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F 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OF 
 
 STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 
 1943 
 
Cornell University Library 
 F 851 J661926 
 
 Highways and byways of California : with 
 
 3 1924 028 918 336 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028918336 
 
At the fountain — Santa Barbara 
 
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
 
 OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 WITH EXCURSIONS INTO 
 
 ARIZONA 
 
 OREGON 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 NEVADA 
 
 AND 
 
 IDAHO 
 
 WRITTEN AND 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 CLIFTON JOHNSON 
 
 Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 New York MCMXXVl 
 
Copyrigkt, igo8, 
 
 by the Macmillati Company. 
 
 Set up and dectrotyped. 
 Published September, 1908. 
 Reprinted September, 191 3, 
 Reprinted May, 19 15. 
 Reissued February, 1926, 
 
 AMERICAN 
 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 Printed 
 
 by the 
 
 Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass. 
 
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF 
 THE PACIFIC COAST 
 
 INCLUDING THE STATES OF 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 ARIZONA 
 
 OREGON 
 
 NEVADA 
 
 IDAHO 
 
 AND THE 
 
 YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 
 
'M)^^ 
 

 Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 I. 
 
 The Grand Canyon of Arizona 
 
 I 
 
 II. 
 
 On the Borders of Mexico 
 
 • 3° 
 
 III. 
 
 A Rustic Village 
 
 • 52 
 
 IV. 
 
 Spring in Southern California . 
 
 • 79 
 
 V. 
 
 Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 
 
 . io6 
 
 VI. 
 
 A Vale of Plenty 
 
 . 124 
 
 VII. 
 
 April in the Yosemite .... 
 
 . 143 
 
 Vlll. 
 
 Around the Golden Gate 
 
 . 166 
 
 IX. 
 
 A Nevada Town with a Past . 
 
 . 182 
 
 X. 
 
 Among the Shasta Foothills 
 
 . 209 
 
 XI. 
 
 Oregon Farm Life 
 
 . 228 
 
 XII. 
 
 Along the Columbia .... 
 
 240 
 
 XIII. 
 
 On the Shores of Puget Sound 
 
 . 265 
 
 XIV. 
 
 At the Edge of Canada .... 
 
 . 286 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Niagara of the West 
 
 • 303 
 
Illustrations 
 
 At the Fountain — Santa Barbara 
 
 
 
 Frontispiece 
 Facing Paqb 
 
 The Grand Canyon of Arizona ...... I 
 
 A Guide on the Bright Angel Trail 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 Descending the Corkscrew . 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 In the Depths of the Canyon 
 
 
 
 
 • 14 
 
 Indian Blanket Weaving 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Early Spring ..... 
 
 
 
 
 34 
 
 The Launching of J:he Ship 
 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 Crossing at a Ford .... 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 A Mexican .... 
 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 The Story Book .... 
 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 Among the Arches of the Old Mission 
 
 
 
 
 54 
 
 An Indian Family .... 
 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 On the Porch at the Village Store 
 
 
 
 
 74 
 
 The Vineclad Verandah of an Old Spanish 
 
 Hom( 
 
 
 
 79 
 
 The Cliffs of Santa Catalina 
 
 
 
 
 85 
 
 Comrades ..... 
 
 
 
 
 86 
 
 Schoolgirls ...... 
 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 Enroute for Death Valley .... 
 
 
 
 
 100 
 
Illustrations 
 
 Garden Work . . 
 
 Meditation 
 
 The Artist 
 
 At Work in a Home Yard 
 
 The News 
 
 Water for Irrigation . 
 
 At Work Along an Irrigating Ditch 
 
 A Prospector and His Outfit 
 
 The Road to the Mountains 
 
 The Valley of the Yosemite 
 
 The Yosemite Falls 
 
 The Grizzly Giant 
 
 Looking from the Fishermen's Wharf 
 
 Golden Gate 
 A Glimpse of the Shipping 
 A Main Thoroughfare in Chinatown 
 The View across San Francisco Bay to Mt. Tamalpais 
 A Prospector 
 
 The Tinker .... 
 Making Firewood of the Sagebrush 
 A Deserted Wigwam . 
 The White Peaks of Mt. Shasta 
 The Well at the Back Door 
 Hoboes Getting Dinner . 
 
 towards the 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 io6 
 
Illustrations 
 
 xi 
 
 Washing Day 
 
 At the Gate 
 
 The Milkmaids , 
 
 Schoolboys 
 
 A Hollow Among the Hills 
 
 Mending a Salmon Net 
 
 A Salmon Wheel 
 
 Woodland Blossoms 
 
 In a Village on the Columbia 
 
 Mending a Shoe 
 
 Starting to Fell a Giant Cedar 
 
 In the Garden . 
 
 Burning Brush . 
 
 Getting Ready to Plant Potatoes 
 
 Visiting at the Gate . 
 
 A Corduroy Bridge 
 
 A Log House 
 
 Planting Time . 
 
 A Jack Rabbit in Sight 
 
 The Niagara of the West . 
 
 The Ferry Above the Falls 
 
 Faons Pagx 
 
 • 225 
 
 • 231 
 
 • 235 
 . 238 
 
 242 
 
 • 244 
 
 • 251 
 . 254 
 . 261 
 . 266 
 . 271 
 
 • 277 
 . 280 
 . 289 
 . 292 
 
 • 294 
 . 298 
 
 • 3°3 
 
 • 307 
 
 • 312 
 . 321 
 
This volume includes chapters on 
 characteristic, picturesque, and 
 historically attractive regions in the 
 states of California, Oregon, Wash- 
 ington, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona, 
 and a chapter on the Yosemite Na- 
 tional Park. 
 
 The notes appended to each chap- 
 ter give valuable information con- 
 cerning automobile routes, and many 
 facts and suggestions of interest to 
 tourists in general. 
 
Introductory Note 
 
 The several volumes in this series have as a rule very 
 little to say of the large towns. Country life is their 
 chief topic, especially the typical and the picturesque. 
 To the traveller, no life is more interesting, and yet 
 there is none with which it is so difficult to get into close 
 and unconventional contact. Ordinarily, we catch 
 only casual glimpses. For this reason I have wandered 
 much on rural byways and lodged most of the time at 
 village hotels or in rustic homes. My trips have taken 
 me to many characteristic and famous regions; but 
 always in both text and pictures I have tried to show 
 actual life and nature and to convey some of the 
 pleasure I experienced in my intimate acquaintance 
 with the people. 
 
 These "Highways and Byways" volumes are often 
 consulted by persons who are planning pleasure tours. 
 To make the books more helpful for this purpose each 
 chapter has a note appended containing suggestions 
 for intending travellers. With the aid of these notes, 
 I think the reader can readily decide what regions are 
 likely to prove particularly worth visiting, and will 
 know how to see such regions with the most comfort 
 and facility. 
 
 Clifton Johnson 
 
 Hadley, Mass. 
 
s 
 o 
 
 o 
 s 
 
Highways and Byways of the 
 Pacific Coast 
 
 THE GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA 
 
 THE only point where the Grand Canyon is 
 easily accessible to travellers is at the Bright 
 Angel Trail, sixty-five miles north of the main 
 line of the Santa Fe. You take a branch road that 
 strikes off from WiUiams across the desert — a desert of 
 red earth stained with alkali and supporting a scanty 
 grovsrth of sagebrush and moss, stray bits of grass and 
 sometimes a straggling patch of scrub cedar. As you go 
 on, the cedars become more numerous and larger, and 
 there are also pines which gradually multiply until the 
 country is pretty uniformly wooded, though the forest 
 is never dense nor the trees of imposing size. 
 
 In this sober evergreen woods, at the end of the 
 journey, is a settlement, which, with its tents and other 
 rough structures clustering among the trees, is sugges- 
 tive of a campmeeting village. The only building that 
 does not accord with this idea is a great hotel, supposed 
 
2 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 to be palatial, but outwardly somewhat suggestive of a 
 factory. The land slopes away from the chasm, and 
 you climb a little hill from the railway station till you 
 suddenly leave the commonplace forest and have before 
 you the world-famous canyon, thirteen miles here from 
 rim to rim as the birds fly, and six thousand feet deep. 
 
 The scene is strange and impressive. Everywhere 
 the vast gorge is a mighty tangle of ravines and chasms 
 and sculptured bluffs. Then, too, there is color; but 
 that is secondary to the vastness, for the tints are not 
 gaudy or startling as so often depicted. There is no 
 suggestion of a gay sunset. The strata of colors, as one 
 kind of rock succeeds another, is in soft tones of reddish 
 brown, ochre yellows and light or dull grays that become 
 delicate purples and blues in the shadowed portions. 
 
 The day I arrived was perfectly clear, and I could see 
 to the farthest recesses of the intricate furrowings of 
 the chasm; and in the evening the full moon sTione 
 down on the tremendous soundless mystery of the 
 canyon, here dimly lighting the grim cliffs, there casting 
 a broad gloom of shadow, while the distance was gray 
 and formless, apparently descending to depths immeas- 
 urable. It was a wonderful sight, yet not at the time 
 wholly a pleasure; for the wind was whistling about in 
 fierce gusts that soon chilled and drove me indoors. 
 
 I was stopping at one of the older and more rustic 
 hotels which was scarcely ten feet from the verge of the 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 3 
 
 gorge. The office had log walls, and a hot fire burned 
 in the big stove in the center. The room was a gather- 
 ing-place for the guides. They liked to occupy a row 
 of chairs along the borders of the room and tilt back to 
 smoke and talk. Four Navajo Indians wandered in 
 during the evening. They were genuine children of the 
 desert, stolid and serious, and clad in many-hued 
 blankets and other wild trappings. For an hour they 
 stood about the office counter while the hotel clerks 
 examined and dickered over the price of the rings and 
 bracelets with which the persons of the visitors were 
 adorned. 
 
 Another desert dweller who warmed himself at our 
 fire that evening was John Hanse, a gray, vigorous man 
 who long years ago became so ardent a lover of the 
 canyon that he planted his home on its borders and has 
 made the gorge his life companion. He said he was 
 ninety-two his last birthday, but you could always 
 discount his statements. He was a veritable Mun- 
 chausen for stories, one of which is as follows: 
 
 "I had a horse," said he, "that was a great jumper. 
 Why, he could jump a mile without half tryin'. By and 
 by the thought came to me that my horse could jump 
 across the canyon, and I decided that was something 
 worth doing. So I mounted him and we got a good 
 start, and he sailed up into the air with the most tre- 
 mendous leap that ever was made. But when we were 
 
4 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 most half way across, I see we wouldn't quite make 
 the other crest and I turned the horse around and came 
 back. We'd pretty near reached the ground — in fact, 
 we was within about six foot of it — and I thought we 
 was goin' to land with such a thump that I jumped oflF 
 and let the horse go the rest of the way alone." 
 
 The wind thrashed around all night, but quieted 
 somewhat in the morning, though still far from gentle. 
 The sky looked threatening, and we had a squall of 
 sleet. Then the sun glimmered out doubtfully, and I 
 engaged a guide to pilot me down the seven mile trail. 
 I chose to walk, and he followed close behind leading a 
 saddled mule. Our goal was the Colorado River, deep in 
 the chaos of adamantine channels and vast crags on which 
 I had looked from the rim. You would hardly suspicion 
 there was a chance for any trail, the bordering bluffs 
 are so immense and so perpendicular. But at one place 
 is a crevice choked with fragments from the cliffs and 
 a little earth that has washed in. Here has been made 
 a slender zigzag path that crawls gingerly down the 
 incline, always turning and twisting and taking advan- 
 tage of every chance to make the descent safe and easy. 
 Nevertheless, it is the rudest kind of a highway, and 
 there was too much mud and too many loose stones in 
 the path for comfortable walking. In places a passage 
 had been blasted along the face of a cliff, and the 
 unprotected outer edge dropped away vertically to 
 dizzy depths not at all agreeable to contemplate. 
 
A guide on the Bright Angel Trail 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 5 
 
 My guide's name was Tom, and I was told that his 
 last name had originally been Catt, but that this sur- 
 name had been changed by an act of the legislature, 
 as it was not to his liking to pass through life known 
 always as Thomas Catt. He was a jolly fellow, voluble 
 and humorous. His language was, however, inclined to 
 the sulphurous and we were constantly encountering 
 places or objects along the trail that, according to his 
 tell, the Almighty had had something to do with, and 
 hadn't blessed, either. He had served on the Bright 
 Angel Trail for years, but he said this was his last 
 season there. " I've looked at the Grand Canyon until 
 I'm gettin' cross-eyed," he declared. 
 
 The views as we went on were no longer confined to 
 the downlook, but the gigantic, many-tinted bluffs and 
 pyramided masses loomed far above and made a ragged 
 and ever-changing sky-line. The rocks were often 
 quite architectural in appearance and suggested vast 
 and solemn cathedrals, or church organs that would 
 perhaps break forth into the mightiest music the world 
 had ever heard. 
 
 Tom presently stopped to light his pipe. "You'll be 
 tired by night," said he, "if you walk the whole distance 
 down and back. Still, a good many do it. They're 
 apt to get pretty well tuckered though, especially in 
 hot weather. Once I was coming out of the canyon 
 with a party, and down below, where the path is very 
 
6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 twisted, at what we call Jacob's Ladder, a woman was 
 settin'. She'd walked to the river and was on her way 
 back; but she said she couldn't go no farther nohow, and 
 unless she could get a ride she was goin' to die right 
 thar. So I let her get on my horse and I followed on foot. 
 Well, sir, when we got to the top and she was off the 
 horse she turned to me and said, 'If I had any way of 
 reporting you and the whole outfit that manage this 
 trail I would sure do it.' 
 
 " 'What for?' I asked. 
 
 " 'Because,' says she, 'you are the most ignorant 
 and inconsiderate lot of people I ever see. You got no 
 business to have any such rough trail, and you got no 
 business to allow a person to walk down it. You 
 ought to be prosecuted!' and she walked off, and never 
 even said, 'Thank you,' for the use of my horse." 
 
 A little farther on, the guide pointed to a slide of 
 loose rock at the foot of the cliff we were edging along, 
 and said, " Do you see that dead burro down thar ? 
 It tumbled off here the other day. It was in a pack 
 train, and the kid who had charge rushed the burros 
 up in a bunch, and while he was trying to straighten 
 'em out this one was crowded off. We lose an animal 
 about every year that way. But thar never has been a 
 human life lost, though eight or ten thousand people 
 go over the trail now each year. It's a wonder to me that 
 some of the women haven't come to grief before this. 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 7 
 
 You never know what a woman will do. They're 
 always screechin' at you, 'Oh, guide, my saddle is 
 loose!' and, 'Oh, guide, I can't stay on any longer!' 
 
 "We have to keep jollyin' 'em to make 'em forget 
 what sort of a road they're traveUin'. You can manage 
 'em that way very well, but if a man gets nervous thar 
 ain't no use. You can't work on his mind in any such 
 fashion, and he gives you no end of trouble. Thar was 
 one fellow recently that another guide and I got to 
 joshing as we went down the trail about its dangers, 
 and how if a man started to fall he'd go quarter of a 
 mile without stoppin'. We didn't think but that he 
 was takin' it all right when suddenly he slid off his 
 horse and said he wa'n't goin' no farther. We tried to 
 reason with him, but he was plumb scared out of his 
 senses, and he struck the back trail. He wouldn't even 
 mount his horse, and he crawled all the way on his 
 hands and knees, clinging to the inner wall. I reckon 
 he was on the verge of snakes. 
 
 "Everybody takes pride in the trip after it's over, 
 especially the women, no matter how much discomfort 
 they've suffered. 'Why, I went way down thar and 
 back, the whole distance, fourteen miles,' a woman 
 will say afterward to her friends, 'and I rode a mule — 
 think of it!' 
 
 "Yes, the women consider they've done a big thing; 
 but they're like an Irishman I know of who had charge 
 
8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 of a squad workin' on the railroad. One morning he 
 hustled his men around and scolded 'em so, they begun 
 to conclude something was the matter. At last one of 
 'em said, 'Mike, what the divil makes you so peppery 
 today ? ' 
 
 " 'I'm not,' says he. 
 
 " 'Yes ye are!' says the other. 'Ye been swearin' 
 at us the whole mornin'.' 
 
 " 'Well, Jimmy,' says Mike, 'ye know I've a wife 
 and children to support, and only these two hands of 
 mine to earn a living. It's been none too aisy in the 
 past; and last night the ould woman brought me twins. 
 Haven't I good raison for bein' out of timper?' 
 
 " 'Ah, Mike,' says Jimmy, 'ye may talk; but I'll 
 guarantee ye wouldn't take tin thousand dollars for 
 thim twins.' 
 
 " 'Perhaps not,' said Mike slowly, thinkin' it over; 
 'perhaps not, but I wouldn't give tin cints for another 
 pair.' 
 
 "That's the way with a woman who goes over this 
 trail. One trip does for a lifetime. She wouldn't take 
 ten thousand dollars for the experience after it is over; 
 but she wouldn't give ten cents to repeat it." 
 
 Among the upper cliffs the snow streaks lingered. 
 However, we had soon descended to where the fresh 
 leafage of spring was bursting the buds, and the flowers 
 were in bloom, and later got down to where the sturdy 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona g 
 
 century plants flourished. Our surroundings were in 
 the main a rocky wilderness, yet wherever there was a 
 slope of broken fragments, or a niche or hollow to 
 retain a little sod, some form of plant life was sure to 
 get a foothold. Along the higher portion of the trail 
 grew occasional tall, handsome firs; but most of the 
 canyon trees were dwarfed and twisted cedars and 
 pines. Rabbit brush, greasewood, Mormon tea and 
 squaw-bush were the common shrubs, and there were 
 thickets of oak bushes, and numerous clusters of soap- 
 weed. "You dry the roots of that soap-weed," 
 said Tom, "and then put them in water and they make 
 a foam right off." 
 
 He informed me that later in the season, "flowers of 
 all kinds known " bloomed in the canyon, and that then 
 there would be an "awful lot of birds." At present, 
 though we sometimes heard the cry of a blue jay, or 
 the cheerful twitter of wrens, the valley was rather 
 silent. We were still on the upper portion of the trail 
 when we heard a pack train approaching on the zigzag 
 path from far below. Tom gave a halloo that roused the 
 echoes and brought a response from the driver of the 
 pack train. We met him at length. He had four 
 burros in his charge moving in single file ahead of him, 
 each loaded with a pair of five gallon cans filled with 
 water from a spring half-way down to the river. The 
 water was for the use of one of the hotels at the summit. 
 
10 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 The fellow urged the beasts on by a shrill whistling 
 and by calling out, "Bobby!" "Sandy!" etc., according 
 as this one or that one lagged. 
 
 "Those burros are foxy creatures," remarked my 
 guide as they went on up the trail. " See 'em stop and 
 look. They'll go anywhere a goat will. Now I'll 
 mount my mule. I would have rode before, but yester- 
 day it carried a fat Dutchman who made its back sore. 
 He was so fat and round that when you got him on 
 mule-back he looked just like a punkin. Do you see 
 this side trail that branches off here .? That goes around 
 the bluff a mile and a half to the Hogan mine. The 
 mine ain't worked now, and I don't think it ever paid. 
 I've never been thar, and if I could have a deed of it 
 just for goin' to see it I wouldn't take the trouble." 
 
 Half-way down we came to a comparative level where 
 a little stream wandered among some green willows, 
 and where a cluster of tents had been erected for the 
 sojourning of persons who wished to stay in the valley 
 over night. Here by the stream there was, until the 
 middle of the last century, a colony of Indians. They 
 irrigated some of the surrounding land and raised 
 patches of corn, watermelons and wheat. No doubt 
 they could supply practically all their wants right in 
 the canyon and only climbed out at long intervals. 
 The fact that they Hved there did not help to make the 
 place more accessible. Indians never improve a trail 
 
Descending the Corkscrew 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona ii 
 
 of their own voHtion, and the ravines and slopes up 
 which they climbed continued to be as formed by nature. 
 Far back in prehistoric times the cliff-dwellers knew 
 this same trail, and they had homes under the shelving 
 overlap of the cliffs. Ruins of their strange habitations 
 are still to be seen only a little aside from the route to 
 the river. 
 
 A mile or two beyond the half-way camp we descended 
 a cliff by the " corkscrew, " where the path doubles on 
 itself in short turns for a long distance and is alarm- 
 ingly steep and fraught with direful possibilities. Then 
 we entered a narrow gorge bounded by wild crags of 
 barren red granite that looked as if they had been burned 
 to an unyielding hardness by subterranean fires. We 
 followed a small stream that coursed down the hollow, 
 often crossing it, and sometimes passing through a 
 thicket of willows. 
 
 At last the crags suddenly ended and we came out 
 on a beach of clean yellow sand, that bordered the 
 river. All around towered the cliffs, and the swift 
 muddy stream was dwarfed by its tremendous surround- 
 ings to insignificance. It had no charm of size or color. 
 Was it this dirty creek I had come down that seven 
 miles of rough, tortuous path to see ? But one could 
 not gainsay the impressiveness of the environment, and 
 it was a satisfaction to behold the power that had done 
 the mighty carving. 
 
12 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Though the river is narrow it is very deep, and is in 
 reality one of the great rivers of North America. Traced 
 back to the source of its principal tributary it is two 
 thousand miles long, and it drains an enormous amount 
 of territory. Yet for the most part its course is in the 
 heart of a region of arid plains, wild forests and rugged 
 mountains, far from settlements or the common routes 
 of travel, and until recent years it has remained practi- 
 cally unknown. 
 
 The first whites to obtain a view of the big canyon 
 were the members of a Spanish expedition in 1540, 
 but they failed in all efforts to descend into the chasm. 
 For three centuries afterward it was only seen at 
 long intervals by occasional travellers, herdsmen or 
 trappers who happened to wander into the region. Even 
 after 1850 when surveying parties began to investigate 
 portions of the river, its course for the hundreds of miles 
 that it flows in the depths of the monstrous chasm 
 continued to be a matter of conjecture. It was believed 
 that not only were there impassable rapids and falls, 
 but that in places the stream flowed along under ground. 
 Thus, to attempt its navigation was to court death. 
 
 Yet in spite of all this. Major J. W. Powell in 1869 
 undertook its exploration by going down it with nine 
 men and four boats. He started on the Green River in 
 Utah. One of the men presently left and returned to 
 civilization, and three others, after holding out against 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 13 
 
 the terrors of the trip for many weeks, decided they 
 would prefer to encounter the perils of the unknown 
 desert. Unfortunately, they fell in with hostile savages 
 when they climbed out on the plateau, and they were 
 ambushed and killed. Their comrades completed the 
 trip with safety, though after many capsizings in the 
 rapids, and narrow escapes from drowning, and the 
 loss of two boats. 
 
 Nearly opposite where I then was. Major Powell 
 discovered a little stream of clear water joining the 
 muddy current of the river. Because of the purity of 
 the water he called the stream Bright Angel Creek, and 
 this name has been appropriated for the trail on the 
 other side of the Colorado. 
 
 The canyon began to be known to tourists soon after 
 the Santa Fe railroad was completed in 1882, but the 
 long rough ride to get to the rim, and the expense made 
 the visitors few. Facilities gradually improved, yet 
 nothing like crowds came till 1901 when the branch 
 railroad to the Bright Angel Trail superseded the old 
 stages. 
 
 Trails which offer a descent to the river are very few. 
 This particular one was discovered by the two Cameron 
 brothers in 1889. They were prospecting for minerals 
 and had a boat by means of which they explored the 
 river for a hundred miles in this vicinity. One day they 
 chanced to observe the crevice where the trail now is 
 
14 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 and followed it to the upland. They found some veins 
 of copper near by that they hoped might prove profit- 
 able; but they also, as my guide said, "were a-figuring 
 on this as a sight-seeing place." Two years later they 
 dug and blasted a rude path up the ravine, and by 
 right of discovery and the work they did, they became 
 owners of the property, though at the time, to quote my 
 guide again, "They were poor men and had come here 
 with almost nothin'. They had no more than the butt 
 end of a shoestring, you might say." 
 
 Tom and I presently turned back. When we reached 
 the half-way camp the western walls of the canyon 
 were obscured by shreds of showers, and the sun had 
 disappeared in dark and threatening clouds. I secured 
 a horse and rode the rest of the journey. A drenching 
 rain soon began to fall, and the water poured off my 
 hat brim, and the trail got muddy and slippery. It was 
 hard work for the creatures. We let them have free 
 rein and they climbed with their noses lowered almost 
 to the ground. The landscape in the mists was more 
 imposing than ever. All the wild medley of buttressed 
 cliffs and lonely pinnacles became vague and evanes- 
 cent. Much of what would usually have been in view 
 was hidden altogether or came and went with the 
 shifting of the storm. There was no beginning or end 
 to the world roundabout. The only solid portion 
 was that under our feet. The rest was a mystery of 
 
In the depths of the canyon 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 15 
 
 cloud and fog and a dreamland of half-discerned 
 titanic crags. Even the near trees were softened into 
 an aspect unknown before, and the shrubbery twinkled 
 with water drops. 
 
 As we neared the top we could hear a roaring sound 
 as of surf along the seashore. It was the wind in the 
 trees at the crest. Now the rain turned to snow, and 
 when we climbed out of the canyon we came into a 
 world of white with a wild wind whirling the flakes and 
 buffeting the fog that rose in weird, baiBed masses from 
 the yawning valley depths. Our beasts huddled in the 
 shelter of a shed, and I stiffly dismounted and ran off 
 to warm myself and dry my wet clothing before the 
 hotel fire. 
 
 The wind howled and banged about without ceasing 
 through the night. "Jingoes!" commented one of the 
 guides in the morning, "it tore around so I couldn't 
 help a-thinking it might lift the old hotel off" its base 
 and send it down into the canyon." 
 
 The air outside was full of flying flakes and the rocks 
 and trees on the windward side were coated with clinging 
 snow. The great gorge was a vacancy of gray mist, 
 and some new arrivals inquired where the canyon was, 
 anyway. One man after looking down into the void 
 and trying vainly to penetrate its vapors said, "I and 
 my two daughters come here yesterday to see the 
 canyon, and the trip has cost me a lot of money. I must 
 
1 6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 go away by the next train and I hain't seen a durn thing 
 but snow and fog. I no business to have come at this 
 time of year. March is a mean month. It ought not 
 to be allowed." 
 
 The weather did not encourage wandering, and I 
 went to visit a Hopi Indian house erected not far from 
 the hotel for the benefit of tourists. It was a flat-roofed, 
 terraced building of stone, with rough ladders set up 
 against it to give access to the upper stories. Most of 
 the interior was devoted to the display and sale of 
 curios; but in one room were a number of Indian 
 women squatted on the floor shaping pottery, and in a 
 second apartment were both men and women carding 
 wool, spinning thread and weaving blankets. 
 
 Back of the Hopi house were two Navajo wigwams — 
 dome-shaped, with a stout framework of heavy sticks 
 daubed over with mud. The huts looked as if they 
 attained the acme of crowded discomfort, but I was told 
 that their occupants were suited. "There was a time," 
 said my informant, "when the government built some 
 good frame houses for the Navajoes, and they were 
 much pleased, but they put their stock into the new 
 dwellings and continued to live themselves as before." 
 
 I spent most of the day at a small two-story hotel 
 owned by the Cameron brothers, the discoverers and 
 owners of the Bright Angel Trail. We had an open fire 
 of pitch pine, and it flamed up vigorously and threw 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 17 
 
 out a fine volume of heat. The company included 
 Ralph Cameron, Tom Catt and two or three other 
 guides, and a German artist named Wix. 
 
 " You've got to work on the trail all the time in order 
 to keep it in good shape," remarked Ralph between 
 puffs at his pipe. " It'll have to be gone over after this 
 storm. The stones slide in and the earth washes away. 
 If the trail was neglected for a year it would be impas- 
 sable to horses. We have our worst rains in July — regular 
 cloudbursts with terrific thunder and lightning. In an 
 hour, or perhaps a quarter of an hour, the trail will be so 
 gutted that the expense of repairing it is three or four 
 hundred dollars. You never can tell when the storms 
 are coming. I've seen the weather clear as a bell, and 
 in five minutes it would be raining pitchforks. 
 
 "My cook has just told me he was going to quit 
 tomorrow. I don't know but I shall have to find a 
 Chinaman. The Chinese make the best help in the 
 world. They never try to be fresh with you, they're 
 clean, and they won't go off and leave you in the lurch. 
 They always give fair warning. There was a time when 
 I was living at Flagstaff that we ran 'em out of there — 
 made 'em git.' But we were sorry for it afterward. 
 They'd owned most of the restaurants, and you could 
 get a good meal for two bits (twenty-five cents), while 
 after they left prices jumped up and you had to pay six 
 bits for the same food. In fact, the eating-house people 
 
1 8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 got so independent a really good meal wasn't to be had 
 at any price. There was such a lot of trouble that 
 finally we let the Chinese back. They're the most indus- 
 trious class I've ever seen. You never come across a 
 broke Chinaman around begging, and it's very seldom 
 they need any attention from the police, because if 
 they have any rows it's among themselves. 
 
 " Did you hear the coyotes last night ? They were 
 howling when I went to bed at ten o'clock." 
 
 "The wind made such a racket," said I, "that I 
 couldn't hear anything else." 
 
 "Oh, yes, you could," declared Tom, the guide. 
 "The coyotes got more wind than the elements. You 
 could have heard them above the gale well enough, 
 and you can hear 'em at some time every night. It's 
 like a lot of kids hollerin', and one coyote will make as 
 much noise as twenty dogs. They come to eat the refuse 
 the hotels dump out in the woods, and they clean it 
 all up, too." 
 
 "They're a cowardly animal," remarked Ralph, 
 "and they won't attack anything bigger than a lamb 
 unless they get very hungry. Then they may kill a 
 full-grown sheep if they get it separate from the flock. 
 They're nothing like as bad as the lobo wolves. There's 
 a bounty of a dollar on coyotes, while on wolves it's 
 twenty dollars. If a wolf gets in among the sheep it 
 won't stop short of killing a dozen or two. Then it 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 1 9 
 
 stays around there to eat 'em till the bodies are all gone. 
 It don't mind the flesh getting putrid. Its appetite 
 ain't in the least delicate and it cleans up practically 
 everything. It even crunches and makes way with 
 nearly all the bones. So there's little left but the wool. 
 They ain't numerous. I s'pose, if they were, President 
 Roosevelt would come here and chase 'em out or kill 
 'em ofl^." 
 
 "Well," said another of the party, "I hope his hunting 
 would have a little less of the show-ofF in it than the 
 ride he took from here to Grand View. It's sixteen 
 miles, and he galloped there in an hour and twelve 
 minutes. A man ought not to attempt it over our roads 
 in much less than twice that time. He rode away from 
 all his attendants, and it was only luck that he didn't 
 ruin his horse." 
 
 "I made better time than he did once," observed 
 Tom, "and over a longer distance. I rode twenty-two 
 miles in an hour and a half. But I was runnin' away 
 from the sheriflF, and was obliged to git over the line." 
 
 "The speech the president made here has always 
 struck me as funny," said Ralph. "He told us to save 
 the canyon for our children and our children's children. 
 It'll be here. What under heaven does he think we 
 were going to do with a gorge thirteen miles across and 
 a mile deep — fill it up ?" 
 
20 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "The things you have speak of wild animals," said 
 the artist, "remind me of an experience in Canada. 
 I was tell there about hunting bears, and how many 
 there be, and how savage. When I was out in the forest 
 sketching I was very much scare and think what I 
 might do. If I do as I feel, no tree too high for me to 
 climb up, and when I get to the top I would make 
 some yells for papa and mama. But it seem to me that 
 the best would be to point my umbrella at the bear 
 and open and shut it in his face. He not know the 
 meaning of that and go away. 
 
 "Nothing happen till one day just as I was finish 
 sketching and am packing up I see a bear sure enough. 
 He was a little fellow, and he was snuffle around to get 
 something. He did not see me yet, and I says to myself, 
 *Dis is a cub, and I need not be frighten of him, but I 
 shall have soon to hurry, or the whole family will be 
 here, and then they will make me all kind of trouble.' 
 
 "So I grab my things and was starting to run when 
 I met a man. 'Get away from here!' I say. 'Dere's 
 a bear back behind me!' 
 
 " 'Where?' he ask. 
 
 "I point at it. 
 
 "'Ho!' he say, 'dat is a porcupine;' and it was, and 
 I have all my scare for nothing." 
 
 "About the funniest creature we've got in this coun- 
 try," said Ralph, " is the trade rat. It lives in the canyon 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 21 
 
 and builds its nest in cracks of the cHfFs out of sticks 
 and rubbish; and it puts cactus thorns and all sorts of 
 sharp instruments on the outside for a defence. The 
 way the rats get their name is that when they take 
 anything of yours they always put something in its 
 place — a stick or burr or whatever comes handy. They 
 will take anything they can carry whether the thing is 
 of any use to them or not. I've known 'em to steal 
 knives and forks." 
 
 "Yes," said one of the guides whom the others called 
 "Bill," "I lost a spoon over a foot long, one night; and 
 after hunting all around I found it where a trade rat 
 had drug it, two hundred yards away. Another time 
 there was a feller in camp with me who put down his 
 hat when he got ready to go to sleep and laid his pipe 
 and tobacco pouch in it. Next morning the pipe and 
 tobacco were gone, and in their place were two lumps 
 of dirt." 
 
 "The most remarkable thing I know of," said Tom, 
 "is the different color of rattlesnakes here in Arizona. 
 Over in the Graham Mountains I've seen 'em as black 
 as soot, and that's the only place I ever did see them 
 right black. Down in the canyon they're grayish, and 
 there's some places in the desert where they're bright 
 yellow. They take their color pretty much from the 
 earth they're in." 
 
22 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "There's just one thing I like about rattlesnakes," 
 said Ralph. "They give you warnin' before they 
 attempt to bite." 
 
 "Unless you step on 'em," said Tom. "Then they 
 don't waste any time; but none of our snakes will go 
 out of their way to attack a man." 
 
 "There's seldom anyone dies from a snake bite," 
 remarked Bill. "Whiskey is the best remedy, and am- 
 monia is good, rubbed on and taken internally. I tell 
 you the most infamous little snake is the side-winder." 
 
 "He is a vicious beggar," said Cameron, "and it's 
 lucky he is a desert snake and small. I've never seen 
 one over eighteen inches long. There's millions of 'em 
 down below Yuma. Their tracks are as thick in the 
 sand there as if the ground had been gone over with a 
 rake. When you get near one it moves off sideways 
 a-watchin' you all the time." 
 
 " Rattlesnakes are great hands to live in prairie-dog 
 holes," said Bill, "and there's often owls in the same 
 holes, too. Them prairie dogs are a curse to lots of 
 country. Their mounds and holes are a nuisance in 
 the first place, and the dogs eat every green thing 
 around. Where there's a whole town of them they 
 make a regular waste." 
 
 "Still storming," said Tom, looking out of the window 
 " I suppose the water train won't be comin' up today." 
 
Indian blanket weaving 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 23 
 
 "No," responded Ralph, "and I wish we had that 
 spring up here at the top." 
 
 The thin surface soil and underlying porous lime- 
 stone do not hold water any more than would a sieve, 
 and the nearest spring on the upland is forty-five miles 
 distant. Even when found, the desert water is often of 
 doubtful character. It may be tainted with alkali or 
 other substances. As a result it is perhaps poisonous, 
 or possibly it is simply bitter, or puckers the mouth. 
 
 " Poison waters are usually as clear and nice to look 
 at as any you ever see," explained Bill. "One time 
 me 'n' another feller was goin' 'cross country, and we 
 got awful thirsty. So when we come to a sparklin' 
 pretty stream — say, we just lit into it; but the water 
 made us dreadful sick; and I been wiUin' to leave 
 alkali waters and such on as that alone since then." 
 
 "Have you seen that new girl who's workin' in the 
 sales department at the Hopi house ?" asked Tom. 
 "Her name is Mrs. Wells, and she's about as bright as 
 they make 'em. Last week I thought I'd play a joke 
 on her. I was takin' a party there to show 'em the 
 Indians and things, and I said to 'em, 'Now I wish 
 you'd be very particular how you speak before these 
 Indians and not say anything to hurt their feelin's. 
 Some of 'em understand English. Then, too, there's 
 some who are very light complected so't you might not 
 know they was Indians. One girl in particular I want 
 
24 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 you to notice. She waits on customers, and she's lighter 
 complected than most white folks, but she's a full- 
 blooded Hopi squaw.' 
 
 "'Ah!' they said, 'is that so.? How remarkable!' 
 
 "We went in and Mrs. Wells came forward with her 
 head cocked up and all smiles and says, ' How do you 
 do,' to my party in her finest manner; and one whis- 
 pered to another, 'Ain't it strange ? I would never have 
 believed that she was a squaw.' 
 
 "But she overheard, and she knew I'd been playin' 
 a trick, and she looked fierce at me. However, she 
 never let on to the visitors, and pretty soon one of them 
 said to her, 'Is it really true that you are a squaw ?' 
 
 "'Certainly I am,' she replied. 'I don't deny my 
 nationality.' 
 
 " 'And can you talk the language ?' the other asked. 
 
 "'Skee-dee, skee-dee!' she says, and they kept 
 watchin' her the whole time and come away believin' 
 that she was a white squaw." 
 
 I saw this lady myself, later in the day. She was 
 mentioning to some crony that her " father's father was 
 the darndest old toper that ever was. He was a South- 
 ern man," she added, " and it was the fashion to drink 
 then. Besides, his home was in a region near the 
 Tennessee Mountains that was full of blind pigs — illicit 
 distilleries, you know. Say, you ought to travel in those 
 mountains. It beats all, the way they live there. Mr. 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 25 
 
 Wells and I took a trip into them soon after we was 
 married, and toward dark one day we come to the only 
 house we'd seen for a long distance. It didn't look 
 very inviting, but it seemed like our last chance and we 
 asked if we could get lodging. The mountain people 
 are very hospitable, and they made us welcome, though 
 the house was a one-room log cabin, and the man had 
 ten children. There was only a single bed, and we 
 wondered how they'd manage. After supper they put 
 the youngest children into the bed, and when they were 
 sound asleep they lifted them out and laid them down 
 in a corner. Then the next older children got into bed 
 and were disposed of in the same manner. Finally 
 the last of the ten had been transferred to the floor, 
 and we were told we might have the bed. Pretty soon 
 we were asleep, and we never woke up till the next 
 morning. Then to our surprise, we found ourselves 
 on the floor with the kids, and the man and his wife 
 were in the bed." 
 
 When I left the Hopi house I found that the storm 
 showed signs of breaking, and gleams of sunshine and 
 scuds of sleet and rain alternated. These changes 
 were not such as to stir one especially, when viewed in 
 the sober woodland at the crest of the canyon; but 
 looking into the gorge with its valleys within valleys 
 and its heights piled on heights they worked miracles. 
 I doubt if anywhere else on the globe could be witnessed 
 
26 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 so astonishing a play of light and shade. The moun- 
 tains of the chasm seemed to be engaged in a game of 
 hide and seek in the mists, now peering forth, now 
 disappearing in the darkling shadows. The light con- 
 stantly varied; sometimes dim and tender; sometimes 
 clear, gleaming on the many-tinted crags with marvelous 
 purity, and glancing along from buttress to buttress, 
 yet always drifting on and shifting to new shapes and 
 making fresh combinations. Presently there appeared 
 a rainbow glorifying one of the retreating showers, and 
 it was so vivid it glowed as if it were of fire and not a 
 mere reflection. The shower moved off, the rainbow 
 faded, the sunlight shimmered over the nearer portion 
 of the valley while the farther recesses of the great 
 chasm reposed in a blue gloom under the cloud shadows. 
 It was a wondrous vision. 
 
 On my last evening at the Grand Canyon there was 
 a raffle. A young half-breed guide, whom the others 
 knew as "Jess Bearclaws" was going away, and he 
 wanted to turn his silver-mounted saddle into money. 
 It had cost him forty-five doflars, but he was willing 
 to dispose of it for thirty, and for a day or two had been 
 wandering around with a paper getting signers for 
 fifteen chances at two dollars a chance. The guides, 
 drivers and clerks were mostly quite ready to help him 
 out, though one clerk refused on the ground that he 
 had no more use for a saddle than for a balloon. Now 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 27 
 
 the chances were all sold and the time had come to 
 determine who was to win the prize. The investors 
 with a few exceptions were on hand early and paid 
 their dues and chaffed and chewed and smoked and 
 discussed the raffle with great seriousness. Meanwhile 
 the absentees were sent for and someone went to hunt 
 up three dice. 
 
 "I take a chance on everything that comes along," 
 said a bleary-looking fellow known as "Yellowstone 
 Jack." "It's only a dollar or two, and what does that 
 matter ?" 
 
 Presently Jess Bearclaws accosted a tall chap named 
 Buckland and said, "I bet you five dollars I've got more 
 money in my pocket than you have." 
 
 Everyone was aghast, for Buckland was a nabob 
 among his fellows and reputed to be worth one hundred 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 "I take that bet," said he. 
 
 "Well," said Jess, "you ain't got any money in my 
 pocket, have you ?" 
 
 "I didn't say I had," retorted Buckland, and then 
 followed a long discussion as to what that ambiguous 
 bet of the half-breed amounted to. 
 
 My guide Tom came in late, paid his two dollars, 
 and remarked, "Now I'm happy — for I'm just as free 
 of money as a fish is of feathers." 
 
28 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Presently the gang adjourned to an inner room, and 
 when they reappeared Buckland had won the saddle. 
 "I knew he would!" exclaimed Tom. "There never 
 was such a fellow for luck. He could go down and fall 
 in the Colorado River and come out with his pockets 
 full of trout." 
 
 Everybody laughed, and the joke was appreciated 
 the more because there are no trout in the river. 
 
 Arizona Notes. — On my way across "Sunset Land," as Arizona 
 would be called if we used the English equivalent for its name, an 
 old lady who sat in the next seat ahead remarked to her companion, 
 "I think we must be somewhere near that putrified forest I've 
 heard tell about." 
 
 She looked out of the window, and pointed at some bare, ragged- 
 sloped mesas we were passing. " Seems to me," she said, " these hills 
 look kind o' putrified — yes, the rocks certainly do look just like putri- 
 fied mud." 
 
 She had not hit quite the word she wanted, but a petrified forest 
 covering thousands of acres is one of the wonderful features of Ari- 
 zona. This is most readily reached from Adamana, whence one 
 portion of the forest is only 6 miles distant. The ground is carpeted 
 with agate chips, and strewn with agate trunks from two to four feet 
 in diameter. One of the stone trees is no feet long and forms a 
 natural bridge over a ravine. 
 
 From Holbrook, about 20 miles west of Adamana, 7 Hopi villages 
 can be visited. If possible, visit them in the latter part of August 
 when the famous "Snake Dances" occur. 
 
 Near Flagstaff is the Lowell Observatory, to which visitors are wel- 
 comed. A little to the north of Flagstaff rise the San Francisco Moun- 
 tains — extinct volcanoes surrounded by a district of cinder cones 
 and lava beds. A road has been constructed up Humphrey's Peak. 
 At the summit you are nearly 13,000 feet above the sea, and get an 
 
The Grand Canyon of Arizona 29 
 
 extensive view of the Painted Desert and other features of the 
 region. 
 
 Long before it was discovered by white men, Arizona was in- 
 habited by a superior race, whose ruined cities, aqueducts, and 
 fortifications are numerous in the valleys and canyons, and show 
 that the population must have been large. Eight miles south of 
 Flagstaff are scores of cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon, and nine 
 miles to the north some of the ruins of cave dwellings can be seen 
 on Coconino Butte. 
 
 The Grand Canyon can be reached from Flagstaff by automobile. 
 The road is for the most part in the forest. It is a dirt road that is 
 rough and rutted in places, and that sometimes has to cross steep- 
 sided gullies and wide stretches of lava beds. The distance is 87 miles- 
 
 Usually, travellers prefer to go by railroad. They leave the 
 main line at Williams, a town named after " Bill " Williams, a famous 
 scout who was killed by the Indians. April and May, and October 
 and November are the best months for cultivating an acquaintance 
 with the Canyon. In summer, although the heat at the rim of the 
 chasm is not often oppressive, the depths get very hot. The winter 
 weather is bleak and disagreeable, but the effects given by clouds 
 and snow under the brilliant skies are enchanting. It is especially 
 desirable to see the Canyon when there is a full moon. 
 
 One can get fairly varied and satisfactory impressions of the 
 Canyon in a two days' interruption of the main line journey, but a 
 week is better. If you plan to do much tramping, your shoes should 
 be stout and thick-soled. Ladies will find short walking-skirts a 
 convenience, and a broad-brimmed straw hat, which can be rented 
 at the hotels, is a comfort in summer. A vigorous person, accus- 
 tomed to rough walking, can descend to the river and return on foot, 
 but most people will find a horse a necessity, particularly for the 
 upward climb. 
 
 There are several outjutting points within easy riding or walking 
 distance of the Bright Angel Trail that are well worth visiting. 
 
 Of the other trails that descend into the Canyon, the most notable 
 is the Grand View Trail, 13 miles to the east. 
 
II 
 
 ON THE BORDERS OF MEXICO 
 
 WHAT I saw of Arizona and Eastern California 
 as I sped across them on the journey to the 
 coast was for the most part barren, parched 
 and forlorn to the last degree. As one of my fellow 
 tourists remarked, "I don't see what all this land is 
 good for except to hold the world together." 
 
 But suddenly the desert was left behind and we were 
 amid blossoming gardens and green, luscious fields, 
 and orange orchards with their dark, vigorous foliage 
 all a-twinkle with golden globes. What a land of 
 enchantment it did seem after those long days on the 
 train hastening over the frosty and arid plains, and how 
 the fresh full-leaved greenery did delight one's heart! 
 All things were growing and flourishing, the weeds 
 were getting rank, the wildflowers were in bloom, and 
 everywhere in home yards were callas and other hot- 
 house and summer flowers in prodigal profusion. 
 
 To get as near the tropics on our west coast as possible 
 I journeyed to San Diego, and on the way thither I 
 
 3° 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 31 
 
 had my first sight of the Pacific roUing its thunderous 
 surf up on the beach and dimpling softly under the 
 half clouded sky as far as the eye could reach. At 
 San Diego I renewed my acquaintance with it, and spent 
 much of the first day rambling along the waterside. 
 I lingered longest in the section where the fishermen 
 dwell. Their little cottages are many of them on piles 
 and are over the water at high tide. This has its 
 advantages, but there had been a storm the previous 
 Sunday which made the pile-dwellers wish their homes 
 were on the firm ground. It was as wild a gale as even 
 the oldest inhabitant could remember, and the wind 
 rose till the spray flew over the cottage platforms and 
 wet the floors inside. To make matters worse the 
 little rowboats and the fishing craft and some heavy 
 timbers got away from their moorings in the harbor 
 and butted into the supporting piles of the dwellings. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said one lady, "it blowed so hard it 
 done quite a good deal of damage. You see our garden 
 out in front here. Everythin' in it was gettin' to look 
 real nice; and now notice that yaller blossoming willow 
 bush. It was crowded full o' flowers, but the storm 
 just nacherly pretty near broke it down."j 
 
 "We was lucky," said her husband, "that we didn't 
 get into no badder troubles. Some houses was let 
 down into the water and knocked all to pieces. Our 
 house come near goin'. It had only two piles left under 
 
32 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 the middle; and it got twisted so the door wouldn't 
 open, while we was still inside. We begun to think we'd 
 be drown, and I took a hatchet and pried oflF a window- 
 casing. I'd 'a' knock the whole darn lights out rather 
 than stay in there any longer. When we escaped I 
 tried to save some boats that jammed in here next us. 
 But when I had one partly pulled out a big wave piled 
 twenty or thirty more on top, and I give up. After the 
 storm I saved some broken pieces so I got a little of 
 my damage back. I have sold part of them and they 
 will furnish me tobacco money to last a while, anyway. 
 
 "I'm thinkin' it's goin' to rain again," he remarked as 
 we were about to part. " I have a crooked toe that was 
 shot in the Civil War, and that pains me every time the 
 weather's turnin' bad. It never ain't failed me yet, 
 and I feel a storm is comin' now." 
 
 I was still wandering about exploring the town when 
 I was accosted by a bareheaded, swarthy gypsy woman 
 who wanted to tell my fortune. The charge was two 
 bits, she said, and I produced the money. Then she 
 made a poor pretense of glancing at the lines of my 
 hand and mumbled a sing-song repetition with slight 
 variations about my having had much trouble, assert- 
 ing in conclusion that, "You have make considerable 
 money, but you spend it easy." 
 
 She hit it right about the spending so far as the 
 quarter I had just parted with was concerned. Next she 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 33 
 
 pulled a couple of little threads out of the fringe of her 
 shawl, and had me tie two knots in one of them and 
 repeat after her, "Go way trouble." "Go way my 
 bad luck." 
 
 That done she crumpled up the knotted string, slyly 
 substituted the other, which she had kept concealed, 
 and told me to pull it out — when lo! the knots were 
 gone. Lastly she gave this thread a twist about one of 
 my buttons and affirmed that if I didn't "tell nobody 
 about it for eight days" I probably wouldn't have "no 
 more trouble and bad luck." To make the thing 
 certain, however, she wanted another quarter. 
 
 San Diego appealed to me most forcibly in the sug- 
 gestions one caught everywhere that the place never 
 experienced our savage Eastern winter. Yet there were 
 chilly mornings and days of wind or rain, when a fire 
 was a comfort. Otherwise everything conspired to 
 make one feel it was early summer instead of March. 
 
 One morning I visited Old Town, an outlying 
 suburb, which in the early days constituted all there 
 was of San Diego. At that time the site of the present 
 city was a sheep pasture. The parent village is pretty 
 dead now, and many of the ancient adobe structures 
 are in ruins, but others are still intact and occupied. 
 Such structures are particularly interesting, because 
 their massiveness gives them an air of repose and per- 
 manence, and because they are characteristic of the 
 
34 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 common method of building in the days when California 
 was a part of Mexico. The material employed is a 
 very sticky, dark brown clay fashioned into blocks 
 about four times the size of an ordinary brick. Some- 
 times straw cut up into pieces an inch or two long was 
 worked into the clay mud. Wet clay was used as mortar 
 when the blocks were laid. The timbers of the floors, 
 doorways and windows were built in as the walls were 
 in process of erection. 
 
 Eight miles from Old Town, up a neighboring valley, 
 is the remains of an ancient Spanish Mission which I 
 decided to see. The valley is wide, and its basin is 
 mostly cultivated. Much of it was growing to barley, 
 oats and other grains, then knee high, and there was 
 Indian corn well started, and melons just coming up, 
 and an abundance of garden truck of all sorts ready 
 for market. The finest tract was farmed by a China- 
 man. He had many acres as level as a floor and his 
 crops were thriving admirably; but his home buildings 
 were dilapidated, and even the house a mere shack. 
 The litter of work and carelessness was dubiously 
 evident all about, and the premises were so odorous that 
 it was no joke to get to leeward of them. 
 
 Judging from the Chinaman's success, I imagined he 
 would have rather a rosy opinion of the region, but 
 some of the other dwellers in the valley were decidedly 
 pessimistic. "California is overrated," said one of them 
 
Early spring 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 35 
 
 to me. " Every farm in the state is for sale. You need 
 money to enjoy this country, and it takes a good big 
 purseful to run a farm and get it into shape to be 
 profitable. A poor man, or a man of moderate means 
 has no chance. He travels up hill all the time and often 
 in the end has to sell out for a song. Lots of people 
 have an idea there's money in fruit, but I've noticed 
 our fruit growers usually make a profit one season and 
 lose the next nine." 
 
 The man did not appear very energetic, and his land 
 did not look as if he worked it with much vigor or 
 judgment. No doubt he painted the country in tints 
 out of his own experience. Another man I talked with 
 was a grizzled old fellow of a different type. He was 
 carrying a post on his shoulder, and when I accosted 
 him he dropped the butt end to the ground. Every 
 few minutes he shifted the post up to his shoulder as 
 if about to go on, but the conversation would take a 
 fresh start and down would go the post once more. 
 He did not agree with the neighbor whom I have quoted. 
 "Oh, no," said he, "not every place is for sale. The 
 majority are, but there's exceptions. I wouldn't sell 
 mine — leastways, not unless I got a good big price for it. 
 
 "I was over in Arizona lately," he continued, "and 
 on the train that brought me back I had a talk with 
 a Missouri man, who was comin' to the coast to settle 
 with his whole family; and he said, 'My little girl has 
 
36 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 been thinkin' they have gold houses out in California 
 and gold sidewalks and gold everything. She says she 
 reckons they have gold taters to eat.' 
 
 " It's a good deal the same with the older folks. They 
 are often disappointed simply because they have un- 
 reasonable expectations. Yes, that's just it, and they've 
 got a lot to learn. It ain't no soft job here. There's 
 plenty to do all the time, and if you want to succeed 
 you haven't hardly got time to talk to anyone. Even 
 an industrious man don't find it all straight sailin.' 
 This region is naturally kind of a desert. Just now for 
 a few years we're havin' rain, and everythin' is green 
 and flourishin'. You couldn't have better pasturage, 
 and we don't have to feed our stock anything in addi- 
 tion to what they pick up themselves, the year through. 
 But before this wet spell there was eleven years we only 
 had one good rain. The streams went dry, the wells 
 went dry, and the feed all shrivelled up in the pastures. 
 Why, we had to give the stock cactus to eat. We'd make 
 a quick brush fire and take the cactus and singe off 
 the thorns, and that singed cactus was what the cattle 
 lived on. I sold most of my cows at ten dollars apiece 
 the feed got so scanty. 
 
