And above the grove of manzanita was a flat top to the hill, from which I could see three ways, and all ending in cloud-wrapped mountains, that had shape and were blue of some kind, as far as you could see. Ah man, this is a glorious land--even the people! Along the road I talked to Lundgren, who used to be a ship- carpenter, but he had a prune orchard here "since the fire." I must "see his horses," great snuzzling monsters that he had raised himself (sold one of them once, and sneaked off and bought it back) and his calves, twins out of a three-year-old--and she had had one before. Oh shades of Teddy Roosevelt, there's your ideal! (Do you remember Kipling's line in the Mary Gloster, "And she carried her freight each trip"?) And next to Lungren was the Frenchman--far up on the hill cultivating his grapes, for which he got $110 per ton last year-- and this year he puts out five acres more. The Frenchman has indigestion and lives alone ... that hillside of vines gives him something to love. When we come to the turn in the road, where you cross the creek to climb the hill, there the "Portugee" lives. He always has lived there. He was found just there when the Padres came. And his name was Silva. John Silva, of Stevenson's Treasure Island--born in the Azores, of course--there are no other Portuguese in America. And John has--how many children? Give you three guesses. All by one wife, too, and she is in evidence, and a native daughter. I saw her with my own eyes, black hair, dark skin, slight figure, voluble, smiling, large-knuckled hands and a flashy eye, oh! a long way from being uninteresting to John yet, or a merely "good woman." Well, how many children did they have, right there by the road?--eleven. Eight boys and three girls--and four dead, too. Fine boys and girls, one I saw plowing or cultivating straight up and down the vineyard, a sixty degree hill, I should say. I was struggling with a cane to get one foot before another on the sloping road and he was outdoing a horse, that he drove with his neck and shoulders, while with his hands he guided the little plow straight up toward the sky. I am not envious of such youth. I never had it. I was always lazy. But it is a real joy for me to be near such youth--just to know that such things can be done--by angels from the Azores. You remember Anne's story, "In future it is prohibited to refer to our beloved Allies as 'the God-damned Portuguese'"? Well, I feel the same way.