There is no heroism in jerking every fish out of the stream, just because they have keen mountain appetites. Moreover, as the rays of the sun become vertical, light is thrown into the pools and eddies, and the bites are languid and less frequent. An hour before sunset they will be as brisk as ever. But a hundred trout are enough for one morning, and too many, since no one is willing to carry them down the mountain. A year ago, an enthusiastic friend found the headwaters of the Butano, just over the ridge, toward the coast. Having cut his way out of the San Lorenzo Valley, making his own trail for seven miles or more, he cast in his hook where, he stoutly affirmed, no fisherman had ever preceded him. The falls in several places have formed deep basins in the soft, white sandstone. There this enthusiastic fisherman found his heaven for two hours, until night began to close in upon him. Did he go into a tree-top for the night, and pull his two hundred trout up after him? No; but he left them in a heap, and crept down the mountain at dusk, his pace quickened a little by the sight of a fresh bear-track. I do not think an honest bear, made fully acquainted with such sacrilegious conduct, would eat a man, or so much as smell of him.
All day long the perspective has been growing broader and richer, until these diminutive little fish, destined to be swallowed with a single snap of the jaws--even as they sought to snap the wriggling worm--have become a minor incident in the crowding events of the day. For an hour after dawn the only outlook was into the Santa Clara Valley. But the morning was cold; the thin gray smoke went up silently into the heavens from here and there a farm-house; across the valley a low column of mist clung to the foothills and rolled sullenly away. The rank vegetation of early spring, broken occasionally by the plowed fields, had all the abruptness of contrast seen in the patchwork of a bedquilt; and in the chill of the dawn was not a whit more pleasing to the eyes. But an hour later the sunlight filled all the valley; the harsher tints of the morning were melted into the more subdued glory of the spring, and one could fancy that the scent of almond blossoms came up the mountain, mingled with the grosser incense of the mold and tilth of many fields. Even the solitary stunted pine far up the mountain was dropping down its leafy _spicula_, like javelins cast aslant, and the last year's cones fell with a rattle, like hand grenades cast from some overhanging battlement. Life was crowding death even here, and the pine was freshening its foliage, as certain of spring time as the alder just shaking out its tassels by the river bank. Away to the southwest the Bay of Monterey, with its breadth of twenty miles, was reduced to a little patch of blue water; and wide off there was a faint trail of smoke along the horizon--the sign that a steamer was going down the coast for puncheons of wine and fleeces of wool.