 "Another thing we've found out is that we can't 
 raise fruit in this neighborhood. The trees will do 
 well for three or four years; but see here," and with 
 his post he thumped some clay laid bare in a washed-out 
 
The launching of the ship 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 37 
 
 gully, "under the surface soil a foot or two is this old 
 adobe, and it's got alkali in it. That's the boy that 
 ruins the fruit trees. The roots, as soon as they strike 
 it, crumple up, and your trees begin to croak and don't 
 flourish any more. 
 
 " But the situation Is like this — a man who comes here 
 and works hard and uses some common sense and 
 adapts himself to the country will prosper. One day I 
 was callin' on a genoowine old Dutchman who is livin' 
 a few miles away. 'Veil,' he says, *dis desert does 
 look fine when it rains.' 
 
 "He's got about sixteen children, and you might 
 think he'd have trouble supportin' 'em. I mentioned 
 something of the sort, but he replied, *I make a living 
 here,' and he gave a big wink and then said, 'and I 
 makit one dollar besides.' 
 
 "So can other people." 
 
 It was a half-clouded morning, and the weather was 
 reminiscent of a sultry day in June at home. The 
 heat was full of moist, growing power, and the pastures 
 and waysides were besprinkled with blossoms of every 
 hue. Poppies, thistles and morning-glories were easily 
 recognized, but most of the blossoms were unfamiliar, 
 and they made a pageant of color such as the East 
 never witnesses. One's ears were greeted with the buzz 
 of flies, the chirrup of insects, and by the croaking of 
 frogs on the sodden lowlands. The walk was quite 
 
38 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 delightful, though not wholly so; for some little gnats 
 darted about my face very persistently. The road I 
 followed was not a public way, and it was frequently 
 interrupted by gates that I had to climb over or open, 
 and its markings became less and less distinct till I 
 lost them altogether. I was then in a cultivated patch 
 of olive trees, and many of the trees were loaded with 
 fruit, both green and ripe. The ripe olives looked very 
 like plums, and their appearance was so inviting I 
 tried one; but it came out of my mouth much quicker 
 than it went in. 
 
 I wandered across several fields till I found my road 
 again, and at last I reached the old Mission on a terrace 
 of a steep hillslope. Much of the original buildings 
 is gone. They were used as a cavalry barracks in the 
 war of 1846 and later as a sheep fold, and such use, 
 added to neglect, has left only remnants; but enough 
 still existed of the stout adobe walls to be impressive. 
 It overlooked the peaceful, fertile valley. Near by, at 
 the foot of the slope, was a grove of ancient olives 
 musical with great numbers of birds, and on the borders 
 of the grove was a fragment of cactus hedge and a few 
 date palms, all that remains of the friars' garden. 
 
 This is the oldest of the California Missions. It was 
 founded in 1769, but the ruins do not date back to its 
 beginnings; for in its sixth year the Mission was 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 39 
 
 attacked by hostile Indians, one of the padres was 
 killed and the buildings burned to the ground. 
 
 By the end of the century there were seventeen more 
 Missions, and three others followed later. It was their 
 purpose to instruct and civilize the Indians. The 
 founding of a Mission was very simple. After a suitable 
 place had been selected in a fertile valley a cross was 
 set up, a booth of branches built, and the ground and 
 the booth were consecrated by holy water and chris- 
 tened in the name of a saint. If there were Indians in 
 the vicinity they were attracted to the spot by the 
 ringing of bells swung on the limbs of trees, and presents 
 of food, cloth and trinkets were given them to win 
 their confidence. Each new Mission had at first only 
 two monks. The booth and cross were in their charge, 
 and they were to convert and teach all the Indians of 
 the neighborhood. Several soldiers and perhaps a few 
 partly Christianized Indians served as a guard and 
 helpers. The community would have a number of 
 head of cattle and some tools and seeds, and with this 
 humble equipment those in charge were expected to 
 conquer the wilderness and its savage inhabitants. 
 
 As a rule the Indians were of low intelligence and 
 brutish habits; but they were taught to cultivate the 
 earth and to do a variety of mechanical work. They 
 felled timber, transported it to the Mission sites, and 
 used it, together with adobe and tiles, in erecting the 
 
40 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 churches and other buildings. Thus in time rose the 
 pillars, arched corridors and domes of the stately 
 structures that are still impressive even in their ruins. 
 Gradually a village grew about each church; for the 
 Indians were encouraged to live near by, and some of 
 the Mission communities numbered thousands. 
 
 The chief structure at a Mission was usually in the 
 shape of a hollow square with a front of four or five 
 hundred feet along which extended a gallery. The 
 church formed one of the wings, and in the interior was 
 a court adorned with trees and a fountain. Round about 
 was a corridor whence doors opened into the friars' 
 sleeping apartments, workshops, storehouses, school- 
 rooms, etc. At sunrise a bell was rung and the Indians 
 assembled in the chapel for prayers. Afterward they 
 had breakfast and were distributed to their work. 
 At eleven they ate dinner, and work was resumed at 
 two. An hour before sunset the Angelus bell was tolled 
 and labor was abandoned for religious exercises in the 
 chapel. Supper followed, and then the Indians were 
 free to take part in a dance or other mild amusements. 
 
 The rule of the friars was in the main just and 
 kindly. Drunkenness was punished by flogging, and 
 the off"enders in quarrels between husbands and wives 
 were chained together by the legs till they promised to 
 keep the peace. Fresh recruits were secured by sending 
 out parties of Indians already attached to the new 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 41 
 
 mode of life and letting them set forth to the savages its 
 advantages, though it is said they were also sometimes 
 captured by main force. The domestic animals im- 
 ported for the use of the Missions multiplied with 
 great rapidity, and in the care of them the Indians 
 became very dexterous. Hides, tallow, grain, wine 
 and oil were sold to ships visiting the coast, and from 
 the proceeds the friars supplied the Indians with 
 clothing, tobacco and such other things as appealed to 
 the taste or fancy of the savage converts. Surplus 
 profits were employed in embellishing the churches. 
 
 The Missions were established at about a day's 
 journey apart on the natural route of travel along the 
 coast, and they were the usual stopping-places for 
 travellers. Whenever one of these sojourners arrived 
 he was welcomed with the hospitality of the Bible 
 patriarchs. First of all his horse was led away to the 
 stables, and the man was escorted to a bath. After- 
 ward he was given a plentiful meal and a comfortable 
 bed, and he was at liberty to stay as long as he chose. 
 
 The maximum of Mission prosperity was attained 
 in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The 
 friars and their neophytes owned countless herds of 
 cattle, horses, sheep, goats and swine, and produced 
 from the ground all their simple needs required. At 
 each Mission were inclosed gardens and orchards where 
 grew a considerable variety of vegetables and many 
 
42 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 fruits, including figs, oranges, olives and grapes. But 
 white settlers were increasing, and contact with them 
 tended to corrupt the Indians and to make them less 
 easily controlled. The greed of the newcomers was 
 aroused by the wealth of the Missions in land and herds, 
 and in 1833 they influenced the Mexican congress to 
 pass a law secularizing the Missions and turning over 
 their property to public purposes, except for some 
 small allowances reserved to maintain the churches. 
 This enabled the politicians of the period to plunder 
 the Missions very thoroughly, and the administrators 
 who were appointed wasted no time in getting the 
 tangible property into the hands of themselves and their 
 friends. 
 
 So serious was the desolation wrought, and so evil 
 were the effects on the Indians that the law was re- 
 scinded, but the mischief had been done, and the 
 Missions were not able to recuperate. The ruin was 
 completed by the American conquest, and the few re- 
 maining Indians were driven or enticed away. That 
 they and their ancestors had been cultivating the lands 
 for three-quarters of a century made no difference. The 
 Americans wishing to pre-empt claims did not regard 
 the presence of Indian families or communities as any 
 more a deterrent than they would have so many coyotes. 
 What cared the rude frontiersmen for missionary friars 
 or civiHzed Indians ? They came to squat on public 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 43 
 
 lands, and they not only took such tracts as pleased 
 their fancy, but in some cases the Mission structures 
 were demolished for the sake of the timber, tiles and 
 other building materials that were in them. 
 
 Every visitor at San Diego makes a trip to the village 
 of Tia Juana, just across the line in Mexico. The idea 
 is cultivated that by so doing one will get a brand new 
 impression and that he will see a bit of Mexico which will 
 serve as a fair sample of the whole. It is sixteen miles 
 down to the line, and a train takes you that far. Close 
 by the terminus is a boundary monument, and some 
 people find pleasure in standing with one foot in their 
 own country and one in foreign territory. Often they 
 have themselves photographed in that position. But 
 the person who wants to make all he can out of the 
 situation jumps back and forth across the line until he 
 is tired. Then, when he reaches home and is asked if 
 he has been to Mexico, he can truthfully respond, " Oh, 
 yes, many times." 
 
 After you have had a look at the monument and 
 indulged in such extras as seem desirable, you get into 
 an omnibus drawn by four horses, and away you go 
 over a road that I should judge had never received any 
 attention since it was first travelled. There are holes 
 and ruts and bumps and sloughs unnumbered, and 
 whenever I thought we were going to capsize in one 
 direction, the vehicle was sure to lurch and up went the 
 
44 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 other side to the danger point. Much of the way was 
 across a gullied, brushy level where the floods had 
 rampaged. Worse still, we had to ford a swift and 
 muddy river. Into it we splashed, and the horses half 
 disappeared, while the water swashed up over the wheel- 
 hubs and barely missed coming into the 'bus. 
 
 At last we reached Tia Juana. Its attractions were 
 not very pronounced. There was just a wide street 
 with a few shops and saloons on either side, and at 
 some distance a straggling of shanty dwellings. It was 
 on a bare plateau, but along the slope that dipped to 
 the valley grew a few groups of trees. The plain swept 
 away to a series of mountain ridges clothed with cacti 
 and sagebrush. Such village men as were not employed 
 in the shops seemed to be a lot of loafers, not given to 
 exerting themselves much beyond the smoking of 
 cigarets. 
 
 The one notable institution of the place is a bull-ring, 
 and the amphitheatre of seats rises conspicuously just 
 outside the hamlet. It is the patronage of the Ameri- 
 cans that keeps the thing going, and any Sunday on 
 which there is to be a fight they come from San Diego 
 in swarms. Extra trains are put on, and teams drive 
 from the town and from the ranches for miles around 
 to serve as stages for conveying the excitement seekers 
 from the station to the bull-ring. The chief financier 
 of the enterprise is a Mexican who has a diminutive 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 45 
 
 butcher shop in the village. It seems a somewhat 
 appropriate branch of his everyday industry, but vsrhat 
 can one say for the Americans who encourage the savage 
 and degrading exhibitions ? 
 
 The cost is a dollar for a seat in the sun, two dollars 
 for a seat in the shade, and the audience is sure to number 
 at least a thousand, and may rise to twenty-five hundred. 
 It was said that the patronage had fallen off decidedly 
 the year before because several horses had been gored 
 to death. This was too much for the tender sensibilities 
 of the American audience. The on-lookers were willing 
 to see bulls killed, but not horses, and many of them 
 refrained afterward from going. So now the toreadors 
 have to fight on foot. 
 
 Between Tia Juana and San Diego is some very fine 
 lemon country, and on my way back I had a talk with 
 the owner of a twenty-acre orchard. "I come from 
 Nebraska two years ago," he said, "and I wouldn't go 
 back to live if you'd give me the whole state. It's too 
 cold, and they have blizzards there that blow the trains 
 off the railroad tracks. I looked around down here and 
 found a feller that was sick of the lemon business, and 
 we made a swap. I give him sixteen hundred acres I 
 had in Nebraska, and he give me his twenty-acre lemon 
 orchard. Some of my neighbors up where I come from 
 told me I was makin' a poor bargain, but the Nebraska 
 land was only worth about fifty cents an acre; so the 
 
46 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 value of my sixteen hundred acres didn't count up 
 very heavy. The feller I sold to didn't really want the 
 property, and he made another dicker and let it go for 
 the furnishings of a shooting-gallery in Los Angeles 
 worth very little over three hundred dollars. 
 
 "They'd been havin' a spell of dry years, and the 
 lemon orchards wa'n't payin' expenses; but the weather 
 turned about and the trees began to do first-rate. It 
 beats all how they will bear. There's blossoms and 
 green fruit of every size and the ripe lemons right on 
 the same tree the year through. I shall clear six or 
 seven thousand dollars this year. Of course there's 
 considerable expense, and I keep from two to six men 
 at work and pay 'em a dollar and a half for a nine hour 
 day. I don't hire any Mexicans — I don't like their 
 color; and I don't hire niggers or Chinamen. I do 
 considerable myself, but I feel that I'm kind o' gettin' 
 lazy like everybody else that lives in this climate. It's 
 very different from what I been used to. You notice 
 the old men here. They ain't got the vim and spirit 
 they have in the East. Back in Nebraska, an old man 
 would think nothing of chasing a critter that had broke 
 loose, but take a man of the same age in California, and 
 you couldn't get up a run with a pitchfork. 
 
 "There's something about the air that slows you 
 down; and I have an idee that once you get used to it 
 you ain't really contented anywhere else. Some people 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 47 
 
 recollect their old home, in New England may be, and 
 they think they'd like to go back there to live. One 
 man whose home was near my lemon ranch was always 
 talkin' that way, and finally he sold out and went; but 
 inside of two months he was back. Things there wa'n't 
 quite like what he remembered them, and the folks he 
 used to know was mostly gone or changed. So he de- 
 cided California was the place for him." 
 
 Nearly a score of miles east of San Diego is the broad 
 fertile valley of El Cajon. It lies among the hills with 
 lofty rugged mountains overlooking it from farther 
 inland, and I went to see it, attracted by the fact that 
 it is famous for its great vineyards whence are shipped 
 each season hundreds of carloads of raisins. An 
 irrigating flume circles the hillslopes, but this artificial 
 watering does not entirely take the place of rain, and 
 in dry years the crop is sure to be a partial failure. 
 Most of the ranches of this handsome vale were 
 mortgaged, I was told. There are so many chances in 
 weather, in disease, in pests, and in price that a perma- 
 nent success in fruit growing in Southern California 
 seems to be somewhat rare. It is a not uncommon 
 belief that dry and wet periods alternate, each covering 
 a series of several years. Things boom in the wet cycle, 
 while in the lean years many orchards and vineyards 
 fare so badly that they become almost worthless. 
 
48 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 I had come to El Cajon by train with the intention 
 of walking back, and presently I was plodding along 
 toward San Diego, most of the time on the level mesas, 
 but now and then dipping into a valley. There were 
 frequent orchards of oranges, grape-fruit, lemons and 
 olives, some thrifty, some far otherwise. The orange 
 trees, though still loaded with fruit were coming into 
 blossom, and in places the air was honeyed with the 
 perfume. Most of the homes I passed were common- 
 place little cottages, frequently only a story high, apt 
 to be ugly from plainness, but sometimes equally ugly 
 from over-ornamentation. Yet there were a number of 
 really substantial and attractive dwellings, fine in them- 
 selves and charming in their flowery environment. 
 One home had a great rank hedgerow of roses full of 
 white blossoms; but much of the land was as wild as it 
 ever had been, and was brushed over with chaparral 
 and other shrubs, waist high. A good deal of this 
 was government land that could be bought for a 
 dollar an acre. The country was at its greenest, but 
 when the spring rains were past the ground would 
 gradually parch and by July all the fields and pastures 
 and waysides where there was not an artificial water 
 system would be clothed in somber brown, and they 
 would so continue till near the end of the year. 
 
 Half way in my journey I was overtaken by a young 
 fellow in a buggy, and he invited me to ride. I was 
 
A Mexican 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 49 
 
 glad of the opportunity, for I was getting weary, and 
 the landscape did not present much variety. He was 
 from the East a twelve-month before and had been 
 spending most of his time "cow-punching" in the 
 mountains. He expressed the opinion that the country 
 offered excellent chances to make money. But, if it 
 was easy to make, it was also uncommonly easy to 
 spend; "and yet," said he, "you can live here as 
 cheaply as anywhere if you choose to do so. Now San 
 Diego is quite a resort of old Civil war pensioners. 
 They're there on the plaza every day sitting around 
 under the shadow of the palms. I've talked with 'em 
 and they say a man can bach' it — that is, get feed for 
 himself livin' as a bachelor — for a dollar and a quarter 
 a week, and a room will cost a dollar more. So a 
 moderate pension will support a man without his doing 
 anything." 
 
 In my own experience I found the gentle conditions 
 of life were best exemplified by a man who dwelt near 
 the beach. I had the feeling at first that I had fallen 
 in with a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island. 
 Just back out of reach of the waves he had a shanty 
 seven feet one way by eight the other, and barely high 
 enough to stand up in. It was built of all sorts of rub- 
 bish; and nearly everything in the house and round 
 about might have been saved from some castaway 
 vessel, and indeed was largely the salvage of the sea. 
 
50 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 The interior walls were crowded with shelves, and 
 from frequent nails were suspended many articles of 
 use and ornament. The furnishings included a number 
 of pictures and newspapers, and a few books. There 
 was a bed with a coverlet made of an old sail, a chair 
 tinkered out of some pieces of board, a rusty little stove, 
 a muzzle-loading musket, and quantities of odds and 
 ends. The two tiny, single-paned windows each had a 
 board shutter inside and reminded me of the port holes 
 of a ship. 
 
 I saw all these details with some thoroughness because 
 I was caught by a shower and was invited to take shelter 
 in the hermit's hut. Outside he had a shed with a roof 
 made of an old boat turned keel upward, and he had 
 various whirligig contrivances set up in his yard — 
 weather vanes in the form of ships with sails set and 
 propellers revolving, and a kind of windmill of odd 
 construction that turned a coffee grinder. 
 
 The proprietor of this peculiar conglomerate was a 
 Maine man originally, and was a person of intelligence 
 and some education. His chief companions were cats, 
 and I saw half a dozen or more dozing around the 
 premises. He got all the wood he needed to burn from 
 the sea, and the sea furnished him with much of his 
 food. Most of his fishing he did with a hook and line, 
 but sometimes used a spear when he went after halibut. 
 His gun had been neglected of late, because the last 
 
On the Borders of Mexico 51 
 
 time he fired it he was out on the water after ducks and 
 it nearly kicked him out of his boat. The money he 
 needed to supply his few wants he got by digging and 
 marketing a few clams, and by taking care of some 
 boats belonging to the town boys, and by catching 
 crawfish which he sold for bait. During the twenty 
 years he had lived there he had never had an overcoat. 
 It wasn't his habit to stand around on windy street 
 corners, he explained, and therefore in that mild climate 
 he didn't need one. 
 
 He was something of a radical in the matter of 
 clothing, yet it is a fact that the climate is singularly 
 equable, and so it is along the coast of the entire state; 
 for though the northern extremity of California is in 
 the latitude of Boston and its southern end is opposite 
 Charleston, the thermometer seldom anywhere drops 
 below freezing or rises to what is often experienced in 
 New York City by the end of May. The breezes from " 
 the Pacific keep the land cool in summer and warm in 
 winter. 
 
 Note. — The visitor at San Diego can choose among numberless 
 hotels, from the most modest to the most palatial; or, if he prefers, 
 can camp on Coronado Beach. The climate is unfailingly gentle, 
 and the ocean and fertile valleys and distant mountains furnish 
 many attractions. Most points of interest are easily accessible, and 
 the traveller with limited time can see much in a very few days. There 
 is excellent fishing and bathing. The glimpse of Mexico one gets at 
 Tia Juana should not be missed, nor the ancient Mission and its olive 
 trees, nor the adobe homes in "Old Town," nor the caverned cliffs 
 at La Jolla. 
 
Ill 
 
 A RUSTIC VILLAGE 
 
 NOT for a long time had I been in a place that 
 so filled me with delight as did Capistrano in 
 Southern California. Such a dreamy, easy- 
 going community — no hurry, no worry^such a luxuri- 
 ant valley, such lofty environing hills with the green 
 turf clothing every rounded outline! Then, to the 
 north, were the rocky peaks of a mountain range, 
 serene and blue in the distance. The village itself 
 was a queer huddle of primitive houses, some no more 
 than board shanties, and none of them large or in the 
 least pretentious. However, the feature that gave 
 especial distinction to the hamlet was the ruin of an old 
 Mission, still impressive, calm and beautiful, and 
 appealing powerfully to the imagination. It would 
 interest one anywhere, and we can boast of so few 
 ruins that have age and noble proportions in this new 
 land of ours that the appeal was doubly strong. Though 
 the Mission buildings are much shattered, some parts 
 continue in use even to this day. The chime of four 
 bells performs its accustomed service, one portion is 
 
 S2 
 
The story hook 
 
A Rustic Village 53 
 
 used as a church, and there is a fine corridor in an 
 excellent state of preservation. 
 
 The structures were begun in 1776. Adobe was 
 largely used for the walls, but the church was of stone 
 with a lofty tower and a roof made of solid concrete 
 domes. At early mass on Christmas morning in 18 12 
 there was an earthquake that toppled over the tower 
 onto the body of the building, and the entire roof 
 crashed down. Forty-nine people were killed. "We've 
 had no earthquake worth mentioning since," one of 
 the leading Americans of the vicinity informed me. 
 "Of course there have been a good many tremors, but 
 they have been mere sardines compared with that 
 shock of 1 8 12, and we pay no more attention to them 
 than we would to a spatter of rain." 
 
 The village was charmingly pastoral. The insects 
 thrummed, the children laughed and called at their 
 play, the roosters crowed in endless succession, the 
 dogs barked, and the cattle lowed from the luscious 
 hillslopes. And what throngs of birds there were! 
 I saw them flitting everywhere and the air was a-thrill 
 with their songs. The mocking-birds were lilting their 
 varied notes, the turtle-doves sounded their mellow 
 calls, and in the vicinity of the buildings were multi- 
 tudes of linnets — pretty little birds and cheerful song- 
 sters, but very destructive to grapes, apricots, peaches, 
 pears and berries. In the pastures the red-winged 
 
54 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 blackbirds abounded, hovering about the sheep and 
 cattle. Often they could be seen on the sheep's backs 
 picking off ticks. Meadow larks were frequently within 
 sight and hearing, but their song was decidedly coarser 
 and less plaintive than in the East. I observed many 
 gay little birds known as "canaries," and there were 
 flickers and pewees and bee-martins and thrashers and 
 numerous others. Of them all I perhaps most enjoyed 
 the swallows. A few had been noticed flying about for 
 a week or two; but the mass of them had come the 
 evening before I arrived. Now they were darting 
 everywhere, building under the eaves of the houses and 
 barns and estabhshing a populous colony beneath the 
 loftiest cornice of the old Mission ruin. Far up against 
 the blue sky I would sometimes see the buzzards soar- 
 ing. Nothing in the way of off"al escapes their alert 
 eyes or scent. Back in the hills, if a man killed a gopher 
 or a rattlesnake or some such little creature, there 
 might not be a buzzard in sight at the time, but the 
 next day half a dozen would be around. 
 
 On the noon that I reached Capistrano the main 
 street was full of teams tied to the wayside hitching 
 rails, and yet the place seemed mysteriously devoid of 
 human beings. At last I discovered the male inhabi- 
 tants of the region gathered at the far end of the street 
 in and about an adobe Justice Court. The wide door- 
 way was jammed full of men peering over each others' 
 
Among the arches of the old Missiot 
 
A Rustic Village 55 
 
 shoulders, and the case was evidently of the most 
 absorbing and vital interest. At length, however, the 
 gathering broke up, the village became populous, and 
 one after another the teams were unhitched and driven 
 away. The excitement, it seemed, concerned two 
 individuals, one of whom had said the other was a liar, 
 and the latter had responded that the former was a son 
 of a gun and likened him to a variety of similar obnox- 
 ious things. But the court failed to get together a jury 
 and the judge had dismissed the case. As a clerk in a 
 local store expressed it, "The two fellers remind me of 
 my schooldays when one of us kids'd sometimes go and 
 complain to the teacher saying, ' Jimmy's been a-callin' 
 me names.' 
 
 " 'What's he been callin' you ?' she asks him. 
 
 " 'I don't Hke to tell you,' the boy says, 'It's awful 
 bad things.' " 
 
 While I was in this store a fat old Indian entered. 
 He had short hair, wore overalls, and except for his 
 color was not much different in dress and appearance 
 from a white workingman. His breath was odorous 
 of liquor, and he was loquacious and happy. The clerk 
 introduced him as the best sheep-shearer in the county. 
 He shook hands and said, "Me good man! You good 
 man V 
 
 In talking with him it was not easy to catch the mean- 
 ing of some of his remarks. The common patois of the 
 
56 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 region used by both the whites and the darker skinned 
 folk is based on Spanish, but with an intermixture of 
 Indian and of words borrowed from the EngHsh. The 
 old sheep-shearer had about fifty other Indians working 
 under him in the season, got five dollars a day himself 
 and two dollars for his wife who did the cooking for 
 the gang. The wealth he acquired did not stick to 
 him. He gambled it away. 
 
 Gambling was a common recreation among the 
 villagers, and the place supported four "blind pigs," 
 or unlicensed saloons. There were always loafers 
 hanging about their porches and a noisy crowd inside 
 playing pool. One of the Capistrano experts at poker 
 was a Chinaman who had a ranch just outside the 
 village. He lived in a dirty little hut there and kept 
 his horse under a pepper tree with only the shelter 
 afforded by the leafage. For ten miles around the 
 people depended on him to supply them with vegetables. 
 Some of the poorest families in the village bought of 
 him, rather than take the trouble to raise their own 
 vegetables, though they have the finest kind of land 
 right at their doors. "He can't hardly speak three 
 words of English," I was told; "but he'll sit down and 
 play poker all right with any of us. Perhaps he'll lose 
 fifty dollars or more in a single sitting and not go home 
 till the small hours of the morning; and yet he'll be at 
 his work that day as usual without batting an eye. 
 No doubt, on the whole, he makes oftener than he loses." 
 
A Rustic Village 57 
 
 One of my acquaintances was a short, stooping old 
 German with a broken nose. He lived in an adobe house 
 with walls two or three feet thick. "You keep der 
 adobe dry," said he, "und it vill last forever; but der 
 vather from der eaves spatters oop und vashes avay 
 der bottom till it breaks down unless you be careful. 
 Some puts on cement to make der vails look nice und 
 last more long. We do not build adobe houses now. 
 It is quicker to use boards, und you cannot keep them 
 so clean as a board house, und the air is not so goot 
 inside. Some of der adobe houses are one hundred 
 years old already, I tink. I haf not lif here always. 
 My business is a bee ranch, twelve miles back in der 
 hills. My home vas out dere till der dry years make 
 me move. If you git no rain dere be no flowers — nq 
 not'ing. Perhaps der bees can find enough to keep 
 alive, bud dere is no vork you can do to help. Der 
 vather give out und everyt'ing, und you might as veil 
 come avay. Last year it vas goot — all right, und I 
 t'ink dis year be good. So I soon shall haf to go dere. 
 Dem hills are chock full o' flowers now — oh, yes — like 
 a flower garden. I haf not been dere since last August. 
 In another month the bees begin to swarm, und I haf 
 to get ready for dot. You haf to be on der vatch or 
 der swarms go avay. It ish not often dey vill go into 
 another hive demselves. Dey come out und hang on a 
 
58 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 bush while der scouts are lookin' for a goot place. 
 Maybe a place is found und dey be off in one half hour. 
 Maybe dey hang on der bush two, three day or a veek. 
 
 " Many time we haf bees fly over dis town. Perhaps 
 dey stop und someone catch und put dem in an old box, 
 und dey make honey. Bud der honey ish not much 
 goot. Der flowers down here are not like dose on der 
 hills. Here der country soon be yellow mit wild mus- 
 tard, und dat make der honey a bitter taste und catch 
 in your throat, just like as if you eat too much pepper. 
 You couldn't sell it. Sometimes a swarm vill get in a 
 house. It vill go in a crack, und perhaps der bees vill 
 make honey in der ceiling, und it vill begin to leak 
 through. Den der people haf to tear a hole und drive 
 der bees out. 
 
 " Der honey in der hills is white as vather. Der bees 
 haf hundreds of kind of flowers dere, but der best is 
 der sagebrush. I wear a veil when I handle der bees 
 und gloves mitout fingers. You cannot tell ven der 
 bees vill sting — some days not at all, und other days 
 dey joost like bulldogs. Dey sting ven dey feels like 
 it, according to der veather. 
 
 "Each hive of bees vill make from one hundred to 
 five hundred pounds of honey in a goot season, und I 
 get about thirty tons from my two hundred stands. 
 Der bees fill der frames each season half a dozen times. 
 We extract der honey by puttin' der frames in a machine 
 
A Rustic Village 59 
 
 dat whirls dem and throws der honey out, bud leaves 
 der comb to be put back in der hives. Dis vay der bees 
 are save much vork, und dey get twice der honey dey 
 used to did. In July already you can do not'ing any 
 more. Der best flowers are past und things are getting 
 dry und der bees can only make what dey need dem- 
 selves." 
 
 We were sitting on the post office piazza, and here 
 we were joined just then by a man who was a 
 former resident of the village and had recently arrived 
 for a visit. He accosted my companion and they were 
 soon discussing incidents of the past. Among other 
 things they mentioned cock fights, and the German 
 said, "Eighteen or nineteen years ago dey use to haf 
 a cock fight mos' every Sunday, but I didn't see him 
 now for a long time." 
 
 When the newcomer moved on, the German happened 
 to turn his eyes toward home and remarked, "I haf 
 now to go to my house. Dere is a peacock from my 
 neighbor dot I can see on der roof Sometime it vill 
 stay dere all der night and holler; so I vill drive it ofi^." 
 
 The peacock belonged on a place that formerly was 
 the home of Don Foster, the feudal lord of the region. 
 He had hundreds of thousands of acres, and sheep and 
 cattle unnumbered, and he set a generous table free to 
 all comers. Indeed, two or three dozen of the villagers 
 were constantly fed at his board and he really supported 
 
6o Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "the whole shooting match;" for they did practically 
 no work. 
 
 The most exciting period in the village history was 
 that immediately following the acquisition of California 
 by the Americans. To quote a leading citizen, "There 
 was then a band of sixty or seventy disgruntled Mexi- 
 cans known as 'Manillas' who were a terror to all the 
 region. They had a leader by the name of Basquez 
 who was credited with all sorts of savagery and wild 
 escapades. He delighted to come unexpectedly when 
 a dance was in progress and join in the merry-making 
 and cut the fandango. Then, again, he would dash 
 into a village with all his troop and commence firing. 
 At once there'd be a yell, 'Basquez is in town!' and 
 you'd ought to see the people hide. 
 
 "The Manillas sailed in here one day and captured 
 the town, all except Don Foster's house. There's one 
 old man living in Capistrano now who at the time of 
 that raid had a store here. When they broke into his 
 place he crawled under a big basket among some rags 
 and rubbish in a corner. He heard the Mexicans 
 helping themselves to his firearms and nice things, but 
 he kept quiet and as soon as it was night he escaped 
 to Don Foster's. After about a week the Manillas got 
 news that the sheriff was comin' with a posse from Los 
 Angeles to punish them, and they went and bush- 
 whacked him and killed all but one man. The sheriff 
 
A Rustic Village 6i 
 
 made a brave fight, and as he lay dying he kept firing 
 his pistol at the fellows as long as he could hold it. 
 
 "In a short time another and bigger posse was 
 gathered. Then the Mexicans scattered, but within a 
 few months they'd nearly all been hunted down. When 
 one was caught there were no legal proceedings. He 
 was just hung to a sycamore tree, or stood up against 
 an adobe wall and shot. Last of all they waylaid Bas- 
 quez and shot him all to pieces. 
 
 "This was a much bigger place years ago. In 1870 
 there were nearly two thousand inhabitants. Now 
 there are less than four hundred. But in those days 
 they were practically all Mexicans and Indians, and 
 they didn't work any more than was necessary to exist. 
 A few watermelons and a sack or two of beans will 
 suffice a Mexican family for a year. They live from 
 hand to mouth, and are content to half starve rather 
 than exert themselves. Why, an energetic American 
 will raise a crop of walnuts and clear in a single season 
 four or five thousand dollars, which is more than a 
 Mexican would clear in four or five thousand years. 
 
 "Most of the Indians have drifted off to the reserva- 
 tions to get the benefit of Uncle Sam's coddling. We've 
 managed to pauperize nearly the whole race. If some- 
 one else will support them they quit doing anything for 
 themselves and are just loafers. As for the Mexicans 
 they were never reconciled to the change of government, 
 
62 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 and when there come a mining excitement down in 
 their home country many of them went there and never 
 returned. In spite of the decrease of numbers we 
 really get more out of the land than ever before. Never- 
 theless there's plenty of laziness still. Work is plenty 
 and men can earn a dollar and a half a day; but if 
 they take a job they soon are tired or get too much 
 money and lay off. A Mexican with five dollars will 
 spend it like a lord. He is very apt to get drunk on 
 Saturday night, and you never know whether he will 
 be back to his work Monday morning or not. Some 
 families are so shiftless we are obliged to support 'em. 
 The county allows such from five to ten dollars a month. 
 But they don't consider themselves indigents. They 
 are, rather, indignants. We have no paupers. They 
 cill themselves 'pensioners' and think it an honor to 
 get public aid." 
 
 English walnut growing had chief place among the 
 local industries, and there were a number of extensive 
 groves. The trees spread out like apple trees, but have 
 a smooth light-gray bark. In the walnut harvest-time 
 the school closes for six weeks to give the children a 
 chance to help gather the crop. Some of the nuts fall 
 of themselves, but a large proportion are thrashed off 
 with poles. Often the poles have a hook on the end 
 and by their aid the branches are shaken. The ground 
 is free from weeds and has been gone over with b 
 
A Rustic Village 63 
 
 smoother so that the picking up is easy. A sack is the 
 usual receptacle, but the women use their aprons. The 
 nuts are spread on big racks to dry, where they are 
 stirred once in a while with a garden rake. In two 
 days of clear warm weather they are ready to ship. 
 
 There were a number of the great slatted drying 
 benches in a yard back of my hotel. A few nuts were 
 still left on the frames, and I often loitered there and 
 feasted. If I chose I could supplement the nuts with 
 oranges picked from trees in the garden. The hotel 
 was an old-time stage-route tavern — a big, long two- 
 story building with a piazza and balcony on both front 
 and rear. I had to go upstairs outside and walk along 
 the balcony to get to my room, which was a rather bare 
 and shabby apartment, with a bed that had two boxes 
 under it to prop up the slats. " We had a heavy-weight 
 sleeping in your bed last night," explained the land- 
 lord, "and he broke through." 
 
 Behind the hotel were all sorts of whitewashed barns 
 and sheds and shacks, including a kitchen and dining- 
 room which were under a roof by themselves. Sus- 
 pended from a full-foliaged pepper tree was a frame- 
 work box covered with fly-netting. This served for a 
 refrigerator. Among the various lodgers at the hotel 
 when I arrived were three men who were driving a 
 couple of wagons to San Diego. They had been stop- 
 ping four days on account of rains that had flooded 
 
64 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 the rivers. There were no bridges, and the quicksands 
 at the fords were treacherous. That evening one of 
 the men came into the office and sat down on the 
 counter. The landlord entered soon after, and he too 
 roosted on the counter. 
 
 "What was that noise I heard as I passed through 
 the yard ?" asked the traveller. " It was in your barn, 
 and, by gee! I thought it was snoring." 
 
 "That's what it was," replied the landlord. "It 
 was my old black horse. He can snore to beat the band. 
 He lies down flat with his head stretched out on the 
 ground, and at it he goes. You punch him to wake 
 him up, and he grunts just like a person that's dead 
 tired. He's the darndest horse I ever see." 
 
 "Well," said the traveller, "my father used to have 
 a pair of horses that was great hands for sugar. When 
 we got 'em out to go anywhere they wouldn't start 
 unless we give 'em each a lump of sugar. Without 
 that you couldn't get 'em to budge — not to save your 
 neck from the rope. Those horses was a cute pair. 
 One time some of us young fellers took 'em and drove 
 to the beach for a picnic. We left 'em on a hill not far 
 from the shore tied to the wagon, one on each side. 
 Then we went down to the sea and fooled around and 
 had a swim, and by the time we dumb back up the hill 
 we was hungry as wolves. We'd left our lunch in the 
 back end of the wagon. It was in a handle basket that 
 
A Rustic Village 65 
 
 had a lid flopping up from either way; and, sir, those 
 horses had got the covers up, one workin' on this side, 
 one on that, and eaten every blessed thing, pie and all. 
 My, Mra'n't we mad ! We made 'em pay for their grub 
 though by running 'em home, seven miles in thirty 
 minutes." 
 
 " You've decided to leave tomorrow, have you ?" 
 said the landlord. 
 
 "Yes," answered the other, "and I'd have gone 
 before if we hadn't been drivin' mules. A horse with 
 a load stuck in a quicksand will try its best to struggle 
 out; but a mule will just lie down, and as soon as a 
 mule's ears get full of water there's no saving him. 
 He'll drown in spite of all you can do." 
 
 In response to some questions of mine the landlord 
 became reminiscent. "My people come here in 1870," 
 said he, "about fifteen years before the railroad was 
 built, and papa bought the store which is now the hotel 
 office. Capistrano was on the main route north and 
 south, but there was no place in town where travellers 
 could stay. They used to bother papa asking for 
 accommodations, and finally he built on to the old store 
 and made this big two-story hotel, and by golly, in 
 those days it was jammed all the time. The stable 
 was full too, and we kept a regular hostler. From the 
 stable alone we took in nearly a thousand dollars a 
 month. The daily stages, one going south, one going 
 
66 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 north, met here at midnight, and we always had hot 
 coffee ready for persons that wanted it. You've noticed 
 how the village people go and hang around the depot 
 to see the trains come in. Well, they used to gather 
 at our hotel just as thick to see those midnight stages 
 arrive. The building of the railroad made a great 
 sensation in the town. When the first engine poked 
 her nose in sight a good many of the people fled to their 
 homes and buried themselves under the bed-clothes. 
 It was weeks before some of 'em would come out of 
 their rooms, and there's those here today that you 
 could no more get on a train than you could get them 
 to fly. If they have to go to Santa Ana, twenty-five 
 miles away, they'll squat in the back end of a lumber 
 wagon and jolt along that fashion rather than trust 
 themselves to the train. 
 
 "This was a rough town in the old days. Behind 
 the counter in our store we had a pistol every few feet 
 to be ready for emergencies. We ran a bar in connec- 
 tion with the store, and one day an Indian come in 
 and wanted liquor. He was drunk already, and I told 
 him he couldn't have any more. That didn't suit him 
 and he drew a knife on me. I picked up a pistol and 
 gave him a welt with the butt that laid him flat on his 
 back. Then I took him by the heels and dragged him 
 out into the street. I thought he was dead, but pretty 
 soon he drew up first one foot and then the other. After 
 
An Indian family 
 
A Rustic Village 67 
 
 that he tried to sit up, but he'd roll over back on the 
 ground. At last, however, he made out to crawl away. 
 
 "Papa had almost the same experience with a 
 Mexican. The fellow stooped down and took from his 
 bootleg a knife eighteen inches long and sharpened on 
 both edges. But while he was stooping papa got a 
 couple of pistols and poked 'em into his face as he 
 looked up and said, 'You give me that knife or I'll 
 blow the top of your head off.' 
 
 " 'Boss, don't shoot,' the fellow said, and he laid 
 down the knife. 
 
 'I'm goin' to take that knife up to Los Angeles,' 
 papa told him, ' and leave it and your name with the 
 sheriff, and the next time you don't behave they'll come 
 down here and kill you.' 
 
 "The Mexican was scared. 'Don't do that, boss,' 
 he begged. 'You give me back my knife, and I'll work 
 for you as long as you want.' 
 
 "So finally papa give him the knife, and after that 
 the Mexican was his best friend. There was nothing 
 the fellow wouldn't do for him. 
 
 "You ought to be here the last day of Lent — Judas 
 Day, we call it. The night before, it is customary for 
 the Mexicans to ransack the village and steal buggies 
 and tools and anything they can carry off, and they 
 make a big pile of all this plunder just outside the fence 
 in front of the old Mission. Then they take a worn-out 
 
68 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 suit of clothes and stuff it full of weeds and stick it up 
 on top of the pile, and that is Judas. Next they get 
 an old dress and stuflF that full of weeds and set it up 
 side of Judas to represent his wife. In the morning 
 when we wake up we find all the vehicles and loose 
 things that were around our yards stacked up over by 
 the Mission, with those two scarecrow figures on top. 
 But the best of the performance comes in the afternoon 
 when the Mexicans bring to the village two half-wild 
 bulls from the hills. They tie Judas to one, and Judas's 
 wife to the other and chase the creatures up and down 
 the street till the two figures are torn to tatters. 
 
 "There was one Judas Day a tramp come to town, 
 and he stopped at the store and bought a couple of 
 dozen eggs. As he was goin' out of the door carryin' 
 the eggs in a bucket papa says to him, 'They're just 
 turnin' the bulls loose out there, and you'd better wait 
 a while.' 
 
 " But he said he was in a hurry and he wouldn't stop. 
 We watched him, and about the time he got in the middle 
 of the street one of the bulls come tearin' along and 
 hits him in the seat of the pants. He went one way 
 and his eggs went another, and that would have been 
 the end of him if the vaqueros hadn't galloped to his 
 rescue. He was mad and he went to Judge Bacon's 
 office and said, T want to have these fellows out here 
 arrested. They've been lettin' wild and vicious animals 
 
A Rustic Village 6g 
 
 loose in the street and I've been knocked down, and 
 two dozen eggs I'd just bought are all smashed.' 
 
 " 'Well,' the Judge said, 'I don't like to arrest these 
 men. This is an annual celebration, and the men 
 themselves didn't do the damage. If anyone is to be 
 arrested it ought to be the bull.' 
 
 ' I don't care who or what it is you arrest,' the tramp 
 said; 'I want justice done.' 
 
 'Don't bother me any longer,' the Judge said, and 
 he pulled out a dollar. 'Here, take this and go buy 
 some more eggs,' said he. 
 
 " So the fellow left satisfied." 
 
 The traveller sitting beside the landlord now got 
 down off the counter and stretched himself. "Who was 
 the man that was here to dinner and went away just 
 afterward on the train .?" he inquired. 
 
 "It was a doctor," the landlord replied. "He had 
 some thought of settling here; but I told him he'd 
 starve to death. You see the people avoid callin' a 
 doctor till the sick person has one foot in the grave and 
 the other following after. The old women think they 
 can cure most anyone with herbs and weeds, and they 
 keep dosing the sick person till he's nearly dead. Then 
 if the doctor can pull him through things are all right; 
 but if the doctor has his patient die on him they'll 
 never pay for his services. 
 
70 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "Whenever there's a death, whether it is day or 
 night, the first thing that is done is to make a run for 
 the Mission to toll the bells. They toll the two big 
 ones for a grown person and the two little ones for a 
 child. The bells toll for ten minutes, and all the friends 
 and relatives start for the house of mourning — get up 
 out of their beds to go, if it is night. The corpse is 
 dressed in what had been the deceased's best clothes 
 and is put on a table, and candles are lighted and set 
 about on the table, and outside on the porch. When 
 all this has been done the company kneel and sing a 
 hymn. Each new arrival who comes later kneels by 
 the body and says a prayer, and some of the women 
 are praying pretty constantly. A crowd is hanging 
 around all the time till after the funeral. 
 
 " On the day of the death, or the one following, some 
 of the men go up to the cemetery to dig the grave; 
 but they have a big demijohn of wine with them, and 
 they're sure to quit when they've got down about three 
 feet. The next night there is a wake and a feast. It is 
 the fashion to eat, drink and be merry and fight. If 
 the night is cool the men and boys build a fire outside 
 which they gather around. By three or four in the 
 morning they are ready to scrap. They are full of their 
 cheap wine then, and it don't require much to stir 
 their anger. 
 
 " The morning after the wake, at ten o'clock, the bell 
 
A Rustic Village 71 
 
 begins to toll for the funeral and the grave-diggers 
 hustle off to finish their work. An hour later the 
 funeral takes place. The coffin is usually an ordinary 
 box made in the village and covered with black cloth 
 for an adult, white for a child. On the cloth are 
 fastened many flowers, and crosses and other figures 
 made out of tissue and gold papers. The coffin is carried 
 on men's shoulders to the church where the people sing 
 a hymn and then go to the grave bearing the coffin in 
 relays. At the cemetery they sing again, and recite a 
 prayer. Lastly the body is lowered into the grave and 
 every man, woman and child tosses in a handful of 
 dirt." 
 
 For twenty-five dollars a family can have a priest 
 conduct the funeral, and while he goes through the 
 sacred rites, the coffin reposes on a table in the church. 
 For fifty dollars a more elaborate service can be had, 
 and the coffin rests on two tables, one placed on the 
 other, while for seventy-five dollars the coffin has three 
 tables beneath and the priest puts on his full robes, 
 swings the censer, brings forth the silver candlesticks 
 and makes the ceremony superlatively impressive. 
 
 Weddings take place at the church at high noon, 
 and the rest of the day and the night till broad daylight 
 is spent in feasting and dancing and in eating a barbe- 
 cued beef. 
 
72 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 A christening is also an occasion for " a big blowout." 
 It takes place on Sunday, of course, and outside of the 
 Mission in the churchyard is a crowd of men and boys 
 who, as soon as the christening party comes forth, begin 
 to shout and fire pistols and guns, and they follow the 
 party home banging away as they go. 
 
 An Eastern girl, not long before, had told me some- 
 thing of her experience as a school teacher in San Diego 
 County. She was twenty miles back from the railroad 
 among the hills. The people were Americans, but they 
 were shiftless and ignorant, and the women and children 
 did most of the work. The man at the place where she 
 boarded was a fair sample of what the other men were. 
 He did not drink or smoke and was in no wise vicious, 
 but he didn't amount to anything. The woman and 
 her children looked after the garden, took care of the 
 cows, raised the chickens, harvested the crops, and 
 brought the house water from a spring a half mile 
 distant. The older girls, when they came from school, 
 would put on overalls and milk the cows. Often the 
 children were dismissed from school to run the mowing- 
 machine and get in the oats and barley which were 
 raised for hay. The woman would even go and dig 
 greasewood roots which they cut up for household fuel. 
 Sometimes she would get ready a load of the roots, and 
 the man would take the load to the nearest town to sell. 
 He occasionally did a little ploughing, but he would exert 
 
A Rustic Village 73 
 
 himself most in hunting wild bees that had made their 
 homes in the hollow oaks. 
 
 There was no feminine timidity in that region. The 
 girls were ready to kill rattlesnakes as often as they 
 encountered them and all the women could shoot. Every 
 few days the teacher's landlady went out with her gun 
 and would return with five or six rabbits. 
 
 The children were all apt to be at school regularly; 
 but this was because short attendance would mean a 
 curtailing of the school money. The parents, however, 
 were not at all particular to have their progeny there 
 on time, or to have them stay the sessions out. Still, 
 they preferred a clean record, and in order that the 
 children should not be marked tardy they requested 
 the teacher to turn the clock back an hour or so in the 
 morning. Their previous teacher had done this, they 
 said. The pupils were very docile and patient. They 
 seemed not to have life enough to be mischievous, and 
 they could be kept on the same lesson for two weeks 
 and never utter a complaint. Indeed, they would study 
 it just as faithfully at the end of that period as at the 
 beginning. 
 
 This glimpse of educational conditions stimulated a 
 desire to visit the school at Capistrano. I found about 
 seventy-five children in two rooms, the little ones under 
 a young woman, the upper grades under a young man. 
 They were an odd mixture, whites and Mexicans and 
 
74 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Indians, and various combinations of the races. The 
 dark-skinned children are as a whole lazy and un- 
 reliable. They would as soon tell an untruth as not, 
 if it will be accepted. As one man said, " They are like 
 a Chinaman — if he steals and is found out, his act is a 
 sin. Otherwise, he esteems his dishonesty a virtue." 
 
 Many of the children have only a vague understand- 
 ing of English, and this makes their progress in school 
 doubly slow. The building and its surroundings and 
 the two teachers were all that could be desired. A 
 generation ago the place had no school, but one day a 
 New England resident of the village stumbled on the 
 fact that they could get money from the state for edu- 
 cational purposes. This man was the local Justice of 
 the Peace, and known as Judge Bacon. "The people 
 here didn't want to learn anything," said one of the 
 early settlers in telling me the story, "and if a school of 
 the usual sort had been established they wouldn't have 
 attended. They'd heard of such a thing as a public 
 school, but they didn't really know what it was. Why, 
 these billy-goats had the idea it was a sort of institution 
 to make Protestants out of 'em. To get around that 
 snag Bacon went to the padre and asked him to start 
 the school and teach it himself in his little rooms at the 
 old Mission. 
 
 "Well, the padre couldn't spell one syllable of 
 English, but Bacon got him to undertake the job, and 
 
m 
 
 
 V ■ ,1 
 
 
 /""i ' '^^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 i 
 
 ; Id^^^^^^^^^^B 
 
 
 ^^' 
 
 ■ 
 
 On the porch at the village store 
 
A Rustic Village 75 
 
 dug up a diploma from somewhere allowing him to 
 accept the position. The children came, and he kept 
 along and kept along for a year or so. Most of the 
 school conversation was in the Spanish language, and 
 what was learned didn't amount to much, but it was a 
 start and about the only way a school here could start. 
 However, at the end of a year Bacon persuaded the 
 padre that teaching school was beneath the dignity of 
 a Catholic priest and fixed things so the priest was 
 authorized to hire a nice young lady to take his place. 
 He got one and she taught about three months, when 
 we had a horse race here and some feller came along 
 and made love to her. The result was she ran away 
 with him, and gad! we've never seen her since. 
 
 "The school was Bacon's hobby, and he got a 
 building put up and afterward painted it himself — spent 
 three weeks at the job. He laid out the grounds around 
 with the notion of having a sort of park, and he urged 
 that there should be put on the post at each corner of 
 the fence a big globe having the entire world mapped on 
 it. Then, inside, on an arch over the teacher's alcove 
 he wanted a motto painted — ' The poorest child may tread 
 the classic halls of yore.' But there were two other 
 trustees, and we wouldn't agree to these things. We 
 didn't see much sense to 'the classic halls of yore,' 
 and were afraid it would only get us laughed at. So, 
 
76 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 instead, we finally had an eagle and some stars painted 
 on the arch. 
 
 "Bacon knew how to read and write, but that was 
 about the extent of his book learning. He was one of 
 the argonauts of '49. He made money in mines and 
 then he invested in cattle here. His home was an old 
 adobe without a floor, but he was rich — oh, heavens! 
 he had money galore. As soon as he got the school 
 building done he put in a seventy-five dollar chandelier 
 to light up so they could have dances. He paid for 
 it — plunked up every nickel himself, and he furnished 
 the oil, and he hired a dancing master to come from 
 Los Angeles. They had a dance every Wednesday 
 night. One day he says to a mother, 'Why wasn't your 
 girl there last time ?' 
 
 " 'She can't go no more,' the mother says. 'She's 
 just wearin' out her Sunday gaiters on the floor there, 
 and I can't have it.' 
 
 " ' Buy her a pair of gaiters, and I'll pay for 'em,' 
 says he; and after that he had to buy gaiters for every 
 girl in town, you bet-cher ! 
 
 "In fact he got fnto the habit of buying anything 
 the girls said they wanted for the dancing. But after 
 a while they carried matters a little too far. I remember 
 how he called on me and said, ' One of my best dancers 
 that lives down here on the lane has balked.' 
 
 " 'What has she balked for .?' I asked. 
 
A Rustic Village 77 
 
 'Well,' he replies, 'she says she's got no corsets. 
 Now I've give them girls calico frocks and shoes and 
 lots of things, but I've got to draw the line somewhere, 
 and I won't give 'em corsets.' 
 
 " After that the weekly dance ran down. Then pretty 
 soon the idea struck him he'd Hke to learn music. So 
 he sent to Philadelphia for instruments to fit out a 
 brass band, and he got the finest that money could buy. 
 He distributed them among a lot of old pickles of his 
 caliber, but I told him he'd forgot one thing — 'Whoever 
 heard of a brass band without a banjo ?' I said. 
 
 "At once he telegraphed to have a banjo sent re- 
 gardless of expense. Those old stiffs he picked out for 
 members of the band knew no more about music than 
 a dog does about his grandfather; but they went to 
 practising in a room here in the town and kept at it 
 till the neighbors fired 'em out. Then they made their 
 headquarters off a couple of miles on a sheep ranch 
 where the coyotes were in the habit of gathering to 
 serenade the ranch dwellers. They petered out after 
 a while. The only fellow among them who pretended 
 to do real well was the man with the bass drum. 'Oh, 
 yes,' he'd say, 'I'm gettin' along first rate. All I have 
 to do is to draw off once in a while and give her a devil 
 of a whack!' 
 
 " Bacon was an old resident when I came, and he's 
 been long dead. It was his habit every time he wanted 
 
yS Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 to go away anywhere to buy two or three white shirts. 
 When he'd worn 'em he'd chuck 'em in a closet and 
 never bother with 'em again. After his death, when 
 things was bein' settled up, we come across all that 
 big heap of white shirts, and we threw 'em outside. 
 The result was that every Mexican in the place wore a 
 white shirt for the next few months." 
 
