The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 Part 3

The servants all had mustaches and hair curled with tongs. I saw the eyebrows of my party go up at an angle when the servants offered them Johannesburg in gold cups, and still higher up when they saw the mustached waiters pouring white wine in gla.s.ses which were previously filled with red wine and alternated indiscriminately.

We were taken up-stairs to see Mrs. S.'s bedroom. It was worthy of an empress, having point-lace coverlids, satin down quilts trimmed with real Valenciennes.

What struck me the most in all this splendor was that so much money should have been expended in furnishing a perishable wooden palace which any tuppenny earthquake or fire could demolish in a moment.

Another thing I noticed was that, though everything else was so handsome and costly, the gla.s.s and porcelain were of the most ordinary kind.

We enjoyed ourselves immensely and compared notes when we reached the hotel. Barring our individual millionaire, we hardly spoke to the others. We were simply insignificant meteors pa.s.sing hastily in their midst.

Well, we went to the Senator's country place. A carriage with four horses was waiting for us at the station, and we drove up in fine style to the millionaire's mansion, where some Irish servants with baggy trousers, tumbled cravats, and no gloves opened wide the doors, ushering us into a large hall, where a gentleman whom we guessed was our host came forward to greet us.

We were glad that we were going at last to make his acquaintance. He is a millionaire and a Senator. That is all I can say about him at present, except that he is extremely hospitable. He did not know one of us from the other, except Ka.s.son. He knew we were a "distinguished party" because the papers said so. When we were being dealt out to our rooms there was great confusion. Senator Sharon had an ancient _dame de compagnie_--the head priestess--who made it a particular point to dispose of Miss Clymer before any of the rest of us. She said, "Which of these gents is your husband?" At which Miss C. blushed and found no other answer than, "_None_." J. and I finally secured the same room, because when Mr. S. in a moment of despair said, with an all-comprehensive wave of his hand, "Gentlemen, please take your wives," J. and I paired off. The Senator did not notice this little detail, for when dinner was announced he said to J., "Will you please take that young lady in to dinner?" pointing to me. Johan explained in which relation he stood to the young lady. The Senator was not in the least surprised, and merely answered: "Is that so? Well, then, take some one else."

A semi-millionaire took me in. He told me all his early life of poverty and threw in various reminiscences. I never knew the like of millionaires for telling you of their former miseries. They always do!

When the ancient dame saw Mr. Ka.s.son and me talking after dinner, she said to us with a kittenish smile, "Husbands and wives mustn't talk together." Hopeless! We did not even try to explain. The evening was forlorn. There were many dreary drawing-rooms, horribly furnished, but brilliantly lighted. A brawling musical box was supposed to enliven us.

We talked in that desultory way that one does with people whom you meet for the first time and never want to meet again. Some of the millionaires hovered among us, but failed to impress us either with their past or present fortunes. Oh, joy! Bedtime came at last.

_May 17th._

I have just had time to scribble these few words before the post comes for my letter.

We have been driving about, admiring landscapes, one another, every one else, millionaires! Everything that money can do to spoil Nature has been done here, but Nature will have her own way in the end; and in spite of the millionaires' millions and the incongruity of everything, we cannot but admire this beautiful and wonderful country.

Before our departure the Senator actually knew us one from the other.

He said to me, struggling with my names, "Well, Mrs. _Lindermann Hegercrone_, I am very sorry you are going."

We started on visit No. 2--this time to Mr. Lathrop's beautiful place in Menlo Park. The grounds are perfectly laid out. Flowers of all kinds arranged in parterres, cl.u.s.ters of trees such as I had never seen before, roses as big as sunflowers, and the beautiful sparkling lake in front of the window and the blue mountains in the distance, made the place a perfect paradise. The stables were extra fine, the floor and ceiling being inlaid in two kinds of wood found only in California. The room where the bridles were kept had such beautiful polished panels that they shone like mirrors. There must have been harnesses for twelve horses hanging on the walls. Mr. L. gave me a box made of the thirty different kinds of wood found in California.

The following day we drove with four horses to Mr. Rathbone's, who also has a gorgeous place. His picture-gallery is worthy of a Rothschild.

We left San Francisco for Los Angeles; the directors of the road put everything at our disposition as usual. We had a _salon_, bed, and dressing-rooms in one car, and Miss Cadwalader and Miss Clymer had similar ones in another. There were kitchen, dining and reading rooms for the whole party, which had now grown to be sixteen in number, Senator Conover and his wife and some officers going with General Taylor to Fort Yuma having joined us.

