city of Mexico to California. They came in one of the many unfortunate
colonies sent out by the Mexican Government during the first years of
the secularization period, having had a toilsome and suffering two
months, going in wagons from Mexico to San Blas, then a tedious and
uncomfortable voyage of several weeks from San Blas to Monterey, where
they arrived only to find themselves deceived and disappointed in
every particular, and surrounded by hostilities, plots, and dangers on
all sides. So great was the antagonism to them that it was at times
difficult for a colonist to obtain food from a Californian. They were
arrested on false pretences, thrown into prison, shipped off like
convicts from place to place, with no one to protect them or plead
their cause. Revolution succeeded upon revolution, and it was a most
unhappy period for all refined and cultivated persons who had joined
the colony enterprises. Young men of education and breeding were glad
to earn their daily bread by any menial labor that offered. Don
Antonio and several of his young friends, who had all studied medicine
together, spent the greater part of a year in making shingles. The one
hope and aim of most of them was to earn money enough to get back to
Mexico. Don Antonio, however, seems to have had more versatility and
capacity than his friends, for he never lost courage; and it was owing
to him that at last his whole family gathered in Los Angeles and
established a home there. This was in 1836. There were then only about
eight hundred people in the pueblo, and the customs, superstitions,
and ignorances of the earliest days still held sway. The missions
were still rich and powerful, though the confusions and conflicts of
their ruin had begun. At this time the young Antonio, being quick at
accounts and naturally ingenious at all sorts of mechanical crafts,
found profit as well as pleasure in journeying from mission to
mission, sometimes spending two or three months in one place, keeping
books, or repairing silver and gold ornaments.
The blowpipe which he made for himself at that time his wife exhibits
now with affectionate pride; and there are few things she enjoys
better than translating to an eager listener his graphic stories of
the incidents and adventures of that portion of his life.
While he was at the San Antonio Mission, a strange thing happened. It
is a good illustration of the stintless hospitality of those old
missions, that staying there at that time were a notorious gambler and
a celebrated juggler who had come out in the colony from Mexico. The
juggler threatened to turn the gambler into a crow; the gambler, after
watching his tricks for a short time, became frightened, and asked
young Antonio, in serious good faith, if he did not believe the
juggler had made a league with the devil. A few nights afterward, at
midnight, a terrible noise was heard in the gambler's room. He was
found in convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and crying, "Oh, father!
father! I have got the devil inside of me! Take him away!"
The priest dragged him into the chapel, showered him with holy water,
and exorcised the devil, first making the gambler promise to leave off
his gambling forever. All the rest of the night the rescued sinner
spent in the chapel, praying and weeping. In the morning he announced
his intention of becoming a priest, and began his studies at once.
These he faithfully pursued for a year, leading all the while a life
of great devotion. At the end of that time preparations were made for
his ordination at San José. The day was set, the hour came: he was in
the sacristy, had put on the sacred vestments, and was just going
toward the church door, when he fell to the floor, dead. Soon after
this the juggler was banished from the county, trouble and disaster
having everywhere followed on his presence.
On the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the
United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles
volunteers to repel the intruders. By this time he had attained a
prominent position in the affairs of the pueblo; had been alcalde and,
under Governor Michelorena, inspector of public works. It was like the
fighting of children,--the impetuous attempts that heterogeneous
little bands of Californians here and there made to hold their
country. They were plucky from first to last; for they were everywhere
at a disadvantage, and fought on, quite in the dark as to what Mexico
meant to do about them,--whether she might not any morning deliver
them over to the enemy. Of all Don Antonio's graphic narratives of the
olden time, none is more interesting than those which describe his
adventures during the days of this contest. On one of the first
approaches made by the Americans to Los Angeles, he went out with his
little haphazard company of men and boys to meet them. He had but one
cannon, a small one, tied by ropes on a cart axle. He had but one
small keg of powder which was good for anything; all the rest was bad,
would merely go off "pouf, pouf," the señora said, and the ball would
pop down near the mouth of the cannon. With this bad powder he fired
his first shots. The Americans laughed; this is child's play, they
said, and pushed on closer. Then came a good shot, with the good
powder, tearing into their ranks and knocking them right and left;
another, and another. "Then the Americans began to think, these are no
pouf balls; and when a few more were killed, they ran away and left
their flag behind them. And if they had only known it, the
Californians had only one more charge left of the good powder, and the
next minute it would have been the Californians that would have had to
run away themselves," merrily laughed the señora as she told the tale.
