THE START FROM RED BLUFFS—MISHAPS BY THE WAY—DEVIL’S
POCKET—ADVENTURE AT YREKA—FIELD-CRICKETS—THE CALIFORNIAN
QUAIL—SINGULAR NESTING OF BULLOCK’S ORIOLE.
_April 28th._—My pack-train is completed, my provisions arranged
for packing on the mules. I have eighty-one mules and a bell-horse.
To manage mules without a horse carrying a bell round its neck is
perfectly impossible. The bell-horse is always ridden ahead, and
wherever it goes the mules follow in single file. (But of this and
packing I shall have more to say further on.)
_April 29th._—Sunday.
_April 30th._—I have determined to find my way through Oregon by an
unknown route; doing this, I shall reach the Commission at least two
months earlier than by taking the ordinary mail-route to Portland.
Again and again I am warned of the risk not only of losing my mules and
men, but my own scalp into the bargain. The country swarms with hostile
Indians, many large streams have to be crossed, the trail is bad, if
any; and altogether the prospect is anything but cheering. I have,
however, made up my mind to go.
The annoyances of a start got over—wild mules reduced to a state of
discipline, packs adjusted, and men as sober as could reasonably be
expected—all went pleasant as a marriage-bell until the second day,
when my first misfortune happened.
_May 1st._—I camp on a beautiful bit of ground, with grass in
abundance, and a stream, clear as crystal and cold as ice, rippling
past close to my fire. I place a guard over my mules, fearing
accidents; and choosing as level a spot as I can see, roll myself in my
blanket, and with my head in my saddle soon slept.
I awoke at sun-up, lit my pipe, and wandered off to see what had become
of my mules. I found the trusty guard sound asleep, coiled up under
a tree, but not a mule. A sharp admonition, administered through the
medium of my foot, soon dispelled his dreams, and awoke him to a lively
sense of reality. He rapidly uncoiled, started up, stared vacantly
around, and thus relieved his feelings:—
‘I guess they’re gone, Cap’en, every tarnation coon of ’em, right slick
back to the Bluffs.’
I could have pistolled the rascal there and then, but the mules had to
be recovered; so I bottled up my wrath, roused all my sleeping camp,
and we started in pursuit of the missing culprits.
_May 4th._—Three days have elapsed. I have got the mules together, but
three are still absent. Again we started. I made a long march, crossing
Cottonwood Creek, through Major Raddon’s ranch—one Of the finest in
California for grazing—struck the Upper Sacramento, and camped about
sundown on a creek called Stillwater.
_May 5th._—In the night it came on a deluge of rain, that regularly
soaked through everything; but it cleared towards morning, and we dried
ourselves in the sun as we rode along.
The next three days we travelled through a beautiful parklike country,
very lightly timbered, covered with grass, and thickly dotted with
magnificent ranches (farms); we struck Pitt river on the fourth day,
crossed it safely, swam the mules, and ferried over the packs.
_May 9th._—Our journey for the first twelve miles lay through a narrow
rocky gorge—the trail; simply a ledge of rock, barely wide enough for
a mule to stand upon. Three hundred feet below rolled the river. The
least mistake—a single false step, and over goes mule or man, as it
may be, and you see the last of him.
Here I passed a most curious place called the Devil’s Pocket; the trail
winds along the very edge, and you peer down into an immense hollow
kind of basin, that looks as if it had once been a lake, and suddenly
dried up. The hills are lofty, sharply pointed, and capped with snow.
At the head of this gorge I, for the first time, saw an encampment
of Digger Indians, and a more famished picture of squalid misery can
hardly be imagined. Their wretched comfortless huts are like large
molehills; there is a pit sunk in the ground, and a framework of
sticks, shaped like a large umbrella arched, over it; old skins and
pieces of bark are thrown over this frame, and the whole is covered
with earth. The entrance is a hole, into which they creep like animals.
Their food consists principally of esculent roots of various kinds,
which they dig during the summer months, and dry in the sun. The
field-cricket (_Acheta nigra_) they also dry in large quantities, and
eat them just as we do shrimps. Bread made from acorn-flour is also
another important article of their diet. They seldom fish or hunt.