 Note. — Capistrano is not a tourist resort, and its hotel accom- 
 modations are poor; yet this lack is not without certain picturesque 
 compensations. The village is one of the quaintest, its setting 
 among the hills is charming, and it has the most imposing and 
 beautiful Mission ruin in California. No traveller who goes to San 
 Diego can afford to miss visiting the place, if only to stop off from 
 one train and go on by the next. The outlying sections of the village 
 where the Indians and poorer inhabitants dwell should not be 
 neglected; and it would be well to visit the wild, abrupt coast. This 
 is close at hand and has an added interest because of the adven- 
 turous incidents which Dana in his "Two Years Before the Mast" 
 describes as occurring in his experiences there. 
 
 About 30 miles south of Capistrano, and 4 miles from the railway 
 station of Oceanside, is the San Luis Rey Mission, which, after being 
 in ruins for nearly a century, is again occupied by monks. 
 
 There is an automobile route the entire distance from Los Angeles 
 to San Diego, 136 miles, over roads that as a rule are good, but have 
 some bad sandy stretches. 
 
IV 
 
 SPRING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 
 
 ONE of my longest stops was at a private house 
 well out in a suburban district of Los Angeles. 
 From the window of my room I looked forth 
 on a world luxuriantly green and brightened with 
 blossoms in marvelous profusion. To add to the 
 pleasure of all this, birds were plentiful, and, in partic- 
 ular, there was a mocking-bird that had a habit of 
 perching not far away and piping and trilling with rare 
 ardor and eloquence. Several palms, a magnolia and 
 some camphor trees grew in front of the house, and 
 behind it were orange, fig, peach and other fruit trees. 
 The entire region was much like a park, so carefully 
 were the orchards kept, and so abounding were the 
 cultivated flowers and shrubs. The surroundings of 
 the finer dwellings were little short of perfection, and 
 there was never any rawness due to waiting for nature 
 to give them a proper setting, even about the newer 
 homes. Things grow so quickly and respond so readily 
 to man's training that a home almost at once nestles in 
 
 79 
 
So Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 flowers and vines and foliage that give it repose and 
 charm. 
 
 The story goes that the climate is so favoring you 
 can plant toothpicks one day, artd the next morning 
 find them grown into tall trees that can be cut and sold 
 for telegraph poles. In sober fact, the nearest approach 
 to this is the growth made by the blue gum, a species of 
 eucalyptus. Aside from fruit trees, no trees in Southern 
 California are so conspicuous and abundant. A blue 
 gum will send up a shoot twenty feet tall in a twelve- 
 month; and in Australia, its home land, it attains a 
 mature height of three hundred feet. The Californians 
 usually cut their blue gums down every few years, and 
 sprouts are allowed to start from the stump. "Our 
 trees here don't know when they are dead," I was 
 informed; "for no matter how little is left when the 
 blue gums are chopped off they will at once take a 
 new start as vigorous as ever. Why, a small patch of 
 blue gums will keep a family in wood." 
 
 Throughout California, no matter where one wanders, 
 mountains are always in s ight glorifying every landscape. 
 Where I then was I could see a series of heights close 
 at hand, lofty and rugged. During the cooler months 
 the clouds love to linger about their summits and they 
 often whiten over with snow; but no snow falls in the 
 vale, though there are sometimes touches of frost. 
 Things continue green and blossoms are profuse 
 
Spring in Southern California 8i 
 
 throughout the winter, and there is a gradual increase 
 of color and fresh growth until high tide is reached in 
 April. Then water is no longer so abundant, and 
 presently the flowers go to seed and the grass withers, 
 and except where there is irrigation the face of the 
 earth is sere and sober. Thus it remains till late autumn 
 when the reviving showers awaken the dull fields and 
 roadsides and pastures to life. 
 
 The summer heat is at times excessive; yet it is a 
 dry heat that does not carry with it a sweltering dis- 
 comfort. What is far worse are the dust storms. In 
 some sections these are frequent, and they are experi- 
 enced occasionally even in Los Angeles. The dust fills 
 the air like a fog and penetrates the houses and covers 
 everything. Moreover, it irritates the throat and makes 
 one constantly thirsty. Out on the desert, the wind, 
 besides raising the dust, whirls the sand through the air, 
 and sand-drifts gather in the lee of all obstructions. 
 One man told me about an experience of his in a desert 
 sand-storm in a top buggy. " The dusty wind had been 
 blowing all day and night," said he, "and then let up. 
 I'd been waiting for that and I started, but it had only quit 
 to get a fresh hold and it soon blowed like the mischief 
 again. The sand cut my face and the alkali in it made 
 the tears run. Pretty soon my buggy blew over; but 
 I got it right side up again and went on. A little farther 
 along it capsized once more, and this time the top blew 
 
82 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 off and went bounding away out of sight. The storm 
 was so blinding I couldn't see a thing ten feet distant, 
 and I'd been troubled a good deal to keep in the road 
 because the wind was so fierce it would pull on the reins 
 and get the horse out of the beaten track. So in making 
 a new start I just tied the reins to the harness. Then 
 I got into my wrecked buggy and let the horse find its 
 own way home." 
 
 Evidently the California summer is not in some 
 respects all it might be, and the winter also has its 
 failings, though of a different sort. In a Chicago rail- 
 way station, on my way from the East, I overheard an 
 Ohio woman who was returning from a visit to the 
 Pacific Coast discoursing on its weather to a chance 
 acquaintance. Her voice was hoarse with a severe cold. 
 "I've never seen worse fog anywhere," said she; "and 
 the tourists were all kicking about it. I wasn't com- 
 fortably warm half the time, and I had to wear jis as 
 heavy furs as at home. The houses ain't fixed to heat. 
 They don't have stoves except in their kitchens. So 
 you can only sit around and shiver. Even in summer 
 the nights are chilly, no matter how hot the day has 
 been. You have to be careful not to let in too much 
 of that flight air or you'll ketch your death of cold. I've 
 never minded the winter in Ohio half as much as I did 
 this winter out there. Then, too, I've always been 
 used to livin' at home, and though the grub was good 
 
Spring in Southern California 83 
 
 I got tired of hotel cookin'. Of course, there's wonder- 
 ful things to see, and all that, and I was enjoying 
 myself pretty well until I struck Los Angeles where I 
 got this awful cold. I didn't meet any people there 
 but jis had colds, and I heard a lot of tourists sayin' 
 they wouldn't live there if you'd give 'em the finest house 
 in the city. It seemed like I was never goin' to get over 
 my cold, and I said, 'Ohio is good enough for me. I 
 can die as well there as out here;' and now that I'm most 
 back I'm so glad I don't know what to do." 
 
 No doubt her experience was in some respects ab- 
 normal. The season was an unusually wet one, and I 
 witnessed several astonishing downpours when torrents 
 brown with sediment flowed in every roadside gutter, 
 and some of the streets were a-wash from curb to curb. 
 The worst flooded ones could only be crossed by wading 
 in water a foot or more deep. Often boards or pieces of 
 timber were laid across the gutter streams to serve as 
 makeshift bridges. 
 
 The uncommon wetness of the season was attributed 
 by some people to the magic of a professional rain- 
 maker. The previous year had been dry, and he con- 
 tracted to bring rain by a certain date. Then he betook 
 himself to a mountain-top; but what mysterious rites 
 he performed in his efforts to produce rain no one knows. 
 The desired result failed to materialize until two days 
 after the time set, and for this reason payment was 
 
84 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 refused. The rainmaker, however, had his revenge by 
 drenching the country at frequent intervals, and in 
 some sections there were disastrous floods. He declared 
 he would not desist until he was paid. Thus urged, his 
 employers finally turned over the money, and the 
 torrential rains more or less promptly ceased. 
 
 Probably the most delightful excursion that can be 
 made from Los Angeles is to the island of Santa Cata- 
 lina, twenty-five miles oflF the coast. When first dis- 
 covered the island was thickly populated by savages, and 
 later it was frequented by pirates who preyed on the rich 
 galleons in the Philippine trade. Now it is a pleasure 
 resort that attracts multitudes of visitors, and its single 
 village is a crowded settlement of hotels and shops and 
 numerous little cottages huddled in a narrow valley 
 basin. Thence you look forth on a crescent beach 
 with wave-torn bluff's on either side reaching out into 
 the sea. In all its length of twenty miles and its width 
 of from two to nine, the island is a chaos of steep hills and 
 mountains, furrowed with deep canyons and having 
 many rugged precipices. The loftiest height is Black 
 Jack which rises twenty-five hundred feet above the 
 sea level. Most of the slopes are grassed over, and 
 thousands of sheep find pasturage on them. You see 
 the paths of the grazing flocks everywhere winding 
 along the inclines, and often see the sheep themselves 
 or hear their bleating. Ofi^ in the middle of the island 
 

 Q 
 U 
 
 a 
 
 '>3 
 
 >te. 
 
 
Spring in Southern California 85 
 
 is a farmhouse where the caretakers of the flocks live, 
 but otherwise human life is confined to the neighborhood 
 of the village of the pleasure-seekers. 
 
 No matter whither I wandered I found a constant 
 succession of glens and ridges clothed with scattered 
 bushes and thorny clumps of cacti, and one can judge 
 of the country inland by the fact that two young men 
 who had lived in Santa Catalina for years recently 
 lost themselves while coming from the west shore eight 
 miles distant. A fog bewildered them, and one gave 
 up with heart trouble or whiskey, and the other went 
 on alone. Night came, and the wanderer stumbled 
 about in the darkness all to no purpose. It was after- 
 noon of the next day when he reached the village. 
 Then search parties started to find his companion, but 
 he was not where he had been left, and it was two days 
 .later that they came across him in a remote part of the 
 sland trying to find his way back to civilization. 
 
 The showers that every now and then trailed over the 
 uplands and down into the vales were full of vague 
 mystery. There was mystery too in the gray old ocean 
 always pounding along the shore, and in the drift of 
 sunlight and shadow across its sober expanse. I had 
 one experience that seemed to argue that this poetic 
 quality as evinced by nature had a marked influence 
 on the island dwellers and made them poetic also. 
 The first night at my hotel I was awakened early in the 
 
86 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 morning by voices under my room. Evidently the floor 
 was thin and I was over the dining room. A waiter 
 was giving his comrades some advice and it was in 
 rhyme, as follows: 
 
 "Mary Ann was very good; 
 She always did the best she could. 
 Now children be like Mary Ann, 
 And do the very best you can." 
 
 A mile or two back from the village up a canyon 
 lived an old hermit who had a chicken ranch. Any 
 farm or country home with land attached, even if there 
 is no more than a garden patch, is a "ranch" in Cali- 
 fornia. I called on the hermit one day. His house was 
 of the shanty order standing in the midst of a plot of 
 ground which he had palisaded with a lath fence against 
 his marauding fowls. Besides chickens he had hundreds 
 of pigeons and a few ducks and turkeys. For closer 
 companionship he kept a couple of handsome collies, 
 and when the sheep from the hills came down around 
 his place, the dogs drove them back. 
 
 "I've been on Santa Catalina twenty years," said he. 
 "It was just beginnin' to be a resort when I got here. 
 There was one small hotel and a few boarding houses, 
 and often more people would come than they could 
 accommodate. Then a good many would have to 
 sleep on the beach. Our summer weather is all right 
 so they didn't suflFer from damp or cold; but they did 
 
Comrades 
 
Spring in Southern California 87 
 
 sometimes get into trouble with the sand fleas. We 
 got fleas here pretty near as big as a grain of wheat, 
 you bet!" 
 
 The hermit had a number of flourishing fig and peach 
 trees, and was starting some grapevines. I noticed 
 several rank-growing plants I thought looked like 
 tobacco. "That's what they are," said he. "One day 
 an Irishman from Los Angeles called on me and he 
 saw a chicken pickin' at itself, and he caught it and 
 looked to see what was the matter. He found some 
 mites, and he says, 'What little tej'ous things are these ?' 
 
 " I told him, and said I could get rid of them if I had 
 some tobacco leaves. Well, the next time he come he 
 brought a packet of tobacco seed, and he said, 'You 
 raise some tobacco and you use it on your chickens. 
 If you don't I'll kill you.' 
 
 " It grows very good here. If you have water you 
 can grow most anything in this soil except greenbacks. 
 Would you like to see our island foxes ? They're a 
 sort you don't find on the mainland. I caught one last 
 night in that box over there. I've beared him a-howlin* 
 around for a week, and he got three chickens o' mine. 
 These foxes make nice pets and I s'pose I've caught as 
 many as four hundred and sold them at a dollar apiece." 
 
 We went to the box, and he tilted it up so that I could 
 see the pretty creature within — evidently a fox, but only 
 half the mainland size. I believe the island contains 
 
88 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 certain other creatures with a peculiar individuality, 
 but it is especially famous for the fish in the surrounding 
 sea. Here is found the leaping tuna, the most active 
 game fish in the world. It is caught with a rod and line, 
 but the line must be many hundreds of feet long, and 
 the fish will tow the boat at racehorse speed from one 
 to twenty miles before it is captured. In weight the 
 tuna sometimes exceeds two hundred pounds. 
 
 Nothing afforded me quite so much pleasure while I 
 was at the island as a trip in one of the glass-bottomed 
 boats. The boat could have carried a score, but two 
 young men in addition to myself were the only passen- 
 gers this time. There was a continuous cushioned 
 seat at the sides and stern, and the oarsman sat in the 
 prow. We had an awning overhead, and in the bottom 
 of the boat were three heavy plates of glass about 
 eighteen inches by three feet, boxed in at the sides. 
 The harbor water was somewhat roiled, but as soon 
 as we got to the cliffs jutting seaward we looked down 
 into fairyland. Even when the depth was fully fifty 
 feet there was scarcely any obscurity, and the sunbeams 
 flickered down almost as through the air onto the gray 
 rocks and the wafting, many-hued sea-plants and 
 the numerous finny inhabitants. How calm every- 
 thing down there seemed ! and with what lazy pleasure 
 the fish moved about in their wonder-world! They 
 were marvelously colored — red and blue, silver and 
 
Spring in Southern California 89 
 
 brown, striped and spotted; and some were pallid 
 little sardines just hatched, and others would weigh 
 four or five pounds. 
 
 My fellow voyagers almost exhausted themselves in 
 their expressions of delight. "Well, sir," one would 
 cry, "this is the finest sight I've ever seen in my life." 
 
 Then the other would break in with, "Look at this 
 gold fish! Ain't he a pippin! and Tom, here's a jelly 
 fish right under the glass. Gee! ain't that pretty ?" 
 
 "Dick, get onto this!" exclaims Tom. "Do you see 
 the fish with spots on its back like lamps }" 
 
 "That's the electric fish," explained the oarsman, 
 "and in the dark those spots light up the water. Now 
 we are going over a lot of seaweed — ribbons and lace and 
 such. It's the wet drygoods of the ocean, and there's 
 enough right in sight to stock a millinery store." 
 
 "I s'pose you can catch fish here at the island any 
 old place," remarked Tom. "My! it looks so nice 
 down in there it would just suit me to camp under 
 water right here for a while." 
 
 "Those gold fish take my eye," declared Dick. 
 "I would certainly like to reach down and grab a 
 couple." 
 
 " See that seaweed with the violet-colored tips," said 
 Tom. "I tell you that's pretty." 
 
 "That was nice all right," agreed Dick; "but look 
 
90 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 at this big purple shell lying on the bottom. I wish I 
 had it." 
 
 Just then a little rowboat approached, in which were 
 two fellows in bathing suits, and our oarsman spoke to 
 Dick and said, "If you want that shell one of those 
 chaps will go down and get it for a quarter." ^ 
 
 So the other boat was hailed and as soon as the diver 
 had leaned over into our craft to take a look through 
 the glass and locate the shell, down he went, and we 
 could see him swimming like a frog straight for it. When 
 he came up he gave a rap on the glass beneath us, and 
 then he presented the shell, climbed into his boat and 
 put an old coat about his shoulders. "There's a 
 number of such divers here," said our rower as we 
 moved away, "and they make big money — five, ten 
 and twenty dollars a day; but they don't live long. If 
 they ketch a cold it goes right to their lungs." 
 
 From Santa Catallna I returned to the mainland and 
 went far back from the coast to a small isolated village. 
 I arrived one warm noontide. A cow was wandering 
 about the wide unshadowed main street, a few teams 
 were hitched to wayside posts before the half dozen 
 stores and saloons, and a rooster was scratching over 
 a gutter rubbish heap. At one end of the street was a 
 patch of grass and a group of trees, and here a pros- 
 pector's outfit had stopped. The outfit consisted of a 
 canvas-topped wagon loaded with supplies and drawn 
 
Spring in Southern California 91 
 
 by four mules which were eating oats from their nose 
 bags. On either side of the vehicle was a water barrel, 
 and on behind a sheet-iron stove and a bale of hay. 
 The proprietors were three men enroute for Death 
 Valley, and they were prepared to spend a year search- 
 ing for wealth in that desert region. 
 
 On the rear borders of the hamlet stood a tiny church 
 with a barbed-wire fence around it. A preacher came 
 from somewhere and held service every other Sunday. 
 I was told that only two men in the place were church- 
 goers and that the minister considered it was a big day 
 if he had an audience of ten. Beyond the church were 
 park-like pastures with frequent great oaks just putting 
 forth their new foliage. But as a whole the surround- 
 ings were either level plains growing in their better 
 parts to wheat and barley, or were low parched hills 
 thinly covered with sagebrush and mesquite. 
 
 The village was on the Newhall Ranch, which in- 
 cludes nearly fifty thousand acres. When "old man 
 Newhall" was alive all the suitable land was in wheat, 
 and at the time of harvest he often shipped several 
 trainloads in a day, while now it is something notable 
 to fill half a dozen cars in that time. The village was 
 a busy place then, for not only were two or three score 
 men employed on the ranch, but twice as many more 
 were working some neighboring oil wells, now aban- 
 doned. A lanky long-haired youth who had charge of 
 
92 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 one of the drink resorts told me the history of the place 
 while he sat on a battered and initial-carved settee in 
 front of his saloon and contemplatively smoked a cigaret. 
 
 "Dad come here twenty odd years ago," he said, 
 " and he's seen this town drop four times and the business 
 go dead. Well, things are not so bad just now as they 
 might be. We get the trade from the ranches for ten to 
 thirty miles around, and they've been makin' some- 
 thin' the last few years and have money to spend. One 
 while we lived in Los Angeles. That's quite a burg 
 and gettin' bigger all the time. I used to could say 
 nobody could lose me in Los Angeles, but I don't hardly 
 know where I'm at in some parts now." 
 
 When I left the village to resume my journeyings it 
 so happened that I was stranded for several hours at 
 a railway junction, a few miles distant, where I had to 
 stay till midnight before I could get a train. One 
 attraction of the waiting-room was a gambling- rhachine. 
 You put a nickel in a slot, turned a crank and something 
 went buzz inside, and possibly a sum varying from ten 
 cents to two dollars dropped out down below. I saw a 
 number of fellows try it, and two of them used up a 
 quarter each in their efforts, but the machine simply 
 kept what they dropped in and gave back no prizes. 
 The profits of the machine, according to the man in 
 charge of the station lunch counter, were about a dollar 
 a day. He said the thing was against the law and 
 
Spring in Southern California 93 
 
 would not be allowed in the cities, but in small places 
 the law was not enforced. 
 
 The lunch man and a friend had a long discussion 
 about the merits of various systems of gambling — cards, 
 craps, roulette and faro bank, and attempted to decide 
 which was "the fairest game in the bunch." "I've 
 tried them all," said the friend. "Yes, I've monkeyed 
 around the gambling tables a good deal. I am natu- 
 rally lucky, too, and when I win, I win right quick." 
 
 Nevertheless he was at present so hard up he was 
 planning to beat his way on a frieght to some land of 
 promise farther on. He went out, and the lunch man 
 turned to me and said, "There ain't much use of 
 playin' against a professional gambler. He ain't 
 settin' there for his health, and he's bound to win 
 oftener'n you are. But a feller knockin' about always 
 sees ways to make a lot of money if he only had a little 
 pile. It takes too long and requires too much effort to 
 earn and save it. So he tries gambling; and yet if 
 he has luck he always wants more money than he has 
 won, and he won't stop until he loses it all. 
 
 "Some of the worst gambling places are over in 
 Arizona. I went into one town there with fifty bucks 
 (dollars) in my pocket and wearin' a twenty-eight 
 dollar suit and a new overcoat and shoes, and with a 
 four-dollar grip in my hand. But in three weeks I 
 come away a tramp. Now I've made up my mind to 
 
94 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 do different," said he as he prepared a cup of coffee 
 for himself. "I ain't touched my booze for a month, 
 and if I can save seventy-five dollars I'm goin' to start 
 for New England where I come from. I can have 
 more fun with five dollars in Boston than I can with a 
 hundred dollars in these cities out here." 
 
 Most likely he would fail in his intention. The Far 
 West is full of human driftwood. Men who have any 
 capacity and industry easily get profitable jobs, but a 
 considerable proportion of such men are constantly 
 roving to new territory, and money doesn't stick to them. 
 
 My midnight train carried me to the remarkably 
 fertile country that extends for nearly a hundred miles 
 east of Los Angeles. There you find an endless succes- 
 sion of orange, lemon, apricot, peach and other fruit 
 orchards. Back a little from the route I took through 
 this wonderland, the mountains frowned in purple 
 gloom from beneath a capping of foggy clouds, and 
 wherever a canyon opened from the heights it had shot 
 out over the levels a wide waste of sand and stones that 
 was half overgrown with brush. Such land was fur- 
 rowed with water-courses that were perfectly dry except 
 just after storms. However, dry water-courses are not 
 confined in California to small streams. There is a 
 saying that the rivers are "bottom upward." That is, 
 the channel is usually a waste of sand, but if you dig 
 down deep enough you are pretty sure to find a seepage 
 
Spring in Southern California 95 
 
 of water. After a storm the dry channels are suddenly 
 filled with rushing torrents that transform the lowlands 
 to shallow ponds, and marshes of mire. 
 
 In the region where I then was oranges grow to per- 
 fection, but they are raised with scarcely less success 
 in the upper Sacramento valley over five hundred miles 
 to the north. Heat and cold on the coast are a matter 
 of altitude, not latitude, and the wildflowers are a-bloom 
 among the foothills and the valleys in midwinter 
 throughout the entire length of the state. What wonder 
 that California is the great orange center of the world ! 
 
 With proper care the trees grow very rapidly. They 
 are vigorous and long-lived. For a hundred years they 
 will continue to bear, and an instance is on record in 
 Italy of an orange tree that survived to the age of four 
 centuries. Perhaps no other tree blossoms more regu- 
 larly and generously, and though sometimes a cold 
 wave does serious local harm, a general failure of the 
 crop is unknown. The trees require little or no pruning 
 back, but the branches have to be thinned out some- 
 what. To combat the scale pests a good many owners 
 resort to spraying, but the most effective way is to 
 fumigate. The leading varieties of trees only grow 
 about ten feet high and are very compact with branches 
 trailing on the ground. Even the larger species seldom 
 attain over fifteen feet, so that a tent can be put over a 
 tree and the fumigating done very thoroughly. Tents 
 
96 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 enough are used to cover a row, and when that row has 
 been treated they are shifted to the next. It is night 
 work, for the heat of the day and the fumes combined 
 would injure the foliage. 
 
 In the early spring one finds much of the land among 
 the orange groves hidden by rank weeds, and by peas 
 purposely grown during the winter and later ploughed 
 under to serve as a fertilizer and to give the soil humus. 
 After the ploughing the land is kept clean, and it is culti- 
 vated many times in the months following. The bare 
 brown earth is not a pleasing setting for the evergreen, 
 glossy-foliaged trees, and their appeal to the eye is also 
 hurt by the round, stout solidity and uniformity of shape 
 of the trees themselves. 
 
 Picking begins in time to ship for Thanksgiving use, 
 but the early fruit is poor. It is not ripe, and in order 
 to get a good outer color some of it has to be treated 
 to a few days' sweat. This turns a green skin to the 
 proper tint, though the inside may be as sour as a lemon. 
 The picking continues until May, and in the height of 
 the season you can buy excellent windfalls from peddlers 
 on the town streets at "ten cents a bucket," and the 
 bucket holds about eight quarts. 
 
 A well-grown orchard, conveniently located, is 
 commonly priced at fifteen hundred to two thousand 
 dollars an acre, though at such figures the native 
 Californians, if they give you a confidential opinion. 
 
Spring in Southern California 97 
 
 say they don't see how any money can be made. It is 
 better to sacrifice something on location, for the in- 
 vestment will be decidedly less. There is great ad- 
 vantage to a prospective purchaser in working in the 
 country a year or two in order to get acquainted with 
 the climate, the soil and crops and methods of marketing. 
 The tenderfoot usually pays high for the place he buys, 
 and often he "comes with a nice little pile and goes 
 back with nothing." Many natives make a business of 
 staying on a place for a while, improving it and then 
 selling at a fancy valuation. That done, they buy some 
 other ranch, which can be had cheap, and repeat the 
 process. 
 
 The manipulations that one hears of in connection 
 with the sale of land in the coast country make a very 
 curious story. The real estate agents are persons of an 
 optimistic turn of mind, with a marked ability to tell 
 fairy tales. I heard of one man who was dissatisfied 
 with the place he owned, and he put it in the hands 
 of a firm of agents, to sell while he, looked up another 
 home to his liking. Shortly afterward he saw a place 
 advertised by these agents that he felt from the description 
 was exactly the thing he wanted. He went to them, 
 and lo! it was the very one he was trying to sell. 
 
 The agents are all eager to get hold of prospective 
 purchasers, and some of the loiterers at the station are 
 likely to be acting in their interest. That old Kansas 
 
98 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 farmer you see chewing tobacco and sitting around in 
 the waiting room is wintering in the vicinity, and he is 
 making a Httle money by keeping on the lookout for 
 new arrivals, getting acquainted with them, and if they 
 want to buy land he steers them to some real estate 
 firm with which he has an understanding. 
 
 Everybody trades in land "on the side," even cheap 
 clerks and servant girls. They can get lots for one 
 dollar down and a dollar a week. But most of the 
 small speculators pay in cash one-fourth of the price and 
 agree to pay the other quarters at six month intervals. 
 They really never intend to make the second payment, 
 but expect the land to advance in value so they can sell 
 out at a good profit before the six months expire. In 
 short, they seldom buy because they want the property 
 for themselves, but simply to await some bigger " sucker" 
 who will take it off their hands at an advance. With 
 prices going up the investors generally make money. 
 On the other hand a drop in values finds a vast number 
 of obligations that cannot be taken care of. The 
 speculators are forced to sell for what they can get, 
 which makes prices tumble still worse and there is a 
 general crash. The preceding inflation has often been 
 so great that it is difficult to estimate what a person has 
 really dropped. "I have lost fifty thousand dollars," 
 said one investor, "and the worst of it is that five hun- 
 dred dollars of the sum was good money." 
 
Schoolgirls 
 
Spring in Southern California 99 
 
 One real estate agent who talked to me with unusual 
 frankness was a man who had just retired from the 
 business after a ten months' experience. He had 
 come from South Dakota and had made his home in a 
 growing coast city often thousand inhabitants. " I have 
 been successful," said he, "but my Godfrey! I didn't 
 feel right. You can't tell the whole truth and make 
 any sales. Southern California is a good place to spend 
 money and a poor place to make it. For some people 
 it's healthy, but for me the winters are too damp and 
 chilly; and yet the natives say you don't need no fire. 
 The fact is, fuel is expensive and most people can't 
 afford it. There's many a family makes one cord of 
 wood last a whole year; but I burned just as much as 
 we did at home in the East. 
 
 "A considerable number of widows lived in the town 
 where I was. When a woman had a little money left 
 at her husband's death she'd buy or build a nice-looking 
 house, but if you examined it you'd find it was put up 
 very slight and cheap. Outside there'd be clapboards 
 nailed right to the studding, and inside cheese cloth over 
 lath, and wall paper pasted on the cloth. The place was 
 a summer resort, and for three or four months the lone 
 woman with a house would rent her dwelling and live 
 herself in a tent or shed behind it. The money she 
 received had to support her the year through. So her 
 food was mostly bread and a little fish and tea, with 
 
lOo Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 now and then five cents worth of warm soup bought at a 
 restaurant. All the time she'd put on the appearance 
 of being very well off, though in reality she was poorer 
 than Job's turkey. 
 
 " People in the East think that the climate in California 
 is so favorable that they can pay any price for a ranch 
 and make money on whatever they choose to go into, 
 and that there'll be no need of their doing much only 
 to let things grow. The real estate agents encourage 
 that notion. They're the gol-darndest lot I ever saw. 
 They can't talk reasonable, and they never quit their 
 everlasting blowing. You'd think they were fairly 
 crazy about this country. It will almost make a man 
 who knows the situation vomit, the way they talk. 
 Murderation, they've got dodges to beat any Eastern 
 man that ever lived. They always like to take a possible 
 customer to ride to show him around. Crowd him into 
 your rig some way, and then your sale is half made. 
 Otherwise, a rival will take the drive with him and your 
 chance in that quarter is gone. It isn't the habit to 
 exhibit any anxiety to sell. You point out this and that 
 piece of property and talk about what it is suited for 
 and what its future value will probably be, and you're 
 pretty sure to get your man interested. 
 
 "Everybody deals in real estate, ministers and all. 
 Some of the ministers get so tangled up they have to 
 leave their pulpits. You have no idee of the state of 
 

 o 
 
 
Spring in Southern California loi 
 
 things. I know one Methodist minister who has done 
 particularly well. When he notices a new man in his 
 congregation he of course takes pains to shake hands 
 and welcome him, and then he asks if he is going to 
 settle. If the man says, 'Yes,' the minister mentions 
 that while he is not in the real estate business he knows 
 of various pieces of property for sale and would be glad 
 to render any assistance he could. You see, the mem- 
 bers of his flock place whatever piece of land they want 
 to dispose of in his hands, and he lists it and sells it on 
 a per cent the same as any other agent. But he is 
 supposed by the purchaser to be disinterested, and he 
 talks with the stranger's family, holds prayers with them 
 and keeps them right under his thumb. You can't 
 never persuade the preacher's man away. He's got a 
 dead sure thing, and by and by the sale is made and the 
 rest of us say, ' The parson has landed another man all 
 right.' 
 
 "Then there's a kind of agent who has no office or 
 no nothing. He keeps watch of the streets. When he 
 sees strangers standing around in the sun trying to get 
 warm he happens up to 'em and says, 'Kind o' cold 
 this morning.' 
 
 "That leads to talk, and if he finds they have some 
 notion of buying property he says, 'Well, I ain't got no 
 property to sell, myself, but there's a friend of mine 
 has just about what you're lookin' for, and I'd be glad 
 to take you around to see it.' 
 
102 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 " Darned if he ain't about the best man in town, next 
 to the preacher, to make sales! The strangers perhaps 
 wouldn't go in the door of a real estate office, but they 
 buy of him because they think he has no money interest 
 in making the sale. They may even brag afterward 
 to the real estate men who have offices, and say, 'We 
 bought through him because we didn't want to pay you 
 fellers a commission/ 
 
 "Another way to force sales is to employ what they 
 call a ' striker.' Suppose you are trying to sell a ranch. 
 The striker comes in while you are talking with your 
 customer, and you greet him as a person who owns a 
 ranch close by the one you have for sale. You ask 
 him what he'll take for his place, but he won't sell. 
 It's too profitable a property, while all the time the 
 striker hasn't any place at all. One agent in the city I 
 lived in was working to dispose of a tract of land to 
 two ladies, and he represented it would have a very 
 ready sale cut up for house lots, though it was miles 
 beyond where the city was at all built up, and the city 
 wouldn't grow to it in five hundred years. To speak the 
 exact truth it wa'n't worth a cuss. But he tells 'em 
 there's three or four parties after it who are liable to 
 take it any time, and they'd better not delay. So they 
 got the refusal of it for a few days. Before the time 
 was up a striker called on 'em. He'd never shaved and 
 had whiskers all around his face a foot long. You 
 
Spring in Southern California 103 
 
 might say he was from Missouri. He was an old 
 innocent-lookin' feller and made out he was deacon of 
 some church, and he says, * I understand you've bought 
 that property, and I wanted to know about getting a 
 part of it. I'm willing to give so much for half of it;' 
 and he named a price bigger'n they were goin' to pay 
 for the whole. 
 
 "They were all in a flutter, and they said that 
 arrangements were not quite complete, but the property 
 was about to be put on the market by them and he 
 should have first chance. Then they made haste to 
 buy and were the most tickled women in the world, but 
 the man with the whiskers never came again. That 
 old freak would land every victim he got hold of and 
 take their last dollar. I was sorry for those women, 
 but women do make the awfullest breaks in these land 
 trades. They go into speculation head over heels. 
 
 "One day a stranger called at my office and told me 
 he'd been in town two weeks and invested five thousand 
 dollars. The tales of the land agents had made him 
 enthusiastic, and he said, 'You people out here are 
 slow. You stand around doing nothing and let us 
 Eastern people make all the money.' 
 
 "He was sure he was going to double on his invest- 
 ment within a year, but he was soon ready to sell out 
 at a heavy loss. There's no use talking — you pick up 
 any property we had and it would pretty near burn 
 
I04 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 your fingers. That's what it would. But new people 
 were coming in on every train looking for property to 
 invest in; and the papers were praising it up all the 
 time, so that hearing of prices constantly on the rise 
 they'd get in a hurry to buy. But a month was a long 
 time for a place to be out of the market. By then a 
 man was pretty sure to be sick of his bargain. When I 
 made a sale I just checked it with a pencil. I didn't 
 cross off the item; for I'd soon have had my book 
 scratched up and spoiled. In a few weeks the property 
 was bound to go on sale again, and then I'd simply 
 erase the check. You could readily tell when a piece of 
 property had recently changed hands, for there would 
 be some little improvements made on it. That's the 
 only time a man ever had any heart for laying out 
 money and effort on his place. 
 
 " The other agents in town got onto me right straddle 
 of my neck for not booming the region more; but I 
 couldn't do it. If a man came to me and I found he 
 had a family of children I would urge him to keep his 
 money and go back where he came from. If he was a 
 single man, or there was only him and his wife, I 
 showed what there was to be had and let him use his 
 own judgment. But, by gosh, I didn't feel right even 
 about that, and now I'm quit of the business." 
 
 Note. — Los Angeles, the metropolis of Southern California, is 
 naturally the first stopping-place of every tourist who arrives by the 
 
Spring in Southern California 105 
 
 Santa Fe or Southern Pacific. In 1880 this "Town of the Queen 
 of the Angels," as the Spaniards called it, had only eleven thousand 
 inhabitants, but twenty-five years later there were nearly two hundred 
 thousand. It is a modem big city, yet with environs that are pecul- 
 iarly charming. Here is some of the finest fruit country on the west 
 coast and you find innumerable groves of both orange and lemon 
 trees, and the homes nestle among blossoms and green foliage even 
 in midwinter. Then there is a background of rugged mountain 
 heights, and not far away in the other direction is the sea and the 
 enchanting island of Santa Catalina, reputed to be the greatest fishings 
 place on earth. Every facility is provided for seeing the towns and 
 villages of the Los Angeles region and for climbing the mountains or 
 going to the wild isle oflF the coast. 
 
 The most famous suburb of Los Angeles is Pasadena. This, too, 
 is a city, but for the most part is a place of homes, each with a setting 
 of velvety turf and fuU-foliaged trees and flowers. It is a playground 
 of wealth, the winter dwelling-place of a multitude of Eastern 
 people and contains some of the finest residence thoroughfares on this 
 continent. Various other flourishing towns and much of the best 
 cultivated portion of this "Land of the Afternoon" can be glimpsed 
 by taking a day's trip on a railway that makes a long loop back into 
 the interior. Of the towns on this loop that would best repay a 
 special visit I think Riverside and Redlands should have the 
 preference. 
 
 The country is least attractive in the parched months of the late 
 summer and early autumn, and is seen at its best in April and May. 
 As compared with the temperature that most of the states east of the 
 Rocky Mountains experience in the colder months, the West Coast 
 climate will be found very genial, but warm clothing, light overcoats, 
 shawls, or convenient wraps which may be used or discarded according 
 to one's needs, are an essential part of the traveller's outfit. The 
 evenings and nights are sure to be cool, and chilling rains are a fre- 
 quent feature of the winter. 
 
SANTA BARBARA AND ITS HISTORIC MISSION 
 
 THERE had been rain early in the day, but as 
 my train went northward from Los Angeles 
 the clouds rolled away, and when we came to 
 the seashore the sun was shining from the west in a 
 broad dazzling path of light across the restless waves. 
 Off in the distance were some islands nearly hidden in 
 silvery haze. A series of fine big hills hugged the ocean, 
 and we skirted their bases close to the beach till we 
 reached Santa Barbara where the hills gave place to a 
 wide valley and disclosed a noble range of mountains 
 rising along the east. 
 
 The lower portion of the town is a straggling and 
 promiscuous set of buildings, and misses little of being 
 squalid; but as you go farther back, homes of the 
 suburban type become more and more numerous till 
 you find nothing else but handsome cottages and villas 
 hiding amid the semi-tropical luxuriance of blossoms 
 and shrubbery. On a gentle hill at the end of the vale 
 stands the Mission charming the beholder with its 
 
 io6 
 
''^S^ 
 
 Garden work 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 107 
 
 simplicity, its size, its imposing situation and its storied 
 age. It is a structure that seems to belong to another 
 realm and another civilization, and the only local 
 buildings at all akin to it are a few lowly adobe houses 
 in the town center, just off the main business street — 
 survivals of the old Spanish village. These are usually 
 whitewashed, and they have broad, tile-floored veran- 
 dahs with roses, morning-glories or other vines growing 
 along the front. Neither the chill of winter, nor the 
 heat of summer can very well penetrate their massive 
 earthen walls. As one of the dwellers said to me, " It 
 might be August, and the sun no matter how hot, you 
 go in this house, it be cold, nice, good." 
 
 He showed me a patch of grapevines trimmed back 
 to the bare stubs, but the green new sprouts were 
 already well started, and he said, "They will have on 
 them fine grapes — good to eat, good to make wine, 
 and the wine is more strong as whiskey. See how these 
 vines is growing. I have all the time to cut them back. 
 He grow fast, queek! You bet you! By gosh, give 
 him a chance and he grow all over the place! That is 
 cactus over there. Prickly pear, I call him. The fruit 
 has many pins on it — ^what you call them ? — thorns. 
 But get them off and the skin off, and the inside is 
 sweet, good." 
 
 I asked him the name of a little flowering plant 
 growing underfoot, but he only knew that it was a weed 
 
io8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 which was sometimes used for medicine. " It will keep 
 you well better than the doctor," he continued. "If 
 I be made sick of the stomach I boil it for a drink. 
 Ah! the doctor can not tell what is the trouble inside 
 of you. He get him your money. He don't care 
 whether you die." 
 
 I went into one old adobe. It was pretty dismal and 
 dark and bare, and the rafters and roof-boards over- 
 head were black with soot. The two things that most 
 impressed me were the presence of a piano, and a sign 
 hung on the wall that had been painted by some genius 
 of the family and which said, don't spick in the table. 
 The idea of the motto was not to chatter while eating. 
 
 In my wanderings about the old part of the town I 
 came across an Irishman converting a wayside blue 
 gum that he had felled, into firewood. The chopper 
 was elderly, tattered and rusty, but in independent 
 circumstances, nevertheless; for he pointed across the 
 road and affirmed that he owned an entire block of 
 land and the various cabins on it, property worth in 
 his say-so fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. He men- 
 tioned that he lived over there, and I asked him in which 
 house. He responded that he didn't live in any house, 
 but camped in a wagon which was hidden from view 
 by some intervening buildings. 
 
 " Have ye been up to the ould Mission ? " he queried, 
 settling himself comfortably on the blue gum log. 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 109 
 
 "It is an intheresting place to look about, and soom 
 like to go to church there on Sundays. I wint wunst 
 mesilf. A lady who thought a heap of me had invited 
 me to go wid her, and she sat in the front seat. But 
 I stayed near the door; and close by me was a lobby 
 hole or box like a little room built ag'in the wall and 
 I could hear a priest a-muttering in it. Yes, he was 
 in there a-gobbling away like an ould turkey — joost as if 
 the outside wasn't good enough for him and he moost go 
 in there and gobble by himself; and I couldn't under- 
 stand a word he said, for he didn't speak out plain 
 and brave. 
 
 "There was a lot o' prayin' to be did in the church 
 service, and you had to be crossin' yoursilf and pokin' 
 your heart most of the time. But I wasn't coom for 
 that. I was there to listen and look. I couldn't make 
 mooch sinse out of what I heard, because a good deal 
 was in Latin or soom other haythen language. Then 
 there was a feller walkin' around swingin' a thing that 
 smoked — a cincer, they call it, and he was shakin' it 
 this way and that and payin' no sort of attintion to it; 
 and I said to mesilf, 'That feller is no Catholic. He 
 don't care what he's got there, M'hether it's wather or 
 a kag of beer or what it is.' 
 
 "I want ye to notice one place at the Mission particu- 
 lar. Turn off the road that goes up the hill joost beyond 
 the main building and ye will see the ruins of three 
 
no Highways and Bjrways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 rooms. It's telled me that the ould monks walled up 
 some bad people in there to stay for the rest of their 
 lives. The backmost room was very small and half 
 under the hill, and the opening into it was only a round 
 hole that you had to crawl through on your face and 
 hands. It seems like that was the place for thim that 
 was very bad — ^the outlawed criminals. The others 
 stayed in the bigger rooms where it was more plisant. 
 " But whin Fremont coom here he throwed a cannon 
 ball or two at thim rooms, and he let the prisoners 
 loose. He knowed what was there. I niver had thought 
 well of his outfit— coomin' here and raising thunder 
 with the Spanish people, but whin I seen what he done 
 in leaving those prisoners loose I felt different. A man 
 in this town who was in Fremont's army tould me 
 about it, but he has been dead now a matther of five 
 or six years. Ah! the ould padres had been havin' 
 their own way till Fremont coom. They got all the 
 Indians workin' for 'em and were bossin' thim and 
 makin' thim do exactly as they pleased and tellin' thim 
 if they didn't obey they'd be sint to hell sure. So the 
 padres got so rich and proud they didn't hardly want 
 to speak to anyone. Thim prison rooms make a strange- 
 lookin' ruin even yit, and the firrust time I was past 
 the hair fairly stood up on me head at the sight. I 
 thought I would as soon have me coffin made and be 
 put in the ground as be walled in there." 
 
Meditation 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission III 
 
 Really, the buildings of which he spoke had some- 
 thing to do with the storage and filtering of the old 
 water supply, and there never was any such grim prison 
 as he described. The Mission itself, unlike most of 
 the California Missions, is not a ruin, but is in excellent 
 repair and still the dwelling of the gowned and sandaled 
 monks, as it was a century ago. These monks are so 
 different from ordinary folk in their garments and in 
 the strangely decorative life they lead that it is fasci- 
 nating to watch them engaged in their various duties. 
 The furniture and all the belongings of the Mission 
 are severely simple, but the great court back of the 
 main building is full of flowers and trees, and its luxur- 
 iance contrasts oddly with the severity of the interiors. 
 Throngs of visitors are constantly coming and going. 
 They, however, only have access to certain public 
 portions of the premises, so that those portions where 
 the friars eat and sleep and do their daily tasks in shops 
 and garden and fields repose in almost unbroken calm. 
 
 From the Mission I went far up a mountain roadway 
 that for a long distance clung to a hillside well up above 
 a noisy stream coursing along in the wooded hollow. 
 The road was muddy and gullied. Heavy wagons 
 were going up after stone, or returning loaded, and 
 there were many equestrians — ladies, men and children. 
 Santa Barbara is a famous place for horseback expe- 
 ditions. Nearly everyone rides, even those who before 
 
112 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 they go there never have been on a horse, and all 
 through the day you see the riders, singly, in couples 
 and in squads, gallivanting through the town streets, 
 and meet them on every road and trail for miles around. 
 
 The road I was on was bordered by pastures that in 
 places were grassy, but were largely covered with gray- 
 green sagebrush mingled with thickets of chaparral 
 misted over at that season with blue blossoms. In 
 favored spots grew the cactus and clumps of great 
 century plants. When there was open grazing land it 
 was strewn with rocks, and this rocky ground seemed 
 to favor the growth of scattered groves of live oaks. 
 The oaks were wonderfully twisted and distorted, 
 their bark was gray with lichen and they looked as 
 ancient as the rock-strewn hills on which they stood. 
 
 At one point I came on a herd of cattle feeding along 
 the brushy roadside, and three boys were watching 
 them. The watchers were playing with a pet cow that 
 was lying down, and which seemed to take a sort of 
 sleepy pleasure in their proceedings. The clothing of 
 the lads was covered with dirt and hairs, for they 
 tumbled about on the ground or leaned on the creature 
 and rubbed it companionably. One boy was milking 
 into his mouth. The oldest of the trio said, "My father 
 gave me this cow when she was a little bit of a calf, and 
 I take care of her. If he tries to milk her he gets 
 kicked, but I can milk her anywhere. Last December 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 113 
 
 she pretty near died. There was no feed in the pastures, 
 and the cattle was dying all over. We lost quite a few, 
 and this cow got so weak she would tumble down. 
 So we carried feed to her and she got stronger. We 
 watch the cattle here all day, but at noontime take 
 turns going home to dinner. When night comes we 
 drive the cattle into the pasture." 
 
 I went on until the foothills began to merge into the 
 rough steeps of the mountains, and then I wandered 
 back to the town. 
 
 On my last afternoon in Santa Barbara I again had 
 a talk with the Irishman-of-wealth who lived in a 
 wagon. He was still laboring at the big blue gum, but 
 desisted from his exertion to sit down and chat, as 
 readily as he had before. He was especially eager to 
 know what I thought of the Mission and its monks and 
 their religion. Soon he was relating some of his personal 
 opinions and experiences. 
 
 "I'm not mooch stuck on religion mesilf," said he, 
 " and a little church-going lasts me a long time. Wunst 
 my fri'nds tould me I ought to go to confession. So I 
 said I would, and at the church where they tuk me I 
 wint into a little room, and there was two chairs and a 
 priest, and he and me set down. Thin he began 
 moombling along like a drunken man wid a pipe in 
 his mouth. Well, I listened and listened; and as I 
 could make no sinse at all out of his moombling, I said 
 
1 14 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 nothing; and at last he got up and says, 'Adieu, coom 
 again;' and I says, 'All right,' and wint out. 
 
 "Last week a Salvationist preacher was along the 
 road here, and he stopped to speak wid me as I was 
 hackin' away at this tree. He wanted me to go to 
 church. I tould him I wouldn't care if there was niver 
 a church in the woruld. ' I don't believe in your Bible,' 
 I says. 'There's good things in it, but there's the divil 
 and everything else besides in it, and it tells lies the 
 same as the rest of the people.' 
 
 " 'Brother,' he says, 'ye moostn't think that way.' 
 
 " 'Well,' I says, 'you take sooch a story as that about 
 Noah — and how God raised the wather of the Pacific 
 Ocean and turned it topsided like over Asia and 
 drowned all the people — I can't bel'ave it. Would God 
 be that cruel ?' 
 
 "'He was not cruel,' the Salvationist said. 'There 
 was an ark, and whin the flood came and the people 
 was all a-swimming God tould thim to come into the 
 ark, and they would not.' 
 
 " 'How could they all get in ?' I says. 'It wouldn't 
 have held thim.' 
 
 "'Eh-heh!' he kind o' stammered, 'God can do 
 anything. He made the woruld.' 
 
 " 'What did he make it out of?' I asked. 
 
 " 'He made it out of doost,' says the Salvationist. 
 
 " 'And who made the doost ?' I says. 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 115 
 
 "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I ketched him there, and he got 
 mad at me. 'You can get soom kids to believe thim 
 things,' I says; 'but it's no use to be arguin' to a sinsible, 
 intiUigent man. I keep the straight thrack and I want 
 no more of this nonsinsical talk.' " 
 
 The chopper took his hat off and ran his fingers 
 thoughtfully through his hair. Then he resumed his 
 remarks by asking, " Did ye iver know there was gold 
 in Ireland ? Well, whin I was a kid I lived about twinty 
 miles from the city of Cork, and near me home was a 
 nice creek — not like these streams in California, but 
 clear and beautiful and running all the time; and wan 
 day I see a bright stone in the wather — it might be 
 about the size of a goose's egg, and I picked it up. 
 I had niver seen anything like it — so yaller and heavy, 
 and it took me eye. So I carried it home to me mother 
 and she put it under the bed. 
 
 " Me mother had been nurse in a gintleman's family, 
 a family that was way up, and the gintleman's daughter 
 would soomtimes coom and call on her. The young 
 lady was there wan time all dhressed up so very fine, 
 and me mother showed her the yaller stone from under 
 the bed, and the young lady carried it away wid her. 
 
 " I didn't know what the stone was thin, but since I 
 been in this country and worked in the mines I know 
 it was a lump of pure gold. I seen in that creek other 
 stones like it, and going right across the creek was a 
 
Il6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 vein of what I called white rocks, that now I would cail 
 honeycomb quartz — gold bearing. If I broke the rock 
 the pieces would hang together wid the gold in it. 
 Soomtimes I would pick up one o' the gold pebbles, 
 and it seemed so heavy I would toss it up joost to feel 
 it coom down chuck in the palm of me hand. If it fell 
 on the ground it would make the doost fly, it was that 
 heavy. Ah, there's plinty of rich ore in Ireland, and 
 what's the matther they don't give the people per- 
 mission for to mine it ? I s'pose if I was to go back there 
 and try to get that gold they'd put me in jail, eh ? 
 
 "Well, now, I was by the creek another time where 
 there was a deep hole wid a ruffle below it, and in this 
 deep place I see soom throut. Wan was ahead and the 
 others was following like a lot of dogs running after 
 another, goin' along in rotation. The first throut had 
 soomthing in its mouth — oh, so shining — joost like 
 sunlight. Pretty soon the throut dropped it, and the 
 next one picked it up and the rest kept on chasing until 
 he dropped it and another ketched it, and away wid it. 
 Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha ! I kept watchin' and by and by I got 
 hold o' the shining thing — and what was it but a 
 di'mond. I didn't know thin, though, what it was, and 
 I ran home and showed it to me mother and said, * Oh, 
 look what a nice little rock I got!' 
 
 But she let the gintleman's daughter take it, and the 
 young lady put it in a ring. I worked at her house whin 
 
The artist 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 117 
 
 I got older, and she would show me the ring wid the 
 di'mond in it and make it flash the light over on the 
 wall, and she would tell how she had the value of so 
 mooch wealth on her finger. That's the way people 
 have cheated me all me life — because I would niver 
 grab for anything. 
 
 " Perhaps not iveryone would have seen what I seen. 
 Soom of us are odd from the balance of the people. 
 I have tould you about the gold and the di'mond, but 
 the most wonderful thing in me life is that I have seen 
 the fairies. Me father seen 'em too, and he said his 
 father did before him; and so I suppose have all the 
 ginerations in our family from the commincement of 
 the woruld right down. I remimber the first time I 
 seen 'em I was a boy out in the pasture. I was all alone, 
 and I seen forty or fifty little men goin' along, and they 
 were no more than three feet high. They wore stove- 
 pipe hats and bobtail coats and knee-breeches, and each 
 had a big long pipe in his mouth, and they stood up so 
 straight and plump and nice it was a pleasure to look 
 at 'em. Ye see they was dhressed in the rael ould-time 
 Irish costume. I have seen the Scotch costume and the 
 other national costumes, and soom are good enough, 
 and soom are crazy-like, but none are equal to the Irish. 
 I tell you an Irishman in that ould dhress looked like a 
 smart, intilligent, brave man. Ivery wan o' those fairy 
 men carried a blackthorn stick. Ah, how mooch the 
 
Ii8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 ould Irish did think o' their blackthorns! How they 
 did bile 'em in hot wather and rub thim wid ile, and 
 hang thim up in the chimney to get seasoned and 
 smoked, and they always carried thim to protict thim- 
 silves when they wint to a fair. 
 
 "Well, there was a bird in Ireland used to coom and 
 sing to me — a little black bird like wan o' these pewees. 
 Whin I took shipping for this counthry I felt very bad 
 to be leavin' me little bird. I said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry! 
 I'm afraid I shall lose me luck.' 
 
 " But after we was about ten days out I looked back, 
 and there I saw me little pewee coomin', and he flew 
 like he was awful tired. Finally he caught up wid us 
 and lit on the topmast, and there he stayed the rest of 
 the day. The next morning he was down on the first 
 yard, and the day after that he was on the bulwarks. 
 I was on the promenade poop forward, and I spoke to 
 him, and he coom and hopped about and e't soom of 
 a piece of bread I had, and then he hollered, ' Pe-wee- 
 wee-wee-wee ! ' and flew back up in the riggin'. 
 
 "After a while I wint down below, and whin I coom 
 up again I couldn't see him at all any more. But he 
 visits me lots o' times since I been in this counthry. 
 It's the same bird, wid the same motions and song my 
 little bird in Ireland had. I could tell him from any 
 other bird. He cooms and gives me warnin' if soom- 
 thin' is goin' to go bad; and maybe, now and then he 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 119 
 
 will appear as a cow. There was wunst I had a little 
 bit of a log cabin down the coast a few miles, and there 
 was a good stout fince around it, and barley a-growin' 
 in the yard. Well, I was settin' in me cabin wan day 
 whin a cow stuck her head in the door and laughed 
 joost like a Christian. 'How did you get inside my 
 fince.?' I said. 'It's destroyin' my barley, ye are.' 
 
