Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 9

Upon this log the Indian walks out, with a very long spear, two-p.r.o.nged at the end and there armed with two bone spear-heads, which are fastened to the shaft of the spear by very strong cord, usually made of deer's sinews.

The Indian stands very erect and in a really fine att.i.tude, and peers into the black pool until his eye catches the silver sheen of a salmon. Then he darts, and instantly you see a commotion in the water as he hauls up toward the surface a struggling twenty-five or thirty pound fish. The bone spear heads, when they have penetrated the salmon, come off from the spear, and the fish is held by the cord. A squaw stands ready on the sh.o.r.e to haul him in, and he is beaten over the head with a club until he ceases to struggle, then cleaned, and roasted on hot stones. When the meat is done and dry it is picked off the bones, and the squaws rub it to a fine powder between their hands, and in this shape it is packed for future use.

From one of these pools a dozen Indian spearmen frequently draw out four hundred salmon in a day, and this fish forms an important part of their food. Of course they kill a great many thousand female salmon during the season; but so far, I believe, this murderous work has not been found to decrease the number of the fish which annually enter the river from the ocean, and go up to its head waters to sp.a.w.n.

If you visit this region during the last of June or in July, you may watch the salmon sp.a.w.ning, a most curious and remarkable sight. The great fish then leave the deep pools in which they have been quietly lying for some weeks before, and fearlessly run up on the shallow ripples. Here, animated by a kind of fury, they beat the sand off the shoals with their tails, until often a female salmon thus labors till her tail fins are entirely worn off. She then deposits her eggs upon the coa.r.s.e gravel, and the greedy trout, which are extravagantly fond of salmon eggs, rush up to eat them as the poor mother lays them. They are, I believe, watched and beaten off by the male salmon, which accompanies the female for this purpose.

When the female salmon has deposited her eggs, and the male salmon has done his part of the work, the two often bring stones of considerable size in their mouths to cover up the eggs and protect them from the predatory attacks of the trout.

And thereupon, according to the universal testimony of the fishermen of these waters, the salmon dies. I was a.s.sured that the dead bodies often c.u.mber the sh.o.r.e after the sp.a.w.ning season is over; and the mountaineers all a.s.sert that the salmon, having once sp.a.w.ned up here, does not go down to the ocean again. They hold that the young salmon stay in the upper waters for a year, and go to sea about eighteen months after hatching; and it is not uncommon, I believe, for fishermen hereabouts to catch grilse weighing from two to four pounds. These bite sometimes at the fly. The salmon bite, too, when much smaller, for I caught one day a young salmon not more than six inches long. This little fellow was taken with a bait of salmon eggs, and his bright silvery sides made him quite different from the trout which I was catching out of the same pool. His, head, also had something of the fierce, predatory, hawk-like form which the older salmon's has.

Fry is an excellent fisherman himself, and knows all the best pools within reach of his house, and, if you are a mountaineer, will take you a dozen miles through the woods to other streams, where you may fish and hunt for days or weeks with great success, for these woods and waters are as yet visited by but few sportsmen.

And if you happen to come upon Indian fishermen on your way--they are all peaceful hereabouts--you may get the n.o.ble red man's opinion of the great Woman Question. As I stood at the road-side one day I saw an Indian emerging from the woods, carrying his rifle and his pipe. Him followed, at a respectful distance, his squaw, a little woman not bigger than a twelve-year-old boy; and _she_ carried, first, a baby; second, three salmon, each of which weighed not less than twenty pounds; third, a wild goose, weighing six or eight pounds; finally, a huge bundle of some kind of greens. This c.u.mbrous and heavy load the Indian had lashed together with strong thongs, and the squaw carried it on her back, suspended by a strap which pa.s.sed across her forehead.

When an Indian kills a deer he loads it on the back of his squaw to carry home. Arrived there, he lights his pipe, and she skins and cleans the animal, cuts off a piece sufficient for dinner, lights a fire, and cooks the meat. This done, the n.o.ble red man, who has calmly or impatiently contemplated these labors of the wife of his bosom, lays down his pipe and eats his dinner. When he is done, the woman, who has waited at one side, sits down to hers and eats what he has left.

"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." Miss Anthony and Mrs. Cady Stanton have good missionary ground among these Indians. One wonders in what language an Indian brave courts the young squaw whom he wishes to marry; what promises he makes her; what hopes he holds out; with what enticing views of wedded bliss he lures the Indian maiden to the altar or whatever may be the Digger subst.i.tute for that piece of church furniture. One wonders that the squaws have not long ago combined and struck for at least moderately decent treatment; that marriages have not ceased among them; that there has not arisen among the Diggers, the Pit River Indians, and all the Indian tribes, some woman capable of leading her s.e.x in a rebellion.

But, to tell the truth, the Indian women are homely to the last degree.

