My boyhood days, from the time I was five until I was fifteen years of
age, were spent on a ranch in Yuba County, California. We were located
on the east side of Feather River, about five miles above Marysville.
The ranch consisted of several hundred acres of high land, which, at its
western terminus, fell away about one hundred feet to the river bottom.
There were a couple of hundred acres of this river bottom land which was
arable. It was exceedingly rich and productive. Still west of this land
was a well-wooded pasture, separated from the cultivated lands by a good
board fence. The river bounded this pasture on the north and west.
In the pasture were swales of damp land, literally overgrown with wild
blackberry bushes. They bore prolific crops of long, black, juicy
berries, far superior to the tame berries, and they were almost entirely
free from seeds. Many a time have I temporarily bankrupted my stomach on
hot blackberry roll, with good, rich sauce.
The country fairly teemed with game. Quail and rabbit were with us all
the time. Doves came by the thousands in the early summer and departed
in the fall. In winter the wild ducks and geese were more than abundant.
In the spring wild pigeons visited us in great numbers. There was one
old oak tree which was a favorite resting-place with them. Sheltered by
some live oak bushes, I was always enabled to sneak up and kill many of
them out of this tree.
I began to wander with the gun when I was but a little over eight years
old. The gun was a long, double-barrel, muzzle-loading derelict. Wads
were not a commercial commodity in those days. I would put in some
powder, guessing at the amount, then a wad of newspaper, and thoroughly
ram it home, upon top of this the shot, quantity also guessed at, and
more paper. But it was barely shoved to the shot, never rammed. Sad
experience taught me that ramming the shot added to the kicking
qualities of the firearm. How that old gun could kick! Many times it
bowled me over. St. George Littledale, a noted English sportsman, in
describing a peculiarly heavy express rifle, said, "It was absolutely
without recoil. Every time I discharged it, it simply pushed me over."
That described my gun exactly, except that it had "the recoil." I deemed
myself especially fortunate if I could get up against a fence post or an
oak tree when I shot at something. By this means I retained an upright
position. Armed with this gun, an antiquated powder flask, a shot pouch
whose measurer was missing, and a dilapidated game bag, I spent hours in
the woods and fields, shooting such game as I needed, learning to love
life in the open, the trees, the flowers, the birds and the wild animals
I met. I was as proud of my outfit as the modern hunter is of his $500
gun and expensive accompaniments. When I went after the cows, I carried
my gun, and often got a dozen or more quail at a pot shot out of some
friendly covey. If I went to plow corn, or work in the vegetable garden,
the gun accompanied me, and it was sure to do deadly execution every
day.
When it was too wet to plow, no matter how hard it was raining, it was
just right to hunt. Clad in a gum coat, I would take my gun and brave
the elements, when a seat by the fireside would have been much more
comfortable. I loved to be out in a storm, to watch the rain, to hear
the wind toss and tear the branches of the trees, to hear at first hand
the fury of the storm, and watch the birds hovering in the underbrush,
and the wild waterfowl seek the protection of the willows. In such a
storm great flocks of geese would scurry across the country within a few
feet of the ground. They usually went in the teeth of the gale. At such
times they constantly uttered shrill cries and appeared utterly
demoralized.
If there were game laws in those days, I never knew it. It was always
open season with me. Often my mother would tell me to shoot something
besides quail, that she was tired of them.
There was a slough on the place which was full of beaver and beaver
dams. How I tried to get one of them, always without success! They were
very crafty, very alert, and at the slightest indication of danger dived
under water to the doors of their houses, long before one was in gunshot
of them. Full many a weary hour have I spent, hidden in the brush,
watching a nearby beaver dam in the hope of getting a shot, but always
without avail. They would appear at other dams, too far away, but never
show themselves close enough to be injured.
In the winter the slough fairly swarmed with ducks of every variety.
They were disturbed but little, and they used these waters as a resting
place, flying far out into the grain fields and into the open plain at
night for their food. The beautiful wood duck, now almost extinct in
California, was very plentiful. They went in flocks as widgeon do. They
would go into the tops of the oak trees and feed upon the acorns. I
killed many of them as they came out of these trees. In flying they had
a way of massing together like blackbirds, and one shot often brought
down a goodly bag of them.