 " So I drove her out of the gate, and I was astonished 
 she wint so quick and peaceable, and not ugly and 
 conniptions like most cows. Thin I looked at the barley, 
 but it was not hurt at all. Another day I found the cow 
 rubbin' herself against the side of my little house, and I 
 drove her off across the fields till she passed around 
 soom bushes, and the next minute she coom in sight 
 and a calf wid her. She passed behind soom more 
 bushes, and as soon as she appeared again there was 
 half a dozen more cows wid her. Ha-ha-ha-ha! I 
 picked up a rock to throw at her, but she looked me 
 such a look I did not throw. 'That's the ould fairies,' 
 I said, and I asked forgiveness. 
 
 "The cow kept foolin' wid me for about a month. 
 I wa'n't feelin' well, and I was gettin' worse. 'Oh,' 
 I thought, 'I'm goin' to die!' 
 
 " I took a walk out wan day, and I seen that cow by 
 the side of the road, and I stopped and had a good look 
 at her. 'What a fine cow!' I says, 'and how full your 
 bag is wid milk! I niver noticed that before. I will 
 
I20 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 bring a bucket and milk you and have soom bread and 
 milk to eat.' 
 
 "So I got the bucket and kneeled down to milk, but 
 the cow began to hitch around and would not stand 
 still, and I said, ' If you don't quit that I'll hit you wi^ 
 the bucket.' 
 
 "She lifted up wan hind foot like she was goin' to 
 kick, and she turned her head around and looked at 
 me as if she was human and had sinse. I was scared 
 and I started to escape into a near field. Well, now 
 thin, as I was goin' over the fince I looked back and 
 there was no cow to be seen. She'd gone out of sight 
 while I was takin' three steps. 
 
 "The next evening I was out again, and there was 
 the cow in the road, and the milk was runnin' out oi her 
 bag and down the road in a regular stream to the gulch. 
 I hurried and brought me bucket and caught about two 
 inches in the bottom of it. Thin I carried it to the house 
 and had soom bread and milk, and that milk was 
 delicious, palatable, fine. It was the best I iver tasted. 
 It made another man of me. I could feel the change 
 at wunst. It braced me up and I was well. 
 
 "I had soom milk left and I thought I would let it 
 stay in the bucket and have it in the morning, but 
 when morning came and I looked in the bucket I saw 
 nothing but wather there. At noon I looked in again 
 and the bucket was dry. Now, what do you call that ? 
 
At work in a home yard 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 121 
 
 It was the fairies all the same havin' fun wid me. I was 
 sick and they cured me. They knowed it was no 
 bother to do it. 
 
 "The fairies had a hand too in my gettin' this block 
 of land I own. They showed me the picture of it 
 before I left Ireland, and the minute I set eyes on it I 
 was certain it was what they intinded I should have. 
 Thin, wan time here, the fairies tould me I could have 
 great herds of cattle or sheep or pigs. 'Whativer kind 
 of animals ye want ye can have,' they said; and I 
 chose the cattle, and no sooner did I say the word than 
 up coom a band of cattle out of the ground — hoondreds 
 av thim. 'There they are,' the fairies said, 'and in 
 twinty years thim will be yours, and the ranch they're 
 on, if ye want thim.' 
 
 "Well, they were on a ranch where a lady named 
 Hale lived, and ivery cow had two calves a year, and 
 things wint along very prosperous. The fairies was 
 workin' on the lady, too, and she had her eye on me, 
 and she knew me fairy cows was on her ranch, and 
 that I was joost givin' up to her the twinty years' use 
 av thim. So whin the time was gone, she cooms and 
 wants me to marry her; but I thought I'd go along on 
 me own hook. Oh, this is a very peculiar sort of a 
 woruld — this is!" 
 
 My comrade rose and chopped a few strokes, but the 
 day was drawing to an end. Some fellow-laborers 
 
122 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 passed on the street and shouted a greeting to him 
 and he concluded to stop work. He put on his vest 
 and coat, took up his axe and saw and started for 
 home. I went with him, and we walked around into 
 the lot where, back of a neighbor's shed, he had his 
 queer habitation. It was a big old lumber wagon with 
 a piece of canvas spread from the high seat down 
 toward the back. The shelter afforded was poor and 
 cramped. A few other belongings were scattered about 
 in the grass and there was a wreck of a stove that could 
 still be made to serve after a fashion. But then, though 
 to me these household effects seemed meagre and 
 shabby, I do not know that they so impressed the owner. 
 He had the gift of imagination; and beautiful as is 
 nature in that region, and delightful as is the ancient 
 Mission, there is nothing in my visit I remember 
 with more pleasure than this man with his visions of 
 realms beyond my ken. 
 
 Note. — Santa Barbara is one of the most attractive towns in 
 California, beautiful in its surrounding scenery, not so large as to be 
 dominated by commercialism, nor so small as to be rude and lacking 
 in comfortable accommodations. The old survives amid the new, and 
 you can even yet find buildings and life that have the characteristics 
 of the time of Spanish rule. Here is the best preserved of all the old 
 Missions. Every Mission is worth seeing, but Santa Barbara has 
 one where the gowned and sandaled monks still dwell and labor. 
 
Santa Barbara and its Historic Mission 123 
 
 The chief outdoor pleasures for the sojourner here are coaching, 
 cross-country horseback riding, fishing, and hunting. Most visitors 
 would be interested to read the account of early days in Santa 
 Barbara to be found in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." This 
 book, in fact, entertainingly describes the aspect and customs of 
 every old sea town from San Francisco to San Diego. 
 
 The climate in this region is mild and equable, but it is also ex- 
 cessively dry, with the result that the roads are dusty most of the 
 year. In the winter and spring, however, during the rainy season, 
 they are often so heavy as to be impassable for automobiles in the 
 mountain sections. But, as a rule, the coast roads out of Santa 
 Barbara are fairly good, though there are always some dubious spots. 
 The main motor route continues south to Los Angeles and San 
 Diego, and north to San Francisco. 
 
VI 
 
 A VALE OF PLENTY 
 
 CALIFORNIA has a number of valleys that are at 
 the same time remarkable for their great size and 
 their productive capacity, but the San Joaquin 
 excels any of the others. A few decades ago it was not 
 esteemed of much use except for grazing, though cer- 
 tain parts would grow excellent crops of wheat; but 
 irrigation has changed all this, and as you pass through 
 it on the train you marvel at the seemingly endless 
 succession of thriving fields and orchards. 
 
 My first day in the valley was a Sunday spent at a 
 little village consisting mostly of a hotel and a few 
 stores and saloons facing the railway. Round about 
 was a vast level extending for miles in every direction, 
 and nearly all of it green with wheat. At long intervals, 
 amid this green sea could be discerned a small huddle 
 of buildings where there was a ranch house. It was 
 one of the regions in which, when the grain ripens, a 
 harvester is used that is drawn by thirty-six mules or 
 horses, and that cuts off the heads of the wheat, threshes 
 out the grain and drops it in sacks behind. Forty acres 
 
 124 
 
A Vale of Plenty 125 
 
 will be covered daily on good ground and the season 
 lasts three months. After the harvester has finished, 
 the cattle are turned onto the land and they feed on 
 the stubble and trample it so it can be ploughed under. 
 
 For an hour or two in the morning I sat on the hotel 
 piazza a little way from a group of men gathered near 
 the door of the odorous barroom. The day was 
 quiet and warm. The flies buzzed, and some sparrows 
 chattered noisily and flitted about with bits of straw and 
 bark and string for their nest-building beneath the 
 cornice of the piazza. A few teams were hitched to 
 railings under the umbrella trees along the sidewalk, 
 and there were occasional passers on the highway. One 
 of these passers was a man driving two burros laden 
 with packs. The creatures walked slowly and 
 patiently and he followed behind. He was from some 
 mine, and all his outfit and belongings were on the 
 donkeys. A boy on horseback rode up in front of the 
 hotel and borrowed the proprietor's gun that he might 
 do a little hunting. A tramp came along and wanted 
 something to eat, and he was set at work chopping 
 wood. Except for him it was a day of loafing and 
 recreation. 
 
 The largest group of loiterers gathered in front of 
 the post office to watch or participate in a game of 
 marbles. The players were young men and boys. A 
 little fellow named Danny was getting the advantage 
 
126 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 when I joined the on-lookers, and a young man in blue 
 trousers, who was addressed as "Chub," was about to 
 snap his taw at Danny's. "I want to kill Danny," he 
 said, "and make him give up his winnings." 
 
 But he missed, and his marble rolled under the 
 piazza. "Well, I'll be dog-goned!" he exclaimed. 
 "That's just the way my luck runs today." 
 
 The piazza underpinning was boarded nearly to the 
 ground. He lay down and reached unsuccessfully 
 into the gloom. Then several others tried it, and at 
 last one of them got a stick to poke with, and pretty 
 soon secured the taw. 
 
 " It's Al's shot, ain't it ?" asked Danny. 
 
 "Look out for me. I'm comin'!" cried Al. 
 
 To his disgust his taw stopped in the ring, and the 
 rules obliged him to drop in a marble to get it out. 
 "Well, that fattens the ring, anyhow," he said philo- 
 sophically as he made the exchange. "Knock down 
 there, Nick; it's your turn." 
 
 Nick's taw was near the ring, and that he might make 
 a sure shot he punched up a little heap of dirt where a 
 marble lay in the ring and put the marble on top. His 
 method proved a success, and Chub said, "He sets the 
 marble up on a nubbin and then fudges it right off. 
 Us fellers had better holler when he gets ready again 
 so he won't shoot straight. That's what the boys used 
 to do at school. It always mixed me up and made me 
 
A Vale of Plenty 127 
 
 mad, and I'd fight. But it didn't do no good if I did 
 fight. I'd get licked every time." 
 
 Nick made careful preparations for a second shot, 
 but just as he snapped his taw his comrades all shouted, 
 and he was so confused he missed. The taw rolled 
 along and hit someone's foot. "Kicks on!" the players 
 cried, and the one who had stopped it gave it a poke 
 with his foot to carry it where he thought it would 
 naturally have gone. 
 
 "You're havin' a pretty hot game," commented a 
 newcomer. 
 
 "It's a warm one, I tell yer," responded Al. 
 
 "I was afraid this was goin' to be a lonesome old 
 day," said Chub, "but I've had a lot of fun;" and the 
 game continued hour after hour until dinner time. 
 Then the participants divided the marbles, for they 
 did not play for keeps, and went their several ways. 
 
 The Sabbath as I saw it here is characteristic of the 
 Far West. Nearly everywhere it is a holiday to a very 
 marked extent, and church-going is decidedly less the 
 habit than in the East. Ball games are one of the most 
 popular of the amusements of the day; and when I 
 chanced to spend a Sabbath at Visalia, a busy town in 
 the heart of one of the best portions of the valley, the 
 chief event of the day was the getting out of the fire 
 engine for a little sport and practice squirting around 
 the streets. 
 
IzS Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 It was the rainy season, and we had several heavy 
 downpours that night which left the region pretty 
 thoroughly soaked. However, the sun shone forth the 
 next morning, and in spite of the miry walking I started 
 for a long ramble among the farms. I had to do a good 
 deal of dodging to get around the pools and puddles, 
 and there were certain of the "slues" in the hollows 
 which almost brought me to a stop. Yet by climbing 
 along on fences or resorting to the embankment of an 
 irrigating ditch, or by cutting across a field I contrived 
 to continue my ramble. 
 
 The country was good to look at in spite of the over- 
 abundance of mud and water. On the eastern horizon 
 rose ranges of snowy mountains, but the lowlands were 
 a green paradise. The grazing fields, in particular, 
 were very beautiful with their cattle, horses, or hogs, 
 and with their scattering ancient oaks. These oaks 
 abounded, but never gathered in a thick wood. They 
 were wide-spreading and stately and made the country 
 look like a park. Other native trees were very few, 
 except along the streams, which were apt to be thickly 
 screened by willows and cottonwoods. Many great 
 tracts of land were set out to regular rows of prune and 
 peach trees, and every farmhouse seemed to have its 
 packing shed and its great heap of wooden drying-trays. 
 Formerly pears were a staple fruit, but some sort of a 
 blight has put the trees out of business. 
 
The news 
 
A Vale of Plenty 129 
 
 The people I met and spoke with were agreed that 
 it was an unusual condition to have too much water, and 
 the owners of the flooded lands were not altogether 
 happy, yet any damage they sufi^ered was largely offset 
 by the drowning of such pests as the gophers and ground 
 squirrels. The local conditions therefore were on the 
 whole satisfactory, but certain other sections had not 
 fared so well. For instance, in the same county, there 
 used to be a lake thirty miles broad and a hundred 
 long. It afforded fine fishing, and the hunters resorted 
 to it to shoot the abounding ducks and geese. Gradually 
 it dried away and left some of the richest farmland in 
 the world. The old lake-bed became a great wheat- 
 producing district, but now the heavy rains had begun 
 to fill the basin of the former lake, and the body of water 
 was fast expanding to its former size. The wheat had 
 grown to be waist high and was well headed out, but 
 the lake-bed dwellers had to abandon everything except 
 the little they could carry away, and, driving their stock 
 before them, they sought more elevated ground. It was 
 thought that many years must pass before the water 
 would again dry away. 
 
 As I walked on I at length wandered into a little 
 village. Near its center I stopped on the piazza of a 
 bakeshop. Here was a chair, a settee and several boxes 
 occupied by a row of men smoking, spitting and talking. 
 The weather was not propitious for field work, and 
 
130 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 the piazza group was in a very leisurely and hospitable 
 frame of mind. If anyone passed, either walking or 
 driving, they never failed to shout out an invitation to 
 stop. "Come and join us," they would say. "You'll 
 never find a better lookin' crowd in your life." 
 
 If the passer was riding, the remarks would continue, 
 "Aw! get out and tie up. Take a rest. Don't be in 
 such a rush." 
 
 Presently a fellow approached driving a smart span 
 of horses attached to a gig. " Hold on to them ribbons 
 thar!" was the cry from the piazza. 
 
 The man in the gig slowed down and halted. His 
 vehicle was old and weatherbeaten, but it had a bright 
 red whiffletree. "Why didn't you paint the rest of 
 your gig ?" someone queried. 
 
 "Well," said the driver, " I left it that way so people'd 
 ask questions." 
 
 "Say, but you would shine if your gig was all painted 
 that style," remarked one of the lookers-on. 
 
 "This is a nice little team," said the occupant of 
 the gig. " I've driven 'em about fifteen miles and now 
 I think I'll put 'em in the stable." 
 
 "Oh, no, don't do that," said someone on the porch. 
 "Drive 'em some more. It'll make 'em eat their hay 
 good." 
 
A Vale of Plenty 131 
 
 Shortly after he had gone a man in a top buggy 
 drove up in front of the bakeshop, and one of the loafers 
 said, "Looks like you was goin' somewhere." 
 
 The man in the buggy poked his head out and said, 
 "Who wants to go to town with me and get drunk ?" 
 
 Some responded that they would like well enough to 
 get drunk, but none of them cared to exert themselves 
 sufficiently to go to town, and he had to continue his 
 journey alone. 
 
 The man of the piazza gathering who interested me 
 most was an old settler of the region who had come 
 from Tennessee in 1870. "But the country had been 
 occupied some for nearly twenty years before that," 
 he observed. "In 1852 there was eight or ten families 
 built a stockade at Visalia and then put up their log 
 cabins against it around on the outside. The Indians 
 was dangerous, you see, and even after I come, the 
 danger wa'n't past. They'd kill our cattle, and they'd 
 take your scalp if they had a good chance. 
 
 "This country in its natural state was a forest of oak 
 with here and there an open where the tall grass grew. 
 We used to cut the grass for hay. Land could be had 
 almost for the asking. You only needed to take up a 
 homestead right from the government, and when you 
 had paid sixteen dollars and lived on the land five 
 years you were owner of a quarter section — one hun- 
 dred and sixty acres. Deer, antelopes and wild mus- 
 
132 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 tangs was plenty. You'd often see the antelopes feeding 
 in among the cattle. People e't their meat, but it was 
 coarse and not so good as deer meat. You could go up 
 there in those foothills you see to the east and kill a 
 wagon load of deer in a day. They roamed about fifty 
 to a hundred in a band. 
 
 "Bears was common up in the mountains — brown, 
 cinnamon, black and grizzlies; but I wa'n't lookin' 
 for them fellers. I was willin' to make friends. If 
 they'd let me alone I'd let them alone, you bet yer boots 
 I would. But one time I was up there helpin' old Billy 
 Rhoades with his sheep. Fred Stacy was with me, and 
 we was goin' across a little medder when we see a 
 full-grown grizzly bear with a cub follerin' her, and they 
 was comin' straight toward us. 
 
 "It happened there was a cluster of smallish pine 
 trees near by, and Fred went up one tree and I went up 
 another. I didn't have a thing to shoot with, and I 
 don't suppose I'd have used a gun if I'd had one. The 
 bear kind o' looked up at us but kept on down the trail. 
 She found our camp, and she turned over our potatoes 
 and beans and scattered them and our other things all 
 about. Yes, she had a regular tear-up. But I was 
 glad to git off with no worse damage. A bear with a 
 cub will fight, you know, and I come as clost to a grizzly 
 then as I want to, less'n the bear was in a cage. 
 
Water for irrigation 
 
A Vale of Plenty 133 
 
 "Another time old man Rhoades and his son was 
 fetchin' some sheep ofF the mountains, and the boy 
 went into a canyon for a drink. He lay down to git 
 at the water when a black bear jumped out of the 
 willers onto him and begun a-chawin' him. He hollered 
 for the old man, who come hurryin' down — and there 
 was the bear chawin' on his boy. The only thing the 
 old man had to attack the bear with was a pocket knife. 
 That was a poor weapon, but he saw he had the job to 
 do, and he didn't hesitate. The bear was on the boy, 
 and the old man was on the bear; and he got her, and 
 he skinned her afterward. She mighty nigh killed the 
 boy, and the old man was so tore and scratched he 
 carried the scars to his grave. 
 
 "Anyone could have a horse in the early days by 
 just goin' out and ketchin' a wild mustang. The way 
 we used to do that was to build a corral consisting of a 
 fence about eight feet high around a half acre or so, 
 with a long wing fence extending out from it. Then 
 when we see some mustangs feeding near we'd go out 
 on the far side of 'em and give a yell to start 'em, and 
 by heading 'em off we'd drive 'em against the wing 
 fence and run 'em right into the corral. After that a 
 man would go in and lasso one. He'd have to be on 
 horseback or they'd run right over him. 
 
 "When he got a mustang roped he'd drag him out, 
 put on a bridle and saddle, blindfold him and get on. 
 
134 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 The mustang didn't like that, and he'd begin to buck. 
 Seems to me I've seen 'em buck as high as that school- 
 house over across the road. No matter what the 
 mustang did, the rider had got to stick on. That was 
 the only way those horses could be broke. They were 
 the meanest things you ever see. They were good saddle 
 ponies though — fine! An ordinary horse wouldn't 
 stand half what they would. The mustangs were small, 
 but they were tough and hardy — kind o' like a Jack 
 rabbit. You could run one all day, and it would be 
 about as good at the end as when it started; and the 
 next morning it would buck you off if you wa'n't careful. 
 
 "When I come here, cattle, sheep and hogs were all 
 the go. There was very little soil cultivated; but 
 gradually it got to be a great wheat country. Now 
 wheat has given way to orchards, and we ship fruit all 
 over the world. Alfalfa is grown quite a little and is 
 more of a money-maker than fruit. It's ready to cut 
 now, and we're only waiting till the weather is settled 
 so we can cure it. We git four or five crops by the time 
 the frosts bring the season to an end. It's good feed for 
 cattle and all right for horses if you use some grain hay 
 with it. By grain hay I mean barley and wheat cut 
 when it is in a stiff dough — that is vnth the grain just 
 past the milk stage. 
 
 " I used to raise wheat, but we had fifteen dry seasons 
 right a-running which did me up. Now the weather 
 
At work along an irrigating ditch 
 
A Vale of Plenty 135 
 
 seems to have changed and I look for fifteen wet seasons. 
 So I'm goin' to try wheat again. You ain't sure of a 
 crop unless you irrigate. When we people come here 
 from the East we didn't know anything about irrigation. 
 But somebody tried it and found it a success. Then 
 we all turned loose. It's a good thing. At the same 
 time there's a lot of hard, dirty work in irrigating. 
 
 " First you're obliged to plough and scrape till you've 
 got your land level and in check. We put two or three 
 acres in a check with a levee around it. The checks 
 have to be smaller if the land is rough. Our land here 
 is pretty smooth, and two men with a pair of horses 
 can git a quarter section in order — leveling checks, 
 making ditches and floodgates, all in about a couple of 
 months. But you are out something right along 
 digging to keep the channels clear and making repairs. 
 Still, if a man would give me a place back in Tennessee 
 whar I come from I wouldn't take it nohow, if I had to 
 live on it. In a wet season your corn would turn yaller 
 as a punkin — it was aggrai^atin' ! 
 
 " To show you what can be done here I want to t el 
 you about a little orchard of apricots I bought a year 
 ago. Everybody claimed it was run out, but I trimmed 
 the trees and worked the ground and I got eight tons 
 of fruit which I sold for twenty dollars a ton. That 
 was better than a thump on the head with a sharp 
 stone, wa'n't it ? 
 
136 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "You can raise anything that will grow on the top 
 side of the earth, in this valley. I got only two objec- 
 tions to it — in over half the land there's alkali, and 
 secondly malaria is a good deal too common. You 
 notice our houses ain't got cellars and are set up on 
 posts off the ground — some of 'em three or four feet. 
 That's on account of malaria. 
 
 "Perhaps it strikes you the houses must be cold in 
 winter, but we don't have such sharp weather as they 
 have in other parts of United States. I ain't seen but 
 one snowfall in all the time I been here. You take a 
 person from back East and drop 'em down here in 
 March and they think they're in Paradise. Thar's an 
 old lady from Iowa just come lately to this place, and 
 she says it is the prettiest country she ever cast her eyes 
 on. When she come everybody was freeziri' and hov- 
 erin' over the fire in Iowa, while here it wa'n't cold 
 worth mentioning, and she says, 'Here I'll live and 
 here I'll die.' 
 
 " But things ain't always so pleasant in our valley as 
 people think they're goin' to be. Thar's a mighty lot 
 gits fooled. They think they can pick up twenty-dollar 
 gold pieces, dog-gone-it; and they have it all figured 
 out how easy they can make their fortunes. So as soon 
 as they see a piece of property that they fancy they just 
 dive in and pay a good round price. Then when they 
 find they can't git rich in a few weeks Hke they expected. 
 
A Vale of Plenty 137 
 
 they're sorry they grabbed so quick. Often they're so 
 homesick that they're ready to take whatever anybody'll 
 give for the property they've bought. There's an old 
 negro here has picked up a lot of land from such fellers 
 till he's got fifteen or twenty sections, and it's all paid 
 for, too. He's a mighty good darkey. What he agrees 
 to do he does, and he's looked up to about as much as 
 anyone in this region. He's a cattle-man and a hog- 
 man and has money laid away. Every one of his girls 
 that gets married he gives five thousand dollars and a 
 piece of land. That's a pretty good starter, eh ? 
 
 "The poor investments that are made by strangers 
 are mostly the fault of the real estate agents. I know 
 of a man who sold out in Kansas and come here 
 and a real estate agent induced him to buy a section of 
 old alkali land at forty dollars an acre — made him 
 believe it was the richest land in the country. The agent 
 done wrong. I call that robbery. The land wouldn't 
 sprout backyard peas. It wa'n't fitten to look at. Even 
 salt grass wouldn't grow on some of it. You know what 
 poor stuff salt grass is. The cattle will eat it when they 
 can't get anything else, but it's tough and they got to 
 have good teeth to bite it, and it won't fatten 'em any. 
 Well, that man put up a house and a barn and a corral 
 before he found out what sort of a bargain he'd made. 
 He finally went back to where he come from, and his 
 
138 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 buildings are standing empty. He's got his money in 
 that place, and he'll never get it out. 
 
 "Of course a good many fellers have taken land and 
 made money; but there's a blamed sight more who have 
 lost." 
 
 As a whole the region around Visalia looked produc- 
 tive and prosperous, and in order to see some of the 
 poorer land of the valley I went on farther north. It 
 so happened that I reached the place I had selected 
 soon after five in the morning. There was no station — 
 only a half dozen little homes and two or three small 
 dilapidated stores, and a white schoolhouse that stood 
 by itself off a quarter of a mile on the open unfenced 
 prairie. A streak of yellow above the serrated peaks 
 of an endless chain of snowy mountains in the east gave 
 promise of the dawn. On the telegraph lines perched 
 a twittering group of linnets. Near by was a box 
 freight car, and while I stood looking around me, a 
 tramp slid out of the car, shouldered his bag and went 
 off along the track; but on the outskirts of the settle- 
 ment he stopped, built a little fire, and I suppose cooked 
 himself some sort of a breakfast. 
 
 I walked out on the prairie. Here and there I could 
 see scattered houses — rather forlorn-looking places, 
 most of them, and usually with no thought whatever 
 bestowed on appearances. The plain was perfectly 
 treeless, except that an occasional home had about it a 
 
A Vale of Plenty 139 
 
 few shade or fruit trees, and now and then a cluster of 
 willow bushes grew beside the irrigating ditches. The 
 ditches conveyed water to some alfalfa farms two or 
 three miles away where the soil was deeper. Most of 
 the land in the neighborhood was only fit for grazing, 
 and close under the surface lay "hardpan" — a soft 
 sandstone. At one place I came across men at work 
 setting out fruit trees. They were on low ground 
 where the soil had accumulated a little, but in order 
 that the tree roots might have a chance to develop 
 satisfactorily the workers were blasting holes in the 
 hardpan, one for each tree. A few horses, cows and 
 goats were staked out near the village homes, and I 
 saw a drove of black hogs munching along over the 
 knolls, and late in the forenoon a vast flock of sheep 
 drifted past. 
 
 A squad of men from the nearest town were plough- 
 ing, scraping and grading the road, which heretofore 
 had never been turnpiked. The soil was very hard, 
 and one of the men said, " It's rough on the tools. I had 
 a new plough yesterday and in three hours I wore the 
 point plumb out. I don't see how these fellers that 
 keep store here make a livin'. They never seem to be 
 doin' no outside work and there's mighty few customers. 
 Most o' the time they stand at the door lookin' for us 
 to come in and spend the money we make on the road. 
 Yet they wear good clothes and smoke a cigaret once 
 
140 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 in a while. One of 'em has a sheep ranch. I guess 
 he's gettin' along all right. He had a Jim Dandy little 
 wagon come to him on the train last week." 
 
 The man now turned to his work and I went to watch 
 some boys not far away who were gathered around a 
 small pond grabbing for pollywogs. They said they 
 were going to use them for fish bait, and they had 
 started to tell me about their luck in fishing when the 
 bell in the schoolhouse cupola gave a few jingles. 
 At once the boys dropped the pollywogs and scudded 
 away across the prairie to the temple of learning. 
 
 For the sake of variety I went in to have a look at one 
 of the stores. It was not much more than a shanty 
 and the supply of goods was very meagre. "Billy" 
 McDonald was the proprietor. I found him a good 
 deal disturbed because his horse was missing. "I left 
 her loose in the stable last night," said he, "and she 
 got out and has gone back to town where I bought her 
 not long ago." 
 
 A customer came in. He was a stranger who hap- 
 pened to be driving through the place and he wanted 
 to purchase some soap. Billy seemed surprised. He 
 didn't carry such an article in his stock. "Neither 
 did the other store," he explained. So the customer 
 bought a glass of whiskey instead. 
 
 Later in the day I again took the train and was soon 
 in a region more favored. Indeed, in my memory of 
 
A Vale of Plenty 141 
 
 the valley I see little else than a constant succession of 
 orchards and vineyards and great wheat fields and 
 luxuriant pastures. But the homes did not seem in 
 keeping with nature's affluence. Many were unpainted, 
 unshadowed and shabby and small, and looked as if 
 in the heat of summer they would be blistered off the 
 face of the earth. Few were such as we in our older 
 Eastern states would consider at all attractive or com- 
 fortable. That the Vale of Plenty should have its 
 imperfections is to be expected; and on the other hand 
 its attractions are many, and there lies before it a future 
 full of promise. 
 
 Note. — The San Joaquin Valley is one of the great agricultura 
 basins of the world. It is two hundred and fifty miles long by about 
 fifty wide. In it grows half the wheat raised in the state, and wheat 
 farms of ten thousand to fifty thousand acres are not uncommon 
 
 Here, too, you may see thousands of acres of alfalfa, vast vineyards 
 and astonishingly large orchards of prunes, peaches, apricots, figs 
 and other fruits. It produces nearly all the raisins of the United 
 
 States, and fabulous crops of asparagus, potatoes, beans and melons 
 and it is famous for its cattle, sheep and hogs. Stop at any of the 
 chief towns, such as Visalia, Fresno, or Stockton, and journey out into 
 the surrounding country and see what is being done. Irrigation is 
 the chief dependence for producing crops, and water for this purpose 
 is abundant. 
 
 Another attraction of the valley is the excursions that can be made 
 from it into the Sierras. Best of all is a visit to the Yosemite, but 
 scarcely less interesting is a trip to the wild canyon of King's River. 
 This latter journey is made from Visalia, partly by stage, partly by 
 
142 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 pack and saddle train. The gorge lacks the waterfalls of the Yosem- 
 ite, and its walls are not so precipitous, but they rise into even wilder 
 and more stupendous heights. On account of snow and flooded 
 streams, July and August are the best months for the trip. To add 
 to the fascination of this jaunt you have close at hand Mount Whit- 
 ney, the loftiest mountain in the United States, if we except the 
 Alaskan giants. It is easily ascended from the west side. The 
 streams are full of trout, and game abounds. Still another attrac- 
 tion of the region is the General Grant National Park containing 
 many of the famous big trees. 
 
 The Sierra Nevada (in English the words mean Snowy Range) 
 sweeps along the eastern borders of California for fully 500 miles. 
 It abounds in scenery of marvellous grandeur, and offers many 
 attractions to the Alpine explorer. 
 
 The Union Pacific Railroad, as it climbs the mountains toward 
 Nevada, passes through 37 miles of snowsheds. 
 
 Although Mount Whitney which soars up 14,502 feet is the highest 
 point in the United States, it is a curious fact that only 75 miles 
 away is the lowest point, 275 feet below the sea-level, in Death 
 Valley. This valley acquired its name from the loss of numerous 
 emigrants who attempted to pass through it in 1849. 
 
The road to the mountains 
 
VII 
 
 APRIL IN THE YOSEMITE 
 
 FROM the San Joaquin Valley I went by a branch 
 railroad to Raymond far back in the Sierra 
 foothills. The journey was delightful. Every- 
 where were flowery fields and pastures, and at times 
 the wastelands were fairly covered with radiant blossoms. 
 Some of the patches and streaks of bloom were blue, 
 some purple, some white, and still others were a blaze 
 of reds and yellows. The poppies were perhaps the 
 most abundant and striking, but there were multitudes 
 of delicate bluebells, and there were " nigger toes " and 
 "popcorn" and dainty snowdrops and "little Johnnies" 
 and many more. 
 
 Raymond is a half vinld little village with some fine 
 rough hills and ravines about, but no sign of grand 
 mountains or big trees or charming waterfalls. The 
 Yosemite was still distant a two days' stage drive. It 
 was the opening of the season and visitors were few. 
 Only two others went on when I did. They were an 
 elderly man and wife. But the stage also carried 
 several men who were going to the Valley to work, one 
 
 143 
 
144 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 of them a Chinaman cook, another a blacksmith 
 known as "Hank," and a third whom his comrades 
 addressed as "Bud." The stage was a three-seated 
 top wagon, and I sat on the front seat between the 
 driver and the blacksmith. 
 
 Hour after hour we went on climbing among the rough, 
 stony hills. They were not very interesting. Every- 
 where were granite boulders and scattered oaks gar- 
 landed with mistletoe, and now and then would occur a 
 scrawny pine. In places there was much undergrowth 
 such as sagebrush, chaparral, buckeye, and a bushy 
 lupine that was loaded with purple blossoms. Then, too, 
 there were great patches of poison oak, each shrub a 
 reddish mass of new foliage. "You want to be careful 
 how you walk through that," advised the driver; 
 "though some people ain't affected by it at all. It 
 don't trouble me none, and I've monkeyed with it for 
 forty years — walked through it, handled it, and even 
 had it in my mouth." 
 
 Grass was so plentiful that the driver remarked, "I 
 would just like to be a cow for the next three months. 
 I'd be sure to have all I wanted to eat, and I'd have 
 nothing to do only to lie around. But by the end of 
 June the grass will be dried brown, and the pasturing 
 won't be so pleasant. Still, that brown grass ain't bad; 
 for it's like hay and is all right till we have rains to 
 wash the goodness out. We are likely to get wet 
 
April in the Yosemite 145 
 
 weather in October, and then the cattle have a hard 
 time. But if the rains come early in the fall the new 
 grass soon starts. If the rains are late the dry feed is 
 destroyed and the new doesn't get a chance to take its 
 place. So the cattle half starve all winter." 
 
 In the valleys were occasional little farms or the 
 homes of ranchmen, and presently the elderly man on 
 the back seat pointed to one of these and said, "It 
 seems to me that the people who live there must lead a 
 lonely life." 
 
 "Oh, no," responded the driver, "they can drive to 
 town in forty minutes; but then, they don't go there 
 very often because they're afraid of the cars." 
 
 We frequently saw birds. Red-headed woodpeckers 
 were working away on the dead trees and the telegraph 
 poles, and blue jays and linnets were common. Once 
 I got a glimpse of a robin, and there were a few hawks 
 and soaring buzzards. The driver called my attention 
 to a quail standing under a bush, and said, ''These 
 foothills are full of them in the fall." 
 
 Several times we had a momentary glimpse of a 
 ground squirrel scudding to shelter. The blacksmith 
 claimed these squirrels were good to eat, but the driver 
 declared they were no better than rats. "Well," said 
 the blacksmith, "cook 'em properly and they're good 
 enough for anybody." 
 
 "Some people eat rattlesnakes," observed the driver. 
 
1^6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 " If I was going to eat one I'd want to kill it myself," 
 the blacksmith said. "You know if you only just 
 wound one it will bite itself where it was hurt and fill 
 its flesh full of poison. 
 
 In a number of spots along the way were rubbish 
 dumps of dirt and broken stone where some old gold 
 mine had been worked, and the lady passenger wished 
 she could get out and hunt for a " nudget." We passed 
 through Grub Gulch which contains a mine still in 
 operation, and in the rough mountain hollow was a 
 rude little hamlet. The mine is not of much account; 
 but in the booming days that followed its discovery 
 there was a wild and lawless community here. "They 
 used to have a man for breakfast every little while," 
 declared the driver. 
 
 Now and then we met a team, and among the rest 
 were several wagons loaded with apples that left a 
 trail of delicious fragrance behind them. Later we 
 saw the orchards in the secluded mountain glens, and 
 I asked the driver if the fruit was profitable. He said, 
 "That depends on the man who raises it and on cir- 
 cumstances. The fellow that handles this orchard we 
 are passing has hard scratching to make ends meet, and 
 he's close as a mosquito, too; but some do very well." 
 
 Much of the way the road clung to a steep hillside. 
 It was narrow and crooked, and on the outer side looked 
 dangerously precipitous. When teams approached 
 

 
April in the Yosemite 147 
 
 each other the drivers shouted a warning and were 
 apt to stop to consider just how to pass. The 
 broadest place possible was selected and one team 
 crowded up to the bank while the other drove gingerly 
 along on the verge. Our own experience was mild 
 compared with what it would have been later in the 
 season when the five-span freighting wagons were 
 running. 
 
 We were constantly encountering streams. They 
 were seldom bridged and we splashed straight across. 
 It was a pleasure to see them, for they were not like the 
 muddy streams of the lowlands, but were clear and 
 sweet, with stone-strewn courses down which they 
 leaped and foamed with unceasing melody. The road 
 was more or less muddy, but the driver assured us that 
 the first thirty miles of our journey were decidedly 
 pleasanter than they would be in summer. Then there 
 would be dust and torrid heat. "Why," said he, "it 
 gets so hot that the wagon tongues hang out. I've seen 
 the thermometer up to 118 in the shade." 
 
 One of the things that adds zest to the stage trip is 
 the possibility of a hold-up. In the past these hold-ups 
 have occurred about once in four years. The previous 
 season a highwayman had relieved a load of tourists 
 of their purses, but did not take their jewelry or watches. 
 He apologized for the annoyance he was causing and 
 said he didn't like to have to resort to such a practice. 
 
148 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 but he needed the money. When the collection had 
 been finished an English tourist got out his camera 
 and said to the desperado, "I'd Hke to take your pic- 
 ture, you know." 
 
 "Certainly," was the reply, "go ahead," and he 
 submitted to the photographing very gracefully and 
 then departed. 
 
 The hold-up that preceded this one was an affair of 
 more consequence. There were five stages going up 
 the valley that day, one behind another, and a single 
 man held them all up right in a bunch. He was a little 
 particular, and when he thought a man had not turned 
 over to him as much money as he carried, he ordered 
 his victim to "dig up some more." But he 
 was not without a touch of ceremonial politeness, for 
 he presented each of his benefactors with his card on 
 which was printed the words, "The Black Kid." 
 At length his work was completed and he took to the 
 brush and was seen no more. 
 
 We stopped once in ten or twelve miles to change 
 horses, but this made little delay as the horses were 
 harnessed and waiting for us. The longest pause was 
 twenty minutes at the station where we had our noon 
 lunch. After this lunch the blacksmith, as he settled 
 himself in his place, smacked his lips and declared tha 
 the cream pie he had eaten for dessert was the finest 
 pie of any sort he had ever tasted. "The only fault I 
 
April in the Yosemite 149 
 
 have to find," said he in conclusion, "is that the cook 
 is too good a mathematicianer and cuts his pies into 
 too many pieces." 
 
 By mid-afternoon we had passed the foothills, and 
 ahead of us lay a mountain. Bud informed the driver 
 that he was going to get out and "hike" for a while, and 
 when he alighted the blacksmith and I joined him. 
 The trees had become more numerous and there were 
 many tall, handsome yellow pines. Bushes were fewer, 
 but in places the ground was hidden by a low evergreen 
 growth of bear clover. "The bears don't eat it," said 
 the blacksmith, "but it smells like 'em." 
 
 "Seems to me," said Bud, "it smells just like a wet 
 dog; and if you walk through it for an hour or two in 
 summer you'll have that smell on your clothes for the 
 rest of your life." 
 
 Just then the blacksmith found a horseshoe in the 
 road and he hung it up on a bush. "That'll bring me 
 good luck," he remarked. 
 
 "I don't know about that," was Bud's comment. 
 "I've quit hangin' 'em up lately because I noticed I 
 got drunk as a lord every time I did it." 
 
 As we climbed upward the ground became increas- 
 ingly muddy and slippery, and at length patches of 
 snow were to be seen here and there in the woodland. 
 These were larger and more frequent as we went higher 
 until the mantle of white was everywhere. The sky 
 
150 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 had gloomed over and it began to storm, a mixture of 
 rain and sleet. Now we arrived at a rough shanty and 
 barn where the stage was to change horses. What a 
 wintry wilderness it was! — ^white roofs and a giant 
 evergreen forest roundabout, gloomy and mysterious 
 with the cold storm. 
 
 When the stage came we walkers got in and tucked 
 the blankets tightly about us and everyone prepared for 
 a disagreeable journey; but shortly the mists drifted 
 away and the sun shone into the shaggy, dripping 
 woodland, and brightened the dark foliage and the 
 brown, rough-barked tree trunks. The driver seemed 
 anxious about his return trip on the morrow. "Gee! 
 this snow'll be frozen then," he said, "and it'll be slick 
 as glass. The brakes won't hold and I'll have a lot o' 
 trouble to keep the wagon from runnin' onto the horses." 
 
 We presently passed over the top of the mountain 
 ridge and were in really magnificent forest that man 
 had never devastated. The trees grew to full maturity 
 and died and fell to enrich the mountain mould for 
 future generations just as their ancestors had before 
 them from time immemorial. Many of the sugar and 
 yellow pines and cedars were four to six feet in diameter, 
 and they often towered up fully two hundred feet. It 
 was a satisfaction just to look at their straight and 
 towering boles. The noblest of the trees and those most 
 prized by the lumbermen were the sugar pines. Speci- 
 
The Yosemite Falls 
 
April in the Yosemite 15 1 
 
 mens have been found that had attained a thickness of 
 twelve feet and were still living, sound in every fiber. 
 The cones are very large and handsome. They grow to 
 be from a foot to eighteen inches long and beautify the 
 tree and ground beneath for months after the seeds 
 have taken wing. The tree's name comes from a sweet 
 gum that exudes from the heart-wood where wounds 
 have been made either by forest fires or the ax. The 
 gum takes the shape of irregular, crisp clusters of 
 kernels. When fresh it is perfectly white and delicious. 
 In descending the mountain it was quite necessary to 
 hold on. The wheels cut through the snow in a very 
 uncertain way, and we thumped and jolted and shook 
 about in a manner that was very disturbing. The lady 
 on the seat behind was constantly cautioning her hus- 
 band to hang on to her, even if her arm was getting 
 blistered with his clutch. When her side of the vehicle 
 tipped up she begged him to hurry and shift as near her 
 end of the seat as possible to keep the balance. When 
 it went the other way she had him slide back to his 
 side. Yet in spite of all he could do to act as ballast she 
 was certain at times we were going over. "Oh, oh!" 
 she exclaimed as we passed safely through one crisis, 
 "what foolishness to come all this way and over such 
 poor and dangerous roads just to see a little scenery 
 that we may not care for after all! I told you we would 
 regret it, but you were bound to come." 
 
152 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Once when the driver let the horses break into a trot 
 along the verge of a precipice she ordered him to 
 "Stop!" and added in an aside that she had never seen 
 such reckless driving. Gradually we had left the snow 
 behind and now we were much of the time dragging 
 along in the mud. Darkness came, but at last we saw 
 the lights of the tiny settlement of Wawona ahead and 
 came out into a clearing in the valley basin, and there 
 was our hotel with shelter and warmth and food. 
 
 The ground was stiff with frost the next morning, the air 
 crisp and clear. We were on the road at seven and were 
 soon climbing another mountain, snugging along the 
 slope and creeping in and out of the ravines. Deer 
 tracks were frequent in the highway mud, and these set 
 the Yosemite workers who were on the stage to telling 
 their experiences in hunting the animals, and they 
 pointed out this place and that along the trail where 
 they had shot one or more. We were on a government 
 reservation where hunting was against the law, and from 
 May to October a hundred of Uncle Sam's cavalry 
 were stationed at Wawona to see that the law was 
 enforced. But after the cavalry left, the huntsmen 
 banged away very much as they pleased. While the 
 soldier guardians were present they exercised some 
 degree of restraint, yet the efficiency of the troops was 
 generally rated pretty low. According to a state official 
 whose headquarters were in the Yosemite they were 
 
April in the Yosemite 153 
 
 worse than useless. "I'll give you an instance," said 
 he. " Five soldiers caught one of the fellows that lives 
 in these parts out hunting and they started for camp 
 with him. But on the way a deer crossed their trail, 
 and every one of the soldiers shot at it and missed. 
 'Give me my gun,' says the prisoner, 'and I'll kill the 
 deer for you, if you want me to.' 
 
 "So they gave him his gun and he brought down the 
 deer. 'Well,' they says, 'you can keep your gun and 
 hike out.' 
 
 "Yes, sir, these soldiers kill any quantity of game 
 and they've fished out every stream and lake in this 
 region. Before them Arabs got in here we had some 
 of the finest fishing in the Sierras. 
 
 "Once the captain told me he was going to bring his 
 cavalry up to camp in the Valley. Him and I locked 
 horns right there and the soldiers didn't come. Thunder 
 and lightning! I have no use for their sort, and there's 
 too much red tape and pompousness about the whole 
 management. The captain has got to come down ofi^ 
 the roost if he wants to do business with me. Any 
 bulldozing proposition won't go. 
 
 "We had a fire on the reservation last summer and 
 it burned for six weeks and ran over a territory thirty- 
 five miles square. For the whole six weeks the Valley 
 was full of smoke, and the tourists who come didn't 
 get to see hardly anything at all. The fire very near 
 
154 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 burned up the soldiers' camp. They were supposed to 
 be fighting the fire; but what class of persons are they ? 
 A fellow with any ginger in him wouldn't take a job 
 at thirteen dollars a month. They aren't in the army 
 to work. They know how to beat the game from A to 
 Z, and for accomplishing anything really efi^ective they're 
 no earthly use. Their police duty is a farce. Why, 
 they're constantly getting drunk at Wawona and raising 
 thunder. They make a regular scat-house of the place. 
 This fire I was speaking of was altogether too much 
 for them. They didn't know how to handle it, and they 
 didn't care to exert themselves much anyhow. It's 
 said that some of them would burn a space around 
 themselves and then lie down and have a sleep. By 
 and by the fire got up into my region and I took ten 
 men and in three days put the whole thing out. With a 
 dozen of these California foothill boys I can do every- 
 thing five hundred of the soldiers and a brigadier- 
 general in command of 'em could do, and a blamed 
 sight better. They are supposed to keep cattle and sheep 
 off the reservation, but there's men who will feed a 
 flock of sheep all around those soldiers. Give me a few 
 local rangers and I'd nab every herder that sticks his 
 nose across the line. Geewhizacar! I'd catch more 
 trespassers in six months than they would in a 
 hundred years." 
 
April in the Yosemite 155 
 
 The stage toiled on till we were again in the white 
 winter woods. As we climbed higher the snow grew 
 deeper and in some places a passage had been shovelled 
 through, leaving walls on either side half-way to the top 
 of the stage. Finally we reached a little station over 
 six thousand feet above the sea level. It was in a small 
 clearing, with the dark, serrated woods all about, and 
 it was fairly buried in drifts eight or ten feet deep. 
 A narrow channel had been dug, and a little space 
 cleared before the barn. We ate a hasty lunch and 
 were soon on the road again, wallowing through the 
 snow and pitching about in the most exciting manner, 
 always with a vague fear that the vehicle might chance 
 to turn over and send us to destruction down the moun- 
 tain side. 
 
 In time we came to where we could look down on 
 the famous Valley — a long winding crevice bounded by 
 mighty cliffs and peaks of many varying forms. How 
 quiet and protected it did look after all those savage 
 inhospitable heights and hollows we had traversed! 
 But the thing that made it most attractive was a slender 
 waterfall dropping over the face of one of the giant 
 bluffs — dainty, fairy-like and giving the otherwise sober 
 landscape a touch of lightness that was very fascinating. 
 This fall was the keynote of the scene through all the 
 long descent to the valley bottom. It was the Bridal 
 Veil, dashing down for nine hundred feet, a mass of 
 
156 Highways and Bjnvays of the Pacific Coast 
 
 foam and spray, and as we drew near we saw shreds of 
 rainbow painting the mists. Across the valley the 
 driver pointed out another waterfall, but a very tiny 
 one, which he said was called "The Maiden's Tear." 
 
 "That's a very curious name," said the lady passen- 
 ger. "Why do they call it that ?" 
 
 "Because it is so far from the Bridal Veil," replied 
 the driver. 
 
 The valley is about seven miles long and nowhere 
 much exceeds a mile in width. Nearly all of it is per- 
 fectly level, some of it open meadows and pastures, but 
 mostly thinly wooded with tall pines and cedars and 
 firs intermingled with occasional deciduous trees or 
 groves. A small river, rapid and rocky and crystal 
 clear, wended its way through the vale, and, all along, 
 the great cliffs soared skyward in many a vast buttress 
 and pinnacle. It was a wilderness valley, and yet it 
 was so level and secluded and so hedged about by 
 protecting mountains that it seemed a spot of eternal 
 calm and serenity. 
 
 The Yosemite was first seen by white men in Janu- 
 ary, 1 85 1. For some time previous there had been 
 friction with the Indians on the mountain borders; 
 but the first serious quarrel occurred when six Indians 
 visited a trading-post thirty miles west of the Valley, 
 and a drunken ruffian from Texas, without any reason- 
 able cause, stabbed to the heart the chief of the party. 
 
April in the Yosemite 157 
 
 The other five savages at once shot the Texan to death 
 with their bows and arrows, and retreated to the forest. 
 Two nights later a pack of sixteen mules was stolen 
 from the trading-post corral by the Indians and driven 
 off to the mountains. 
 
 These happenings occasioned great excitement among 
 the vi?hites. It was midwinter, yet a company of about 
 one hundred men from the vicinity armed themselves 
 and started on the trail. The Indians had gone to the 
 Yosemite canyon where they converted the mules into 
 jerked meat, and there the frontiersmen surprised them 
 and slaughtered a large number. It was a massacre 
 that included men, women and children. The whites 
 were revenged and they left the Valley. But, though 
 they were the true discoverers of the famous spot it 
 was only made known to the outside world by an expe- 
 dition that went on a similar raid two months later. 
 Those who took part in this second foray had a rough 
 time in the snowstorms and deep drifts of the mountains, 
 and when they reached the Valley they found no 
 Indians except one old squaw. However, the scenery 
 so impressed certain members of the party that their 
 descriptions of it aroused very wide interest in its 
 marvels. 
 
 The Valley is supposed to have been given its peculiar 
 character by a convulsion that caused the rock mass 
 filling the space to sink to some unknown depth. For 
 
158 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 a vast period of time the waste from the sides of the 
 cHfFs dropped into this abyss, which was doubtless 
 occupied by a lake of surpassing beauty. But at length 
 the hollow was filled sufficiently by the falling rocks 
 and by the soil the streams brought from the regions 
 surrounding so that the lake became the present alluvial 
 valley. 
 
 Half way up the glen is a village consisting of a two- 
 story wooden hotel and its annexes and several photo- 
 graph studios, a store, a tiny church and a few dwellings. 
 The hamlet looked strangely lost with the tremendous 
 heights towering around. Just beyond a meadow the 
 Yosemite Fall drops over from the crest of a rock wall 
 twenty-six hundred feet high. How slender and 
 beautiful it is! and how amazing its long leap! It 
 brightens the whole vicinity and relieves the somber- 
 ness of the ragged mountainous cliffs, and the air 
 resounds with its mellow roar. It is characteristic of 
 the canyon that you have the music of the waterfalls 
 in your ears wherever you go, while the great rock walls 
 loom about with a constantly changing sky-line. Of 
 course, not all visitors are satisfied, and one man said 
 to me, "These mountains around the Valley are all 
 right, but I don't think much of the waterfalls, after 
 seeing Niagara." 
 
 As well say a humming bird is not beautiful because 
 you have seen an eagle. 
 
April in the Yosemite 159 
 
 Up at the far end of the valley where it narrows and 
 you look ahead into a wild wooded defile, is Mirror 
 Lake. This, however, scarcely deserves its name; for 
 the only time it is apt to be quiet is before sunrise. Soon 
 afterward the wind sucks down the valley and the sur- 
 face is broken with waves for the rest of the day. 
 
 Trails lead to the top of all the important bluffs and 
 peaks, and it would seem as if a person could climb to 
 his heart's content. But to some people a trail is too 
 prosaic and they like the glory of going up where there 
 are difficulties and danger. In a recent summer an old 
 Alpine climber named Bailey and a young companion 
 decided to follow up a steep crevice along the wall of 
 El Capitan to the summit of that king of cliffs. It 
 proved a very arduous task, and the younger man 
 several times urged the elder to return; but the latter 
 was determined to go on. They were nearly to the top, 
 and Bailey, who was ahead, sat down on a ledge and 
 reached his staff to assist his comrade. Suddenly he 
 toppled over and bounded along down the rocky slope. 
 The young man saw him disappear, and to calm his 
 nerves he seated himself and smoked a cigaret. He did 
 not dare to descend, and when he rose he struggled up 
 to the summit and followed the trail down to the hotel. 
 Helpers promptly returned with him carrying a number 
 of long ropes, and after a good deal of difficulty they 
 
i6o Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 recovered the body of Bailey about seven hundred feet 
 below where he fell. 
 
 The winter residents of the Valley number only about 
 thirty, but in summer the village expands wonderfully. 
 Hundreds of tents are put up to serve as homes for 
 campers and the place is very populous. Formerly 
 this was a "tin can town" just as are most California 
 hamlets — that is, the street and neighborhood were 
 strewn with the rusty receptacles of canned goods which 
 enter largely into the Western bill of fare. But now every 
 dweller, temporary or permanent is compelled to bury 
 his old tins. It seems a pity that the buildings should 
 be so uncomely and cheap, and one regrets the ugly 
 wooden or iron bridges, so artificial and out of keeping 
 with the landscape. The bridges might well be arches 
 of the native stone, simple and permanent, that would 
 make the scenes of which they are a part more beautiful 
 instead of less so. 
 
 When my visit came to an end and I rode out of the 
 Yosemite it was with many a lingering and half-regretful 
 backlook as we climbed the mountain, and left behind 
 that vale of enchantment with its mighty environing 
 heights and delectable waterfalls. Two ladies sat on 
 the box seat with the driver, who was unusually youth- 
 ful, intelligent and entertaining. They were discussing 
 the timidity of travellers, and the driver said, "I have 
 had ladies riding on this seat, who, when the wagon 
 
April in the Yosemite i6i 
 
 gave a bad jolt, would holler and grab hold of me." 
 
