So local, so quintessential is a wine,
that it seems the very birds in the verandah might communicate a
flavour, and that romantic cellar influence the bottle next to be
uncorked in Pimlico, and the smile of jolly Mr. Schram might mantle
in the glass.
But these are but experiments. All things in this new land are
moving farther on: the wine-vats and the miner's blasting tools
but picket for a night, like Bedouin pavillions; and to-morrow, to
fresh woods! This stir of change and these perpetual echoes of the
moving footfall, haunt the land. Men move eternally, still chasing
Fortune; and, fortune found, still wander. As we drove back to
Calistoga, the road lay empty of mere passengers, but its green
side was dotted with the camps of travelling families: one
cumbered with a great waggonful of household stuff, settlers going
to occupy a ranche they had taken up in Mendocino, or perhaps
Tehama County; another, a party in dust coats, men and women, whom
we found camped in a grove on the roadside, all on pleasure bent,
with a Chinaman to cook for them, and who waved their hands to us
as we drove by.
CHAPTER IV--THE SCOT ABROAD
A few pages back, I wrote that a man belonged, in these days, to a
variety of countries; but the old land is still the true love, the
others are but pleasant infidelities. Scotland is indefinable; it
has no unity except upon the map.
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