" The road
mounts the near shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, bound northward
into Lake County. In one place it skirts along the edge of a
narrow and deep canyon, filled with trees, and I was glad, indeed,
not to be driven at this point by the dashing Foss. Kelmar, with
his unvarying smile, jogging to the motion of the trap, drove for
all the world like a good, plain, country clergyman at home; and I
profess I blessed him unawares for his timidity.
Vineyards and deep meadows, islanded and framed with thicket, gave
place more and more as we ascended to woods of oak and madrona,
dotted with enormous pines. It was these pines, as they shot above
the lower wood, that produced that pencilling of single trees I had
so often remarked from the valley. Thence, looking up and from
however far, each fir stands separate against the sky no bigger
than an eyelash; and all together lend a quaint, fringed aspect to
the hills. The oak is no baby; even the madrona, upon these spurs
of Mount Saint Helena, comes to a fine bulk and ranks with forest
trees--but the pines look down upon the rest for underwood. As
Mount Saint Helena among her foothills, so these dark giants out-
top their fellow-vegetables. Alas! if they had left the redwoods,
the pines, in turn, would have been dwarfed. But the redwoods,
fallen from their high estate, are serving as family bedsteads, or
yet more humbly as field fences, along all Napa Valley.
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