CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Oregon reaor I 3 1924 024 731 501 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024731501 OREGON. ; i^- 1 1^ ; /' OREGON: THERE AND BACK IN 1877 Br WALLIS NASH. "All places that the eye of heaven visits Are to a v/ise man ports and happy havens." — Richard IT., 1. 3. MACMILLAN AND CO. 1878. [The EigUof Translation and Reproduction is Ik.vrvcd.] CHARLES DARWIN, IN TOKEN OF A PEIENDSHIP WHEREIN HIS GENTLE COURTESY HAS ALMOST INDUCED FORGETFULNESS OF HIS GREATNESS, THIS BOOK IS, BY HIS PERMISSION, PREFACE. Since returning from the journey here described many questions have been put to m'e as to the cKmate, soil, productions, institutions, laws, and conditions of social life found on the Pacific slope, and chiefly in Oregon. This proves that while there is a growing necessity for a better knowledge of that State, as her corn, wool, and salmon become more important articles of com- merce, and on the other hand her applications for English manufactures are more loudly expressed, and the number of English settlers in Oregon is ever increasing, yet there is not available any simple and popular account of the State. My visit, which resulted from a friendship of several years standing with Colonel T. Egenton Hogg — a Californian who has devoted the best years of his 62 PREFACE. life and a vast amount of energy, intelligence, and capital to acquiring extensive tracts of land in Oregon — convinced me that whilst English money is being, and will be, most profitably employed there, a field of emigration is also open which is suited in all respects to a large number of our fellow-countrymen. Situated only twenty days journey from Liverpool, possessing so many attractions in climate, soil, beauty of scenery, ease of access, freedom from drought, tempest, floods, and immunity from inseet plagues, the next question which presented itself was whether the institutions of the State, its government, laws, and taxation, were such as to encourage the Enghsh settler. My best answer to this appears in the following pages. It is allowable for an Englishman to express deep regret that Oregon is not a British colony — that ignorance as to its capabilities and lack of faith in its future prevailed when it was ceded to the United States. But it still can boast liberal laws, and the British settler, should he purchase and hold land and prosper in this State, wiU not find it necessary to abandon his British citizenship. PREFACE. Should the reading of this book suggest to any to try their fortunes there, if they will communicate with me I wiU gladly put them in the way. A handbook to Oregon, compiled from the best oiEcial sources, and verified by actual inquiry and observation, has been prepared by Mr. H. N. Moseley, M.A., F.R.S., the Naturalist to the late Challenger Expedition, who was one of our companions on this journey. Reliable information is thus at the disposal of the intending settler. I cannot end my pleasant labours in this book without gratefully recognising the kind reception we met in Oregon on all hands, from the Hon. S. F. Chad wick, the Governor, to the little, farmers in their cabins and the teamsters and herdsmen along the country roads. Wallis Nash. Bbckenham, Kent, March, 1878. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Life on the Germanic — Introduction to New York ways — Bribery and Corruption — Steaming on Dry Land —Believed of Baggage— House Telegraplis— Automatic Fire-Alarms— Our Fellow-Travellers— Going to Bed on Board the Train— Two Hours of Chicago . . Page CHAPTER II. Farming in Iowa — The American " Moses and Sons "—. March of the Mormon Soldiers — Turn out at Omaha — Nebraska Puflfed — Prairie-travelling in the Olden Days — The Snowshed Man — Mormon Civilisation — Indians for near Neighbours — Travellers' Tale of " Snowing Up." — John Chinaman in California — Bret Harte's Mining District — Over the Sierra Nevada — Nearing San Fran- cisco . . . . . . Page 17 CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. A House Taking a Journey— The Golden Gate and the Sea-lions — Fast-trotters — The Lick University — The Court of Justice — The Days of the Vigilance Committee — Chinatown in San Francisco : Shops, Theatre, and Opium-smoking — The Glorious Fourth of July — Coach- travelling to the Yosemite Valley — Mr. Adams and the Padre— The Geysers— Tame Indian— The Spanish Water- finder — The Englishman's Eanch — San Francisco Hos- pitality Page 44 CHAPTER IV. The Stage to Oregon— Seeing Friends oflf— Charlie McConnell — Bushranging in California — A Costly Buffet — Govern- ment Fish-hatching Establishment — Hotel at Soda Springs — Volcanic Sentinels — Mount Shasta — Mining Yreka — Over the Mountains — First Look at Oregon — Change of Landscape — Gold Mines of the Rogue River — Jacksonville— Scotch Sunday — Our Stage Com- panions — Again amid the Mountains — The Secluded Valley and its Contented Inhabitants — Descending our Last "Grade" — Our Last Driver — An Oregon Somerset- shire — The Little Town of Eoseburg . . . . Page 86 CHAPTER V. Information for the Colonist — Position and Acreage of the State — The Three Divisions — Willamette Valley, its Cultivation, Streams, and Mountains — Railway to CONTENTS. Yaquina Bay — Wheat Export — Thirty Bushels to the Acre - -Volunteer Crops — Harvesting by Contract — Oats — Open- air Threshing — Farmers' Profits — Fruit-growing — Wild Berries — The Operation of Clearing — Absence of Stones — The Mary Eiver — Beaver-dam "Slews" — Change in Vegetation — ^A Look into the Future — The Rival Bays of Oregon — Mid-Oregon : its Climate — Summer Camping- out^Soil — The Herdsman — The Sage Brush of the Al- kali Plains — Eastern Oregon — Harney Lake Valley, a perfect Land of Promise — Forests and Woodlands . Fage 108 CHAPTER VI. Fitting-out at Corvallis — Our Horseflesh — Our Cook and Iron Stove — Village of Philomath — Houses on Trunks of Trees — The Man who could not Pay — Fly-FisMng — Hemmed in- — Night coming on — Kit Abbey — Deer and Elk — King's Valley on the Luokiomute — The Settler's Choice of Site — Fire-Ravaged Land — Portrait-painting — Indians of tlie SUetz Reservation — Model Farm — The Natural- ist's Escape from his Horse — Evening Scene in View of the Pacific— Newport on Yaquina Bay — Indians Fishing in the Bay — Capabilities of the Harbour — Oyster-beds — Kit Abbey's Shot — The Dance — Dancing at the Word of Command — The Lecture — Mr. Towner and his Out- crop of Coal — The Solitary Tree-feller — Sighting a Bear Page 129 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE VII. The Indians of To-day and tlie Indian of the Novelist- Chinook Talk— The Indians at Home— "King George's Man " taking Portraits — Visiting the Siletz Eeserve — The Sweat Bath of the Chief— Mr. Bagley, the Indian Agent — Chitco Jennie, the Human Heart-eater — Indian Burying- ground — The one Naturalized Indian — Former Tribes — The Settler's Eelations— What the White Man did for the Eed— Indian Character Page 166 CHAPTEE VIII. A Presbyterian Minister's Experience as Settler : his Ignor- ance at Starting, and his Success — A Scotch Miller of Twenty Years Standing — An Italian on Yaquina Bay and his Bees — A Town and Country Lawyer — The Ladies of the Family — A Farmer of Elk City — The Struggles of the First Year, and Present Prosperity — A Eeverse of the Picture : the Garden of the Sluggard — The Farmer and his Angora Goats — The Story of his Life in Oregon — His smiling Prosperity — The Feminine Granger Page 185 CHAPTEE IX. The "Law" Easily Enforced — And generally Eespeoted — The Election of Judges Discussed — Lawyers' Influences — Popular Prejudices — Eeligious Divisions — Newspaper CONTENTS. Press — A Travelling Editor — Party Spirit — Doctors and Doctoresses — Roads — Common Halls — Social Gatherings — SeK-help — Education — Schools — Colleges — Education Lands — Compulsion— Insane Asylum — State Penitentiary — Prison Management — Convict Labour — Blind Institution —The Capitol, its BuUdings and their Contents . Page 207 CHAPTER X. The Library— Senate Chamber— Oregon City and Willamette Falls— The Ship Canal— Iron Works— Woollen Mills— Dried-fruit Works— The Donation Law of 1850 — Grants to the Railroad and Waggonroads — The Homestead Law— Special Laws for Mineral Lands— The Pre-emption Law— The Emigrant on "Wild" Land— Advice to a Settler in Oregon— The Rights of Foreigners— Married Women's Property Page 222 CHAPTER XI. The City of Portland— The Grain Ships— Theatre— Fire in an Adjoining Hotel — One Life Lost — Steamer to San Francisco— The Mouth of the Columbia— Our Ship's Company— The " Cannery "—Chinamen at Work— The Process — The Arrangement with the Fishermen — Astoria — Prophecy Concerning the River — The Facilities of Yaquina Bay as a Harbour— The New Railway from Corvallis— Farewell to Oregon ... . Page 233 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. The Coast of California — Passing the Golden Gate — An Echo of the Eailroad Eiots— Menlow Park— The Eich Men of San Francisco— Its Climate, Winter and Summer— Life at High Pressure Page 248 CHAPTEE XIII. The Top of the Sierra Nevada — Salt Lake— Brigham Young's Death — Mormon Government and Mormon Institutions — Cattle-droves going Eastward — Contrast between Home and American Life — Coasting Lake Michigan — Its gigan- tic Expanse — The Comfort of the Pulbnan Car — The " Great Western " of Canada — Compared with our Own — Hearing Niagara — The American Fall — Prospect House —The "Awful Corner"— The Abyss of Waters— The Fate of an Only Son — Fascination for Suicides — The Thunder Storm — Last Look at the Eapids — Custom House Officer in plain clothes — The Eacing Trains — Eight-day Passage Home — Epilogue .... Page 257 LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. 1. Yaquina Bat, Looking Towards Land . . Frontispiece 2. EocKT Mountains — Summit. Central Pacific Railway . Page 26 3. Utah Indians . . 43 4. Seal Rock near San Francisco 48 5. Valley of the Willamette. Town op Albany . 115 6. Skinning a 'Coon 141 7. Yaquina Bay 151 8. Chitco Charley 165 9. Yaquina Bay. Indian's full Dress 170 10. Kasebah 184 11. Elk City 195 12. Falls of the Willamette. Oregon City . . . 225 13. Astoria. Mouth of Columbia River ... . 244 OREGON. N"aih'6 Oregon •Stan/brdis C&off^ ^^ta2>'^ ZoncZorv. OEEGON. CHAPTER I. Travellees only can realise the thrill of excitement of climbing from the tender into the great White Star steamer as she lies in the Mersey, steam blowing off. In that one moment the regrets at leaving home, the fear lest human nature at sea should prove too weak, the joy of wandering, are strangely mixed. But the pressing needs of finding one's cabin and getting "fixed" there, of preventing aU the state-room luggage from being swept into the hold, of saying good-bye to friends who pity you for going so far away, and whom you pity for staying in the mill-wheel round of home duties, soon recall the first-time voyager to himself. As the ship passes from the dingy tide-water and "goes on ahead," and the ear gets accustomed to the rhythm and beat of the screw, which will ^ B OREGON. [chap. unceasingly play the same tune for the next nine or ten days, we realise that the journey looked forwards to for years has hegun. The first night on shipboard passed, sea-life has fairly commenced. The passengers begin to make friends ; neighbours at table comment on the meals ; and the pace of the ship answers for that common topic, the weather, in ordinary landsmen's life. The a.fternoon after leaving Liverpool we reached Queens- town, to find the Channel fleet at anchor in the splendid harbour. One or two of the officers were shown over the Germanic, and praised the noble proportions of the ship, and the good order and cleanliness of every part. The eighth day after we left Queenstown we were nearing New York. We had had three days of head-wind and sea, but had hardly known what rolling or pitching was: so that our preference for ships having state-rooms and saloons amidships, instead of aft, was justified. We had seen hundreds of porpoises, playing, roUing over, springing half out of the water, romping along; two whales had spouted for our amusement, the petrels had borne us company across the ocean, and now the Yankee gulls had come out to welcome us : very like, I.] AT SEA. only, we thought, a shade more lively even than their Irish cousins who left us five days ago. . Now the excitement was to be certain if we could get to the quarantine ground in New York harbour by eight o'clock, that the health officers might come on board to-night, and so suffer our hundred of American passengers to spend their Sunday at home. Faster and faster the ship went, until we were told, and we believed, that for sixteen hours she had averaged seventeen miles an hour. Long Island was in sight ; the lighthouse was passed; Sandy Hook was on our left hand ; and the ship stopped. The sudden silence caused by the ceasing of that screw-beat, which had registered fifty-two strokes a minute, and had formed the unceasing accompaniment to so many tunes for nine days, was almost oppressive. The tug-boat, with health-officers, and with many friends of the passengers on board, came in sight, striking golden lights from the fast darkening waters of the harbour, and in a minute the friendly groups of the voyage were broken up: the quickly-made acquaintanceships were as quickly ended. In a few minutes the great ship seemed deserted, while cheer after cheer sounded from the tug, crowded to the B 2 OREGON. [chap. gunwale, bustling along towards the city, the spires and chimneys of which were shining in the sun's last rays. Having no special reason for hurry, the quartet forming our party slept on board that Saturday night, and only left the Germanic about eleven on Sunday morning, after she had found her way, as neatly and gracefully as a yacht, among the crowds of vessels, to her berth alongside the White Star wharf. The night before one of the custom-house officers had remained on board, nominally to see that all was right, practically to give aU who were so minded the chance of making to themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness. It was a strange coincidence that the virtuous and strong-minded passenger found it a tedious, complicated matter to get, with his baggage, through the hands of the officers iu waiting on the wharf, while the old- stagers, who in Eome did as Rome does, and were busy as they left the ship in rolling dollar-notes into the smallest compass, and then held them in the lightest possible fashion in their fingers, passed quickly through, baggage reaUy unopened and unexamiaed, to their carriages. Since we landed there have been great I.] NEW YORK. changes in this matter, and there are new men, new manners — and quite time, too. From the wharf a lumbering coach, swaying on its C-springs, took us to the hotel. But what paving ! Holes here, ruts there, tram-roads everywhere ! Our American travelling friend said, "You won't find worse roads in Oregon." We disbelieved him then; but he spoke the truth. How hot it was ! "We bathed and dressed, putting on black coats and white ties, after the example of half the passers-by ; but we had to change once more before the day was out: for every scrap of under- clothing on us was damp. New York reminded us more of Continental cities than of English ones : so many trees shaded the side- walks; so many green jalousies were fixed outside the windows ; while the absence of smoke and dirt on the house-fronts struck us all. We were to travel West by the Monday evening train ; so we ordered tickets from an agent sent by a friend who had passed West a day or two before, and who recommended him as active and prompt. He was. He cheated us in the price of the tickets, in the collection and checking of the baggage, in the . OREGON. [chap. charge for sleeping-car berths. We should have saved money and temper had we shaken hands with him all round, given him cigars and drinks, and ourselves gone in a very expensive coach to the depot of the railway to fetch our tickets ourselves. Was it not a really good introduction for simple-minded Englishmen? We congratulated ourselves that our teeth were fast in our heads, or they would have gone too. The American cities swarm with agents like our friend, who live (we cannot say they fatten) on strangers. At the railway and stage offices themselves, on the other hand, honesty and a certain rough, independent civility was the rule. After some debate we settled to go West by the Pennsylvania railroad, going South from New York to Philadelphia, and thence West by way of Pittsburg and Fort Wayne to Chicago. The train left at eight o'clock in the evening. About six our luggage was ready, and our first experience of the baggage-checking system began. Having each made up a hand-valise or carpet-bag of necessaries for the seven days' trip, everything else was to be "checked." The transfer company's agent came to the hotel with a bundle of brass labels on his arm, each label being attached to a leather strap with a loop, and I.] NEW INVENTIONS. 