Their arms are bows and arrows; their clothing, both male and female,
simply a bit of skin worn like an apron; they are small in stature;
thin, squalid, dirty, and degraded in appearance. In their habits
little better than an ourang-outang, they are certainly the lowest type
of savage I have ever seen.
We camped in the evening on a large plain called Big Flat.
_May 10th._—It was bitterly cold all night, and froze sharply. We got
off soon after sun-up, and literally crept along the side of a high
range of mountains, densely wooded, and forming one side of the valley
of the Sacramento, which has dwindled down into a mere mountain-burn.
Here I came suddenly on a little colony of miners, engaged in
gold-washing. I discovered the place was named Dogtown—the entire town
consisting of a store, a grogshop, and a smithy. I paid twenty-five
cents (a shilling) for a mere sip of the vilest poison I ever tasted,
libellously called ‘Fine Old Monongahela Whisky.’ About six miles
farther, still on the same trail, I came to another gold-claim, where
there were no houses at all, called Portuguese Flat. Passed through
some thin timber; camped on a lovely mountain-stream.
_May 11th._—Shotgun Creek; my camp is on the side of a steep mountain,
and, about a mile farther on, is another stream, Mary’s Creek. Camped
on this stream was a small pack-train, that had been with stores to
some mining-station. I heard wolves barking and howling all night, and
twice I drove them out of my camp with a fire-log. The next morning, as
I passed the camp of the packers, they were in sad grief. The rascally
wolves had pulled down one of their mules, and torn it almost to
pieces. I rode up in the wood to see its mangled remains. The ravenous
beasts must have fixed on its haunches, and ripped it up whilst it
lived. I was sadly grieved for the poor beast that had come to so
untimely an end, and for the man who had lost him—at least 30_l._
worth.
For two more days I followed up the course of the Sacramento, and
crossed it for the last time. Standing at the ford, and looking
straight up the valley, the scenery is wild and beautiful in the
extreme; on either side sharp pinnacle-like rocks shoot up into all
sorts of fantastic shapes, dotted with the sugar-pine, scrub-oak, and
manzanita in front; and blocking up, as it were, the end of the valley,
stood Mount Shasta, at this time covered to its base with snow.
This vast mountain is a constant landmark to the trappers, for it can
be seen from an incredible distance, and stands completely isolated in
the midst of the Shasta plains. I camped close to the very snow at its
base, in a little dell called ‘Strawberry Valley.’ The next day reached
the Shasta plains, and camped early in the day.
_May 15th._—As I was to bid goodby to civilisation, and abandon all
hopes of seeing aught but savages, after leaving this camp, and being
by no means sure of the road, I made up my mind to ride into Yreka and
obtain information about the Indians, and the state of the trails, and
also (what was of equal importance) obtain a relay of provisions; the
distance from my camp to the city was about thirty miles.
Yreka city is a small mining-station, situated on one side of the
great Shasta plains; it stands quite away from law, society, and
civilisation, gold being the magnet that attracts first the miner, and
then the various satellites (jackals would be the more appropriate
name) that follow his steps. I left the mules in charge of my
packmaster, and started at sun-up. The ride was a most desolate affair,
over an interminable sandy plain, without even a shrub or flower, much
more a tree, to break the monotony. I reached Yreka about ten, and put
up at the ‘What Cheer House,’ bespoke my bed, and ordered breakfast.
The keen morning-air and a thirty-mile ride had made me perfectly
ravenous, and I waged alarming havoc on the ham and eggs, fixings,
and corn-dodgers, that, I must say, were admirable. The tea was not a
success, being a remarkably mild infusion, very hot, and sweetened with
brown sugar; but it washed down the solids, and the finest congou could
not have done more.