 "You liked that, didn't you?" said the lady next to 
 him. 
 
 "Well, not while I was drivin'," he responded. "I 
 wouldn't object some other times, perhaps." 
 
 "I suppose you do have some funny people on the 
 stage," the lady remarked. 
 
 "Yes," said he, "there was a trip last summer I 
 carried a load that was all women, and every one of 
 'em was an old maid, and always would be. The 
 youngest of the lot must have been thirty-five or forty." 
 
 "That's not so very old," the lady interrupted. 
 "There's plenty of chances for her yet." 
 
 "Well," was the driver's response, "all I can say is, 
 if she's goin' to marry she'd better get a move on her. 
 Those old maids was at me to tell 'em a story, or give 
 'em a conundrum; and finally I says, 'Why is it that 
 an old maid likes to go to church early ?' 
 
 "They couldn't tell, and I said, 'Because she wants 
 to be sure to be there when the hymns are given out.' 
 
 "They said I was awful to give such a conundrum as 
 that, but it pleased 'em all the same." 
 
 "Were those old maids from the East ?" inquired the 
 lady. 
 
 "Yes, there ain't none out here," replied the driver. 
 "Our girls all marry, and there's not enough to go 
 around." 
 
1 62 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "You are not married, are you?" queried the lady. 
 
 "Oh, I was taken long ago," he responded. "Get 
 up, Humpy; go on Smoke!" said he cracking his whip 
 over the backs of the front horses. 
 
 "What are the names of the other two?" the lady 
 questioned. 
 
 "Coon and Toothpick," he replied. 
 
 Each of the three hundred and fifty horses on the 
 route has its name and its individuality, but I think the 
 names of our four had more than the average of pic- 
 turesqueness. 
 
 From Wawona, where we arrived in the afternoon, 
 I made a side trip to see the big trees. This necessitated 
 an eight-mile climb up a mountain side; for the trees 
 love a high altitude. The road had only just been 
 opened through the snows, and once our stage got 
 stuck in a drift. Considerable digging had to be done 
 before the struggling horses could drag us free. As we 
 were toiling slowly along the driver asked us if we had 
 ever seen one of their black California rabbits. We 
 never had. 
 
 "Why, there's one now," he said, pointing on ahead. 
 
 Sure enough, there was the rabbit sitting on its 
 haunches alert and watchful close by the road, and it 
 was nearly three feet tall. I expected every moment 
 it would leap away, but we continued to approach and 
 it did not move except that I saw an eye blink and its 
 
3 
 
 
April in the Yosemite 163 
 
 ears waggle a trifle. We were all very much excited 
 over the sight and were exclaiming softly to one another 
 when lo! we suddenly realized that the rabbit was 
 nothing but a remnant of a burned-out stump which 
 chanced from a certain view-point to have the outline 
 of a rabbit. 
 
 When we were well up on the height we changed 
 to a sleigh and at last we came to the forest giants. 
 They are in the midst of heavy woodland and are 
 scattered among trees of various other species, many 
 of which are themselves of magnificent girth and 
 height; but the sequoias stand out distinctly. Their 
 reddish brown bark is unlike the bark of the rest of the 
 trees in texture as well as color, and the larger trees far 
 exceed in size any of their comrades not of the same 
 family. They diflFer also from the balance of the forest 
 in having dome-like tops instead of pointed ones. Most 
 of them are sadly scarred about the base by fire; but 
 the charred crevices and hollows date far back and are 
 said to be due to a habit the Indians had of letting fires 
 run through the woodland to clear it of undergrowth 
 and make easier traveUing and hunting. 
 
 The most venerable and the largest member of the 
 clan is the "Grizzly Giant." It is supposed to be over 
 five thousand years old, and its immense size, its 
 shattered and dead top and gnarled limbs make it look 
 like the ancestor of its race. The tree is ninety-three 
 
164 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 feet in circumference, and its first limb, a hundred feet 
 from the ground, has a diameter of six feet. Many of 
 the sequoias have broken and bare tops, but this is the 
 work of storms rather than age. Even when a big tree 
 falls the end is still far off; for the wood does not decay 
 readily at heart, and the wasting away from the out- 
 side is very slow. Trees that were thrown down before 
 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock are in the Sierra 
 forests today with wood in them as sound and bright 
 in color as it was in their prime. Most full-grown trees 
 are not much over twenty feet in diameter and about 
 two hundred and seventy-five feet in height. But the 
 giants of the race go up fifty feet more. The trees, 
 except for accidents, seem to lack little of being immortal. 
 They live on indefinitely until cast down by storms, 
 burned, killed by lightning or destroyed by man. 
 
 The fruitfulness of the sequoias is marvelous. The 
 cones are only about two inches in length but the 
 branches hang full of them and each is packed with 
 two or three hundred seeds. Millions of seeds are 
 ripened annually by a single tree — no doubt, enough in 
 some cases to plant all the mountain ranges in the 
 world. However, very few seeds ever get the chance 
 to germinate, and of those that do, not one tree in ten 
 thousand lives through the vicissitudes that beset its 
 youth. Yet trees abound of all ages, from fresh-starting 
 saplings to those in the glory of their prime, and the 
 
April In the Yosemite 165 
 
 giant trees seem abundantly able to maintain their race 
 in eternal vigor. 
 
 The day following this visit to the big trees I returned 
 to Raymond; and it was not so prosaic a change from 
 the wonderland where I had been as might have been 
 expected. Indeed, it was a real delight to descend from 
 the wintry mountains and to gradually find the spring 
 about us — at first only faint hints, but finally a green 
 earth, and new leafage on the trees and abounding 
 blossoms, and the birds flitting and singing. 
 
 Notes. — ^The word Yosemite means "full grown grizzly bear." 
 Since 1905 the park has been in charge of the Federal Government, and 
 is policed by two troops of cavalry who camp near the Yosemite Fall. 
 This waterfall is the highest in the world with anything like the same 
 amount of water. When it comes over the top of the cliffs it is about 
 3 S feet wide. A splendid ice-cone, 500 feet high, forms at the foot 
 of the upper fall in winter. 
 
 Bridal Veil Fall derives its name from the effect on it of the wind, 
 which often makes it flutter like a filmy veil. 
 
 Travellers now usually go to the valley by way of Merced and 
 El Portal. From the latter place, where the railroad ends, a 12-mile 
 stage road takes one into the heart of the valley. 
 
 The Yosemite season lasts from early April until October, though 
 it is now possible to go at any time without serious discomfort. The 
 cold, and the heavy snowfall on the mountains are the chief deter- 
 rents to winter visits. The best months are May and June, when 
 the falls are full of watef' and there is no dust. 
 
 The customary way to see the famous Mariposa Grove of Big 
 Trees now is to make an excursion from the Yosemite Valley. It 
 is 26 miles to the hotel at Wawona, and 8 miles more to the Grove. 
 Here are about 600 fine specimens of the sequoia. 
 
VIII 
 
 AROUND THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 THE situation of San Francisco makes it a 
 logical metropolis. It has one of the largest 
 harbors in the world, and there is no other 
 that can in the least rival this between San Diego and 
 Puget Sound. Besides, the bay and its rivers 
 give an admirable opportunity for extensive and cheap 
 water commerce inland, and the great fertile valleys 
 which open away toward the interior are naturally 
 tributary to the city that guards the Golden Gate. 
 The city is built on about a dozen hills which add 
 greatly to its picturesqueness. It turns its back on 
 the sea, and its wharves front the bay easterly. The 
 name which designates the passage from the Pacific 
 into the harbor was applied by Fremont in 1848, and 
 has nothing to do with the gold-bearing districts. 
 "Golden" referred to the fertility of the country on the 
 shores of the bay. 
 
 The settlement of the place dates back to 1776 when 
 the Franciscan Friars established a Mission here. The 
 Mission was in the center of the peninsula, half way 
 
 166 
 
<3 
 
 ^ 
 « 
 -« 
 
 ^ 
 
 <!0 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 O 
 
Around the Golden Gate 167 
 
 between the sea and the harbor. For over fifty years it 
 was the nucleus of quite a village, and the community 
 in its prime had a population of five hundred Indians 
 and Mexicans. Another settlement was presently 
 established on the shore of the bay for commercial pur- 
 poses and came to have a considerable trade in hides 
 and tallow. 
 
 In January, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered 
 gold while digging a ditch for a sawmill about forty-five 
 miles northeast of Sacramento. This caused tremendous 
 excitement in San Francisco and two thirds of the 
 population left for the new region of promise. Lots in 
 the city sold for one half what they were worth a month 
 before; but the necessities of life began to get scarce in 
 the gold camps, and some of the miners returned to 
 San Francisco and prepared to profit through the rapid 
 increase of business that was sure to come. The large 
 finds of gold in the interior brought an inrush of new- 
 comers and the population early in 1849 was two 
 thousand. By July it was five thousand, and this 
 number doubled the following year. Between April 
 and December 1849 over five hundred vessels arrived 
 bringing thirty-five thousand passengers. As many 
 more immigrants came overland; but the great ma- 
 jorit}' found their way with little delay to the mines. 
 Such was the eagerness to share in the golden fortune 
 that scores of vessels lay in the harbor unable to pro- 
 
1 68 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 ceed farther for want of sailors because the crews had 
 deserted in a body almost as soon as the anchors were 
 dropped. Some of these vessels eventually rotted 
 where they were moored. Others were hauled up on 
 the beach to serve as storehouses, lodging-houses and 
 saloons. For a long time several of them, flanked by 
 buildings and wharves, and forming part of a street, 
 were original features of the town. 
 
 Money in the period of sudden growth was scarce, 
 and gold dust was the principal medium of exchange. 
 During 1848 the monthly yield of gold in California 
 averaged three hundred thousand dollars, in 1849 a 
 million and a half, in 1850 three million. Prices of 
 labor and all supplies were very high. Flour was forty 
 dollars a barrel, butter ninety cents a pound, a loaf of 
 bread fifty cents, a hard boiled egg one dollar. A tin 
 pan or a wooden bowl cost five dollars, and a pick or a 
 shovel ten dollars. But laborers received a dollar an 
 hour, and in spite of the cost of living everybody made 
 money. 
 
 Bayard Taylor who visited San Francisco at this 
 time says that, "Around the curve of the bay hundreds 
 of tents and houses appeared, scattered all over the 
 heights and along the shore for more than a mile. On 
 every side stood buildings begun or half finished, and 
 the greater part of them were canvas sheds open in 
 front, and with signs in all languages. Great quantities 
 
Around the Golden Gate 169 
 
 of goods were piled in the open air for want of a place 
 to store them. The streets were full of people hurrying 
 to and fro, and of as diverse and bizarre a character as 
 the houses." 
 
 The winter season of 1849 and 1850 was very rainy, 
 and the streets, which had not as yet been either graded 
 or paved, became simply impassable. In many places 
 wagons would sink to the wheel-hubs, and the animals 
 were sometimes so deeply mired they could not be 
 extricated and were left to die where they were. Trees 
 and shrubbery and boxes and barrels of goods were 
 thrown into the streets to afford a passage-way. 
 
 The city continued its rapid growth, and by 1853 
 the population had increased to forty-two thousand. 
 With the influx of treasure-seekers came a motley 
 crowd of adventurers from all points on the Pacific 
 Coast, Australia and the East, and many of them made 
 a living by preying on their fellows. Gambling jumped 
 into popular favor, and though stringent measures were 
 adopted for its abatement they did not avail. Fortunes 
 were made and lost in a single day, and many a miner 
 who came from the interior to embark for his home, by 
 trying to increase his fortune at the gaming table found 
 himself penniless and obliged to return to the mines 
 and begin all over. 
 
 There were parts of the city where even a policeman 
 hardly dared to go, and night was made hideous with 
 
170 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 debauchery and assaults. During the early years of 
 the city's awakening many murders were committed by 
 the desperadoes, yet no one was hanged for the crimes, 
 and the courts became a byword. The situation was 
 intolerable and in 1851 the famous Vigilance Committee 
 was organized in the interests of law and order. This 
 Committee within a month tried and hanged four men 
 and banished thirty others, and the course pursued was 
 universally upheld by public opinion. Conditions be- 
 came normal and the Committee ceased its labors. 
 But in 1856 crime had once more become rampant and 
 the law impotent. The Vigilants reorganized and acted 
 with the same vigor and with the same results as before, 
 and there was again individual security and public 
 order. 
 
 The history of San Francisco's beginnings are 
 extremely interesting to anyone who visits the city and 
 these strange happenings and conditions form a fasci- 
 nating background. They were constantly in my mind 
 when I was there early in 1906 and added much to the 
 significance of what I saw. For a place of its size I 
 was surprised to find so much of it built of wood. Of 
 course certain fine residences and many of the big 
 business blocks were of material more permanent and 
 substantial, but even in the commercial heart of the 
 town wooden structures were plentiful, while in the 
 residence sections redwood dwellings were almost 
 
A glimpse of the shipping 
 
Around the Golden Gate 171 
 
 universal. I wondered what would happen if a big 
 fire got started, and mentioned this thought to a native. 
 He, however, assured me that I need have no appre- 
 hension on that score; for they had the finest fire 
 department in the world, and no fire could get beyond 
 control. 
 
 Another feature of the city that engaged my attention 
 was its weather. Someone had told me that, "with its 
 rains and fogs and rough winds San Francisco has 
 about the meanest climate that ever a man set foot in." 
 I suppose there is a modicum of truth in the statement, 
 but during my stay the weather was rather fine. If we 
 had rain it came at night, and though there was often 
 fog and gloom in the early morning the sun presently 
 broke through. Then followed a period of dreamy 
 calm, but later the wind came blustering in from the 
 sea and for much of the afternoon blew with uncom- 
 fortable violence. This seemed to be the daily program. 
 
 The city's fame as a seaport drew me early to the 
 wharves. Everywhere here for miles were ships loading 
 and unloading, and I found toil and din and smoke and 
 dubious smells no matter whither I wandered. Against 
 the sky was a dense forest of tapering masts with their 
 network of rigging, and here and there were stout 
 steamer funnels belching soot and fumes. The great 
 drays banged and rattled along over the rough pave- 
 ments, there was clanking of chains, the panting of 
 
172 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 engines, the shouts of men. Loafers strolled about or 
 roosted on piles of boards and other chance seats, and 
 children and sight-seers mingled with the rest of the 
 crowds, all drawn by the allurement of the sea-going 
 ships and the varied activity. It was a rude region, 
 and the business buildings which fronted toward the 
 wharves were dingy and forbidding. Saloons were pre- 
 dominant, and these endeavored to interest the public 
 by the individuality of their names, as for instance, the 
 North Pole, the Castle, the Tea Cup, Life Saving 
 Station and Thirst Parlor, The Fair Wind, and Jim's 
 Place. 
 
 Whatever else the stranger in San Francisco missed 
 seeing he was sure to visit the Chinese quarter. Here 
 was an oriental community of fifteen thousand in the 
 heart of the city. It occupied an area of about ten 
 square blocks. No space was wasted, and besides the 
 main thoroughfares there were many narrow byways 
 running in all directions and lined with little places of 
 business. Often the buildings were curiously orna- 
 mented and made resplendent with many-colored paints 
 and big paper lanterns, but the majority were battered 
 and aged and grimy. 
 
 The first Chinese to arrive in California came on 
 the brig Eagle in February, 1848. They were two men 
 and one woman. Within the next two years about five 
 hundred came, and by 1852 there were eighteen thous- 
 
Around the Golden Gate 173 
 
 and. Large numbers went direct to the mines where 
 they worked for a few cents a day. The enmity aroused 
 by their competition in the labor market resulted in 
 exclusion laws, and latterly their numbers have been 
 decreasing. Naturally, therefore, the racial bitterness 
 which the Americans have felt toward the Mongolians 
 is somewhat allayed. Yet harsh feeling is still to be 
 encountered, and one man enlightened me thus: 
 
 "They ought to be kept out — every one of 'em. Go 
 to the farming country and watch how they manage on 
 their ranches workin' all the time, night and day, and 
 Sundays, rain or shine. A white man has no show 
 against them — not a particle. When it comes to dis- 
 posing of what he raises, the Chinaman sells every time 
 he starts out to make a trade. Ask him the price of a 
 bunch of beets. 
 
 " * Five cents,' he says. 
 
 " 'Too much,' you say. 
 
 "He picks up another bunch and says, 'Here, two 
 bunches for five cents today;' and you take them. 
 
 "A Chinaman knows how to accumulate the cash. 
 He will come into this country with nothing and go 
 away with a bag of money as long as your arm. 
 
 "In the city they crowd into the smallest quarters 
 and eat the cheapest food. Let them keep coming and 
 they would take all the work and absorb all the wealth 
 there is here; and we ain't keepin' 'em out either in 
 
1 74 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 spite of our laws. One way or another they are con- 
 stantly sneaking in. Each Chinaman has to be photo- 
 graphed to identify him, but they all took alike, and if 
 you catch one of those that have slipped in, he'll show 
 a photograph of some other Chiniman, and you can't 
 tell but that it is of him. 
 
 "They are a thrifty people and an honest people, I'll 
 say that for them. They stand by their bargains and 
 always pay when they say they'll pay. I'd rather sell 
 goods to a Chinese merchant than an American so far 
 as finance goes. Some are millionaires. But they 
 don't help develop the country. They don't invest here. 
 All their money, sooner or later, goes back to China, 
 and it's a big drain. That ain't where we're goin' to 
 get hit the worst, though. The Chinese who do us the 
 most harm are those that come to look around or to 
 study. You see the Chinamen are cracker-jacks to 
 imitate. Give 'em the chance and they'd steal all our 
 ideas about machinery and how to do things in a modern 
 way. Then they'd go back to China and start their 
 manufactories, and we wouldn't be in it at all. 
 
 "There's no other race to which there's the same 
 objection. Lots of Mexicans come in, and they're kind 
 of a mean, treacherous class that don't like us any better 
 than we like them; but they're lazy and shiftless, and 
 their competition don't count. Then there's Indians. 
 I ain't got no objection to them. The fact is they're 
 
A main thoroughfare in Chinatown 
 
Around the Golden Gate 175 
 
 nearer of kin to us than the Chinese, a good sight. 
 The world has only three race divisions. There's the 
 Caucasian, the Ethiopian and the Mongolian. The 
 Indian ain't a Mongolian, is he ? and he ain't an 
 Ethiopian. So he must be a Caucasian." 
 
 I found a few of the Chinatown shops large and fine, 
 and the goods in them were often expensive, rare, and 
 delightfully original and charming in design. But for 
 the most part the shops were small and not by any 
 means prepossessing. Usually they had open fronts, 
 and much of the stock was displayed on the sidewalk, 
 and the walks were also made use of for the conducting 
 of many minor industries such as cobbling and tinker- 
 ing. I loitered about for hours watching the strange 
 scenes. The people with their yellow visages and 
 unfamiliar garments looked as if they had been exhumed 
 from some prehistoric past. The men mostly wore 
 black or dark blue. Often the women wore these colors 
 likewise, but a good many had clothing as gay as a 
 rainbow, and so did the children. The women went 
 about bareheaded and their garments consisted of large 
 loose-fitting blouses with huge sleeves and a pair of 
 trousers of equally generous proportions. 
 
 The inhabitants included some persons of refinement 
 and learning, and a considerable number of keen and 
 successful business men; but the larger part were of 
 the lower class. This, I suppose, is the reason why the 
 
1 76 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 women usually had normal feet; yet once in a while I 
 saw one stump along with feet that seemed to be non- 
 existent. 
 
 In various places were walls pasted over with hiero- 
 glyphic notices and bulletins, nearly all printed on red 
 or yellow paper, and the passers often paused to read. 
 There was always an absorbed group in front of a 
 trinket stand where some colored Japanese battle 
 pictures were displayed. No space in the buildings was 
 wasted, and the occupants were much given to burrow- 
 ing about underground. The filth of the basements 
 had formerly been superlative; but of late, by order of 
 the city, every cellar had been supplied with a cement 
 floor. The shopkeepers seemed very busy, yet some- 
 times I would see one taking his ease and smoking his 
 long pipe in contemplative peace and satisfaction, or I 
 would see a group standing about a table at the back of 
 their cavernous little place of business eating with their 
 chop-sticks and drinking tea. Every butcher had an 
 entire roasted hog hung up from which he cut portions 
 as they were wanted. Some of the meat and dried fish 
 and vegetables looked very uncanny. I often could not 
 tell what the things were, but I did recognize on sale in 
 one shop a chicken's feet minus the skin. 
 
 Almost every kind of business was represented in 
 Chinatown. They even had a bookstore, and they 
 published a daily newspaper. Barbers' shops were 
 
Around the Golden Gate 177 
 
 numerous, for every man had his head shaved about 
 once a week; and when you looked into the tonsorial 
 establishment you perhaps saw the barber making the 
 job thorough by shaving the inside of the subject's ears. 
 One very busy alley was largely given up to the sale of 
 fish. The stores were full of the finny merchandise, 
 the narrow walks were almost covered, and numerous 
 great shallow baskets spread with fish and crabs and 
 clams were put on boxes along the curb at either side of 
 the street. 
 
 I went into a joss-house. In the lower room was a 
 group of men smoking (and gambling, so I was told). 
 Up above was the room of worship, gorgeous, but taw- 
 dry. It was crowded with paraphernalia and well 
 supplied with wooden images. Near by was a fine 
 restaurant occupying an entire building. The furnish- 
 ings were very aristocratic, and there was much carving 
 and heavy oriental chairs and tables. It was run by a 
 company of eight men, and their safe in one corner of 
 an eating apartment had eight padlocks on it. Each 
 partner carried the key to his individual padlock, and 
 the safe could only be opened when all were present. 
 
 Another place I visited was the underground shop of 
 an "inventor," as he called himself. But his inventions 
 were more curious than original. They were all rather 
 rude mechanisms that did things of no particular use. 
 One of the oddest was an arrangement for reading by 
 
178 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 candlelight. When you were through you let go of 
 your book which was hitched to a string from above, 
 and it was drawn up out of the way. At the same time 
 the candle swung back and an extinguisher dropped 
 over it. 
 
 A somewhat similar subterranean shop was occupied 
 by a very old man who had two mimic theatres fastened 
 to his wall crowded with actors, one-half life size- 
 He would set the mechanism going and the figures 
 would bob their heads and move their hands in a most 
 unearthly manner. He also had a wonder-stone, a 
 polished disc about eighteen inches across and with 
 many smoky stains in the rock. The old man pointed 
 out in the stains a great number of figures — men, 
 women and animals; but it was seldom I would make 
 out the things he said he saw. 
 
 There were pawn-shops in Chinatown, and in the 
 windows you were sure to see, among other articles, 
 several opium pipes. Opium is less used than formerly, 
 but opium dens still existed, and I wandered into one 
 of them. Its entrance was at the back of a gloomy 
 hallway. Within was a large apartment having a 
 double tier of platforms at the sides on which were 
 heaps of blankets and a few Chinamen sleeping or 
 smoking. One ancient was lying on his side and 
 toasting a bit of opium on the end of a slender stick 
 over a little lamp. Then he crowded it into the orifice 
 
Around the Golden Gate 179 
 
 of his pipe and puffed away. Another fellow was 
 smoking a water-pipe — that is, drawing tobacco fumes 
 through a one-inch tube, two feet long, filled with 
 water. This individual showed me various small 
 trinkets which he said were very cheap because they 
 had been smuggled in from abroad by friends. The 
 Chinaman is not very particular about obeying laws 
 that he can evade. He even holds slaves — for one 
 alley was pointed out where, behind barred windows, 
 the women slaves of this strange foreign community 
 were kept. 
 
 My sojourn in San Francisco came to an end at length, 
 and one evening in the early dusk I crossed the bay 
 to go on by train to other regions. From the ferry-boat 
 I looked back and saw the great city with its masts and 
 towers and heights, gray and beautiful against the glow 
 of the sunset sky. Lights were everywhere a-twinkle, 
 and the beholder could not but be impressed with the 
 greatness of the city — populous, rich, serene and 
 powerful; and yet, one week later came the great 
 earthquake and the fire that reduced this metropohs of 
 the west coast to a blackened ruin. 
 
 Note. — The old San Francisco is no more, but the attraction of its 
 situation will always remain, and the new tragedy in its stirring history 
 adds greatly to the interest of the visitor. At about five o'clock of 
 Wednesday morning, April 18, 1906, occurred the first great shock 
 of that elemental calamity. It had been a beautiful night, and the 
 
i8o Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Post-Lenten fever of society's revels was at its height. That night 
 the dimaz of the Grand Opera season had been reached in a magnifi- 
 cent performance, and never before had there been such enthusiasm 
 in San Francisco's musical world. The performance was only con- 
 cluded at midnight, and then for hours the cafes had been gay with 
 the laughter and discussions of the opera-goers. Even at the time of 
 the great shock some of the revelers were still in the streets. There 
 was a series of shuddering jerks and writhings of the earth, here and 
 there a crash of falling walls, then a profound silence for several min- 
 utes. After that was heard the clangor of the gong on the cart of the 
 fire chief as he dashed through the heart of the city. Broken gas- 
 pipes had started fires; but worst of all, beneath the surface of the 
 streets the water mains had been severed, and the city was doomed. 
 Not until three days later did the conflagration burn itself out. Over 
 four square miles of the city were gone utterly, and property to the 
 value of more than a third of a billion dollars had been destroyed, 
 and the larger portion of the inhabitants were homeless refugees in 
 the public parks. 
 
 A new and more substantial city has risen from the ashes, and it 
 continues, as before, to be the largest city on the Pacific Coast. It 
 is at the north end of a long peninsula. On the west is the ocean and 
 on the east is San Francisco Bay, 50 miles long and 10 miles wide. 
 The city lies mainly on the shore of the Bay and on the steep hills 
 that rise a little back from the water's edge. 
 
 The Golden Gate which gives entrance from the sea to the Bay 
 is one mile across. The Presidio, or Government Military Reserva- 
 tion, stretches along the Golden Gate for 4 miles. Daily drills of the 
 troops stationed there are held from 9 to 1 1 a. m. 
 
 Beyond the Presidio, on the outermost portion of the peninsula 
 that borders the Golden Gate, is the popular resort, Sutro Heights 
 Park. A great attraction here is the view of the Seal Rocks. These 
 rocks are three in number, conical in shape, and from 20 to 50 feet 
 high, and only a stone's throw from the land. On them huge sea- 
 lions bask in the sun. Some of the creatures weigh over half a ton 
 and are from 12 to ij feet long. They are protected by law, and 
 
Around the Golden Gate i8i 
 
 scores of them are always hovering about the rocks. Their evolu- 
 tions in the water are very interesting, and their singular barking 
 can be heard above the roar of the breakers. Near by are swimming 
 pools and an aquarium. 
 
 A little to the south is Golden Gate Park with its fine lawns, ser- 
 pentine drives, shady walks, gorgeous flowers, and groves of tropical 
 or semi-tropical trees, and its wonderful collection of animals and 
 birds. 
 
 One of the most interesting historical relics of the city is the old 
 Mission Dolores at the corner of Dolores and l6th streets. The 
 superstitious believe that it escaped by divine intervention the great 
 fire which destroyed so much of the city. It dates from about 1778. 
 The adobe walls are three feet thick, it has a tile roof, and the floor 
 IS of earth except near the altar. Adjoining it is a neglected little 
 churchyard. 
 
 The Chinese Quarter has been rebuilt since the fire, and is still 
 one of the most fascinating features of the city. It contains about 
 10,000 inhabitants, mostly men. 
 
 The San Francisco climate is notably equable, without extremes 
 of either cold or heat. Nevertheless, visitors should always have 
 warm wraps available, for strong chilling winds from the sea are 
 frequent even in summer. 
 
 Beyond the Golden Gate, northward, rises Mt. Tamalpais, 2600 
 feet high. A scenic railroad climbs to its summit, whence can be 
 had an excellent view of the entire bay region. 
 
 At Berkeley, just across the bay from San Francisco, is the Uni- 
 versity of California, with its extensive and picturesque grounds. 
 It has over 3,000 students, one-third of whom are women. An 
 unusual feature of its equipment is an open-air Greek theater, which 
 accommodates 12,000 spectators, and is used for university meet- 
 ings, commencement exercises, and concerts. 
 
 Automobile trips can be made from San Francisco in every 
 direction. One of the best roads is that to Sacramento, the capital 
 of the state, 136 miles distant. Perhaps an even pleasanter way 
 to make this trip is to go by steamer up the Sacramento River. 
 
i8ia Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Orchards and gardens are almost continuous along the banks of 
 the stream. 
 
 The motorist going south from San Francisco will find good dirt 
 roads in the main, but in places they are very narrow, and have 
 some sharp turns and steep grades. Thirty-four miles takes one to 
 Palo Alto. The name means tall tree, and the great redwood which 
 suggested the name still stands. Stanford University is the great 
 attraction at Palo Alto. It has an endowment of ^30,000,000, and 
 its buildings in the Mission style of architecture, with long corridors 
 and inner courts, are the finest possessed by any university in the 
 world. 
 
 Twenty miles farther south, is San Jose in the center of the largest 
 compact orchard on the globe, sheltered by the mountains round- 
 about from every asperity of land or sea. This is the starting-point 
 for Lick Observatory, 26 miles away on Mt. Hamilton. Stages 
 make the round trip in a day, allowing an hour's stay on the moun- 
 tain. The road is excellent, and the views are beautiful and ever- 
 changing. The distance to the summit from the base of the moun- 
 tain is only two miles in a direct line, but by the road it is seven 
 miles. The road is said to make 365 bends in this upward climb. 
 The observatory is one of the most notable in the world in point of 
 situation, equipment, and achievement. Its great telescope has a 
 36-inch object glass. James Lick, whose gift of ^700,000 built the 
 observatory, is buried in the foundation pier of the telescope. 
 
 Continuing the journey southward from Palo Alto, we reach Santa 
 Cruz, 91 miles from San Francisco. This is a favorite summer and 
 winter resort, with an excellent bathing beach, fine cliffs, and good 
 fishing. Six miles distant is a grove of big trees, about 20 of which 
 have a diameter of over 10 feet. One of them attains a diameter of 
 23 feet. A large hollow tree is shown in which General Fremont 
 camped for several days in 1847. 
 
 Somewhat farther down the coast is charming Monterey, the old 
 capital of California in the days of Spanish rule. Dana, in his "Two 
 Years Before the Mast," describing Monterey as it was in 1835, 
 before California had become a part of the United States, says: "It 
 
Around the Golden Gate l8ib 
 
 makes a very pretty appearance; its houses being of whitewashed 
 adobe. The red tiles, too, on the roofs contrast well with the 
 white sides. There are no streets nor fences (except that here and 
 there a small patch might be fenced in for a garden) so that the 
 houses are placed at random. In the center of the place is an 
 open square, surrounded by four lines of one-story buildings, with 
 half a dozen cannon in the center; some mounted and others not. 
 This is the presidio, or fort. Every California town has a presi- 
 dio in its center; or rather every presidio has a town built around 
 it; for the forts were first built by the Mexican government, and 
 then the people built near them, for protection." 
 
IX 
 
 A NEVADA TOWN WITH A PAST 
 
 THE International Hotel where I stopped was a 
 big six-story building, imposing in size and in 
 many of its appointments, but all gone to seed. 
 It had been a very grand affair when it was erected. 
 Its broad stairways, its heavy woodwork, its great 
 windows with their lace curtains, its black walnut bed- 
 steads and marble-topped bureaus, upholstered chairs 
 and Brussels carpets all had an air of antique luxury. 
 Time was when an apartment cost from two to five 
 dollars a night. Now the prices are fifty cents and one 
 dollar, and everything is battered and worn, and the 
 whole building is almost ghostly in its loneliness, so few 
 are the travellers who stop at the once busy hostelry. 
 A Chinaman is the landlord, and he goes himself to 
 meet the trains and carry his patrons' hand luggage up 
 the steep hill to his hotel. The Palace, the Occidental 
 and the other fine hotels have fared even worse than 
 this one, and the streets are lined with buildings that 
 in their day were genuinely impressive and probably 
 as fine as any west of the Rockies. 
 
 182 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 183 
 
 Virginia City is indeed a strange town — a living 
 skeleton. In the height of its opulence it boasted a 
 population of thirty thousand. Today there are less 
 than one tenth that many, and dilapidation and ruin 
 are seen on every hand. The chief streets terrace 
 along a great hillside. Farther up the slope are wastes 
 of sagebrush growing in stunted clumps a foot or two 
 high and half hiding the earth with their gray twigs 
 and foliage. Down below is a valley where the mines 
 have dumped vast heaps of waste. The entire region 
 is a wild upheaval of hills, and around the horizon are 
 seen ranges of snowy-topped mountains. Once in a 
 while a gnarled scrub pine or dwarf cedar occurs, but 
 only a few feet high. Formerly scrub pines of fair size 
 were plentiful on the hills; but they were practically 
 all used for firewood long years ago. After they were 
 gone some Chinamen ran a woodyard and sold pine 
 roots. Probably one hundred and fifty donkeys were 
 engaged in toiling about the uplands and bringing in 
 the stumps and roots of the old scrub pines. This 
 material, too, was exhausted presently, and now the 
 fuel comes by train. 
 
 If you look attentively you discover a little grass 
 growing in the sagebrush. It gets a foothold about the 
 roots of the brush and now and then starts a clump by 
 itself. This is bunch-grass. The cattle relish it and 
 they nose about after it where you would at first glance 
 
184 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 think they could find nothing more palatable than the 
 bitter sage. As the season advances thousands of sheep 
 roam over the country, though the grass is always too 
 scanty to make the landscape green. 
 
 In the town are a few poplar trees, and occasionally 
 there are fruit trees in the gardens. But gardens are 
 scarce and small. There is lack of soil and lack of 
 moisture. The streets are rough and dirty, and as I 
 walked about I was constantly encountering old tin 
 cans and getting my feet tangled up in wires from the 
 baled hay. On the main street in the busier portion 
 is an almost continuous roofing over the broad side- 
 walks, and this serves the stores instead of awnings. 
 The walks themselves are of plank that evidently date 
 back into the town's ancient history. The knots and 
 spikes protrude and the rest is deep hollowed by the 
 passing of countless feet. Often streaks of sagebrush 
 grow alongside the gutters, and these tenacious shrubs 
 establish themselves wherever else in the village there 
 are spaces untrodden and uncared for. Buildings in 
 good repair are rarities. Those out of plumb are com- 
 mon, and some lean against one another for support, 
 or are braced by long timbers. There are tottering 
 fences and ragged walls and broken roofs and smashed 
 glass, and many windows and doors are boarded up. 
 
 As I was rambling through the sagebrush below a 
 house on the outskirts an old German came out and 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 185 
 
 spoke to me. He was very friendly, and he became 
 doubly so when he learned that I was from New Eng- 
 land. " Dot New England haf caused me thirty-four 
 years of trouble," said he with a humorous twinkle in 
 his eyes. " It vas dere I got mine wife. I suppose you 
 people back East are thinkin' we haf der world by der 
 tail out here. I'm glad of dot. You used not to think 
 we vas much. But the West haf been makin' some 
 progress dese late years. I think, though, all of us 
 here are, you might say, impregnated with minerals, 
 and we want to get rich too fast. It would be better 
 not to grab so much for ourself. Yes, although bein' of 
 a fiery political nature, I want everyone to haf an equal 
 share." 
 
 I resumed my walk and a little later stopped to chat 
 with a small boy who was on horseback racing around 
 a yard. He had an array of bottles and cans full of 
 water set on a wall, and he would pick one up, canter 
 to some other part of the enclosure and deposit it on 
 a post. He said he was playing grocer and was deliver- 
 ing goods. I asked for directions to Gold Hill, and he 
 slid ofF his horse and went along to show me the way. 
 His name was Chester; "But the boys have got a nick- 
 name on me," he confided, "and call me Figs. My 
 father works in a mine, but on Sundays he goes 
 prospecting." 
 
l86 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 The search for gold has resulted in tearing the country 
 all to pieces. Everywhere the hills are dotted 
 with prospectors' holes. From any height you can see 
 dozens — perhaps hundreds. They suggest the burrow- 
 ing of woodchucks or prairie dogs. There is always 
 quite a heap of dirt and broken rock on the downhill 
 side. The region along the Comstock Lode abounds 
 too in deserted shafts. Usually the spots where had 
 been the buildings, and the machinery for working the 
 abandoned mines, are now only marked by immense 
 dumps of waste with possibly a few great foundation 
 stones and irons. The shafts may be filled up, or they 
 may be partially open. Figs pointed to one of these 
 holes and said a boy pushed him into it and he had 
 slipped and crawled in the darkness a long way. He 
 thought he was lost and he cried; but at last he saw day- 
 light ahead and he crept out at the bottom of the hill. 
 
 Figs had a mania for throwing stones. He tossed 
 them down vacant shafts and heaved them at cows, 
 roosters, water-puddles and anything else that happened 
 to catch his eye. He evidently did not find life dull. 
 "On Saturday," said he, "seven of us kids are goin' to 
 the reservoir pond to have a swim. We'll like that — ^you 
 betcher! There's ducks on the pond, and a feller that 
 lives near it shoots 'em and lets us have 'em three for a 
 quarter. We'll bring some home and have 'em for 
 dinner the next day." 
 
A prospector 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 187 
 
 The village of Gold Hill, two miles from Virginia 
 City, is deader, if anything, than its neighbor. There 
 IS the same dilapidation and wreckage, and the same 
 canting walls and neglect of repairs. Figs called 
 my attention to the church steeple, and said, "That's 
 goin' to fall pretty soon. It rocks like a cradle every 
 time the wind blows hard." 
 
 On the outskirts of the hamlet I met a Scotchman 
 who affirmed that his cabin was the oldest dwelling in 
 the region. It was built in 1867. The main part 
 contained a single room, but there was a leanto at the 
 rear and a little cave ran back under the hill. The 
 owner invited me in to rest myself and offered me a cup 
 of whiskey, or, if I preferred, he would make me a cup 
 of tea, coffee or chocolate. When we entered, a gray 
 cat departed through a missing window-pane. The 
 man said the cat was his pardner; "And I don't want 
 any other," he affirmed. "If you have a man living 
 with you he is too apt to smoke and drink and read too 
 much and not attend to the cabin business. I been 
 spendin' a year or two in the new gold region at Tonopah. 
 I had to get away from there on account of my health. 
 It's a desert country with not enough sagebrush growin' 
 to shelter a jack-rabbit, and the water is bad — full of 
 borax, soda and alkah. The Tonopah people been 
 dyin' like sheep. Some of 'em, when they begin to feel 
 sick go to Carson and boil a little of the alkali out of 
 
1 88 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 their systems in the hot springs that are there. But I 
 come here, and the first thing I knew I was in bed with 
 the pleurisy. I had it in good shape, and pretty near 
 died. The doctor said the cabin needed ventilation 
 and he ordered that window-pane broke." 
 
 The cabin was very neat in spite of its small size. 
 It was on the warm side of the hill and so was comfort- 
 able in winter, while the cavern annex was " as cool as 
 an ice house" in the hottest days of summer. In fact, 
 I judged that its occupant considered it an ideal resi- 
 dence. He was a prospector, and there had been times 
 when he had made so much money he didn't know 
 what to do with it. Nevertheless he had lost it "twice 
 as fast as he made it." 
 
 That evening, at Virginia City, I dropped in at the 
 office of the paper on which Mark Twain began his 
 literary career as a reporter. There was no one behind 
 the counter in the little front room, and I went on into 
 the type-setting department — a high, grimy room with 
 type-cases along the sides, and walls bedizened with 
 big theatre posters. I was made welcome, and I sat 
 down by a stove in the middle of the apartment. Two 
 or three men were busy at the type, and their friends 
 strolled in from time to time to look on, or chat, or warm 
 themselves. Among the rest was one of the early 
 settlers of the region, and I had a long talk with him. 
 He looked as if he had shared the fate of the town. His 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 189 
 
 overcoat was greasy and faded, and he hobbled in 
 aided by a cane, and his ragged beard was streaked 
 with tobacco juice. I asked him how the town appeared 
 when he first saw it. 
 
 After lifting the cover of the stove and spitting into the 
 opening, he replied, "I come here in April, 1861, and I 
 found just twenty-nine houses. The most important 
 was a small wooden hotel where you paid a dollar a 
 night and furnished your own blankets and slept on the 
 floor. You had to pay a dollar, too, for a meal and it 
 was no better than you get here now for twenty-five 
 cents. What I counted as houses were none of them 
 anything but shanties. Some of the people were living 
 in tents, and some had run back a little drift under a 
 hill and stretched over the hollow a green hide for a 
 roof. The edges of the hide were made fast by laying 
 on rocks. To shut in the front for the night you hung 
 up a blanket. These dugouts were common for years. 
 
 "Ore was discovered in this region about three miles 
 below by the Grosch brothers in 1858. It was a heavy 
 black sulphite and in order to find out its value they 
 started over the mountains for San Francisco to have 
 some of it assayed. But the cold and the snow were 
 too much for them, and one died on the way and the 
 other died afterward from the exposure. The ore 
 proved to be very rich in silver, and some nephews of 
 theirs went back to where it was found. Other pros- 
 
1 90 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 pectors poked around the neighborhood, too, and in 
 1859 two fellers named MuUins and Riley was lookin' 
 at the croppings above here on this hill and discovered 
 some heavy sort of rock they didn't understand. Com- 
 stock was still farther up the hill, and he see they'd 
 found something, and he come and looked at it. He 
 knew the ore was valuable and he bluffed 'em into 
 givin' him a third right in the discovery. They staked 
 out claims and that was the beginning of work here at 
 the Comstock Lode. The really productive part of 
 the lode is only about a mile long, and in thickness it 
 varies from three or four feet to over a hundred. How 
 deep it goes no one can say, but it doesn't pinch out 
 as most lodes do after going down a short distance. 
 
 "At first there was no very great excitement, but by 
 '61 people begun to come in pretty rapid on foot, on 
 horseback, and in teams. That next winter was a 
 terrible hard one. The snow was so drifted wagons 
 couldn't get in with supplies, and wood was fifty dollars 
 a cord and hay a hundred and fifty dollars a ton, and 
 everything else equally expensive. But in the spring 
 we had plenty once more. Until the railroad was built 
 in 1869 our supplies come on ten and twelve-mule 
 teams, and there got to be five lines of six-horse stages 
 running into town. The railroad was a great job; for 
 it wound around the mountains, and over the hills, 
 and through tunnels and all that; but with the wealth 
 
The tinker 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 191 
 
 there was here they'd have built a railroad up a tree 
 if necessary. 
 
 " People come faster than ever when the railroad was 
 dpne and we had here the biggest mining camp the 
 world ever saw. However, it wasn't the prospectors 
 who staked out the early claims who made the big 
 fortunes. They sold out and traded off and started 
 again. I knew Comstock well. He was a man of some 
 education, big-hearted and good-natured — a man who 
 would never do wrong to anyone except himself. An- 
 other person very much like Comstock was 'Old 
 Virginia,' as we called him, the man this town was 
 named after. I've seen those two lying on the floor 
 under the influence of liquor and the twenty dollar gold 
 pieces rolling out of their pockets. 
 
 "In those days everybody had money. I used to 
 make five hundred dollars a month myself. Part of it 
 I earned as leader of a brass band. There were four of 
 us, and we got twenty dollars apiece to play at a ball, 
 five dollars apiece at a serenade, and ten dollars each 
 at a funeral. The brass band was always at the funerals. 
 We played a funeral march on the way to the cemetery, 
 a dirge at the grave, and a quickstep comin' back. 
 
 " One of the first times I ever saw Mark Twain was 
 at a ball where I was playing. He'd got a little step- 
 ladder for a seat, and he kept jogghng me as he moved 
 it around to get a better sight of the people. So I finally 
 
192 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 up with my cornet and blew a blast in his ear. He left 
 the hall then, and the next day he tried to get even by 
 giving me a good hot write-up in his newspaper. But 
 we met afterward, and he treated me to a drink and 
 things were all right. That was the only time I ever 
 saw the color of his money, though I suppose he's 
 drank one hundred and fifty dollars worth of whiskey 
 at my expense. What he did with the salary he earned 
 I can't imagine. I never knew him to gamble nor buy 
 mining property. He had plenty of chances to make 
 his fortune, but he was afraid to invest five cents. 
 
 "Most of us were pretty easy in money matters. 
 If we made a lucky strike we laid off to enjoy ourselves. 
 A man might be rich today and dead broke tomorrow. 
 You probably have met men about town since you've 
 , been here who are fortunate now to earn a living, but 
 who have been worth a great many thousands of dollars. 
 Comstock died poor. He went to Montana where he 
 wound up by putting a six-shooter to his ear, after 
 having returned to his tent disappointed in a prospect- 
 ing tour. There's thousands and thousands of pros- 
 pectors' holes dug that never reveal any sign of good 
 ore, and there's lots of mines that are worth nothing 
 except to sell to Eastern investors. The chance of out- 
 siders making anything in western mines is pretty slim. 
 If a mine is a profitable property we prefer to own it 
 ourselves, and if we sell stock in such a mine it's usual 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 193 
 
 to dig out some of the best ore to show and boom the 
 price till we've disposed of what stock there is for sale. 
 Then we work some poor portion of the mine so the 
 outsiders think it is worthless and sell back their stock 
 at almost nothing. Afterward we get at the richer 
 parts again and make money for ourselves. I suppose 
 it's likely, if you were to figure up the capital invested 
 which fails to be profitable, and the unrewarded labor 
 and the other expenses, it has cost more to find and get 
 the gold and silver in this Western country than the 
 metals mined have been worth. 
 
 "But the possibilities are alluring. To show the 
 chances — I knew two fellows from Indiana who rode 
 in here on horseback one morning, staked out claims, 
 and in the afternoon sold out on the street for three 
 thousand dollars apiece. That was more money than 
 they'd ever seen where they came from. They thought 
 they was rich, and they left for home. Another fellow 
 traded an old plug of a horse for an interest in a mine 
 and sold out a little later for four hundred thousand 
 dollars. Then there was Sandy Bowers. He got hold 
 of a claim a few feet wide, and there was a woman had 
 a small claim joining his. They got married, and 
 pretty soon it was found their claims covered a little 
 mountain of gold. It was in the hollow above the village 
 of Gold Hill, and that was what gave the place its name. 
 The gold was taken out and Sandy sold his interest. 
 
194 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 and was immensely rich. In order to enjoy his wealth 
 he built himself a mansion about twenty miles from 
 here over in the Washoe Valley — country where it is 
 about as bare of everything but sagebrush as it is 
 around Virginia City, and he became known as the 
 'Sagebrush Croesus.' He spared no expense in putting 
 up his house, and it was of cut stone and cost half a 
 million. The door-knobs and hinges were of solid silver, 
 and there was everything else to match. Most of the 
 furniture he imported from Europe because there wasn't 
 any fine enough to be had on this side of the Atlantic. 
 They had a ten thousand dollar library, though neither 
 Sandy nor his wife could read or write; but the bindings 
 looked well. They bought an expensive piano, though 
 they knew no more about music than a pig does. Of 
 course they had to have what they called statuary, 
 even if it was made of plaster-of-Paris. Whoever sold 
 them the stuff didn't lose anything. When they opened 
 up their house they had a big feast and invited all their 
 friends, and the oysters that was served were from 
 Philadelphia and cost a dollar and a half apiece. 
 
 "For a time they lived in grand style, as nearly as 
 they could copy it; but they speculated in stocks and 
 lost all they had. Sandy died, and was so poor at the 
 time he hadn't the money to buy a single silver hinge 
 of his fine mansion. His wife became a fortune-teller 
 in San Francisco, and was called 'the Washoe Seeress.' 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 195 
 
 "It's astonishing, the wealth that's been taken from 
 this little strip of rough country here. One shaft alone 
 has yielded two hundred and seventy millions. The 
 men that got the bulk of the money from that hole were 
 what we speak of as 'The Big Four' — Flood and O'Brien 
 and Fair and Mackey. The first two were saloon- 
 keepers in San Francisco, and the others worked up 
 here at the mines. They just happened to invest in the 
 right thing, and they hung on. Why, I remember when 
 Mackey was getting three dollars and a half a day 
 while I was getting four. 
 
 "Very little of the fortunes that have been made in 
 the Comstock have been spent in the staie of Nevada. 
 The millionaires prefer to live in San Francisco or 
 New York or Europe. Nevada furnishes the money, 
 but is left poor. However, for the first few years this 
 town was full of wealth. There was gamblers here 
 that had two or three hundred thousand at a time, and 
 if a church was to be built, or other public work to be 
 done they were the heaviest contributors. They made 
 their money easier than anybody else, and they gave 
 more freely. But money doesn't stay with a gambler. 
 If he lives long enough he ends in poverty. 
 
 "For some years there was considerable lawlessness, 
 and the fellow who could draw his pistol first was the 
 best man. But, as a whole, this was a good place to live 
 in then — always lots goin' on and the streets so crowded 
 
196 Highways and Bjrways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 nights you could hardly get along. Everything was 
 prosperous and promising when in October, 1875, 
 about five o'clock one morning a gentleman threw a 
 lighted lamp at a woman he had some difference with 
 and unluckily missed his aim and set the house on fire. 
 A gale was blowing and that fire swept right through 
 the town and burned all the business section and three- 
 fourths of the homes, and the churches and millions of 
 feet of heavy timber to be used in bracing the walls of 
 the mines when the ore was taken out. The people in 
 the burned district had about all they wanted to do to 
 escape with what they had on, and very little was saved. 
 For a while no sort of adequate shelter could be had 
 for most of the homeless, and many families would just 
 stretch blankets over the sagebrush and crawl under. 
 We went to work at once to rebuild, and forty-five 
 trains a day came in from Carson bringing grub and 
 supplies. But the city was never the same afterward. 
 The buildings were thrown up in a hurry, and they 
 don't stand the test of time. Pretty soon the town began 
 to dwindle down, and a good many of the mines were 
 abandoned. As they got deeper they became more 
 difficult to work, and there was serious trouble with 
 hot water in them, and, besides, the price of silver had 
 dropped. A few mines are still in operation and are 
 adding to their owners' wealth, and there is some 
 prospect that things may be brighter in the future; but 
 Virginia City will never again be what it was." 
 
Making firewood of the sagebrush 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 197 
 
 When I left the old mining camp I went to Carson, the 
 capital of the state. The place is on the level floor of a 
 wide valley and looks like a country village. There is 
 some moisture here and with the help of irrigation the 
 place is an oasis amid the almost interminable barrens 
 of sagebrush round about. The inhabitants number 
 somewhat over two thousand, and there is a long main 
 street of small stores, hotels and saloons, back of which 
 are other streets lined with residences, mostly a story 
 or a story and a half high; but the houses have fruit 
 trees and green grass about them, and the streets are 
 lined with Lombardy poplars which guard the pubHc 
 ways like arboreal sentinels standing in martial array, 
 shoulder to shoulder. 
 
 Everyone talked mines and ore, and of fortunes 
 made and lost. Such talk was especially rife at the time 
 of my visit because there were reports of a great dis- 
 covery twenty-five miles distant, where two brothers 
 by the name of Ramsey had been prospecting for over 
 a year. We understood that they had found some 
 wonderful ledges which assayed as much as twelve 
 thousand dollars a ton. With the first rumors men 
 from all the region around started for the new El Dorado. 
 It was even said that one of the railroad trains had been 
 deserted by its crew who stampeded to the gold fields. 
 The spot was a canyon off in the desert, and whoever 
 went had to carry supplies for himself and horses. 
 
1 98 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Teams were in great demand and every sort of a vehicle 
 was pressed into use to convey prospectors and their 
 outfits to the land of promise. A two-horse rig could not 
 be had for less than eight dollars a day. Two old 
 prospectors who went out from Carson told me of their 
 experiences. They started in the afternoon driving a 
 span hitched to a buggy. They had only a general 
 idea of the direction, but travelled on through the sage- 
 brush till dark when they camped. At daybreak they 
 were on the road again, and now they had plenty of 
 company. Other rigs and bunches of horsemen and 
 men on foot were constantly in sight trailing along the 
 valleys and over the hills, all in a rush to reach the gold 
 region in time to pick up some choice location. When 
 they got to the camp they found it consisted of a half 
 dozen tents and about twenty wagons. They lost no 
 time in asking about the ore which was half gold ; but 
 they failed to get any very exact information. The 
 Ramseys had nothing to say, and of all the men who 
 were tramping the hills and posting location notices, 
 not one had seen a pound of pay ore of any description. 
 It was known however that the Ramsey brothers had 
 staked seventy-four claims. Some fellows of wide ex- 
 perience said the region resembled Tonopah, Goldfield, 
 and all other mining camps they had ever visited. But 
 one man said it looked like hell with the fire out. 
 
 The two prospectors tramped about forty miles that 
 day without discovering anything promising. Toward 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 199 
 
 evening they returned to their outfit and camped in a 
 gulch near a tiny rivulet, built a fire of sagebrush, made 
 coffee and were happy. For company they had about 
 three hundred other gold-seekers and the narrow gulch 
 was crowded full. A saloon man had arrived in the 
 afternoon with several cases of whiskey, and the bottles 
 had been promptly bought at his own price. The whis- 
 key increased the hilarity, and some of the lads around 
 the evening camp fires celebrated by firing off their 
 pistols into the air. Finally everybody retired to rest 
 and quiet reigned; but about midnight a number of the 
 horses got loose and there was chasing around barefoot 
 to catch them. 
 
