Lumbering in Washington Territory-Preparing LogsLumbering in Washington Territory—Preparing LogsClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
I suppose all saw-mills are pretty much alike; those on this coast not only saw lumber of different shapes and sizes, but they have also planing and finishing apparatus attached; and in some the waste lumber is worked up with a good deal of care and ingenuity. But in many of the mills there is great waste. It is probably a peculiarity of the saw-mills on this coast, that they must provide a powerful rip-saw to rip in two the larger logs before they are small enough for a circular saw to manage. Indeed, occasionally the huge logs are split with wedges, or blown apart with gunpowder, in the logging camps, because they are too vast to be floated down to the mill in one piece. The expedients for loading vessels are often novel and ingenious. For instance, at Mendocino the lumber is loaded on cars at the mill, and drawn by steam up a sharp incline, and by horses off to a point which shelters and affords anchorage for schooners. This point is, perhaps, one hundred feet above the water-line, and long wire-rope stages are projected from the top, and suspended by heavy derricks. The car runs to the edge of the cliff; the schooner anchors under the shipping stage one hundred feet below, and the lumber is slid down to her, a man standing at the lower end to check its too rapid descent with a kind of brake. When a larger vessel is to be loaded, they slide the lumber into a lighter, and the ship is loaded from her. The redwood is shipped not only to California ports, but also to China and South America; and while I was at. Mendocino, a bark lay there loading for the Navigator Islands.
A large part of the lumbering population consists of bachelors, and for their accommodation you see numerous shanties erected near the saw-mills and lumber piles. At Mendocino City there is quite a colony of such shanties, two long rows, upon a point or cape from which the lumber is loaded.
I had the curiosity to enter one of these little snuggeries, which was unoccupied. It was about ten by twelve feet in area, had a large fire-place (for fuel is shamefully abundant here), a bunk for sleeping, with a lamp arranged for reading in bed, a small table, hooks for clothes, a good board floor, a small window, and a neat little hood over the door-way, which gave this little hut quite a picturesque effect. There was, besides, a rough bench and a small table.
It seemed to me that in such a climate as that of Mendocino, where they wear the same clothes all the year round, have evening fires in July, and may keep their doors open in January, such a little kennel as this meets all the real wants of the male of the human race.
This, I suspect, is about as far as man, unaided by woman, would have carried civilization anywhere. Whatever any of us have over and above such a snuggery as this we owe to womankind; whatever of comfort or elegance we possess, woman has given us, or made us give her. I think no wholesome, right-minded man in the world would ever get beyond such a hut; and I even suspect that the occupant of the shanty I inspected must have been in love, and thinking seriously of marriage, else he would never have nailed the pretty little hood over his door-way. So helpless is man! And yet there are people who would make of woman only a kind of female man!
As you travel along the coast, the stage-road gives you frequent and satisfactory views of its curiously distorted and ocean-eaten caves and rocks. It has a dangerous and terrible aspect, no doubt, to mariners, but it is most wonderful, viewed from the shore. At every projection you see that the waves have pierced and mined the rock; if the sea is high, you will hear it roar in the caverns it has made, and whistle and shriek wherever it has an outlet above through which the waves may force the air.
The real curiosity of this region is a logging camp. The redwood country is astonishingly broken; the mountain sides are often almost precipitous; and on these steep sides the redwood grows tall and straight and big beyond the belief of an Eastern man. The trees do not occupy the whole ground, but share it with laurels, dogwood, a worthless kind of oak, occasionally pine, and smaller wood. It is a kind of jungle; and the loggers, when they have felled a number of trees, set fire to the brush in order to clear the ground before they attempt to draw the logs to the water.
Victoria Harbor, Vancouver's islandVictoria Harbor, Vancouver's islandClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
A logging camp is an assemblage of rude redwood shanties, gathered about one larger shanty, which is the cook-house and dining-hall, and where usually two or three Chinamen are at work over the stove, and setting the table. The loggers live well; they have excellent bread, meat, beans, butter, dried apples, cakes, pies, and pickles; in short, I have dined in worse places.
A camp is divided into "crews;" a crew is composed of from twenty to twenty-six men, who keep one team of eight or ten oxen busy hauling the logs to water.