7 bearing a plainly-impressed number, corresponding witb a similar number on a small brass ticket. By the leather strap a brass label was looped on to each article of baggage, and the corresponding ticket handed to us. A small fee for each package was paid to the transfer agent. No one gave another thought to his baggage till we reached Omaha on the following Friday. The transfer company takes all trouble and risk of loss off the traveller's hands, and no one grudges the large dividends they earn. Another institution we saw in fuU work. In the office of the hotel a small black case, like a travelling clock case, stands on the counter, by the clerk's side. A visitor wants a parcel carried to the other side of the city: the clerk touches an electric bell once, and in two minutes a bright, cleanly-dressed lad stands at the counter, waiting his instructions. In the same way a hack carriage is called, or a police- man summoned. The company which arranges all this supplies the battery and dial at a small annual charge, and the subscriber uses both as and when he pleases. A still more useful novelty we noticed in full opera- tion at New York, and afterwards at Chicago and San OREGON. [chap. Francisco. This is the self-acting fire-alarm. In the upper corner of every room and corridor of the hotel, in many shops, offices, and warehouses, is fixed a modest- looking dial-case, about five inches square. It is hardly noticed as one enters the room. But day and night a watch is kept. Let the temperature in the neighbourhood of the little apparatus rise to 140 degrees, that is, let a fire break out in or near the room, and the electric connection is automatically made, and the alarm flashes to the nearest fire-engine station, indicating the street, house, and room where the enemy is at work. Here also the company owning the patent receives a small annual sum, and supplies and keeps in order the little machine. About seven o'clock we had the family coach once again, and rumbled and jolted to the Jersey City ferry. In company with several other coaches and waggons, and in a crowd of seventy or eighty people, we got on to the huge ferry-boat really without knowing it. We had parted from the land and were well out in the stream before we saw that we had started. The machinery is hidden from the passengers' view, and, makes very little noise: the horses I.] THE TRAVELLERS. were unconcernedly resting and blinking: passengers were chatting, newsboys everywhere with the evening papers, and in a few minutes we landed as easily as we embarked, and took our places in the train. Each place and berth in the long sleeping-car being numbered and specially set apart previously for its occupant, there was no scrambling or confusion; and we were soon curiously scanning the faces of our fellow-passengers, of whom we were to see so much for the next seven days. But it is time to label separately the members of our party, since the experience of each on the journey differed according to character, temper, and history. It was a number of strange chances which had brought together the naturalist, the captain, the lawyer, and the American Confederate colonel. The first had journeyed round the world and seen many men, many manners; the second had served' the Queen long, and passed some years in India; the third came straight from the worry and bustle of London life ; the fourth had travelled more than the traveller, fought more than the soldier, schemed and struggled more than the lawyer. When one man's tongue was tired another took up the talk ; and 10 OEEGOJSr. [chap. when the three EngHshmen gave in, the colonel was ready, with a fiery tale of the civil war, with incidents of prison life, with experiences in both hemispheres, with sporting life in Australia, India, and his native, America, North and South- — so that one way or other topics never failed. The colonel left us by an earlier train to visit his friends in Baltimore and join our train in the night at Harrisburg — so the three Englishmen entered the train at eight alone : tickets they had for train and sleeping-berths; but their mentor having left them before the tickets were obtained, the firstfniits of the thieving agent's tricks appeared. Showing their tickets, they asked for their places ; the negro porter pointed out one section for the four travellers : the two narrow seats below drawn out and joined made but one average-sized bed : the tray which was lowered overhead showed but one similar sized bed: so where were the four to sleep? The agent had sold "berths" instead of "sections," thus giving but one half of the accommodation they supposed they were to get. Every other sleeping-berth in the Pullman cars was taken, so there was nothing for it but to draw lots I.] NIGHT TRAVELLING. 11 who should pass the night in the day-car: the soldier -lost, and so dozed, and smoked, and grizzled all night long on the seats where one can neither lie along nor rest. Every one has heard described the cars, twice as long as our English carriages, with passage down the middle open throughout the train, and free to "conductors," as the guards are called, and to passengers of every grade in life. But the scene as night comes on is strange. The passenger calls the negro porter and tells him to get the bed ready. Clearing the double seats of the section of the books, bags, work, newspapers, and any other litter with which they are strewed, the porter drags the two seats together till they meet; from the locker under each seat he draws pillows and blankets; then reaching up, he turns a handle in the sloping panel overhead and draws down a shelf, forming thus the upper berth. There are stored two mattresses and other bed clothes. Curtains are slipped on to the rods running the length of the carriage, and there are at once two rows of berths completely curtained off the one from the other, and the central passage through the car left clear. 12 OREGON. [chap. Going to bed is a ticklish business. You disappear behind your curtains and roll into your lower berth or clamber into your upper one ; but what then ? Coats and waistcoats are easily dofifed ; but there is only just room to sit, with feet stretched out : the position does not adapt itself to the farther opera- tions of the toilet; consequently much agitation of the curtains and many grunts and groans disclose the sufferings of your neighbours. If you are in the upper berth, a smart shock from below shows you that the gentleman on the ground floor has not judged distance correctly with his head: if in the lower berth the shelf over your head creaks and groans till you expect a sudden fall in diy goods. Meanwhile the carriage rocks and tumbles along, and the Britisher is saying to himself, " Not much palace about this car — the line's not equal to the North-Western — talk of smooth travelling indeed ! " . But the longest night ends at last, land each traveller tries to forestall his neighbour at the washing-basins at the far end of the car. The porter puts away the beds, and the day is begun. The morning after we left New York was lovely, I.] NEW YORK TO CHICAGO. 13 and we looked with curious eyes to mark tlie differences and resemblances between home and here. The fields were larger, the farming not so neat, more weeds, less grass; the hedges were absent, their places being taken by snake fences made of zigzag interwoven logs, seven logs in height, and each link in the zigzag about eight feet long. Then the wooden houses with shingled roofs gave no idea of solid permanence to an English eye, but suggested rather the here to-day, there to-morrow, of a, race always stretching forwards to new and better lands, and building and farming for themselves, and not for their grandchildren. The nights were lighted with the fire flies dancing round every bush : the sunsets were resplendent with clouds of the deepest red. Travelling on these lines even so far West as to Omaha is further made easy by the hotel cars attached to each train. Very cheap and excellent meals are served, and the hotel car is joined to the rear of the train from six in the morning till eight at night. The travelling kitchens are wonders of compact and clever stowage, and all the dishes of the season are served, with the pleasant accompaniments 14 OREGON. [cHift of clean tablecloths and bright glass and silver, and active, black-faced, white-jacketed waiters. We passed Pittsburg, with its coal mines and furnaces, the whole tract resembling the district between Eotherham and Sheffield. The great round-house at the station with its many engines, each in its stall, waiting its turn for the road, was a striking object; though we little thought how soon it would be in flames, and one hundred and one engines burned into shapeless twisted masses of steel and brass in the labour riots, but a few weeks after our visit. After passing for many hours through undulating country, with miles and miles of wheat and Indian corn, dotted everywhere with farms, we approached Chicago. The hills and rugged ground were flattened out into wide fertile plains, and we got our first glimpse of Lake Michigan. The line approached the water : other lines met and joined ours, several crossing at right angles on the level: the masts of the shipping and piles of lumber, with huge grain-elevators, showed us what a. centre of life and bustle we were entering: then the train ran along the streets, the great bell on I.] CHICAGO. 15 the engine continually clanging to warn passers-by off the unfenced railway, and we entered a dingy, smoke-stained terminus. The passengers and luggage going West were transferred .in omnibuses and waggons across the city to the terminus of the Chicago and North- Western line, and we found our way to an hotel for a much-needed bath and breakfast. As we crossed the city we looked in vain for traces of the fire. The new buildings of brick and stone surpassed those of New York in size and costliness ; we passed a gap showing a lower level of three or four feet, and were told that the whole city had been rebuilt on this fresh-brought layer of soil, to raise the streets and houses by so much above the level of the lake. The streets were thronged like those of Liverpool; at the bridges in several places the vehicles were formed by the police into lines to pre- vent blocks; the foot-passengers jostled each other in crowds. A Chicago man in the train had told us, " I guess Chicago is the most money-making city in the United States;" certainly it needed some attrac- tion of that nature to overcome the drawbacks of 16 OEEGOK [cHAP.i. position on a perfect flat just on a level with the lake. Two hours there sufficed us ; and we were all glad enough to find our places for the next long stage in our journey — Chicago to Omaha. n.] IOWA. CHAPTER II. Leaving Chicago about one o'clock by the Chicago and North- Western Line, we very soon lost sight of the lake and passed through an undulating, well- wooded and watered country for many miles. Then, crossing the Mississippi, we entered on vast plains of rich, dark soil, dotted everywhere with white farm- houses, each surrounded with its plantation of rapidly- growing cottonwood-trees. Wide-stretching fields of wheat, Indian-corn, clover, and oats reached as far from the railroad-line as we could see ; and so across the State of Iowa. Villages were growing up round every station; in each the church, the school, the liquor store, the black- smith's shop, and the. store where agricultural machinery of aU kinds was exposed for sale, were conspicuous. Everywhere advertisements of the Buck-eye Eeaper and the Champion Plough were displayed, and these c 13 OREGON. [chap. disputed every blank wall and fence with a notice of a knife-polisli. The profits on the sale of this last must be stupendous, to judge by the outlay on this bill-posting extraordinary. Many hundred miles farther on, while passing through the wildest and grandest scenes, this ubiquitous knife-polish stared one in the face, and so accompanied us nearly from New York to San Francisco, Mr. Mechi and Messrs. Moses and Son might learn many a lesson in this art from our American cousins. Here is a sample : — " Survival of the fittest. The ingenious doctrine propounded by Mr. Darwin, the tireless investigator of nature and her laws, is as applicable in determining the fate of medicines as in that of the animal species. Only those medicines which are best suited to the people's wants survive the test" — therefore buy Pierce's pills. Nothing impressed so strongly on us the size of the United States as this ceaseless travelling through seemingly never-ending stretches of each kind of, scenery. Gently roUing hills and dales lasted for days; broad, level plains covered with farms lasted for days; and now at last, after passing Omaha, we were to reach the prairie lands. II.] THE MISSOURI. 19 At Omaha, or rather at Ootincil Bluffs, on the eastern side of the Missouri River, three lines con- verge, the Chicago and North- Western, the Chicago and Rock Island, and the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, The Missouri is crossed by a bridge about three- quarters of a mUe long, stretching high above the muddy brown stream, resting on lofty iron cylinders, with straight wooden and iron spans. As we looked up the river and across it and saw the thriving towns on each side, with factories, distilleries, machine-shops in fall life and swing, it was hard to realise that thirty years ago the waggons of the pioneers were ferried across the river, while the emigrants rested in their tents by the river's side to recruit after the long stage passed, and take courage for the dangers and troubles' of the plains and mountains stiU before them. Here in 1846-7 the Mormon encampment was made on their way to their promised land ; and here, accord- ing to the Mormon records, Brigham Young enlisted five hundred of his followers for service in the United States Army ia the Mexican War. From this point the Mormon battalions, with their waggons, started on their 2000-mile march, which carried them to San C 2 20 OEEGON. [chap. Diego in Califoima, "almost tlie entire march being over an uninhabited region, and niuch of the way a trackless, unexplored, and forbidding desert, affording neither water nor grass sufficient for the animals. When the teams failed, the battalion had to carry the extra amount of ammunition, and, at the same time, push the heavy waggons through the heavy sand and over the rugged mountains." ^ At Omaha we reached the line of the Union Pacific Kailway. A fresh train was ready to receive us, and all the baggage was re-checked. How the porters did rattle about the trunks ! It was pitiful to see here and there a weakly one burst open with its fall, and all the poor treasures of the emigrant exposed to rough usage and loss. The safest packages were the huge, round-topped, iron-bound coffers, called Saratoga trunks. In each corner of the bottom is cunningly hidden a metal roller ; the trunk is too heavy for the porter to lift, drag it he must ; so the rollers save the corners from the wrenching which looks violent enough to rend any ordinary box into pieces. The great shed was a scene of the wildest confusion. ^ Rise, Progress, and Travels of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. — Deseret News Offloej Salt Lake City. II.] LUGGAGE AT OMAHA. 21 The baggage-car was drawn up at one door, and down a slide to the floor followed an unending string of every named and unnamed piece of luggage. The number of the label on each was shouted by a porter as it left the car ; the number was registered in a book by another man ; the passengers, lining a rail across the shed, each claimed their own property, and handed over their corresponding labels. Their destination was then demanded, fresh labels issued to them, the luggage was weighed, and excess paid for, and the passengers were free to take their seats in the cars which were to carry them to Ogden Junction. Excess luggage is a serious matter. From our party of four, forty-three dollars was demanded and paid; not without a lively passage of arms between the colonel and a very meddlesome porter, whose mistaken view was that he was entitled to divide up the luggage of the party amongst its four owners, two of whom had considerably less than the one hundred pounds allowed, and so surcharge the colonel with the whole excess incurred by his weighty trunks, laden with outfit and accumulations of a year's foreign travel. But justice, and the colonel, prevailed; our trunks and bundles, gun-cases, and "fish-poles" were 22 OREGON. [chap. heaped together on the weigh-bridge, and forty-three dollars was the charge. Let future passengers profit by this hint. In a small office in the station at Omaha the agent was placed for the sale of the railway company's lands in the State of Nebraska. It was furnished with samples of all kinds of grain and hay grown in the State, with a label on each, stating by whom it was grown, when planted, and when harvested. We counted upwards of 320 grains of Indian-corn on one cob. Other samples were as prolific. The handbooks for emigrants were got up in first-rate style, with numerous pictures. To be led by them would be to believe Nebraska to be the most fertile, prosperous, and enjoyable State in the Union — the severity of its winters, the violence of the winds sweeping its vast plains, were passed by in silence. Soon after leaving the station at Omaha the farms cease, houses are left behind, and the line, gradually rising from the 966 feet above sea-level at Omaha, by slow stages mounts to 8,242 at Sherman Station, the highest point on the route. We ran by the side of the Platte Eiver for upwards of 340 miles, parallel most of the way with the great overland trail, the 11.] THE EMIGEANT TRAIL. 23 route of the early emigrants to California, as well as that of the Mormons to Salt Lake. It is a well-worn, dusty track, even yet used by -''occasional waggon- trains. White-tilted, narrow waggons, on high wheels, were, even as we looked, being dragged sluggishly by four- teen or sixteen oxen each, and alongside his slow- pacing team the leader of the expedition trudged with his long whip, dust everywhere rising in clouds. About eight months, one old lady afterwards told us, it had taken her, with her husband and children, to get across from Missouri to California, the average day's journey being six to eight miles, and rests being often needed for several days, in grassy spots, to recruit the oxen. They travelled in company for protection from the Indians, but often had to go hungry to bed, the provisions running short. In those days, the buffalo ranged these prairies in bands of many thousands each. Nowadays the few survivors have moved hundred of miles away from the railway, with its clanging bell and howKng whistle. The most striking feature of this prairie-travelling was the absence of all boundaries. Neither hedge, nor fence, nor road, nor line of trees was in sight. 24 OEEGON, [chap. and the vast grass-covered undulations stretched away till the nearer features became quite indistinguishable in the limitless distance. But the land had a wild beauty of its own ; the grey of the long sun-burned grass was soft indeed; the gentle undulations of the plains led the eye away till the near grey faded into the distant blue, while here and there a band of antelopes stood boldly out against the sky. They seemed too tame for their own comfort. Often they were within range of the train, and there was a perfect fusillade from the rifles and revolvers with which a good many of the passengers were armed. A travelling New York company of actors specially distinguished themselves. All day long their firearms were popping at objects, live or dead ; if antelopes, prairie dogs, and jackass rabbits did not show them- selves, any conspicuous stone or rock, within reach, served to draw their fire; and they were deaf to aU the remonstrances of their more peaceable and sober- minded fellow-travellers. Not that any of the living marks were any the worse, so far as we saw ; for in- variably they bounded off, or turned somersaults into their holes, unhurt. <' ^bV . ■' y»4'j II.] THE PRAIRIES. 25 Occasionally the whistle sounded loudly and vehe- mently, to frighten, from the unfenced railroad track, a herd of the half- wild cattle, of which thousands pass the summer months on these prairie lands, being driven eastward, in slow stages, until the limits of cultivation are reached, when they are packed tightly into railroad cars, to finish their journey to the Eastern States. Here and there, in a hoUow of the prairie, were one or two waggons, with picketed horses round, and often a drove of unbroken colts and fillies ; the camp fire was the centre, round which four or five picturesque figures were grouped. These men start in the early spring from the far western plains with a great band of cattle or horses, and finish their journey only in the autumn months. Always rising, we passed the border of Nebraska and entered Wyoming. The train stopped at Cheyenne, a town of 6,000 inhabitants, planted there 6,000 feet up on the Rocky Mountain slope, with no trees to shade it, no hedges to break the rush of the wind. Soon after crossing Dale Creek Bridge, 650 feet long and 126 high, we came to the coal-bearing dis- trict appropriately called Carbon, From these mines the Union Pacific locomotives are supplied. There is 26 OREGON. [chap. a little town of huts half-sunk in the ground, in which the miners live. The piles of coal stored there indi- cated a large output. The first snow-fences and snow-sheds are now seen. The former, running at an angle from the line for several hundred yards, stop the drifting of the snow ; the latter are wooden tunnels, made of sturdy beams and trunis of fir-trees, each snow-shed being watched by a man, whose business it is to pass through after each train and guard against the fires, which have often destroyed in an hour the fruit of months of labour and hundreds of dollars expenditure. A lonely life, often miles from his station and house, with no excitement save the six trains which generally pass in each twenty-four hours : the Western Pacific express, the Atlantic Eastern express, two emigrant trains, and two freight or luggage trains. For many miles the level of the rails was being, or had been, raised from three to eight and ten feet, and this work was carried on without stopping the trafiic. Huge ploughs drive deep furrows into the soil on either side of the road, and loosen it. Then great scrapers follow, and the earth is piled on to the line. Then the ties (Anglic^, sleepers) are raised, with the n.J MOEMONDOM. 