The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

We stand on Mexican soil. We are on the seaward skirt of its westernmost State of Sonora in the wild lands almost washed by the Californian Gulf which will be the formidable last ditch of the unconquerable red men flying before the Star of the Empire.. Before us the immensity of land; behind us that of the Pacific Ocean.. O immeasurable stretches of verdure which form the ever-unknown territory the poetically entitled Far West grand and attractive sweet and terrible the natural trellis of so rich beautiful mighty and unkempt flora that India has none of more vigour of production!. To an aeronaut's glance these green and yellow plains would offer only a vast carpet embroidered with dazzling flowers and foliage almost as gay and multicoloured irregularly blocked out like the pieces of glass in ancient church windows with the lead by rivers torrential in the wet season rugged hollows of glistening quicksands and neck-deep mud in summer all of which blend with an unexampled brilliant azure on the clear horizon.. It is only gradually after the view has become inured to the fascinating landscape that it can make out the details: hills not to be scorned for altitude steep banks of rivers and a thousand other unforeseen impediments for the wretch fleeing from hostile animals or fellow beings which agreeably spoil the somewhat saddening sameness and are hidden completely from the general glance by the rank grass rich canes and gigantic flower stalks.. Oh for the time—the reader would find the patience—to enumerate the charming products of this primitive nature which shoots up and athwart hangs swings juts out crosses interlaces binds twines catches encircles and strays at random to the end of the naturalist's investigation describing majestic parabolas forming grandiose arcades and finally completes the most splendid aye and sublime spectacle that is given to any man on the footstool to admire for superabundant contrasts and enthralling harmonies.. The man in the balloon whom we imagine to be hovering over this mighty picture even higher up than the eagle of the Sierra Madre itself who sails in long circles above the bald-headed vulture about to descend on a prey which the king of the air disdains—this lofty viewer we say would spy on the afternoon when we guide the reader to these wilds apparently unpeopled more than one human creature wriggling like worms in the labyrinth.. At one point some twenty men white and yet swarthy unlike in dress but similarly armed to the teeth were separately worming their tortuous way we repeat through the chaparral proper or plantations of the low branching live oak as well as the gigantic ferns mesquite cactus nopal and fruit laden shrubs the oblong-leaved mahogany the bread tree the fan-leaved abanico the pirijao languidly swinging its enormous golden fruit in clusters the royal palm devoid of foliage along the stem but softly nodding its high majestically plumed head; the guava the banana the intoxicating chirimoya the cork oak the Peruvian tree the war palm letting its resinous gum slowly ooze forth to capture the silly moths and even young snakes and lizards which squirmed on the hardening gum like a platter of Palissy ware abruptly galvanised into life.. These adventurers insinuated themselves through this tangle unseen and perhaps unsuspected by one another all tending to the same point probably the same rendezvous. A marked devil-may-care spirit which tempered the caution of men brought up in the desert betokened that they were master of the woods hereabouts or at least only recognised the Indian rovers as their contesting fellow tenants..