"Ugly," said an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of squaws--"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized, thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights movement has succeeded, and when women, dressed like frights in such Bloomer costume as may then be prescribed, go out to their daily toil like men, and on an equality with men--when they have cast off the beauty which is so scornfully spoken of in the conventions, and have secured their rights--whether they will be any better off than these squaws. When you have thoughtfully regarded the Indian woman perhaps you will agree with Gail Hamilton that it is woman's first duty to be useless; for it is plain that here, as in a higher civilization, when women consent to work as men, they are sure to have the hardest work and the poorest pay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN RANCHERIA.]

As you ascend the Sacramento you near Mount Shasta, and when you reach Strawberry Valley, a pretty little mountain vale, you are but a short ride from its base. It is from this point that tourists ascend the mountain.

You can hire horses, guides, and a camp outfit here, and the adventure requires three days. You ride up to the snow-line the first day, ascend to the top the following morning, descend to your camp in the afternoon, and return to the valley on the third day. Mount Shasta has a glacier, almost, but not quite, the only one, I believe, within the limits of the United States. The mountain is an extinct volcano. Its summit is composed of lava, and if your eye is familiar with the peculiar shape of volcanic peaks, you can easily trace the now broken lines of this old crater as you view the mountain from the Shasta plain on the north.

There are many extremely pretty valleys scattered through these mountains, and these are used by small farmers, and by sheep and cattle owners who in the winter take their stock into the lower valleys, but ascend into the mountains in May, and remain until October. This is also a timber region, and as it is well watered by permanent streams you see frequent saw-mills, and altogether more improvement than one expects to find. But, proceeding further north you come upon a large plain, the Shasta Valley, in which lies the considerable town of Yreka, notable during the last winter and spring as the point from which news came to us about the Modoc war.

From Yreka you may easily visit the celebrated "lava beds," where the Indians made so stubborn and long-continued a defense against the United States troops; and at Yreka you may hear several opinions upon the merits of the Modocs and their war. You will hear, for instance, that the Indians were stirred up to hostilities by mischievous and designing whites, that white men were not wanting to supply them with arms and ammunition, and that, had it not been for the unscrupulous management of some greedy and wicked whites, we should not have been horrified by the shocking incidents of this costly Indian trouble, in which the United States Government for six months waged war against forty-six half-starved Modocs.

The Shasta Valley is an extensive plain, chiefly used at present as a range for cattle and sheep. But its soil is fertile, and the valley contains some good farms. Beyond Yreka gold mining is pursued, and, indeed, almost the whole of the mountain region north of Redding yields "the color;" and at many points along the Upper Sacramento and the mountain streams which fall into it, gold is mined profitably. One day, at the Soda Spring, several of us asked Mr. Fry whether he could find gold near the river. He took a pan, and digging at random in his orchard, washed out three or four specks of gold; and he related that when he was planting this orchard ten years ago he found gold in the holes he dug for his apple-trees. But he is an old miner, and experience has taught him that a good apple orchard is more profitable, in the long run, than a poor gold mine.

A large part of the Sacramento Valley is still used for grazing purposes, but the farmers press every year more and more upon the graziers; and the policy of the Government in holding its own lands within what are called "railroad limits"--that is to say, within twenty miles on each side of the railroad--for settlement under the pre-emption and homestead laws, as well as the policy of the railroad company in selling its lands, the alternate sections for twenty miles on each side of the road, on easy terms and with long credit to actual settlers, prevents land monopoly in this region.

There is room, and cheap and fertile land, for an immense population of industrious farmers, who can live here in a mild climate, and till a fertile soil, and who need only intelligence and enterprise to raise profitably raisins, orchard fruits, castor-oil, peanuts, silk, and a dozen other products valuable in the world's commerce, and not produced elsewhere in this country so easily. It is still in this region a time of large farms poorly tilled; but I believe that small farms, from 160 to 320 acres, will prove far more profitable in the end.

The progress of California in material enterprises is something quite wonderful and startling. A year brings about changes for which one can hardly look in ten years. It is but eighteen months ago that the idea of a system of irrigation, to include the whole of the San Joaquin Valley, was broached, and then the most sanguine of the projectors thought that to give their enterprise a fair start would require years, and a great number of shrewd men believed the whole scheme visionary. But a few experiments showed to land-owners and capitalists the enormous advantages of irrigation, and now this scheme has sufficient capital behind it, and large land-holders are offering subsidies and mortgaging their lands to raise means to hasten the completion of the ca.n.a.l. Two years ago the reclamation of the tule lands, though begun, advanced slowly, and arguments were required to convince men that tule land was a safe investment. But this year eight hundred miles of levee will be completed, and thousands of acres will bear wheat next harvest which were overflowed eighteen months ago. Two years ago the question whether California could produce good raisins could not be answered; but last fall raisins which sold in the San Francisco market beside the best Malagas were cured by several persons, and it is now certain that this State can produce--and from its poorest side-hill lands--raisins enough to supply the whole Union. Not a year pa.s.ses but some new and valuable product of the soil is naturalized in this State; and one who has seen the soil and who knows the climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or, at most, ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed, and all their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, seen how wide is the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future of California.

