Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 16

The hogs are fed chiefly on skim-milk, and belong entirely to the tenant.

The calves, except those which are raised for the proprietor, are, by agreement, killed and fed to the pigs. The leases are usually for three years.

The cows are milked twice a day, being driven for that purpose into a corral, near the milk-house. I noticed that they were all very gentle; they lay down in the corral with that placid air which a good cow has; and whenever a milkman came to the beast he wished to milk, she rose at once, without waiting to be spoken to. One man is expected to milk twenty cows in the season of full milk. On some places I noticed that Chinese were employed in the milk-house, to attend to the cream and make the b.u.t.ter.

The tenants are of different nationalities, American, Swedes, Germans, Irish, and Portuguese. A tenant needs about two thousand dollars in money to undertake one of these dairy-farms; the system seems to satisfy those who are now engaged in it. The milkers and farm hands receive thirty dollars per month and "found;" and good milkers are in constant demand.

Every thing is conducted with great care and cleanliness, the buildings being uncommonly good for this State, water abundant, and many labor-saving contrivances used.

At one end of the corral or yard in which the cows are milked is a platform, roofed over, on which stands a large tin, with a double strainer, into which the milk is poured from the buckets. It runs through a pipe into the milk-house, where it is again strained, and then emptied from a bucket into the pans ranged on shelves around. The cream is taken off in from thirty-six to forty hours; and the milk keeps sweet thirty-six hours, even in summer. The square box-churn is used entirely, and is revolved by horse-power. They usually get b.u.t.ter, I was told, in half an hour.

The b.u.t.ter is worked on an ingenious turn-table, which holds one hundred pounds at a time, and can, when loaded, be turned by a finger; and a lever, working upon a universal joint, is used upon the b.u.t.ter. When ready, it is put up in two-pound rolls, which are shaped in a hand-press, and the rolls are not weighed until they reach the city. It is packed in strong, oblong boxes, each of which holds fifty-five rolls.

The cows are not driven more than a mile to be milked; the fields being so arranged that the corral is near the centre. When they are milked, they stray back of themselves to their grazing places.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLUMBIA RIVER SCENE.]

CHAPTER X.

TEHAMA AND b.u.t.tE, AND THE UPPER COUNTRY.

General Bidwell, of b.u.t.te County, raised last year on his own estate, besides a large quant.i.ty of fruit, seventy-five thousand bushels of wheat. Dr. Glenn, of Colusa County, raised and sent to market from his own estate, two hundred thousand bushels. Mr. Warner, of Solano County, produced nine thousand gallons of cider from his own orchards. A sheep-grazer in Placer County loaded ten railroad cars with wool, the clip of his own sheep. For many weeks after harvest you may see sacks of wheat stacked along the railroad and the river for miles, awaiting shipment; for the farmers have no rain to fear, and the grain crop is thrashed in the field, bagged, and stacked along the road, without even a tarpaulin to cover it.

In 1855, California exported about four hundred and twenty tons of wheat; in 1873, the export was but little less than six hundred thousand tons. In 1857, six casks and six hundred cases of California wine were sent out of the State; in 1872, about six hundred thousand gallons were exported. In 1850, California produced five thousand five hundred and thirty pounds of wool; in 1872, this product amounted to twenty-four million pounds. Thirty million pounds of apples, ten million pounds of peaches, four and a half million pounds of apricots, nearly two million pounds of cherries, are part of the product of the State, in which the man is still living who brought across the Plains the first fruit-trees to set out a nursery; while four and a half million of oranges, and a million and a half of lemons, shipped from the southern part of the State, show the rapid growth of that culture.

In the northern counties, of which Tehama and b.u.t.te are a sample, they are usually fortunate in the matter of late as well as early rains; but close under the coast range the country is dryer, as is natural, the high mountain range absorbing the moisture from the north-westerly winds. They begin to plow as soon as it rains, usually in November, and sow the grain at once. Formerly the higher plains were thought to be fit only for grazing; but even the red lands, which are somewhat harder to break up, and were thought to be infertile, are found to bear good crops of grain; and this year these lands bear the drought better than some that were and are preferred. Lambing takes place here in February, and they shear in April. The grazing lands abound in wild oats, very nutritious, but apt to run out where the pastures are overstocked. Alfilleria is not found so far north as this; alfalfa has been sown all over the valley in proper places, and does well. They cut it three times in the year, and turn stock in on it after the last cutting; and all who grow it speak well of it.

