Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 8

You will, perhaps, ask how the disease is contracted. I doubt if any one knows definitely. But from all I heard, I judge that there must be some degree of predisposition toward it in the person to be contaminated. I believe I have Dr. Trousseau's leave to say that the contact of a wounded or abraded surface with the matter of a leprous sore will convey the disease; this is, of course, inoculation; and he seemed to think no other method of contamination probable. I was careful to provide myself with a pair of gloves when I visited the settlement, to protect myself in case I should be invited to shake hands; but I noticed that the doctor fearlessly shook hands with some of the worst cases, even where the fingers were suppurating and wrapped in rags.

There are several women on the Islands, confirmed lepers, whose husbands are at home and sound; one, notably, where the husband is a white man. On the other hand, a woman was pointed out to me who had had three husbands, each of whom in a short time after marrying her became a leper. There are children lepers, whose parents are not lepers; and there are parents lepers, whose children are at home and healthy.

There are three white men on the island, lepers, two of them in a very bad state. So far as I could learn the particulars of their previous history, they had lived flagitiously loose lives; such as must have corrupted their blood long before they became lepers. In some other cases of native lepers I came upon similar histories; and while I do not believe that every case, or indeed perhaps a majority of cases, involves such a previous career of vice, I should say that this is certainly a strongly predisposing cause.

As to the danger of infection to a foreign visitor, there is absolutely none, unless he should undertake to live in native fashion among the natives, smoking out of their pipes, sleeping under their tapas, and eating their food with them; and even in such an extreme case his risk would be very slight now, so thoroughly has the disease been "stamped out"

by the energetic action of Mr. Hall, the Minister of the Interior, Mr.

Samuel G. Wilder, the head of the Board of Health, and Dr. Trousseau, its physician. In short, there is no more risk of a white resident or traveler catching leprosy in the Hawaiian Islands than in the city or State of New York.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVE PIPE. NECKLACE OF HUMAN HAIR.]

I have heard one reason given why this disease has been more frequent in the last ten years. Ten or twelve years ago the Islands were visited by smallpox. This disease made terrible ravages, and the Government at once ordered the people to be vaccinated. There seems to be no doubt that the vaccine matter used was often taken from persons not previously in sound health; this was perhaps unavoidable; but intelligent men, long resident in the Islands, believe that vaccination thus performed with impure matter had a bad effect upon the people, leaving traces of a resulting corruption of their blood.

The choice of the plain of Kalawao as the spot on which to seclude the lepers from all the Islands was very happy. It can not be said that to an agile native the place is inaccessible, for there are, no doubt, several points in the great precipice where men and women could make their way down or up; and there are instances of women swimming around the precipitous and surf-beaten sh.o.r.e, seven or eight miles, to reach husbands or friends in the settlement to whom they were devotedly attached. But it is easily guarded, and, for all practical purposes, the seclusion is perfect.

A singular tradition, related to me on the island, points to its use for such a purpose and gives a sad significance to the leper settlement. It is said that in the time of the first Kamehameha, the conqueror and hero of his race, upon an occasion when he visited Molokai, an old sorceress or priestess sent him word that she had made a garment for him--a robe of honor--which she desired him to come and get. He returned for answer a command that she should bring it to him; and when the old hag appeared, the king desired her to tell him something of the future. She replied that he would conquer all the Islands, and rule over them but a brief time; that his own posterity would die out; and that finally all his race would be gathered together on Molokai; and that this small island would be large enough to hold them all.

It is probable, of course, that this tale is of recent origin, and that no priestess of Kamehameha the First possessed so fatal and accurate a gift of prophecy; but the tale, told me in the midst of the leper asylum, pointed to the gloomy end of the race with but too plain a finger. The Hawaiians, once so numerous as to occupy almost all the habitable parts of all the Islands, have so greatly decreased that they might almost find their support on the little island of Molokai alone. Happily the decrease has now ceased.

The great Pali of Molokai, one of the most remarkable and picturesque sights of the Islands, stretches for a dozen miles along its windward coast. It is a sheer precipice, in most parts from a thousand to two thousand feet high, washed by the sea at its base, and having, in most parts, not a trace of beach. This vast wall of rock is an impressive sight; here the shipwrecked mariner would be utterly helpless; but would drown, not merely in sight of land, but with his hands vainly grasping for even a bush, or root, or a projecting rock.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA:

ITS AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS, DAIRIES, FORESTS,

FRUIT-FARMS, ETC.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CALIFORNIA VINEYARD.]

CHAPTER I.

THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY: A GENERAL VIEW, WITH HINTS TO TOURISTS AND SPORTSMEN.

