ay along the cliffs. Sometimes the steep
hills covered with redwoods rose so abruptly from the trail that the
undergrowth brushed him as he passed; on the other side but a few
inches stood between himself and death amidst the surf pounding on the
rocks a thousand feet below. The sea-gulls screamed about his head,
the sea-lions barked with the hollow note of consumptives on the
outlying rocks. On the horizon was a bank of fog, outlined with the
crests and slopes and gulches of the mountain beside him. It sent an
advance wrack scudding gracefully across the ocean to puff among the
redwoods, capriciously clinging to some, ignoring others. Then came
the vast white mountain rushing over the roaring ocean, up the cliffs
and into the gloomy forests, blotting the lonely horseman from sight.

He arrived at his house--a big structure of logs--late in the night.
His servants came out to meet him, and in a moment a fire leaped in
the great fireplace in his library. He lived alone; his parents and
brothers were dead, and his sisters married; but the fire made the low
long room, covered with bear-skins and lined with books, as cheerful
as a bachelor could expect. He found a note from the Princess Helene
Rotscheff, the famous wife of the governor, asking him to spend the
following week at Fort Ross; but he was so tired that even the image
of Chonita was dim; the note barely caused a throb of anticipation.
After supper he flung himself on a couch before the fire and slept
until morning, then went to bed and slept until afternoon. By that
time he was himself again. He sent a vaquero ahead with his evening
clothes, and an hour or two later started for Fort Ross, spurring his
horse with a lighter heart over the cliffs. His ranchos adjoined
the Russian settlement; the journey from his house to the military
enclosure was not a long one. He soon rounded the point of a sloping
hill and entered the spreading core formed by the mountains receding
in a semicircle above the cliffs, and in whose shelter lay Fort Ross.
The fort was surrounded by a stockade of redwood beams, bastions in
the shape of hexagonal towers at diagonal corners. Cannon, mounted on
carriages, were at each of the four entrances, in the middle of the
enclosure, and in the bastions. Sentries paced the ramparts with
unremitting vigilance.

Within were the long low buildings occupied by the governor and
officers, the barracks, and the Russian church, with its belfry and
cupola.