behind the faggots.

A Californian vineyard, one of man's outposts in the wilderness,
has features of its own. There is nothing here to remind you of
the Rhine or Rhone, of the low cote d'or, or the infamous and
scabby deserts of Champagne; but all is green, solitary, covert.
We visited two of them, Mr. Schram's and Mr. M'Eckron's, sharing
the same glen.

Some way down the valley below Calistoga, we turned sharply to the
south and plunged into the thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly
mounting; a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough
perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead
and on all sides a bower of green and tangled thicket, still
fragrant and still flower-bespangled by the early season, where
thimble-berry played the part of our English hawthorn, and the
buck-eyes were putting forth their twisted horns of blossom:
through all this, we struggled toughly upwards, canted to and fro
by the roughness of the trail, and continually switched across the
face by sprays of leaf or blossom. The last is no great
inconvenience at home; but here in California it is a matter of
some moment. For in all woods and by every wayside there prospers
an abominable shrub or weed, called poison-oak, whose very
neighbourhood is venomous to some, and whose actual touch is
avoided by the most impervious.

The two houses, with their vineyards, stood each in a green niche
of its own in this steep and narrow forest dell. Though they were
so near, there was already a good difference in level; and Mr.
M'Eckron's head must be a long way under the feet of Mr. Schram.