Page:A La California.djvu/197

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A FINE PICTURE.
159

and blended with the blue cloudless sky of autumn, upon the farther verge of the horizon. We looked down upon the homes of two hundred thousand toiling, active and busy people. The homes of millions of happy, contented, abundantly blessed people, will in a few years fill that broad land on which we gazed with deep and silent admiration that morning. If I were a painter, I would unroll my canvas at that point, and paint you such a picture as you should stand before and gaze upon with unspeakable delight from morn to night. I am not—more is the pity! For half an hour the glorious scene held us enchanted; then the destructive element in our nature asserted its supremacy again, and we began to talk of deeds of blood once more.

"Manuel, when we engaged you as our guide, you promised on the honor of a descendant of conquering Castile, and the faith of a Christiano, to show us at least the track of a grizzly bear! Do it!"

Manuel, with a brow slightly clouded, arose slowly, mounted his horse a little hesitatingly, and led us onward up the steep acclivity. Half a mile brought us to a saddle-back, on one side of .which there was a narrow grass-plat. Looking carefully along the other side, among the chemisal, broken rocks, and coarse gravelly soil, he discovered at length a track, at which he pointed in silent triumph. A painter desiring to catch the smile of benign ecstasy which illumined the countenance of the beloved disciple, would have found fame and fortune in the face of Manuel at that moment, had he the talent to catch the expression,