The slough I mentioned above was not a stagnant one. It was fed by water
from Feather River. After winding around an island, it emptied its
waters back into the river farther down stream, so that fresh water was
continually entering and flowing from it. Along its banks grew a fringe
of tall cottonwood trees. Many of them were completely enveloped with
wild grapevines, which bore abundantly. The slough was full of two or
three varieties of perch, or, as we called them, sun-fish; also a white
fish called chub. These fish were all very palatable, and I caught loads
of them. In the fall, when the wild grapes were ripe, they would fall off
into the water and were fed upon by the fish. Beneath the vine-clad
cottonwoods the fishing was always good.
One afternoon I was following a path just outside of the pasture fence,
through heavy wheat stubble, left after cutting time. I saw a pair of
pink ears ahead of me, which I knew belonged to a rabbit. I blazed away
at the ears. The gun, as usual, did execution at both ends. I went over
on my back. When I regained my feet I saw a great commotion on the
firing line. Rabbits' legs and feathers were alternately in the air.
Investigating, I found two cottontail, one jackrabbit and three quail in
the last stages of dissolution, all the result of one shot at two
rabbit's ears. I felt bigger than Napoleon ever did as I gathered up my
kill and started for home.
On one of my wanderings I came across; the barrel of a rifle on an
Indian mound, which had been plowed up when we were preparing the land
for planting. It was so coated with rust that the metal was no longer
visible. Floods had covered the ground many times. Not knowing how long
it had been buried there, I dug the rust and dirt out of the barrel as
best I could and took it home. On my first trip to Marysville I took it
to a blacksmith named Allison, who did all of our work, and asked him to
cut it off about a foot from the breech end, so that I could use it as a
cannon. He put it in his forge, and pulled away upon his bellows with
his left hand. He held the muzzle end of the rifle barrel in his right
hand, and poked at the coals with it so as to get it properly covered.
He intended to heat it and then cut it off. All at once, Bang! and that
horrid old thing went off. The bullet went through Allison's clothing
and slightly cut the skin on his side. He was the worst scared man in
all California. When he felt the sting of the bullet he threw up his
hands and fell on his back, yelling lustily. I was almost as badly
panic-stricken, thinking surely he was killed. I began to see visions of
the gallows and the hangman's rope. He recovered his self-possession,
and when he found he was not hurt, his fear turned to anger. He threw
the rifle barrel out into the street, and then drove me out of the shop.
When I got outside and my fear had left me, I sat down on an old wagon
tongue and laughed until I was entirely out of breath. Allison came out,
and my laughter must have been contagious. He leaned up against a post
and laughed until he cried. His anger had left him, and we were soon
fast friends again. At the proper time I ventured the opinion that the
rifle could not go off again, and that it would be well enough to finish
the cutting process. He consented and soon had the barrel cut off. I
took the breech end home with me, and endangered my life with it many
years. I generally loaded it with blasting powder, for the reason that
it was usually on hand and cost me nothing, and so loaded, the cannon
made more noise than had I used gunpowder.
During the campaign in which Gen. George B. McClellan ran for the
Presidency against Abraham Lincoln, the Democrats of Northern California
had a great celebration which lasted two or three days. Among other
things was a barbecue at the race track, two or three miles out of town.
Great pits were dug which were filled with oak stumps and logs, and
burned for about twenty-four hours before the cooking began. These logs
were reduced to a perfect bed of live coals. Over these, old-fashioned
Southern negroes, of whom there were many in the neighborhood, cooked
quarters of beef, whole sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese.
There were at least five thousand people on the ground. My blacksmith
friend, Allison, was firing a salute with an old cannon. He fired the
cannon after it was loaded, with an iron rod, one end of which was kept
heated in a small fire. I attended to the fire for him. After the
discharge the gun was wiped out with a wet swab. The powder was done up
in red flannel cartridges. Allison, with heavy, buckskin gloves on his
hands, would hold his thumb over the vent or tube of the cannon. Two
men, first slitting the lower end of the cartridge, would ram it into
the gun. During each loading process I straddled the gun, looking
towards Allison. After a number of discharges, the heat burned a hole
through the glove that Allison was using, and his thumb, coming in
contact with the hot metal, was withdrawn for an instant, while the
assistants were sending home a charge. There was an immediate premature
explosion. I was sitting astride the gun, and felt it rise up and buck
like a horse. Allison's eyes were nearly ruined, and his face filled
with powder, the marks of which stayed with him the rest of his life.