27 metals attached, and the work on that spot is done. And this is found the best protection against the winter snowdrifts. Then, after passing the boundary of Utah, the scenery gradually changed. The land became more undu- lating ; the grey, withered grass of the prairie was sprinkled and broken with rocks, and, after a barren stretch, we reached the limits of the Mormon cultivation. SmaU farmhouses reappeared, some brickbuilt ; each surrounded with its plantation of trees, its garden and orchard. Rills of running water were led everywhere through the fields, carrying fertility with them. Fruit- trees appeared, and luxuriant fields of lucerne and clover. At the stopping-places children brought jugs of cider to sell to the thirsty passengers. Many of the houses bore the Mormon sign, an open eye, surrounded by rays, with their motto, " Holiness to the Lord." Soon we reached the junction, at Ogden, with the Salt Lake City line, and changed into the cars of the Central Pacific road. Turning North, the line skirts the Great Salt Lake. As we saw it, a more lovely scene the eye never rested on. The fore-shore of the lake was green with 28 OREGON. [chap. grass and weed, with lines of shining water everywhere catching the evening light. The sun, sinking towards the snowy range of mountains on the Western side of the lake, sent quivering rays across its waters, while purple and orange clouds were piled up high above the horizon. Flocks of white waterbirds' were everywhere taking flight as the train startled them from their evening rest, and in long lines sought fresh beds farther along the shore. One or two of the Mormon settlers were gathering in the herds of cattle, which, during the day, had been feeding on the succulent grasses of the flat lake shore ; and, as night drew on, we left cultiva- tion behind, and were again threading our way among a maze of rocks and low mountains, the line winding here and there, seeking the smoothest passage through. The next day was the dreariest and hottest of the trip. We had passed into Nevada. The stations were sometimes piled with stacks of silver ingots, and the platforms were thronged with miners, some in the workaday costume of dingy, earth-and-water-stained trousers tucked into unblacked knee-high boots, with flannel shirts of every hue; others in the Sunday 11.] NEVADA. 29 garb of black cloth pantaloons, fine white linen em- broidered shirts, with diamond pins and rings. One tall fellow in the height of fashion, with a silver bracelet round one arm, between shoulder and elbow, outside a spotless white shirt, and carrying the other arm in a sling, entered our smoking carriage, and told us how three days before a mass of earth had fallen on him in the mine, and, he beHeved, had dislocated his left shoulder, and how he was going down to San Francisco to get the surgeon's help. We followed down the course of the Humboldt Eiver. It wound along with a slowly flowing stream, its banks lined with alders and cotton-wood, taking in affluents here and there, and growing wider and stronger, till it spread out into a marshy plain, — and then appeared no more. It sank away into the sand. We lost sight at once of water and greenness, and the sage plains, white alkali-covered stretches dotted over with the grey sage bush, were the only prospect. A white impalpable dust filled the air and entered the carriages, even through the carefully closed double windows and shut doors. It settled on everything, our faces included. Wherever it lay on the skin it made it hard, tense, and sore. If washing was tried 30 OEEGON. [chap. the skin cracked, eyes got bloodshot and hot; and we passed some hours of misery, the sun streaming doj/n, with no breath of wind to moderate its power. The only living thing visible in these wastes was an occasional jackass rabbit lazily loping among the bushes, and one or two large hawks circling high overhead. Here and there, before we lost sight of the Humboldt River, we saw an Indian camp, and at every station some of the miserable squaws and children came to the train to beg; while their lords and masters, in the cast-off clothes of the white men, with a gaudy blanket draped round the shoulders of each one, squatted under the shadow of the station fence, or lounged along the platform. Their miserable shanties were not worth the name of huts : a few bushes stuck in the ground, with one or two longer sticks supporting an old ragged blanket or cloak. Here and there a raw-boned pony was tethered, standing with drooping head and taU, the image of laziness and despair. The dirty, haggard, unkempt squaws had no English words to beg with, and mutely held up their hands, sometimes with a battered meat-tin or broken pot, for the fragments II.] INDIAN ADVENTUEE. 31 of bread and meatj and half-eaten fruit which were thrown to them from the windows of the train. These people are the survivors of tribes which disputed, with hundreds of braves, the incoming of the white men; and several of the stations bear names recording battles and skirmishes in which many an emigrant, and many a soldier too, fell. The alder-bushes often covered many acres by the river-side with a thick shrubbery. One of these thickets was the scene of an adven- ture described to us by the chief actor in it. Some few years ago, in the height of the Indian wars, our friend had to travel alone on horseback from one of the United States forts to another with doUars he was collecting as the price of the corn and other provisions with which he supplied the troops. Night closed in after a seventy miles' ride, and he dismounted, picketed his horse to feed, and eat his frugal supper of biscuit and bacon, not daring to light a fire, lest it should betray him to Indian enemies. Then leading his horse into the heart of the shrubbery, he tethered him there, and lay down, bis head on his saddle, and wrapped in his blankets, for a few hours' rest. 32 OREGON. [chap. He had not slept long, when he was awakened by hearing voices near. He lay and listened, recog- nising Indian talk. Softly unrolling himself from his blanket, he held his rifle and revolver ready, and soon saw the light of a fire but a few yards off. Creeping softly nearer, he made out three Indians crouching, after their fashion, round a few burning sticks. The Indians' despise the huge camp fires of the white men. They say, "Make small fire, can get close to it : big fire keep you away, no good." The Indians had, like himself, no thought but of hiding in the thicket to sup and sleep. He heard their horses near by cropping the branches, and dreaded the moment when his own horse would dis- cover other horses near, and neigh for company. He dared not wait till the Indians had finished their supper and laid down to sleep ; so he crawled back to his own horse — fortunately his friend — ex- pecting every moment that some unlucky movement would make noise enough to rouse the attention of his most unwelcome neighbours. But fortune smiled on him; he found his horse calmly waiting his return. Quietly he saddled him, and cut the rope he dared not attempt to draw in n.] SNOWED-UP. 33 and coil. Jumping on his back, he charged throT^gh and over the Indians at their fire, which lay directly in his road to the open ground. Startled by the unlooked-for rush, they scattered deep into the bushes, not knowing how many foes they had to reckon with; and in a second he was galloping, far out in the clear, dark night, over the open prairie, thankful indeed for an unhoped-for escape, and fearing no pursuit. Soon we crossed the Washoe range of hills, and neared the boundary of California. The railroad line began to climb the foot hills of the Sierra Nevada. The grey sage-bush plains disappeared, and the pine- trees of the Sierra took their place. The air grew clear and bright, and we all breathed freely once again. A fellow-traveller of ours told us how, three years ago, he was snowed up for three weeks in February at one of these stations. Knowing that such an event was possible, he and his friends had provisioned their sleeping-car with preserved meats and soups, huge tins of crackers {Anglich biscuits), abundance of jams and marmalade, and plenty of champagne. The train, with six engines, crept slowly up towards D 34 OREGON. [chap. the summit, charging successfully through several drifts ; but the snow lay deeper and deeper as they mounted. They stopped for water at a little town, with one small inn, two saloons, and two stores. They started, but soon came to a standstill, the engines buried deep in the drift ; the train backed, and again and again they charged the wall of snow, but only got so far in as not to be able to back out again, and there they stuck. The next day they tried again to get through, but were defeated: the snow continued to fall, and they were forced to give' up all idea of getting forwards till an army of diggers could be sent to clear the way. Backwards was equally impossible, as they were cut off from help by many miles of snow, ever growing deeper. After two days the provisions in the other cars began to fail. The passengers, many of them miners on their way to San Francisco for a spree, began to grumble at the plenty reigning in the Pullman car; but laid siege to the inn and the saloons in the station-town, and were quieted. The cold at night was intense, and the fuel in the train began to fail. ii.J SNOWBD-UP. 35 There were three ladies in the Pullman car — one old and two young — so the gentlemen persuaded them to move their quarters to the inn; and, after a struggle through four hundred yards of snow, they succeeded in reaching their port of refuge. The}' found the inn full of miners and rough customers from the other part of the train, who were willing to receive the ladies and give them shelter, but hesitated to admit their male companions ; high words followed, and the presence of the ladies alone kept the peace. The next day they thought it prudent to get back to the PuUman; so loading themselves with as many billets of wood as they could carry, they made their painful way back to the train, • settled in the snow. But soon the mob from the inn followed, and tried to force an entrance into the car. The ladies shrank into a corner, while the gentlemen held the doors and windows against all comers ; and so followed a free fight, ending in the assaila.nts being beaten off. This was renewed once and again. In the end a treaty of peace >vas made, the provisions in the Pullman car were shared among the passengers, regardless of original rights,. and harmony reigned. D 2 36 OREGON. [chap. In the evening all parties adjourned again to the inn; songs were sung, stories told, punch brewed, and the ladies bivouacked by the imi-parlour fire. This life lasted for three whole weeks, and the last of the preserved meats and biscuits were being eaten, when the rescuing army of Chinamen cut their way to the sno wed-in train. Twenty miles of snow-sheds now secure the winter traffic from this kind of interruption but we heard how last winter eleven engines to one train of cars were employed to force a passage. Ever since we entered at Ogden, on the Central Pacific line, the labourers on the line were Chinese. Every few miles we passed a group of five or six celestials, straw-hatted, blue-clothed, and long-tailed — their faces burned from the natural olive to a healthy brown — holding shovels with handles six feet long ; making up, by the patient, tireless hand- ling of their tools, for the small spadefuls they raised at each stroke. Here and there a barrack-looking house stood by the roadside where they lodged, with numbers of them off duty hanging about the doors, smoking their pipes and chatting; looking too many for the II.] CHINA BOYS. 37 house to hold. The sight of the lodging-houses in China Town in San Francisco, though, explained matters, and showed us how ten Chinamen herd together in a space where three Europeans would be stifled. Ajid at the stopping-places for meals we now were waited on by China boys. In short white linen frocks, their long tails tightly wound round their heads, they flew here, there, and everywhere round the room: intent on their own duty, they took not the slightest notice of the various com- mands and intreaties of individual passengers till all were served. Then John condescended to bring a glass of water or of milk, and even to secure for a very polite passenger a second helping of peach or apricot pie. The absence of wine, beer, or spirits at all meals was very noticeable to the English passenger. Tea and coffee were served invariably at breakfast, dinner, and supper. If drinks were wanted, the saloons were open, and naturally a good many adjourned there at odd times; but iced water was the prevailing beverage. We cHmbed the Sierra Nevada proper in the 38 OREGON. [chap. night. "We were roused soon after two to catch a glimpse of Lake Conner, lying almost hidden among the mountains, the moon shining brightly on its still waters, and the solemn pine-trees standing round its brink. As day dawned we were quite among the moun- tains — like no others that we had seen before — in their steep, pine-covered sides, light-grey colour, and serrated, broken tops. We were now in the heart of the mining district. The characters and scenes of Bret Harte's Cali- fornian sketches passed before us. Truckee, Red Dog, Bloomer Cut, You Bet, Cisco, Gold Run, Dutch Flat, Poker Gully, lay in turn in the sun- shine. Flumes (timber-made and supported sluices) ran by the line for mUes ; the country was turned up, seamed, scarred, stripped, broken; hill-sides washed down into the valleys; valleys choked with spoil and refuse, holding here and there a hut, with no approach save over heaps of water-worn gravel. At each station Tennessee and his partner, Henry York, Sandy McPherson, Colonel Starbottle, and the rest, were all diligently employed in doing nothing. We had seen some feeble attempts at laziness before : n.] LAZINESS. 39 the emigrants on the steamer deck ; the Irish in the low streets of New York. The Indians in Utah were lazy. But for the height, the very perfection, of this art of doing nothing, show us a saloon in a mining district, in the afternoon, with a deep verandah running along the front, next a dusty road ; a bright bare sunny sky over- head, no wind ; five or six chairs under the verandah, each tilted on its two hind legs, with a sallow, pointed- bearded, felt-hatted, shirt-sleeved, black-trousered, long- legged individual in each ; two out of five smoking, and three out of five chawing ; three out of five hands deep in trousers-pockets; two out of five gently whittling away at splinters of wood with long sharp knives. Go and stand by and smoke, and try to be lazy yourself: it is not bad: never speak: if you are asked a question in the course of a quarter of an hour, don't answer, only grunt; unless a man on a tilted chair says slowly, " What'll you drink. Mister ? " Then say, equally slowly, " Guess a cocktail '11 do me, you bet." But don't refuse ; each lanky idler has got a pistol in his trousers-pocket, loaded, and they do go off so easily. California is a land of fruit ; the most unlikely-looking folk came to the train to sell as the day wore on ; old 40 OEEGON. [chap. mulattoes, young and sprightly boys (whose idea of a joke was for each to run off with his neighbour's choicest peach, just as he believed he had secured a buyer) ; old worn-out miners ; but no women old or young. Peaches, figs, strawberries, plums, grapes, cherries, were ia profusion at each station; for one "bit," say fivepence, a basket of cherries or strawberries, holding more than one person could eat, was offered. Then we reached Cape Horn. The mountains were tumbled and tossed in the wildest confusion. The line wound backwards and forwards, always climbing up. We passed the boldest tressel bridge we had yet seen. Spanning a deep gully, it was buUt up of tiers of wooden beams interlaced and tied together; so high that it was guyed by wire ropes anchored into the hill- sides, to take off the strain of the wind in times of storm. The engine slackened to four miles an hour, and we passed gently across, the wood creaking and groaning as the weight was felt. The cattle feeding below looked the size of sheep, and the man driving them a pigmy. And then clinging to the mountain side, along a narrow ridge, we passed to the highest point. Eounding a bluff, the train stopped, the passengers got out, and we gazed almost fearfully down 2,000 feet into ii.J CAPE HORN. 41 the valley, which we all but overhung. At the bottom the American River, which is a considerable stream, looked but a thread, the tall pines but tiny plants. The Chinese navvies who built this road were hung in ropes from above, each with his pickaxe, till he could hew a footing for himself, and then by slow degrees the shelf on which the track is laid was cut from the rock. Running rapidly down the mountains, we reached Sacramento, the capital of the State, a city of 40,000 people. The Capitol, a lofty, domed building, in the Italian style, stood conspicuous, shining in white marble, stone, and stucco. The streets were hned with stores, having continuous verandahs, most neces- sary in the broiling sun. Then broad corn-fields, studded with fine oak-trees, stretched for many miles. The wheat had been reaped or harvested ; it was being thrashed out in the fields ; steam-thrashing machines were everywhere at work, and by each was the pile of bags of wheat, and the huge heap of straw shortly to be burned. Large bands of horses in the fields, from which the corn had been cleared, standing under the shade of the oak-trees, showed why so many trees were left. 42 OEEaON. [chap. The ground was scored here and there by the burrows and runs of the grey ground-squirrels, or gophers, which were running merrily about ; and plenty of jackass rabbits (of the size of hares, and with even longer ears), gave promise of sport for the greyhounds which are now common in the State. As the evening drew on, and we got near our journey's end, troops of friends of the passengers joined the train at each station, and many pleasant family greetings were seen. Acquaintances of the journey intro- duced each other to their relatives, and the English pas- sengers were not left out. Califomian hospitality showed itself at once, and invitations were plentifully given. Then we moved slowly through the town of Oakland, the engine bell warning trespassers off the line, and the train ran out on the long timber staging jutting far out into the bay. The salt water plashed round the piles; the sea breeze came in fresh and cool. We entered the great ferry-boat in waiting at the end of the jetty, in which boat all the passengers in the train were taken in, with room for plenty more. "We moved rapidly away towards San FranciscOj lying on the opposite hills, with the sights and sounds of a great city ever growing nearer. II.]