The State of California extends over somewhat more than ten degrees of lat.i.tude. If it lay along the Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast, its boundaries would include the whole sh.o.r.e-line from Cape Cod to Hilton Head, and its limits would take in the greater portion of ten of the original States.

It contains two great mountain ranges--the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range. These, running parallel through the State, approach each other so closely at the south as to leave only the narrow Tejon Pa.s.s between them; while at the north they also come together, Mount Shasta rearing its splendid snow-covered summit over the two mountain chains where they are joined.

Inclosed within these mountain ranges lies a long, broad, fertile valley, which was once, no doubt, a great inland sea. It still contains in the southern part three considerable lakes--the Tulare, Kern, and Buena Vista--and is now drained from the south by the San Joaquin River, flowing out of these lakes, and from the north by the Sacramento, which rises near the base of Mount Shasta. These two rivers, the one flowing north, the other south, join a few miles below Sacramento, and empty their waters into the bay of San Francisco.

That part of the great inland plain of California which is drained by the Sacramento is called after its river. It is more thickly inhabited than the southern or San Joaquin Valley, partly because the foot-hills on its eastern side were the scene of the earliest and longest continued, as well as the most successful, mining operations; partly because the Sacramento River is navigable for a longer distance than the San Joaquin, and thus gave facilities for transportation which the lower valley had not; and, finally, because the Sacramento Valley had a railroad completed through its whole extent some years earlier than the San Joaquin Valley.

The climate of the Sacramento Valley does not differ greatly from that of the San Joaquin, yet there are some important distinctions. Lying further north, it has more rain; in the upper part of the valley they sometimes see snow; there is not the same necessity for irrigation as in the lower valley; and though oranges flourish in Marysville, and though the almond does well as far north as Chico, yet the cherry and the plum take the place of the orange and lemon; and men build their houses somewhat more solidly than further south.

The romance of the early gold discovery lies mostly in the Sacramento Valley and the adjacent foot-hills. Between Sacramento and Marysville lay Sutter's old fort, and near Marysville is Sutter's farm, where you may still see his groves of fig-trees, under whose shade the country people now hold their picnics; his orchards, which still bear fruit; and his house, which is now a country tavern.

Of all his many leagues of land the old man has, I believe, but a few acres left; and of the thousands who now inhabit and own what once was his, not a dozen would recognize him, and many probably scarcely know his name. His riches melted away, as did those of the great Spanish proprietors; and he who only a quarter of a century ago owned a territory larger than some States, and counted his cattle by the thousands--if, indeed, he ever counted them--who lived in a fort like a European n.o.ble of the feudal times, had an army of Indians at his command, and occasionally made war on the predatory tribes who were his neighbors, now lives upon a small annuity granted him by the State of California. He saved little, I have heard, from the wreck of his fortunes; and of all who were with him in his earlier days, but one, so far as I know--General Bidwell, of Chico, an able and honorable gentleman, once Sutter's manager--had the ability to provide for the future by retaining possession of his own estate of twenty thousand acres, now by general consent the finest farm in California.

As you go north in California the amount of rain-fall increases. In San Diego County they are happy with ten inches per annum, and fortunate if they get five; in Santa Barbara, twelve and a half inches insure their crops; the Sacramento Valley has an average rain-fall of about twenty inched, and eighteen inches insure them a full crop on soil properly prepared. In 1873 they had less, yet the crops did well wherever the farmers had summer-fallowed the land. This practice is now very general, and is necessary, in order that the grain may have the advantage of the early rains. When a farmer plows and prepares his land in the spring, lets it lie all summer, and sows his grain in November just as the earliest rain begins, he need not fear for his crop.

There is less difference in climate than one would suppose between the Sacramento and the San Joaquin valleys. Cattle and sheep live out-of-doors, and support themselves all the year round in the Shasta Valley on the north as constantly as in Los Angeles or any other of the southern counties. The seasons are a little later north than south, but the difference is slight; and as far north as Red Bluff, in the interior, they begin their harvest earlier than in Monterey County, far south but on the coast. Snow rarely lies on the ground in the northern counties more than a day. The best varieties of the foreign grapes are hardy everywhere.

Light frosts come in December; and in the flower-gardens the geranium withers to the ground, but springs up from the roots again in March. The eucalyptus flourishes wherever it has been planted in Northern California; and as far north as Redding, at the head of the valley, the mercury very rarely falls below twenty-five degrees, and remains there but a few hours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WINE VATS.]