Red Bluff is one of the oldest towns in the valley; it stands at the head of navigation on the Sacramento, and was, therefore, a place of importance before the railroad was built. The river here is narrow and shoal, and it is crossed by one of those ferries common where the rapid current, pushing against the ferry-boat, drives it across the stream, a wire cable preventing it from floating down stream. The main street of the town consists mainly of bar-rooms, livery-stables, barber-shops, and hotels, with an occasional store of merchandise sandwiched between; and, if you saw only this main street, you would conceive but a poor opinion of the people. But other streets contain a number of pleasant, shady cottages; and, as I drove out into the country, the driver pointed with pride to the school-house, a large and fine building, which had just been completed at a cost of thirty thousand dollars, and seemed to me worth the money. The town has also water-works; and the people propose to bridge the Sacramento at a cost of forty thousand dollars, and to build a new jail, to cost fifteen thousand dollars. Such enterprises show the wealth of the people in this State, and astonish the traveler, who imagines, in driving over the great plain, that it is almost uninhabited, but sees, in a thirty-thousand dollar school-house in a little town like Red Bluff, that not only are there people, but that they have the courage to bear taxation for good objects, and the means to pay.

From Red Bluff two of the great mountain peaks of Northern California are magnificently seen--La.s.sen's Peaks and Shasta. The latter, still one hundred and twenty miles off to the north, rears his great, craggy, snow-covered summit high in the air, and seems not more than twenty miles away. La.s.sen's Peaks are twins, and very lonely indeed. They are sixty miles to the east, and are also, at this season, glistening with snow.

Between La.s.sen's and the Sacramento, some thirty miles up among the mountains, there is a rich timber country, whose saw-mills supply the northern part of the valley with lumber, sugar-pine being the princ.i.p.al tree sawed up. The valley begins to narrow above Red Bluff, and the foot-hills and mountains still abound in wild game. Hunters bring their peltries. .h.i.ther for sale; and this has occasioned the establishment at this point of a thriving glove factory, which turned out--from an insignificant looking little shop--not less than forty thousand dollars'

worth of gloves last year. Two enterprising young men manage it, and they employ, I was told, from fifty to eighty women in the work, and turn out very excellent buckskin gloves, as well as some finer kinds. Such petty industries are too often neglected in California, where every body still wants to conduct his calling on a grand scale, and where dozens of ways to prosperity, and even wealth, are constantly neglected, because they appear too slow.

This whole country is only about four years in advance of the lower or San Joaquin Valley, and the influence of climate and soil in bringing trees to bear early was shown to me in several thrifty orchards, already beginning to bear, on ground which four years ago was bought for two dollars and fifty cents per acre. The habit of raising wheat is so strong here, that almost every thing else is neglected; and I remember a farm where the wheat field extended, unbroken, except by a narrow path leading to the road, right up to the veranda of the farmer's house. His family lived on canned fruits and vegetables; and except here and there a brilliant poppy, which stubborn Dame Nature had inserted among his wheat, wife and children had not a flower to grace mantle or table. I confess that it pleased me to hear this farmer complain of hard times, because, as he said, the speculators in San Francisco made more money from his wheat than he did.

If the speculators in San Francisco teach the farmers in California to grow something besides wheat, they will deserve well of the State.

The upper waters of the Sacramento run through mountain pa.s.ses, and between banks so steep that for miles at a time the river is inaccessible, except by difficult and often dangerous descents; and an old miner told me that when this part of the river, between where Redding now lies and its source, near Mount Shasta, was first "prospected" for gold, the miners or explorers had to build boats and descend by water, trying for gold by the way, because they could not get down by land. In those days, he said, if a company of miners could not make twenty dollars a day each, the "prospect"

was too poor to detain them; and they made but a short stay at most points on the Upper Sacramento.

The country was then full of Indians; and it was very strange, indeed, to hear this miner--a thoroughly kind-hearted man he was, and now the father of a family of children--tell with the utmost unconcern, and as a matter of course, how they used to shoot down these Indians, who waylaid them at favoring spots on the river, and tried to pick them off with arrows.