. ARRIVAL AT SAN FRANCISCO. 43 The ferry boat passed neatly into its berth among the shipping, and we landed among a crowd of gesticulating, yelling hotel touters and porters, each with the name of his hotel shown in gilt letters on his cap. We found the Lick-house family coach in waiting, and were jolted over the roughest of paving to the hotel, glad enough to be at rest after 3,000 mUes of sea and 3,000 mUes of land safely passed in eighteen days. 44 OEEGON. [chap. CHAPTER III. A FEW hours sleep in California refreshes one. The night breeze is always cool; in the height of summer two blankets are wanted on the beds; the air is in- vigorating, full of life. As you pass along the streets of San Francisco, the passers-by look brisk, eager, active-minded, and alert, often worn with worry and excitement, but giving no evidence of rumination or rest. How proud the inhabitants are of their city ! Built on hUly ground, fronting towards the north and west, with the waters of the bay washing the end of every street, it cannot be other than a healthy place. Everywhere fine buildings of granite and stone are displacing the original wooden houses, and these last, if in good condition, are not pulled down, but moved off bodily into the suburbs. As you pass along the wide streets, the look ahead is blocked up by a house III.] SAN FRANCISCO. 45 in the middle of tlie road. Going near, you find a wooden house set on rollers, being wound up by a horse moving round a capstan to an anchor fixed into the road. After a journey of say fifty yards, the anchor is moved another stage forwards, and the house slowly but steadily follows. Meanwhile passing carriages have to get by as best they can; no one objects to the annoyance, for what his neighbour is doing to-day, it may be his turn to undertake to- morrow. As soon as the English visitor has deUvered his letter of introduction, and often on the strength of an acquaintanceship formed on the journey there, the San Franciscan invites his friend to a drive to the Cliff House to breakfast. Eising at six the next morning, you find at the hotel door a light buggy (with wheels looking as fragile and slender as if a bicycle, and not a carriage, had been in the builder's mind), with a pair of spirited blood horses. Mounting beside the driver, you pass slowly at first over the uneven streets till you reach the outskirts, and pass palace after palace of a style of building peculiar to the place. 46 OREGON. [chap. ■ Marble steps outside lead up to a porch, laid with encaustic tiles, forming the entrance to a lofty house, always white, covered with carved-work framing in each door and window. Plate-glass in every window, but all the house of wood. The rooms are large, light, commodious, well furnished. Each house is surrounded with a little garden full of bright flowering shrubs and flowers ; but its chief glory is a terrace or slope of the greenest turf, shaven close, and constantly watered. Then you reach the Park. Here is art triumphing over nature. Outside its limits are hills of loose drifting sand, on which no green thing grows. Within its boundaries soil has been painfully carted in, then planted with a lupin, which is the only plant which, for the first year or two, can struggle against the clouds of sand brought up by eveyy wind. But then firs of all kinds, laurels, laurustinus, heaths, arbutus, were planted, and, being constantly watered, thrive well. The hollows were filled with water, and lakes thus formed. The roads, gravel laid, and rolled, and well watered, are tempting to charioteers whose . passion is fest driving, and constant notice-boards are needed. III.] THE SEA LIONS. 47 by ■which speed in the Park is limited to ten miles an hour. Outside and beyond the Park similar level stretches, with no limit as to pace, lead between the sand hills ; and so past the great cemetery, called Lone Mountain, to the beach, and our drive ends by half a mile over the hard, smooth sand, with the breakers of the Pacific rolling in on our left, and before us the picturesque and rugged rocks forming the southern doorpost of the Golden Gate. The Cliff House is built on a rocky ledge, with its verandah looking straight out to sea, and there, while the oysters and tender-loin steak are being got ready, we make acquaintance with the sea-lions. One large and two smaller rocks are their home, the larger dotted over with the unwieldy brown beasts, basking in the sun. They climb painfully to the highest points, and seem to play "I'm king of the castle" continually, though none of average size care to try conclusions with one huge overbearing brute, with a scarred chest, commonly known as Brute Butler. When the fancy seizes them, splash they go from the rocky points into the pure green water below, exchanging in a moment their lumbering crawl on the rock' for the graceful, agile, swift motions of the seal. 48 OEEGON. [chap. After twisting, waltzing, gambolling to their hearts' content, they emerge sleek, black, and dripping on to the lower rocky ledges, and then up again they climb into the sunshine to dry. What a happy life ! Protected by law, and custom^ and public opinion from any cruel, thoughtless shot. Well-fed, well-lodged, and with daily changing specta- tors of their feats to minister to their vanity (if sea- lions are vain ; and surely they are as they twist their long bodies into attitudes, and turn their great soft eyes towards the balcony side of their rocks). John Chinaman must envy them. As our host observed, " It would be far safer for a rough to kiU a Chinaman than one of them, for, if one were shot at and hurt, the rascal's life would not be worth an hour's purchase." After a good "square" meal, earned by early rising, and done full justice to by appetites sharpened by the crisp, bright sea-breeze, we turn the horses' heads towards the city, some five miles off. The road is smooth, and not too hard ; the horses tearing at their bits with impatience ; our driver, with a rein in each hand, plants his feet firmly, and we are off. III.] AN EARLY EACE. 49 A dozen similar vehicles, bent on a trial of speed, start with, or just behind, or before, us. Our friend says calmly, " Not a three-minute pace yet ; we shall do a two-fifty gait presently." The horses settle down into a lunging far-reaching trot, with action not high, but long. Presently a rival steals up alongside, and is all but passing as our friend is chatting and not driving. He holds his horses tighter, and very decisively, but not too loud, the looked-for " G — along " is heard, and then they step in real earnest. Faster and faster the other team presses on us, and presently, there being no passenger in that buggy, they go by; but the pace is tremendous. After a couple of miles of real racing we pull up by degrees, and soon pass the racecourse, where we stop to see the training of the trotters for the public races going on. Five or six horses, each in front of a huge pair of wheels, with a little seat wedged in between them, on which the driver sits, almost on the horse's back, were being carefully timed round the mUe track. By this time it is nearly ten o'clock, and we soon, at a sober pace, enter the city again, before the wind rises, as it soon will do, to make the road a purgatory of dust. 50 OREGON. [chap. Our party scattered, each to his own pursuits. The naturalist went off to see a collection of: the minerals of the Pacific coast, and to hear full details of the Lick University trust.^ If money and judgment and determination will do it, the trustees will succeed in getting together a staff of professors to do honour to the intentions of the founder, who set aside the fortune, earned by a long life of industry, to provide the means of the highest education for the youth of the State to which he owed his own success. Nothing is more striking than the determination of these recently-settled States to plan and foster the colleges and universities which seem as necessary a part of their public life as the capitol and the court-house. Land is freely set aside to provide the funds. Teachers are plentiful. Students of both sexes flock in; and so in stores, on farms, in sawmills and factories, on river steamboats, and on stages, you find roughly-dressed, plain-looking youngsters, who cut their mother tongue to tatters in their common talk, but whose knowledge is not contemptible of mathematics, history, mechanics, chemistry, geography, ^ See Appendix A for account of the Lick UniTersity Trust. III.] LAW COURTS. 51 and who would be generally competent to take a fair place in the modern school at Hairrow, Winchester, or Marlborough. Having introductions to brothers of the craft in San Francisco, the lawyer found his way to the court-house, where the circuit court of the Supreme Court of the United States was holding special sittings, to try a mining case from Nevada, where two great companies were claiming the same vein of silver ore. Three judges were on the bench in a lofty but not large court, distinguishable merely by their place of honour, but not by wig and gown; below them sat the registrar and clerks, and then came the table on which the attorneys engaged in the case had placed their briefs and books; then the body of the court, filled indiscriminately with attorneys, witnesses, and public. The proceedings were dignified and decorous, though wigs and gowns were absent, and there were no distinctions between Queen's Counsels in silk and the outer bar in stuff, and the solicitors in the purgatorial well below, and no crier and usher with his " Silence, silence ! " when the murmur of voices gets tooJoud. The walls of the court were hung with great maps E 2 52 OREGON. [chap. and sections of the ground in dispute, and the case was farther illustrated by a large glass model, showing through its transparent sides transverse sections of each distance of fifty feet on the lode in dispute, painted on the. glass slips fiUing the case. The case was fully argued, as became the magnitude of the issues involved, and so far as an entirely un- prejudiced and disinterested witness could judge, neither litigant could have cause to question the industry and ability of the attorneys who argued, of the witnesses who supported and assailed the respective views of the attack and defence, or the care and independence of the judges, who seemed to let no point slip. There was one moment in the hearing strange to an English eye, when, to elucidate some point, judges, witnesses, and attorneys, having left their chairs, were grouped round the map on which a scientific witness was laboriously pointing out the spot to which his evidence related. In another court in the same building a State judge was dealing out justice on the previous day's offenders against the public peace, and the fairness with which a Chinese thief s defence was heard there contrasted bitterly with the scanty justice honest Chinamen received iiT.] SAN PEANCISCO MANNERS. 53 from their neighbours in the streets and lanes of the city. Montgomery Street is as crowded as Cheapside in the middle of the day. The mining-brokers and their clients stand thick as bees on the pavements, and a hum as loud as from a hive at swarming-time rises as you pass by. The edges of the roads are lined with the one-horse buggies of the merchants and business men of all sorts from streets even but a few hundred yards off ; and the horses stand half on, half off, the side-walks, each with a leathern halter tied to a four-pound weight, taking no interest in the bargaining which fills the air, but patiently waiting -till it pleases his lord and master to finish his business, his luncheon, and his drinks, and mount again. Close by are several free luncheon-rooms. In the basements generally of buildings full of ofiices above, are these large rooms, each expensively fitted with polished woods, silver fittings, and marble counters. You enter and pay at the counter on your right twelve and a half or twenty-five cents, according to the notice posted up ; then the world of drinks is before you, and any one you ask for is at your service. 54 OEEGON. [chap. Your payment also entitles you to the free run of the counter at the far end of the room, on which stand steaming dishes of soup, clam-chowder, chicken-gumbo,^ roast turkey with cranberry-sauce, sucking-pig and apple-sauce and all the other dishes of the season. White-jacketed waiters press you to eat, and it is a marvel how you get so much for giving so little. But it pays, as witness the fortunes of the proprietors. The post-oflSce arrangements differ from ours. Most of the business people have little lockers at the office open to the inside to receive the letters as they arrive, but closed on the side next the public passage by a door with a tiny latchkey, and so free only to the owner for the time being of the key. The letters are fetched at any moment in the twenty-four hours. The post-office and the custom-house both stand on ground reclaimed from the bay by the cutting down of the rocky hills behind. Five and twenty years ago ships discharged their infrequent cargoes on this very spot, and there were twenty feet of water where now streets run and public offices have been built. Five ' " Chicken gumbo." More soup than stew, vegetables in plenty, especially small slices of the okra-bean, with a flaronr specially its own. Once tasted, always to be taken, if only opportunity offers. in.] , EAELY DAYS. and twenty years seems an indefinite time, but put it into figures, and say that in 1850 tents and shanties constituted the city, and the only solid buildings were the old Spanish mud-built Dolores church and its surrounding mission, and one can realise the change. One of our friends made his fortune as a watch- maker in those early years. He and one other were the only men who could replace a broken watch-glass : his stock was not large. If a burly miner came in with his gold dust to have his glass refitted, often our friend was not able in his scanty store to find the right one. His dodge was to say, "Just wait while I go into my shop and grind this smaller"; and out he ran to his neighbour's shop by a back way to see if he could find the right one there. Then returning, he charged three or four dollars for what now is worth but a few cents, and readily the price was paid. Every Sunday in those good old times a main of cocks was fought close by the old church, and the churchyard was handy to receive the weekly victims of the rows which regularly broke out. Then were the days of the Vigilance Committee, which alone restrained the passions of those utterly lawless men ; an organisation which was happily 56 OREGON. [chap. renewed in this very summer to redeem the city from the power of the mob. Even yet men go armed about their daily work. As we passed down from the hotel along the street a crowd was gathered round a chemist's shop. Inside a man "Was breathing his last, shot " on sight " with a revolver by a man Avith whom some trivial quarrel had arisen from a hasty push on leaving the lift by which both men had descended from their bedrooms to breakfast. But public opinion was against the murderer, and he only escaped by suicide in the prison the doom for which he ■was surely destined. So the times are past, never to return, when "a man for breakfast" was the regular item in the daily papers. The Chinese quarter in San Francisco, however, is the sight of the city. Having arranged, by the courtesy of the chief of police, for the services of a detective whose beat was in this quarter, we left the hotel about eight in the evening. In ten minutes we had reached Dubois Street, and were in the other hemisphere. No other white men but our three selves were in sight ; the crowd, jostling, laughing, pushing, was of yellow-faced, pig-tailed, blue-clothed men. III.] CHINA-TOWN. 57 The shops had Chinese signs, exposed for sale only Chinese < goods, the workshops in the basements were crowded with Chinese workmen, each at his bench, lighted with a flaring wick burning in a tray of oil ; the restaurants sold tea; hawkers of strange vegetables and unwholesome-looking meat passed and repassed ; here and there a Chinese woman with baggy black trousers, curiously braided hair, and jade bracelets on each arm, carrying a broad-faced, narrow-eyed babyj made her way through the crowd, and the air was heavy with novel scents, none of them pleasant to our nostrils. We went down the steps from the street into one of the basement workshops. Six or seven jewellers were at work. Each had his dirty black tray before him, and with long, slender, dirt-grimed fingers and delicate tools, was nipping off morsels of gold wire, and beating and twisting and joining them into filigree work, which contrasted strangely in its brightness with the dingy, crowded room, coarse black benches and greasy lamps and dirty workmen. The next was a shoemaker's, equally crowded, where the pointed, wooden-soled, straw-lined shoes were being 58 OREGON. [chap. made. Then we went into a druggist's shop and asked to be served with opium ; the salesman refused, deterred by the recognition of the police-badge of our com- panion, it being against the regulations of the city for Chinese to sell opium ,to white men. But trade was to be done and money made; so outside the shop a smiling youngster said, "You give me dollar, I buy opium, you give me one bit." And so the law was evaded successfully as ever, where both parties to the bargain desire so to do. Then we went into the Chinese theatre. A good- sized place, with no money wasted on the wooden benches, uncoloured walls, flaring gas-burners, and bare, boarded stage. It was crammed with a very appreciative audience of men, and in a side gallery sat, equally intent on the performance, some six or eight lady members of the families of the better-off merchants and shopkeepers. Most of the men wore their hats, and leaned eagerly forwards on their elbows on the back of the bench in front, and at every point made by the actors a round of laughter, different in tone from an English or American laugh, ran through the theatre. At the back of the stage sat, in a semicircle, the I".] CHINESE THEATRE. 