Thus recuperated, I started off to call on Judge ——, to whom I had a
letter of introduction from my agents in San Francisco. It did not take
long to find the Judge’s quarters, the lanes, streets, and alleys being
distinctions without any material differences. The mansion in which his
judgeship ‘roomed’ was a small shanty, with a porch or verandah round
it, to keep off the sun when it happened to be hot, and the wet when
it rained. I knocked with my knuckles—no reply; tried again—still
silence; resorted to the handle of my hunting-knife, anything but
mildly—that did it.
‘I raither calkilate, stranger, you’d better jist open that door; _I_
ain’t agwine to, you bet your boots.’
I opened it, and walked in. There sat Judge —— in a large armchair,
cleverly balanced on the two hind-legs. No, it was not sitting, or
lying, or standing, or lounging; it was a posture compounded of all
these positions. His (I mean Judge ——’s) legs were extended on a
level with his nose, and rested on the square deal table before him.
He was smoking an immense cigar, one half of which was stowed away in
his cheek, rolled about, and chewed; whilst the other half protruded
from the corner of his mouth, and reached nearly to his eye. A
little distance from the Judge was an immense spittoon, like a young
sponging-bath. He was ‘whittling’ a piece of stick with a pocket-knife,
and looked the embodiment of supreme indifference. The chair he
occupied and the table—whose only use, as far as I could see, was to
rest his legs on—constituted the entire furniture.
The Judge himself was a long spare man, and gave me the idea of an
individual whose great attribute consisted in possessing length without
breadth or thickness; everything about him was suggestive of length.
Beginning at his head, his hair was long, and his face was long, and
his nose was long, and a long goatee-beard terminated the end of his
chin; his arms were long, and his legs were long, and his feet were
long; he had a long drawling utterance, and was inordinately long at
arriving at a moderate pitch of civility. He eyed me over and drawled
out, ‘W-a-e-l!’ I handed my letter, and quietly awaited its effect; as
he was long in everything else, he was long in opening it. Having made
a minute inspection of the exterior, he slowly took it from its yellow
envelope, and gradually seemed to understand from its contents that he
was to be civil.
‘So you ain’t bin long in these parts, Cap’en?’ said the Judge, without
in the smallest degree shifting his position.
I said I was quite a stranger, and should be glad if he would give me
some information about the trails and the Indians, along the route I
intended taking.
‘Bars and steel traps!’ roared the Judge. ‘You’ll have your har ris,
sure as beaver medicine! Why, thar ain’t worse redskins in all Oregon
than the Klamaths. Jist three months agone come Friday, the darn’d
skunks came right slick upon Dick Livingstone and his gang. You’ve
heerd of Dick, I guess?’ (I said I had not.) ‘Wael, most people has,
leastways. They was jist a-washing up a tall day’s work, up Rogue
River, when the Klamaths swarmed ’em just as thick as mosquitos in a
swamp. Several went under, bet your life, for Dick and his boys warn’t
the ones to cave in. But ‘twarn’t no use; the reds jist crowded them
clean down, and took the har off everyone of ’em. The trails, too, is
awful soft. Mose Hart says—and he’s now from Bogus Holler, whar you
have to go—that a mule is jist sure to mire down a’most any place.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘your news is not by any means refreshing, Judge;
nevertheless, I mean going.’
‘Wael, Cap’en, maybe you’re right; makin’ back-tracks ain’t good,
anyway; we are a go-ahead people, we are, and it won’t pay to be
skeerish, anyway. S’pose we go and take a drink, and I’ll jist put you
through the city; I guess I’m well posted about most things in these
diggins.’
So we did the city, which did not take very much time to do; we did
the stores, where every person, from the master to the errand-boy,
did nothing but sit on the counter to chew, whittle, and spit. The
amount of whittling done in this city is perfectly astounding; every
post supporting the verandahs outside the stores and bar-rooms was
whittled nearly through; some of them in two or three places. We did
the bar-rooms, and did sundry drinks with divers people. I purchased
provisions, hired a guide, took leave of the Judge (who was not half
a bad fellow when you understood him), and retiring to my inn,
determined to enjoy the luxury of a bed and a long night-in, having
slept on the ground since leaving Red Bluffs; and if the Judge was
right about the redskins, the chances were considerably against my ever
stretching my limbs on another. So, to make the most of it—for a start
at sun-up and a long ride, added to a tedious day, had pretty well
fagged me—I retired very early, and turned in.