 At dawn the camp began to bestir itself, and the 
 two old prospectors were careful to secure an early 
 supply of water from the rivulet. They were none too 
 soon; for each man as he awoke would go and scrub 
 and dip water and lead his horses to drink, and condi- 
 tions in the brook soom became very bad. That was 
 the only available source of supply, and the flavor of 
 soapsuds and mud did not improve it for coffee. Our 
 prospectors did not see much to be gained by staying 
 longer, and they staked out a couple of claims at 
 random and returned to town. If the excitement 
 proved well founded they still had a chance for wealth. 
 If it did not, they would be at no further expense. 
 Lacking new developments the camp was sure to 
 
2O0 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 dwindle very rapidly. Thus far, in its three days of 
 notoriety, probably five thousand dollars had been 
 spent by the prospectors who rushed to the canyon, 
 while not five cents worth of ore had been brought away. 
 
 Round about Carson, at intervals in the valleys, were 
 groups of ranch buildings, usually sheltered by a little 
 grove of cottonwoods. The cottonwoods were to some 
 degree a source of fuel supply and were every few years 
 cut back and allowed to grow out again. However, 
 most of the wood that was burned seemed to be the 
 sagebrush. It looked like poor stuflF, but I was assured 
 It made a hot fire. The stems were sometimes as large 
 as one's arm, though soon dividing into a brush of 
 twigs, and the bushes were seldom over three or four 
 feet high. If the farmers went back into the mountains 
 they could get scrub pine; but they would do this only 
 to sell it in the town where it was worth nine dollars a 
 cord. 
 
 In both Virginia City and Carson, Indians were 
 frequently seen on the streets; but they seldom appeared 
 to have any very definite business there. It was as if 
 they had come to dream amid a civilization they could 
 not comprehend. Sometimes several would sit In the 
 sunshine on the curbing and stay purposeless a long 
 time, or a dozen or more might gather in a waste lot, 
 some sitting, some lying down, some standing waiting 
 in a seemingly vacant-minded way till the Inclination 
 

A Nevada Town with a Past 201 
 
 came to go elsewhere. The men's garments were 
 modern, and so were the women's gowns; but the 
 feminine portion of the race, both old and young, 
 delighted in gay shawls, and in bright colored kerchiefs 
 which they wore over their heads. The women were 
 fat and stumpy and moved along with an awkward 
 waddle. Sometimes one would have a papoose on her 
 back, strapped to a board that had a hood-like projec- 
 tion above, from beneath which the little one looked 
 out, silent and watchful. 
 
 On the outskirts of Carson amid the sagebrush I 
 happened on a little Indian village of a half dozen 
 families. I approached one of the houses — a low, rude 
 shanty, and suddenly a dog made a rush and grabbed 
 me by the leg. I kicked, and a small Indian boy came 
 and drove the cur around the house with a switch. 
 Near the dwelling was an open-sided shed just large 
 enough to shelter the wagon which was underneath. 
 Every Indian family in the region aspired to own a 
 wagon. They usually bought one second-hand at a 
 cost of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars, and they 
 took better care of it than of any of their other belong- 
 ings. A wagon shed is perhaps exceptional, but they 
 at least cover it from the sun and rain with sacking. 
 
 Except for the shanty I have mentioned, the habita- 
 tions of the village were wigwams — conical frame- 
 works of sticks covered with canvas. The cabin had a 
 
202 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 floor and a stove; but in the wigwams the fire was made 
 in the center on the ground, and the smoke escaped 
 through a hole in the peak. Of course, a good deal of 
 smoke lingers inside, and as a result the older Indians, 
 especially the squaws, are apt to be blind. Not far 
 from each dwelling was a half circle made by heaping 
 up sagebrush in a thick hedge. This served as a wind 
 break, and within its shelter the squaws like to sit and 
 weave their baskets and do other work. 
 
 A half mile distant was a deserted camp, and for 
 many rods about, the earth was strewn with boards and 
 sticks, broken crockery, tin cans, bottles, pieces of 
 carpeting, pots, pails and baskets and broken tools, 
 and there were shoes galore, the ruins of a mattress and 
 various articles of clothing. One or two of the wigwams 
 were nearly complete. A man who lived in the vicinity 
 told me that the camp had been abandoned on account 
 of the death of a squaw. "You see," said he, "they 
 think that the squaw's spirit will be comin' back and 
 kickin' things over, and they always move every time 
 anyone dies. They'll even leave a good wooden house. 
 Often they go only a short distance, but they wouldn't 
 stay in the same place. It seems to be their idea that 
 the spirit will only harbor around within a few feet or 
 rods of the hut where the person died. 
 
 "The Indians are queer in a good many ways. 
 They don't hke to have their photographs taken, and 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 203 
 
 if a person comes near their homes with a camera they 
 will go into the hut and shut the door, and they won't 
 poke their heads out till the photographer goes away. 
 Their notion is that the person who gets their picture 
 has power to make them do whatever he pleases. They 
 believe he could cause their death, if he chose to. 
 There's a man in Carson got a picture of a papoose, 
 and the child died. He da'sn't let the Indians know 
 he has that picture. The squaw mother would kill him. 
 
 "They used to think that the white man's medicine 
 would be fatal to 'em; and they still depend to some 
 extent on their own superstitious methods of healing. 
 A young squaw here lately had the pneumonia. My 
 wife went and see her and said she was pretty badly off. 
 But the medicine man come and give her some boiled 
 herbs, and the Indians was there from miles around. 
 They stayed all night and had a devil of a powwow, 
 crying and hollering to keep the squaw's soul from 
 takin' flight, and I'll be darned if she didn't get well. 
 
 "When a white man lies down to sleep he always 
 covers his feet and keeps his head out; but, do you 
 know, an Indian does just the opposite. He covers his 
 head every time. If he has only a small piece of blanket 
 bis head will be wound up in it, even if all the rest of 
 his body is exposed." 
 
 I mentioned to the man my experience with the 
 Indian dog, and he remarked, " Well, there's no serious 
 
204 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 harm done. None of the dogs out here ever have hydro- 
 phobia. We don't know what hydrophobia is. Why, 
 one of our women was East once, and she was walking 
 on a town street when she heard a great racket, and a 
 man shouted to her there was a mad dog comin'. 
 'What's he mad about .?' she says. 
 
 "The Indians use acorns for food a good deal. They 
 lay in a store of them in the fall, and every few days 
 they shell some and hammer the kernels on a flat rock 
 into a kind of meal. Then they make a low, level- 
 topped heap of dirt, two feet across with a rim around 
 the edge, lay over it a piece of cheese cloth and on that 
 put the acorn meal and stick a little bunch of cedar up 
 in the middle. Meanwhile they've got some water 
 boiling and they pour it on. It takes the bitterness out 
 of the nuts, and the cedar gives the meal a flavor that 
 they like. That done they boil the meal for a time and 
 then dip out the dough, a big spoonful at a time, and 
 drop it into a dish of hot grease. They gave my wife 
 one of these acorn doughnuts, but I couldn't get up the 
 appetite to taste it myself. 
 
 " The women help in the town at housework. They're 
 not very steady and come and go as they please. The 
 men do better. If you pay them regularly and don't 
 scold them they're pretty faithful. But they won't 
 contract to stay with you, and if the notion takes them 
 to go off" a week fishing, they go. The amount they'll 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 205 
 
 do in a day compares very favorably with what any 
 other class of laborers would accomplish. By gosh! 
 when they work, they work, and I doubt, for instance, 
 if there's many white men can hook out potatoes as 
 fast as they do. 
 
 "They always camp where sagebrush is plenty, but 
 they don't seem to care how far they have to pack water. 
 The Indians earn considerable money, and the young 
 fellows all wear good clothes. Most of the men like to 
 gamble, but they do it principally among themselves, 
 and as a rule they put what they earn to good use. 
 However, they are wasteful in not takin' care of what 
 they have. Furniture and household goods of all sorts 
 they leave around wherever it happens to suit them, and 
 the things get rained on, or dried up with the sun or 
 spoiled in some other manner and then are thrown away. 
 They are more particular to protect their wagons than 
 anything else — at least while the red paint lasts. That 
 is because it is not easy to accumulate the cash to replace 
 one. The wagons are chiefly useful in going back into 
 the hills after pine-nuts and acorns." 
 
 The Indians bring large quantities of the pine-nuts 
 to market, and the nuts are eaten around nearly every 
 fireside in the region where they grow. The seeds are 
 about a half inch long and a quarter inch in diameter, 
 and the shells are thin so that they can easily be crushed 
 in the fingers. In taste the kernels are sweet and 
 
2o6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 pleasing, and not only does the human race enjoy them, 
 but they are devoured by dogs, horses and birds. The 
 trees are the most important food trees in the Sierras 
 and they supply the ranches with much of their fuel 
 and fence posts. They seldom grow more than fifteen 
 or twenty feet high, and they have no inclination to 
 symmetry, but throw out crooked and divergent 
 branches. The trunk of a full-grown tree is about a 
 foot through. They occur scatteringly in bushy patches 
 from the margin of the sage plains to an elevation of 
 about eight thousand feet. No slope is too rough and 
 none too dry for the nut pine, and it is the predominant 
 tree over a vast territory. Tens of thousands of acres 
 are found in continuous belts. Seen from a distance the 
 trees darken the land where they grow, yet a closer 
 view shows that they never form crowded groves, cast 
 little shade, and their forest has none of the damp leafy 
 glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. 
 When the brown nutritious seeds are ripe the Indian 
 women who have been out at service among the settlers 
 washing and drudging, assemble at the family huts, 
 and so do the men who have been working on the 
 ranches. Then they make ready the long beating poles, 
 and such bags and baskets as they can procure and all 
 start gleefully for the nut lands. As soon as they get 
 into the vicinity of the trees they select a spot where 
 water and grass are found and camp. That done the 
 
A Nevada Town with a Past 207 
 
 children run up the ridges to the forest, and the men 
 laden with poles, and the women with baskets, follow. 
 The beating begins and the cones fly in all directions 
 among the rocks and sagebrush. Once in a while a 
 man will climb a tree and cut off the more fruitful 
 branches with a hatchet. The squaws gather the cones 
 and build fires by which they roast them until the scales 
 open sufficiently to allow the seeds to be shaken out. 
 The nut gatherers get much bedraggled with the soft 
 resin of the pines, but this does not trouble them in the 
 least. In the evening, assembled about their camp fires, 
 all chattering and feasting on the nuts, they are espe- 
 cially happy. 
 
 Here was a bit of life truly idyllic, and it seemed to 
 me nothing in the feverish delving for fortunes in the 
 earth was half so charming. 
 
 Note. — ^To Eastern eyes, the Nevada country, as soon as you get 
 away from the wooded mountains, is desolate in the extreme; but its 
 very desolation is one of the things that makes it interesting by way 
 of contrast. Virginia City and Gold Hill, however, have a magic 
 past that makes them quite fascinating entirely independent of their 
 surroundings. Then there is Carson — ^which is a real curiosity, it is 
 such a half-wild and tiny hamlet for a state capital. These places are 
 not far aside from one of the main routes across the continent and 
 well repay a visit. For those who have time it is to be recommended 
 that they keep on southerly to the new mining regions in the Goldfield 
 and Tonopah country. Here is life in the rough and men with the 
 
2o8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 bark on, and much is to be seen of humanity and nature in this dis- 
 trict that is a revelation to the average traveller. 
 
 Easier of access, and with another sort of attraction is Lake Tahoe 
 on the dividing line between Nevada and California. It is only a 
 fifteen-mile ride on a narrow-gauge road from Truckee on the main 
 line. At the end of this ride you find the best of hotel accommoda- 
 tions, and a wilderness lake some twenty miles long and twelve 
 broad surrounded by forests and snow-capped mountains. The lake 
 is more than six thousand feet above the sea level, and is marvel- 
 ously deep and crystal clear. There are many lesser lakes in the 
 vicinity and foaming cascades, and good hunting and fishing. The 
 region is at its best in the late summer and autumn. One can judge 
 of the virtues of the lake from the fact that Mark Twain, who spent 
 some time on its shores, says, "Three months of camp life on Lake 
 Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor and 
 give him an appetite like an alligator." 
 
 Captain Dick, an eccentric old English sailor, chose this wild 
 mountain retreat for his home, built a cabin, and chiseled out a tomb 
 in the solid rock on a lonely rock-bound island. But he fell out of his 
 boat, while intoxicated, and the lake, which is said never to yield up 
 its dead, became his last resting-place. 
 
 Automobiles have done good service in the Nevada deserts, and 
 are used in many places on regular stage routes. There is a motor 
 route across the state from Utah into California, and branches from 
 this in several directions. On the more important routes there is 
 nothing to seriously trouble a traveller in good weather, but some- 
 times washouts are encountered, and the going is rough where alkali 
 is found. Lake Tahoe can be visited by motorists either from the 
 north by way of the quaint mountain town of Truckee, or the jour- 
 ney can be made from Carson City around the south and east side 
 of the lake. 
 
 Nebraska is known as the "Sagebrush State," and in general I 
 suppose it merits the name, but when one reaches the vicinity of the 
 famous divorce town of Reno the wildness of the country disappears, 
 and the landscape is distinctly pastoral and agricultural. 
 

 
 
X 
 
 AMONG THE SHASTA FOOTHILLS 
 
 IT WAS eleven o'clock at night, and I had just 
 stopped off at a little railway station in Northern 
 California. The station was not lighted and when 
 the train rumbled away I was left blinking in the un- 
 certain darkness. I looked this way and that for some 
 sign of habitation and saw none. Looming against 
 the northern sky rose a grim black peak, an 
 almost perfect pyramid, strangely regular and vast and 
 near. In the east rose another pyramid mountain 
 mass, ghostly white with eternal snows. That I knew 
 was Shasta. I began exploring the lonely void around 
 and presently discovered a man with a lantern on the 
 other side of the station. This man was good enough 
 to act as my guide, and he piloted me across the road to 
 a story-and-a-half hotel hidden among some trees. 
 Then he went his way. The building was dark and 
 silent. I stepped up on the piazza and after rapping 
 again and again without avail reinforced my blows 
 ^ith shouts of "Hello!" 
 
 209 
 
210 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 At length a woman's voice responded, and presently 
 
 the lady of the house appeared with a candle. She 
 
 said she had no accommodations left except a cot bed; 
 
 but as her hotel was the only one in the hamlet, a cot 
 
 bed seemed to me a very satisfactory solution of my 
 
 difficulties. She gave me the candle, and I climbed a 
 
 narrow stairway into a garret — a little, rough-boarded 
 
 apartment with a closed deal door at either end and a 
 
 rude railing around the stairway-opening in the middle. 
 
 A stand and a chair were in one corner, and in each of 
 
 the other corners was a cot bed. Two of the beds were 
 
 already occupied. The other was mine. There were 
 
 no windows and no provision for ventilation, and after 
 
 I blew out the candle the room was as dark as a pocket. 
 
 Downstairs I could hear a clock solemnly ticking. One 
 
 of my fellow-roomers was snoring uneasily, and the other 
 
 would now and then talk in his sleep. But at last all 
 
 this faded out of my consciousness, and when I awoke 
 
 there were glints of light coming in at sundry cracks 
 
 and knot holes in the partitions that separated the 
 
 garret I was in from the apartments adjoining at either 
 
 end. The occupants of these rooms were astir, and one 
 
 at a time, two from each chamber, they entered mv 
 
 room and passed down the stairway. 
 
 My fellowrroomers now rose, and one of them, as h-=* 
 dressed, lit and smoked a cigaret. To wash we were 
 obliged to go down to the back porch, where on a bench 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 21 1 
 
 was a basin with a pail beside it from which to dip the 
 necessary water. From this little porch we had the 
 mighty form of Shasta in full view, marvelous in the 
 height of its aspiring pinnacles and in the unsullied 
 whiteness with which the snows clothed its wild crags. 
 The woodland darkened its base, but the trees gradually 
 frayed out and ceased long before they reached the 
 summit. 
 
 We could also look forth from the porch on that near 
 and frowning peak of gloom I had seen the night 
 before. From bottom to top it was little else than 
 barren rock and loose slides of stone. "It's called 
 Black Butte," said the hired girl, "and I've been told 
 it's infested with rattlesnakes, and that the rocks are 
 all wore slick with the snakes comin' and goin'. It's 
 a fine place for 'em all right, and people say if you go to 
 the mountain just about sun-up you can see the rattle- 
 snakes pokin' up their heads all around." 
 
 "Well," said the landlady, "I know that knoll on 
 the east side of Black Butte is a regular rattlesnake 
 den. I had a boarder once named Chapman, and 
 he had a perfect mania for catchin' rattlesnakes. 
 He was really luny about it, and he went after 'em every 
 Sunday. I've never dumb up there, but I've seen the 
 snakes' tracks crossin' the road down below. He'd 
 catch 'em alive and ship 'em off and sell 'em." 
 
212 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 " It's said that if you get a good fat rattlesnake and 
 try out the oil, that oil is a wonderful cure for rheuma- 
 tism," remarked one of the lodgers. "You rub it on 
 and take it internally, both." 
 
 "I'm not scared of snakes," declared the hired girl, 
 gazing meditatively at the dark stony height. "I'd 
 just as soon tackle 'em as not; but I don't want any- 
 thing to do with a mouse. Mice are creatures I can't 
 stand. I can dance for a week if I see a mouse runnin' 
 around the room. Yes, you bet I can I" 
 
 "I ain't stuck on seein' mice or snakes either," said 
 the landlady; "but I think the varmints back on 
 Shasta are worse than the snakes." 
 
 Then she told how, occasionally, a brown bear was 
 captured and wildcats shot, and how right there at 
 the hotel they sometimes would hear a California lion 
 roar, or the coyotes yelping. In the midst of her 
 observations she came to a sudden stop and chased out 
 an old hen that had walked into the house and was 
 looking around. "That there hen has got to change 
 its habits!" she announced. "For two days it has laid 
 an egg on my bed, and I won't have such doin's." 
 
 The hens were laying very well, at present, she said, 
 only they often stole nests off in the manzanita shrubs 
 and thorny "sticker-bushes" where she could not find 
 the eggs. 
 
The well at the hack door 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 213 
 
 The place where I was stopping was a woodland mill 
 village clustering about some big red box-factory 
 buildings with their piles of boards. Some of the 
 houses were substantial cottages, but most were little 
 shacks of unplaned boards that in themselves and in 
 their surroundings were extremely unprepossessing. 
 Their occupants were mostly "Eye-talians." There 
 were no gardens, no green grass — only ragged forest of 
 brush and stumps and brown gritty earth. All the 
 vicinity had been cleared of its good timber. 
 
 One odd feature of the village was its ovens. Under 
 a shed adjoining nearly every house was a plank plat- 
 form on which was built a dome-like cavern of stones 
 and cement. In this a fire is made, and when it has 
 burned down to embers it is raked out, and the loaves 
 of bread are put in and the opening closed. The heat 
 the oven has absorbed from the fire does the baking. 
 
 In my walks I often heard the weird honking of wild 
 geese, and when I turned my eyes upward I would see 
 a flock of the great birds with outstretched necks 
 winging their swift way northward. Sometimes there 
 would be no more than a dozen, and again there would 
 be scores. They flew in a more or less V-shaped forma- 
 tion, and it was an inspiring sight to see them ploughing 
 along the blue field of heaven. Frequently two ot 
 three flocks were in sight at the same time. 
 
214 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 About a mile down the valley, not far from the road, 
 was a pleasant green hollow where some cows were 
 pastured, and through the glen flowed a crystal-clear 
 brook. The brook burst forth full-fledged from a 
 bountiful spring, and in the pellucid depths of the pools 
 near this spring, one could get glimpses of lurking 
 trout. Close by the stream was a cluster of pines, and 
 one day as I was passing I noticed among the trees two 
 men who had a little fire. I went into the grove and 
 joined them. They spoke of themselves as "bums," 
 or "hoboes," but affirmed that they were not tramps. 
 "A tramp," they explained, "never works, but a hobo 
 is a man who travels on the road and does work when 
 he can find a job." 
 
 They even entered on a learned disquisition as to the 
 origin of the word hobo; for they were men of intelli- 
 gence and some education. They had "travelled from 
 A to Z" in every state of the Union, and one of them 
 said, " There's very few has more knowledge of places 
 and routes than I have. I could pass a better civil 
 service examination than any mail agent on this rail- 
 road that goes through here." 
 
 They had bunked in a box car that had a little straw 
 in it the night previous. The sun had warmed the car 
 so it retained its heat till about midnight, but after that 
 it became so cold the hoboes crawled out and went 
 down the railroad and built a fire. "Yes, there are 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 215 
 
 discomforts," they said, "and yet this is a very healthy 
 life, and we never have any trouble with our stomachs 
 or our lungs. A sick man couldn't do better than to 
 find a good pard, take along a little money and start 
 out on the road." 
 
 The men seemed very leisurely. In fact, "a tramp 
 doesn't care whether he gets to town this week or next. 
 He knows the town will be there when he arrives." 
 
 My companions spoke of the grove they were in as 
 the " Hoboes' Jungle," and said that men of their sort 
 were there nearly every day. They had several paper 
 bags and parcels of provisions and were preparing 
 dinner. The younger man acted as chef, and the older 
 said, "I never was much of a jungle cook, but I can 
 wash the dishes and get the firewood." 
 
 Dishes were plenty, such as they were. There were 
 tin cans and pails in great variety, and there was a 
 stew-pan, a frying-pan and a large pot and a number of 
 }ow, panlike dishes the hoboes had themselves shaped 
 out of pieces of tin. The frequenters of this jungle 
 never washed their pots and pans after they finished a 
 feast, but left that job for the next men. The older of 
 the two bums took the pot, and with a rag and some 
 sand gave the inside a thorough scouring. Then he 
 washed it at the stream side and plugged up a hole with 
 a bit of wood. He brought it full of water to his comrade 
 who was paring potatoes. Afterward he returned to the 
 
2i6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 brook with several other cans and pails which he also 
 cleansed and put in order. One of them he filled from 
 the stream and set on the fire to boil for the coffee. Last 
 of all he went into the neighboring woods and gathered 
 an armful of fallen branches, broke them up and 
 adjusted the pieces on a rough circle of stones that 
 served for a fireplace. 
 
 "Now," said the cook, "we want some ladles." 
 
 "All right," responded the other, "I never seen the 
 time when I couldn't jump into the bush and make a 
 set of kitchen tools in about fifteen minutes, if I was 
 real hungry." 
 
 He got out his jackknife, selected some pieces of 
 wood that suited his purpose, and soon had fashioned 
 two rough paddles. Besides the potatoes, or "spuds" 
 as they called them, the cook prepared two large onions 
 and fried a good-sized piece of steak. He had some 
 little packages of salt and pepper which he drew on for 
 flavoring. The work was done with a good deal of 
 deftness, but it took considerable time. However, he 
 said that preparing the food was not nearly so much of 
 a task as getting it in the first place. 
 
 "What'll you have for a plate?" asked the cook, 
 turning to his pard. 
 
 "Here's a flat tin dish that'll do," replied the older 
 man, "only I must burn it out first." 
 

 
 pr ^ k.. 
 
 
 Hoboes getting dinner 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 217 
 
 When everything was ready the cook put half the 
 great mess of potatoes and onions into the burned-out 
 dish, together with half the steak, while he reserved his 
 share in the frying-pan. Then a loaf of bread was 
 taken out of a parcel and the two sat down on some 
 oil-cans turned bottom upward and ate in great con- 
 tentment. 
 
 "This is a pretty spot," observed the older man, 
 " and I always do like to eat where I can hear the sound 
 of running water." 
 
 They did not pause till the last morsel was gone, and 
 I imagine it was the only square meal they had that 
 day. After it was done, one got out his pipe and the 
 other his chewing tobacco. They had some thought of 
 applying for work in the local mills. If they decided 
 to go on to other regions they would travel by train. 
 Often they were permitted to ride on a freight train 
 in return for helping the train crew with their work. If 
 permission was refused they stowed themselves away 
 somewhere, in or about the cars. Very likely they 
 would get put off. Usually this was done at some stop 
 the train made, and the hobo then spoke of himself as 
 "being ditched." Occasionally the train men would 
 push a hobo off while the train was going, and in the 
 hobo's phraseology he then "hit the grit." At times 
 they sneaked a ride on a passenger coach — perhaps up 
 on top or on the platform of the "blind baggage" 
 
21 8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 coach next to the tender, or perhaps rode seated on 
 the trucks down beneath the cars. "It ain't a bad 
 place under there," declared the older man, "when the 
 dust don't fly too bad, and I've seen trains carryin' 
 more passengers on the trucks than was in the coaches." 
 
 "I told you I'd been to every state in the Union," 
 said the younger man. "Besides that I've been to 
 Honolulu and to Mexico. Mexico is called the land 
 of tomorrow. It's the motto of that country never to 
 do today what you can put off till the next day, and 
 California is just the same. That's the effect of the 
 climate, I suppose, and I won't dispute but what the 
 climate is fine. However, if you want a hobo tourist's 
 idea of California, I'd say that this state is nine-tenths 
 climate and one-tenth business. The hobo that wants 
 to come to a starvation country had better come here. 
 Instead of eating three meals a day he gets only one 
 meal in three days. They call this God's country, but 
 I tell you the devil has the whole thing in hand. 
 
 "When I came out here as a young man affairs went 
 well with me for a time and I got to own two good 
 ranches. Yes, I made barrels of money. Then come 
 a dry year and everything run behind. My stock was 
 starving and I shot forty of my horses to put 'em out 
 of misery. Others I sold to a rich ranchman at a dollar 
 a head. The best of 'em he shipped to Nevada to 
 graze, and the rest he killed and fed to his hogs. In 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 219 
 
 addition to losing by the drouth I speculated in mining 
 stocks and kept sending good money after bad till I 
 lost all I had. 
 
 "This state is overrated. People back East hear 
 about the fruit and the sunshine and the flowers the 
 year around, and the railroads advertise, and the land 
 sharks tell how this is the finest spot on earth to really 
 enjoy livin', and that when a person dies here he gets 
 a ticket right from this glorious climate straight up into 
 heaven with no change of cars. Lots of Eastern people 
 believe this is all as represented. A family comes early in 
 the year from the snows and frosts of their home winter. 
 Here things are green, and the real estate agent knows 
 the new-comers are green too. He shows 'em a place, 
 and says, 'Now this is a nice ranch, and you can raise 
 anything in the world on it. The price is so and so. 
 We're almost giving it away, as it were, but we want 
 intelligent liberal people of your class to settle here.' 
 
 "The man's wife, she looks around, and she says, 
 'Just see the sunshine, and the oranges, and all those 
 roses. I guess we'd better have it.' 
 
 "So the man buys. But in a year or two there's a 
 change in his sentiments, and the wife ain't quite satis- 
 fied. She gets to longin' for the East, and she speaks 
 to her husband and tells him things don't seem to be 
 just as they was represented. That's what he thinks, 
 too, and he's ready to do whatever he can to please her; 
 
220 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 so he goes to the agent he bought of and says he wants 
 to sell. 
 
 "'Why, it's foolish to do that," the agent says. 
 "Prices have dropped and at present you'd lose.' 
 
 "But the man wants to quit, and the agent makes 
 him an offer. 'The way things are now,' he says, 
 'that's the best I can do.' 
 
 "The man sells and goes back East where he come 
 from a few thousand dollars poorer than when he left. 
 The neighbors ask how it happens he didn't stay, and 
 he tells 'em, ' They don't have snow out there, and that's 
 about the only unpleasant feature they lack.' 
 
 "You talk up California to any people in the East 
 who have lived out here and they'll run you off the 
 place. Irrigation is the only salvation for this West 
 Coast land; and, by the way, did you ever notice how 
 the natives spit to help out the work of the streams ? 
 I chew tobacco myself, but I ain't a savage. The tobacco 
 users in this country act as if they owned the air, and 
 the floors of public buildings and railroad cars, not to 
 mention the earth. They are irrigating all the time 
 wherever they are, indoors and out, till a decent man 
 is disgusted. 
 
 "They say it is dreadful easy to make a livin' in the 
 fruit business, but I tell 'em I ain't seen anyone knockin' 
 oranges out of the trees with a gold brick — no, not a 
 single instance of that kind. It's claimed that the San 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 221 
 
 Joaquin Valley is one of the most fertile valleys in the 
 world, and so it is in spots. But watch out for the hard- 
 pan. That is the great backfall in this country. Often 
 the soil Hes so thin on top of it that it's just about 
 worthless. Horned toads wouldn't live on it. But the 
 people in this country are what you call flimflammers, 
 or, in other words, four-flushers. They lay off that 
 hardpan desert into fruit ranches and induce people to 
 leave their happy homes in the East to settle on it. A 
 Californian expects you to give him all the money 
 you've got and thank him for taking it. He sticks you 
 with that land, and you build a shanty on it and put up 
 a windmill and supply the wind yourself. Sheep can 
 barely exist on the soil, and it won't raise white beans. 
 " Do you know about the mosquitoes .? You walk 
 along the Sacramento or the San Joaquin rivers, and 
 the mosquitoes rise in swarms and follow you in droves; 
 and there's terrible malaria in those valleys. Lots of 
 ranchers have to go to the seashore in the summer to 
 spend a couple of months, and you'd be surprised to 
 see how wrinkly and dark and sick they look. Some 
 owners, just in self-defense, lease their land to the 
 Chinamen and live in the city themselves. Chinamen 
 don't have malaria. They are very careful. They 
 scrape their tongues at night with a piece of wood. 
 I've watched 'em, and they bathe their feet before 
 goin' to bed. They always boil their drinkin' water, too, 
 
222 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 and never take any in its original form, but add a Httle 
 tea." 
 
 - "I'll tell you another thing," said the older hobo. 
 "I'm an ex-pugilist, but the fleas down there in South- 
 ern California have knocked me down and jumped on 
 me. Of course you don't get 'em real bad till summer, 
 though there's some all the year." 
 
 "Any hobo who wants to get work on a ranch here 
 has got to carry his own blankets," remarked the 
 younger man. "On the farms back East the hired 
 man has a room in the house and he sits at the family 
 table to eat. Here they want the workingman to 
 knuckle down and show his inferiority. Unless he's 
 got his blankets on his back and will sleep on the straw 
 in the barn it's not easy to find a job. 'Blanket stiff's' 
 is what we call fellers who go about with their bedding. 
 A stiff", you know, is a man who's dead — that is, one 
 who's broke so often he don't really count in the 
 world." 
 
 "A man with a farm here don't begin to get the 
 comfort out of it he would in the East," declared the 
 other hobo. "Fifty acres of good land there will 
 support him handsomely, and he'll raise all his own 
 vegetables, meat and everything. Out here he may 
 have a much bigger place, but he'll raise just one thing — 
 fruit, or cattle, or whatever he chooses, and buy the 
 rest, or do without. There's people in this country 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 223 
 
 with thousands of cattle who don't milk a single cow 
 and they use condensed milk." 
 
 "One reason why we have trouble in getting work 
 here," said the younger man, "is because employers 
 all give preference to natives. You take it there at 
 San Francisco, if you're a native son, they extend the 
 glad hand and either give you a job or find one for you. 
 There's a society they call 'Native Sons of the Golden 
 West' — Gloomy West, it ought to be; and it would 
 describe the members more accurately if they called them 
 'Native Drunks.' They're wine and steam-beer fiends, 
 especially on the day when they gather by thousands 
 to have their annual powrwow. A native son won't do 
 you any kind of a favor without expecting you to grease 
 his hand a little on the side; and we all despise a 
 California hobo. If there's a bunch of us together, 
 and a native son comes along we won't feed him or let 
 him come within forty rods of our camp. It's easy to 
 get the best of 'em. They're not very sharp. You'd 
 be surprised to see how simple some of these native sons 
 are. Why, there was one of 'em who'd always lived in 
 the hills, and he concluded he'd travel East. He'd 
 never seen a railroad, and when he'd bought his ticket 
 and the engine came snorting along the track he was 
 so afraid of the monster he wanted to run away. They 
 could only get him on the train by blindfolding him 
 and backing him up on from a cattle shute." 
 
224 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "Well, I've got even with a few of 'em for their 
 meanness," said the older hobo. "I've done quite a 
 little canvassing out here, and if I'm sober I have a 
 very good address and can make good money. One 
 spell I put in selling nice gold watches for twenty dollars, 
 or perhaps eighteen. They cost me three. Another 
 while I sold harness-dressing that I manufactured 
 myself. I'd explain how it would make the leather 
 soft and pliable and increase the durability, and I did 
 well. Once I had twenty-seven hundred dollars ahead, 
 but it seemed to get away from me. I never was in- 
 clined to hoard my money, and I could never save what 
 I earned for more than a short time. 
 
 "My best profit came from a home dressmaking 
 pattern. It was a kind of a disk made to look like 
 leather and there were holes punched in it. They cost 
 me fifty cents and was marked five dollars, but I told 
 people that the manufacturers allowed me to introduce 
 'em at two-fifty. They sold quick, and often people 
 who didn't buy would have me make a pattern for 
 which they'd pay fifty cents. I could most always get 
 feed for my horse and lodging for myself free by making 
 a few patterns at the ranches where I stopped. 
 
 " But it's much harder to sell to a California woman 
 than it is to an Eastern woman. The climate seems to 
 have a tendency to make people nervous and crazy. 
 A woman here is always in a fidget, and at the same 
 
If ashing day 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 225 
 
 time she may not be doing anything; and there's no 
 use whatever tryin' to transact business with 'em after 
 noon. You couldn't sell a California woman a twenty 
 dollar gold piece for a nickel then. She either wants to 
 take a nap, or to go out on the street to display her 
 finery." 
 
 Two other hobo couples now arrived in the grove. 
 They had parcels of food under their arms, and began 
 dinner preparations. Each couple had their own fire, 
 and did their housekeeping separately, but there was a 
 friendly interchange of certain portions of the bill of fare. 
 One party lacked coflFee and bread. These things were 
 supplied by the other, which in return received some 
 bacon fat to fry eggs in, and several other small items. 
 One of my earlier acquaintances got out a piece of soap 
 and washed his hands and face in a pail of warm water. 
 Then he went to the stream and washed an extra shirt 
 he carried, and hung it on the bushes. Lastly, he shaved 
 himself. In the sheltered glade loitering among the 
 shadows of the grove with its carpet of pine needles, 
 and lulled by the gentle warmth of the weather and by 
 the singing stream the hobo life had a flavor quite 
 alluring. Certainly the hoboes themselves seemed 
 content and even happy. 
 
 The next morning the crown of the mighty Shasta 
 was hidden by mists, and my landlady said, "It's an 
 
226 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Gjast 
 
 old Indian sign that when there's a cloud-cap on 
 Shasta, 'he talkee storm.'" 
 
 Sure enough, the weather was threatening all day, 
 and we had sprinkles of rain and could see the snow- 
 squalls whirling across the white mountain wastes. 
 The hired girl looked from the back door up at the 
 wild clouds hovering about the giant mountain, and 
 said, "I told 'em yesterday it was goin' to storm, and 
 I've come out a winner." 
 
 Though Shasta's topmost peak is 14,400 feet above 
 the sea-level the climb to it is not especially difficult or 
 dangerous, and many persons make the ascent every 
 year. July and August are the best months for this, 
 as then the weatheir is sure to be good and there is 
 comparatively little snow. The climbers and their 
 guide drive up to the timber line and camp for the 
 night. At three the next morning they leave their horses 
 and go the rest of the way on foot. Five hours of 
 ascent takes them to the top, and they have ample time 
 to look off on the world below, and to descend by night- 
 fall to the village whence they started. The entire cost 
 for parties of ten or more is five dollars each. For a 
 single person the charge is twenty dollars. 
 
 The mountain with its hoary peaks and its shaggy 
 base is always impressive, and one Is reminded of the 
 Alps; yet it lacks something of their charm, for there 
 you have a mystery of atmosphere you seldom get in 
 
Among the Shasta Foothills 227 
 
 our land, and the vales about are pastoral and gentle. 
 Then, too, there are rustic homes and quaint villages 
 and peasant life in keeping, or in interesting contrast 
 with the scene. But in America the foreground is only 
 wilderness or ruined forest, blasted by the ravages of 
 the lumbermen, and the buildings are unsightly saw- 
 mills, and temporary shacks for the help, and if there 
 is a village it is altogether crude and unromantic. 
 
 Note. — ^The Shasta region is a land for the lover of the beautiful 
 with the pioneer instinct. There is fishing and hunting and mineral 
 springs and the most impressive of scenery. Many resorts have come 
 into existence in the neighborhood where one can stop with entire 
 comfort, such as Sisson, Mott, Shasta Springs, and Crag View. The 
 tlimb to the summit of the white peak affords an exhilarating experi- 
 ence, and the acquaintance one makes with the wilderness around is 
 eertain to leave many pleasant memories. 
 
XI 
 
 OREGON FARM LIFE 
 
 I WAS at a scattered village in a wide alluvial valley 
 that was bordered by irregular wooded hills. 
 Spring had arrived some time before, and the new 
 leafage was well started, the grass was getting ankle 
 high, dandelions, violets and buttercups were in bloom, 
 and the garden posies were opening out around the 
 homes. Most of the orchards were past their blossom 
 season, but the apple trees were blushing in full splendor. 
 Men were ploughing and harrowing, and some were 
 planting corn, and some were hoeing their garden 
 patches, where, though it was only mid-April, the peas, 
 lettuce, cabbages and other things were all green and 
 thriving, and the strawberries were beginning to shed 
 their first petals. 
 
 A variety of produce was raised in the region, but the 
 great prune orchards were especially noticeable. About 
 the barns were numerous hogs and calves, and in the 
 pastures were grazing flocks of sheep and herds of 
 cattle. There were large fields of wheat, and of oats 
 and vetch sowed together, and of alfalfa. In the depths 
 
 228 
 
Oregon Farm Life 229 
 
 of the valley flowed Cow Creek, an innocent-looking 
 stream just then, but showing signs in the gullies neigh- 
 boring that it was a wild and wide-reaching torrent in 
 flood-time. During the high water many of the out- 
 lying farmers are cut off entirely from the village, and 
 others can get to it only by keeping to the high ground 
 and crossing fields and climbing fences. 
 
 The prosperous serenity of the country was attractive, 
 but scarcely stimulating, and when somebody chanced 
 to speak of a place, six miles back in the hills, named 
 Canyonville, I was eager to see it and visions of wild 
 and picturesque beauty floated through my mind. I 
 started in the early afternoon and tramped the dusty 
 road in the warm sunshine up and down an endless 
 succession of little hills. Sometimes I was amid farm 
 fields, or pastures, sometimes in the sober fir forest. In 
 the more open pastures grew occasional oak trees, 
 their limbs raggedly fringed with moss. Occasionally 
 there were thickets of chaparral frosted thickly over 
 with blossoms, and humming full of bees. The little 
 lizards were out enjoying the sunshine, but at my 
 approach would scud to shelter with a quick rustle 
 through the dry leaves. The birds sang, and far aloft 
 in the sky sailed some stately buzzards. 
 
 When I reached Canyonville the day was drawing to 
 a close, and the cows were drifting in from their pas- 
 turage. The place was a small trading center. It did 
 
230 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 not look very flourishing; for the main street was 
 grass-grown, and many of the Httle stores on either side 
 were vacant and had their windows boarded up. The 
 most conspicuous of the village buildings were two 
 diminutive churches, perched on the same knoll, 
 both dilapidated, and one never had been painted. 
 However, the hamlet, taken as a whole, in its setting 
 of steep, fir-clad hills was quite delightful. 
 
 I found lodging at the Overland Hotel, the only 
 hotel in the place, but there was a stumpy, two-story 
 building down the street that was formerly a rival. 
 Latterly it had been used as a dwelling, though its 
 sign was still up — "The Grand Central." "More 
 name than house," one of the villagers remarked, and 
 really, one would hardly expect so impressively named 
 a hostelry in a remote country village. 
 
 Like nearly all the buildings on the main street, 
 whether shops or residences, my hotel stood snug to 
 the board walk and had a piazza roof reaching out along 
 the whole width of the front over the walk below. 
 The piazza floor served as a sidewalk, but it also served 
 the inmates of the hotel as a support for their chairs 
 when they chose to sit in the open air. There I estab- 
 lished myself soon after I arrived and rested and looked 
 about. On the opposite side of the street was a group 
 of boys squabbling playfully. They would snatch off 
 each others' hats and give them a throw, and this 
 
Oregon Farm Life 231 
 
 seemed to entertain them until one hat was tossed up 
 on a roof. The roof was low, and by standing on a 
 window ledge and clinging to the eaves the owner of 
 the hat with the aid of a stick poked it off. Then he 
 jumped down to the ground. A comrade laid hold 
 of the hat again, but the owner became savagely 
 belligerent and exclaimed, "You let loose o' there 
 you dirty idiot, or I'll hit you with this stick." 
 
 That put a damper on the game and brought it to 
 an end. The stout, elderly landlady of the hotel had 
 come to the door. She called one of the boys over to 
 her and said, " Roy, how's the folks ?" 
 
 "Oh, they're pretty well," he replied. 
 
 "You don't look like you been workin' none," she 
 continued. "I wish you'd go to your house and bring 
 me a few pounds o' butter." 
 
 As he moved off she said to me, "His people make 
 good butter, though it's claimed that the creamery here 
 makes the best. The old fashioned country butter 
 ain't to be depended on. I've got three cows myself, 
 but I use all the milk and cream. The only thing I 
 don't like about the cows is that I have to do my own 
 milking. Women do a good deal of the milking around 
 here. 
 
 "This is a nice place to live. You can't get rich; 
 but even if you could, I don't know that you could 
 take any more with you when you died." 
 
232 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 After supper, when the cows had been milked and 
 the other work done, the hotel family both transient 
 and permanent, gathered about the office stove, and as 
 it was now dusky, Ella, the hired girl, lit the lamp. 
 The evening was chilly, and one of the men spoke 
 approvingly of the warmth that came with genial vigor 
 from the little stove. 
 
 "Well," remarked the landlady, "you can always 
 depend on Ella to make a good hot fire, because the 
 girl who does that is sure to get a smart husband." 
 
 "That reminds me," said a teamster who was a 
 local lodger, "I heard yesterday that Ed Slosson 
 had married the Widow Weaver." 
 
 "What in the world is he thinkin' of!" cried the 
 landlady. "She's old enough to be his mother. He 
 must be a-losin' his mind." 
 
 "I guess he had a likin' for the old lady's farm," 
 responded the teamster. "All the people up the valley 
 where she lives have got fine places. Their buildings 
 are good and their land is all fertile and easily handled. 
 Down this way most every ranch is mortgaged, but up 
 there they own their places clear. I'd like a good ranch 
 myself; and yet if I had the money I don't suppose I'd 
 buy one. You can't get a really first-class ranch for 
 less than ten thousand dollars, and I don't know of 
 any such in the county that will pay four per cent, on 
 the price asked." 
 
Oregon Farm Life 233 
 
 "I'd hate to ranch up where the Weaver place is," 
 said another of the party. "It's too far from any 
 village." 
 
 "Most every place has its faults," commented the 
 teamster. "You know where my brother lives. That's 
 nice country, but I wouldn't live there on account of 
 the water, though they say those that get used to it 
 like it and don't want any other. They would just 
 naturally starve to death if they couldn't get some of 
 that old sour mineral water to drink. It's worse even 
 than city water. I tell you, in summer, city water is as 
 warm as dishwater and don't quench your thirst at all. 
 Hain't that so ?" 
 
 "Talkin' about mortgages," said the other man, "I've 
 •magined when I was drivin' along that I could tell 
 every place that wasn't paid for by the look o' the 
 buildings. Lots o' men would do better to let their 
 land go to the holder of the mortgage and pay crop 
 rent instead of interest. That's what I been tellin' 
 Albert Lannagan he'd better do." 
 
 "Albert used to have a good stake," observed the 
 teamster, "but he don't have the knack o' keepin' 
 what he has like his father did." 
 
 "That was once a great ranch for apples," continued 
 the other speaker; "but there ain't been no right good 
 apples in Oregon for twenty years. The old orchards 
 have all failed like on account of the San Jose scale. 
 
234 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 However, I don't believe we could equal the Eastern 
 apples anyway. Apples are a cold climate fruit. Last 
 year our crop was ruined by that hot day we had. The 
 thermometer went up to io8, and, in addition, the wind 
 blew hard, and every apple was scalded on the wind- 
 ward side. There's one thing about it — we don't have 
 to hurry pickin' 'em for fear of frost. I've seen apples 
 hangin' on the trees perfectly good at Christmas." 
 
 "I was readin' in the paper that Oregon apples beat 
 the world," remarked a man who had not spoken before. 
 
 "Oh, that ain't so at all," affirmed the teamster. 
 "They don't compare with those back in Michigan 
 where I come from." 
 
 "I don't believe you're a good judge," the other 
 retorted. "When a feller Is young he has an appetite 
 for fruit, and it never tastes the same afterward." 
 
 "That ain't the case with me," responded the team- 
 ster. "I enjoy fruit as well as ever I did. When it 
 comes to apples I'm like the boy that set out to eat 
 a barrel of sugar. He e't all he could and quit." 
 
 "When I was a boy," said the other, "it used to be a 
 great thing to go off in the woods and have a chicken 
 roast. Someof the boys would steal the chickens. If I'd 
 done that and my father had found it out there wouldn't 
 have been enough left of me to tell the story. We used 
 to take our own chickens. But I remember soon after 
 I and my wife was married, two young brothers of hers 
 
The milkmaids 
 
Oregon Farm Life 235 
 
 come in one evening with some chickens they'd stolen 
 and wanted 'em cooked for them to have a picnic. 
 'Boys,' said I, 'I'll tell you right now you won't get 
 them chickens cooked in this house. You've stole 'em 
 and they may make you trouble. Best thing you c'n 
 do is to say nothing to nobody and throw 'em out over 
 the back fence.' 
 
 " So that was what they did. Then they went home, 
 and pretty soon I stepped out and picked up the chickens. 
 They were dead, and there was no use o' wastin' 'em, 
 and my wife cooked 'em. The boys ate some o' those 
 same chickens; but they never did know that the 
 chickens wa'n't ours. I'd learned 'em a lesson. If I 
 had let 'em go on as they'd started there's no knowin' 
 what they would have done later." 
 
 " I wish business would pick up here," said the land- 
 lady. "There's nothing a-doing much in the woods 
 since the timber cruisers got into trouble. They have 
 been havin' this racket over them a good while now. 
 The government ain't a-goin' to allow them to be 
 smugglin' the forest any more, and that's kind o* 
 stopped business a little bit. It wa'n't many years ago 
 this place supported six or seven saloons. Now it's 
 prohibition. Oh, it used to be a good deal more lively." 
 
 " I can mention one thing we ain't gone back much on," 
 said the landlady's grandson who was sitting on an old 
 sofa at the back of the room, "and that's lodges. We've 
 
236 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 got the Masons, and the Odd Fellows, and Rebeccas, 
 and Eastern Star, and Degree of Honor and Knights of 
 Pythias, and Woodmen of the World, and two or three 
 others. The people are kind o' lodge crazy, and some 
 belong to all the different lodges. We did have a grange, 
 but the granges around here have all busted up." 
 
 It was nearly nine o'clock, and the various members 
 of the hotel gathering each took a candle and made 
 their way upstairs to bed. 
 
 Out at the rear of the hotel a bell was suspended on 
 a pole, and I was awakened by its rude jangling the 
 next morning at a quarter to six. Fifteen minutes 
 later it again rang to make certain that everyone in 
 the hotel and in the village should know that breakfast 
 was ready. When I went downstairs I met the land- 
 lady coming from the barn where she had just finished 
 milking. The village was astir, and the smoke was 
 rising lazily from home chimneys, and there were 
 occasional passers clumping along on the board walks. 
 The cows and horses were being turned loose to graze 
 on the village streets and out into the surrounding 
 forest. 
 
 By eight o'clock the schoolboys began to gather at 
 the battered two-story schoolhouse, which was on the 
 borders of the central village cluster. Apparently they 
 wanted plenty of time to play baseball; for after a httle 
 loitering about the front steps, they resorted to a near 
 
Oregon Farm Life 237 
 
 common and a game was started. It was a large school, 
 and rustic youths were plentiful, and the game was 
 quite spirited. Nearly every boy wore overalls, and 
 some came from home without their coats, and some 
 were barefoot. I judged that as the season advanced 
 they gradually shed their garments until they only 
 retained the overalls and a shirt. A number of youths 
 were reduced to those necessaries already. The ortho- 
 dox head-covering was a straw hat with a broad brim 
 that was rakishly turned up behind and down in front. 
 
 When school-time approached, girls became as 
 abundant as the boys, but their attire was neat and 
 pretty and was not at all suggestive of the barn and the 
 fields as was that of the boys. It was a pleasure to see 
 a village so teeming with children, and all of them so 
 hardy and genuinely rural. 
 
 In the hamlet itself the men folks were now resorting 
 to the post-office, and presently the stage came in. 
 Then they got their mail and after more or less visiting 
 dispersed, and the village settled down to its usual 
 sleepy quiet. I went back into the country to have a 
 look at the happy valley where all the land was superla- 
 tively fertile and all the buildings substantial and all 
 the farmers rich. It was an attractive region, but after 
 having heard it described so enthusiastically it hardly 
 came up to my expectations, 
 
238 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 What interested me most in my ramble was a man I 
 encountered by the roadside splitting out "shakes." The 
 material he used consisted of sections of straight- 
 grained fir about thirty inches long. These had been 
 roughly split out of a large tree into squarish blocks 
 six or seven inches through. He would set one up on 
 end and with his frow and maul ream out the thin boards 
 quite deftly and rapidly. These home-made shakes 
 were a very common roofing on the farm buildings, 
 especially the barns and sheds. Pine was the most 
 desirable material, but not a great deal grew here, and 
 the man had resorted to fir. The chief trouble with the 
 latter was that in nailing it to the roof it had a tendency 
 to check, and a good many pieces had to be thrown 
 away on this account. 
 
 The man was elderly, and he had come to the region 
 when it was new, over half a century ago. We got to 
 talking, and pretty soon I sat down on his pile of shakes. 
 Then he took out his pipe and after filling and lighting 
 it seated himself on a log. "It was in 1853," said he, 
 "that I first saw this country. We'd come out here 
 hunting for Oregon — that is, hunting for Oregon farm^ 
 lands that were as good as we'd heard tell of. We wert 
 six months getting to the coast region from our old 
 home. Now, you can step on a railway train and get 
 here in less than six days. Look at the progress of the 
 world, will you? I gosh! if a man had advocated 
 
Schoolboys 
 
Oregon Farm Life 239 
 
 building a railroad across them plains in those days 
 they'd 'a' hung him. They wouldn't 'a' believed it 
 could be did. 
 
 "We had flint-lock guns. Then the cap-lock was 
 invented, and the brich-loader; and it wa'n't long before 
 a man wouldn't pick up a muzzle-loader if he saw one 
 lying in the road. Muzzle-loaders shot good, but they 
 were too slow. One man with a brich-loader was equal 
 to twenty-five with the old-fashioned sorts. 
 
 "This country was all wilderness and Indians. The 
 mountains was wooded, but the valleys was prairie. 
 There was some large timber in the valleys, but no 
 underbrush, and the land was covered with bunch 
 grass that growed thick and tall and was the finest feed 
 possible. You could turn out your horses in the fall 
 and they'd find plenty to eat and would keep fat as hogs 
 all winter. Oh, Lord, yes! But as time went on this 
 country got to be heavily sheeped, and the sheep e't off 
 and tramped down the bunch grass till it was run out. 
 The grass that's took its place is pretty poor. In the 
 summer, which is when we have our rainless season, 
 things dry up and you got to feed your cattle and keep 
 on feedin' 'em straight through the fall and winter. 
 If we have right early rains in the fall the grass may 
 turn green a little, but it don't make growth to amount 
 tp anything. 
 
240 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "You see lots o' young trees growin' everywhere the 
 plough ain't gone, and what I said about there bein' so 
 much prairie land don't seem likely, does it ? Well, 
 I'll tell yer — it's a thing I kind o' hate to mention 
 because I'm afraid people'll think I'm a har — the 
 reason of there bein' grass instead of underbrush and 
 thick forest was that the Indians set fires to keep the 
 land clear and make good range for their ponies, and 
 easy hunting. 
 
 "We took up a donation claim. All we had to do 
 was to settle on the land, and it was ours. In a few 
 years that was done away with and they substituted the 
 homestead claim, and you had to pay something for 
 your ranch. We put up a log house with a stick and 
 clay chimney at one end. The boards for the floor we 
 reamed out of four-foot cedar, and after bein' laid we 
 levelled them with an adz and plane. The doors had 
 wooden hinges and latches that we made ourselves. 
 Iron was expensive. Nails was two bits or more a 
 pound, and we mostly got along without 'em. For the 
 roof, to save usin' nails, we put on a pole over each 
 course of shakes to fasten 'em in place. 
 
 "Oh, the early settlers had it pretty tough. We 
 talked a jargon that was got up for the Indians; and that 
 was taught in the schools. I used to could speak 
 that jargon better than I could English and we had an 
 j'-dea that was goin' to be the standard language here 
 
Oregon Farm Life 241 
 
 in Oregon. Grazing was the principal business. The 
 man with ten acres fenced had a big place. There was 
 plenty of wildcats and panthers, and black and brown 
 bears, and you can find a good many still back in the 
 mountains. Coyotes are about the worst pest now, 
 though I can't say they're so awful bad. They kill 
 sheep and ketch turkeys and chickens and anything 
 like that. 
 