59 orchestra. There were six musicians: in the centre, on a high stool, was the leader, a violinist, dressed in hlue silk, with long, hanging sleeves lined with dirty white silk. He carried a blue silk handkerchief up one sleeve, and at every pause he drew it out, flourished it gracefully, and wiped his steaming brows, all with an air that Joachim or Vieuxtemps might envy. He played on a long-necked, small-bodied, two-stringed instrument, with a bow which worked between the two strings. When ,a change in the key was wanted he changed violins with the greatest agility, picking out the one he wanted from a row of five or six, arranged on a shelf behind his head. On his right was a drummer, playing a very small and high-toned drum, and next him was a man having what appeared to be a larger fiddle, which was not changed. On the left of the leader was a banjo-player, whose accompaniment was constantly going. Next him was a player on cymbals ; and, in a recess in the wall behind the violinist, was a fiend with several gongs, which accentuated all the stops in the music, and filled the theatre with a most hideous din. > We had heard that a Chinese play lasted for months, and followed the dramatis personce from cradle to 60 OREGON. [chap. burial; if so, we chanced on a very exciting, melo- dramatic period in the lives of the hero and heroine. Two lovers were kept from happiness by a wicked mandarin, who employed a bravo with a sword to kill the gentleman. But the lady's sister was a member of the mandarin's household, and proceeded to poison him by putting arsenic in his tea. The mandarin died peaceably in his chair whUe his bravoes were dragging the gentleman lover into his presence to slay him. Then a fight between the lover and the ruffians, in which virtue triumphed and wickedness fell reeling on the ground. But more followers of the mandarin came to the rescue, and the lovers escaped in a boat with the heroine's sister, who had poisoned the mandarin, and with the help of two honest boatmen. Then the wicked mandarin was carried to his burial, and we could stand the noise and heat and smell no longer, and left the farther history of the lovers to be imagined, not seen. The actors were all men : their voices, pitched in a high falsetto recitative, with a sing-song at the end of a sentence which reminded one strongly of a feeble attempt at intoning in church at home. The actors playing female parts had to set their voices still I".] CHINESE THBATEB. 61 higher, and at the least excitement they fairly- screamed. The acting was full of conventionalities, as was the scene-setting, and also the properties. If a blow were necessary, it was aimed, but stopped short; the fight with swords was regular one, two, three-work ; the boat was indicated by a small piece of carpet on the stage, on to which the escaping lovers leaped, and two long sticks served the boatmen for oars. Death was shown by a white silk banner brought on by two stage assistants, and held in front of the dead man, and burial was set forth by the deceased walking boldly off the stage, followed by the white banner and its bearers. Two or three old chairs and a table, a tea-kettle, and a rusty sword or two formed the scenes and properties. As we followed what was to us of course the dumb- show of the performance, it was interesting to be made to feel that we were looking, not at the elementary efforts of a half-savage nation, but at the fuUy- developed, traditional results of play-acting having a history of centuries. After the theatre to the restaurant in due course. We looked in at one or two ; but they were fuU, and steamy. At each small table were two • or three China- 62 OREGON. ■ [chap. men, each with a saucerful of shell-fish soup, and a bowl of rice in common. At last we found a place of a superior sort, where a green verandah on the fitrst floor, hung with paper lanterns, looked clean and tempting. Down stairs there was the usual crowd, but up stairs the room looking on to the verandah was empty, except for two opium-smokers at one end, reclining on a raised bench, and leaning on their elbows over the little stove between them holding the fire for their pipes. An English-speaking waiter was found, who was smoking mild, sweet tobacco in a heavy, brass-mounted pipe. We ordered tea and sweetmeats; he found us stools, which he set round a table, and brought a delicate china teapot and cup for each person. Then he put a good large spoonful of tea into each little teapot, and a lad brought a great brass kettle of boiling water, from which each teapot was filled. Cakes of various colours, made of some sweet-tasting stuff like maccaroons, then came on in a tray. The tea was poured by the waiter from each man's teapot into his cup, and we were left to nibble and sip. All this while the opium-smokers at the end of the room never turned an eye on us — absorbed, body and in.] OPIUM. 03 soul, in moulding the little pea of opium between finger and thumb, then placing it on the pipe ; then, lighting the pipe at the little charcoal stove between them, they took just three whiffs, deliberate and happy, and the pipe was out, and all was to do over again. They were people above the lowest class ; but, after our tea was done, we saw opium-smoking in full blast. Hovel after hovel we entered, in one dark alley after another, to find each filled with the peculiar sickly smell of the smoke, and crowded from floor to ceiling, on broad shelves ranged round and across, like berths on shipboard, with couples of languid, anything but washed-out looking wretches — never speaking, only moving to replenish their pipes and re-light them. Other miserable huts were filled with lodgers,- all alike crowded: some cooking, some eating, all tea- making; some card-playing, some tobacco-smoking, all talking and laughing together. Nearly all were men; one or two alleys contained Chinese women of the lowest class, who have lately been brought over in considerable numbers. Then we stumbled up a dark entry, and up two flights of ruinous wooden steps, past three or four crowded lodging- houses, to the Joss House, or temple. But it was 64 OREGON. [chap. closed ; and the priest in charge had gone out visiting ; so we had to content ourselves with seeing the outside of the tumble-down building, the door-posts covered with red characters, lighted by a swinging paper lantern or two. Up that court was the only place in all Chinatown where we received anything but perfect civility. There the inhabitants were evidently of the roughest order, and seemed disinclined to move to let us pass either in or out. It was pitch dark, and one could not but think how far we were from help should rudeness develop insult or violence. But we took no notice of any, and passed out unmolested into the streets, by this time silent and dark. One or two Chinese chiffoniers, with basket and lantern, were turning over the heaps of refuse by the doors; but we watched them for some time without their finding anything worth keeping, even to their unfastidious judgment. And so we found our way back to the hotel, and dismissed our guide, having crowded more sight-seeing into one evening than ever before. The Chinese labourers are brought over by the Chinese companies, formed by wealthy and respon- HI.] CHINESE COMPANIES. 65 sible men, who contract to hire out their fellow- countrymen, from one to five hundred, for all ima- ginable trades and purposes, Do you want a cook or valet ? You go to the company r they will find you the servant, and keep you supplied as long as you please : change him as often as you wish ; and meanwhile guarantee his fidelity and honesty, They are a strange people these Chinese house- servants. A friend of ours, as kind and good a master as servants could have, had occasion to discharge a Chinese waiter or footman : after that no one would stop with him. One after another left him after one day in the house, no reason assigned. He changed his company and got a fresh servant fi:om a fresh source ; but it was no use ; he left, and was followed by a succession. Our friend was at his wits* end. At last he besought an acquaintance who had a Chinese body- servant who was much attached to him and had lived with him for years to bring John to look over the servants' quarters. John and his master came and went over the house from bottom to top. At last John burst out laughing. " What's the matter ? " said his master. "Look here, sah," said the man. 66 OREGON. [chap. pointing to a few scratches on the wall in the servants' bedroom, " say massa Johnson got evil eye : no good stay with him." And so the matter was explained : a dash of white- wash set matters straight, and obliterated the legacy of trouble the discharged servant had so artfully prepared. Nearly all the house-servants, gardeners, railway labourers, scavengers, and laundry-men in and round 3an Francisco are Chinese. No white men can com- pete with them in their own branches in point of cheapness and certainty of work ; and the system of supply and guarantee by the companies does away with the drawbacks of their occasional fickleness,, incompetency, and dishonesty. One master of our acquaintance was robbed by his two Chinese servants of several thousand dollars worth of jewellery and plate. But the company at once made his loss good, though what became of the dishonest servants was never known. Probably they went back to China in coJBSns, numbers of which, restoring the dead Chinamen to the graves of their ancestors, form a lucrative part of the cargo of many of the steam-ships for Hong-K|ong and Shanghai. But you must not put a Chinaman to have III.] CHINESE SERVANTS. 67 anything to do with a horse: they are not bred for it: they fear the horse, and seem utterly unable to ride, drive, feed, or harness him. They will learn to manage a steam-engine, but not a horse. There is a record of only one exception ; he was a servant of a friend of ours, and we heard with great admiration that Sam could not only drive, but shoot flying. The effort was too great, however, and Sam lived but a year or two after he had attained this glory. We were at San Francisco on the 4th of July. Half the city went mad, and the other half looked on at their antics. For days before the newspapers gave lists of the marshals and deputy-marshals of the day. The order of the procession was also given; and about ten in the morning, the shops all being shut, we stood among a most good-natured interested crowd, mostly of women and children, to see the whole string pass. There were the marshals ; at ordinary times douce, respectable heads of families, to-day decked out in cocked hats with feathers, and white gauntlets, and braided frocks -and trousers, pacing about on horse- back with rulers in their hands: they showed the way to all the military companies. Horse, foot, and F 2 C8 OREGON. [chap, artillery, all fairly drilled and all well-armed, marched past. The Germans, French, and Italians, in separate companies of Grenadiers, Zouaves, and Garibaldini, with red shirts, made a gallant show. Then came all the trade societies, with scarves and banners, marching four abreast. Their line was broken by various devices: here a huge waggon of flourbags decked with garlands was provided by the bakers; next a waggon with wine casks, and young girls with fuU baskets of grapes symbolised the vine- yards of the State : then one with a high piled trophy of pumpkins, carrots, cucumbers, cauliflowers and all other vegetables, had been arranged by the gardeners ; and so on. Not the least picturesque part of the show was made up of the teamsters, each bestriding a huge but compact drayhorse, with bright new harness decked with gay ribbons, and aJl the riders in uniform of white shirt-sleeves and dark-blue waist- coats and trousers, and new wide-brimmed straw hats. After parading the city for some hours the procession halted at one of the large pubhc halls, where, as in various other buildings, large audiences assembled to hear orations from popular speakers on III.] THE GLORIOUS FOUKTK. 69 the memories of the day, the glories of America past, present, and future. The day concluded with a general discharge of fireworks in and about the streets — crackers were exploding everywhere, guns firing, and a general hullabaloo lasted till two or three in the morning before the tired-out revellers got to rest. The next day the uniforms had disappeared, the shops and offices were all open, a double quantity of money-making had to be got through, and nothing but a very jaded, late-torbed, brandy-and-soda look about most men's faces reminded you of the Glorious Fourth, Of course there should be an account given of the big trees and of the Yosemite valley. So many pages have however been written about them that we have pity on the reader and pass on — rthe more readily because there was so little water in the rivers, owing to the drought, that the waterfalls were not worth seeing : so a visit to these wonders of the world is postponed for us tUl the next time we are passing that way. Every Californian, however, very early in his talk with you, guesses that you., have been up to the Yosemite. You reply, " Well, no, I have not." He 10 OEEGON. [chap. always says, " Ah ! you should go : must not leave California without seeing them." We were very kindly made free of the Pacific Club during our stay in San Francisco. The first afternoon, after being introduced to more than a dozen members, we sat in . ithe smoking-room chatting* Every one advised the Yosemite. So we turned on a grey-bearded, impressive colonel, who was giving us very strong exhortations to go at once. " Well, sir, when were you there last ? " " Well, sir, I have been intending to go up this very fall." "Have you never been?" "Well, sir, I have always found myself too busy to go there except just for my. holiday, and then I have had to go with the family to the sea, or up into the mountains to shoot." And then we questioned each in, turn, to find that only one out of six of these natives had ever been there himself. It is a five days' trip from San Francisco, and not entirely pleasant to some people. A good many miles of • stage up the mountains and down again have to be passed. Large open stages with six horses, like an English break, but with three cross seats, holding three each, in the m.] THE DRIVER AND THE PRIEST. 71 body of the carriage, are preferred for the summer travelling, One of our friends was going up to the Tosemite: when he got to Merced station for the stage, he found a fat, white-faced priest was to be one of his companions. This gentleman, being out for a holiday, chaffed this and joked that man, and at last tried to take a rise out of the stage-driver. They had not long started: the six blood-horses were toiHng up the first part of the ascent, and had dropped from their run into a walk. The driver was also owner of the stage and team ; a taU, dried-up, powerful Californian, intent on his work, speaking but little except to his horses, and set on getting through his long day's wofk, but proud of his coach and horses to the backbone, " "Well, Mr, Adams," said the priest, " is this all you can do for us ? Not much pace about this travelling : I always thought you gentlemen could drive, and your teams could go." Mr. Adams cast one look over his shoulder from his box seat at the broad grinning face of the padre, who was comfortably seated on the forward cross seat below, nearest therefore to the driver, but he said not a word. 72 OKEGON, [chap. Presently the priest tried again, but failed to get any reply from the grave, sober-looking driver. So they toiled up the mountain. Presently they stopped at a wayside inn, and some country women got in. The stage-driver is absolute master of the loading of his coach, so he handed the ladies in, and signed to the priest to move on to the back seat overhanging the wheels, and the back of the stage altogether. The father grumbled, but went. Some more folk were picked up on the road and put into their places inside, and the priest was gradually edged into the last outside seat on the right-hand, or off-side. After an hour or two zigzagging up they reached the top, the priest never ceasing his jokes, and small ones they were. The horses stopped to breathe, and then paced gently along the level at the top. The view opened out, and they saw the road twisting and turning down the steep grades below them, with a precipice of hundreds of feet down to the river below. They could see miles ,of this before them, and the road looked but a thread in the straight bit at the bottom. III.] THE DRIVER AND THE PRIEST. 73 The passengers shook a little in their places at the prospect, but Mr. Adams remarked, generally, as he handled his "lines," "Not much pace about this travelling, you bet." The first turn in the grade came, and the taU-end of the long coach swung round vehemently, the wheels skirring and grating on the stones, hard locked. Every one winced, and the priest, having the fuU benefit of the swing and of the prospect down the mountain side, shrunk away and shut his eyes. Pre- sently Mr. Adams shook up his six bays, and threw his long lash among them with a smack. The horses bounded as if traces and reins must alike go ; and down they skated, stones flying, brakes creaking, wheels striking a chain of sparks, and the heavy coach swaying at each turn in the zigzag, till the off hind-wheel, with the fat priest above it, fairly overhung the precipice below. The women cried out, the men shivered, the priest let go the side of the coach to clasp his hands, with his eyes turned to the skies, and his white lips muttering rapid prayers to all the saints in his calendar. Down they went, faster and faster, till the horses 74 OREGON. [chap. were at a rapid gallop, and the noise and rattle, and dust and stones flying, nearly drove every one wild- Mr. Adams sat unmoved, except to ply Ms brake with his right foot harder and harder, till the hind- wheels were absolutely locked, and jumped and skidded till it seemed as if wood, leather, and iron could never stand the strain. The priest ' turned sickly, ghastly white, expecting each moment to be his last ; but the pace round the turns kept them on the road, and they gained the bottom safely, a sorely-bruised and shaken and frightened crew. As the horses dropped into a gentle trot, Mr. Adams looked back once again and quietly remarked, " Sometimes we hin get pace on this road." Having one clear day to spare, we devoted it to the Geysers. We left San Francisco in the early morning, went on board the steamer Donahue, which plies between San Francisco and the little town of Donahue, and crossed the bay. The white mist was clearing off, and one by one the islands came in sight. We passed Alkatross Island with its fort and casemates, where some of the last political prisoners of the Civil War spent weary months, while the civil courts debated, and ultimately III.] DONAHUE. V5 reversed, the sentences of the military courts. Then San Jos6 and Vallejo showed us their white houses nestled at the foot of the great brown hills. The little waves of the bay died away as we passed between flat, broad marshes into a smooth lagoon, and then into a river winding along, with but just room for the steamboat to make her way, the blue water of the bay exchanged for the absolute white of the river on which the low rays of sunlight were dazzling to the eye. Flocks of white gulls were seated in rows on the fences surrounding the scattered cottages of the fishermen, one every now and then dipping into the water after some little fish, and sending circles ever widening, till the steamboat crossed and covered them all. Then the hills drew nearer to the water's edge, and slopes covered with yellow wheat stubbles, broken here and there with vineyards and fields of Indian corn, came one by one into view. Then we ran alongside a railway station and wharf, and the steamer, butting her prow into the opposite muddy bank, swung gently round into her place,- and all the passengers entered the train in waiting. We steamed gently up the rich valley, passing one or 76 OREGON. [chap. two little towns bathed in sunshine, and reached Cloverdale, the end, at present, of the line, which has been designed and executed, and is, we believe, owned by Mr. Donahue, who has given his name to town and steamboat. Nothing is more striking in California than the insight and enterprise of some of these successful men, whose names are on every one's tongue. First, carefully weighing the chances of success, they are slow to " take hold " of a project (to use the expres- sive term in common use there). But being convinced that there is "money in it," nothing stops them; and devoting themselves to the one object, they succeed. If you ask to whom this great town house, covered with ornament inside and out, or this lovely country- house, with deep green verandah, seated among its oak-trees, with far-stretching views, belongs, the answer is sure to bej to one or other of the Central Pacific founders, or to some other magnate who has planned, made, and owns some railway, port, or town. At Cloverdale we found ourselves too late to get a return stage from" the Geysers if we w;aited to go Til.] THE GEYSERS. 