A "crew" consists of teamsters, choppers, chain-tenders, jack-screw men (for these logs are too heavy to be moved without such machinery), swampers, who build the roads over which the logs are hauled, sawyers, and barkers. A teamster, I was told, receives seventy dollars per month, a chopper fifty dollars, chain-tenders and jack-screw men the same, swampers forty-five dollars, sawyers forty dollars, and barkers, who are usually Indians, one dollar a day and board besides, for all. The pay is not bad, and as the chances to spend money in a logging camp are not good, many of the men lay up money, and by-and-by go to farming or go home. They work twelve hours a day.
A man in Humboldt County got out of one redwood tree lumber enough to make his house and barn, and to fence in two acres of ground.
A schooner was filled with shingles made from a single tree.
One tree in Mendocino, whose remains were shown to me, made a mile of railroad ties. Trees fourteen feet in diameter have been frequently found and cut down; the saw-logs are often split apart with wedges, because the entire mass is too large to float in the narrow and shallow streams; and I have even seen them blow a log apart with gunpowder.
A tree four feet in diameter is called undersized in these woods; and so skillful are the wood-choppers that they can make the largest giant of the forest fall just where they want it, or, as they say, they "drive a stake with the tree."
To chop down a redwood-tree, the chopper does not stand on the ground, but upon a stage sometimes twelve feet above the ground. Like the sequoia, the redwood has a great bulk near the ground, but contracts somewhat a few feet above. The chopper wants only the fair round of the tree, and his stage is composed of two stout staves, shod with a pointed iron at one end, which is driven into the tree. The outer ends are securely supported; and on these staves he lays two narrow, tough boards, on which he stands, and which spring at every blow of his axe. It will give you an idea of the bulk of these trees, when I tell you that in chopping down the larger ones two men stand on the stage and chop simultaneously at the same cut, facing each other.
They first cut off the bark, which is from four to ten, and often fifteen inches thick. This done, they begin what is called the "undercut"—the cut on that, side toward which the tree is meant to fall; and when they have made a little progress, they, by an ingenious and simple contrivance, fix upon the proper direction of the cut, so as to make the tree fall accurately where they want it. This is necessary, on account of the great length and weight of the trees, and the roughness of the ground, by reason of which a tree carelessly felled may in its fall break and split into pieces, so as to make it entirely worthless. This happens not unfrequently, in spite of every care.
So skillful are they in giving to the tree its proper direction that they are able to set a post or stake in the ground a hundred feet or more from the root of the tree, and drive it down by felling the tree on top of it.
"Can you really drive a stake with a tree?" I asked, and was answered, "Of course, we do it every day."
The "under-cut" goes in about two-thirds the diameter. When it is finished the stage is shifted to the opposite side, and then it is a remarkable sight to see the tall, straight mass begin to tremble as the axe goes in. It usually gives a heavy crack about fifteen minutes before it means to fall. The chopper thereupon gives a warning shout, so that all may stand clear—not of the tree, for he knows very well where that will go, and in a cleared space men will stand within ten feet of where the top of a tree is to strike, and watch its fall; his warning is against the branches of other trees, which are sometimes torn off and flung to a distance by the falling giant, and which occasionally dash out men's brains.
At last the tree visibly totters, and slowly goes over; and as it goes the chopper gets off his stage and runs a few feet to one side. Then you hear and see one of the grandest and most majestic incidents of forest life. There is a sharp crack, a crash, and then a long, prolonged, thunderous crash, which, when you hear it from a little distance, is startlingly like an actual and severe thunder-peal. To see a tree six feet in diameter, and one hundred and seventy-five feet high, thus go down, is a very great sight, not soon forgotten.
The choppers expressed themselves as disappointed that they could not just then show me the fall of a tree ten or twelve feet in diameter, and over two hundred feet high. In one logging camp I visited there remained a stump fourteen feet high. At this height the tree was fourteen feet in diameter, perfectly round and sound, and it had been sawn into seventeen logs, each twelve feet long. The upper length was six feet in diameter. Probably the tree was three hundred feet long, for the top for a long distance is wasted.
So many of the trees and so many parts of trees are splintered or broken in the fall, that the master of a logging camp told me he thought they wasted at least as much as they saved; and as the mills also waste a good deal, it is probable that for every foot of this lumber that goes to market two feet are lost. A five-foot tree occupies a chopper from two and a half to three and a half hours, and to cut down a tree eight feet in diameter is counted a day's work for a man.
