Egyptian, y’ know. Sort of steeped ourselves, as you might say, in the
country’s history and politics and customs and language and all that sort
of thing. This city is so romantic and picturesque that a motor-car seems
to be inappropriate and unfitting—like wearing a top hat in the country,
y’ know. So we always have the camels meet us—yes. All bally nonsense, I
suppose, but it sort of keeps us in the spirit of the place—makes us feel
as though we were living in the good old days before the tourist Johnnies
came and spoiled it all. Same idea that Vanderbilt has in driving his
coach from London down to Brighton. You can make the trip by train in
half the time and for half the money and much more comfortably, but you
lose the spirit of the old coaching days—the atmosphere, as the painter
fellows call it. Rum sort of an idea to use camels instead of taxis,
perhaps, but we like it and that’s the chief thing after all, isn’t it?
What?”
That was precisely the frame of mind which caused us to disregard the
one hundred and twenty-five miles of oiled highway which reaches, like a
strip of hotel linoleum, from San Francisco to the Californian capital,
and load ourselves, together with our six-cylindered Pegasus, aboard
the stern-wheel river boat which leaves the Pacific Street wharf for
Sacramento at half past eight on every week-day morning. That section of
our Mexico-to-Alaska journey which lay immediately before us, you must
understand, led through a region which is indelibly associated with “the
days of old, the days of gold, the days of ’Forty-Nine,” and to storm
through it in a prosaic, panting motor-car seemed to us as incompatible
with the spirit of romance which enshrouds it as it would to race through
the canals of Venice in a gasoline launch. Feeling as we did about it,
the consistent thing, I suppose, would have been to have hired a creaking
prairie-schooner and plodded overland to the mines in true emigrant
fashion, but as the few prairie-schooners still extant in California
have fallen into the hands of the moving-picture concerns, who work them
overtime, we compromised by journeying up to the gold country by river
boat, just as the Argonauts who came round the Horn to San Francisco were
wont to do.
Whoever was responsible for dubbing the Sacramento River trip “the
Netherlands Route” could have had but a bowing acquaintance with Holland.
I don’t like to shatter illusions, but, to be quite truthful, the banks
of the Sacramento are as unlike the Low Countries as anything well could
be. The only thing they have in common are the dikes or levees which
border the streams and the truck-gardens which form a patchwork quilt
of vegetation behind them. The Dutch waterways are, for the most part,
small, insignificant affairs, third or fourth cousins to the Erie Canal,
and so narrow that you can sling your hat across them. The Sacramento
River, on the contrary, is a great maritime thoroughfare four hundred
miles in length and navigable for three quarters of that distance, being
fourth among the rivers of the United States in tonnage carried. From
the deck of a Dutch canal-boat you cannot see a mountain, or anything
which could be called a mountain by courtesy, with a telescope. Look
in whichever direction you will from a Sacramento River boat and you
cannot escape them. Even at night you can descry the great walls of the
Coast and Sierra Nevada Ranges looming black against a purple-velvet
sky. And the racing windmills with their weather-beaten sails—the
most characteristic note in a Dutch landscape—are not there at all.
It’s rather a pity, it seems to me, that Californians persist in this
slap-dash custom of labelling the natural beauties for which their State
is famous with European tags. Why, in the name of heaven, should that
enchanted littoral which stretches from Coronado to Monterey be called
“Our Italy”? Why should the seaward slopes of the Santa Ynez Range, at
the back of Santa Barbara—a region which is Spanish in history, language,
and tradition—be dubbed “the Riviera”? Why should Santa Barbara itself,
for that matter, be called “the American Mentone”? Is there a single
sound reason why the majestic grandeur of the Sierra Nevada should be
cheapened by labelling it “the American Alps”? No, not one. And it seems
to me, as a visitor, a travesty to nickname the Sacramento, a river as
long and as commercially important as the Seine and draining the greatest
agricultural valley in the world, “the Netherlands Route”—because,
forsooth portions of its banks are protected against overflow by levees.
Compare the wonders of California to those of Europe by all means, if
you will, and nine times out of ten they will emerge victorious from the
comparison; but for goodness’ sake don’t saddle them with names which in
themselves imply secondariness.
The Sacramento is a river of romance. To those conversant with the
stirring story of early California, its every bend and reach and
landing-place recalls some episode of those mad days when the news that
a man had discovered yellow gravel in a Sierran mill-race spread like
a forest-fire across the land, and the needy, the desperate, and the
adventurous came pouring into California by boat and wagon-train. About
it still hover memories of the days when this river of dikes ran between
high banks; when the great valley to which it gives its name was as
unsettled and unknown as the basin of the Upper Congo; when Sacramento,
then but a cluster of tents about a log stockade, was an outpost on the
firing-line of civilisation. This winding stream was the last stage in
the long journey of those gold hunters who came round the Horn in their
stampede to the mines. The river voyage was one of dreams and doubts,
of hopes and fears. At every landing where the steamer touched were
heard reports of new bonanzas found in the Sierran gulches, of gold
strikes on the river bars, of mountain brooks whose beds were aglitter
with the precious ore. Returning down this same river, as time went on,
were the booted, bearded, brown-faced men who were going home—ah, happy
word!—after having “made their pile” and those others who had staked and
lost their all.