77 up by the stage leaving at three o'clock ; so we hired a pair-horse buggy, and were driven up. The owner of the livery-stables drove us himself, and told us ia conversation how he had twice been burned out, and had lost house, stables, horses, and carriages, and had to begin the world again — taking, however, but three or four years in that prosperous place to regain his former possessions. The mountain road, smooth and well engineered, though dusty, wound through groves of oak and laurel, with bushes of the poison-oak, with bright green and red leaves intermixed, and overhanging the road. The river below, in ordinary years a swift trout-stream, had shrunk, in this summer's drought, into a string of dull green pools. As the pass opened out, and the mountains rose higher on each side, there were several quicksilver mines, high up near their tops, with long tramroads from the miaes to the level of road and river below, where the reducing works were placed, and full cars were runrung down the steep incline, loaded with the deep red ore, dragging upwards by their weight the empty trucks. We reached the Geysers Hotel, charmingly placed, with a huge oak in the angle of the house, over- 78 OEEGON. [chap. shadowing the rooms on each side. The sulphurous Scent from the Geysers canon opposite filled the air. After shaking, brushing, and washing off the white dust which lay thickly on us, we crossed the little stream in front of the hotel by a rustic bridge, and passed up into the side of the mountain. It was a narrow cleft, in which several pools of black water, a few feet across, were connected by a trickling rill. The hill-sides were black and red, and then streaked with yellow, where the imprisoned gases were finding their exit to the air. The earth shook, and a sound of rushing and boUing grew louder and louder, as we climbed higher up into the canon. Steam rushed from every orifice, and fresh ones were easily made by thrusting the sticks we carried through a thin crust of soil. The incrustations of sulphur formed delicate yellow tracery over the black mud, and the hill-sides in places were deep red with cinnabar. Not a blade of grass grew in the cleft, which looked as if the explosion which had torn the hill-side asunder and left its ashes smoking everyTvhere, had but just burst out, A chemist would find a month's work in the com- pounds of sulphur, iron, and quicksilver before his ni.] SULPHUR. 79 eyes. We mounted to the top, and stood on what looked like a huge bubble thrown up in the soft earth. "Jump," said the guide, and the whole excrescence shook and waved tiU we expected to plunge through into a hot gulf below. " Never fear," said he, " I have been here seventeen years. I weighed only 112 pounds when I came, and now I am sixty-eight and weigh 150 pounds, and I have jumped here most days — so I think it will bear us aU, and more too." So sulphur fumes and steamy air sometimes cure ; and the guide's experience may give promise for a sulphur-steam cure; who knows? The night was falling as we drove back, seeing nothing on the road tUl we passed a great four-horse waggon with iron pots of quicksUver being taken from the mines to the market. We were suddenly startled by two armed men pushing through the bushes into the road ; they said they were trying for a shot at a bear. We had our suspicions that their intention was to stop the stage soon expected to pass ; however, they let us by. The road was dangerous in the dark, with its sharp turns and steep zigzags, and we were not sorry to get to our comfortable inn at Cloverdale. The night was pitch dark. We were smoking in the 80 OEEGON. [chap. verandah after supper, and chatting with the landlord, hearing his adventures as a Union soldier in the war, when an Indian pony came quietly along the sandy road and stopped suddenly in the strong light of the lamp, while its rider, a big, straw-hatted Indian, rolled off the pony and mysteriously beckoned the landlord away from us. He followed the Indian into the dark, and we saw another Indian on his pony holding the first man's horse. The landlord said loudly, "No, I tell you; no, not a drop," and retiirned to us. The Indians stood sulkily in the edge of the darkness and we went to bed, the landlord showing us to our rooms and leaving the down stairs rooms all open and lighted, with money and drink and property aU abroad. " Are you not afraid," said we, " to leave those Indians there Avith everything open ? " " What ? " he answered, " afraid of that riff-raff? No, nor twenty like them ■ fifteen years ago that Indian would have shot the man who refused him whisky as I did ; but now they are as tame as sheep." And from our rooms above we saw them mount and ride off into the black night. This last summer has been a terrible one for the farmers in the south of the State. We heard the sad experiences of a young Englishman ni.] THE ENGLISH FARMER. 81 who had been out for three years, had sunk his ready money in the purchase and stocking of a ranch, had sent for and married a charming little English girl, but was then making his way back' to England to try and get some more funds to start afresh. He told us he had 3,000 sheep which he had been glad to sell for sixpence apiece, as they were starving on the ranch, and there was neither hay to buy nor money to pay for it. His wife's experiences on the ranch, ten miles from a town, and no lady but her sister-in-law within reach, were most amusing. She said they got up very early and turned out on horseback before breakfast to see after the stock. Then coming in, her husband set the breakfast things while she cooked the bacon, made the bread, and ground and made the coffee. After break- fast they gardened, and saw to the orchard of olives and oranges and almonds till it was time to think about dinner. Then cooking the dinner amused them a long while, and the afternoon gave them a siesta. Then as the cool evening drew on another long gallop all round brought them in tired to supper ; then a little while for music and reading and then to bed. " And have you not got tired of this life ? " we said to the little lady, as 82 OREGON. [chap. fresh in complexion and neat in toUet as if Brighton and not Santa Barbara had been her home for two years past. " Oh dear, no," she said, " Bob is so good ; he never made wry faces over the messes I used to make at first, and now I am a good cook, and it was glorious fun, like pic-nics always ! " and " Bob " looked on smiling, a great broad-shouldered Englishman, proud of nothing but his little brave wife. He confided to us that having no female servants in the house was "rather a bore," and said they preferred to cook for themselves rather than let the farm helps touch the food. He told us that the want of water on the ranch was the great drawback ; and that a year and a half ago his help had persuaded him to let a Spanish water- finder come to try his skill; that an old wizened, velvet- jacketed, silver-buttoned Spaniard had come and marched gravely about the place, had then produced the familiar forked switch and gone slowly round. That then a spot at the foot of a hOl near the buildings had been shown as the place where there was water, but not good. That they had dug there and found a brackish spring. That the old water-finder had marched off again with his stick, and presently pointed out the foot Ill-] CALIFOENIAN WINE. 83 of another hill near by as a place where there was some water, good but not abundant. That there also his words had come true, and that they had used that spring for drinking ever since. Our friend, with true British pluck, was ready enough to try his fortune again, and hoped in a year or two to have ranch and flock and herds; and, above all, the drove of pigs which was his particular hobby, and which were to make him the richest of rancheros in the shortest time. When we returned to San Francisco we dined with the owner of one of the largest vineyards in Napa county in the State. We heard of the patient efforts by varying the kinds of grapes and getting over vine- dressers from Champagne, Burgundy, and the Rhine country, which have now been made for years past to get a wine worthy of the soil and climate. The San Franciscans know exceedingly weU what good wine is, and they import some of the best ; our observation was that they were much more anxious that the British stranger should taste their native wine than to drink it themselves. We agree with them quite. Taking a gentle sip of Californian Burgundy, roll it G 2 84 OREGON. [chap. round your tongue and swallow it slowly — say, " All, this is really good ! — the true Burgundy flavour ! " — then fill your other glass with the genuine Pomard, and say, " But this is perhaps more mature ! " and drink it all. Your friend will be pleased that you admire his native wine, and drink his French wine — and he will ask you to dinner again. And what hospitable people they are \ You go to a Mend's house to dine, and sit next a chatty, pleasant fellow — he says, "What are you going to do in the morning ? Come down with me to the Cliif House to breakfast, and then I want you to meet some of our scientists, so come and dine at six, and I will get one or two of our professors to come in ; and next week one or two of us are going up to our little place in the mountains to shoot, and you must come and kill a deer and a bear, and there are lots of duck and quaU." This kind of thing is repeated, until the English stranger thinks with remorse of the American friends who have come over to England with intro- ductions to him, and whom he has dismissed with a dinner at the club, and a sense that he has then per- formed towards them the whole duty of man. The in.] HOSPITALITY. 8.5 fact is that the Americans are a more friendly people then we, visit each other more freely and with less ceremony hy far, habitually having one night in the week open for their acquaintances to come and share in the talk, music, dancing, or cards, which are going on. 89 OREGON. [cnAP. CHAPTER IV. After a few more days in San Francisco we prepared for our intended journey overland to Oregon. And it is a serious matter to go in for two days and three nights in a stage, when one knows what a stage is, and what the roads are. To pass night after night, either on a high box-seat with a low back, where you dare not do more than doze lightly for fear of falling off, or in the inside, which is worse. Three seats, and room for three passengers on each ; two seats facing each other as usual at the front and back of the carriage, and the third across, just behind the doors, with a broad leather strap for the only back. On two out of the three seats your head strikes against the wooden supports of the leather sides and top of the coach the moment you "drop off," and on the middle seat your head, having no support, seems to be always dropping off you. Then every one has at least four IV.] THE STAGE JOURNEY. 87 legs inside, for you can never find a quiet space for yours ; and, again, just as you can hold up no longer, and sleep is stealing over you, creak, gur-r-r, crack go the hind wheels just under you, as the brake conies violently into play down hill, and the stones fly. And the dust ! And in the little eating-houses — inns you cannot call them — where the stage stops for meals, you are fed chiefly on small, square bits of tough, fried meat, with fried potatoes, and sometimes pie. (This last you would eat of more freely were it not for the legions of house-flies, which dispute with you every mouthful !) As we heard of all these things, and of the dangers of the road, from accidents to the stage, and robbery of the stage and all its passengers, we were half inclined to go by sea from San Francisco to Portland, and fight shy of the stage. But we stuck to the road, which now has to be described. Instead of going to Sacramento by rail on our way north to Redding, we determined on leaving by the Vallejo boat, and then the rail along the Sacramento river valley. All our friends came to see us off, after the fashion in those parts. The 88 OREGON. [chap. Americans laugh at their own fondness for leave- taking, and certainly it is carried to an absurd extreme. What American writer is it who teUs the story of how he went down by boat south, and as he stood on deck alone, in the middle of a crowd of passengers waving handkerchiefs and shouting fare- wells, he felt lonely, and thought he would like some one to say farewell to him too ? So he sung out, "Good-bye, Jack — good-bye;" and a voice replied, " Good-bye, old fellow ; a pleasant journey to you." But one was not enough, so he cried, "Good-bye, Captain — good-bye;" and three hats were swung, and three answers came. "Good-bye, Colonel — good-bye," the traveller cried. Fifteen handkerchiefs were waved as the vessel moved off. "Good-bye, General — good-bye," was the traveller's last shout ; and a chorus of voices returned his greeting, and a grove of handkerchiefs and a swarm of hats were shaken till the figures grew smaller and smaller, and their voices stUl crying "Good- bye, old fellow — good-bye," faded away. ValleJQ has an older look than most of the Cali- fornian towns, and is as pleasantly situated on the IV.] THE STAGE BY NIGHT. 89 bay as San Francisco herself: the navy yard of Mare Island is close by, the chief repairing yard for the United States navy on the Pacific coast. At Vallejo we took the train up the valley, and reached Sacramento at half-past eleven having left at seven, instead of leaving at eight and arriving at three, by the usual route, vid Oakland. We went on north at half-past three, and until midnight, when we reached Redding, we were passing through a lovely vaUey, well wooded with fine oak trees, and occasional thickets of laurel and cotton woods by the streams. At Redding, where is the terminus at present of the Californian and Oregon railroad, we found the stage in waiting. The talk, half-joke and half- earnest, was as to hiding or not hiding our money. "We aU knew that there was a chance of being stopped and robbed; but, till we mounted the stage, we did not know that it had been stojpped five times in the last eighteen months, or we should have been more inclined to take the advice of friends, who insisted that the only safe place for our money was in our socks. By one o'clock at night we started, the luggage-rest 90 OREGON. [chap. at the back being piled witb luggage and post-bags, and on the top being fastened a heavy, strong box of Wells, Fargo, and Co.'s, for money and valuables. The four horses had quite enough to do to drag the stage up the first hill, laden as it was inside and out. "We had the advantage of the box-seat next Charlie McConnell, the prince of drivers. He handled his horses, and worked the heavy brake, and smoked cigars, and chatted unceasingly to his two box-seat passengers, doing aU equally well. The night was dark, but clear, the stars shining; but in the woody glades we soon entered we were glad enough of the strong light thrown down the road by the large bright lamp fixed under the splash-board over the pole. We crossed first a bare heathy ground, strewn with rocks, then entered a wood, the road descending rapidly. "Look out for yourselves at the bottom, gentlemen," said McConneU. "If we are going to be stopped on this stage, there will be the placCj^" pointing to a level ending in a sharp rise upwards, and having a clear space of thirty yards or so before the wood began. "They always choose a place IV.] HIGHWAYS AND HIGHWAYMEN. 91 where one can stop the horses when they are at a walk ; and the other, fifteen or twenty yards off, covers the driver and outsides with a double gun, loaded with buckshot. Don't shoot, gentlemen, un- less you are sure of both rascals at once, or we shall all be riddled," he went on, seeing a move to get revolvers ready. "Better lose a few dollars, than risk a charge of buckshot among us." We passed safely the debateable ground, and shortly the road brought us to the edge of a river, the McLeod, looking inky black between its tree- covered banks. The ferryman was in waiting, and the horses marched gravely on to the boat, and waited for the crossing. When the coach was settled on the boat, the ferryman turned vigorously a large wheel at the side of the boat, round which a rope was wound, which reached up to a wire-rope stretched high from tree to tree across the stream. "Seen a fellow on a little black mare pass yester- day or to-day, Jack ? " said McConnell. " No," was the answer. When we got across, McConnell said, "That scamp I asked after, stopped the stage on the other road three days ago; and from the de- scription, he is the same fellow who robbed us last 92 OEBGON. [chap. November, and took my watch. He is in this country, and can only get out by one of two roads, and the sheriff is after him. If I hear of him, I shall go after him myself. The rogue took my watch — took the driver's watch ! " said he, evidently considering that to rob the stage driver as well as the passengers was breaking the rules of the game. Presently he said, " There are two fellows in the State prison yet, who were taken by one man a year or two ago." " Tell us about it," we said. " Well," he answered, "the stage was going along all right when a feUow ran to the horses' heads, and two others covered the driver with their guns in the regular way. He told the driver to drop the reins, and made the passengers throw up their hands. Then he told the passengers to get down and stand in a row by the roadside, and made the driver throw down the Wells Fargo box, which was what they were after. " Then they robbed the passengers all comfortable. When they came to one man, he asked them to give him back his watch, which was of no great account to them, but had belonged to his grandfather. Instead of being civil, the rascal up with his hand and gave him a great smack on the face, and told him to hold IV.] A BOLD STKOKB. 