We went to Santa Monica, which is the fashionable watering-place of these parts. Here we drove on the beach, which is thirty miles long. A gentleman of Los Angeles was attached to our party and showed us the sights. We saw all kinds of ranches--orange, grape, and bee ranches.

Then we drove to a Mexican settlement, where they gave us a gorgeous dinner, really worthy of more time than we could give it, for we had to leave at five o'clock for Los Angeles, where we dined again.

The next day we started off on another tour. We drove through twenty-five miles of banana, pineapple, pomegranate groves and vineyards. We tasted all the wines and fruit-syrups, and drank native port and champagne. We had a special train and arrived at Merced the next morning, to start on our Yosemite Valley tour.

_May 20th._

Just our luck! The first rain for four months pours down to-day. We drove, nevertheless, from 7 A.M. until 6 P.M. (only stopping for our meals), over barren, sandy, and desolate country. We saw whole flocks of sheep dead and dying by thousands from want of care and drought. We (seven and the driver) were packed away in an open three-seated wagon with four horses, and drove over the dreariest road one can imagine. We pa.s.sed continually places where the ground was all upturned, evidently either worked-out or abandoned gold-diggings. It was very pathetic when one thought of the work, time, and hopes wasted there. At twelve o'clock we reached Hunter's (the name of the hotel), and then we drove over more dismal plains still to a hotel called Clark's. It must originally have been a lovely place, but now it is spoiled by the gold-diggings. Here we stayed all night in a very rough kind of tavern.

During the night we heard the howls of wolves and jackals very near the hotel, which was not pleasant. We started at five o'clock the next morning in a big, open _char-a-bancs_, and went through the most beautiful forest. The trees are all from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high, and from six to seven feet in diameter; hardly any smaller trees among them. And such wonderful ferns! And the ice-plants!

This has a brilliant red stalk and flowers coming from under the snow.

We were so high up that there was snow on the ground all about us. The trees are perfectly beautiful. The mansanilla, the branches of which are like red coral, and the leaves the lightest of greens, the California laurel, and many others of which I do not know the names, were too beautiful. The white pine has cones one and a half feet long.

We drove up for four hours through the forest, until we reached the height of five thousand feet. Here was a magnificent view, as you may imagine. Then we began going down. That was something dreadful! The driver, with his six horses, drove at a diabolical rate, one foot on the brake, the other planted against the dashboard to keep his balance, holding a tremendously long whip in one hand and the six reins in the other. I shut my eyes and said my prayers. I cannot find words to describe my emotion when I saw the precipice on one side and the mountain on the other, especially when we came to a sharp corner and looked in front, when we actually seemed to be going into s.p.a.ce.

We arrived exhausted at the Yosemite Valley, where the feeling of repose at being on flat ground and driving through those green pastures surrounded by the six-thousand-feet-high mountains was delicious. We found the hotel large, comfortable, with a good many other visitors.

The _table d'hote_ dinner was well attended. Outside the hotel we spied an Indian lurking about. They told us that he was the last of the Yosemite tribe; he boasted that he had never spoken to a white man. I am sure no white man would ever care to speak to such an uncouth-looking tramp as he was, dressed in ragged clothes and wearing shabby boots, playing hide-and-seek in the most undignified manner, and utterly unworthy of the traditional Cooper Indian.

J. had time to put in a little fishing. The last of the Yosemites dodged behind the trees, watching him and probably envying him the lone minnow which was brought back in triumph.

The next morning we mounted horses and donkeys and rode up to Cloud's Rest to see the glorious view over the whole Yosemite range. Our horses picked their way most carefully over the stones and water puddles. J.

had a donkey who pretended that he was weak in all his four legs. When he went up the mountain his fore legs stumbled at every moment, inviting J. to get off and lead him, and when he came down the mountain his back legs gave way and he sat down, so that J. could not help getting off. The result was that J. had to lead him both up and down and could have dispensed with his services entirely.

The Bride's Veil falls six thousand feet in a straight fall, becoming only a tiny spray and a fine mist before it reaches the rocks at the bottom.

Bright and early the next morning we drove to see Mirror Lake, which was really like a mirror. The air was deliciously fresh and fragrant with spring flowers. We bought some photographs and turned them upside down. The lake and mountains were so mirrored that you could not see which was top or bottom.

