MIL NORDHOFF'S BOOKS OF TRAVEL*
[SECOND NOTICE]
Ix his later volume, Mr. Nordhoff treats of the northern counties of the vast State of California — which, if it lay along the Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast, would include the whole shore-line from Cape Cod to Hilton Head within its boundaries, and take in the greater portion of ten of the original States—as fully as in his first he treated of the southern counties. The majestic natural features of the Golden State are so well defined, —:the great parallel mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada, and coast range, with only the narrow Tejon Pass between them at their southern extremity, and snow-crowned giant Shasta presiding over their junction at the north ; the great rivers, Sacramento and San Joaquin, which pour their mingled waters into the Bay of San Francisco ; and the vast plain between the ranges, teeming With varied wealth, with corn, and wine, and flocks, and metals ; —that it is not difficult to follow the traveller's description in imagination. The plain is divided into two valleys, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin ; it is with the former this second volume deals, and the picture it presents of the present, and the prospect for the future, are truly fascinating. It reminds us of Captain Burton's speculations concerning the Highlands of the Brazil, and Professor Orton's dream of the Valley of the Amazon, when the men of the future shall have taken possession of their heritage. The rapidity with which great changes are wrought and new resources are developed is very striking, even to the citizen of the United States. "Not a year passes," he says, "but some new and valuable product of the soil is naturalised in this State, and one who has seen the soil and who knows the climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or at most ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed and all their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, leen how wide is the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future of Califorrta."
Though the romantic features of the country, the Indians, the wild animals, and the wild sports are disappearing before the rapid and steady march of prosperity, there are traces of them in this second volume, where a chapter on the Indian Reservation of Round Valley, in Mendocino County, presents a powerful contrast to the rest of the book. Of the Reservation system, Mr. Nord- hoff speaks in terms, of the strongest reprobation, justified by his description of the shocking treatment of the Indians in the
"reserve," which produces results that must necessarily react upon the white population. The chapters devoted to the Indian and the Chinese questions are deserving of the serious attention of readers who really wish to comprehend the entire social condition of this important portion of the world. Maria County, north of San Francisco, is the country of butter ranchos, which are a great curiosity in their way, the dairy busi- ness being organised to perfection ; and as the business requires more and better buildings than wheat, cattle, or sheep-farming, as well as more fenc2s, Maria County has a neater and thriftier appearance than the other farming communities. Here is a de- scription of a famous "rancho," containing 18,000 acres, belong- ing to a Mr. Howard, and divided into nine separate farms, occupied by nine tenants engaged in making butter:— " To let the farina outright would not do, because the tenants would put up poor improvements, and would need, even then, more capital than tenant-farmers usually have. Mr. Howard, therefore, contrived an ingenious scheme which works satisfactorily to all concerned. He fences each farm, making proper subdivisions of large fields ; he opens springs, and loads water through iron pipes to the proper places, and also to the dwelling, milkhonse, and corral. He builds the houses. which consist of a substantial dwelling, 28 feet by 82 feet, a storey and a half high, and containing nine rooms, all lathed and plasteaed ; a thoroughly well-arranged milkhonse, 25 feet by 50 feet, having a milk- room in the centre 25 feet square.with a churning-room, store-room, wash- room, &c.•, a barn, 40 feet by 50 feet, to contain hay for the farm-horses; also a calf-shed, a corral or enclosure for the cows, a well-arranged pig-pen ; and all these are put up in the best manner, well painted, and neat. The tenant receives from the proprietor all this, the land, and cows to stock it. He furnishes, on his part, all the dairy utensils, the needed horses and waggons, the furniture for the house, the farm implements, and the necessary labour. The tenant pays to the owner 27 dollars per annum for each cow, and agrees to make the necessary repairs, and to raise for the owner annually one-fifth as many calves as he keeps cows, the remainder of the calves being killed, and fed to the pigs. He agrees also to sell nothing but butter and hogs from the farm, the hogs being entirely the tenant's property. Under this system 1,520 cows are now kept on nine separate farms on this estate. The average product of butter is 175 lb. of butter to each cow ; many cows, however, give 200 lb. or even 250 lb. per annum. The cows are in fine condition, placid and happy. They require no sheds, nor any store • Northern California, Orrgon, and the Sanchrfch Islands. By Charles Nordhoff. London: Sampson Low and Co. of food, but provide for themselves all the year round in the open fields In Mann County it is never hot in the summer nor cold in winter, and sea-fogs keep the grass green through the summer and fall in the gulches and ravines.
