this lesson of an earlier age, but profit by it and be wise."

So far Hamitchou recounted his legend without the palisades of Fort
Nisqually, and motioned, in expressive pantomime, at the close, that he
was dry with big talk, and would gladly wet his whistle.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII

A Summer in the Sierras

Our Western literary disciple, Bret Harte, is responsible for some such
statement as this, through the mouthpiece of one of his lively
mountaineers:

"Tain't no use, you ain't got good sense no more. Why, sometimes you
talk jest as if you _lived in a valley_!"

Doesn't that epitomize the contempt of the highlander for the lowlander?

A lover of the Californian Sierra reasonably would be expected to
originate such a philosophy. For while all mountains approach
perfection, existence in the California cordillera is as near Utopian as
this old earth offers. That, of course, applies only to the out-of-door
lover. For the others I dare venture no judgment; in their blindness
they love best their cities and their rabbit-warren homes, and the
logical desires of sunshine and forest are dried out of them by steam
heat and contaminated by breathing much-used oxygen.

Humans, generally speaking, have their chief habitat in the lowlands.
Compelling reasons, aside from choice, are responsible for this state of
affairs. For instance, there are not enough highlands to go around.
Then, too, valleys and plains are better adapted to the customary
occupations of the genus _homo_, especially that obsessing mania for the
accumulation of cash. But despite their habits and their environment, a
satisfactory proportion of the valley dwellers love the hill country,
and when they have mountains for neighbors revel in the opportunities
thereby afforded.

In California the lot of the lowlander is blessed beyond compare, for
the most enticing playland imaginable is at his beck, and he is offered
a scenic menu _a la carte_, so to speak, which includes about everything
the Creator devised in the way of out-of-door attractions. There is sea
beach and forest, poppy-gilded plain and snow-quilted mountain. From a
semi-tropical riviera, with the scent of orange blossoms still in his
nostrils, he may mount above the snow line in a few brief hours. One day
he bathes in the Pacific, inhaling the dank, sea-smelling fog, and the
next finds himself in the grandest forests of America, breathing the
crisp air of lofty altitudes.