The next day being Sunday, we thought we would stay quietly in Yosemite Valley, enjoying the rest and beauty of our surroundings. The hotel was good, and the place was enticing. Here it was that the funniest thing happened we had yet encountered. A deputation of one knocked at our door at an early hour this morning. We had just finished a plain Sunday breakfast of hash, fried potatoes, corn cakes, griddle-cakes, and syrup fresh from the white-pine trees. But I am digressing, and the man is still knocking at our door. J. opened it and let him in. With many hums and haws he said that he had been sent to ask J. if he would read the prayers and preach a sermon in the drawing-room of the hotel, "its being Sunday and you being a minister."

J. was a little aghast, not exactly understanding, while I was shaking with laughter at the other end of the room, and would not have interfered for worlds for fear of losing a word of the dialogue.

"I read the gospel!" cried J.

"Yes, sir. You're a minister, ain't yer?"

"Well, yes, I am, but not the kind you mean."

The little man said, condescendingly: "We are not particular as to sect. Whether you're a _Baptist_ or _Methodist_, it makes no difference as long as you will preach."

J. had difficulty in explaining in his best English that preaching was not a specialty of his. He did not add that all he did in that line was to administer occasionally a mild _savon_ which he kept only for family use when we washed our linen at home.

The abashed amba.s.sador left us, shaking his head, and evidently wondering why a minister, whether from Denmark or Lapland, couldn't preach, any more than a doctor who was a doctor couldn't practise.

You may be sure that this episode gave us plenty to laugh about to last all that beautiful day in the valley of Yosemite.

We stopped there altogether three days, and were lost in admiration and wonder at the beauty of everything. The greatest wonder the gentlemen met was the item on the bill for blacking boots, which was fifteen dollars. They paid without a murmur, because they wanted to tell their friends about it when they got home.

We took our leave of beautiful Yosemite Valley, throwing a disdainful look at the _boots_, and we saw the last of the Yosemites peeping at us from behind the shrubbery. We mounted the stage-coach which was to take us to Mariposa Grove. We drove up the mountain all right, but when the summit was reached the coachman began to whip up his six horses and started galloping them down and turning those corners in such a reckless manner that our hair stood on end; and in answer to our gentle words reminding him that there were human beings in the coach he said, coolly:

"Oh, I guess it'll be all right, but this is my first experience." On a sharp turn of the road we suddenly saw a great white pine about six feet in diameter lying right across our path. It had evidently fallen in the night. Fortunately, the driver saw it and managed to pull up his six horses in time to avoid a catastrophe.

How in the world should we ever get over this obstacle? All our projects would be disarranged if there came a single unexpected delay.

A _conseil de guerre_ was held, every one talking at once, and it was decided that the driver should unhitch the horses, and that each lady should hold two of them, while the men were to look about to find timber enough to improvise an inclined plane on both sides of this enormous tree-trunk, so that the coach could be hauled up on one side and dragged down on the other. The gentlemen managed to get the carriage over, then they led the horses over, and lastly we ladies were piloted across.

After a delay of an hour we were able to drive to Mariposa Hotel, where we found eight saddle-horses waiting for us. It was all most exciting, and we enjoyed every moment of the ride through the most beautiful forest in the world. The ordinary trees of this forest would be gigantic in any other part of the globe (six to seven feet in diameter), but when we "struck" the first big tree I almost fell off my horse with wonder. This tree was four hundred feet high and about thirty-three feet in diameter. I knew beforehand that they were monstrously big and high, but I did not know that they had such a beautiful color--a red cinnamon. The first branch was a hundred feet from the ground and six feet in diameter. In the Mariposa Grove there are three hundred of these giants. In one tree, which was partly hollowed out by fire, we seven people sat on horseback. That gives you an idea! We saw a carriage full of travelers drive through a hollow fallen tree as if through a tunnel. One must see these to imagine what they are like. The "Old Giant" was the most imposing and grandest of them all--thirty-seven feet in diameter, and high! One got dizzy trying to see the top, which is really not the top. The winds up there do not allow themselves to be encroached upon, and the young shoots are nipped off as soon as they appear.

We had to sleep at Mariposa Grove (Clark's Hotel) in the evening. We talked of nothing else but the wonderful trees until some one asked me if I was too tired to sing. I was willing enough. There was, in fact, a piano in the parlor--an old, yellow-keyed out-of-tune Chickering which had seen better days somewhere--and a spiral stool very rickety on its legs. There were wax flowers under dusty globes. Though no one of our party cared much for music, and the surroundings were anything but inspiring, still I longed to sing.

I sang a lot of things, and my tired audience no doubt thought I had done enough and ought to go to bed, which I did, after having received their thanks and seeing the heads of the servant-girls and various other heads and forms disappear from the veranda.

_May 25th._