Life in its shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks, and bears, and
rattle-snakes, and former mining operations, are the staple of
men's talk. Agriculture has only begun to mount above the valley.
And though in a few years from now the whole district may be
smiling with farms, passing trains shaking the mountain to the
heart, many-windowed hotels lighting up the night like factories,
and a prosperous city occupying the site of sleepy Calistoga; yet
in the mean time, around the foot of that mountain the silence of
nature reigns in a great measure unbroken, and the people of hill
and valley go sauntering about their business as in the days before
the flood.
To reach Mount Saint Helena from San Francisco, the traveller has
twice to cross the bay: once by the busy Oakland Ferry, and again,
after an hour or so of the railway, from Vallejo junction to
Vallejo. Thence he takes rail once more to mount the long green
strath of Napa Valley.
In all the contractions and expansions of that inland sea, the Bay
of San Francisco, there can be few drearier scenes than the Vallejo
Ferry. Bald shores and a low, bald islet inclose the sea; through
the narrows the tide bubbles, muddy like a river. When we made the
passage (bound, although yet we knew it not, for Silverado) the
steamer jumped, and the black buoys were dancing in the jabble; the
ocean breeze blew killing chill; and, although the upper sky was
still unflecked with vapour, the sea fogs were pouring in from
seaward, over the hilltops of Marin county, in one great,
shapeless, silver cloud.
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