93 his tongue. So they took his watch, and the rest of the watches, and all their money, and then told them to get up again and be off. So they all mounted again, and drove off glad enough to be free. " As soon as they had gone about a quarter of a mile, or so, the passenger told the driver to stop. ' What for ? ' says he. ' I am not going to have my face slapped for nothing,' says the passenger. So he got out of the luggage a nice little repeating Henry rifle, and got down off the coach and back he went. " Presently he saw, as he expected, a light in the bushes near the road. So he crept up through the trees, and saw the three rascals all round the Wells Fargo box, which they were trying to break open ; they had put their guns down, never dreaming of danger. The passenger got up within a safe distance till he could cover them well ; then he let fly, and the first shot dropped one of them dead, the next winged one of the others, and the third screamed out for mercy. So he went up and made the unhurt one help his wounded fellow back into the road, and then he drove them in front of him till he came up to the coach, and took the two nicely. And they are both in the State prison now," said McConnell. 94 OREGON. [chap. " When the driver asked the man why he did such a risky thing as go back alone after three, all he said was, 'I was not going to have my face slapped for nothing. ' " And with many tales like this he lightened our way till day broke, and showed us the wood-covered hills and deep valleys we were passing, and the distant mountains on ahead. We drove by the side of the McLeod, where in the pools the salmon were leaping every here and there ; the river rushing over rocks, and flashing in the bright morning sun in the rapids and stickles, till we longed to try our luck with salmon fly or phantom. But it is the rarest thing for these fish, even when fresh run, to take a bait. We heard from a traveller afterwards that he had stopped for three weeks and only caught two fish, one a three-pound grilse, with a spoon bait, and the other a ten-pound salmon, with a bunch of worms. He told us that the trout took the fly pretty freely in the mornings- and evenings, and we had a dish of pound or pound and a half fish for dinner, which were part of his spoils. Soon we came to the government fish-hatching establishment, where there were two or three little IV.] STAGE B'T DAY. 95 houses for the men employed, and the usual set of troughs and runs. We saw several Indians about ■who get their living on the river; but they net the fish, or spear them by torchlight. Following the stream up, we got to our breakfast stopping-place, and were introduced to the first of the fly-filled rooms and dirty tablecloths, and fried meat, and heavy hot bread, and unwholesome-looking pies, all of which we were to become so familiar with during the next day or two. And then the sun grew hotter, and the dust to rise in clouds, and we left off one by one our outer gar- ments, and donned the dust-coats of thin alpaca, the relics of our railway journey across the plains. The oaks left us, and we entered the pine region, the trees only of an average Scotch fir size, and growing sparsely on the thin stony soil. We saw a snake or two, which had been basking in the hot sun, move slowly away before the horses reached them ; the blue jays kept us company all day, flitting from tree to tree ; but we saw no game birds or animals, and only a few gophers and squirrels. As the day wore on we parted, with regret, from Charlie McConnell, and did not at all profit by the exchange. 96 OEEGON. [chap. for our new driver shone neither as a whip nor as a companion. About three o'clock, we stopped by a charmingly- placed little hotel, called Soda Springs, and on the low wall next the road was plated for us a great jug of the water from which the place takes its name, a natural seltzer water, fuU of life and effervescence, cool and refreshing. What nectar it was to all of us, dusty and dry ! The hotel is a long one-storied white building of wood, with a deep green verandah in two stories, into which both ground floor and first floor rooms opened ; and in its shade, in rocking chairs, dressed in light summery costumes, were three or four young ladies and gentlemen. The stem danger of forfeiting our places if we stopped, and being probably delayed for a day or two alone, drove us on, and most unwillingly we climbed to our places and toiled on. The pine-trees got larger as we mounted, and soon specimens of from three to four feet diameter became not rare. We soon got a sight of the snow-covered, double-headed top of Mount Shasta, and had to take a long half-circle round its base. This was the first which we had seen of the great volcanic cones, which stretch northwards like sentinels. IV.] MOUNT SHASTA. 97 guarding the continent from western winds, from Shasta to Mount Nelson. All snow-covered, they catch the earhest and latest sun-rays, and tower, each in his solitary grandeur, thousands of feet ahove the great chain of which they are the ornaments. Sepa- rated by breaks of from fifty to one hundred miles from each other, yet the air is so clear, and they stand out so gloriously against the sky, that often three of them are in sight at once as we travel northwards ; and their • beauty consoles us for the gradual lowering of the rest . of the chain, which sink from the crowded broken , mountain-tops of the Sierra Nevada, into the more uniform shapes and much gentler slopes of the Cascades. Late in the evening we stopped to change horses at a little creeper-covered house, with a few cleared fields, and some scattered fruit-trees. The white jessamine and honeysuckle had spread freely over the porch and mounted to the roof, and the little grass-plat, next the road, was planted with rose-trees, which were covered with flowers. Our driver lived here, and as the stage drew near, his young wife and little child stood by the fence to greet him. We walked on a little way up the road to get a view- H 98 OREGdN. [chap. through the pines, and came to a clearing where men had felled the trees, and were splitting the logs for planks and shingles. The echo of their tools was the only sound to disturb us as we looked across a patch of fern, and between the red pine trunks to where the mountain shone out crimson before our eyes. One great mass, split near the top into two — ^with no others near to rival him and dwarf his size — ^his bare rocky sides of a dull red, with glaciers falling from the snow- cap, showing blood colour below, and vermilion in the full light of the evening sun. "We stood entranced, and were repaid in a moment for the heat, dust, rattle, and sleeplessness of the day. On this higher level the woods were gradually left behind, and we entered long stretches of level land, broken up into farms, with snake fences again lining the road, crops just ripening for harvest, cattle standing belly-deep in rich pasture through which rills of water ran. . The foot-hills of the mountains rose in isolated round buttes — one was the scene of an Indian fight, where among the scrub the band of redskins held their white enemies for long at bay, until ammunition and water failed, and they were massacred to a man. IV.] YEEKA. 99 Then we passed through long thickets of laurel and a sandy tract, where individual firs stood out over the scrub, like specimen conifers in the laurel plantation of a park at home. And then when night had come we reached the mining town of Yreka ; the stage stopped for supper, and we exchanged the cool night air, and the continuous soft grinding of the wheels over the sandy road, and the gentle clanking of the harness, for the dazzle of a street lighted from the open doors and windows of five or six saloons, and thronged with miners, who crowded round us as we got down. After a welcome cup of tea we started again, and dozed on uneasily inside the stage, as it swung down a rapid zigzag descent of many hundreds of feet, the brake hard on all the time, and the hind wheels bumping and jumping from stone to stone. When morning dawned we were in Oregon, having mounted again in the early hours. A different land- scape greeted us. We were passing between thick woods with close undergrowth of fern, trailing creepers of the wild cucumber, and berry-bearing bushes, black and red. There was no trace of the stony arid soil of the Califomian mountains, with their prevailing tints of H 2 100 OREGON. [chap. grey, yellow, and light brickdust-red ; but fresh green everywhere round us. A trickling stream by the road- side had formed a carpet of bright spongy moss, and the plants of the English woods and hedges, or their American cousins, seemed like old friends. We stopped to breakfast at a roadside inn, and were fed with abundance of cream and wild strawberries. A clear running rill of water had been led through a pipe from the hill-side above, and flowed freely through the tank, where we washed off the dust of our second night's ride. We climbed to our places, and started refreshed for our day's journey. We passed through a wide tract of undulating country, green everywhere with woods and copses ; on the upper ranges of the hills the firs showed black in the distance ; but there were wide slopes of corn-land and grass-fields ripening into their summer yellow, and here and there a farmer's house, each with its wide verandah, and fruit-trees round it, with its one barn and stable. The corners and angles of cleared land, cutting into the woods above, showed that the settlers were extending their cultivated fields and developing the productiveness of the country ; and the soil, red or dark grey in prevailing tints, and free from rock and Jv.] OREGON AT LAST. 101 stone, prepared us, on the very boundary of the State, for the fertility we were to take note of for hundreds of miles on our northward journey. As the day wore on the heat became oppressive, while the sun poured down ^ on the road, winding through the valleys. We passed one or two little towns and villages, aU looking prosperous, with new houses being built or old ones enlarged. By the middle of the day we reached Jacksonville, a town of from 1,000 to 1,500 inhabitants, depending not only on the agricultural riches of the surround- ing country, but on the gold mines on the head waters of the Eogue river, which we were soon to pass. The day being Sunday the town was in absolute quiet ; had we been in Scotland there could not have been a more perfect rest from all worldly pursuits. On the road as we drew near the town we passed waggons full of the country people on their way to church or chapel: the women in light print dresses, holding great blue or green umbrellas to protect themselves from the burning sun; the men in dark cloth jackets and trousers and soft felt hats. As the stage approaches they speak to their horses and draw 102 OKEGON. [chap. slowly to the side of the road to let us pass, using no whip, and scarcely needing to touch the reins to get instant obedience. So far as horses are con- cerned, no Humane Society seems wanted in Oregon ; we hardly ever saw one struck, never one maltreated or overdriven, from one end of the State to the other. The inside places of the stage were now filled up close. A farmer's wife, some fifty years of age, dressed in a brown alpaca suit of gown and tippet, of a fashion of fifty years back, with brass-rimmed spectacles on her nose, and tight little curls round her face, was put in. Her maiden niece, who had never smiled in her life, and never would, accom- panied her, and sat in the corner, stiff, gaunt, and angular. Then there was a cheery little Jewish bag- man, who sold sewing-machines all about the country, and boasted he had left twelve behind him in Jack- sonville, and should never see them again; and then a seller of a new reaping-machine, the wonder of the century, completed the fiiU number. The farmer's wife never forgot it was Sunday, and tried to repress the irrepressible Jew; but he made jokes and told stories all the more. The reaping-machine man gloried in having an Englishman to talk to who knew nothing IV.] OREGON STAGE-PASSENGERS. 103 of reaping machines; so on he droned, explaining principles and patents, and showing how his machine could cut and bind into sheaves, while others could only cut, and so on, till his auditor wished his machine and him together in the bottom of the Kogue river. Then we came to the mining district — nearly all', washed out now — only a few Chinamen, picking up the white men's crumbs, being left. The deposits had been found generally in the beds of the rivers; so they had been diverted into fresh channels, and sluices run ; and now the abandoned watercourses, with heaps of rough stones and gravel, and holes dug here and there, looked forlorn and ragged beyond description in the bright, hot sun. The forest was all round us ; the stumps and roots of the trees had not been cleared from the road, and the horses often ran neatly on each side of a stump over which the bottom of the stage passed with only an inch or two to spare. By this time we had reached the high, rocky, broken ground dividing the head-waters of the Kogue and Umpqua rivers, and in the evening came to the little town of GalesviUe, where we changed drivers for the last time. We were again in the heart of the mountains 104 OREGON. [chap. surrounding the head of the Eogue river valley. _ The land . in the vaUey was xich and the crops luxuriant, only the corn which the settlers raise beyond their own needs they must give to the hogs, for there is no way of getting it to a profitable market. The stage passing daily each way with mails and passengers is their one link to the outer world ; but it takes no passengers to the valley, nor brings any away ; summer by summer, winter by winter, they live on in their isolation, without even the ordinary farmers' topics of markets, labour, and stock: self-contained and happy in their freedom from all wants they cannot supply and from all ambitions they cannot satisfy. It reminded one of the Happy Valley of Rasselas. Bounded on all sides by the rugged mountains, the only road being the rough track by which we were passing ; down the centre ran the river, the only object reminding one that there was ever haste in this world : for the ripples and stickles shoWed that the water was hurrying to the sea. Green fields of grass and bits of oats of stUl brighter green occupied the few hundred acres of level land by the stream. The white farm- houses, roofed with grey shingles, were dotted aboiit (not grouped into villages or hamlets), each with its IV.] THE EETIEED VALLEY. 105 orchard and patch of paddock, -while here and there a great chestnut-tree threw a broad patch of shadow over roof and buildings. The cattle lay about in the shade or stood ruminating in the rich grass ; and a sense of quiet and laziness, as of a perpetual Sunday afternoon, fiUed the air. No miU had been built to set even the stream to work ; we passed no inn or shop or forge ; we saw no centre of life and action round which the men would gather either in work or play Dragging the coach through a river over which there was no bridge, and then painfully climbing round a rocky ledge, where the narrow road was cut bodily out of the rock, and where the tripping of but one of the six horses must have overthrown the rest, and rolled us aU into the valley a hundred or two feet below, the team pulled us slowly to the top of the pass, and we soon were ready to begin the descent of the last of our many "grades" into the head of the great Willamette valley. The night was clear, calm, and cool. The road ran through thick woods again, with an undergrowth of tall fern. Four deer, at intervals during the night, were startled from their feeding by the noise 106 OEEGON. [chap. of our approach, but, dazzled apparently by the bright light from the great lamp in front of the coach, let us get quite close before they sprang hastily off the road, and hurried away into the dark wood. This last driver was a fit finisher of the drive begun by McConnell so many hours before. Tall, strong, ready, and active, he needed all his powers to keep his team of six travelling safely down this precipitous canon ; and the working of the brake by his right foot was so continuous and laborious, that we were not sur- prised to hear him say to the man seated on the roof behind him — " Please push your knee hard, sir, hard, into the small of my back." We started down and were glad enough to get safely to the foot, for one needed constantly to repeat to one- self that these men drove this coach daily over this road without accident ; and it seemed impossible that some portion of the stage or harness should not give way under the succession of violent strains. We looked from the stage window, right over the tops of the trees growing on the next turn of the zigzag below. The light from the great lamp in front shone fitfully on the rocks and trees as we rattled past, and IV.] ROSEBUEG. 107 after two hours of this sort of travelling we left the' mountains behind. The day broke as we were once more traversing a farming country, and homesteads, cornfields, and orchards met otir eyes. Somersetshire was the county in England which the general aspect of the land recalled to us, with its long stretches of hill land, its combes and glens, its fertile fields, frequent apple orchards, and snug homesteads. And so we passed through a good many miles, till the little town of Eoseburg came into view, its white houses and church steeple shining in the bright morn- ing sun. The stage pulled up at the inn before driving on to the post-ofiice to deliver over the mailbags, and we got down to stretch and shake our stiff and weary limbs. To look back on the journey seemed to pass in review weeks of travelling, and hundreds of miles of distance. One would have thought no less of dis- tance or time could have accounted for such aching bones, tired heads, bloodshot eyes, and travel-stained garments. The journey from California into Oregon was accom- plished, and we had safely arrived in the land we had come so far to see. 108 OREGON. [chap. CHAPTER V. To make this record of travel of use to the ordinary reader, who merely looks to add to his knowledge of the far-off parts of the world, and especially to any debating in their own minds what country they should choose for their future residence, it is necessary to give some general description of Oregon. If the writer appears to express in too strong terms his admiration of the State, he can only plead that he believes that any other visitor, who travelled with mind open to conviction, would feel constrained to sustain his words — and he appeals to facts as to climate, soU, and productions for confirmation. Oregon, then, is the most north-westerly State in the Union, and lies between the forty-second and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude: nearly corre- sponding with the South of France and North of Spain. It is bounded on the east by Idaho, on the v.] OREGON. 