It really was a lovely bed, just like bathing in feathers. I stretched
out my limbs until they fairly cracked again, and rolled in enjoyment.
My thoughts were soon wandering; and visions of home, mixed up with
mules falling over precipices, battles with Indians, an ugly feeling
round the top of my head, judges, drinks, rowdies, all jumbled together
in a ghostly medley—floated off in misty indistinctness, and I
subsided into the land of dreams.
I awoke, with an indistinct idea that I was at a ball, with a jiggy
kind of tune whirling through my brain. Pish! I must have been
dreaming; so I turned over, and tugged the blankets more tightly round
my shoulders, vexed that such a stupid dream should have awoke me.
Hark! what on earth is that? ‘Ladies and gents, take your places,
salute your partners,’—then crash went two fiddles, crowding out a
break-down. Again the voice—‘Half right and left’—and off they went.
The sounds of countless feet, scuffling rapidly over a floor, told me,
in language not to be mistaken, that a ball was going briskly on very
near my head.
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, took a long mournful yawn, and began to
consider what had best be done. I discovered that a thin wooden
partition only intervened betwixt my head and the ball-room; everything
rattled to the jigging tune of the music and the dancers; the windows,
the doors, the wash-crockery, the bed, all jigged; and I began to feel
myself involuntarily nodding to the same measure, and jigging mentally
like the rest. Shades of the departed! I could not stand this. Goodby
bed, and feathers, and sleep! I may as well dance in reality as in
imagination; and abandoning all my anticipated delights, dressed, and
entered the ball-room.
It was a long room, lighted with candles hung against the wall in
tin sconces; the company—if variety is charming—was perfect. The
costumes, as a rule, were more suggestive of ease than elegance;
scarlet shirts and buckskin ‘pants’ were in the ascendant. The boots as
a rule, being of the species known as Wellingtons, were worn outside
the trousers, inducing the latter indispensables to assume a bunchiness
about the knees, not calculated to display the symmetry of the leg to
advantage. Very few had any jackets on, but all, without exception,
carried a bowie-knife and six-shooter in their waistbelts. The ladies’
costumes were equally varied: most of them wore bright-coloured
muslins, of very large patterns, and showy waist-ribbons, tied behind
in a large bow, with streamers down to their heels.
The dance was just ‘down’ when I came into the room. I saw a few
citizens I had met in the day, but each one seemed to have his ‘fancy
gal,’ and any chance of getting an introduction was a vain hope. The
fashion, I discovered afterwards, is either to bring or meet your
partner at the ball-room, and dance with her, and her only, all the
evening.
A waltz was called, and I wanted a partner. Looking round, I espied a
lady sitting near the end of the room, who evidently had not got one.
She was in the same place when I entered the room, and it was clear
to me, by her unrumpled appearance, that she had not danced for the
evening. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady’ might, I imagined, apply as
forcibly to dancing as to wooing or fighting; if I am snubbed it won’t
be all the world, and I suppose I shall live it down—so here goes!
Walking boldly up to her, I asked coolly, but rather apologetically, if
she would try a waltz.
‘Guess, stranger, I ain’t a-fix’d up for waltzin.’
‘Perhaps, madam,’ I said, ‘you will excuse me, although unknown to you,
if I ask you to dance the next cotillon with me?’
Looking into my face with an expression half doubt, half delight, she
said: ‘Stranger, I’ll have the tallest kind of pleasure in puttin’ you
right slick through a cotillon, for I’ve sot here, like a blue chicken
on a pine-log, till I was like to a-grow’d to the seat.’
