Pleasant Valley

“ Some of our boys, whose stock was nearly worn out, concluded that they would join the three wagons and take more time to get through. This move reduced our little company of packers to six men and ten animals. In the morning we bade them all goodby (some of them for the last time) , swung into our saddles, and moved on.
After crossing the divide we entered Pleasant Valley, which, with its level floor, abundant grass, and willow-fringed stream of cool water, was very appropriately named. As our provisions were now getting short, I was on the lookout for game of any sort that would furnish food. ”

“ The date of our start from Pleasant Valley I cannot now recall, further than that it was between the 25th of June and the 1st of July. We made slow progress, for the road was very rough. About six of us rode ahead, and looked out and marked the route. We would go ahead half the day, and then return to meet the train, often finding them camped, the men working the road, cutting the timber, rolling rock, and digging dugways, or mending wagons. Sometimes we had to lay over a day or two to make the road passable. ”

“ The farmhouses in the valley are mostly of stone. It is a most charming and beautiful place, and appropriately called 'Pleasant Valley.' The farmers are prosperous; and the land so rich that it sells for the high price of seventy and eighty dollars an acre. ”

“ They eat cold food and preserve a solemn demeanor on that day, and they have the pretty legend that at midnight the elders bloom and the beasts of the field and the cattle in the barn kneel, lowing and moaning. The sun was just rising and the day was mild, for a curious warm spell, not uncommon in the hills, had come to Happy Valley. Already singing little workers were “toting rocks” from St. Hilda's garden, corn-field, and vineyard, for it was Monday, and every Monday they gathered—boys and girls—from creek and hillside, to help her as volunteers. ”

“ From Panguitch to Orderville, fifty miles, the scenery opens with the dreary hills that had become so miserably familiar, alternating with level pasture-lands, among which the serpentine Sevier winds a curiously fantastic course. But gradually there grows upon the mind a sense of coming change. Verdure creeps over the plains, and vegetation steals on to the hill-sides, and then suddenly as if for a surprise, the complete beauty of Long Valley bursts upon the traveller. ”

“ You can wander in this happy, aimless fashion all about Green Valley, go in and out its deep-rooted old homes, stroll through its tree-guarded old streets, and at every turn taste romance and adventure, revel in beauty of some sort. ”

“ The hills by the great Valley River are a quiet country, sodded deep, with here and there an open grove like those in which the dreamers wandered with a garland of meadowsweet, or the fauns piped when the world was young. Through them, now and then, a little stream goes laughing, fringed with bulrushes and beds of calamus and fragrant mint, a narrow stream that runs chuckling through the stiff sod and spreads dimpling over the road on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a dodging sprite of the wood who laughs suddenly in some sunlit corner. ”

“ Happy Valley is surrounded by mountains whose sloping sides are thickly clothed with vegetation; the trees, although of a stunted species, are thickly interlaced with undergrowth and an innumerable variety of evergreen bushes, through which murmur many mountain springs, that become in the rainy months swollen into torrents. ”

“ The valley is not so pleasantly defined as between Peebles and Clovenford, yet so soft and beautiful, and in many parts pastoral, but that peculiar and pensive simplicity which I have spoken of before was wanting, yet there was a fertility chequered with wildness which to many travellers would be more than a compensation. The reaches of the vale were shorter, the turnings more rapid, the banks often clothed with wood. In one place was a lofty scar, at another a green promontory, a small hill skirted by the river, the hill above irregular and green, and scattered over with trees. ”

“ The smell of cedar came from the open door, and all was as fresh and clean as the breath of the forest from which everything came—a home that had been the girl's lifelong dream. The Goddess of Happy Valley had her own little temple at last.
On the open-air sleeping-porch they sat that night alone.
“I'm going to help raise some money for that Mission down there,” said Doctor Jim. “I don't know where any more good is being done, and I don't know any people who are more worth being helped than—your people.” ”