This captured flag, with important papers, was intrusted to Don
Antonio to carry to the Mexican headquarters at Sonora. He set off
with an escort of soldiers, his horse decked with silver trappings;
his sword, pistols, all of the finest: a proud beginning of a journey
destined to end in a different fashion. It was in winter time; cold
rains were falling. By night he was drenched to the skin, and stopped
at a friendly Indian's tent to change his clothes. Hardly had he got
them off when the sound of horses' hoofs was heard. The Indian flung
himself down, put his ear to the ground, and exclaimed, "Americanos!
Americanos!" Almost in the same second they were at the tent's door.
As they halted, Don Antonio, clad only in his drawers and stockings,
crawled out at the back of the tent, and creeping on all fours reached
a tree up which he climbed, and sat safe hidden in the darkness among
its branches listening, while his pursuers cross-questioned the
Indian, and at last rode away with his horse. Luckily, he had carried
into the tent the precious papers and the captured flag: these he
intrusted to an Indian to take to Sonora, it being evidently of no use
for him to try to cross the country thus closely pursued by his
enemies.
All night he lay hidden; the next day he walked twelve miles across
the mountains to an Indian village where he hoped to get a horse. It
was dark when he reached it. Cautiously he opened the door of the hut
of one whom he knew well. The Indian was preparing poisoned arrows:
fixing one on the string and aiming at the door, he called out,
angrily, "Who is there?"--"It is I, Antonio."--"Don't make a sound,"
whispered the Indian, throwing down his arrow, springing to the door,
coming out and closing it softly. He then proceeded to tell him that
the Americans had offered a reward for his head, and that some of the
Indians in the rancheria were ready to betray or kill him. While they
were yet talking, again came the sound of the Americans' horses' hoofs
galloping in the distance. This time there seemed no escape. Suddenly
Don Antonio, throwing himself on his stomach, wriggled into a cactus
patch near by. Only one who has seen California cactus thickets can
realize the desperateness of this act. But it succeeded. The Indian
threw over the cactus plants an old blanket and some refuse stalks and
reeds; and there once more, within hearing of all his baffled pursuers
said, the hunted man lay, safe, thanks to Indian friendship. The
crafty Indian assented to all the Americans proposed, said that Don
Antonio would be sure to be caught in a few days, advised them to
search in a certain rancheria which he described, a few miles off, and
in an opposite direction from the way in which he intended to guide
Don Antonio. As soon as the Americans had gone, he bound up Antonio's
feet in strips of rawhide, gave him a blanket and an old tattered hat,
the best his stores afforded, and then led him by a long and difficult
trail to a spot high up in the mountains where the old women of the
band were gathering acorns. By the time they reached this place, blood
was trickling from Antonio's feet and legs, and he was well-nigh
fainting with fatigue and excitement. Tears rolled down the old
women's cheeks when they saw him. Some of them had been servants in
his father's house, and loved him. One brought gruel; another bathed
his feet; others ran in search of healing leaves of different sorts.
Bruising these in a stone mortar, they rubbed him from head to foot
with the wet fibre. All his pain and weariness vanished as by magic.
His wounds healed, and in a day he was ready to set off for home.