This satisfactorily arranged, I sat down by her side until the waltz
finished, to have a good look at and trot out my new inamorata. She
was a blonde beauty, with fair hair and light-grey eyes, that flashed
and twinkled roguishly; and robed in some white material, with blue
ribbons in her hair and round her waist—a mountain-sylph, that any
wanderer in search of a partner would have deemed himself lucky to have
stumbled on. Our conversation was rather discursive, until I discovered
that home-politics, or rather the duties and requirements of a _gal
t’hum_, was a never-failing spring from which to draw fresh draughts
of household knowledge. At last the cotillon was called by the master
of the ceremonies, and again I heard—‘Take your places, salute your
partners;’ the fiddles started the same kind of jigging tune, and away
we went.
A cotillon is a compound, complicated kind of dance, evidently
constructed from the elements and fragments of many other dances: a
good deal of quadrille, a strong taste of lancers, a flavour of polka
and waltz—the whole highly seasoned with Indian war-dance. You never
stand still, neither can you lounge and talk soft nothings to your
partner—it is real, _bonâ fide_, downright, honest dancing. I soon
discovered why the men left off their jackets: a trained runner could
not have stood it in clothing. My jacket and waist-coat soon hung on a
peg, and, red-shirted like the rest, I footed it out gallantly.
My partner was a gem, with the endurance of a ballet-girl in pantomime
time. How many cotillons we got through I never clearly remembered;
but we danced on, till the grey morning light, stealing in through the
windows, warned the revellers that Old Sol was creeping from behind the
eastern hills, and that the day, with all its cares and toils, was near
at hand once more. My fair partner positively refused to allow me to
see her home. Being a casual acquaintance and not a lover, I suppose,
of course, that it was highly proper on her part. I thanked her
sincerely, for I really felt grateful to her for enabling me to dance
away a night that I had destined for a long luxurious repose. With a
hearty ‘good-night’ we parted, never to meet again.
It was a glorious morning—the air cool and fresh, the sky unflecked by
a single cloud. The sun was just tipping the hilltops with rosy light,
and peeping slily into the valleys, as I wandered out to think over my
strange adventure. My way led by chance up the back of the street, and
out by a little stream to the gold-washings. Early as it was, all was
bustle and activity. Many of my friends of the ball were now wresting
the yellow ore from its hiding-places, the anticipation of gold
dispelling all sense of fatigue. The want of water is a great drawback
to these diggings. So valuable is it, that it has been brought by a
small canal a distance of thirty miles, and is rented by the miners at
so much a cubic foot.
I lingered here some time, for there is much to see, then turned my
steps towards my inn through the city.
‘Say—Cap’en—here—hold on!’
I turned, and saw a man in a one-horse dray, whipping up his horse, and
violently gesticulating for me to stop. He soon came up, and jumping
out of the dray, seized my hand, and shook it with a grip that made my
very eyes water.
‘Guess you ain’t acquainted with this child?’
I said no; I had not the pleasure of knowing him.
‘I spotted you, Cap’en, just as soon as ever I seed you making tracks
down the street. My gal Car’line told me how she put you through all
the dance last night.’
It suddenly flashed upon me that the drayman was my partner’s papa.
Here’s a lively affair! If he does not ask me my intentions, and riddle
me with a six-shooter if I refuse to marry his ‘gal’ at once, I shall
deem myself the most fortunate of men. I civilly said, in reply, that I
found his daughter a most admirable partner.
‘I rather guess you did, Cap’en; she’s all watch-spring and whalebone,
she is; can’t skeer up a smarter gal than “Car” in these parts, if you
was to do your darndest. She! why, she’s worth her weight in nuggets to
the man as gets her.’
I felt cold all over—I thought it was coming. ‘You must excuse me,’ I
said; ‘my breakfast is waiting, and I daresay we shall meet again.’ (I
knew this was an awful twister.)
‘I’m sure we shall, Cap’en. Let’s licker:’ so we adjourned to the
nearest bar-room and took an ‘eye-opener,’ and so I escaped from the
drayman. I drew a deep breath, and felt as if I had got clear from the
claws of a grizzly bear—made for the inn as fast as I could, gobbled up
a hasty breakfast, packed up my goods, and with my guide started for my
camp.