When the tree is down the sawyers come. Each has a long saw; he removes the bark at each cut with an axe, and then saws the tree into lengths. It is odd enough to go past a tree and see a saw moving back and forward across its diameter without seeing the man who moves it, for the tree hides him completely from you, if you are on the side opposite him. Then come the barkers, with long iron bars to rip off the thick bark; then the jack-screw men, three or four of whom move a log about easily and rapidly which a hundred men could hardly budge. They head it in the proper direction for the teamsters and chain-men, and these then drag it down to the water over roads which are watered to make the logs slide easily; and then, either at high tide or during the winter freshets, the logs are run down to the mill.
The Maine men make the best wood-choppers, but the logging camp is a favorite place also for sailors; and I was told that Germans are liked as workmen about timber. The choppers grind their axes once a week—usually, I was told, on Sunday—and all hands in a logging camp work twelve hours a day.
The Government has lately become very strict in preserving the timber on Congress land, which was formerly cut at random, and by any body who chose. Government agents watch the loggers, and if these are anywhere caught cutting timber on Congress land their rafts are seized and sold. At present prices, it pays to haul logs in the redwood country only about half a mile to water; all trees more distant than this from a river are not cut; but the rivers are in many places near each other, and the belt of timber left standing, though considerable, is not so great as one would think.
Redwood lumber has one singular property—it shrinks endwise, so that where it is used for weather-boarding a house, one is apt to see the butts shrunk apart. I am told that across the grain it does not shrink perceptibly.
Accidents are frequent in a logging camp, and good surgeons are in demand in all the saw-mill ports, for there is much more occasion for surgery than for physic. Men are cut with axes, jammed by logs, and otherwise hurt, one of the most serious dangers arising from the fall of limbs torn from standing trees by a falling one. Often such a limb lodges or sticks in the high top of a tree until the wind blows it down, or the concussion of the wood-cutter's axe, cutting down the tree, loosens it. Falling from such a height as two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet, even a light branch is dangerous, and men sometimes have their brains dashed out by such a falling limb.
When you leave the coast for the interior, you ride through mile after mile of redwood forest. Unlike the firs of Oregon and Puget Sound, this tree does not occupy the whole land. It rears its tall head from a jungle of laurel, madrone, oak, and other trees; and I doubt if so many as fifty large redwoods often stand upon a single acre. I was told that an average tree would turn out about fifteen thousand feet of lumber, and thus even thirty such trees to the acre would yield nearly half a million feet.
Port Townsend, Washington TerritoryPort Townsend, Washington TerritoryClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
The great valleys of California do not produce much butter, and probably never will, though I am told that cows fed on alfalfa, which is a kind of lucerne, yield abundant and rich milk, and, when small and careful farming comes into fashion in this State, there is no reason why stall-fed cows should not yield butter, even in the San Joaquin or Sacramento valleys. Indeed, with irrigation and stall-feeding, as one may have abundance of green food all the year round in the valleys, there should be excellent opportunity for butter-making.
But it is not necessary to use the agricultural soil for dairy purposes. In the foot-hills of the Sierras, and on the mountains, too, for a distance of more than a hundred miles along and near the line of the railroad, there is a great deal of country admirably fitted for dairying, and where already some of the most prosperous butter ranchos, as they call them here, are found. And as they are near a considerable population of miners and lumber-men, and have access by railroad to other centres of population, both eastward and westward, the business is prosperous in this large district, where, by moving higher up into the mountains as summer advances, the dairy-man secures green food for his cows the summer through, without trouble, on the one condition that he knows the country and how to pick out his land to advantage.
Another dairy district lies on the coast, where the fogs brought in by the prevailing north-west winds keep the ground moist, foster the greenness and succulence of the native grasses during the summer, at least in the ravines, and keep the springs alive.
Marin County, lying north of San Francisco, is the country of butter ranches on the coast, though there are also many profitable dairies south of the bay, in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. In fact, dry as California is commonly and erroneously supposed to be, it exports a considerable quantity of butter, and a dairy-man said to me but recently that, to make the business really prosperous, the State needed a million or two more inhabitants, which means that the surplus product is now so great that it keeps down the price. No small quantity of this surplus goes East, as far as New York; and it is one of the curiosities of production and commerce that, while California can send butter to the Atlantic, it buys eggs of Illinois. One would have thought the reverse more probable.
