The proprietor was a brave old white-faced Swede.  He had wandered this way, Heaven knows how, and taken up his acres—­I forget how many years ago—­all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits in his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder.  Long, useless years of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, penniless and sick.  Without doubt he had tried his luck at the diggings, and got no good from that; without doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life of Jack ashore.  But at the end of these adventures, here he came; and, the place hitting his fancy, down he sat to make a new life of it, far from crimps and the salt sea.  And the very sight of his ranche had done him good.  It was “the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains.”  “Isn’t it handsome, now?” he said.  Every penny he makes goes into that ranche to make it handsomer.  Then the climate, with the sea-breeze every afternoon in the hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the sciatica; and his sister and niece were now domesticated with him for company—­or, rather, the niece came only once in the two days, teaching music the meanwhile in the valley.  And then, for a last piece of luck, “the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains” had produced a petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at the modest figure of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds of his capital when he first came there with an axe and a sciatica.

This tardy favourite of fortune—­hobbling a little, I think, as if in memory of the sciatica, but with not a trace that I can remember of the sea—­thoroughly ruralized from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up the hill behind his house.

“Who first found the forest?” asked my wife.

“The first?  I was that man,” said he.  “I was cleaning up the pasture for my beasts, when I found this”—­kicking a great redwood seven feet in diameter, that lay there on its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark, all changed into gray stone, with veins of quartz between what had been the layers of the wood.

“Were you surprised?”

“Surprised?  No!  What would I be surprised about?  What did I know about petrifactions—­following the sea?  Petrifaction!  There was no such word in my language!  I knew about putrifaction, though!  I thought it was a stone; so would you, if you was cleaning up pasture.”

And now he had a theory of his own, which I did not quite grasp, except that the trees had not “grewed” there.  But he mentioned, with evident pride, that he differed from all the scientific people who had visited the spot; and he flung about such words as “tufa” and “scilica” with careless freedom.

When I mentioned I was from Scotland, “My old country,” he said; “my old country”—­with a smiling look and a tone of real affection in his voice.  I was mightily surprised, for he was obviously Scandinavian, and begged him to explain.  It seemed he had learned his English and done nearly all his sailing in Scotch ships.  “Out of Glasgow,” said he, “or Greenock; but that’s all the same—­they all hail from Glasgow.”  And he was so pleased with me for being a Scotsman, and his adopted compatriot, that he made me a present of a very beautiful piece of petrifaction—­I believe the most beautiful and portable he had.