brag, like a true tar, that " this damned frog-pond, (meaning Lake Bigler), would never turn him up. But it did turn him up—or down, rather, at last ; and as to the whited sepulchral house which he so painfully made, is it not be-

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smeared as out of the black contents of a marking pot, across its roof, with the names of Abraham Heyman and Solomon Tausig, of Gold Hill, and with lesser fragmentary signs and legends of famous squatters upon poor Dick's chosen but forever-to-be-empty last resting-place ? All talk of tastefulness and the sweet proprieties are silenced in presence of these autographical enterprises of illustrious tourists. (Jack has promised me that he will obliterate these blinding impertinences with a bucket of whitewash). The story of the final catastrophe of dead and drowned Cap'n Dick may not be an uninteresting one to the readers of the MORNING APPEAL, albeit it has doubtless been told before. By reference to the British Mercantile Navy List and Annual Appendage of the Commercial Code of Signals for all nations, of 1861, edited by J. H. Brown, Registrar General of Seamen and shipping, it will be discovered that one RICHARD BARTER was granted by the Examining Board for London, in the year 1848, a certificate as First Mate in the Mercantile Marine Service of the Kingdom. This said Richard Barter was the identical Cap'n Dick whose name is so closely woven in with all the life, history and legendary lore of Emerald Bay. Sailor Jack, whose real name is John Sullivan, and who is a native of St. John, New Brunswick, says that Cap'n Dick was a Bristol man, and that time was when he took part in the romantical risks of the smuggler's trade. It was four years ago, come this next month of September, that Cap'n Dick was to be seen taking a bit of a spree at and about the Glenbrook.

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Vesey kept that hostelry then ; and it was the next morning after a ball there that Dick started in his 18-foot Whitehall boat for his home in Emerald Bay. Martin Silva and Charley Johnson, well known Lake boatmen, helped him launch his boat ; but they exacted the promise from him that he would not hoist his sail—which was what the tars call of man-o'-war's-man's rig and fashion ; for it was a squally, wind-blown morning, and lake navigation was not without its perils even to a sober, experienced mariner. But once afloat, Dick could not resist the temptation, to fly his kite ; so he made sail before he was clear of the Glenbrook Cove, but had to furl it two or three times, so unmanageable was the little craft under the fitful puffs from the wind-breeding land. When he got off the Logan Shoals, his sail was up again, and he had passed nigh to Cave Rock, and was far enough out to catch the east wind from Zephyr Cove, (whose low-lying lands make it a sort of unsalted Cape Hatteras) when a Norwegian fisherman, named Wilson, saw the sail suddenly disappear. It was then that Cap'n Dick yielded up his sixty-three years of rough and tumble to the " Frog Pond ; " and no sight of his poor old storm-beaten mortality has ever since been seen by human eyes. Some days afterward his stoven boat with its deadly sail all set, and his oars, were picked up on the shore of Rubicon Point. The oars even now may be seen in the little parlor at the Holladay House. That's how Cap'n Dick met his death. He had been capsized once before in his Esquimaux-canoe-shaped boat ; and when he got safely

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ashore, he hauled that treacherous craft high and dry, and scuttled her for a wayward wench that it wouldn't do to trust. There she lies now, with the green grass and the yarrow growing through the auger holes in her floor planks. Dick lived in his own house, just above the water level, on the Island. This house is a well-built structure of battened boards and shingled roof. It is provided with a glass door and two windows of 10 X 12 lights. On the N. E. side is a stone-chimney surmounted by a large iron smoke-stack. Inside, the house (which has but one room), is ceiled and wainscoted, in panel work throughout. I looked through the window and saw the lonely old stranded mate's not unhandsome mantle-piece and wide comfortable chimney, also his broom, his three chairs and his table. He was prepared to keep hermit's hall in no little ease and safety from the weather. Close by his cabin is a stout, low-limbed cedar. In the spreading trunks of this he had fitted a seat, rustic fashion, such as he had seen in sunny days in his green home in Merry England. So there were many tender spots under the stranded sailor's rough exterior ; and he was not all cynic or world-hater, as he often seemed. And therefore, I furthermore suggest that those marking-pot names aforementioned, on his monument, are not in the gentlest of taste. It's like plundering the dead, by non-combatants after the deadly fray. . . . . . We came back here yesterday in Jack's boat, he pulling one pair of sculls and a smart young woman from Storey county the other. Jack's dog, " Major," followed the boat along the shore of the north

LETTERS FROM LAKE B1GLER. 255

side of the bay, and when we came to the entrance, in he jumped into the water and swam across to the south headland, where Jack, being so persuaded by sympathetic pleadings, took the sagacious and faithful beast aboard. I note this little occurrence, for I like to let my readers know that I keep good company, even to the dogs of my association.