Marin County offers some important advantages to the dairy-farmer. The sea-fogs which it receives cause abundant springs of excellent soft water, and also keep the grass green through the summer and fall in the gulches and ravines. Vicinity to the ocean also gives this region a very equal climate. It is never cold in winter nor hot in summer. In the milk-houses I saw usually a stove, but it was used mainly to dry the milk-room after very heavy fogs or continued rains; and in the height of summer the mercury marks at most sixty-seven degrees, and the milk keeps sweet without artificial aids for thirty-six hours.
The cows require no sheds nor any store of food, though the best dairymen, I noticed, raised beets; but more, they told me, to feed to their pigs than for the cows. These creatures provide for themselves the year round in the open fields; but care is taken, by opening springs and leading water in iron pipes, to provide an abundance of this for them.
The county is full of dairy-farms; and, as this business requires rather more and better buildings than wheat, cattle, or sheep farming, as well as more fences, this gives the country a neater and thriftier appearance than is usual among farming communities in California. The butter-maker must have good buildings, and he must keep them in the best order.
But, besides these smaller dairy-farms, Marin County contains some large "butter ranches," as they are called, which are a great curiosity in their way. The Californians, who have a singular genius for doing things on a large scale which in other States are done by retail, have managed to conduct even dairying in this way, and have known how to "organize" the making of butter in a way which would surprise an Orange County farmer. Here, for instance—and to take the most successful and complete of these experiments—is the rancho of Mr. Charles Webb Howard, on which I had the curiosity to spend a couple of days. It contains eighteen thousand acres of land well fitted for dairy purposes. On this he has at this time nine separate farms, occupied by nine tenants engaged in making butter. To let the farms outright would not do, because the tenants would put up poor improvements, and would need, even then, more capital than tenant-farmers usually have. Mr. Howard, therefore, contrived a scheme which seems to work satisfactorily to all concerned, and which appears to me extremely ingenious.
Point ReyesPoint ReyesClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
He fences each farm, making proper subdivisions of large fields; he opens springs, and leads water through iron pipes to the proper places, and also to the dwelling, milk-house, and corral. He builds the houses, which consist of a substantial dwelling, twenty-eight by thirty-two feet, a story and a half high, and containing nine rooms, all lathed and plastered; a thoroughly well-arranged milk-house, twenty-five by fifty feet, having a milk-room in the centre twenty-five feet square, with a churning-room, store-room, wash-room, etc.; a barn, forty by fifty feet, to contain hay for the farm-horses; also a calf-shed, a corral, or inclosure for the cows, a well-arranged pig-pen; and all these buildings are put up in the best manner, well painted, and neat.
The tenant receives from the proprietor all this, the land, and, cows to stock it. He furnishes, on his part, all the dairy utensils, the needed horses and wagons, the furniture for the house, the farm implements, and the necessary labor. The tenant pays to the owner twenty-seven dollars and a half per annum for each cow, and agrees to take the best care of the stock and of all parts of the farm; to make the necessary repairs, and to raise for the owner annually one-fifth as many calves as he keeps cows, the remainder of the calves being killed and fed to the pigs. He agrees also to sell nothing but butter and hogs from the farm, the hogs being entirely the tenant's property.
Under this system fifteen hundred and twenty cows are now kept on nine separate farms on this estate, the largest number kept by one man being two hundred and twenty-five, and the smallest one hundred and fifteen. Mr. Howard has been for years improving his herd; he prefers short-horns, and he saves every year the calves from the best milkers in all his herd, using also bulls from good milking strains. I was told that the average product of butter on the whole estate is now one hundred and seventy-five pounds to each cow; many cows give as high as two hundred, and even two hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
Men do the milking, and also the butter-making, though on one farm I found a pretty Swedish girl superintending all the indoor work, with such skill and order in all the departments, that she possessed, so far as I saw, the model dairy on the estate.
Here, said I to myself, is now an instance of the ability of women to compete with men which would delight Mrs. Stanton and all the Woman's Rights people; here is the neatest, the sweetest, the most complete dairy in the whole region; the best order, the most shining utensils, the nicest butter-room—and not only butter, but cheese also, made, which is not usual; and here is a rosy-faced, white-armed, smooth-haired, sensibly-dressed, altogether admirable, and, to my eyes, beautiful Swedish lass presiding over it all; commanding her men-servants, and keeping every part of the business in order.
