Declining the proffered carriage, we walk down a wide avenue into the hotel grounds, see rows of neat cottages stretching away on either hand, with families and groups lounging on the piazzas, telling stories, singing, and mayhap love-making in the moonlight—enter the hotel, dine sumptuously—washing down our broiled chicken, trout and quail with the rich, fruity red wine of Calistoga; and finally, well pleased with the world, ourselves, and mankind in general, retire to our cottage, disrobe, draw the drapery of our couch around us, and lie down to pleasant dreams.
The noise of wheels rattling swiftly over the gravel walks, horses galloping away to the mountains; then the loud clangor of the hotel bell, and the long-drawn whistle of the locomotive, awaken us betimes in the morning. The sun is already high above the green-clad, rock-capped, rugged mountains on the eastern side of the valley, when we came out upon the piazza to take our first daylight view of Calistoga. It is glorious! Eastward, a long range of mountains, fantastic in form, abrupt and rugged, skirts the whole horizon. A long mesa, bench, or table, on the summit shows where the great river of lava flowed away from the crater southward towards the Bay of Suisun ages ago. Northward rises, majestically bold and beautiful, Mt. St. Helena, cutting off the valley in that direction. The foot-hills and sides of this mountain are green in spring time and early summer, and golden later in the year, with the rank growth of wild oats, which covers the whole face of the country where the plow has not disturbed the soil, up to the point where the old lava -flow
