The
dust of Richebourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis
of the dust! Not man himself can seem a stranger child of that
brown, friable powder, than the blood and sun in that old flask
behind the faggots.
A Californian vineyard, one of man's outposts in the wilderness,
has features of its own. There is nothing here to remind you of
the Rhine or Rhone, of the low cote d'or, or the infamous and
scabby deserts of Champagne; but all is green, solitary, covert.
We visited two of them, Mr. Schram's and Mr. M'Eckron's, sharing
the same glen.
Some way down the valley below Calistoga, we turned sharply to the
south and plunged into the thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly
mounting; a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough
perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead
and on all sides a bower of green and tangled thicket, still
fragrant and still flower-bespangled by the early season, where
thimble-berry played the part of our English hawthorn, and the
buck-eyes were putting forth their twisted horns of blossom:
through all this, we struggled toughly upwards, canted to and fro
by the roughness of the trail, and continually switched across the
face by sprays of leaf or blossom. The last is no great
inconvenience at home; but here in California it is a matter of
some moment.
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