Alas! Mrs. Stanton, she has discovered a better business than butter-making. She is going to marry—sensible girl that she is—and she is not going to marry a dairy-farmer either.
I doubt if any body in California will ever make as nice butter as this pretty Swede; certainly, every other dairy I saw seemed to me commonplace and uninteresting, after I had seen hers. I don't doubt that the young man who has had the art to persuade her to love him ought to be hanged, because butter-making is far more important than marrying. Nevertheless, I wish him joy in advance, and, in humble defiance of Mrs. Stanton and her brilliant companions in arms, hereby give it as my belief that the pretty Swede is a sensible girl—that, to use a California vulgarism, "her head is level."
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 butter.
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 butter, I was told, in half an hour.
The butter 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 butter. 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.
Columbia River SceneColumbia River SceneClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
General Bidwell, of Butte County, raised last year on his own estate, besides a large quantity 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 Butte 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—Lassen'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. Lassen'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 Lassen'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 principal 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 hither 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 passes, 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 grass 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.
Street in Olympia, Washington TerritoryStreet in Olympia, Washington TerritoryClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
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-pronged 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 class.
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 FranciscoBulletinwill 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. Butte 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 quantity 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-class 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.
'Tacoma,' Or Mount Rainier'Tacoma,' Or Mount RainierClick Thumbnail for full-size Illustration
The manufacture of cigars is one of the largest industries of San Francisco. Last year the Government received taxes on 78,000,000 cigars made in the State of California, and in September alone taxes were paid on 8,000,000. But, though the State has thousands of acres of land well fitted to produce tobacco, and though the "weed" has been grown here for twenty years or more with great success, so far as getting a heavy crop is concerned, I doubt if even 1,000,000 of cigars have, until this fall, been made of tobacco raised in California.
There has, however, been no lack of efforts to produce here tobacco fit to manufacture into cigars and for smoking and chewing purposes. The soil in many parts of the State is peculiarly adapted to this plant; the climate, mild and regular, favored its growth and hastened its perfection. The best seed was procured from Connecticut, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida, and Cuba. But for many years the product was rank, coarse, and fitter for sheep-wash than for any other purpose.
Meantime, however, not a few men familiar with the old processes of raising and curing the plant have tried their best ingenuity to improve the quality. It was thought that the soil was too rich, because the tobacco makes a rapid and heavy growth; but planting on thinner or older soil did not answer. Several methods of curing were contrived, and there is now reason to believe that the one known as the Culp process, from the name of its patentee, will produce the desired result. I had heard and read so much about it, and about the merit of the tobacco produced by it, that I went down to Gilroy, seventy or eighty miles south of San Francisco, to see what had really been accomplished. The account I give below will probably interest many tobacco growing and manufacturing readers, while it will, I fear, painfully affect the spirits of the anti-tobacconists; for there is reason to believe that tobacco will become presently one of the most important and valuable crops of this State.
I must premise that I am not an expert in tobacco, nor familiar with the methods pursued in the East. I have seen a tobacco-field and the inside of a Connecticut curing-house, and that is about all. I give, therefore, not opinions, but facts.
Gilroy stands in a long and broad plain, a very rich piece of alluvial bottom, with water so abundant that artesian wells are easily bored and very common. At the depth of one hundred and thirty feet they get flowing wells, and it happened in one case of which I heard that the water came up with such force as to prevent the casing going down into the well, and the pressure of the water broke away the ground, enlarged the bore of the well, and threatened to flood a considerable area, so that the farmers gathered in force, and by means of an iron caisson loaded with stones, and with many cart-loads of stones besides, plugged up the dangerous hole.
The land is a deep alluvial loam, easily worked, and here, and in some neighboring valleys, many tobacco growers have been engaged for the last ten or twelve years. Mr. Culp, who was a tobacco grower, and, if I understood him rightly, also a manufacturer in New York for some years before he came here, and who appears, at any rate, to be a very thorough farmer and a lover of clean fields, has planted tobacco here for fifteen years. He has a farm of about seven hundred acres, four hundred of which have this year been in tobacco. From him and others I learned the following particulars of the way in which they cultivate the plant in California.