The two assistants were horribly mutilated, but neither of them was
killed. For a time I thought I never would hear again. My ears simply
shut up and refused to open for some time.
It would seem that this disaster should have been sufficient for one
day, but it was not. That night there was to have been public speaking
in front of the Western Hotel, by many prominent politicians. Opposite
the hotel was a two-story brick building, with a veranda built around
it. All of the offices on the second floor opened on this veranda. It
was crowded with people. The weight became excessive. The iron posts
next to the sidewalk, which sustained the veranda, slid out, and the
platform swung down like a table leaf, spilling everybody onto the
sidewalk. Eight or nine people were killed outright, and many more very
severely injured.
When about twelve years of age I got hold of two greyhounds, sisters,
named "Flora" and "Queen." During the winter time I spent much time
chasing jackrabbits. In summer time the ground got so hard that the dogs
would not run. The ground hurt their feet. But in the winter we had
great sport. There was an immense open plain east of our property, miles
long and miles wide, and level as a floor. There was a dry weed, without
leaves and of a reddish color, which grew in patches all over this
plain. These weed patches were the hiding places of the jackrabbits. The
game was exciting and stirred one's sporting blood. I found a great
difference in the speed of jackrabbits--as much in fact as in the speed
of blooded horses. Occasionally I would get up one that would actually
run away from the dogs, which were a fast pair. I followed the sport so
persistently, and paid so little attention to fences when they
interfered with my going, that I got the appellation in the neighborhood
of "that d Ñ d Graves boy."
When we got up a hare, away we went after the dogs, just as fast as our
horses would carry us. The sport was hard on horseflesh, so much so that
my father finally forbade me running any of our horses after the hounds.
There lived in our neighborhood a man who owned, and who had put upon
the track some of the fastest horses in the State. At this time he had
retired and raised horses for the fun of it. He also had some good
hounds. He enjoyed the sport as much as I did. Having plenty of good
horses, he furnished me with as many as I needed. We spent many days in
trying to determine which of us had the best dogs. Incidentally, we
wrecked some promising thoroughbreds. The question of the superiority of
our dogs was never settled. We always left the door open for one more
race.
Our place was the haven of all the boys of my acquaintance. When I was
attending school at Marysville some boy came home with me nearly every
Friday night. We would work at whatever was being done on the place
Saturday forenoon, but the afternoon was ours. With the old gun we took
to the pasture, hunted for game, for birds' nests and even turtles'
nests. The mud turtle, common to all California waters, laid an
astounding number of very hard shelled, oblong, white eggs, considerably
larger than a pigeon's egg. They deposited them in the sand on the
shores of the slough, covering them up, leaving them for the sun to
hatch. They always left some tell-tale marks by which we discovered the
nest. Often we got several hundred eggs in an afternoon. They were very
rich, and of good flavor.
There were many coons and a few wildcats in the pasture woods. With the
aid of a dog we had great sport with them. Hard pressed, they would take
to the trees, from which we would shoot them. On one occasion we found
four little spitfire, baby lynx, which we carried home and later traded
to the proprietor of a menagerie. We got some money and two pair of
fan-tail pigeons in exchange for them. When quite small they were the
most vicious, untamable little varmints imaginable, and as long as we
had them our hands were badly scratched by them.
On the bottom land, each year, we had a large and well assorted
vegetable garden. It produced much more than we could possibly use. We
boys would sell things from the garden for amusement and pin money.
During one summer vacation, a boy, one Johnnie Gray, a brother of L. D.
C. Gray of this city, was visiting me. We took a load of vegetables to
Marysville. After selling it, getting our lunch, paying for the shoeing
of our horse (which in those days cost four dollars), and buying some
ammunition for the gun, we had $1.50 left. We quarreled as to how we
should spend this remnant. Not being able to agree, we started home
without buying anything. On the outskirts of Marysville was a brewery.