As you travel from Marysville, either northward or southward, you will see before and around you a great wide plain, bounded on the west by the blue outlines of the Coast Range, and on the east by the foot-hills of the Sierra: a great level, over which as far as your eye can reach are scattered groves of grand and picturesque white oaks, which relieve the solitude of the plain, and make it resemble a well-planted park. Wherever the valley is settled, you will see neat board fences, roomy barns, and farm-houses nestling among trees, and flanked by young orchards. You will not find a great variety of crops, for wheat and barley are the staple products of this valley; and though the farms here are in general of 640 acres or less, there are not wanting some of those immense estates for which California is famous; and a single farmer in this valley is said to have raised on his own land last year one-twentieth of the entire wheat crop of the State.

Northwest of Marysville the plain is broken by a singularly lovely range of mountains, the b.u.t.tes. They rise abruptly from the plain, and their peaks reach from two to three thousand feet high. It is an extremely pretty miniature mountain range, having its peaks, pa.s.ses, and canons--all the features of the Sierra--and it is well worth a visit. b.u.t.te is a word applied to such isolated mountains, which do not form part of a chain, and which are not uncommon west of the Mississippi. Shasta is called a b.u.t.te; La.s.sen's Peaks are b.u.t.tes; and the traveler across the continent hears the word frequently applied to mountain. It is p.r.o.nounced with the _u_ long.

Along the banks of the Sacramento there are large quant.i.ties of land which is annually overflowed by the river, and much of which is still only used for pasturage during the dry season, when its gra.s.ses support large herds of cattle and sheep, which are driven to the uplands when the rains begin to fall. But much of this swamp and tule land has been drained and diked, and is now used for farm land. It produces heavy crops of wheat, and its reclamation has been, and continues to be, one of the successful speculations in land in this State. It will not be long before the sh.o.r.es of the Sacramento and its tributaries will be for many miles so diked that these rivers will never break their bounds, and thus a very considerable area will be added to the fertile farming lands of the State.

Already, however, the Yuba, the Feather, and the American rivers, tributaries of the Sacramento, have been leveed at different points for quite another reason. These rivers, once clear and rapidly flowing within deep banks, are now turbid, in many places shallow, and their bottoms have been raised from twenty to thirty feet by the acc.u.mulation of the washings from the gold mines in the foot-hills. It is almost incredible the change the miners have thus produced in the short s.p.a.ce of a quarter of a century. The bed of the Yuba has been raised thirty feet in that time; and seeing what but a handful of men have effected in so short a period, the work of water in the denudation of mountains, and the scouring out or filling up of valleys during geological periods becomes easily comprehensible.

All our Northern fruits thriftily in the Sacramento Valley, and also the almond, of which thousands of trees have been planted, and a few considerable orchards are already in bearing. The cherry and the plum do remarkably well, the latter fruit having as yet no curculio or blight; and the canning and drying of peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, and pears are already, as I shall show in detail farther on, a considerable as well as very profitable business. Dried plums, in particular, sell at a price which makes the orchards of this fruit very valuable. Excellent raisins have also been made, and they sell in the open market of San Francisco for a price very little less than that of the best Malaga raisins. The climate, with its long dry summer, is very favorable to the drying and curing of every fruit: no expensive houses, no ovens or other machinery, are needed. The day is not distant when the great Sacramento plain will be a vast orchard, and the now unoccupied foot-hills will furnish a large part of the raisins consumed in the United States. For the present the population is scant, and cattle, horses, and especially sheep, roam over hundreds of thousands of acres of soil which needs only industrious farmers to make it bloom into a garden.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAINING A VINE.]

The farmer in this State is a person of uncommon resources and ingenuity.

I think he uses his brains more than our Eastern farmers. I do not mean to say that he lives better, for he does not. His house is often shabby, even though he be a man of wealth, and his table is not unfrequently without milk; he buys his b.u.t.ter with his canned vegetables in San Francisco, and bread and mutton are the chief part of his living, both being universally good here. But in managing his land he displays great enterprise, and has learned how to fit his efforts to the climate and soil.

The gathering of the wheat crop goes on in all the valley lands with headers, and you will find on all the farms in the Sacramento Valley the best labor-saving machinery employed, and human labor, which is always the most costly, put to its best and most profitable uses. They talk here of steam-plows and steam-wagons for common roads, and I have no doubt the steam-plow will be first practically and generally used, so far as the United States are concerned, in these Californian valleys, where I have seen furrows two miles long, and ten eight-horse teams following each other with gang-plows.

Withal, they are somewhat ruthless in their pursuit of a wheat crop. You may see a farmer who plows hundreds of acres, but he will have his wheat growing up to the edge of his veranda. If he keeps a vegetable garden, he has performed a heroic act of self-denial; and as for flowers, they must grow among the wheat or nowhere.