 "We used to raise better wheat then than we can at 
 present; but we didn't have any of our modern machin- 
 ery for handling it. We tramped the grain out with 
 horses or cattle. We'd clear up a circle on the ground 
 about thirty feet across, and some people would build 
 a platform. Then around the outer part we'd lay a 
 ring of sheaves with the butts inward. There were 
 several ways to do the thrashing. Perhaps the common- 
 est was for a feller to get on a saddle horse and lead 
 another and go round and round over the grain. I've 
 rode a horse like that a many a day thrashing. Some- 
 times a yoke of cattle would be driven around instead 
 of horses. Often a post was set up in the middle of the 
 circle with a long arm to it, and the horses hitched to 
 the end of that and set to goin.' From time to time 
 we'd stop to turn the sheaves or to throw out the straw, 
 rake the grain into a heap in the center of the circle 
 and put down more sheaves to tramp. 
 
242 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "Now I've got to git to work, and I want twenty 
 dollars from you. The information I've given is worth 
 that, ain't it ?" 
 
 Note. — ^To see the Oregon farm country, probably one could not 
 do better than to explore the Willamette Valley south of Portland, 
 From the agricultural point of view this is a very attractive region 
 and you will find much to please you in soil, crops, climate and 
 people. 
 
 A very interesting freak of nature in the south-western part of the 
 state is Crater Lake. Medford in the Rogue River Valley is the 
 nearest railway station. The distance is 85 miles and the road fairly 
 good. The round trip can be made by automobile in two days. The 
 lake is over 6,000 feet above the sea among the heights of the 
 Cascade Mountains, where it occupies the abyss of an extinct 
 volcano. It is about 5 miles in diameter. Around it rises a per- 
 pendicular wall of rock from 500 to 2,000 feet high. The lake is 
 2,000 feet deep. It has no visible inlets or outlets, but the water is 
 fresh and pure, and of a wonderfully clear ultramarine hue. The 
 volcanic cone of Wizard Island rises from the water to a height of 
 845 feet, and is a curious instance of a crater within a crater. There 
 is a launch and rowboats on the lake, and the fishing is excellent. 
 The district containing this lake has been set apart as a national 
 park. 
 
s 
 o 
 
 S 
 o 
 
XII 
 
 ALONG THE COLUMBIA 
 
 THE Columbia is one of the biggest of American 
 rivers, and in time of flood it has a flow greater 
 than is ever attained by either the St. Lawrence 
 or the Mississippi. Its lower course, especially, is 
 broad and impressive, and a great highway for com- 
 merce and travel. At the mouth, the river is two miles 
 across. Here, a short distance back from the sea, John 
 Jacob Astor in 1811 established a trading post. He 
 selected a spot where the south shore dipped inward a 
 little and a cove gave slight shelter. This did very 
 well as a site for a village cluster, but for a large town 
 like the present Astoria it has disadvantages. The 
 shores nearly everywhere rise from the water's edge in 
 a steep hillside, and the place clings along this declivity 
 for several miles. It is very odd — the way the buildings 
 lift one above the other, and you are surprised by the 
 sharp rise of the streets and by the numerous stairways 
 that give approach to the upper tiers of homes. The 
 climbing is evidently not relished, for the buildings are 
 snugged in a very close but attenuated mass on the 
 
 243 
 
244 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 lower verge of the slope while the upper portion is a 
 background of ragged forest. Probably more than half 
 the town is not on the land at all but is on the wharves 
 or stilted up at the waterside with the waves lapping 
 about underneath at high tide. The principal business 
 thoroughfare is a wharf street. This is largely a result 
 of the fact that the ships formerly furnished nearly all 
 the custom, and the trader who was right on the 
 wharves had the most advantageous position. The 
 whole water front is a curious labyrinth of these wharves, 
 and they jut far out into the water, with a zig- 
 zagging of streets and numerous footways, and the 
 railroad cutting across them all. Here are enormous 
 sawmills with their great piles of lumber, the ware- 
 houses of the river steamers and of the ocean-going 
 ships, and the wide-spreading fish canneries. 
 
 Here too were the fish wharves with hundreds of 
 the staunch rowboats alongside used in the salmon 
 fishing, and as the boats rocked on the waves the pulleys 
 that were a part of the tackle by which they were 
 hitched kept up a weird and incessant creaking. Some 
 of the boats had gasoline power, but in most I saw a 
 mast lying along the gunwale, and as soon as the craft 
 started for work and got into open water the mast was 
 set in place and the sail spread to the breeze. Now 
 and then a boat would begin to drop the net over 
 the stern within a few hundred feet of the wharves. 
 
Mending a salmon net 
 
Along the Columbia 245 
 
 Others went out to the middle of the river or to the 
 opposite shore, or down where the stream meets the 
 ocean. Each boat carries two men — a "captain" and 
 an "oar-puller." They let the net drift with the tide. 
 When they at length take it into the boat they may 
 have only one or two fish, or they may have dozens. 
 In a catch of twenty-five fish there will be those that 
 weigh anywhere from fifteen to sixty pounds, and there 
 is a possibility of getting a giant of the race that v?ill 
 run up to over eighty pounds. 
 
 Boats are coming and going all the time, but most 
 of them start out at low tide, toward evening, and do 
 not return till morning. In the quiet weather of summer 
 they often delay the start for home until the land breeze 
 springs up, and then come flitting in, half a thousand 
 or more, all together. After a boat has delivered its 
 fish to the cannery or cold storage it returns to its 
 hitching-place by the wharf, and the wet net piled at 
 the stern is pulled out and hung on rails that are set 
 on the wharf for this purpose. Later the net is carefully 
 looked over and the breaks repaired. Sometimes it 
 has caught on a snag and been torn so badly that it is 
 a several days' task to put it in shape. The nets are 
 both wide and long, and cost three or four hundred 
 dollars. A boat costs about half as much more. Profits 
 are divided, two thirds going to the captain and one 
 third to the oar-puller. A captain who uses good 
 
246 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 judgment and works hard may be fortunate enough to 
 clear during the season close to two thousand dollars. 
 But the average is much less, and some poor stupid 
 fellows barely pay expenses. 
 
 The open season is from April fifteenth to August 
 fifteenth. There is no forecasting when the fish will 
 run in multitudes. One man may come home and go 
 to bed having caught nothing. Another may come in 
 an hour later who has drawn up his net so full that he 
 cannot get all the fish into his boat and has to throw 
 many away. Often, the bulk of the catch is made 
 within a fortnight, but again the haul of fish may be 
 distributed somewhat unevenly through the entire four 
 months. A man is supposed to make all he needs in 
 the season to carry him through the year, and some 
 ar:; content to loaf and do odd jobs during the time 
 that intervenes between seasons. Others find steady 
 work. There was a time when the fishermen were 
 largely Americans and English, but now they are nearly 
 all Finns or natives of Eastern and Southern Europe, 
 who speak our language brokenly or not at all. 
 
 Get away from the town inland and you find almost 
 unbroken forest. In a few favored spots a little farm- 
 land has been cleared. A considerable quantity of 
 potatoes is raised, and the Chinese have plots where 
 ikey grow most of what the town needs in the way of 
 green vegetables. You see these slant-eyed gentry 
 
Along the Columbia • 247 
 
 peddling their products through the streets, carrying 
 their wares in two plethoric baskets suspended from 
 the ends of a bamboo pole which is balanced on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 In the woods are to be found raspberries, black- 
 berries and huckleberries in abundance, while straw- 
 berries flourish in the open country. But for the most 
 part these small wild-fruits go unpicked, though in 
 quality they are far finer than those grown in the tepid 
 climate of California. The people continue to depend 
 on the south for fruits because nobody cares to be 
 troubled with anything that brings such small returns 
 as berry-picking. There is practically no poverty, and 
 therefore no spur to make small savings. If any families 
 are poor it is because of drink. Astoria's main street 
 had fourteen saloons in a third of a mile, and all the 
 towns and villages in the valley seemed to be over- 
 supplied with drinking-places in a somewhat similar 
 manner. Apparently, everyone resorted to them — fish- 
 ermen and lumbermen, merchants and farmers, and 
 while I did not often see men wholly incapacitated 
 because of their potations, there were plenty who got to 
 the border line. Nor did this seem to be counted a 
 serious failing, but, rather, the natural thing for any 
 man to occasionally drink to excess. As a visitor from 
 Iowa expressed himself to me on the subject, "My 
 sakes! it's awful, ain't it!" 
 
248 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 In Astoria the streets were mostly planked. It was 
 the same in other places, and from some of the river 
 villages the plank roads ran far out into the forest. 
 When in good repair they made a fairly smooth road, 
 but where they were broken or teetering one got well 
 jolted in riding over them. I sometimes saw split 
 sections of trees substituted for the plank back in the 
 woodland, and then the surface was much like corduroy. 
 
 Habitations all along the river stuck pretty close to 
 the waterside, and the stream and the railway skirting 
 it furnished nearly the entire means of transportation. 
 Here and there were trails through the woods, but no 
 roads worthy the name when you got away from the 
 villages. The country is still very rich in natural 
 resources and has only been scratched yet. Get away 
 from the river a short distance almost anywhere and 
 you are in heavy woodland so thick and luxuriant that 
 you push along in a twilight gloom. The shores of the 
 stream abound in booms and logs, and you see frequent 
 stern-wheel steamers ploughing their way up stream 
 with a long raft trailing behind. At the mouth of every 
 creek there seemed to be a sawmill, and the creek was 
 perhaps a waterway for floating down the logs, or it 
 may be it only served to make an opening back into 
 the hills for a narrow-gauge logging railway. 
 
 Such trees as the mills were working up we see no 
 more in the East — so straight and large and free from 
 
Along the Columbia 249 
 
 blemish. What to do with the slabs and refuse is a 
 problem. The mill men would gladly dump them into 
 the river, but there is a law to protect the fishing which 
 forbids the water being thus contaminated. A good 
 deal they burn. Some make great piles of the waste 
 material round about the mill at the edge of the water, 
 and when the floods come it is a relief if the accumula- 
 tions go adrift. Perhaps the mill owners had exactly 
 that in mind when the piles were made. Laws are all 
 very well for others, but when they interfere with one's 
 personal convenience or profit men are prone to attempt 
 dodging. So the shores of the great river are every- 
 where thick-strewn with sawed fragments and sawdust 
 and there are likewise numberless stumps and logs of all 
 sizes. Some of these stray logs were thicker than I am 
 tall. Often, they were perfectly sound, yet they either 
 get imbedded in the mud and stay to rot, or find their 
 way to the ocean. For many families it is more con- 
 venient to get firewood from the shore than from the 
 forest. If so, the supply is inexhaustible. Then, too, 
 when a man wants to build a fence or a shed he can by 
 a little picking get plenty of really good timber and 
 boards from the drift to meet all his needs. 
 
 The sawmill people are reckless regarding the fishing, 
 and so are the fishermen themselves. The finest salmon 
 are the Royal Chinooks, and the law only allows them 
 to be taken for four months; but in the smaller places 
 
250 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 the fishing is almost continuous. The fishermen are 
 supposed to set free any Chinook that gets into their 
 nets out of season, but I am afraid they seldom do. 
 They dispose of such fish less openly, but rarely are 
 willing to sacrifice the immediate personal gain to the 
 future common good. If left entirely to their own 
 devices the fishermen would in a few seasons extermi- 
 nate the salmon and put an end to the very industry 
 by which they make their living. A few years ago it 
 seemed likely this would happen, but of late the propa- 
 gation of the fish has received attention, and many 
 millions of spawn have been put in the waters. As a 
 result the number of fish has apparently been largely 
 increased. How much it is not easy to say, for the 
 people interested in the industry prefer there should be 
 an impression of a short catch in order to bolster prices, 
 and the real quantity in pounds secured is very likely 
 a fourth greater than the published figures. 
 
 At the time of my visit the river water was brown 
 with mud. This just suited the fishermen, for the fish 
 are then less able to see and avoid the nets. Later in 
 the season a good deal of fishing would be done with 
 long seines fastened at one end to the shore on a gently 
 shelving beach. The other end is carried out on a 
 flat-boat in a long loop down stream, brought to the 
 land and pulled in by horses. Many fish are also 
 caught in traps. A trap consists of a Hne of poles 
 

 
Along the Columbia 251 
 
 driven into the river bottom near shore v?ith wire 
 netting fastened to them. The fish come to the w^ire 
 and feel their vsray along until they are in a kind of 
 pocket at the end whence they are not able to find their 
 way out. Down at the bottom of the pocket is a net, 
 and when this is raised, up come the fish, and the 
 fisherman reaches in and takes them out. 
 
 Most of the river hamlets are rude and small, and 
 with the dark fir woods closely environing them they 
 seemed lonely and much cut off from the world. But 
 sources of pleasure are by no means entirely lacking. 
 At one place where I stopped they were to have a dance 
 that evening including a midnight supper at a dollar 
 a ticket. The clouds began to threaten in the afternoon, 
 and the young folks were a good deal concerned lest 
 it should rain and hurt the success of their entertain- 
 ment. The girl who waited on the table at the one 
 village restaurant was especially anxious. Those on 
 whom she waited were mostly fishermen and railroad 
 workers in overalls and shirt sleeves. They talked 
 dance and they talked fish, and they chaffed the girl. 
 She talked back and added liveliness to the occasion by 
 snatching back the dishes just as she was about to 
 deliver them into the hands of the eaters, or she would 
 give a slap to the paper one fellow was reading every 
 time she passed. The room was rough in its appoint- 
 ments, and the food as a whole was not very satisfying. 
 
2^2 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 but the boiled salmon was deHcious and the quantity 
 served most generous. 
 
 Across the way from the restaurant was a grocery 
 store; and the sign painted on the three panes of glass 
 that formed the diminutive show window read thus: 
 1 DAN I FOW I LER |. This had a short-syllabled 
 suggestion that the proprietor was Chinese. Near by was 
 another business which had a similar sign, only this sign 
 ran across two windows with a substantial sepa- 
 ration between as follows: | SAL | | OON |. 
 Judging from English associations with the names, Dan 
 Fow Ler was a man, and Sal Oon a woman. On 
 the whole, I concluded some sign painter with a relish 
 for a joke had been travelling on the coast. I saw 
 other signs of the sort and recall one in particular 
 covering the front of a building but with a window in 
 the middle of it so that the letters were grouped like 
 
 this: LODfflGING. 
 
 From the village where I had stopped on the Colum- 
 bia I rambled back up a hollow past several homes 
 with garden patches and a few fruit trees and small 
 fields about them. In the near woodland the dogwood 
 bushes were full of their white wings, and the roadside 
 was aglow with dandelions. But when I went on I did 
 not have to go far into the forest before I found that a 
 fire had run through it, and few trees had survived. 
 
Along the Columbia 253 
 
 Some still stood, bare and dead, and many had fallen 
 making the earth a chaos of their shattered and black- 
 ened trunks. For several miles I plodded on and every- 
 where saw naught but the charred and melancholy 
 woodland ruins. It looked as if the region could never 
 again know the beautiful, tall green forest that had 
 formerly grown here. Some of the wilderness fires run 
 over vast areas and even destroy homes and lives, but 
 most of the woodland is now owned by the lumber 
 companies, and they take many precautions to prevent 
 or fight fires that used to be neglected. The law compels 
 the burning of the winter slashings, and this has to be 
 done early while the ground is still moist so that the 
 fires will not run through the woods. The entire 
 Columbia Valley was dim and blue and often the 
 opposite shore faded into ghostly vagueness by reason 
 of the smoke from the slashings. 
 
 To see the river at its best one should make the jour- 
 ney from Portland to the Dalles, a distance of nearly 
 one hundred miles. The railroad is close to the shore 
 much of the way and the views from the car window 
 are quite entrancing, but it is only from the river steam- 
 ers that one gets the full beauty of the scenes. As you 
 go up the river the valley is at first broad and pastoral, 
 a succession of billowy hills with their farmlands and 
 forest, their scattered homes and grazing lands. Grad- 
 ually the hills lift into wooded bluffs, and you at times 
 
254 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 find rocky precipices rising from the water's edge, or 
 lonely pinnacles like monster monuments. The stream 
 resembles the most romantic portions of the Hudson 
 in its scenery, but it is an untamed river of the wilder-, 
 ness with a vigor and a charm all its own. Willows and 
 cottonwoods fringe the shores, but the crags and 
 slopes are almost solidly clothed with evergreens. 
 
 At intervals some little village found a clinging place 
 in a dell among the rocks, and these forest hamlets 
 looked very attractive and Swiss-like in their mountain 
 environment. Perhaps the most pleasing of them is 
 Cascade Locks at a spot where the river breaks into a 
 foaming tumult of rapids and the shores rise in great 
 rocky ranges on either side. The homes hide among 
 the trees, and the land is a medley of steep hills and 
 irregular hollows. Everyone apparently built as fancy 
 dictated, and the houses were most picturesquely 
 scattered, some on the bluffs overlooking the river, 
 some on the little heights farther back, some in the 
 green dells with perhaps a mountain rivulet, crystal 
 clear, tumbling along through the dooryard. If you 
 followed the narrow roads and paths that Hnked the 
 houses together you were always twisting and turning, 
 climbing or descending, but the sudden surprises of the 
 views were ample payment for the exertion. 
 
 Wherever there was a rift in the trees in the direction 
 of the stream, you saw its foaming waters and the big 
 
Woodland blossoms 
 
Along the Columbia 255 
 
 stony terraces of the mountains beyond, while in the 
 other direction the shattered cHfFs towered into the sky, 
 calm and majestic guardians of the vale. Formerly, 
 according to an Indian legend, the river here was 
 spanned by a mighty natural bridge, beneath which the 
 water flowed smoothly in an unbroken channel, and the 
 red men were accustomed to cross the bridge in their 
 travels and local intercourse. At one time there lived 
 on the Oregon side an Indian brave whom the gods 
 regarded with much favor. While hunting on the 
 Washington side he met and fell in love with an Indian 
 maiden of a neighboring tribe. Presently he married 
 her and they started together for his home. But when 
 about to cross the bridge, disappointed suitors and 
 others of the maiden's tribe leaped out from an ambush. 
 The two hastened on across the bridge, and no sooner 
 had they reached the Oregon side than they heard a 
 tremendous crash, and looking around they saw that 
 the great bridge had fallen carrying the wrathful 
 pursuers to their death. Thus the gods showed their 
 love for the young brave. The fall of the bridge formed 
 the rapids which have obstructed the white man's 
 navigation. 
 
 The village came into being as a portage place; for 
 steamers could not get over the rapids, and their cargoes 
 had to be transferred a half mile across a neck of land. 
 Now the government has built locks, and the steamers 
 
256 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 pass on. These locks have cost three or four million 
 dollars, probably twice what a private concern would 
 have paid for the same work. The investment is entirely 
 out of proportion to any present business done through 
 the locks. The cost of maintenance is considerable 
 and the daily passage of four of the flat-bottomed river 
 steamers constitutes practically all the traffic. As one 
 man said to me, "The business won't pay for the axle- 
 grease used." 
 
 In earlier days the local fishing was an important 
 industry, but salmon are not as plentiful here as they 
 were. Below the locks are numerous fish-wheels 
 along the shores. They are a striking feature of 
 the landscape, for they are from twenty to forty 
 feet in diameter and six or eight feet across. Each 
 pair of spokes is fitted with a great wire-meshed 
 scoop. The wheel is adjusted in a substantial 
 framework, and the current revolves it and keeps the 
 scoops lifting from the water. A stout lattice dam 
 reaches out from the wheel with a sharp slant down 
 stream, and there is a boom moored above to protect 
 the whole structure from drift rubbish. The dam 
 guides the fish to the wheel, and the first thing they 
 know they are hoisted in the air, fall into an inclined 
 trough at the hub, from which they flop down at one 
 side onto a platform, or into an inclosure of water 
 where the fishermen can get them at their convenience. 
 
Along the Columbia 257 
 
 It is customary to string the fish on wires and attach 
 them to a half-barrel which acts as a buoy and drop 
 them into the stream. Arrangements have been made 
 with a cannery down the river, where a man is on the 
 watch for them, and when a buoy comes in sight he 
 goes out in a launch and gets the fish. Sometimes as 
 many as a ton are attached to a single half-barrel. 
 
 The chief resort for persons of leisure in the village 
 was the porch of a tiny butcher's shop. Thence you 
 could look down from the hillock where the shop stood 
 and see two or three other small places of business, a 
 hotel and the station. This was the heart of the hamlet, 
 but there was seldom enough transpiring to rouse the 
 loiterers from their dreamy lethargy. Occasionally 
 there were attempts at joviality, but the sluggish social 
 current was only slightly stirred thereby. One man 
 tried his wit several times on a gnarled old citizen with 
 a brush of gray whiskers under his chin who was 
 absorbed in a newspaper. But the latter would only 
 glance reluctantly over his spectacles, make a short 
 response and return to his reading. Finally the joker 
 said, " Did you know I was a Norwegian ?" 
 
 The reader looked up and a smile overspread his 
 somber features. "Wal," he repHed, "I guess ye are a 
 good deal north of wegian." 
 
 The joker saw that he had been worsted at his own 
 game, and he walked away. Shortly afterward we had 
 
258 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 a new accession to our group. He was a brisk elderly 
 man, who as he stepped onto the porch regaled us with 
 a couplet of a song which ran in this wise : 
 
 " Happy land, happy land! 
 
 Breaking stones and wheeling sand." 
 
 He went into the shop, and the butcher asked him 
 why he hadn't bought any meat of him lately. 
 
 " I ain't eaten no beefsteak for a month," replied the 
 singer. "It don't agree with me." 
 
 "If you stop eatin' and buyin' meat how'm I goin' to 
 live ?" said the butcher. 
 
 "Well," responded the singer, "that's your lookout. 
 I can't kill myself to make the butcher live." 
 
 So saying he came out on the porch and sat down on 
 a keg. We got to talking and among other things spoke 
 of the fishing. " The salmon have been kind o' played 
 out the last few years up here," said he, "and when a 
 fish-wheel gets worn out or stove up we don't trouble 
 to repair it, and there's seldom any new ones built. 
 But a good many are in use yet. It's the easiest way 
 of fishin' that there is. All you have to do is to set and 
 watch the salmon get caught. You don't find any 
 wheels below Portland. The current ain't strong 
 enough. The wheels does best in quick water. 
 
 "A dozen years ago this here river was full of salmon. 
 I've taken a dip net and stood on the shore and thrown 
 half a ton out in a single day. The net was on the end 
 
Along the Columbia 259 
 
 of a sixteen foot pole, and I'd just let it down and then 
 lift it up. The water was generally too riley for me to 
 see the fish. There was lots of fun and excitement 
 when they was comin' fast. I've dipped out three blue- 
 backs to a lick, and once I got a Royal Chinook that 
 weighed sixty-eight pounds. He was a whopper; 
 but we didn't use to be paid only two cents a pound." 
 
 While we were chatting, a laborer passed, shouldering 
 a roll of blankets. The butcher had come to the door, 
 and he pointed to the passer and said, "You see that 
 feller don't you ? Well, when I first reached here from 
 the East I thought a man with his bed on his back 
 was the funniest thing I'd ever come across; but a 
 rancher in this country won't take his hired man into 
 his house. They've got to furnish their own blankets 
 and usually sleep on the hay in the barn. I know a 
 feller who, when he'd just arrived and didn't understand 
 the ways they manage, got a job harvesting on a big 
 wheat ranch. The help are apt to sleep in the straw 
 stacks then, and it's precious little time they get to 
 sleep anywhere; but he didn't know anything about 
 that, and he was sitting around in the evening, and he 
 says to the rancher, 'Where am I goin' to sleep tonight ?' 
 
 " ' Why, I don't care where you sleep,' says the 
 rancher. ' I've got nine hundred and sixty acres of land 
 around here, and if you can't find a place to sleep on 
 that, I'll get my next neighbor to lend me a piece of his.' 
 
26o Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "A man usually rolls up in his blankets on the hay 
 in the barn. At the sawmills here the employers 
 furnish a tent, or shack, and boards to build a bunk and 
 some hay to put in the bottom of the bunk, and then 
 the worker fixes up to suit himself. Yes, it's only 
 hoboes who travel without blankets. When you see a 
 man knockin' around this country empty-handed and 
 lookin' for work, you can be dead sure he's prayin' to 
 God never to find it." 
 
 At the village hotel, among a few other transients 
 was a watch-peddler. He was eighty-six years old, 
 bowed and gray, but still brisk and hearty. He had a 
 neat little grip packed with the watches and with a 
 variety of chains, fobs and jewelry, and he not only 
 sold from this stock, but did repairing. He mentioned 
 one family in the place to which he had sold eleven 
 watches, "and good ones, too." His sales to that 
 particular family would have been fewer had it not been 
 that its head was a logging laborer on the river, and 
 occasionally lost a watch in the water. The peddler 
 had been in the country for many years, and he had 
 observed much and intelligently. I was interested in 
 his views of the difference between life in New England 
 and in the Far West. 
 
 "I remember very well my father's house back in 
 Vermont," said he one evening as we were sitting 
 together in the hotel office. " It was big and substantial 
 
In a village on the Columbia 
 
Along the Columbia 26 1 
 
 and we had a nice garden and raised all sorts of things 
 for our own eating. My father, as affairs went then and 
 in that region, was a rich man. He owned a good farm 
 and had four or five thousand dollars in the bank. 
 Everybody called him Uncle Joe, and if anyone needed 
 to borrow they'd come to him. They didn't borrow 
 very heavy. A hundred dollars was a big pile for a 
 man to go in debt them days — that's what it was ! My 
 father wa'n't an eddicated man. It was my mother 
 learned him to write after they was married. He used 
 to do most of his figgering with a piece of charcoal on 
 a board. 
 
 "When I first came out here I took up a claim, and 
 I had a neighbor on one side of me that was nicknamed 
 'Gassy' Smith because he talked so much, and on the 
 other side lived a man called 'Hog' Jones who was so 
 stingy he wa'n't fit to live. Hog was well off, but he 
 was like this — if you was to buy a bushel of wheat of 
 him that was worth seventy-five cents he'd make you 
 pay two dollars for it if he possibly could. Most of the 
 people around were Southern, and they were copper- 
 heads of the worst kind, while I was a republican. 
 They didn't like me a little bit, and even threatened to 
 shoot me, but I tried to treat 'em right and did 'em any 
 favors I could, and they got over that. 
 
 "My son has a farm out here now. His house looks 
 as if it had stood where it is for seventeen hundred 
 
262 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 years, but I don't suppose it has for fifty. It's the 
 darndest old shack you ever saw, but that don't 
 seem to trouble him any. He's got the Western habit 
 of not payin' much attention to the home surroundings. 
 The country here is developing all the time, but the 
 houses is dreadful little improved over what they were 
 twenty years ago. I've stayed at houses so poorly 
 built and neglected the sand blowed in the cracks 
 across the floor. You rarely find a good henhouse, or 
 stable, or barn, or a woodshed properly filled. Usually 
 the wood is just a pile in the yard exposed to the weather, 
 and there's not much cut up ahead. They haul it a 
 load at a time, and I've seen 'em do the splitting by 
 leaning the sticks against the wagon tongue. Often, 
 in order to handle a fallen tree and make it into cord 
 wood lengths, they bore two holes with a long -augur 
 into the center of the tree at different angles so they'll 
 meet. This they do at each place where they want to 
 cut it off, then drop a live coal into one of each pair of 
 augur holes and the coals burn through the log and 
 reduce it roughly into sections that can be handled. 
 The method is wasteful, but it saves the trouble of 
 sawing. 
 
 "Our farms have great natural resources, and it 
 seems curious the people should be too lazy to raise 
 vegetables and the like o' that; and yet they are. 
 Oh, my, I should say so ! The ranches all have smoke- 
 
Along the Columbia 263 
 
 houses and their meat food is mostly pork, but in the 
 villages beef is common, only the beef is apt to be this 
 dry, tough Coast sort. It ain't like the juicy tender 
 beef you get in the East. Not much corn is grown here 
 to fatten the creatures with, and in most parts they 
 have to do a lot of tramping over the range to get 
 enough to eat. Exercise and poor feed makes the meat 
 tough and the cattle small and lean. You let a man 
 from here see the way cattle are given corn in the 
 East — all they will eat — and his eyes would fall right 
 out of his head with surprise. 
 
 "I've stopped at ranches to get dinner where they 
 wouldn't furnish me anything but bread and milk, 
 and darn poor bread at that. Even then they wa'n't 
 hardly satisfied with twenty-five cents to pay for it. 
 Good Lord! I've been to places where they had any 
 amount o' cows and yet not a mite of butter. Most 
 men get to own their places clear, but they seldom 
 have money laid by. However, there are some men 
 who in the larger enterprises of the region make their 
 fortunes. I know one fellow who came into this village 
 with fifty dollars in his pocket and he became a partner 
 in the sawmill. A few years later he sold out his interest 
 for sixty thousand dollars. He was a smart, sharp, 
 devilish good man, I tell yer. When he got his cash he 
 left. He didn't build here or spend any of his money 
 here." 
 
264 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "No," said a young fellow who with a companion 
 was playing cards at a neighboring table, "of course 
 he didn't. A man with wealth has no business living 
 in a hole like this. What enjoyment is there here for 
 him ? He goes, and he goes quick, you betcher!" 
 
 No doubt the confines of life in the river village were 
 narrow, but I could not feel that it was so blank as 
 this young man claimed. Certainly nature had done 
 much for the place, and the wild charm of mountains 
 and forest and stream surrounding could not easily 
 be surpassed. 
 
 Oregon Notes. — By all means visit Astoria, and see the lower 
 river and its wilderness hamlets, and its fishermen and woodsmen. 
 
 Astoria was settled in 18 11, but immigration to this section of the 
 country was slow for a long time owing to the prevalent idea that 
 the region was valueless, and access to it difficult. As late as 1842, 
 Oregon had a population of only 240 white persons. Portland 
 started in 1843. Since that time its growth has been rapid and un- 
 interrupted. It calls itself the "Rose City," and a Rose Festival 
 is held there in the first week of June. The city is at the head of 
 deep sea navigation on the Willamette River, 6 miles above that 
 river's junction with the Columbia. 
 
 The favorite excursion from Portland is up the Columbia to the 
 Cascades, 60 miles, and to the Dalles, 50 miles beyond. 
 
 Twenty miles more takes one to the station. Hood River. From 
 there stages run in summer 27 miles to Cloud Cap Inn at the foot of 
 the glaciers on the north side of Mt. Hood. Thence excursions can 
 be made to many glaciers and cascades. The ascent to the summit 
 of the mountain, which is over 1 1,000 feet above the sea, is somewhat 
 difiicult, yet is often made by ladies. From 6 to 10 hours is sufficient 
 for the round trip. 
 
XIII 
 
 ON THE SHORES OF PUGET SOUND 
 
 THE place where I stopped longest in the Puget 
 Sound country was a scattered settlement of 
 five thousand people which was old as age goes 
 in the Northwest. Its most commanding height was 
 crowned with a big school-building, and there were 
 httle church spires sticking up all about. "We're 
 supplied with pretty near every creed and denomination 
 you can think of," declared one citizen proudly. 
 
 As I was rambling through the town on my first 
 evening there a church bell that I judged from the 
 sound was one size larger than a hand bell, began to 
 ding-dong not far away. I was on the same street as 
 the church and presently came to the edifice. Several 
 boys were climbing up to look in the windows and then 
 jumping down. "I see him!" they cried excitedly. 
 "I see the crazy man!" 
 
 The bell now ceased its clamor, and I concluded to 
 attend service. I entered and found a Young People's 
 Meeting in progress. Outside I could hear the boys 
 scuffling at the windows. After a while a man in the 
 
 265 
 
266 Highways and Bjrways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 audience rose and left the room. He was shabbily 
 dressed, his hair was tousled, his looks vacant and his 
 step shuffling. He was the crazy man. Nearly all in the 
 room turned to watch him go, and among the children 
 there was much snickering which was long in subsiding. 
 
 After the meeting came to an end there was a second 
 meeting in a larger room across the hall for the entire 
 congregation. The gathering was small, but the 
 service had considerable vim in it. The singing, with 
 the cabinet organ to lead, was particularly energetic, 
 though the hard metallic tones of the voices savored 
 of the uncultured wilderness. The region is still raw 
 and youthful, and delicacy of feeling and expression 
 will come later. The regular preacher was away, and 
 a member of the congregation who had a knack for 
 speaking took his place. He looked like a reformed 
 bartender — stout figured, with a narrow forehead, a 
 heavy mustache and a hoarse, loud voice. When he 
 rose to begin his sermon he said, "There was an old 
 farmer went to town to buy a clock, and the storekeeper 
 showed him one, and says, 'Here's a clock that will 
 run eight days without winding.' 
 
 "'Gracious!' says the farmer, 'and if she will run 
 eight days without winding how long will she run if 
 you wind her ?' 
 
 "Now, I ain't been wound up for eight days myself, 
 so there's no knowing how long I'd run if I had been 
 
Mending a shoe 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 267 
 
 wound up. I'm goin* to talk to you tonight about the 
 Bible. The Bible ain't just one book. It's many books 
 put together. How many books are there in the Bible ?" 
 
 He paused, tipped his head on one side and raised 
 his eyebrows inquiringly. There was a blank silence. 
 "Don't all speak at once," he cautioned jokingly. 
 
 "Sixty-six," responded a faint voice in the audience. 
 
 "Yes," said the preacher, "and sixty-six books is 
 a good big library; but if you was to go and collect all 
 the books that have been written about the Bible or 
 been inspired by it you would have thousands — ain't 
 that right ? 
 
 "The Bible wa'n't given to the world all complete. 
 It was given gradually — first a little for Adam, then 
 more for Abraham and his family, and later still more 
 for the Jewish people. But finally it was all given and 
 was for the whole world. The climax of God's work 
 was to send Christ down here on the earth, and Christ 
 came to save the people of his day, and he came to save 
 you and I. This was a savage old world then. You 
 take the thumb-screw and the stretchers and guUetin 
 and the gladiator which was all a-flourishin' — it was 
 time for judgment, and the Christian religion was 
 necessary." 
 
 At the close of the service the fact that I was a 
 stranger led a number to shake hands and introduce 
 themselves and say a friendly word. This reception 
 
268 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 was very pleasant, but the greetings were coupled with 
 some extras I did not so much appreciate. One asked 
 me if I was a Christian, another if I was a Baptist the 
 same as they were, and they all wanted to know if I 
 was going to settle there, and one tried his best to direct 
 me to the oifice of a relative who was a real estate agent. 
 
 Along the borders of the town ran a swift, deep river, 
 and on its banks were sawmills and shingle mills. All 
 through the day the air was shrilled with the sound 
 of the demoniac saws and the panting of engines. 
 Every mill had its great piles of sawed lumber about 
 and its heap of burning waste constantly crackling and 
 sending up a cloud of smoke. The region contains the 
 finest and largest body of timber in existence, but it is 
 fast going. "When I come here four years ago," said 
 onei man, "nearly all the roads leading out of town was 
 hardly wider than the wheel tracks and was closed in 
 on both sides by heavy forest. You couldn't hardly 
 see daylight, but gee whiz! it's a fright the way the 
 forest has been cleared up, and now those same roads 
 are lined with farms. In a few years more there'll be 
 none of the best forest left." 
 
 One afternoon I went back into the woodland to 
 see some of it that had been untouched. I followed 
 a logging railroad, starting at a spot four miles out of 
 town where they dumped the logs from the cars into 
 the river. I was soon in genuine Puget Sound forest 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 269 
 
 where except for the railroad the woodsmen had as 
 yet done no work. This particular section had been 
 neglected because the trees were mostly hemlocks, 
 timber which is comparatively valueless. But they 
 Were wonderful trees, straight as arrows, clean-stemmed, 
 crowded, and astounding in their towering height. 
 The fires had never run through them, and for once I 
 saw woodland as nature intended it should be. No 
 matter how fierce the winds might be that swept the 
 tree tops they could not ruffle the forest depths. Here 
 eternal quiet reigned. Here was always coolness and 
 moisture and twilight, even at midday. Here grew 
 the green mosses and tangled shrubbery, and great ferns 
 of almost tropical luxuriance. Here lay the trees that 
 had died and fallen, but which by reason of size and 
 the dampness were many, many years in crumbling 
 into mould. So encumbered was the ground with the 
 rough, rank mass of decay and so thick was the under- 
 growth that one would find the task of pushing a way 
 through well nigh impossible. 
 
 The wilderness was sober and almost silent. Some-! 
 times a bird sang, sometimes a squirrel chattered. In 
 one glade a dogwood had opened some scattered blossoms, 
 and I saw occasional wake-robins — wild lilies, they 
 were called locally, and a few skunk cabbage plants j 
 each thrusting up a great yellow flower from amid the 
 green leaves. 
 
270 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 Presently I came to a chopper's camp in a clearing. 
 How sorry it did look! — a group of board shanties 
 amid a stark, staring desolation of brush and a few 
 standing dead trees, while back behind was nature's 
 green forest temple. Yet though nature had been ages 
 in upbuilding, man would soon bring the slender pillars 
 and graceful arches tumbling to earth, and their like 
 would be seen no more in that place forever. I kept 
 on, following the railroad in its sinuous way through 
 the forest. Now, the land on either side had been cut 
 over, and it was not long before I could hear on ahead 
 the light steady blows of axes and at frequent intervals 
 the throbbing and hissing of some horrible steam 
 monster. This monster proved to be a donkey engine 
 hauling logs to the loading place. It was firmly fas- 
 tened to several standing trees and it dragged the logs 
 by means of a stout wire cable. What a snorting, 
 thunderous creature it was, and how startling the 
 sudden screeches of its whistle. The very trees might 
 well have fallen in terror at the racket it made. The 
 energy it displayed was astonishing as it brought the 
 great logs crashing through the woods over the hillocks 
 and through the hollows, scraping off the bark and 
 smearing them all over with mud. Once on the landing 
 platform the log was released and by means of another 
 cable the engine rolled it on to one of the waiting cars. 
 
Starting to fell a giant cedar 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 271 
 
 A little farther up in the woods the men were felling 
 trees. Two worked together. The trees grow very 
 large at the base, and for the first ten feet taper rapidly. 
 To save time they are cut well up above where the 
 great sinews reach out to grip the earth. Six feet is 
 perhaps a usual height, but I saw old stumps on the 
 lowlands of twice that altitude. The cedar stumps 
 continue sound indefinitely, and many years perhaps 
 after the choppers have done their work and the fires 
 have burned the brush, these stumps are cut into fifty- 
 two inch lengths and split up into shingle bolts that 
 look like short heavy pieces of cord wood. " But it ain't 
 first-class material," explained one man. "The grain 
 is any way and every way, and there's a good deal of 
 complaint about the shingles we're turning out." 
 
 When preparing to fell a tree each of the two choppers 
 makes a notch on opposite sides of the trunk about 
 three feet from the ground and inserts a short board 
 that has on the end a sharp upturned edge of iron. 
 The iron catches, and the board projects horizontally. 
 On these supports the choppers stand, and they per- 
 haps will cut other notches and insert boards and go 
 up a stage or two higher. The task of severing the 
 trunk is begun by making an undercut which will 
 bring the tree down in a particular direction, and then 
 they finish from the other side with a long saw. 
 
272 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 The trees sometimes have a diameter of a dozen feet. 
 The cedars, in particular, reach a vast girth, and in 
 the valley by the roadside was one with a circumference 
 at the ground of sixty-three feet, and near by was 
 another that had a gothic arch cut through it affording 
 easy passage for a person on horseback. But the 
 tallest trees are the firs. Two hundred feet is a very 
 moderate height and some shoot up to above three 
 hundred. The fall of one of the monsters, when the 
 woodsmen have cut through its base, is something 
 appalling. As the tree begins to give, the sawyers 
 hustle down from their perch and seek a safe distance. 
 Then they look upward along the giant column and 
 listen. "She's workin' all the time," says one. 
 
 "Yes," agrees the other, "you can hear her talkin';" 
 and he gives a loud cry of "Timber!" to warn any 
 fellow-laborers who may be in the neighborhood. 
 
 The creaking and snapping increase, and the tree 
 swings slowly at first, but soon with tremendous 
 rapidity and crashes down through the forest to the 
 earth. There is a flying of bark and broken branches 
 and the air is filled with slow-settling dust. The men 
 climb on the prostaate giant and walk along the broad 
 pathway of the trunk to see how it lies. What pigmies 
 they seem amid the mighty trees around! The ancient 
 and lofty forest could well look down on them and 
 despise their short-lived insignificance; yet their per- 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 273 
 
 sistence and ingenuity are irresistible, and the woodland 
 Is doomed. 
 
 To the rear of those who do the felling are the 
 buckers. They work singly and cut off the limbs and 
 saw the trunks into lengths. They climb about in a 
 chaos of wreckage, sometimes well up in the air, some- 
 times down on the ground out of sight. "When I 
 hailed from the East out here," said one worker, "and 
 they put me to bucking, I thought that was a pretty 
 lonesome job. It didn't seem like a hull lot o' fun for 
 bne man to start with a long wiggling saw cutting off 
 a log seven or eight feet through. But that's all right 
 now I've got used to it." 
 
 Perhaps the best paid wilderness worker is the hook 
 tender who attaches the donkey engine cable to the 
 logs. His is a dangerous task and he is paid four 
 dollars or more a day. The head fallers get three and 
 a half, the second fallers three and a quarter, and the 
 swampers who delve about clearing a path for the 
 railroad receive two and a half. Every man comes to 
 camp with his own blankets, and he pays five dollars 
 a week for board. "There's quite a rakeofF in that," 
 one man in the valley, who had himself been a chopper, 
 explained to me; "but they have the best of food 
 and a first-class cook. It would do your heart good to 
 eat with 'em. I've stopped at many a hotel, but never 
 had food served yet that would come up to what they 
 
274 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 have in the logging camps. The lumbermen won't 
 stay no time at all unless they are well fed." 
 
 The buildings at the camp I visited in the woods had 
 roofs and sides of a single thickness of unplaned boards. 
 In the men's home quarters were bunks in a double 
 tier along the walls — mere boxes with a continuous 
 seat down below along the front. Each man fixed up 
 some shelves to suit himself around the inside of the 
 bunk for containing his belongings, and on the floor 
 underneath were thrown the surplus boots and other 
 articles not especially valued. Every projection and 
 cross piece was hung full of duds. In the middle of the 
 room stood a stout stove and a long table. This 
 building was home to the men the year through, for 
 they continue cutting in winter and summer alike. 
 
 Their chief recreation is to go to town on Saturday 
 nights. As the man I have already quoted explained, 
 "They've got money, and they just blow it in. That 
 there is the logger style of it. If they saved instead of 
 spending they'd all be rich. There's no places of 
 amusement in the town. They can go to the library 
 and sit down or go to a hotel and sit down, but that 
 don't suit 'em. No, they either get drunk or go to church. 
 Some take in both. I've seen 'em at church pretty 
 well loaded. 
 
 "Now, I want to tell you, my friend, they wear good 
 clothes when they go to town. Say! you'd take 'em 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 275 
 
 more for clerks and professional men than loggers. 
 Of course some don't give a cent how they dress, but 
 that's not usual. 
 
 "Saturday nights 'bout 'leven or twelve o'clock you 
 hear 'em returnin' along the road. Mostly they hire 
 a rig and ride to the camp, eight or ten fellers to a 
 team. Oh, they're sporty! There's nothing too good 
 for the logger. Take 'em as a whole they're the best 
 class of men I ever run up against. They're all nation- 
 alities, some Americans, some Canadians and a good 
 many Scandinavians. Yes, they're pretty darn well 
 mixed. The loggers are generous and always take up a 
 collection if someone is hurt in the woods. That don't 
 happen often considerin' the danger, but when a man 
 does get it he gets it proper." 
 
 The region I was visiting was in many respects ideal 
 farming country with its rich soil, near markets and 
 facilities for transportation. The crops of potatoes and 
 other vegetables and cereals are wonderful, and great 
 quantities are produced of strawberries, raspberries 
 and blackberries of the finest quality. However, as 
 one local dweller said, "You can't get anywhere but 
 that there's something wrong with the country, I don't 
 care where it is. It's damp here, and that's bad for 
 the rheumatism; but the main thing I don't Hke is 
 that the land sells for more than it's worth. Cleared 
 farm land within three or four miles of the town goes 
 
276 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 at from a hundred to two hundred dollars an acre, and 
 that's too much." 
 
 I noticed in a circular sent out to advertise the region 
 it was stated specifically that they have no mosquitoes 
 and no thunderstorms. Like most circulars for Eastern 
 readers sent from the Pacific Coast this describes a 
 paradise which does not exist. They have both mos- 
 quitoes and thunderstorms in the Puget Sound country, 
 though in most seasons and in most sections these are 
 quite mild. "But the thunderstorms we had last 
 summer," said one informant, "was heavy and no 
 mistake. They seemed to skip us right here though, 
 and the ground got awful dry. I'd see a storm comin' 
 up black as tar, and it would make me boihng mad to 
 watch it swing off over the hills where it wa'n't needed 
 and leave us as dry as ever." 
 
 Land that I called cleared seemed almost non- 
 existent. By keeping a sharp lookout I did now and 
 then observe a clean field, but nearly all the farms were 
 very much encumbered with stumps and brush. There 
 are stumps even when the land is cultivated, black and 
 massive, dotting the fields like gravestone memorials 
 to the dead forest. Often stumps were standing in the 
 dooryards close about the homes, some of them nearly 
 as tall as the buildings. "I tell you what I seen," a 
 native remarked to me. "In my pasture there's a 
 hollow stump so big that sometimes five or six cattle 
 
s 
 s 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 277 
 
 will get into it as a sort of shelter. By gol! that sounds 
 hke a fish story, but it ain't. 
 
 "There's so many stumps and snags and such a lot 
 of brush in this country I sometimes think God Almighty 
 never intended it to be cleared at all. In starting 
 the work the first thing is the brush-cutting — slashing, 
 we call it. The brush is left piled up in windrows, and 
 when it's dry you burn it; but it don't burn clean and 
 the fire leaves a lot of stub ends besides all the charred 
 logs and other large pieces, so you are in a nice job. 
 You can be just as black as you want to be in the 
 picking up." 
 
 The stumps are the most serious part of the problem. 
 The effort to obliterate a really big one by burning and 
 hacking and digging may continue for years. To put 
 a charge of powder or dynamite underneath is the 
 quickest way. That breaks it up and loosens it. Then, 
 by hitching horses on to the fragments, the great root 
 fangs can be jerked forth from the ground, but there 
 will still be an enormous hole to fill. The entire 
 expense of clearing the land of both brush and stumps 
 will average about seventy-five dollars an acre. 
 
 I asked a man in the town if the farmers were pros- 
 perous. "Sure thing!" he replied. "They're well fixed, 
 and lots of 'em have money in the bank." 
 
 But those black spectral stumps lingered in my mind, 
 and I could not dispel the feeling that the farmers were 
 
278 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 wrestling with the wilderness, and that their prosperity 
 was of the future rather than of the present. Besides, 
 their buildings were small and often poor, and I said 
 so to the town man. 
 
 "Well," he responded, "in the East when a man has 
 made money, the first thing he does is to improve his 
 surroundings so he can take some pride in 'em; but 
 here they don't seem to care much about that. They're 
 content to live in shacks, and there ain't much to their 
 barns except a roof which is just good enough to turn 
 water off." 
 
 One day I was caught by a light shower, and stopped 
 at a wayside home. A woman and some ragged 
 children came to the door and I was ushered into the 
 best room. It was a battered, barren apartment with 
 board walls and ceiling. The most notable articles of 
 furniture were a stove, a sewing machine, and a sofa 
 with an old quilt on it. The walls were adorned with 
 three enlarged portraits staring out of heavy, dingy 
 frames. 
 
 The woman exhumed some photographs for my 
 entertainment, wiping them one by one with her apron 
 as she passed them to me. They were much the worse 
 for wear. "This one is of a logging crew," she ex- 
 plained; "and this here is of the last graduating class 
 from the high school; and that there is of two of my 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 279 
 
 nieces in Seatt e. I been washing today," she added 
 with a sigh, "and I'm completely done out." 
 
 The shower was soon over. In a near field the man 
 of the house was zigzagging around among the black 
 stumps with a pair of old horses ploughing. He did not 
 stop for the rain. When I started on I went through 
 the field and spoke with him. He seemed to be in no 
 hurry and he let his horses stand while he went and 
 sat down on a pile of rubbish that he had cleared oflF 
 the land and thrown in a great windrow to serve as a 
 fence. Then he got out his jackknife and began 
 whittling. 
 
 "I landed here twenty years ago," said he, "and I 
 swore I wouldn't stay if they was to give me the hull 
 country, but now I'm content with a very little of it, 
 and there never was better land anywhere than this 
 right here. It can't be discounted. The region was 
 at first all covered with heavy woods. The river and 
 the cricks was the thoroughfares, and there was swarms 
 of Indians camped up and down 'em. Timber wa'n't 
 worth what it is at present, and there's been more 
 spoilt here than a little. We'd pick out the finest trees, 
 cut 'em down, take the best part of each log and leave 
 the rest. We didn't use to look at hemlock at all. 
 
 "The cutting-ofF of the country has made quite a 
 difference in the weather. We've had a terrible fine 
 winter and spring so far this year. But we used to 
 
28o Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 have mist day after day. We called it Oregon mist — 
 missed Oregon and hit here. It was thick enough to 
 cut into chunks; yet you might be out in it all day and 
 hardly get wet through. My gracious! the mist was so 
 bad in July and August it was almost impossible to 
 cure our hay. Late years, instead of mist we have 
 rain, and then it comes off clear. 
 
 "This is a great country for fish. Heavens and earth! 
 when I come here we didn't think much of salmon — ^they 
 was too common. We appreciate them now. At 
 this season they are a little scarce and you have to 
 pay as much for 'em in our town as in any old place; 
 but, later, in the salmon run you can buy a ten or 
 twelve pounder for fifteen cents. 
 
 "There's one thing I'm glad of — ^they say we ain't 
 in the earthquake zone, and yet I'm not sure about 
 that. Back here in the woods is a bluff that's full of 
 petrified clams and other things which was once in 
 the sea. How did that bluff get where it is unless it 
 was hove there sometime ? Earthquake zone be 
 darned! You can't tell me we ain't in it when I've 
 seen them petrified clams in that high bluff. 
 
 " I've got some first-class land, but I could show you 
 other land in this region that's as poor as this is good. 
 I've had a chance to sample some of it myself. Once I 
 bought thirty-five acres on the upland, and I had a 
 blamed nice little farmhouse there and as fine a well 
 
Burning brush 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 281 
 
 of water as ever was outdoors. In the spring I started 
 my crops, and everything looked as green and nice as 
 it does here, but there was hardpan close below the 
 surface, and in June my crops just pinched right off and 
 died. The next winter a man come along and looked 
 at the place thinkin' of buyin'. We agreed on the 
 price, and I was all in a tremble till I got the money for 
 fear he'd back out. He gave me eight hundred and 
 fifty dollars and I bought down here. I can raise more 
 on one acre of this land than he can on his hull place. 
 
 "A good deal of the high ground is all right, and to 
 hear the land agents talk you might think it was as 
 good as this in the valley. You don't get a fair idea 
 from them. It takes this bottom land nearly all the 
 time to do what they say land up there will do. My 
 farm here gets along pretty well without fertilizer year 
 after year, by rotating. On high ground, though, 
 you're obliged to enrich the soil if you want decent crops. 
 
 "Not long ago a party of homeseekers come to our 
 town from Minnesota, and they was met at the station 
 by a lot of land-sharks who showed 'em around. On 
 the borders of the town I noticed one of the sharks 
 pointing out a farm field and sayin' to a visitor, 'Why, 
 man alive! if you was to pay five hundred dollars an 
 acre for that you'd double your money in two years.' 
 
 " 'What'd I raise ?' says the homeseeker. 
 
282 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 " * You could do it with potatoes,' says the shark. 
 'Our land'U produce twenty tons to the acre.' 
 
 "Well, it wa'n't my business to chip in, but I couldn't 
 help remarkin', 'Say, I can't hit that. If you've got 
 any such land to sell I'd like to buy it.' 
 
 "Hops have been a great crop here, but raisin' 'em 
 is just like gambling. The price goes up and down so 
 uncertain that perhaps they'll make you rich, and 
 perhaps they'll make you poor. There's one valley I 
 know of went into hops, and all but two men in that 
 valley have lost their ranches. It was the same way 
 with tobacco when I lived back in Wisconsin. At first 
 we made big money and thought we'd discovered a 
 gold mine. Everybody went into it heavy, and pretty 
 soon the price dropped way down out of sight. It was 
 a pity, by gracious! You had the tobacco on your 
 hands, and you couldn't eat the stuff. All you could do 
 was to chew it and spit it out, or smoke it; and my old 
 dad was put right to the wall. 
 
 "But then there's things right here that don't turn 
 out any better. Two years ago I tried the poultry 
 tacket. I thought I'd go into the business in a large 
 way and make some money. So I bought an incubator 
 and paid seventy-two dollars for it and set four hundred 
 eggs. I got twenty-five chickens. Then I tried another 
 four hundred eggs and got thirty chickens. That wag 
 enough for me and I put the incubator away. My 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 283 
 
 hens do good work hatching, but in a few days after a 
 hen brings off a brood, the weasels, skunks and rats get 
 busy and you won't find a confounded thing around 
 the place only dead chickens. 
 