But, in truth, it is not easy to exaggerate, for the soil in the great valleys is deep and of extraordinary fertility; there are no forests to clear away, and farms lie ready-made to the settlers' hands; the range of products includes all those of the temperate zone and many of the torrid; the climate is invigorating, and predisposes to labor; and the seasons are extraordinarily favorable to the labors of the farmer and gardener. The people have not yet settled down to hard work. There are so many chances in life out there that men become overenterprising--a speculative spirit invades even the farm-house; and as a man can always live--food being so abundant and the climate so kindly--and as the population is as yet spa.r.s.e, men are tempted to go from one avocation to another, to do many things superficially, and to look for sudden fortunes by the chances of a shrewd venture, rather than be content to live by patient and continued labor. This, however, is the condition of all new countries; it will pa.s.s away as population becomes more dense. And, meantime California has gifts of nature which form a solid substratum upon which will, in a few years, be built up a community productive far beyond the average of wealthy or productive communities. This is my conclusion after seeing all parts of this State more in detail than perhaps any one man has taken the trouble to examine it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIEDRAS BLANCAS.]

CHAPTER II.

WINE AND RAISINS--PROFITS OF DRYING FRUITS.

I have now seen the grape grow in almost every part of California where wine is made. The temptation to a new settler in this State is always strong to plant a vineyard; and I am moved, by much that I have seen, to repeat here publicly advice I have often given to persons newly coming into the State: Do not make wine. I remember a wine-cellar, cheaply built, but with substantial and costly casks, containing (because the vineyard was badly placed) a mean, thin, fiery wine; and on a pleasant sunny afternoon, around these casks, a group of tipsy men--hopeless, irredeemable beasts, with nothing much to do except to encourage each other to another gla.s.s, and to wonder at the Eastern man who would not drink. There were two or three Indians staggering about the door; there was swearing and filthy talk inside; there was a pretentious tasting of this, that, and the other cask by a parcel of sots, who in their hearts would have preferred "forty-rod" whisky. And a little way off there was a house with women and children in it, who had only to look out of the door to see this miserable sight of husband, father, friends, visitors, and hired men spending the afternoon in getting drunk.

I do not want any one to understand that every vineyard is a nest of drunkards, for this is not true. In the Napa and Sonoma valleys, in the foot-hills of the Sierra, at Anaheim and elsewhere in the southern country, you may find many men cultivating the grape and making wine in all soberness. But everywhere, and in my own experience nearly as often, you will see the proprietor, or his sons or his hired men, bearing the marks of strong drink; and too often, if you come unexpectedly, you will see some poor wretch in the wine-house who about four o'clock is maudlin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POINT ARENA LIGHT-HOUSE.]

Seeing all this, I advise no new settler in the State to make wine.

He runs too many risks with children and laborers, even if he himself escapes.

In giving this advice, I do not mean to be offensive to the great body of wine growers in California, which numbers in its list a great many able, careful, and sober men, who are doing, as they have done, much and worthily for the prosperity of the State and for the production of good wine, and whose skill and enterprise are honorable to them. But the best and most thoughtful of these men will bear me out when I say that wine growing and making is a business requiring eminent skill and great practical good sense, and that not every one who comes to California with means enough to plant a vineyard ought to enter this business or can in the long run do so safely or profitably.

Fortunately, no one need make wine, though every man may raise grapes; for it is now a fact, established by sufficient and practical trial, that raisins, equal in every respect to the best Malaga, can be made in California from the proper varieties of grapes, and can be sold for a price which will very handsomely pay the maker, and with a much smaller investment of capital and less skill than are required to establish a wine-cellar and make wine. The vineyard owners already complain that they can not always readily sell their crude wine at a paying price; but the market for carefully-made raisins is, as I am told by the princ.i.p.al fruit dealers in San Francisco, open and eager. To make wine requires uncommon skill and care, and to keep it so that age shall give it that merit which commands a really good price demands considerable capital in the necessary outlay for casks. While the skillful wine-maker undoubtedly gets a large profit on his vines, it begins to be seen here that there is an oversupply of poorly-made wine.

But any industrious person who has the right kind of grapes can make raisins; and raisin-making, which in 1871 had still a very uncertain future in this State, may now safely be called one of the established and most promising industries here.

