Montaria

“ In all this multitudinous forest of the Montaña, there is nothing of the gloom of the impenetrable vegetation of the fiery lowlands of the tropics. In this elevated valley vegetation assimilates to that of the temperate zones; there is never any nipping check of winter; the tree can develop its life without harsh discipline of frost, and grow without need of frantic impulse after long lethargy. Hence we are at home, and yet strangers in these woods. Our Northern comrades seem to surround us, but they have suffered promotion. ”

“ In the first place, you'll be eaten alive by black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes." He slapped vigorously as he spoke. "And you'll have the devil of a job getting canoe men. You see all the Montagnais are down here at the settlement 'making their mass.' Once a year they leave the hunting grounds up by the Divide and beyond and come down river to 'faire la messe'—it's a sacred duty with 'em. They're very religious, as you probably know—a fine lot, too, take 'em altogether, gentle, obedient, industrious, polite, cheerful, and fair to middling honest. ”

“ See, yonder is Monte Rosa; how grand he looks in the still calm air of the morning. What a gentleman a mountain is! how independent of the changeful fortunes of the plains, where grass succeeds tillage, and what is barley to-day, may be a brick-field to-morrow; but the mountain is ever the same—proud and cold if you will, but standing above all the accidents of condition, and asserting itself by qualities which are not money-getting. I’d like to live in a land of mountains, if it were not for the snobs that come to climb them. ”

“ And amidst all this turmoil, amidst all the devastating roar, which shook the earth as though bent on wrecking the very mountains themselves, amidst all the blinding, hellish light, so fierce, so intense, that the last secrets of the remotest forest depths must be yielded up, two horsemen dashed down the trail from the fur fort as fast as sharp spurs could drive their eager beasts. ”

“ In sooth we should have been in danger of pushing one another into the abyss, if they had not built between the river and the wayfarers a wall which was continued in places a German league at a stretch. The more lofty of the mountains which stood around us were wild rocks, some in solid masses, some scored and broken up by the passage of the torrents, and some of a kind of shale which let fall below innumerable fragments of astonishing size, wherefore it impressed us that it would be perilous to travel here during a tempest. ”

“ Broad sheets of vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were all there now—cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy peaks, from the sharp pyramids of Monte Viso and the Grivola in the west to the distant Bernina and the Ortler in the east. Supreme among them towered Monte Rosa—queenly, triumphant, gazing down in proud pre-eminence, as she does when seen from any point of the Italian plain. There is no mountain like her. ”

“ Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take their rise,—on the northern border of the United States, and accessible only through leagues of desert,—lie the gold fields of Montana. ”

“ The top of a mountain is like an island in the air, one is cooped up upon it unless one descends; in the case of the Monte Generoso there is the view of the lake of Lugano, the walk to the Colma, the walk along the crest of the hill by the farm, and the view over Lombardy, and that is all. If one goes far down one is haunted by the recollection that when one is tired in the evening one will have all one’s climbing to do, and, beautiful as the upper parts of the Monte Generoso are, there is little for a painter there except to study cattle, goats, and clouds. ”

“ Southward from the cluster of buildings of La Reformaa, a small mountain range is visible, the crest of which forms an extensive plateau, on which the ruins of a little ancient city lie hidden among the high forest trees. Although the monteros had found nothing of importance there, as the ruins lay within easy reach I deemed it advisable to explore them. ”

“ Utterly different, yet in its way no less sublime, is the immense panorama of big peaks as seen from Montana. Here again{174} (though perhaps, strictly speaking, you are in the Rhone valley) there is no impression of being in a valley at all, so lofty is the shelf on which Montana stands, so swiftly the ground plunges into the Rhone valley proper below. But this is no narrow cleft as at Mürren, and the hills that climb out of it on the further or southern side are miles away. But what a row of glistening giants is piled up on those hills. ”

“ THE forest of Montacute, in the north of England, is the name given to an extensive district, which in many parts offers no evidence of the propriety of its title. The land, especially during the last century, has been effectively cleared, and presents, in general, a champaign view; rich and rural, but far from picturesque. Over a wide expanse, the eye ranges on cornfields and rich hedgerows, many a sparkling spire, and many a merry windmill. ”

“ The Landes—that long, desolate tract on the western coast of France between the Gironde and the Adour, with its vast forests of melancholy pines, its lone moors and solitary deserts, its broad marshes, and its dunes of sand that creep relentlessly on as if they had life—appeal wonderfully to the imagination, that folle du logis, as Montaigne calls it, but which, in spite of him, we love to feed. ”

“ But, lo! the mists are rising, and yonder are the Alps. Now that the curtain is rent, one flashing peak bursts upon you after another. They come not in scores, but in hundreds. And now the whole chain, from the snowy dome of the Ortelles in the far-off Tyrol, to the beauteous pyramid of Monte Viso in the south-western sky, is before you in its noble sweep of many hundreds of miles, with thousands of snowy peaks, amid which, pre-eminent in glory, rises Monte Rosa. Turning to the south, you have the purple summits of the Apennines rising above the plain. ”