109 west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by the Columbia Eiver, and on the south by California and Nevada. It extends, on an average, for 350 miles east and west, and for 275 miles north and south, and contains 95,274 square miles, or about sixty millions of acres. It is naturally divided into three great districts, varying in climate, soU, and general conditions. Western Oregon lies between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains, thus taking in territory of 250 miles from north to south, and about 100 miles from west to east. It contains the Willamette Valley, named after the great river which runs through it from south to north, falling into the Columbia river just below the city of Portland. This valley is about 150 miles in length, and from thirty to sixty miles in breadth, and contains about five millions of acres of some of the richest land in the world. Only about one-tenth is as yet under cultivation, the residue is covered with natural grasses, or with forest and wood and copse. It is watered not only by the Willamette, but by numerous tributary rivers and streams; while clear springs and rills abound on every hill-side. 110 OREGON. [chap. The valley is not of a uniform dead level, but is broken into by many spurs of low hiUs, running into it from tbe Coast mountains on the west, and from the Cascades on the east, while it is dominated at irregular distances by the snow-capped volcanic cones of the Cascades, named The Three Sisters, Diamond Peak, Pitt, Scott, Thielson, Jefferson, and Hood. This last rises to the height of upwards of 11,000 feet, and, lying nearly due east of Portland, shows to the city his snow-crowned pyramid, misty in the early morning, clear and cool at noonday, and rosy red as he catches the last rays of the western sun. The coast ranges on the western side of the valley do not rise higher than 4,000 to 5,000 feet in their tallest heads, and the intervals between lie only about 2,000 above the level of the ocean; whilst there are several passes, notably that to Yaquina Bay, here- after to be described, where only a height of 600 feet has to be passed between the valley and the Pacific. Down this great valley the tide of population flowed, and Koseburg, Eugene City, Corvallis, Albany, Salem, Oregon City, and Portland are successively passed on our journey northwards through the State. The same route is followed by the railway along the eastern v.] CROPS. Ill bank of the river, and another line is in progress on the western side; while still another railroad, from Corvallis to the ocean at Yaquina Bay, is in course of construction, and wOl afford a quicker and easier outlet from the lower and middle parts of the great valley to the coast. Wheat grows luxuriantly everywhere; and being both heavy in yield and first-rate in quality, is the farmers' mainstay. With mere scratching of the ground and no care, it yields from twelve to twenty bushels to the acre ; but with ploughing of from five to eight inches in depth, and a little attention to keeping down the weeds, but with no manure, from thirty-five to fifty bushels to the acre is obtained. The Oregon wheat is well known, and commands the highest price in the Liverpool market, which in 1876 received four millions of bushels from this source, and it was estimated that in 1877 seven millions of bushels would be exported. A very good farmer, who owns a beautiful farm of 500 acres on the western foot-hills, about five miles from Corvallis, told us that his crop cost him just, ten dollars per acre to prepare for, harvest, and deliver, and his return averaged nearly thirty bushels to the 112 OEEGON. [chap. acre, which brought him seventy cents per bushel, or twenty-one dollars in the whole. We heard and saw evidence of many similar in- stances of success, which in this land, never ravaged by drought, or laid waste by floods, or swept by tempests, the farmers everywhere expect. Not satisfied with the bountiful return of nature for the slight labour of once ploughing and then putting in the seed, the Oregon farmer trusts entirely to nature, in many cases for a second and even a third crop. If he has got thirty bushels an acre from the crop he worked for, he relies on about twenty bushels for the next, appropriately called " volunteer ; " and if he stiU trusts to Providence, he expects about twelve to fifteen bushels in the following harvest. But nature takes her revenge by providing the care- less husbandman with an abundant crop of weeds, which, covering the land, enforce double ploughing and absolute rest in the fourth year. The quantity of wheat ripening for harvest seemed on many farms we saw quite disproportionate to the number of hands available for farming operations. We found, however, that there was in full operation a system of " farming made easy," which explained matters. v.] FARMING BY CONTRACT. 113 There is a class of contractors each owning a large number of horses and the best available machinery, and employing several hands. Such a man comes to farmer A, and says, "How many acres of wheat do you want put in?" He asks farmers B and C and D the same question, until he has secured a season's work; he then sends, say, six "gang-ploughs," with four ploughshares, and six horses each, and sets to work. By this means he gets through as much work as a steam-plough here, and cultivates a whole stretch of country. After he has finished his last ploughing and sowing, at the end of April, he takes a rest till August (unless a contract for grubbing wood strikes him as advan- tageous meanwhile). In August he makes similar terms for the harvesting and sackiag of the grain, and you may see a great field alive with "reapers," or "headers," and horses and men. Almost as soon as the com is cut the thrashing-machine is at work, and the wheat is put into sacks and carted off to the river or railroad, on its way to the warehouse. Thus an Oregon farmer can calculate to a nicety his expenses; and it will not be found far wrong if we say that, counting interest on the purchase-money 114 OKEGON. [chap, of his land at twelve per cent, per annum, and his own labour at a doUar and a half, or 6s. a day, and putting in all the expense of ploughing, sowing, harvesting, and storing his corn, the farmer will find the cost of his wheat to be about forty-nine cents, or 2s. O^d. a bushel; whUe the average selling price for the last four years has been about seventy-five cents, or 3s. l^d. a bushel, leaving him with a profit of twenty-six cents, or Is. Id. a bushel. Oats, also, prosper well. The straw often reaches five feet in height, carrying a bright, fuU head; the standard weight in Oregon is thirty-six pounds to the bushel, but forty-five and even fifty pounds is often reached, with a return of from fifty to eighty bushels to the acre. No failure of the wheat crop has ever occurred since the settlement of the country, that is, during a continuous period of thirty-three years. Barns and sheds for keeping the grain are not needed. Thrashing goes on in the fields, and thence the corn is sent directly to the warehouses for use or exportation. "The Oregon exhibition of cereals was one of the most successful at the Centennial Exhibi- tion at Philadelphia. Medals and diplomas were v.] FRUIT. 115 awarded for fifteen varieties of wheat, five of oats, and for white rye in grain, with straw nine feet high; also for 'ninety-day white wheat,' grain and sheaf raised upon land neither ploughed nor harrowed, and yielding thirty bushels to the acre." — Statement published by the State. Flax, hops, and potatoes are most successfully cultivated, the latter yielding from 150 to 300 bushels to the acre, and the Colorado beetle is as yet unknown. The ordinary kinds of fruit thrive luxuriantly. Apples, pears, plums, cherries, gooseberries, currants, strawberries, grow in abundance, and of first-rate quality. We saw the apple-trees on the foot-hills laden with fruit, and the farmers told us they were giving apples to the pigs, having no market even for the finest sorts. The owner of a splendid orchard of twelve acres near Oorvallis told us he was thinking of cutting down his trees and ploughing his orchard for wheat, not knowing what to do with his fruit. The woods are full of wild berries: thimble- berries, bright scarlet, with a sub-acid wild flavour; salmon-berries, yeUow and sweet; elderberries, black and red ; blackberries, like our English fruit ; huckle- I 2 116 OEBGON. [chap. berries, scarlet and shining, and slightly acid in taste, and a large wild strawberry, grow everywhere. Wild cucumber vines, the spiny, egg-shaped fruit of which is relished by the cattle, trail from bush to bush. A strong growth of oak and cherry and maple- copse is spreading rapidly over the country where cultivation has not yet reached ; the result of the discontinuance of the forest fires, which were set going annually by the Indians before they were transferred to, and limited in, their reservations during the last ten or twelve years, In many places we watched the operation of clearing going on. The farmer cut a broad path through the scrub with his axe, the young trees and bushes, fifteen or twenty feet in height, being severed from their roots, but inclined over then- growing neighbours : turning round a square of half an acre or so in extent, he left the cut wood to dry for a month or six weeks in the summer sun. Then setting fire to the withered boughs and leaves, ' the fire spread through the living copse inclosed, and a bare, black spot of earth remained, littered with the partly-burned stems and roots. Then a team v.] ROUGH FAEMING. 117 of oxen, dragging a heavy plough, was set to work ; and another team, with a strong chain with large iron hooks attached, dragged out the burned and charred stumps. These being heaped together, were again set on fire, and then the ashes scattered over the land. Next spring the wheat will be sown, and the land, reclaimed finally from waste, will become cultivable ground, returning in the first year's crop the expense of the clearing. The foot-hills of the Coast and Cascade ranges are covered naturally with a luxuriant growth of brake- fern. We asked several farmers if they did not find this very hard to extirpate: they replied that all they had to do was to mow this fern, and scatter timothy grass-seed, the staple grass of the State, among the roots. In the very next summer the grass would overcome and oust the fern, and cattle would live and fatten the year round on these slopes. Throughout this whole great valley, to the top of the foot-hills of the Cascades, hardly a stone was to be seen. The roads, indeed, suffered from their absence; as, having no bottom of solid stone, they 118 OEEGON. [chap. were no .better than wide tracks, beaten smooth, taken from the adjoining soil; in winter, by all accounts, reduced by the abundant rain to mud ; in summer, lying thick in grey dust. The hills in the Coast range were covered with rich, strong soil to their very summits, giving a very civiHsed look to the whole country ; wherever cleared of scrub, they afford pasturage to cattle; and wherever level enough to plough, fine crops of wheat or oats are raised. From this great Willamette valley runs, at right angles from the town of Corvallis, to the ocean at Yaquina Bay, a wide, broken gap through the Coast range of mountains. The Mary river, a tributary of the Willamette, shows half the way through, and then, after passing a broad saddle some three miles wide and seven hundred feet above sea-level, the Yaquina river rises and flows gently down to the bay. This whole tract of country is contorted and broken: steep, green hills, varying from 600 to 1,000 feet in height, or thereabouts, iaclose soft, grassy valleys; and where the little streams run through the bottoms, the beavers have often thrown their v.] BENTON COUNTY. 119 dams across. Years passing by have shed into these swamps each autumn's shower of leaves, until a deep layer of black vegetable mould has been de- posited of unsurpassable fertility. Where no man has yet claimed these beaver dam "slews" (sloughs?), the swamp-cabbage and a thick growth of succulent rushes cover the ground; while bears and deer haunt these level bits, lying deep in the shadow of the woods. Where grain has been planted, after a way has been cut by the settlers through the ancient dam to drain the land, most abundant crops grow unmanured year by year. As the soft winds of the coast and the heavy dews temper and moisten the air, a marked change in the vegetation is seen; the fern grows higher, and has to force its way to the light through an undergrowth of "sal-lal," a large kind of whortle- berry, with leaves more than double, and fruit nearly twice as large, as those we were familiar with in Norway, Scotland, and Devonshire. Syringa bushes grew vigorously by the wayside. Eed and black elder bushes, covered with fruit just turning colour, flourished side by side with a plant called the arrow biish, with a feathery white flower like the deutschia. 120 OEEGON. [chap. It did not need a very strong spirit of prophecy to foresee a not distant future, when a farm-house would overlook each of these fertile glens, and herds of cows would range these now silent hill-sidfes ; when the saeter-girls of Norway, the Highland lassies with snood and plaid, and those Swiss maidens from whom we have begged a draught of mUk at the last summer chalets before we breasted the real work of the Alpine climb, could each and all find homes, round which their cattle would graze in peace all the year round, and a heavier yield of butter and cheese would each year be sent from these cool hiUs to the hot and dry mining towns and' manufacturing cities of California. The Pacific coast of Oregon is indented with bays, on each of which a settlement has been formed, and which are rival claimants for selection and improvement, as a harbour of refuge, by the United States government. Between the Californian boundary on the south and the Columbia river on the north are passed Ellensburg, at the mouth of the Rogue river; Port Orford, under the shelter of Cape Blanco ; Em- pire City, on Coos Bay, with coal-mines recentlj'^ v.] ' UNDEVELOPED PORTS. 121 developed and yielding well ; Gardner, at the mouth of the Umpqua river ; Newport, on Yaquina Bay ; Garibaldi, on Tillamook Bay; and last, but not least, Astoria, at the mouth of the great Columbia, just within the bar. Each of these little settlements has a character of its own, and each believes that Portland is nothing to the city which is in course of formation; though, in fact, the unbiased visitor notices in each, save in Astoria, and at Newport, in Yaquina Bay, the drawbacks of narrow, or shallow, or unsheltered harbours, and the rugged or lofty mountains closing out the harbour and its circumscribed district from the great country behind. The next division of the State may be called Mid Oregon, and extends from the summit of the Cascade range to the Blue Mountains on the East, which last may be roughly said to form another North and South dividing-line through the State. The climate differs materially from that of the "Western division of the State ; it is far drier through the year, and considerably colder in winter. Snow often lies, for from three to six weeks in the months of December and January, several inches deep, on 322 OREGOK. [chap. the level plateaus and in the valleys ; while in the passes of the Cascade mountains it is often twelve and fifteen feet deep. The maUs are carried through the passes in the winter time hy horsemen, carriage and waggon traffic heing then impracticable, and occasionally the drifts are too deep for horses to get through, and runners on snow shoes are then employed. But it must not be supposed that even in Mid or in Eastern Oregon the climate is severe or disagree- able when tried by our English standards. The spring begins in February and lasts till May; while the weather is warm and pleasant, and the vegeta- tion starts everywhere into life under the influence of the abundant rain. And the summer, though hot, is not sultry or oppressive, for the air is clear and crisp. The summer and autumn are both dry, and rain seldom falls until the end of October. During the late summer and autumn the mountains are the re- sort of numbers of the farmers of the Willamette valley and their families, as well as of the store- keepers from the cities and towns. Packing their stores into one of the long narrow waggons of the v.] CAMPING OUT. 123 country, and not forgetting the rifle, shot-gun, and " fish-pole " (Oh ! that Farlow or Chevalier could see the implement !) the whole family shut up house in the valley and start for the mountains. Very likely they may be four or five days on the road; as the pair of horses, willing though they be, cannot average more than from fifteen to twenty miles a day. At night they pitch a thin tent for the females, and the men and boys sleep, rolled in their blankets, round a huge camp-fire. Arrived in the mountains, they choose some favourite deU, high up, with a cool spring babbling over the rocks at one side, and a clear sward, on which the two horses are picketed, in front. The waggon is unpacked, the tent pitched, the stores arranged, and the family disperse ; the men to hunt the black-tailed deer, and later on in the season the elk (wapiti) and the black bear. The boys find a lake near by filled with trout, large and small, and perseveringly fish with a clothes' prop, a cord, and a bunch of worms, and catch, not much. The women and children fill huge baskets with the mountain berries, which they boU down into jam for winter use, the black pot being always kept simmering on the cross sticks over the fire. 124 OEEGON. [chap. And so they pass three, four, or five weeks, in the clear sunny mountain air, till the harvest in the valley is ripe. That this holiday is generally enjoyed may be judged from the fact that one hundred and fifty waggons of campers-out paid toll, as we were told, in one season, at one gate in a pass on the Willamette and Cascade mountains military-waggon road. The SOU of Mid Oregon varies extremely. On the summit of the table-land, east of the Cascades, are wide tracts covered with fine volcanic ash. Wherever this is watered by one of the many streams issuing from the mountain sides, and fed from glaciers or winter snows, heavy crops of natural grass, and if cultivated, of grain, are raised. Horned stock do exceedingly well on these wide plains, which are not bare, but are broken in many places, with groves and belts of splendid firs, pines, and cedars. The herdsmen buy in the valley from the farmers l^rge numbers of calves, giving from 11. to 11. 10s. for each. Collecting them into bands of from 200 to 500 or more in number, they drive them in short journeys over the mountains and there leave them to nature. V-] CATTLE HEEDING. 125 taking their chance of a winter of only ordinary severity. In average years the cattle thrive even through the winter months, and require no artificial feeding ; and in twelve months each calf has doubled in value, and in two years will be ready to sell to go east at from 4