There was but one pony in the old women's camp. This was old, vicious,
blind of one eye, and with one ear cropped short; but it looked to Don
Antonio far more beautiful than the gay steed on which he had ridden
away from Los Angeles three days before. There was one pair of ragged
shoes of enormous size among the old women's possessions. These were
strapped on his feet by leathern thongs, and a bit of old sheepskin
was tied around the pony's body. Thus accoutred and mounted, shivering
in his drawers under his single blanket, the captain and flag-bearer
turned his face homeward. At the first friend's house he reached he
stopped and begged for food. Some dried meat was given to him, and a
stool on the porch offered to him. It was the house of a dear friend,
and the friend's sister was his sweetheart. As he sat there eating his
meat, the women eyed him curiously. One said to the other, "How much
he looks like Antonio!" At last the sweetheart, coming nearer, asked
him if he were "any relation of Don Antonio." "No," he said. Just at
that moment his friend rode up, gave one glance at the pitiful beggar
sitting on his porch, shouted his name, dashed toward him, and seized
him in his arms. Then was a great laughing and half-weeping, for it
had been rumored that he had been taken prisoner by the Americans.
From this friend he received a welcome gift of a pair of trousers,
many inches too short for his legs. At the next house his friend was
as much too tall, and his second pair of gift trousers had to be
rolled up in thick folds around his ankles.
Finally he reached Los Angeles in safety. Halting in a grove outside
the town, he waited till twilight before entering. Having disguised
himself in the rags which he had worn from the Indian village, he rode
boldly up to the porch of his father's house, and in an impudent tone
called for brandy. The terrified women began to scream; but his
youngest sister, fixing one piercing glance on his face, laughed out
gladly, and cried, "You can't fool me; you are Antonio."
Sitting in the little corner room, looking out through the open door
on the gay garden and breathing its spring air, gay even in midwinter,
and as spicy then as the gardens of other lands are in June, I spent
many an afternoon listening to such tales as this. Sunset always came
long before its time, it seemed, on these days.
Occasionally, at the last moment, Don Antonio would take up his
guitar, and, in a voice still sympathetic and full of melody, sing an
old Spanish love-song, brought to his mind by thus living over the
events of his youth. Never, however, in his most ardent youth, could
his eyes have gazed on his fairest sweetheart's face with a look of
greater devotion than that with which they now rest on the noble,
expressive countenance of his wife, as he sings the ancient and tender
strains. Of one of them, I once won from her, amid laughs and blushes,
a few words of translation:--
"Let us hear the sweet echo
Of your sweet voice that charms me.
The one that truly loves you,
He says he wishes to love;
That the one who with ardent love adores you,
Will sacrifice himself for you.
Do not deprive me,
Owner of me,
Of that sweet echo
Of your sweet voice that charms me."
Near the western end of Don Antonio's porch is an orange-tree, on
which were hanging at this time twenty-five hundred oranges, ripe and
golden among the glossy leaves. Under this tree my carriage always
waited for me. The señora never allowed me to depart without bringing
to me, in the carriage, farewell gifts of flowers and fruit: clusters
of grapes, dried and fresh; great boughs full of oranges, more than I
could lift. As I drove away thus, my lap filled with bloom and golden
fruit, canopies of golden fruit over my head, I said to myself often:
"Fables are prophecies. The Hesperides have come true."
CHANCE DAYS IN OREGON.
The best things in life seem always snatched on chances. The longer
one lives and looks back, the more he realizes this, and the harder he
finds it to "make option which of two," in the perpetually recurring
cases when "there's not enough for this and that," and he must choose
which he will do or take. Chancing right in a decision, and seeing
clearly what a blunder any other decision would have been, only makes
the next such decision harder, and contributes to increased
vacillation of purpose and infirmity of will, until one comes to have
serious doubts whether there be not a truer philosophy in the "toss
up" test than in any other method. "Heads we go, tails we stay," will
prove right as many times out of ten as the most painstaking pros and
cons, weighing, consulting, and slow deciding.
It was not exactly by "heads and tails" that we won our glimpse of
Oregon; but it came so nearly to the same thing that our recollections
of the journey are still mingled with that sort of exultant sense of
delight with which the human mind always regards a purely fortuitous
possession.