“ Night and day, and through wind and storm, she had travelled the hills, healing the sick.
“O Lawd... hyeh's another who meddles with thy servant and profanes thy day.”
The Courtship of Allaphair
Preaching at the open-air meeting-house was just over and the citizens of Happy Valley were pouring out of the benched enclosure within living walls of rhododendron. Men, women, children, babes in arms mounted horse or mule or strolled in family groups homeward up or down the dusty road. Youths and maids paired off, dallying behind. Emerged last one rich, dark, buxom girl alone. ”

“ Surprise Valley was no terminal, but a place for tongue-lolling, wild-eyed cattle to pause and rest, drink and eat before the fearful journey called anew. No need for corral, fence, or herders here to keep them from straying, but an urgent need for pressing riders to throw the herd back [192] on the trail again, to start the dumbly protesting animals on the thirty-six-hour drive to the next unfailing water, against the instinct which bade them stay. A valley of delight it was, a jewel, verdant and peaceful, forced by man to serve a vicious purpose ”

“ We were now nearly level with the Half Dome (our elevation was seven thousand one hundred feet) , below us the beautiful valley with its winding river, bright meadows and stately forests. Horses staked out on the meadow looked like dogs; people, like ants. The Yosemite, Vernal, Nevada and Illilouette Falls, Mirror Lake, the roaring cascades above, the Happy Isles, all the peaks of the upper end of the Valley, and mountains for miles and miles beyond, snowcapped and storm-swept, were in plain sight.
After an appetizing lunch at the hotel, we took the short trail for the valley. ”

“ As the sun leans down to the horizon, the driver draws taut his reins before Surprise Valley Hotel. Surprise Valley ends the coach journey—ends the direct mail service—ends the bush parson's endeavors—ends the travelling school-master's rounds—ends civilization—ends everything. When humour so inclines them—which is seldom—the people of Surprise Valley may walk from their doorways into the great unknown of the West.
Fortune has given to Surprise the greenest fold of the western ranges. Easy hills stand up about the camp, tracing a zig-zag rim against the sky. ”

“ The last and surest sign of spring's arrival in Green Valley is gossip. The mornings may be ever so full of meadow larks, the woods moistly sweet and carpeted with spring's frail and dainty blossoms, but no one dreams of letting the furnace go out or their base burner get cold until they see Fanny Foster flitting about town at all hours of the day and behold the array of shiny armchairs standing so invitingly in front of Uncle Tony's hardware store. ”

“ That those of different faiths should consent to place their dead together in this lovely tropical valley is enough to give it the name of Happy Valley, if its beauty did not do as much. In my estimation it rivals in beauty the public gardens, and visitors use it as a park. ”

“ But men like the Colonel and Joshua Stillman and the Reverend Alexander Campbell are representatives of Green Valley's leisure class. They give Green Valley its high peace, its aristocratic flavor. But they are a little remote from the town's workday life, being given to dreams and memories and scholarly pursuits. They know little of the doings and talks that go on in Billy Evans' livery barn, or the hotel. They do, of course, go to the barber shop, the bank and the postoffice, and always when abroad give courteous greeting to every townsman. ”

“ For Green Valley is a joyous, sweetly human old town to those who love and understand it.
Take an early spring day when the winter's wreck and rust and deadness seem to be everywhere. Yet here in the Green Valley roads and streets little warm winds are straying, looking for tulip beds and spring borders. The sunshine that elsewhere looks thin and pale drops warmly here into back yards and ripples ever so brightly up and down Rabbit's Hill, where the hedges are turning green and David Allan is plowing. ”

“ This Valley is on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas, and is a narrow gorge about 10 miles long and half a mile in width, enclosed within gigantic granite precipices like monstrous walls, which rise, almost unbroken and perpendicular, to a height of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the green, quiet vale beneath. Its most remarkable features are its perpendicular walls, and their great height, as compared with the narrow width of the Valley. In the spring and early summer it is one vast flower garden, and plants, shrubs, and flowers, of every hue, cover the ground as with a carpet. ”