Sheep, when they are not corralled—and the practice has fallen into wise disuse—are also happy enough creatures in Northern California. The graziers usually own a range in the foot-hills and. another on the bottom-lands. During the summer the sheep are kept in the bottoms, which are then dry and full of rich grasses ; in the fall and winter they are taken to the uplands, and there they lamb and are shorn. When the range lies too far away from any river, the sheep are driven in May into the mountains, where they have green grass all summer. At Red Bluff, Mr. Nordhoff saw a curious sight, cattle and horses wandering singly or in small groups, of their own motion, to the mountains, and actually crossing the Sacramento without driving. He was told that in the fall they would return, each to his master's rancho. The sheep grazier in the northern counties, like the dairy-farmer, derives exceptional benefits from the beautiful climate. He needs no store of hay or roots, and no sheds, for his sheep live out of doors all the year round. At the foot hills near Rocklin, where he had been visiting a sheep-farm, Mr. Nordhoff came upon a group of the few Digger Indians still left in this part of California, and witnessed a strange scene :-
"They wore engaged in catching grasshoppers, which they boil and eat. They dig a number of funnel-shaped holes, wide at the top, and eighteen inches deep, on a cleared apace, and then, with rags and brush, drive the grasshoppers toward these holes, forming for that purpose a wide circle. It is slow work, but they seem to delight in it, and their ex- citement was great as they neared the circle of holes, and the insects began to hop and fall into thorn. At last there was a close and rapid rally, and half-a-dozen bushels of grasshoppers wore driven into tho holes, whereupon hats, aprons, bags, and rags were stuffed in to prevent the multitudes from dispersing; and then began the work of picking them out by handfuls, crushing them roughly in the hand to keep them quiet, and crowding them into the bags in which they were to be carried to the rancheria. 'Sweet all same pudding 'cried an old woman to me, as I stood looking on. It is not a good year for grasshoppers ; nothing like the year of which an inhabitant of Roseville spoke to me later in the day, when he said, 'The grasshoppers ate up every bit of his garden truck, and then sat on the fence and asked him for a chow of tobacco."
"You have a good timber country, I hear?" said Mr. Nordhoff to an Oregonian, as they were steaming up the Columbia River, abreast of Washington Irving's Astoria, and the speaker was experiencing the disillusionment attendant upon discovering that the narrow, broken, irreclaimably rough strip of land, which is simply the rudest possible Western clearing, never had space for anything picturesque or romantic. " Timber ! " replied the Oregonian, "timber,—till you can't sleep !" The saying is strong, but accurate. There is little else to describe in Oregon Territory ; wherever you look, you see only timber,—" tall firs, straight as an arrow, big as the California redwoods, and dense as a Southern cane-brake." Astoria is growing, however ; Salem, the capital of Oregon, is already important ; and Portland is a well-built city, remarkable for the profusion of plate-glass in shop-fronts, hotels, and even private houses. Mr. Nordhoff supposed there must be a glass factory near at band, but found the luxurious fabric was all imported. Such is the prosperity of this remote place, that it is said to contain more wealth in propor- tion to its population than any other town in the United States. The description of the Columbia River is a surprise to us. We had never thought of it as one of the great rivers of the world, but Mr. Nordhoff tells us that it is larger, as well as "infinitely greater," than the Mississippi ; that it forms above Astoria a vast bay, and in its narrower portions frequently widens into open, broad, lake-like expanses, studded with lovely islands. The shores are generally precipitous, but wherever they lower, they admit views of grand, snow-clad mountain ranges. Near the junction of the Columbia with the Willamette are the "salmon factories," -whence come the Oregon salmon which, put up in tin cane, is distributed all over the world. The only part of this inditstry executed by white men is the catching of the fish in weirs, in gill- nets. The subsequent process is as follows :— "The fishermen carry the salmon in boats to the factory—usually a large frame building erected on piles over the water—and here they fall into the hands of Chinese. who get for their labour a dollar a day and their food. The salmon are flung up on a stage, where they lie in heaps of a thousand at a thne,—a surprising sight to an Eastern per- son, for in such a pile you may see many fish weighing from 30 lb. to 60 lb. The work cf preparing them for the cans is conducted with exact method and great cleanliness, water being abundant. The fish being chopped into chunks of suitable size for the cans, those pieces are plunged into brine, and presently stuffed into the cans, it being the object to fill each can an full as possible with fish, the bone being ex- cluded. The top of the can, which has a small hole pierced in it, is then soldered on, and 500 tins set on a form are lowered into a huge kettle of boiling water, where they remain until the heat has expelled all the air. Then a Chinaman neatly drops a little solder over each pin-hole, and after another boiling, to make sure that the cans are her- metically sealed, the process is complete, and the salmon are ready to take a journey longer and more remarkable even than that which their progenitors took when, seized with the curious rage for spawning, they ascended the Columbia to deposit their eggs in its head waters, near the centre of the continent. I was assured by the fishermen that the salmon do not decrease in numbers or in size, yet in this year (1873) more than two millions of pounds were put up in tin Cans on the Lower Columbia alone, besides 15,000 or 20,000 barrels of salted salmon."
Washington Territory is not interesting. The steamer for Victoria (British Columbia) sails from Olympia, the capital of the Territory, famous only for its magnificent maple-trees. Puget sound is, according to Mr. Nordhoff, one of the most picturesque and remarkable sheets of water in the world ; and the voyage from Olympia to Victoria, which shows the traveller the greater part of the Sound, is a delightful excursion. Of Victoria (Van- couver's Island) he writes with the utmost contempt, and injures
.a charming book by a paragraph relative to the San Juan bound- ary dispute, distinguished by a specimen of vulgar bounce :— " You will wonder," he says, "at the stupid pertinacity of these English in clinging to the little island. of San Juan, when you reach Victoria, and see that we shall presently take that dull little -town too, not because we want it or need it, but to save it from perishing of inanition." The overland journey, which Mr. Nord- hoff sketches, from Portland to the Snake River and back, and the return by land to California, offer the double charm of picturesque grandeur and vast extent in the present, and a vision of a new world in the future. "The great plains and table-lands," he says, "which lie east of the Cascades, and are drained by the Columbia, -the Snake, and their affluents, will some day contain a vast popu- lation. Already enterprising pioneers are pushing into the remotest
valleys of this region. As you sail up the Columbia, you will bear of wheat, barley, sheep, stock, wool, orchards, and rapidly. crowing settlements, where, to our Eastern belief, the beaver still builds his dams, unvexed even by the traps and rifle of the /miter."
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