Three days and two nights on the Pacific Ocean is a round price to pay
for a thing, even for Oregon, with the Columbia River thrown in. There
is not so misnamed a piece of water on the globe as the Pacific Ocean,
nor so unexplainable a delusion as the almost universal impression
that it is smooth sailing there. It is British Channel and North Sea
and off the Hebrides combined,--as many different twists and chops and
swells as there are waves. People who have crossed the Atlantic again
and again without so much as a qualm are desperately ill between San
Francisco and Portland. There is but one comparison for the motion: it
is as if one's stomach were being treated as double teeth are handled,
when country doctors are forced to officiate as dentists, and know no
better way to get a four-pronged tooth out of its socket than to turn
it round and round till it is torn loose.
Three days and two nights! I spent no inconsiderable portion of the
time in speculations as to Monsieur Antoine Crozat's probable reasons
for giving back to King Louis his magnificent grant of Pacific coast
country. He kept it five years, I believe. In that time he probably
voyaged up and down its shores thoroughly. Having been an adventurous
trader in the Indies, he must have been well wonted to seas; and being
worth forty millions of livres, he could afford to make himself as
comfortable in the matter of a ship as was possible a century and a
half ago. His grant was a princely domain, an empire five times larger
than France itself. What could he have been thinking of, to hand it
back to King Louis like a worthless bauble of which he had grown
tired? Nothing but the terrors of sea-sickness can explain it. If he
could have foreseen the steam-engine, and have had a vision of it
flying on iron roads across continents and mountains, how differently
would he have conducted! The heirs of Monsieur Antoine, if any such
there be to-day, must chafe when they read the terms of our Louisiana
Purchase.
Three days and two nights--from Thursday morning till Saturday
afternoon--between San Francisco and the mouth of the Columbia, and
then we had to lie at Astoria the greater part of Sunday night before
the tide would let us go on up the river. It was not waste time,
however. Astoria is a place curious to behold. Seen from the water, it
seems a tidy little white town nestled on the shore, and well topped
off by wooded hills. Landing, one finds that it must be ranked as
amphibious, being literally half on land and half on water. From
Astoria proper--the old Astoria, which Mr. Astor founded, and
Washington Irving described--up to the new town, or upper Astoria, is
a mile and a half, two thirds bridges and piers. Long wooden wharves,
more streets than wharves, resting on hundreds of piles, are built out
to deep water. They fairly fringe the shore; and the street nearest
the water is little more than a succession of bridges from wharf to
wharf. Frequent bays and inlets make up, leaving unsightly muddy
wastes when the tide goes out. To see family washing hung out on lines
over these tidal flats, and the family infants drawing their go-carts
in the mud below, was a droll sight. At least every other building on
these strange wharf streets is a salmon cannery, and acres of the
wharf surfaces were covered with salmon nets spread out to dry. The
streets were crowded with wild-looking men, sailor-like, and yet not
sailor-like, all wearing india-rubber boots reaching far above the
knee, with queer wing-like flaps projecting all around at top. These
were the fishers of salmon, two thousand of them, Russians, Finns,
Germans, Italians,--"every kind on the earth," an old restaurant-keeper
said, in speaking of them; "every kind on the earth, they pour in
here, for four months, from May to September. They're a wild set;
clear out with the salmon, 'n' don't mind any more 'n the fish do what
they leave behind 'em."
All day long they kill time in the saloons. The nights they spend on
the water, flinging and trolling and drawing in their nets, which
often burst with the weight of the captured salmon. It is a strange
life, and one sure to foster a man's worst traits rather than his best
ones. The fishermen who have homes and families, and are loyal to
them, industrious and thrifty, are the exception.
The site of Mr. Astor's original fort is now the terraced yard of a
spruce new house on the corner of one of the pleasantest streets in
the old town. These streets are little more than narrow terraces
rising one above the other on jutting and jagged levels of the
river-bank. They command superb off-looks across and up and down the
majestic river, which is here far more a bay than a river. The Astoria
people must be strangely indifferent to these views; for the majority
of the finest houses face away from the water, looking straight into
the rough wooded hillside.