They sow the seed from the 1st to the 10th of January, and sometimes even in December. The beds are prepared and sown as in the East, except that they do not always burn the ground over, which, if I remember rightly, is invariably done in Missouri and Kentucky. In this season, the days are always warm enough for the little plants; but there are light frosts at night, and they are protected against these by frames covered with thin cotton cloth.
The fields are plowed—by the best growers—ten inches deep; cross-plowed and harrowed until the soil is fine, and then ridged—that is to say, two furrows are thrown together. This saves the plants from harm by a heavy rain, and also makes the ground warmer, and is found to start the plants more quickly.
Planting in the fields begins about the 8th of April; and the plants are set a foot apart in the rows, the rows being three feet apart, if they are from Havana seed; if Connecticut or Florida, they stand eighteen inches or two feet apart in the rows.
They had grown, besides Havana and Florida, for their crop, Latakia, Hungarian, Mexican, Virginia, Connecticut-seed Standard, Burleigh, White Leaf, and some other kinds, by way of experiment.
Cultivators and shovel-plows are used to keep the soil loose and clean; if the weather should prove damp and cold, the shovel-plow is used to make the ridges somewhat higher. They go over the fields twice in the season with these tools, using the hoe freely where weeds get into the rows. Last year, in twenty-six days after they were done planting, they had gathered two bales of tobacco. This, however, is not common, and was done by very close management, and on a warm soil.
All the tobacco growers with whom I spoke assert that they are not troubled with that hideous creature, "the worm." They attribute this in part to the excellence of their soil, and partly to the abundance of birds and yellow jackets. They do not "worm" their crop, it seems, which must give them an enviable advantage over Eastern growers.
They do not always "top" the Havana, and they do very little "suckering." If the ground is clean, they let the suckers from the root grow, and these become as large and heavy as the original plant. They believe that the soil is strong enough to bear the plants and suckers, and that they get a better leaf and finer quality without suckering.
The planting is continued from April until the latter part of July, so as to let the crop come in gradually; the last planting may be caught by an early frost, but whatever they plant before the 1st of July is safe in any season. Cutting begins about the 4th of June, and this year they were cutting still on the 19th of October. The earlier cut plants sprout again at once, and mature a second and even a third crop. Mr. Culp told me that he had taken four crops of Havana in one year from the same field, and I saw considerable fields of third crop just cut or standing; but in some cases the frost had caught this. "If the soil is in perfect order, we can here make a crop of Havana in forty days from the planting," said he.
One man can prepare and take care of ten acres here, keeping it in good order. For planting and cutting, of course, an extra force is used. One man can set out or plant three thousand plants in a day of Havana; of the other kinds from fifteen hundred to two thousand.
The tobacco is cut with a hatchet; if it is Havana, the toppers usually go just ahead of the cutters in the field, or they may be a day ahead. Florida is topped ten days or two weeks before cutting. You must remember that after April they have no rain here, so that all field work goes on without interruption from the weather, and crops can be exposed in the field as a planter would not dare do in the East. Up to the cutting, the methods here differ from those used in the East, only so far as climate and soil are different.
When the plant lies in the field Mr. Culp's peculiar process begins; and this I prefer to describe to you as nearly as I can in his own words. He said that tobacco had long been grown in California even before the Americans came. He had raised it as a crop for fifteen years; and before he perfected his new process, he was able usually to select the best of his crop for smoking-tobacco, and sold the remainder for sheep-wash. One year two millions of pounds were raised in the State, and, as it was mostly sold for sheep-wash, it lasted several years, and discouraged the growers. Tobacco always grew readily, but it was too rank and strong. They used Eastern methods, topping and suckering, and as the plant had here a very long season to grow and mature, the leaf was thick and very strong.
The main features of the Culp process are, he said, to let the tobacco, when cut, wilt on the field; then take it at once to the tobacco-house and pile it down, letting it heat on the piles to 100 degrees for Havana. It must, he thinks, come to 100°, but if it rises to 102° it is ruined. Piling, therefore, requires great judgment. The tobacco-houses are kept at a temperature of about 70 degrees; and late in the fall, to cure a late second or third crop, they sometimes use a stove to maintain a proper heat in the house, for the tobacco must not lie in the pile without heating.