The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena, now so quiet and
sylvan, was once alive with mining camps and villages. Here there
would be two thousand souls under canvas; there one thousand or
fifteen hundred ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of comfortable
houses. But the luck had failed, the mines petered out; and the
army of miners had departed, and left this quarter of the world to
the rattlesnakes and deer and grizzlies, and to the slower but
steadier advance of husbandry.

It was with an eye on one of these deserted places, Pine Flat, on
the Geysers road, that we had come first to Calistoga. There is
something singularly enticing in the idea of going, rent-free, into
a ready-made house. And to the British merchant, sitting at home
at ease, it may appear that, with such a roof over your head and a
spring of clear water hard by, the whole problem of the squatter's
existence would be solved. Food, however, has yet to be
considered, I will go as far as most people on tinned meats; some
of the brightest moments of my life were passed over tinned mulli-
gatawney in the cabin of a sixteen-ton schooner, storm-stayed in
Portree Bay; but after suitable experiments, I pronounce
authoritatively that man cannot live by tins alone. Fresh meat
must be had on an occasion. It is true that the great Foss,
driving by along the Geysers road, wooden-faced, but glorified with
legend, might have been induced to bring us meat, but the great
Foss could hardly bring us milk. To take a cow would have involved
taking a field of grass and a milkmaid; after which it would have
been hardly worth while to pause, and we might have added to our
colony a flock of sheep and an experienced butcher.