Theodore Winthrop

“ Exertion is its own reward. The joy in the first effort over-balances the delight of sloth, and the joy in perpetual effort is clear gain. And really never an ambling palfrey, slow-footed potterer under an abbot, interfered less with his rider’s quietude than Klale, the gentle loper. We dragged ourselves from the shade and the pea-vines, and went dashing at full speed along the trail, no longer encumbered by fallen trunks and hurdles of bush and brier. ”

“ No Pacific Railroad in the Nachchese Pass, that my coup d’oeil assured me. Even the Boston hooihut, with all its boldness in the forest, here could do little. Trees of a century may be felled in an hour; crags of an aeon baffle a cycle. The Boston hooihut must worm its modest way in and out the gorge, without essaying to toss down precipices into chasms. My memory and my hasty road-book alike fail me in artistic detail to make pictures of that morning’s Via Mala. ”

“ Who can say what lurks in the heart of Loolowcan? He who persuades himself that his difficulties are fought through, is but at threshold of them. When he winds the horn of triumph, perhaps the sudden ogre will appear; then woe be to the knight, if he has taken the caps off his revolver.
Loolowcan and I were smoking our pipes of tobacco, when the tramp of hoofs was heard along the trail, and, with the late skipper of stones and a couple of soldiers, Captain McClellan rode up. In vain, through the Nachchese Cañon, had the Captain searched for a Pacific Railroad. ”

“ My couch was uneven as a rippled lake suddenly congealed. A being not molluscous, but humanly bony, and muscular over bonyness, cannot for hours beat upon pebbles unbruised. So I had a night of weary unrest. The wild rush of the river and noise of the gale ran through my turbid sleep in dreams of tramping battalions, — such as a wounded and fevered man, lying unhelped on a battle-field, might dream. ”

“ Via Mala I was now to enter the world east of the Cascades, emerging from the dense forest of the mountain-side. Pacific winds sailing inland leave most of their moisture on the western slopes of the range. Few of the cloudy battalions that sweep across the sea, and come, not like an invading horde of ravagers, but like an army of generous allies, — few of these pass over the ramparts, and pour their wealth into the landward valleys. The giant trees, fattened in their cells by plenteous draughts of water, are no longer found. The land is arid. ”

“ And soon did that goddess, kindly and faithful object of my life-long devotion, verify my trust, providing not only fodder for my cavalry, but a bower for my nooning, a breeze from above to stir the dead, hot air, and a landscape appropriate to a banquet, and not like the cruel chasms I had passed.
In a patch of luxuriant wild-pea vines my horses had refreshing change of diet, befitting the change of region. No monotony of scene or action for man or beast thus far in this journey, no stagnation of mind or body from unexciting diet. ”

“ Where it might, the trail followed the Nachchese valley, — a rough rift often, and hardly meriting the gentle name of valley. Precipices, stiff, uncrumbling precipices, are to be found there, if any one is ambitious to batter his brains. ”

“ Had Klale swerved but a little less, there would have been tragi-comedy in this farce. In place of the buckskins torn yesterday, I wore a pair of old corduroys, with scarlet cloth leggings; Destiny thought these did not need to be farther incarnadined, nor my shins, much abused along the briery trail, to be torn by any crueller thorniness of bears’ claws. There was, however, underlying too extravagant fun, this sense of escape from no fun. Nature will not allow even her grotesque creatures to be quite scoffed at. Bears may be laughable, but they are not ridiculous. ”

“ But there is a lower kind of sublimity, where the predominant effect is one merely of power, bigness, the gigantesque and cyclopean, rude force acting disorderly, and producing a hurly-burly almost grotesque. Perhaps sublimity is too noble a word to apply to these results of ill-regulated frenzy; they are grand as war, not noble as peace. Such qualities of Nature have an educational value, as legends of giants may prepare a child to comprehend histories of heroes. ”

“ I must advance toward that unknown spot where, having full confidence in Nature, I believed that a table would be spread for them in the wilderness. “Nature never did deceive the heart that loved her”; for a true lover becomes a student of his mistress’s character enough not to demand impossibilities. ”

“ To pace on an ambling mule over level greensward, like a fat papal legate travelling, in mediæval times, from refectory to refectory, — that seems as much as one would wish to do on a hot afternoon of August. ”

“ These are absent from the uninviting bed of cobble-stones by the Nachchese, and so are mosquitos, rattlesnakes, burglars, and the cry of fire. Negative advantages these. Consider also the positive good to a man, that, having been thoroughly toughened by hardness, he knows what the body of him is strong to be, to do, and to suffer. Furthermore, one after experience of a pummelling couch, like this, will sympathize sufficiently, and yet not morbidly, with the poor bedless. So I slept, or did not sleep, while the gale roared wildly all night, and was roaring still at dawn. ”

“ Civilization without its appliances is weaker than barbarism. ”

“ Mariners may cut their own hooihut over the hilly deep by the stars. Terrene travellers cannot thus independently reject history; they must humble themselves to be followers where tribes have tramped before. Even such condescension may not avail when night is master. Loolowcan, though eager as I to press on, finally perforce admitted that we lost our way in the thickets and over the gravel oftener than we found it ”