Often I turned and gazed anxiously over the plain, expecting I should
see the drayman, his daughter Caroline, and a priest in hot pursuit;
and there and then, on the Shasta plains, I should be, _nolens volens_,
linked to my fair-haired partner, for a life’s cotillon!
Such was my first, and such was my last, my only night in Yreka! ‘All’s
well that ends well,’ and I trust the fair Caroline has as pleasant a
remembrance of the Cap’en as he has of her!
I found my camp all right, saddled up, and am off on my perilous
journey through the wilds of Oregon. The Shasta plains are vast sandy
flats, half prairie, half desert, sparsely covered with withered grass,
and not a bush or tree or shrub, as far as the eye could wander,
had struggled into life. ’Tis true a stunted artemisia, or wild-sage
bush, had fought its way inch by inch in its struggle for existence,
and looked so old, dry, and parched, that your idea was, if you laid
a finger on it, it would powder up like dried herbs; but whatever had
been in shape of grass, or herb, or shrub, was gone, cleared bodily and
entirely away by the field-crickets.
Never shall I forget this insect array. On getting well upon the
plains, I found every inch of ground covered with field-crickets; they
were as thick on the ground as ants on a hill; the mules could not
tread without stepping on them; not an atom or vestige of vegetation
remained, the ground as clear as a planed floor. It was about twenty
good long miles to the next water, and straight across the sand-plains,
and, for that entire distance, the crickets were as thick as ever. It
is impossible to estimate the quantity; but when you suppose a space of
ground twenty-seven miles long, and how wide I know not, but at least
twice that, covered with crickets as thick as they could be packed, you
can roughly imagine what they would have looked like if swept into a
heap.
It was long after sundown when we reached the water, tired, thirsty,
and utterly worn-out; but the stream being wide and swift, the
crickets had not crossed it, so our tired animals had a good supper,
and we a comfortable camp. I rode off to some farm-enclosures I saw,
in search of milk and eggs; and, to my great surprise, I noticed every
field had a little tin-fence inside the _snake_ or _rail_ fence, about
six or eight inches wide, nailed along on a piece of lumber, placed
edgeways in the ground, so that a good wide ledge of tin projected
towards the prairie.
‘What,’ I said to the first farmer I met, ‘induces you to put this tin
affair round your field?’
‘Why, stranger, I guess you ain’t a-travelled this way much, or you’d
be pretty tall sure that them darned blackshirts out on the prairie
would eat a hoss and chase the rider. But for that bit of a tin-fixin’
thar, they’d mighty soon make tracks for my field, and just leave her
clean as an axe-blade. These critters come about once in four years,
and a mighty tall time they have when they do come!’
It was a most effectual and capital contrivance to keep them out, for
if they came underneath the tin they jumped up against it, and it
was too wide to leap over. These field-crickets (_Acheta nigra_) are
black, and very much larger than the ordinary house-cricket. They eat
seeds, grass, fruit, and, when they can get nothing else, they devour
each other. I frequently got off my horse to see what a large mob of
crickets were about. They had dragged down, perhaps, two or three
others, and were one and all deliberately tearing them to pieces. If
they meet head to head, they rush at each other and butt like rams,
but, backing against each other, they lash out their hind-legs and kick
like horses. What becomes of them when they die I cannot imagine; the
entire atmosphere for miles must become pestilential. I suppose, from
their coming in such vast numbers every fourth year, that the larvæ
must take that time ere they assume the perfect shape.
_May 16th._—The Californian quail, which I found most plentiful
along the course of the Sacramento, ceases at the edge of this great
sandy desert; it appears to be the limit to its northern range. I
note a singular instance, how curiously and readily birds alter
their usual habits under difficulties, in the nesting of Bullock’s
Oriole. A solitary oak stood by the little patch of water, a spring
that oozed, rather than bubbled, through the sandy soil where my camp
stood; it was the only water within many miles, and the only tree
too; every available branch and spray had one of the woven nests of
this brilliant bird hanging from it. I have never seen them colonise
elsewhere. The nests are usually some distance from each other, and
concealed amidst thick foliage.