I remember hearing a little boy ask a famous general once how many men he had killed in the course of his wars, and being disappointed when he heard that the general, so far as he know, had never killed any body. I suppose a soldier in battle but rarely knows that he has actually shot a man. But one of these old Indian fighters sits down after dinner, over a pipe, and relates to you, with quite horrifying coolness, every detail of the death which his rifle and his sure eye dealt to an Indian; and when this one, stroking meantime the head of a little boy who was standing at his knees, described to me how he lay on the gra.s.s and took aim at a tall chief who was, in the moonlight, trying to steal a boat from a party of gold-seekers, and how, at the crack of his rifle, the Indian fell his whole length in the boat and never stirred again, I confess I was dumb with amazement. The tragedy had not even the dignity of an event in this man's life. He shot Indians as he ate his dinner, plainly as a mere matter of course. Nor was he a brute, but a kindly, honest, good fellow, not in the least blood-thirsty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STREET IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.]

The poor Indians have rapidly melted away under the fervent heat of forty-rod whisky, rifles, and disease. This whole Northern country must have been populous a quarter of a century ago; General Bidwell and other old Californians have told me of the surprisingly rapid disappearance of the Indians, after the white gold-seekers came in. It was, I do not doubt, a pleasant land for the red men. They lived on salmon, clover, deer, acorns, and a few roots which are abundant on mountain and plain, and of all this food there is the greatest plenty even yet. If you travel toward Oregon, by stage, in June, July, or August, you will see at convenient points along the Sacramento parties of Indians spearing and trapping salmon. They build a few rude huts of brush, gather sticks for the fire, which is needed to cook and dry the salmon meat; and then, while the men, armed with long two-p.r.o.nged spears, stand at the end of logs projecting over the salmon pools, and spear the abundant fish, the squaws clean the fish, roast them to dryness among the hot stones of their rude fire-place, and finally rub the dried meat to a powder between their hands, or by the help of stones, when it is packed away in bags for winter use.

What you thus see on the Sacramento is going on at the same time on half a dozen other rivers; and I am told that these Indians come from considerable distances to this annual fishing, which was practiced by them doubtless a long time before the white men came in. Not unfrequently in these mountains you will find a castaway white man with a half-breed family about him; "squaw-men" they are called, as a term of contempt, by the more decent cla.s.s.

As you drive by the farm-houses on the road, you may commonly see venison hanging on the porch; and every farmer has a supply of fishing-rods and lines, so that you can not go amiss for trout and venison. Few of them know, however, that a trout ought to be cooked as quickly as possible after he is caught; and if you do not take care, your afternoon fish will appear on the table next day as corned trout, in which shape I have no liking for it.

The Shasta Valley contains a good deal of excellent farming land, but it is used now chiefly for cattle and sheep, and in many parts of it the grazing is very fine. There are a number of lesser valleys scattered through the mountains hereabouts. Indeed, the two ranges seem to open out for a while, and Scott's Valley on the west, and the Klamath Lake country to the east and north-east from Yreka, are favorite grazing regions. Here there is occasional snow in the winter, and some cold weather; the spring opens later and the rains last longer. The streams in all this region bear gold, and miners are busy in them. Yreka, in the Shasta Valley, is the centre of a considerable mining district, and therefore a busy place, even without the Modoc war, which gave it a temporary renown during the winter and spring. Now that the Modoc war is closed, no doubt the famous lava beds will attract curious visitors from afar. They can be reached in thirty-six hours from Yreka; and that place is distant thirty-six hours from San Francisco.

Aside from the public lands still open in small tracts of eighty and one hundred and sixty acres to pre-emption by actual settlers, under the homestead law, and the railroad lands, to be had in sections of six hundred and forty acres, the Sacramento Valley contains a number of considerable Spanish grants; and the following account of these, which I take from the San Francisco _Bulletin_ will give an Eastern reader some idea of the extent of such grants, their value, and how they are used:

"The first large tract of land north and west of Marysville is the Neal grant, containing about seventeen thousand acres. This grant is owned by the Durham estate and Judge C.F. Lott, though Gruelly owns a large slice of it also. The Neal grant is mostly composed of rich bottom-lands; nearly all of it is farmed under lease; the lessees pay one-quarter to one-third of the crops as rent. They do very well under this arrangement.

"The next grant on the north is that of Judge O.C. Pratt. It contains twenty-eight thousand acres of bottom-land. b.u.t.te Creek skirts it on one side for a distance of seventeen miles, and a branch of that creek runs through the centre. Nearly six thousand acres are covered with large oak-trees. There are about one hundred miles of fences on this rancho; there are about ten thousand sheep, twelve hundred head of cattle, and two hundred horses on it; the land has been cultivated or used as pasturage for about fourteen years. About ten thousand acres of it, I am informed, would readily sell in subdivisions for fifty dollars per acre; ten thousand acres would sell for about thirty dollars, and eight thousand acres at twenty dollars per acre. There are many tenants on this tract, having leases covering periods of three to five years; rent, one-fourth of the crop raised; the owner builds fences and houses for the lessees. The average quant.i.ty of wool annually grown on this rancho is sixty thousand pounds; beef cattle, two hundred and fifty head; value of produce received as rent from tenants, twelve thousand dollars per year. Judge Pratt is willing to sell farms of one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty acres at about the rates named, and on easy terms.