The river trip of to-day gives graphic proof of the changes which
threescore years have wrought; it shows that agriculture, not mining,
is now the basis of the State’s prosperity, just as it must be the
basis of every civilisation which is to endure. The interest commenced
at the journey’s very start. Swinging out from the unending procession
of ferries which form, as it were, a Brooklyn Bridge between Oakland
and San Francisco, we churned our way under the cliffs of Alcatraz, the
white-walled prison perched upon its summit looking for all the world
like the sea-fowl for which this penal isle is named. Though Alcatraz
may lack the legendary interest which attaches to the Château d’If, that
rocky islet in the harbour of Marseilles where the Count of Monte Cristo
was imprisoned, it is no less picturesque, particularly at sunset, when
the expiring rays of the drowning sun, striking through the portals
of the Golden Gate, transform it into a lump of rosy coral rising from
a peacock sea. Off our port bow Tamalpais, a weary colossus wrapped
in a cape of shaggy green, looked meditatively down upon the heedless
city as, seated upon the hills, he laved his feet—the Marin and Tiburon
Peninsulas—in the cooling waters of the bay. Keeping well to the eastern
shore, where the lead shows seven fathoms clear, we skirted the city’s
shipping front, where fishing-boats, their hulls painted the bright hues
the Latins love, and some—the Greek-owned ones—with great goggle eyes
at their bows (the better to detect the fish, of course), were slipping
seaward like mallards on the wing. To starboard lay the shores of Contra
Costa County (meaning, as you doubtless surmise, “the opposite coast”),
the long brown fingers of its innumerable wharfs reaching out into the
bay as though beckoning to the merchantmen to come alongside and take
aboard the cargoes—oil, wine, lumber, grain, cheese, fruit—which had been
produced in the chimneyed factories that fringe this coast or raised
in the fertile valleys which form its hinterland. Crossing over to the
port rail as our steamer poked its stubby nose into the narrow Straits
of Carquinez, we could make out Mare Island Navy Yard with the fighting
craft in their coats of elephant grey riding lazily at anchor in front
of it, while against the hill slopes at the back snuggled the white
houses of Vallejo, the former capital. Our first stop was at Benicia,
on the right bank of the Carquinez Straits, which lie directly athwart
the Overland Route to the East and are familiar to transcontinental
travellers as the place where their entire train, from engine to
observation-car, is loaded on a titanic ferry. This was the home of
Heenan, the “Benicia Boy,” the blacksmith who fought his way upward to
the heavyweight championship of the world, and the forge hammer he used
is still proudly preserved here as a memento of the brawny youngster
who linked the drowsy village with a certain brand of fame. Benicia
succeeded Vallejo as the capital of California, and the old State House
where the Argonaut lawmakers held their uproarious sessions still stands
as a monument to the town’s one-time importance, which departed when its
parvenu neighbour, Sacramento, offered the State a cool million in gold
for the honour of being its capital.
Leaving sleepy Benicia, with its memories of prize-fighters and
lawmakers, in our wake, we debouched quite suddenly into Suisun Bay
(suggestive of Japan and the geisha girls, isn’t it?) with the Suisun
marshes just beyond. You will have to journey north to Great Central
Lake, in the heart of Vancouver Island, or south to Lake Chapala, in the
Mexican State of Jalisco, to get wild-fowl shooting to equal that on
these grey marshes, for here, in what Easterners call winter-time but
which Californians designate duck time, or the season of the rains, come
mallard, teal, sprig, and canvasback, plover, snipe, and brant, in flocks
which literally darken the sky. In the waters hereabouts is centred the
fishing industry of the Sacramento River, which has been monopolised by
swarthy, red-sashed fellows who speak the patois of Sicily or Calabria
or the Greek of the Ægean Isles. No wonder that these sons of the south
look on California as a land of gold, for an industrious fisherman,
who will attend to his nets and leave alone the brandy and red wine of
which they are all so fond, can earn twenty-five dollars a week without
any danger of contracting heart disease; his brother in Palermo or the
Piræus would consider himself an Andrew Carnegie if his weekly earnings
amounted to that many _lire_ or _drachmæ_. If one is in quest of colour
and picturesqueness he can steep himself in them both by taking up his
residence for a time among these fisherfolk of Suisun Bay, but if he does
so he had better take the precaution of keeping a serviceable revolver in
his coat pocket and leaving his address with the river police.