The price of a five-gallon keg of beer was $1.50. We concluded to take a
keg home with us. It was an awfully hot summer day, and the brewer was
afraid to tap the keg, thinking that the faucet would blow out under the
influence of the heat before we got home. He gave us a wooden faucet,
and told us how to use it. "Hold it so," he said, showing us, "hit it
with a heavy hammer, watch the bung, and when you have driven it in
pretty well, then send it home with a hard blow." We were sure we could
do it. We drove home, put the beer in the shade by the well, spread a
wet cloth over it, and then put our horse away. My parents chided us for
throwing our money away on beer. In the cool of the evening we concluded
to tap the keg. One of us held the faucet and the other did the driving,
but we did not have the success predicted for us by the brewer.
At the critical moment we drove in the bung, but not with sufficient
momentum to fasten the faucet. It flew out of our hands into the air,
followed by the beer. In about a minute the keg was entirely empty. We
were overwhelmingly drenched and drowned by the escaping beer, but never
got a single drop of it to drink.
On another occasion some of us children were coming home from
Marysville. We were driving an old white horse, named "Jake," who knew
us and loved us as only a good horse can. He submitted to our abuses,
shared in our pleasure and would not willingly have hurt any of us. We
were in a small, one-seated spring wagon. While driving through a lane,
moved on by the spirit of deviltry, one of us whipped Jake into a run,
and the other one threw the reins over a fence post. The result was as
could have been expected by any sane-minded individual. The horse
stopped so suddenly that he sat down on the singletree, and broke both
the shafts of the wagon. We were hurled out with great force, and got
sundry bruises and abrasions. We wired up the shafts and got home as
best we could, and, I am sorry to say, we lied right manfully as to the
cause of the accident. We told a story of a drunken Mexican on horseback
who chased us a considerable distance, and finally lassoed the horse,
bringing him to so sudden a stop as to cause the damage. Instead of
being punished, as we should have been, we were lauded as heroes of an
attempted kidnapping.
One of my uncles made for us a four-wheeled wagon, the hub, spokes and
axles being made out of California oak--such a wagon as you can buy in
any store today, only a little larger. We made a kite of large
dimensions, and covered the frame with cotton from a couple of flour
sacks. At certain times of the year, the wind across the Marysville
plains blew with great velocity. This kite, in a strong wind, had great
pulling capacity. We would go out into the plain, put up the kite, and
fasten the string to the tongue of the wagon, three or four of us pile
on, and let her go. The speed that we would travel before the wind by
this means was marvelous, but we tried the kite trick once too often. We
got to going so fast we could not slow down nor successfully guide the
wagon. It ran over an old stump, spilled us all out, and kite and wagon
sailed away clear across Feather River into Sutter County and we never
saw either of them again.
The boys of the present age have no such opportunities for out-of-door
sports as we did in the olden days. Now it is baseball, automobile
exhibitions and moving picture shows. Increased population, high-power
guns, cultivation of the soil, the breaking up of large ranches into
smaller holdings, have resulted in the disappearance of much of the game
with which the land then abounded.
Fifty years ago in California, conditions of rural life were necessarily
hard. Our habitations were but little more than shelter from the
elements. We had none of the conveniences of modern life. At our house
we always made our own tallow candles. We hardened the candles by mixing
beeswax with the tallow. We made the beeswax from comb of the honey
taken from bee trees. We corned our own beef and made sauerkraut by the
barrel for winter use. We canned our own fruit, made jelly and jam from
wild berries and wild grapes. We selected perfect ears of corn, shelled
it at home, ran it through a fanning machine, and then had the corn
ground into meal for our own consumption. We raised our own poultry and
made our own butter and cheese, with plenty to sell; put up our own
lard, shoulders, ham and bacon and made our own hominy. The larder was
always well filled. The mother of a family was its doctor. A huge dose
of blue mass, followed by castor oil and quinine, was supposed to cure
everything, and it generally did. In the cities luxuries were few. To
own a piano was the privilege of the very wealthy.
Speaking of pianos, in the flood of 1863, before Marysville was
protected by its levee, which is now twenty-five feet high, the family
cow swam into the parlor of one of the best mansions of the town,
through the window. When the flood waters had subsided, she was found
drowned on top of the piano.
Life under the conditions here given was necessarily hard. Our
amusements were few. We, who lived in the country, had plenty of good
air and sound sleep-two things often denied the city resident. Our
sports were few and simple, but of such a nature that they toughened the
fiber and strengthened the muscles of our bodies, thus fitting us to
withstand the heavy drafts on our vitality that the hurly-burly of
modern life entails upon the race.