"The Hensley grant, lying north of Judge Pratt's rancho, contains five leagues. It was rejected by the United States Courts, and was taken up by, and is covered with, settlers, who own one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty acres each, worth forty to sixty dollars per acre.

Little or none of that land is for sale, the owners being too well satisfied with their farms to sell them, even at the highest ruling rates.

"General Bidwell's rancho adjoins Judge Pratt's. It contains about twenty thousand acres, of which about one-quarter is of the best quality, and would readily sell at fifty to sixty dollars per acre. About five thousand acres more, lying along the Sacramento River, are subject to overflow.

That portion is very rich grazing land, and is worth fifteen to twenty dollars per acre. The other ten thousand acres lie near the foot-hills; they are extremely well adapted to grape culture, and are worth five to twelve dollars per acre. General Bidwell is not willing to sell.

"The next rancho on the west is owned by John Parrot. It contains about seventeen thousand acres, and lies on the east bank of the Sacramento River. It contains about four thousand acres of first-cla.s.s wheat or corn land; the remainder is composed of excellent pasturage; there are only a few thousand sheep, and a few cattle and horses on this rancho. It has for several years been cultivated by Morehead and Griffith, under a private arrangement with the owner. It is understood that Parrot would sell, either in a body or in small tracts, to desirable purchasers; his prices would probably range from fifteen to fifty dollars per acre.

"The next large rancho is that of Henry Gerke, living twenty miles above Chico. It now contains about eighteen thousand acres, of which a large portion is suitable for wheat or corn growing, and grazing purposes. One of the largest and finest vineyards in the State is on this rancho; and the wine it produces has a large sale in the State. The most of Gerke's land is devoted to wheat raising; eighteen hundred tons of wheat were raised on it last year, and about twenty-two hundred tons this year. It is mostly tilled by tenants. The land is worth from twenty to fifty dollars per acre. The owner would sell the whole rancho, but it is not known whether he would sell in small tracts or not. He has a standing offer of six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the land, vineyards, and improvements.

"General Wilson owns several thousand acres of the original Gerke grant.

His land is altogether devoted to wheat growing, and is worth forty dollars per acre.

"A.G. Towne's grant adjoins Gerke's on the north and west. It now contains about twelve thousand acres; much of it is devoted to wheat growing, and is worth fifteen to forty dollars per acre, or an average all round of twenty-five dollars.

"At Tehama, on the west side of the Sacramento River, is Thome's grant.

It contains about twenty thousand acres, one-third of which is of the very best quality of wheat land, the remainder good grazing. It is understood that this land can be bought either as a whole or in small farms. The best of it is worth about forty-five dollars an acre; the body of it about twenty dollars.

"The next grant, on the north, is that of William G. Chard. It is nearly all cut up and owned in small farms. Colonel E.J. Lewis, a well-known politician, is one of the largest owners on the Chard tract. He is extensively engaged in wheat raising.

"Ide's grant is adjacent, on the north; it is also mostly divided and owned in small tracts of one hundred and sixty to four hundred acres each.

"The Dye grant lies east of and opposite to Red Bluff. It was originally a large grant, but has been partially subdivided. It contains some good bottomland, but is mostly adapted to grazing.

"The most northerly grant in the State is that formerly owned by the late Major Redding. It is partially subdivided. Like the Dye grant, it contains some rich bottom-land, but, like it, is mostly adapted for grazing and grape growing. Haggin and Tevis lately bought (or hold for debt) about fifteen thousand acres of this rancho, which are worth about one hundred thousand dollars, or about seven dollars per acre. It is understood from inquiries made from the owners of these two last named tracts, that they are willing to sell grain lands at about an average of thirty dollars per acre."

Of course these grants make up, in the aggregate, but a small part of the arable land of the Sacramento Valley.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TACOMA," OR MOUNT RAINIER.]

CHAPTER XI.

TOBACCO CULTURE--WITH A NEW METHOD OF CURING THE LEAF.