 " I was some afraid when I settled here that the river 
 would carry off all my land. The banks used to wash 
 badly, but since the trees have been cut off the channel 
 ain't changed so much. You see a tall tree partly 
 undermined by water would get weaving in the wind 
 and loosen up a lot of soil that would wash away in 
 no time then. You notice how high up off the ground 
 my house is perched. That's on account of floods. 
 One November the water covered the second doorstep, 
 but the flood is a great help to us fellers. It fertilizes 
 the land. I thought it would ruin my potatoes that 
 November. I had 'em all in a pit with a tent-shaped 
 roof over 'em banked up with turf When the flood 
 was at its highest the top of the pit stuck out of the 
 water like a muskrat's house. I spoke to the neighbors, 
 and they said, 'The water'U seep right off. Leave 
 your potatoes alone. Don't monkey with 'em, and 
 they'll be all right.' Well, it didn't hurt 'em a dog-gone 
 bit, and I never lost a potato except some in the ground 
 that wa'n't dug. Those was just as mushy as if they'd 
 been frozen. 
 
 "In 1896 we had what we called the big he freshet. 
 That there surpassed anything the old-timers had ever 
 
284 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 seen, and on the low grounds steamers ran all around 
 out over the fences and rescued the people. It wa'n't 
 very nice to be tangled up with a flood like that. A good 
 many buildings was carried down the stream and it 
 got away with a terrible lot of stock. I've seen a pig 
 floating along on a log in that flood just as calm and nice 
 as if he'd been a frog, and it was a comical sight. There's 
 a queer animal — Mr. Piggy. You take one that's in 
 danger of drowning into a canoe, and it'll lay just as 
 quiet as can be. But as soon as you are near enough 
 to the shore so it thinks it can spring to land, then 
 look out for yourself They say a pig don't know 
 anything, but they wouldn't say so if they'd come as 
 near getting a ducking as I have in the way I speak of." 
 Every dweller who had been for any length of time 
 in the region had a similar fund of picturesque im- 
 pressions and experiences. There were clouds mingled 
 with the sunshine; yet I think no one who visits the 
 Puget Sound country can fail to believe that there is 
 before it a great future. The Sound itself makes a 
 waterway marvelous in extent and navigable for the 
 largest ships. The climate is peculiarly attractive. It 
 does not entirely lack vigor, yet the cold is never 
 extreme, and there is plentiful moisture. The streams 
 flow throughout the year, and the supply of water for 
 drinking is abundant and pure. Many great towns 
 are growing up along the shore and they have back of 
 
On the Shores of Puget Sound 285 
 
 them much land of wonderful fertility. Already a 
 network of steam and electric roads have been built 
 that reminds one of the populous sections of the East. 
 As one man remarked, "You can start from here and 
 go anywhere in the world — ^in any direction, and by 
 land or water." 
 
 Note. — ^The Puget Sound country appeals to the traveller with 
 exceptional force. The Sound itself is a magnificent waterway with 
 its shore line of eighteen hundred miles; and the larger bordering 
 towns are remarkably vigorous and modern and promising, while 
 the tributary streams and fertile soil and fine forests prophesy a 
 future of unusual prosperity and the maintenance of a very large 
 population. 
 
 The first white settlement dates back to 1828. Wars with the 
 Indians retarded immigration, but in 1858 the discovery of gold at 
 Frazer's River brought an influx of 15,000 persons, many of whom 
 became permanent settlers. Nevertheless, the census of 1 870 
 reported a population of only 24,000. 
 
 The two largest towns on Puget Sound are Seattle and Tacoma. 
 The former, which was named after an Indian chief, was founded in 
 1852. The higher parts of the city command splendid views of the 
 Olympic Mountains. These mountains are well worth visiting, for 
 the scenery is notably striking, and there are magnificent forests 
 and many glaciers. 
 
 Tacoma had only 760 inhabitants in 1880. Many good roads 
 lead to the "natural parks" that begin 6 miles south of the city. 
 The parks are carpeted with flowers and contain numerous lakes. 
 
 The nearest of the big snow-capped peaks of the Cascade Range 
 is Mt. Ranier, 14,363 feet high. To visit it take the train to Wilke- 
 son, 32 miles, and then go on by a bridle-path, 25 miles, to the base 
 of the mountain. Like the other isolated peaks of the range, Mt. 
 Ranier is an extinct volcano. Two craters at the summit still give 
 off heat and sulphurous fumes. 
 
XIV 
 
 AT THE EDGE OF CANADA 
 
 THE village where I stopped was smack up 
 against the Canadian line. It had been recom- 
 mended to me as "quite a busy little burg," 
 but I could not see that it was very different from 
 other small sawmill towns I had observed as I 
 looked out of the car window going north. There was 
 the same cluster of wooden stores, saloons, churches, 
 lodging houses and hotels, and a dribble of residences for 
 a mile round about. The house that reached a full mag- 
 nificence of two stories was a rarity. Most people were 
 content with one story, and the house was small at that. 
 Newness and rawness were very apparent, and there 
 was a good deal of the makeshift about the dwellings. 
 All the home premises were snuggly fenced, and the cows 
 and horses were turned loose to browse in the public 
 ways and along the railroad tracks and out into the 
 surrounding wilds to suit themselves. 
 
 A large sawmill had burned the year before and had 
 not been replaced. Many workers had therefore 
 moved away, and certain saloons and lodging houses 
 
 286 
 
At the Edge of Canada 287 
 
 had closed their doors as a consequence. These build- 
 ings now were little short of ruinous, with shattered 
 windows and other marks of neglect and misuse that 
 gave the place a touch of melancholy and decay. On 
 my first day, as I sat in the hotel office, I made inquiry 
 about conditions, and one man turned to another and 
 said, "Well, Bill, the town's havin' a little bit of a boom 
 now, ain't it ?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Bill, "it booms nights. I've heard 
 it, but I don't see much difference daytimes." 
 
 "Why is it that your vacant buildings look so shaky .?" 
 I asked. "They can't be old." 
 
 "I suppose," responded Bill, "it's because it ain't 
 the habit of the country to build substantial. Even a 
 nice appearin' building is apt to be cheap and thin 
 walled. The paint is about all there is to it." 
 
 By the office stove sat a couple of Germans. They 
 just then started discussing a village runaway, and the 
 older man said, "Dere vas two horses and a heavy 
 wagon. Von bridle camed off and der driver he got 
 down to fix it, and an engine tooted. Dot made der 
 horses run down der street, and der wagon pole hit a 
 telegraph post and broke. Two old peoples vas stand- 
 ing on der sidewalk dere." 
 
 "Vas dey hurted ?" asked the listener. 
 
 "Yes," repHed the other, "dey vas old peoples and 
 easy-going and dey couldn't get out of der vay from 
 
288 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 nothings. Der voman vas hit in der head. Der horse 
 kind o' pawed Hke and hit her mit his front foot." 
 
 "Vas she knocked down?" inquired the younger 
 German. 
 
 "Oh, sure," was the reply, "she vas knocked down 
 all right." 
 
 " Dat vas ven der horse put his foot on her, don't it ?" 
 said the younger of the two. 
 
 "No," his companion answered, "if he put his foot 
 on her den it fix her for goot. She ish all better now." 
 
 The surrounding region was a wide plain varying little 
 in level for miles, but it had a fine setting of rugged hills 
 and lofty wooded ridges in the distance, and when the 
 Weather was clear I saw peaks that were white with 
 snow. The lowlands were pretty thoroughly cleared 
 of valuable timber, yet I was assured that a little farther 
 back there was no end of heavy woodland, and that 
 the forest had as yet hardly been touched. The forest 
 that was in view would have been much finer had it 
 not been for the yearly ravaging of the fires. 
 
 "We had one big fire this last March," a man 
 explained to me. "That's an unusual time for a fire. 
 We commonly get 'em in summer, but this winter was 
 very dry. A feller was burning up some brush and the 
 fire got away. There was a gale blowing, and it carried 
 the flames through the tree tops. The wind would 
 catch burning moss and pieces of old dead bark from 
 
Getting ready to plant potatoes 
 
At the Edge of Canada 289 
 
 the tall trees and take them a long distance and keep 
 the fire spreading. I and two other fellers and a horse 
 got cut off by the fire from the logging camp where we 
 was workin' and we had to go roundabout in a hurry 
 or get burned. The horse was no help and we con- 
 cluded to leave it, but the horse follered us. It pushed 
 along through the brush close behind and when we 
 climbed over a log it would rear up and jump and we 
 all reached camp safe. 
 
 "Down at the next village they wet gunny sacks 
 and put 'em on the roofs to prevent the houses from 
 bein' set on fire by the flyin' sparks. One man lost his 
 house and barn and all his cows and was pretty near 
 burned himself. Oh, gosh, yes, it was raging! At 
 night, looking from here toward the mountains, you 
 could see the big blaze away up in the air. Yet it done 
 a whole lot of good in places, clearing the land, and 
 there was plenty of people who was glad to see the fire 
 running over the woods because it would make fine 
 pasture." 
 
 During my stay I rambled about the region pretty 
 thoroughly, though the walking was far from ideal. 
 However, in the opinion of the natives they are blessed 
 with excellent roads. I thought them wretched. Deep 
 ruts and sudden hollows and mud holes abounded, and 
 there were spots where broken stone had been dumped 
 on. This stone prevented teams from sinking down 
 
290 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 out of sight, yet shook you up till your teeth rattled if 
 you were in a vehicle. Then, too, there was a good 
 deal of corduroy so that the traveller on wheels got 
 bumps and jarrings of every variety. 
 
 On one of my walks I overtook two school children, 
 a boy and a girl, and we kept on in company for a mile 
 or more. The girl's name was "Addie," the boy's 
 name, "Fred," and they were near neighbors. Each 
 carried a dinner pail, for they lived too far from the 
 village to allow them to go home at noon. The boy 
 was barefoot and his legs were well daubed with clay 
 mud as the result of wading in roadside pools. 
 
 "We've got two tame pigeons in our barn," remarked 
 the boy. "Mr. Frye give 'em to us. Oh, Addie, did 
 you see that peach tree of ourn this morning ?" 
 
 "Eh-uh," she replied, by which she meant, "No." 
 
 "Well, you ought to stop and look at that tree. 
 She'll have peaches on this year. She's just full of 
 blossoms." 
 
 "We've got a big red cow," said Addie, turning to 
 me; "and that cow'll let you pet her. When she's 
 lying down you can get on her back and have a ride. 
 I like my old red cow, and her milk is nearly all butter. 
 We have another cow named Maud, and her milk 
 don't have any cream at all. Maud won't let you pet 
 her either, and if you do she will run and beller." 
 
At the Edge of Canada 291 
 
 "I picked a whole bunch of shootin' stars, yester- 
 day," said Fred, "and I brung 'em home and put 'em 
 in water. They looked pretty and I'd have tooken 'em 
 to school only I forgot. When I was little I picked a 
 lot of skunk cabbage blossoms, but they smelt awful. 
 They stinked and I threw them away. I don't never 
 pick them any more." 
 
 "Once I fell in the crick near our house," Addie 
 affirmed, "and my brother pulled me out. I didn't 
 get whipped. My mother only scolded me." 
 
 While the children were telling me the story of their 
 lives after this fashion a family of small pigs came 
 scampering along the road toward us with a dog 
 barking at their heels. My companions hastened to 
 share in the excitement, and they seemed not to care 
 much whether they chased the pigs or the dog. But 
 they soon rejoined me, and the boy said, "We had some 
 little pigs in a pen last year, and I got in there and was 
 running 'em and one bit my finger." 
 
 " I don't see but that there is as much going on here 
 as where I live," I observed. 
 
 "Where do you live?" they asked. 
 
 "In Massachusetts," I replied. "Do you know 
 where that is ?" 
 
 "Eh-uh," Addie responded, "but I know where 
 Seattle is and where Portland is." 
 
292 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 "And I know where Massachusetts is," declared 
 the boy. "It's across the ocean." 
 
 " What ocean ?" I inquired, but I had reached the 
 limit of his information. 
 
 The children's homes were out among the blackened 
 stumps and the ragged woodland as yet uncleared of 
 brush. The dwellings were small, paintless, and rude 
 in their surroundings and all their appointments. Yet 
 the everyday work and play, the farm animals, and 
 the changing seasons held plenty of charm for the 
 children and they were content. Their elders possibly 
 saw a darker and duller side. However, they were 
 spurred on by their hopes for the future. They were 
 constantly winning in their fight with the wilderness, 
 clearing up and improving the land, setting out fruit 
 trees, increasing the number of their domestic animals 
 so that the time seemed coming when they would be 
 assured of a good and valuable farm and a comfortable 
 income. As for present discomforts, I doubt if these 
 occasioned any special chafing, for these were part 
 and parcel of the prevailing way of living in the region. 
 
 It was interesting to watch a man ploughing new 
 ground and see how irregularly he had to dodge about 
 to avoid stumps and snags, and how constantly the 
 horses were jerked to a standstill by some obstruction 
 the plough had encountered. "Yes," said a resident, 
 i. former dweller in Tennessee, whom I accosted at 
 
Visiting at the gate 
 
At the Edge of Canada 293 
 
 v;his task, "that's a right smart of green roots in hyar, 
 and a heap of fern roots, too." 
 
 His small boy was busy pulling out such roots as the 
 plough loosened and piling them up to burn, and in a 
 few days they would have a crop of oats started. 
 
 In a neighboring field a man with the help of his 
 wife was gathering up fragments of stumps on a wooden 
 sledge and making great bonfires of them. "This is 
 spare time work," said he. "I've got some good cows 
 and a cream separator, and we're makin' butter enough 
 to supply us with the money to pay our living expenses. 
 So when there's no hurry about the other things we 
 clear up the land and we are makin' what will one of 
 these days be a ranch we can sell for a high price. In 
 the rough you can buy this land cheap, and by clearing 
 it gradually at odd times your labor don't mean any 
 real outlay." 
 
 I was about to resume my walk, but the man said his 
 wife was just starting to the house to get dinner ready 
 and invited me to stay and eat with them. He was 
 insistent, and I accepted the friendly hospitality. When 
 we left the field he drove his horse to the barn — a good- 
 sized spreading structure, yet without a sawed stick in 
 it. The entire material had been split out of cedar — the 
 beams and studding, the rafters and shingles and the 
 boards. Some of these boards were eight or ten feet 
 long, and their even thickness and the neatness of the 
 
294 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 whole job were surprising. The barn was nearly empty 
 except for a little wild hay from the marshes and a 
 few bags of apples. The fruit had lain there on the 
 floor all winter, and it was still sound and eatable, 
 though a trifle withered. 
 
 "When I was new here," said the man, "I thought 
 a building like this was the dog-gonest thing I'd ever 
 seen in my life. It was quite a cur'osity, by George! 
 But such buildings are common all around, and there's 
 a good many split-out houses, too. Say, it's astonishing, 
 ain't it, the lumber and boards that can be made without 
 a saw ever touching 'em ? The road from here to town, 
 four miles, used to be pretty near all of corduroy split 
 out of cedar. They've turnpiked the road lately and 
 covered most of the cedar out of sight, but there's still 
 left a corduroy bridge one hundred feet long over a 
 low wet place. 
 
 "Cedar is useful in a good many ways. It makes 
 the best fence rails in the world — ^you bet your life it 
 does. It just naturally won't rot out, and the rails are 
 so light you can throw them all around. Give me 
 cedar rather than firwood fencing every time. A 
 firwood rail that's let lie on the ground — he'll go — won't 
 last over night hardly. Do you-all use any of our 
 Washington cedar shingles in the East .? If you get 
 our number ones you won't do any kicking." 
 
A corduroy bridge 
 
At the Edge of Canada 295 
 
 The farmer's dwelling was a little brown house in a 
 large yard that was nearly filled with apple trees just 
 coming into bloom. At the back door was a pump, 
 but we washed for dinner in a corner of the kitchen 
 where there was an oilcloth covered stand with an 
 earthen jar of water on it and a tin cup to serve for a 
 dipper. The children came from school, the baby 
 woke up and we all sat down to eat. The repast was 
 plentiful and good, vsrith pork and potatoes as the 
 mainstays. After we finished, the man and I sat talking 
 while the wife cleared the table. Their oldest son was 
 a school teacher. " He's been in four different places," 
 said the man, " and every time he's had a regular tough 
 school to handle. Children go to school all the way 
 from seven to twenty-one years of age, and there's often 
 some pretty wild kids among 'em. Sometimes they 
 whip the teacher, and sometimes they lock him outside. 
 Yes, they'll plague a teacher to death, and the school 
 gets played out. At my son's school, though, there's 
 very little trouble. He has a knack at managing. This 
 winter I believe one big boy undertook to whip him, 
 but my son, in spite of being small, is active, and he just 
 collared the lad and flopped him on the floor flat on his 
 back. Since then things have been all right. 
 
 "Last year we had trouble in this little school in our 
 own deestrict. The children got to having a big time 
 and had like to have tore the schoolhouse to pieces. 
 
296 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 They done just as they pleased, and the teacher, she'd 
 sit down and cry. She was a nice girl, but she was just 
 that tender-hearted she couldn't use any force to 
 compel a kid to behave himself. She was easy in a good 
 many ways. The ringing of the first bell she was 
 supposed to do at half past eight, but she'd ring it 
 according to the time she happened to get through 
 breakfast at the place where she boarded — maybe one 
 morning at eight and perhaps next day at nine. We 
 have three school directors in each deestrict, but one 
 of 'em was away, and the other two couldn't agree what 
 to do. You see one of these two was an old bach', and 
 I think he had a notion to try to marry the girl. So he 
 wouldn't hear of her bein' turned off. But finally she 
 resigned. 
 
 "Of course the boys were a good deal to blame. 
 They done a little too much, but they wa'n't really bad, 
 because this new teacher who's come in has no trouble 
 at all. We have a nine months' school beginning about 
 the first of September, and it keeps continuous except 
 for a week at Christmas and another week at Easter. 
 We pay fifty dollars a month. Usually the teacher 
 takes care of the schoolhouse, but once in a while we 
 get hold of one who won't build the fires. Then we 
 hire a janitor, but that's a thing we don't do unless 
 we have to." 
 
At the Edge of Canada 297 
 
 "Do the people in this neighborhood go to church 
 in the town ?" I inquired. 
 
 "They ain't great hands to go to church anywhere," 
 he replied; "but once in a while we have meetings in 
 the schoolhouse. There's an Advent Church in the 
 town, and whenever the preacher gets short of money 
 he comes out here and holds services for a few Sunday 
 afternoons. On the Saturday before he starts in he'll 
 drive around from house to house to announce that 
 there'll be a meetin'. He's about two-thirds or three- 
 fourths crazy in my opinion. He ain't married, and 
 you can take any man, I don't care who he is, and let 
 him live for years all by himself out in this wilderness, 
 and he will get a little off. Under them circumstances 
 a man is sure to have very peculiar streaks and imagine 
 things ought to go a certain way. Yes, and a man 
 bachin' here in the woods is pretty likely not to be able 
 to get along a minute with his neighbors. Well, speak- 
 in' about our meetin's, at the end of 'em there's a canvas 
 made of the homes and we fix the preacher up with 
 both money and food supplies. 
 
 "That reminds me the pigs are squealing for their 
 dinner, and I must go and feed them." 
 
 The rancher went off toward the pigpen and I betook 
 myself to the highway. Along either side of the road 
 was an unending series of shallow, slimy pools alive 
 with wriggling tadpoles, and these pools or the warm 
 
298 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 neighboring banks were a resort of numerous " streaked" 
 snakes, as they are called in Oregon, but which we in 
 the East speak of as "striped." The snakes slipped 
 away at my approach into the weeds and brush, darting 
 out their forked tongues warningly. 
 
 As I walked on I observed occasional log houses, 
 survivals of the rude days of the first settlers. They 
 were low and small and looked like poor quarters, but 
 there was one that seemed to me quite delightful. The 
 roof made a wide projection at one end over the gable 
 and door below, and relieved the architectural bareness. 
 Vines had been trained to grow up to the eaves, and a 
 patch of berry bushes close by made the cabin nestle 
 in its surroundings very prettily. A path led away to 
 a smokehouse a stone's throw from the dwelling, and 
 this smokehouse was made of a large hollow log set 
 on end with a roof put on the top and a door at the side. 
 A steep wooded cliff rose a few rods distant and made 
 the scene both wild and picturesque. 
 
 The woman of the house said the family had come 
 from Chicago. "We didn't think to live in a place like 
 this," she explained, "and when the children would 
 look from the car windows as we were coming and see 
 little log cabins of this sort they would cry out, " What's 
 that — a chicken coop ?" 
 
 While we were talking, a little girl appeared from 
 around the corner of the house. She had been after 
 

 o 
 
At the Edge of Canada 299 
 
 some strayed calves and now had got them together in 
 an adjoining lane. "I saw a Chinee rooster in the 
 woods," said she. 
 
 By that I understood she had seen a male Chinese 
 pheasant. These birds have been introduced com- 
 paratively recently, but are becoming numerous and 
 are a valuable addition to the wild game. I often 
 heard their sharp double squawk in my rambles. The 
 little girl affirmed that they were, "awful nice eatin'." 
 
 I was late in returning to the town. The sun had set 
 and the frogs were croaking in lively chorus in the 
 village puddles. Some of the young men were out in 
 the grass of the broad main street pitching horseshoe 
 quoits. I could hear the call of children at play on 
 the byways; there was a soft tinkle of cow bells and 
 the clack of footsteps on the wooden walks. Low in 
 the west hung the slender golden scimiter of the new 
 moon, and in the east, above the dark nearer ranges, 
 rose a lonely mountain peak, pure and white and 
 beautiful against the dusky sky. 
 
 Note. — ^Any hamlet like this, recently carved out of the wilderness, 
 has a peculiar fascination, and such are numerous in the far North- 
 west. The traveller with a liking for what is simple and rustic cannot 
 do better than to pick out one at random and stay at least a day or 
 two. Life there is more comprehensible than in a big town; individu- 
 ality is more marked in its dwellers, and you come in contact with 
 real life in a way that entertains and instructs. 
 
XV 
 
 THE NIAGARA OF THE WEST 
 
 THE Shoshone Falls on [the Snake River in 
 Southern Idaho ranks among the most in- 
 posing falls in the world; yet it has received 
 from the tourists thus far scant attention. Very little 
 exact information as to its character is to be had, and I 
 found the railway people, both in the offices and on the 
 trains woefully lacking in knowledge of how to get to 
 the great waterfall. Thus it was that I stopped off 
 from the train one night at Shoshone, supposing I was 
 to go from there a twenty-five mile journey by stage to 
 the Falls the next day; but I found the stage had long 
 been discontinued and that I must travel a roundabout 
 route by rail, a distance of one hundred miles. 
 
 I had plenty of time to look around the village the 
 following morning before an available train came. 
 It was a place of a thousand inhabitants, and in addition 
 to the homes and group of stores there was a courthouse, 
 school building, several small churches and a newspaper 
 office. A western town has to be very diminutive 
 indeed not to have a newspaper, and where one can 
 
 300 
 
The Niagara of the West 301 
 
 exist, a rival usually gains a foothold. Then there is 
 a fight — an endless war of words. Even in the largest 
 of the coast cities the papers have a curious boyish 
 habit of pitching into each other, and they give their 
 rivals their due with no light hand. You are surprised, 
 on reading what is said of a competing paper, that it 
 can continue to exist when it shows such incompetence, 
 idiocy and general cussedness, and you are informed 
 that its office boy is superior in sense and ability to 
 the editor-in-chief. 
 
 The settlement was huddled very snuggly together 
 as if in dread of the open loneliness of the surrounding 
 prairie, but really, I suppose, to take advantage of the 
 town water system. A creek flows through the village 
 and makes it possible to irrigate and have green lawns 
 and flourishing gardens. 
 
 Round about was the prairie clad with gray sagebrush 
 that seemed to extend to the ends of the earth. Inter- 
 mingled with the sage were scattered tufts of bunch 
 grass and low weeds and blossoms, but these growths 
 fell far short of covering the nakedness of the ground, 
 and the region looked the more somber because it had 
 been overflowed with lava in the remote past, and 
 rough fragments and shattered ledges were everywhere. 
 It appeared as if it never had been and never could be 
 of any use to mankind; yet I saw a few village cows 
 nibbling on the barrens. Evidently they contrived to 
 
302 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 pick up a living, and I was told that many large herds 
 of cattle and flocks of sheep grazed over the plains, 
 and that in places along the stream were expanses of 
 soil where flourishing fruit ranches had been estab- 
 hshed. The ranchers came from long distances to 
 trade at the town, and they and the county business 
 made the settlement. 
 
 The town was engirdled with rubbish, and it was clear 
 that whoever wanted to dispose of old tin cans, worn- 
 out household utensils and garbage simply conveyed 
 the waste material to the outskirts and dumped it. 
 In this forlorn outlying section was the cemetery. It 
 was right on the open prairie and looked as if it had 
 been forgotten. Two or three graves were marked by 
 marble slabs, but the rest were either unmarked or 
 had wooden head pieces on which the lettering was 
 fast being eff'aced by the weather. A few of the graves 
 were inclosed by broken fences of palings or wire, and 
 some had lava blocks heaped up around them. While 
 I was poking about here I disturbed a Jack rabbit. 
 As soon as he saw me he laid back his long ears and 
 was off" through the sagebrush like a streak. 
 
 My train came presently and I went on to Minidoka 
 and then took a branch road to Twin Falls City. This 
 branch road had been called into existence within a 
 year by the irrigating of the tract of country through 
 which it ran. Naturally, the region was a sagebrush 
 
^i^|.:"' 
 
 y ^ 
 
 ■ ■■■ ^ • A ■ - . ■; 
 
 ■,, > * ; i . ' ' ' 
 
The Niagara of the West 303 
 
 plain rising and falling in long swells and broken here 
 and there with ragged gullies. But an irrigation 
 company was now ready to furnish water for three 
 hundred thousand acres, and the government was 
 preparing to supply a flow for half as much more 
 territory, so the entire fifty miles along the railroad had 
 suddenly become populous; for there are always plenty 
 of people adrift in these newer regions who are on the 
 watch for chances to make their fortunes quickly and 
 easily, and they rush into any district that is opened up. 
 Some become permanent residents. Others sell out 
 after a while and seek still newer fields of opportunity. 
 Many settlers are from the middle West where land 
 has become expensive, and where a man making a 
 fresh start has usually a prolonged struggle to own a 
 farm. If he is adventurous or unstable he turns his 
 eyes to the undeveloped lands in remote regions which 
 are to be had cheap and which he can make valuable 
 by the labor of his own hands. 
 
 As a result of these tendencies I saw the cabins of 
 the homesteaders dotting the landscape far out into 
 the dreary desert on either side of the railroad. "When 
 I first come here a year ago," said the brakeman on the 
 train, "there was nothin' doin' at all, and now the coun- 
 try is thickly populated. No crops will go in this year 
 on the government property, because the canals ain't 
 finished. The people living on the land have no chance 
 
304 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 for any income from their claims. All they can do 
 is to make sure of 'em. You're obliged to spend part 
 of your time on your property and put up a house and 
 make some improvements. Usually a man's house is 
 a one-room shack — ^just a little board shed as cheap 
 as it can be made. Even then it costs seventy-five or 
 one hundred dollars, for all the lumber has to come 
 in by railroad and it is expensive. 
 
 "About the only work that can be done on the land 
 is to grub up the sagebrush and build fences. Some 
 hack at the sage by hand, but most hire a machine 
 which claws it out at a cost of three dollars an acre. 
 After that job is done the brush has to be piled up and 
 burned. 
 
 "There ain't many who can afford to stay con- 
 tinuously on their -places. They've got to go and rustle 
 to get money to make payments, and they put in most 
 of their time workin' on the railroad, or in some town, 
 or on a ranch. If a man has a family he leaves them 
 to hold down the claim. I've got a claim myself, and 
 so have several other fellows workin' on the train. 
 
 "This country is said to assay ninety per cent, 
 sagebrush and sand, and ten per cent. wind. You're 
 sure to have plenty of wind on such a big open plain 
 as this, but the soil is rich, and when we get crops 
 growing, things will look very different. Some say the 
 hot winds blowing from the desert will make us trouble, 
 
The Niagara of the West 305 
 
 and that with the fine sand they carry along they will 
 bruise the foliage of our crops and spoil everything. 
 The better the irrigation is, they say, the more tender 
 the crops will grow and the worse they'll be damaged; 
 but I'm willing to risk it. 
 
 "When I was a boy I lived in New York City. A 
 fellow is only an atom back there. If you lose your 
 place somebody else is all ready to step into it and then 
 you feel as if you were out of the race forever. You're 
 obliged to scrap like a cuss for everything you get. 
 There's room out here," and he shrugged his shoulders 
 expressively. "I'd rather be a big frog in a little puddle 
 than a little frog in a big puddle. This is better'n 
 New York any turn in the road. If you fall down 
 there's plenty of chances to start again, and the life 
 is not so bound by custom. Things are free and easy. 
 It suits me, and you won't find many people who get 
 used to the ways here who would care to go back. 
 With industry and health and a square jaw there's no 
 reason in God's world why a man shouldn't get along. 
 
 "But of course not everybody sees things the same 
 as I do. My mother come out here and stayed a year 
 and then packed up bag and baggage and hiked it 
 back to New York. She thought this country was 
 lonesome." 
 
 Now and then the train stopped at a little town 
 consisting of a cluster of shops, saloons and homes, all 
 
306 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 perfectly new and distressingly bare of vegetation. 
 There were no embowering trees and vines and none 
 of the repose that comes with age. Twin Falls was 
 like the other villages, but larger and carefully laid out 
 with broad streets, and it even had its public park. 
 Everywhere in and around the town were the irriga- 
 tion channels, some wide, some narrow, but all of them 
 filled with a muddy flow of water, and it was this water 
 which was to make the dead desert a land of plenty. 
 
 The town had started in the sagebrush and within 
 about a twelve-month had grown from nothing to a place 
 of over one thousand inhabitants. The man who had 
 been there a full year was an old settler — a pioneer. 
 This was to be the metropolis of the irrigated country, 
 and it already had some substantial buildings, and the 
 place resounded with the blows of hammers and the 
 clink of trowels. As a whole, small structures were 
 the predominant ones, and shanty houses, often scarcely 
 larger than a good-sized dry-goods box, were common. 
 Some people were dwelling in tents, or in the upper 
 portion of a covered wagon that had been lifted ofi^ 
 the wheels and set on the ground. 
 
 There was much coming and going of teams on the 
 dusty highways, trade was lively in the numerous 
 stores, and some business seemed to be doing in the 
 two diminutive wooden banks. One corner in the 
 heart of the town was being utilized at the time I 
 
A Jack rabbit in sight 
 
The Niagara of the West 307 
 
 arrived as a horse mart. Of the creatures exhibited 
 I observed especially a pair of large handsome horses 
 hitched at the borders of the board walk. They were 
 in charge of a peaked little man in shirt sleeves who 
 hovered about proclaiming their merits, and, between 
 whiles, expectorating tobacco juice. His favorite claim 
 with regard to his team was: "There ain't no 
 pimples on 'em anywhere. They're good sound horses, 
 one of the finest driving teams in this country. It ain't 
 often you get two such as these." 
 
 "What price do you hold 'em for ?" someone asks. 
 
 "Three hundred and a quarter," is the reply. "Now 
 ain't they the prettiest things you ever laid your eyes 
 on ? They're a well-bred team and just as kind — why! 
 I've gone out to the barn and found my little boys on 
 them horses' backs and wallowing all over 'em and 
 never getting harmed a mite." 
 
 "It would cost a good deal to take care of 'em," 
 said the prospective customer. "Feed is pretty ex- 
 pensive." 
 
 "They ain't heavy eaters," responded the trader. 
 "You give 'em a little oats and hay and they'll keep 
 fat all the time. They are good to work, or for driving 
 either. If a man wants to go to town he can just hitch 
 'em up and they'll take him. They're a fine team any- 
 where. See how they're built. There ain't a pimple 
 on 'em." 
 
3o8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 The Shoshone Falls was seven miles distant and I 
 decided to walk thither. The route was not very direct, 
 for I had to follow the right-angled roads with which 
 the country had been laid off. An uneasy wind blew, 
 and every now and then a rotary current would start 
 and catch up a flurry of dust. Sometimes the dust 
 would rise in a vague brown column hundreds of feet 
 high, and I frequently had several of these wandering 
 columns in sight at the same time. Far off on the 
 horizon, dim with silvery haze, were ranges of moun- 
 tains and two or three peaks white with snow. The 
 heat shimmered over the plain, and the glare of the 
 sun was a pain to the eyes. I was soon very thirsty 
 and the dust and wind parched my lips, but I plodded 
 on, for I had doubts concerning the drinking water to 
 be supplied by the houses along the way. 
 
 The settlers were busy taming the land by tearing 
 out and burning the sagebrush, and by ploughing, 
 harrowing and scraping their holdings into a smooth 
 grade for irrigating. Some of the crops were in the 
 ground. There was new wheat pricking up out of the 
 soil, and there was alfalfa, started the year before, 
 now forming a dark green sod. I noticed that the 
 houses were apt to have a heap of sagebrush near them 
 awaiting use as fuel. "That's the only thing growing 
 on the prairie we can burn except greasewood," one 
 farmer said to me. "The greasewood is scarce, and 
 
The Niagara of the West 309 
 
 we'd rather have the sage because It has larger butts. 
 A good deal of coal is shipped in, and we depend on 
 that mostly in cold weather. There was spells though, 
 last winter, when enough didn't arrive to go around, 
 and we had to go scratching after sage. The poor 
 families suffered some in the towns, and when things 
 were very bad the railroad would leave a car of engine 
 coal where people could help themselves to what they 
 needed. A car that was out over night wouldn't have 
 much left in it by morning. It was understood with the 
 constable that he wasn't to watch very close and was 
 only to arrest chronic swipers who would take the coal 
 to saloons and sell it for booze." 
 
 From any rising bit of ground on my walk I could 
 see to the north a dark irregular rift in the sagebrush 
 barren, and I knew there flowed the Snake River. 
 The rift looked ominous, yet by no means of Imposing 
 proportions, and I concluded that any falls it might 
 contain would be a disappointment. At last I left the 
 farmlands behind, and the road became a narrow trail 
 winding along through a strewing of lava blocks. Then 
 I came to the verge of the canyon, which seemed to 
 have expanded as if by magic to a width of a half mile, 
 and which yawned over eight hundred feet In depth. 
 Far down in the chasm was the great foaming waterfall. 
 I had come from the hot, silent, monotonous prairie 
 wholly unprepared for so magnificent a sight or for the 
 
3 10 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 thunder of waters that sounded in my ears. The 
 gorge itself is of gloomy, volcanic rock devoid of any 
 beauty in color, but savagely impressive by reason of its 
 size, and also because its columnar and grottoed walls 
 and vast terraces are suggestive of the planning and 
 labor of some titanic architect and builder. 
 
 I wandered for a considerable distance along the 
 verge of the monstrous gorge and gazed down on the 
 misty fall from the scarp of many a projecting buttress, 
 some of which dropped away almost perpendicularly 
 to the dark stream at the bottom of the canyon. When 
 I at length took advantage of a ravine to descend to 
 lower levels I found the setting of the falls became 
 increasingly attractive; for now the rock walls and 
 black crags towered far above and made a most inspir- 
 ing spectacle. The river itself is a stream that at the 
 falls flows a full thousand feet wide. Immediately 
 above the leap are rapids and lesser falls, while big 
 boulders and various islets block the way and add to 
 the wild beauty. The vertical final drop is about one 
 hundred and eighty feet, and as you watch the great 
 white tumult of waters going down into the void of 
 foam and flying spray below, you cannot help thinking 
 of Niagara. The latter is not so high, but it is much 
 broader and carries far more water. However, the 
 Shoshone Falls exhibits about as much width and power 
 as the mind can comprehend, and its environment 
 
■ The Niagara of the West 3 1 1 
 
 appeals to one far more than does the commonplace 
 level from which the greater falls makes its descent. 
 The on-looker feels satisfied that here is one of the 
 noblest sights on this continent. 
 
 Clinging to the wild cliffs in the lower portions of the 
 gorge grew a fringe of gray-trunked gnarled cedars. 
 I saw a pair of robins flitting among them, and there 
 were swallows winging in swift flight through the air, 
 and high above the walls of the gorge the buzzards 
 soared. During the previous winter the ground had 
 been pretty continuously covered with snow, and there 
 had been much suff"ering among the cattle on the range. 
 Many had died and some had fallen over the cliff's of 
 the canyon. So the buzzards hovered about the vicinity 
 in force, for food was plenty. A little up stream from 
 the falls, on the tip of an island crag an eagle had built 
 its nest, though the casual observer would not have 
 thought the rude heap of sticks was anything more 
 than the broken tangle of a dead cedar. 
 
 Somewhat farther up the river in the quiet water 
 beyond the rapids was a clumsy flat-bottomed ferry- 
 boat. As I watched it ply back and forth I could not 
 help wondering what would happen if the wire broke. 
 A year or two ago the present ferryman's prede- 
 cessor, after imbibing too freely of whiskey, went 
 over the falls in his rowboat, and his body was 
 found in the river below, several days later. One 
 
312 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 foolhardy adventurer leaped from the crest of the 
 falls. He was an Indian half-breed, and when a 
 comrade dared him to make the jump, down he went. 
 However, he escaped with only a few bruises, and was 
 at once famous. Some showman arranged with him 
 to repeat the exploit; but while making a tour with 
 his protege in preparation for the event the half-breed 
 robbed his manager and was lodged in jail. 
 
 On a plateau, close by the falls, stands a rusty old 
 hotel. There I lodged, and from its piazza at eventide 
 I looked out on the mists rosy with the sunset light 
 hovering over the mighty torrent and pulsating fiercely 
 in the wind, swaying and weaving, now filling the 
 canyon, and again all but disappearing. The volume 
 of water in the river would be very much greater in 
 June, the time of flood, and the spray would then fly 
 over the hotel like rain. On its exposed sides the house 
 was coated with a grayish deposit left behind by the 
 mists. This gathered on the windows in a thick 
 film that can only be removed by the use of an acid. 
 The hotel people did not trouble to clear the upper 
 sashes, for that portion of the windows was supposed to 
 be hidden by the curtains, so I could see the results 
 of the spray very easily. 
 
 The ground quivered with the pounding of the 
 water, and the hotel was in a tremble and the furniture 
 shaking all night. In the morning the broad arch of a 
 
The Niagara of the West 313 
 
 rainbow was painted on the mists. I was out early 
 and crawled down a narrow gulch among the crannied 
 rocks to the foot of the falls. This was a tooth and 
 nail task, but the view of the roaring cataract from 
 below was well worth the labor. The river here was 
 in violent commotion, and the waves dashed on the 
 rocky shore like the breakers of an angry sea. The 
 scene no doubt is far wilder in time of flood, yet the 
 falls must lose in beauty by reason of the vast volumes 
 of obscuring mist. The cataract is at its worst in the 
 late summer and early autumn, for then the stream is 
 so low that a large portion of the precipice over which 
 it flows is perfectly bare. 
 
 When I left the canyon I found a family of travellers 
 camped in a hollow among the rocks a little before my 
 road reached the level of the prairie. They had a 
 covered wagon and a tent. The mother was inside 
 cooking over the little stove that thrust its pipe out of 
 the canvas roof. The father armed with a gun and 
 accompanied by a small daughter was just returning 
 from a walk through the sagebrush. "I never bagged 
 a thing," he said. "I didn't even get a chance at a 
 Jack rabbit. This country used to be full of 'em. 
 They were thicker'n the hairs on your head, by golly! 
 Once I stopped up here at Minidoka and went out after 
 supper with a friend for an hour and a half and got 
 twenty-five. We fed 'em to the dogs, but Jack rabbits 
 
3 14 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 in the season make a nice stew. They do more damage 
 than a little. They're awful on alfalfa, and they'll eat 
 all your garden stuff if you don't fence against them. 
 They're a great pest, too, among the trees that are set 
 out, because they skin the bark off and the trees die. 
 
 "This morning, a little before sunrise, a coyote paid 
 us a visit. It sat up here on the rocks howling and our 
 dog was barking back. I opened the window and poked 
 out my gun and blazed away at him, but he escaped." 
 
 There were two other girls in the family. They were 
 gathering flowers. Blossoms were plenty, and the 
 ground was fairly dappled with their delicate bloom, 
 though they seemed out of place on that gray, stony 
 waste. Among the children's gatherings were sweet 
 Williams, pansies, yellow violets, sunflowers that, except 
 in color, resembled oxeye daisies, a little white flower 
 they called stars, a kind of vetch they spoke of as 
 ladies' slippers, and some sprigs of larkspur. 
 
 "Don't leave that larkspur around where the horses 
 can get it," said their father. "It's poison. Larkspur 
 kills lots o' cattle in this country." 
 
 The man adjusted a folding chair in the shadow of 
 the wagon and invited me to sit down. He said he and 
 his family were all musicians, and they went from town 
 to town giving entertainments and playing at dances. 
 The star performer was the smallest girl, eight years 
 old. She could play the piano and various other instru- 
 
The Niagara of the West 315 
 
 merits, but excelled on the violin, and he had her give 
 me a sample of her art. She got out her violin, adjusted 
 it under her chin and began playing, while he sat on 
 the wagon brake and thrummed an accompaniment on 
 his guitar. The music was very pleasing, for the child 
 played sweetly and simply and with remarkable ease. 
 When she finished, the middle-sized girl was sent to a 
 brook for water, and the eldest with a halter in her hand 
 went off to look for their horses, which, though hobbled, 
 had strayed beyond sight, and I bade this hardy and 
 happy family of "Versatile Musicians," as they called 
 themselves, farewell. 
 
 In the course of time I reached the town and there 
 I made the acquaintance of another wagon family. 
 They were settlers just arrived and had stopped on the 
 outskirts. The man had gone to a store to buy some 
 supplies. A small boy and girl had unhitched the 
 horses and were feeding them and a colt a little hay 
 from the back end of the wagon. The woman with a 
 baby in her arms sat on the seat. She said they had 
 been on the road for two weeks. They slept in the 
 wagon nights. The two older children walked a good 
 deal, and in places the road was so bad and the jolting 
 so severe that the mother also walked. " In the moun- 
 tains there was snow," said she, "and sometimes the 
 horses would fall down. A good many horses would 
 kick when things was like that, but these just got up 
 
3l6 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 and pulled again. We couldn't always find water. 
 Once we had to travel thirty miles without anything 
 for the horses to drink and they could hardly stand. 
 I carried a little for ourselves in bottles. This country 
 is not so nice as back East, but wages are so poor there 
 you don't feel like stayin'." 
 
 Canvas-topped wagons were plentiful all through 
 this newly-opened region. Some of the wagon people 
 were chronic travellers and were not content to stay 
 anywhere very long. Such were referred to as " floaters " 
 or "boomers," but the majority came to settle. 
 
 My last evening in Idaho was spent at Minidoka 
 where I had to wait till midnight for the train that was 
 to carry me home across the continent. The village 
 inhabitants numbered possibly two or three hundred, 
 and there were eight saloons and a drugstore in the 
 hamlet. These drinking-places drew their chief support 
 from the workers on the government water ditches, and 
 they were suggestively named "The Irrigator," "The 
 Oasis," etc. Not long before, the village had been the 
 residence of no less than twenty-five professional 
 gamblers, but the sheriff^ had now driven them out; 
 "and the business men here are all kicking because 
 he done it," said my informant. " Of course the gamblers 
 didn't produce anything, and yet they gathered in the 
 money of the ditch-diggers and spent considerable of it 
 
The Niagara of the West 317 
 
 right here in town. So we ain't as well off without 'em 
 as we were with 'em." 
 
 The saloons were brightly lighted and had plenty 
 of customers, and the place was full of drunken stag- 
 gerers. As the night wore on, the station became 
 populous with the sodden drinkers. One of the few 
 sober persons waiting for the train was an Illinois man 
 who had been visiting a brother up in the Boise Valley. 
 "The land boomers have been just a boosting things 
 there as they have everywhere else out here," said he, 
 "but they got a setback last summer. The ranchers 
 have been depending on irrigation, and the water failed, 
 and their crops were burnt out. Most men have held 
 on to their places, but they've had to put a plaster on, 
 and those mortgages won't be cleared oiF in a long time. 
 
 "I been lookin' around quite a little out here, and 
 wherever I've been, these 'ere real estate men have 
 tried to sell me a ranch. Oh, my soul, yes! But I told 
 'em there was too much wind in this country. One 
 day a whirlwind will take your land over to your 
 neighbors, and the next day bring it back. I hke to 
 have my land stay put. 
 
 "Another thing that handicaps the ranchers here is 
 the smallness of the local markets. You've got to ship 
 most everything great distances. The wholesalers and 
 railroads make all there is to be made. Yes, the rail- 
 nads do sock it to 'em for freights. My brother set 
 
3i8 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 out a lot of peach and prune trees, but he can't afford 
 to ship the fruit. It seems too bad to see those peaches 
 big as your fist goin' to waste, and in his three acre 
 prune orchard the prunes every year drop and lie so 
 thick you couldn't put your finger down anywhere 
 under the trees without touchin' some. If a neighbor 
 wants to go and fill a sack he's welcome, but my brother 
 never harvests none. 
 
 "Some tiy to make money raisin' hay. If there 
 comes a hard winter the price is way up, but the next 
 winter the buyer can probably get it for whistling. On 
 the average you're obliged to stack it two or three years 
 to sell it at a profit. 
 
 " I tell you, it don't seem to me they can enjoy livin' 
 so much out here as we do In the East. You take this 
 Western country and any sort of a house does for a 
 home. Three hundred dollars or less will put up a 
 pretty good dwelling. My brother has been livin' in 
 such a shack for twenty years. On the ground floor 
 are two little bedrooms and a kitchen not over fifteen 
 feet square. A ladder in a corner of the kitchen serves 
 as a stairway for you to climb up to a sleeping-place 
 under the roof. He raised seven children there, but 
 now they're growed up and moved away. The house is 
 far from any town, and during the eight weeks I was 
 stopping with 'em I saw just two teams pass. I used 
 
The Niagara of the West 319 
 
 to go out and hunt Jack rabbits. That was the only 
 excitement I seen. 
 
 "Near where I was stayin' was a valley that had so 
 much alkali in the soil hardly anything would grow. 
 We went across it one day. The distance was only five 
 miles but the weather was hot, and my brother drove 
 like the old Harry. The horses kicked up the dust, 
 and I was filled full. 'I golly 1' I said, 'you're goin' to 
 kill me, ain't you V 
 
 " But he said the quicker out of it the better. I had 
 the awfulest eyes for the next two weeks that ever was. 
 They were bloodshot, and each morning when I got 
 up they were gummed together, and the inside of my 
 nose was so sore I didn't git any comfort. It beats all 
 what that alkali will do for a feller. 
 
 "There's one advantage, though, they have over the 
 East — they don't have potato bugs. The common run 
 of people don't know them at all. Now and then a sack 
 of the bugs is shipped out here, and they think the 
 creatures are beans. A potato bug is about the stub- 
 bornest thing I ever seen. It don't try to escape, even 
 when you knock it off in a can and put it in the fire. 
 Any other bug that's got wings would use 'em and fly 
 away." 
 
 The Illinois man relapsed into silence, and slouched 
 his hat over his eyes as if he was going to try to doze. 
 Most of the other occupants of the room sat smoking 
 
320 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 and spitting, or sleeping in dull stupor. I went out and 
 walked back and forth in the chill night air on the long 
 gravel platform in front of the station. A half moon 
 was shining high in the hazy sky. The village was now 
 dark, except for the saloons. One other person was 
 walking as I was, back and forth with crunching foot- 
 steps on the gravel. We passed some remark presently 
 and walked together, and my new comrade became 
 confidential. 
 
 "I'm pretty well loaded," he said. "It's seldom I 
 take so much; but I know what I'm about. I always 
 keep my senses. To see me now you wouldn't suspect 
 that as a boy back East I was well brought up. My 
 parents were good, careful people, and they did all they 
 could to give me an education and start me right. 
 I suppose they were a little too strict, for when I found 
 myself free I was like a colt let loose, and I kicked up 
 my heels. They died just as I came of age and left me 
 twelve thousand dollars. I was my own master then, 
 and a mighty poor master I made. 
 
 " I had always been fond of books, and it seemed to 
 me nothing could be so pleasant as to travel and see 
 those famous places of which I had read. So off I 
 started, and I visited England, France, Egypt, Palestine 
 and other countries. I didn't spare expense. The best 
 was none too good for me in my touring. After cover- 
 ing as much country as I cared to I spent several 
 
The Niagara of the West 321 
 
 months in Paris, and there I got mixed up with the 
 fast life, and my money melted away. 
 
 "I reached home finally with cash enough left to buy 
 four six-horse teams and I went into the business of 
 trucking. For a year I did well, and then within a few 
 days I lost more than half my horses by pink eye. After 
 that my luck went from bad to worse, till I gave up 
 trying to make a place for myself in the world. I spend 
 all I get. Perhaps I will keep straight for five or six 
 months, and then I'll have a spree that'll leave me 
 dead broke. 
 
 "I've done only one good thing in my life. I'll tell 
 you about it. I had a cousin who fell in love with a 
 locomotive engineer. Her parents didn't like that. 
 They thought from his occupation he was kind of low 
 and of loose morals; and besides his work kept him 
 dirty and away from home much of the time. They 
 wouldn't consent to her marrying him, but she did 
 marry him just the same; and they were as loving a 
 couple as I ever saw. They thought everything of each 
 other, and when he got his wages he'd always bring 
 'em home and give the whole into her keeping. Then, 
 if he wanted of an evening to go down town he'd say, 
 'May, there are one or two things I want to buy. Let 
 me have three or four dollars.' 
 
 "She'd probably give him twice what he asked 
 for — they were just that trustful of each other. Well, 
 
322 Highways and Byways of the Pacific Coast 
 
 two years passed, and he was killed in a collision, and 
 left May with a little baby girl. May couldn't get over 
 his loss. She tried to be brave, she tried to act cheerful; 
 but she was thinkin' of him all the time, and when she 
 was taken sick she didn't make a good fight against 
 the disease and she died. 
 
 "Her folks took the baby, and yet because the child 
 was the daughter of a man whom they didn't approve of 
 it wasn't welcome. They didn't treat it right. They 
 couldn't forgive May for marrying as she did. But 
 heavens! what fault was that of the baby's ? It used to 
 make me wild, and I'd tell 'em what I thought of 'em. 
 That didn't do any good, and at last I took the baby away 
 from the whole bunch. Ever since, I've supported her. 
 She's at school back East now, and she'll be sixteen 
 next month. You ought to see her letters. She's no 
 sponge. She never begs for money, but if there's any- 
 thing she wants she'll say she'd like it if I think best, 
 and the money to buy what she wants goes to her as 
 fast as the mail will carry it. I've bought lots of 
 jewelry and clothing for her, and there's few girls has 
 more nice things than she does. She's not spoiled, 
 either. 
 
 "About once a year I go East to visit her. She's 
 never seen me as I am now, no, sir! I wear a good 
 suit of clothes, and I fix up all right, and I wouldn't 
 think of touching even a glass of beer ' i week before, 
 
The Niagara of the West 323 
 
 lest she should smell it in my breath. When I come 
 away I always hide a twenty dollar gold piece some- 
 where so she'll find it when I'm gone. Yes, taking care 
 of that baby is the only good thing I've ever done. I'm 
 pretty useless to anyone and everyone but her. I only 
 wish I was what she thinks I am. Say, stranger, my 
 life would have been a blank these last dozen years 
 without her to work for." 
 
 It was midnight. The moon and stars looked down 
 serenely from the vastness of the heavens and the 
 saloons over across the tracks in the gloomy village 
 were still brilliant and noisy. Approaching from the 
 west I could see the headlight of my train, and off in 
 the sagebrush, on the outskirts of the hamlet, I could 
 hear the weird yelping of a coyote. 
 
 Note. — ^A remarkable feature of the state is the black and ragged 
 lava bed which covers so much of the territory along the course of 
 the Snake River. It forms a desert 400 miles long and from 40 to 60 
 miles wide. The lava deposit has a depth of from half a mile to a 
 mile. Through this the Snake River has carved its mighty canyon, 
 which at places has a depth of 4,000 feet. 
 
 The Shoshone Falls merits the attention of the tourist scarcely 
 less than Niagara, and access to it is now reasonably easy. Just 
 above the main cataract is the 80-foot Bridal Veil Fall, and three 
 miles farther up are the Twin Falls. About 5 miles below the 
 Shoshone Falls are the attractive Blue Lakes where boating and 
 fishing may be enjoyed. 
 
 An added interest attaches to this region because a very large area 
 of what was a sagebrush desert has recently been reclaimed by one 
 of the biggest i tion schemes ever attempted. 
 
s. H. eoi 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 (Highways and Byways of 
 
 California) 
 
 By Clifton Johnson. Profusely illustrated 
 with a fine series of half-tone plates. 12mo,. 
 cloth. (Macmillan.) Wt. 2 lbs. 
 Issued at $2.50. Our bargain price 98c 
 
 A more readable book of travel is not often published. 
 As in other volumes of the series, the author has de- 
 scribed the rurally picturesque and typical and ha9 
 avoided the urbanly conventional and uninteresting. 
 

 
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