Uncouth and quaint vehicles are perpetually plying between the old and
the new towns; they jolt along fast over the narrow wooden roads, and
the foot-passengers, who have no other place to walk, are perpetually
scrambling from under the horses' heels. It is a unique highway:
pebbly beaches, marshes, and salt ponds, alder-grown cliffs, hemlock
and spruce copses on its inland side; on the water-side, bustling
wharves, canneries, fishermen's boarding-houses, great spaces filled
in with bare piles waiting to be floored; at every turn shore and sea
seem to change sides, and clumps of brakes, fresh-hewn stumps, maple
and madrone trees, shift places with canneries and wharves; the sea
swashes under the planks of the road at one minute, and the next is an
eighth of a mile away, at the end of a close-built lane. Even in the
thickest settled business part of the town, blocks of water alternate
with blocks of brick and stone.
The statistics of the salmon-canning business almost pass belief. In
1881 six hundred thousand cases of canned salmon were shipped from
Astoria. We ourselves saw seventy-five hundred cases put on board one
steamer. There were forty eight-pound cans in each case; it took five
hours' steady work, of forty "long-shore men," to load them. These
long-shore men are another shifting and turbulent element in the
populations of the river towns. They work day and night, get big
wages, go from place to place, and spend money recklessly; a sort of
commercial Bohemian, difficult to handle and often dangerous. They
sometimes elect to take fifty cents an hour and all the beer they can
drink, rather than a dollar an hour and no beer. At the time we saw
them, they were on beer wages. The foaming beer casks stood at short
intervals along the wharf,--a pitcher, pail, and mug at each cask. The
scene was a lively one: four cases loaded at a time on each truck, run
swiftly to the wharf edge, and slid down the hold; trucks rattling,
turning sharp corners; men laughing, wheeling to right and left of
each other, tossing off mugs of beer, wiping their mouths with their
hands, and flinging the drops in the air with jests,--one half forgave
them for taking part wages in the beer, it made it so much merrier.
On Sunday morning we waked up to find ourselves at sea in the Columbia
River. A good part of Oregon and Washington Territory seemed also to
be at sea there. When a river of the size of the Columbia gets thirty
feet above low-water mark, towns and townships go to sea unexpectedly.
All the way up the Columbia to the Willamette, and down the
Willamette to Portland, we sailed in and on a freshet, and saw at once
more and less of the country than could be seen at any other time. At
the town of Kalama, facetiously announced as "the water terminus of
the Northern Pacific Railroad," the hotel, the railroad station, and
its warehouses were entirely surrounded by water, and we sailed, in
seemingly deep water, directly over the wharf where landings were
usually made. At other towns on the way we ran well up into the
fields, and landed passengers or freight on stray sand-spits, or
hillocks, from which they could get off again on the other side by
small boats. We passed scores of deserted houses, their windows open,
the water swashing over their door-sills; gardens with only tops of
bushes in sight, one with red roses swaying back and forth, limp and
helpless on the tide. It seemed strange that men would build houses
and make farms in a place where they are each year liable to be driven
out by such freshets. When I expressed this wonder, an Oregonian
replied lightly, "Oh, the river always gives them plenty of time.
They've all got boats, and they wait till the last minute always,
hoping the water'll go down."--"But it must be unwholesome to the last
degree to live on such overflowed lands. When the water recedes, they
must get fevers."--"Oh, they get used to it. After they've taken about
a barrel of quinine, they're pretty well acclimated."
Other inhabitants of the country asserted roundly that no fevers
followed these freshets; that the trade-winds swept away all malarial
influences; that the water did no injury whatever to the farms,--on
the contrary, made the crops better; and that these farmers along the
river bottoms "couldn't be hired to live anywhere else in Oregon."
The higher shore lines were wooded almost without a break; only at
long intervals an oasis of clearing, high up, an emerald spot of
barley or wheat, and a tiny farm-house. These were said to be usually
lumbermen's homes; it was warmer up there than in the bottom, and
crops thrived. In the not far-off day when these kingdoms of forests
are overthrown, and the Columbia runs unshaded to the sea, these hill
shores will be one vast granary.