In 1872 I ate excellent raisins in Los Angeles, and tolerable ones in Visalia; but they sell very commonly in the shops what they call "dried grapes," which are not raisins at all, but damp, sticky, disagreeable things, not good even in puddings. This year, however, I have seen in several places good native raisins; and the head of the largest fruit-importing house in San Francisco told me that one raisin-maker last fall sold the whole of his crop there at $2 per box of twenty-five pounds, Malagas of the same quality bringing at the same time but $2.37-1/2. There is a market for all well-made raisins that can be produced in the State, he said, and they are preferred to the foreign product.

At Folsom, Mr. Bugby told me he had made last year 1700 boxes of raisins, and he was satisfied with the pecuniary return; and I judge from the testimony of different persons that at seven cents per pound raisins will pay the farmer very well. The Malaga and the White Muscat are the grapes which appear here to make the best raisins. n.o.body has yet tried the Seedless Sultana, which, however, bears well here, and would make, I should think, an excellent cooking raisin.

For making raisins they wait until the grape is fully ripe, and then carefully cut off the bunches and lay them either on a hard clay floor, formed in the open air, or on brown paper laid between the vine rows. They do not trim out poor grapes from the bunches, because, as they a.s.sert, there are none; but I suspect this will have to be done for the very finest raisins, such as would tempt a reluctant buyer. The bunches require from eighteen to twenty-four days of exposure in the sun to be cured.

During that time they are gently turned from time to time, and such as are earliest cured are at once removed to a raisin-house.

This is fitted with shelves, on which the raisins are laid about a foot thick, and here they are allowed to sweat a little. If they sweat too much the sugar candies on the outside, and this deteriorates the quality of the raisin. It is an object to keep the bloom on the berries. They are kept in the raisin-house, I was told, five or six weeks, when they are dry enough to box. It is as yet customary to put them in twenty-five pound boxes, but, no doubt, as more experience is gained, farmers will contrive other parcels. Chinese do all the work in raisin-making, and are paid one dollar a day, they supplying themselves with food. There is no rain during the raisin-making season, and, consequently, the whole outdoor work may be done securely as well as cheaply.

Enormous quant.i.ties of fruit are now put up in tin cans in this State; and you will be surprised, perhaps--as I was the other day--to hear of an orchard of peach and apricot trees, which bears this year (1873) its first full crop, and for one hundred acres of which the owners have received ten thousand dollars cash, gold, selling the fruit on the trees, without risk of ripening or trouble of picking.

Yet peaches and apricots are not the most profitable fruits in this State, for the cherry--the most delicious cherries in the world grow here--is worth even more; and I suspect that the few farmers who have orchards of plums, and carefully dry the fruit, make as much money as the cherry owners. There has sprung up a very lively demand for California dried plums. They bring from twenty to twenty-two cents per pound at wholesale in San Francisco, and even as high as thirty cents for the best quality; and I am told that last season a considerable quant.i.ty was shipped Eastward and sold at a handsome profit in New York.

The plum bears heavily and constantly north of Sacramento, and does not suffer from the curculio, and the dried fruit is delicious and wholesome.

Some day the farmers who are now experimenting with figs will, I do not doubt, produce also a marketable dried fig in large quant.i.ties. At San Francisco, in October, 1873, I found in the shops delicious dried figs, but not in great quant.i.ties, nor so thoroughly dried as to bear shipment to a distance. The tree nourishes in almost all parts of the State.

Usually it bears two and often three crops a year, and it grows into a n.o.ble and stately tree.

I am told that when Smyrna figs sell for twenty to thirty cents per pound, California figs bring but from five to ten cents. The tree comes into full bearing, where its location is favorable, in its third or fourth year; and ought to yield then about sixty pounds of dried figs. I suspect the cost of labor will control the drying of figs, for they must be picked by hand.

If they fall to the ground they are easily bruised, and the bruised part turns sour.

They are dried in the shade, and on straw, which lets the air get to every part. Irrigation is not good after the tree bears, as the figs do not dry so readily. Birds and ants are fond of the fruit; and in one place I was told the birds took almost the whole of the first crop. There are many varieties of the fig grown in this State, but the White Smyrna is, I believe, thought to be the best for market. There are no large plantations of this tree in the State, but it is found on almost every farm and country place, and is a very wholesome fruit when eaten green.

When the farmers of the Sacramento Valley become tired of sowing wheat, and when the land comes into the hands of small farmers, as it is now doing to some extent, it will be discovered that fruit-trees are surer and more profitable than grain. A considerable emigration is now coming into California; and I advise every one who goes there to farm to lose no time before planting an orchard. Trees grow very rapidly, and it will be many years before such fruits as the cherry, plum, apricot, or the raisin-grape are too abundant to yield to their owners exceptionally large profits.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHIPPING LUMBER, MENDOCINO COUNTY.]

CHAPTER III.

THE TULE LANDS AND LAND DRAINAGE.

While you are talking about redeeming the New Jersey marshes these go-ahead Californians are actually diking and reclaiming similar and, in some cases, richer overflowed lands by the hundred thousand acres.