“ After leaving the Fort we generally kept on the ridge between the Canadian and the North Fork, crossing sometimes the tributary brooks of the one and sometimes those of the others. Having travelled in this manner for about eighty miles, we entered one of the most charming prairie vales that I have ever beheld, and which in the plenitude of our enthusiasm, we named 'Spring Valley,' on account of the numerous spring-fed rills and gurgling rivulets that greeted the sight in every direction ”

“ The foreground also changes every few rods in the most surprising manner, although the earthquake talus and the level bench on the face of the wall over which the trail passes seem monotonous and commonplace as seen from the bottom of the Valley. Up we climb with glad exhilaration, through shaggy fringes of laurel, ceanothus, glossy-leaved manzanita and live-oak, from shadow to shadow across bars and patches of sunshine, the leafy openings making charming frames for the Valley pictures beheld through gem, and for the glimpses of the high peaks that appear in the distance. ”

“ The inhabitants of Green Valley were mostly farmers, who, besides "owing no man any thing," had each a comfortable dwelling and ample outhouses of his own, nothing better than his neighbors, but equaling theirs in the well-to-do look of the fences, the garden and door-yard. ”

“ But I've seen days here in Green Valley that just about melt all the meanness out of one, they're so fine; and moonlight so soft and pure and holy that you wouldn't mind dying in it. And Green Valley folks are ornery enough on top and when things are going smoothly for you. But just let there be a smash-up or a stroke of bad luck and their shells crack and humanness just oozes out of them. They're about as decent a lot as you'll find anywhere. ”

“ Happy Valley is the name of another beautiful place in the Summer-land, where children live. As its name implies, it is a valley; for great green hills surround and hedge it in, and it lies like a bright and sparkling jewel within the sweet embrace of those wooded heights which may be seen from its every point of view. The hills around the valley are covered with groves of shady trees, the green foliage of which gives a restful, cool, and inviting sight to the eye that gazes upon them. ”

“ I've sat here as the hills were glowing in the changing evening lights and our valley grew dark and cold. What a fair country that must be where the sun sets! And we stay here in our dim light, in our dull monotones, when, to the westward, there's a land all capped with clouds of red and gold. There is Tip's Valley of Peace. John Shadrack's widow may not be a celestial being, but that is my sunset country. ”

“ The Bridal Veil From the margin of these glorious forests the first general view of the Valley used to be gained — a revelation in landscape affairs that enriches one’s life forever. Entering the Valley, gazing overwhelmed with the multitude of grand objects about us, perhaps the first to fix our attention will be the Bridal Veil, a beautiful waterfall on our right. Its brow, where it first leaps free from the cliff, is about 900 feet above us; and as it sways and sings in the wind, clad in gauzy, sun-sifted spray, half falling, half floating, it seems infinitely gentle and fine ”

“ Great changes have taken place in the Sun river valley since “Stranger” made that trip. A few have left for other parts; many are still on the old camping ground that was then almost a barren desert, but now highly cultivated and decorated with trees and shrubs as beautiful as many of the eastern homes. The old freighter, the man at the gate, the good mother at the milk ranch and one of the school girls, and my old friend, Mr. H., have left what was then a new settlement, and have crossed the great divide and settled in the “New Jerusalem,” where all good people go and live forever. ”

“ The fact that, though so widely built over, Valley Fields has not altogether lost its ancient air of rusticity is due entirely to the zeal and devotion of its amateur horticulturists. More seeds are sold each spring in Valley Fields, more lawn mowers pushed, more garden rollers borrowed, more snails destroyed, more green fly squirted with patent mixtures, than in any other suburb on the Surrey side of the river. Brixton may have its Bon Marché and Sydenham its Crystal Palace; but when it comes to pansies, roses, tulips, hollyhocks and nasturtiums, Valley Fields points with pride. ”