The delta formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, which, after
paying toll to the fruitful valleys through which they pass, clasp hands
near Suisun Bay and wander together toward the sea, bears a striking
resemblance to the maze of islands and lagoons and weed-grown waterways
at the mouth of the Nile. Some of these low-lying islands are but camping
grounds for migrating armies of wild fowl; on others, whose rich fields
are guarded by high dikes such as you see along the Scheldt, are the
truck-gardens, tended with the painstaking care that makes the Oriental
so dangerous a competitor of the Caucasian. It is these river gardens
which make it possible for the San Franciscan to have asparagus, peas,
artichokes, alligator pears, and strawberries on his table from Christmas
eve around to Christmas morning, and more cheaply than the New Yorker can
get the same things in cans. Indeed, a quarter of the asparagus crop of
the United States comes from these levee-shielded tule lands along the
Sacramento. That, I suppose, is why it is so hard for an Eastern _bon
vivant_ to impress a Californian. The New Yorker, thinking to give his
San Franciscan friend a real treat, takes him to Sherry’s or the Plaza
and, shutting his eyes to the prices on the menu, orders a meal in which
such out-of-the-season delicacies as asparagus figure largely.
“Quite like home,” remarks the Californian carelessly. “My wife writes
that she is getting asparagus from our own garden every day now and
that strawberries are selling in the market for fifteen cents a box.
Alligator-pear salad? Not any, thanks. The chef at the club insists on
giving it to us about four times a week, so I’m rather tired of it. If
it’s all the same to you I think I’d like some pumpkin pie and milk.”
Hanging over the rail, I took huge delight in watching the stream of
traffic which turned the river into a maritime Broadway: stern-wheel
passenger steamers, ploughing straight ahead, with never a glance to
right or left, like a preoccupied business man going to his office; busy
little launches, teuf-teuffing here and there as importantly as district
messenger boys; panting freighters with strings of grain-laden barges
in tow; ugly, ill-smelling tank-steamers carrying Mr. Rockefeller’s
petroleum to far-off, outlandish ports; scow-schooners, full sisters
of those broad-beamed, huge-sailed lumbering craft which bring the
products of the Seine banks down to the Paris markets; big black
dredgers, mud-stained and grimy, like the labourers they are, hard at
work reinforcing the dikes against the winter floods; tide-working
ferries, lazy, ingenious, resourceful craft which swing across the river,
up-stream or down, making the current or the tide or both do their work
for them.
After Isleton is passed the river settles down to an even width of
sixscore yards, flowing contentedly between banks festooned with wild
grape-vines and shaded by oaks and walnuts, sycamore and willows, between
which we caught fleeting glimpses of prosperous homes whose splendid
trees and ordered gardens reminded us of country places we knew along
the Thames. This is the most beautiful part of the river by far. Every
now and again we glimpsed the mouth of a leafy bayou which seemed to
invite us to explore its alluring recesses in a canoe. A moment later a
little bay would disclose a fine old house with stately white columns
and a mansard roof—the result, most probably, of the owner’s success in
the gold-fields sixty years ago. These homes along the Sacramento have
none of the _nouveau riche_ magnificence of the mansions at Pasadena and
Montecito, but they are for the most part dignified and characteristic of
that formative and romantic period in which they were built. Clarksburg,
one hundred and ten miles from San Francisco, is the last stop before
Sacramento, ten miles farther on. Here the river banks become more
busy. Steam, motor, and electric lines focalise upon the capital. We
passed a colony of house-boats, not the floating mansions one sees at
Henley, but simple, unpretentious craft which admirably answer their
purpose of passing a summer holiday. Wharfs began to appear. A great
black drawbridge, thrusting its unlovely length across the river,
parted sullenly for us to pass. Above a cluster of palms and blossoming
magnolias the dome of the capitol appeared, the last rays of the setting
sun striking upon its gilded surface and turning it into a flaming orb.
The air was heavy with the fragrance of camellias. A bell tinkled sharply
in the engine room, the great stern wheel churned the water frantically
for a moment and then stopped, the boat glided deftly alongside the
wharf, the gang-plank rumbled out. “All ashore!” bawled some one. “All
ashore! Sacramento!”
In the gold-rush days Sacramento was to the mining region what
Johannesburg is to the Rand—a base of supplies, a place of amusement,
where the miners were wont to come to squander their gold-dust over the
polished bars of the saloons and dance halls or on the green tables of
the gambling-houses. Those were the free-and-easy days when anything
costing less than a dollar was priced in “bits,” a bit having no
arbitrary value but being equivalent to the amount of gold-dust which
could be held between the thumb and forefinger. In the days when placer
mining was in its glory, debts were discharged in gold-dust instead of
coin, and it often happened when a man was paying a small grocery bill,
or more particularly when he was buying a drink, the bartender, instead
of taking the trouble to weigh the dust, would insert his thumb and
forefinger in the miner’s buckskin “poke” and lift a pinch of gold-dust.