“ Beyond this valley-gate the eye wandered into the quivering Italian sky, imagining, if it did not see, further distances and a limitless extent of waving hills and wooded plains. On our right the ground rose in wave above wave of forest, in the recesses of which, the right track once lost, one might wander for hours without seeing any snowy landmark by which to steer a course. ”

“ Where their shadow touches, colour dies out of the world. The air grows chill and deadly as they advance. The trade-wind freshens, the trees begin to sigh, and all the windmills in Monterey are whirling and creaking and filling their cisterns with the brackish water of the sands. It takes but a little while till the invasion is complete. The sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the earth. Monterey is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, salt, and frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns ”

“ Before it was over I knew a lot more than when we started out, and had got hard as nails; riding on round-up beats a gym for putting wire muscles under a man's skin, in my opinion. We worked all around White Divide—which was turning a pale, dainty green except where the sandstone cliffs stood up in all the shades of yellow and red. Montana, as viewed on "horse round-up," looks better than in the first bleak days of March, and I could gaze upon it without profanity. I even got to like tearing over the newborn grass on a good horse, with a cowboy or two galloping, keen-faced and calm, beside me. ”

“ We passed rapidly along: the sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy, while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mont Salêve, the pleasant banks of Montalègre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc, and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it. ”

“ Just outside Monterey’s eastern gate is the world renowned Del Monte and the equally famous Del Monte grounds, where the world’s pleasure seekers gather throughout the year, and where one may wander amid the beauties of garden and grove. Here, in a natural park of unusual beauty, for whose adornment a world-wide arboreal and horticultural tribute was levied, the genius of man and a bountiful nature have conspired to produce a veritable fairyland. ”

“ Montaña (pronounced Montanya) is the name given by the Peruvians to any wooded country, “monte” being the Spanish term for a thick and tangled forest. As there is no other wooded country in Peru except to the eastward of the Andes, the term applies only to the eastern slope and the level country at the base of the mountains, stretching as far as the confines of Brazil. ”

“ The mountains lost their glassy look; blue, ice-topped, they were as full [134] of young and vivid life as when they danced about, heedless that the heaving earth purposed they should wait for centuries before settling into things of beauty for unborn man to admire. They never will look old, those mountains of Montana; man may take the treasure from their veins and the jewels from their crowns, but they drink forever the elixir of the air. ”

“ Even the dogs are polite at Monterey, and the horses, which are always grazing about, run up to you, and appear as if they would welcome you on your arrival; but the fact is, that every traveller carries a bag of salt at his saddle-bow, and by their rubbing their noses against it, it is clear that they come to beg a little salt, of which they are very fond. Every body and every animal is familiar with you, and, strange to say, the English who reside there are contented, and still more strange, the Americans are almost honest. What a beautiful climate it must be at Monterey! ”

“ What made the prospect all the more delightful was that, beyond these fertile hills, we could distinguish the rugged and inaccessible summits of the Apennines, and the torrents descending therefrom, which, when they have lost their primal impulse, come down into the valleys as gracious and gentle brooks. While traversing these hills we could see, both on the heights and down below, many fertile level fields, some of them wider than the eye could cover on account of a slight slope in the distance, the landscape being of a beauty and richness beyond the power of a painter to imitate. ”

“ We rumbled down hill and out upon the desert, plodding until evening through sand, and over rocky, cedar-wooded spurs, at last crossing adobe meadows, where were settlements and a herd of Spanish cattle which had escaped the drought of California, and now marched, northward bound, for Montana.
Frowning volcanic hills flanked our road as evening wore on, lifting dark forms against a sky singularly pale and luminous. ”

“ So we came to the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare granite slab, and looked over into Italy, as men might lean from the battlements of a fortress. Behind lies the Alpine valley, grim, declining slowly northward, with wind-lashed lakes and glaciers sprawling from storm-broken pyramids of gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths that lead to Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling vapour, but never wholly hidden from our sight. ”

“ Here is, indeed, a country for our artists to discover; they will find the color and rugged beauty of Monterey on a wilder and vaster scale. In fact, we often remarked that the whole coast from Greenwood to Crescent City, with its colorful ocean, its rugged, rock-bound shoreline, its giant forests, and a thousand other sights of beauty and grandeur, offers a field for the landscape painter such as scarcely exists elsewhere in the world. ”

“ Through this quaint desert the railway cars drew near to Monterey from the junction at Salinas City—though that and so many other things are now for ever altered—and it was from here that you had the first view of the old township lying in the sands, its white windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual wind, and the first fogs of the evening drawing drearily around it from the sea.
The one common note of all this country is the haunting presence of the ocean. A great faint sound of breakers follows you high up into the inland cañons ”

“ The women carry all the household goods when they move, and the men the weapons. They [85] have magicians, who act as priests and physicians, and these magi are the great obstacles in the way of converting the natives.
The bay of Monterey is formed by Point Año Nueva on the north, and Point Pinos on the south; it is twenty-four miles wide at its entrance, and six in length to the east; the east shore is low and sandy, and the sea runs into the beach with a tremendous noise, that may be heard three miles off. ”

“ In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured the breezy charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor.
RIDGWAY OF MONTANA.
The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics and mining industries are the religion of the country. The political contest, the love scene, and the fine character drawing give this story great strength and charm. ”