Moreover, while he has great ingenuity in his methods, the farmer of the Sacramento plain has but little originality in his planting. He raises wheat and barley. He might raise a dozen, a score, of other products, many more profitable, and all obliging him to cultivate less ground, but it is only here and there you meet with one who appreciates the remarkable capabilities of the soil and climate. Near Tehama some Chinese have in the last two years grown large crops of pea-nuts, and have, I was told, realized handsome profits from a nut which will be popular in America, I suppose, as long as there is a pit or a gallery in a theatre; but the pea-nut makes a valuable oil, and as it produces enormously here, it will some day be raised for this use, as much as for the benefit of the old women who keep fruit-stands on the street corners. It would not be surprising if the Chinese, who continue to come over to California in great numbers, should yet show the farmers here what can be done on small farms by patient and thorough culture. As yet they confine their culture of land mainly to vegetable gardens.

To the farmer the valley and foot-hill lands of the Sacramento will be the most attractive; and there are still here thousands of acres in the hands of the Government and the railroad company to be obtained so cheaply that, whether for crops or for grazing, it will be some time before the mountainous lands and the pretty valleys they contain, north of Redding, the present terminus of the railroad, will attract settlers. But for the traveler the region north of Redding to the State line offers uncommon attractions.

The Sacramento Valley closes in as you journey northward; and at Red Bluff, which is the head of navigation on the river, you have a magnificent view of La.s.sen's Peaks on the east--twin peaks, snow-clad, and rising high out of the plain--and also of the majestic snow-covered crag which is known as Shasta b.u.t.te, which towers high above the mountains to the north, and, though here 120 miles off, looks but a day's ride away.

Redding, thirty miles north from Shasta, lies at the head of the Sacramento Valley. From there a line of stage-coaches proceeds north into Oregon, through the ma.s.s of mountains which separates the Sacramento Valley in California from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The stage-road pa.s.ses through a very varied and picturesque country, one which few pleasure travelers see, and which yet is as well worth a visit as any part of the western coast. The Sacramento River, which rises in a large spring near the base of Mount Shasta, has worn its way through the high mountains, and rushes down for nearly a hundred miles of its course an impetuous, roaring mountain stream, abounding in trout at all seasons, and in June, July, and August filled with salmon which have come up here through the Golden Gates from the ocean to sp.a.w.n. The stage-road follows almost to its source the devious course of the river, and you ride along sometimes nearly on a level with the stream, and again on a road-bed cut out of the steep mountain side a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the river; through fine forests of sugar-pines and yellow pines many of which come almost up to the dimensions of the great sequoias.

The river and its upper tributaries abound in trout, and this region is famous among Californian sportsmen for deer and fish. Many farm-houses along the road accommodate travelers who desire to stay to enjoy the fine scenery, and to hunt and fish; and a notable stopping-place is Fry's Soda Spring, fourteen hours by stage from Redding, kept by Isaac Fry and his excellent wife--a clean, comfortable little mountain inn, where you get good and well-cooked food, and where you will find what your stage ride will make welcome to you--a comfortable bath. The river is too cold for bathing here in the mountains because of the snow-water of which it is composed. About ten miles south of Fry's lies Castle Rock, a remarkable and most picturesque mountain of white granite, bare for a thousand feet below its pinnacled summit, which you see as you drive past it on the stage.

Fry's lies in a deep canon, with a singular, almost precipitous, mountain opposite the house, which terminates in a sharp ridge at the top, one of those "knife-edge" ridges of which Professor Whitney and Clarence King often speak in their descriptions of Sierra scenery. If you are a mountain climber, you have here an opportunity for an adventure, and an excellent guide in Mr. Fry, who told me that this ridge is sharp enough to straddle, and that on the other side is an almost precipitous descent, with a fine lake in the distance. If you wish to hunt deer or bear, you will find in Fry an expert and experienced hunter. He has a tame doe, which, I was told, is better than a dog to mark game on a hunt, its sharp ears and nose detecting the presence of game at a great distance. If you are a fisherman, there are within three minutes' walk of the house pools abounding in trout, and you may fish up and down the river as far as you please, with good success everywhere. In June and July, when the salmon come up to sp.a.w.n, they, too, lie in the deepest pools, and with salmon eggs for bait you may, if you are expert enough with your rod, take many a fat salmon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BOTTLING-CELLAR.]

It is astonishing to see how the salmon crowd the river at the sp.a.w.ning season. The Indians then gather from a considerable distance, to spear and trap these fish, which they dry for winter use; and you will see at this season many picturesque Indian camps along the river. They set a crotch of two sticks in a salmon pool, and lay a log from the sh.o.r.e to this crotch.