So it came to pass that when a man applied for a job as bartender his
ability to fill the position would be tested by the proprietor asking,
“How much can you raise at a pinch?” whence the familiar colloquialism
of the present day. The more that he could raise, of course, the more
valuable he would be as an employee, the chief requisite for a successful
bartender being, therefore, that he should have splay fingers. In
gold-rush times steamers ran daily from San Francisco to Sacramento, just
as they do to-day, for the river provided the quickest and easiest means
of reaching the mines from the coast, while six-horsed Concord coaches,
the names of whose drivers were synonyms for reckless daring, tore along
the roads to Marysville, Stockton, and Nevada City as fast as the horses
could lay foot to ground.
To fully appreciate the miracle of reclamation, whereby the banks of
the Sacramento have been transformed from worthless drowned lands into
the richest gardens in the world, you should motor down the splendid
boulevard which for a dozen miles or more parallels the river. The
miners along the Sacramento early found that the easiest and cheapest
method of getting gold was to direct a powerful stream of water against
the hillsides, washing the hills away and diverting the resultant mud
into long sluice-boxes, in which the gold was collected. The residue
of mud and water was then turned back into the streams again and was
carried down and deposited in the bed of the Sacramento River, gradually
decreasing its capacity for carrying off flood waters and making its
navigation impossible for large boats. Hence, when the spring freshets
came the swollen river overflowed and devastated the farms and orchards
along its banks. For forty years this sort of thing continued, the
protests of the farmers and fruit growers being ignored, for in those
days the miners virtually ruled the land. But as time wore on, mining
gradually decreased in importance and agriculture grew, until, in 1893,
the farming interests became powerful enough to induce Congress to stop
all hydraulic mining and to put all mining operations on streams in the
San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys under the control of the California
Debris Commission. Once rid of the bugaboo of the hydraulic nozzle and
its resultant obstruction of the river channels, the farmers along the
Sacramento got together and purchased a number of clam-shell dredgers
and set to work to build new levees and to repair the old ones. If you
will follow the course of the Sacramento for a few miles outside the
capital, either by road or river, you will see them at work. It is very
interesting. A great arm, ending in a sort of hand like two clam-shells,
reaches out over the river and the hand plunges into the stream. When the
hand, which is in reality a huge steel scoop with hinged jaws, emerges
from its gropings at the river-bottom it is filled with sand, whereupon
the arm carries it over and empties it upon the bank. This is the way
in which the dikes which border the Sacramento are constructed, one
clam-shell dredger doing as much work in a day as five hundred men. As a
result of this ingenious contrivance you can make the circuit of Grand
Island on an oiled road, forty feet wide, which has been built on top of
the dikes. Below you on one side is the river; on the other orchards and
gardens from which come annually a quarter of the world’s asparagus crop,
the earliest cherries in the United States, and a million boxes of pears.
I think that the most significant thing that I saw in Sacramento was
Sutter’s Fort, or, to be quite accurate, the restored remnants of it.
Three quarters of a century ago this little rectangular fortification
was the westernmost outpost of American civilisation. In 1839 a Swiss
soldier of fortune named John Augustus Sutter obtained from the Mexican
Government a grant of eleven square leagues of land on the banks of the
Sacramento River and permission to erect a stockade as a protection
against the encroachments of the Indians. The stockade, however, quickly
grew into something closely resembling a fort, with walls loopholed for
musketry and capable of resisting any attack unsupported by artillery.
Sutter’s Fort, or “New Helvetia,” as the owner called his little kingdom,
was on the direct line of overland immigration from the East, and as a
result of the strategic position he occupied and of his influence with
the Mexican authorities, Sutter soon became the virtual ruler of all
this Sierran region. During those stirring days when Frémont and his
frontiersmen came riding down from the passes, it was this Swiss-American
adventurer who held the balance of power on the Pacific Coast, and it
was in no small measure due to the encouragement and aid he gave the
American settlers that California became American. The old frontiersman
died in poverty, the great domain of which he was the owner having been
wrested from him, on one pretext and another, each flimsier than the one
preceding, during the turmoil and lawlessness which marked the gold-rush
days. To-day the old fort is the centre of a highly landscaped city
park; the muzzles of its brass field-guns frown from their embrasures
down paved and shaded avenues; street-cars clang their noisy way past
the gates which were double-barred at night against the attacks of
marauding bands of Mexicans and Indians; and at night spluttering
arc-lamps illuminate its loopholed, vine-clad walls. Sacramento has
acknowledged the great debt she owes to Sutter by giving his destitute
grandson employment as a day labourer on the grounds of the fort which
his grandfather built and to which the capital city of California owes
its being.