TEHAMA AND BUTTE, AND THE UPPER COUNTRY.
General Bidwell, of Butte County, raised last year on his own estate,
besides a large quantity of fruit, seventy-five thousand bushels of
wheat. Dr. Glenn, of Colusa County, raised and sent to market from his
own estate, two hundred thousand bushels. Mr. Warner, of Solano County,
produced nine thousand gallons of cider from his own orchards. A
sheep-grazer in Placer County loaded ten railroad cars with wool, the clip
of his own sheep. For many weeks after harvest you may see sacks of wheat
stacked along the railroad and the river for miles, awaiting shipment; for
the farmers have no rain to fear, and the grain crop is thrashed in the
field, bagged, and stacked along the road, without even a tarpaulin to
cover it.
In 1855, California exported about four hundred and twenty tons of wheat;
in 1873, the export was but little less than six hundred thousand tons. In
1857, six casks and six hundred cases of California wine were sent out of
the State; in 1872, about six hundred thousand gallons were exported. In
1850, California produced five thousand five hundred and thirty pounds of
wool; in 1872, this product amounted to twenty-four million pounds. Thirty
million pounds of apples, ten million pounds of peaches, four and a half
million pounds of apricots, nearly two million pounds of cherries, are
part of the product of the State, in which the man is still living who
brought across the Plains the first fruit-trees to set out a nursery;
while four and a half million of oranges, and a million and a half of
lemons, shipped from the southern part of the State, show the rapid growth
of that culture.
In the northern counties, of which Tehama and Butte are a sample, they are
usually fortunate in the matter of late as well as early rains; but
close under the coast range the country is dryer, as is natural, the high
mountain range absorbing the moisture from the north-westerly winds. They
begin to plow as soon as it rains, usually in November, and sow the
grain at once. Formerly the higher plains were thought to be fit only for
grazing; but even the red lands, which are somewhat harder to break up,
and were thought to be infertile, are found to bear good crops of grain;
and this year these lands bear the drought better than some that were and
are preferred. Lambing takes place here in February, and they shear in
April. The grazing lands abound in wild oats, very nutritious, but apt to
run out where the pastures are overstocked. Alfilleria is not found so far
north as this; alfalfa has been sown all over the valley in proper places,
and does well. They cut it three times in the year, and turn stock in on
it after the last cutting; and all who grow it speak well of it.
Red Bluff is one of the oldest towns in the valley; it stands at the head
of navigation on the Sacramento, and was, therefore, a place of importance
before the railroad was built. The river here is narrow and shoal, and it
is crossed by one of those ferries common where the rapid current,
pushing against the ferry-boat, drives it across the stream, a wire cable
preventing it from floating down stream. The main street of the town
consists mainly of bar-rooms, livery-stables, barber-shops, and hotels,
with an occasional store of merchandise sandwiched between; and, if you
saw only this main street, you would conceive but a poor opinion of the
people. But other streets contain a number of pleasant, shady cottages;
and, as I drove out into the country, the driver pointed with pride to the
school-house, a large and fine building, which had just been completed at
a cost of thirty thousand dollars, and seemed to me worth the money. The
town has also water-works; and the people propose to bridge the Sacramento
at a cost of forty thousand dollars, and to build a new jail, to cost
fifteen thousand dollars. Such enterprises show the wealth of the people
in this State, and astonish the traveler, who imagines, in driving
over the great plain, that it is almost uninhabited, but sees, in a
thirty-thousand dollar school-house in a little town like Red Bluff, that
not only are there people, but that they have the courage to bear taxation
for good objects, and the means to pay.
From Red Bluff two of the great mountain peaks of Northern California
are magnificently seen--Lassen's Peaks and Shasta. The latter, still
one hundred and twenty miles off to the north, rears his great, craggy,
snow-covered summit high in the air, and seems not more than twenty miles
away. Lassen's Peaks are twins, and very lonely indeed. They are sixty
miles to the east, and are also, at this season, glistening with snow.
Between Lassen's and the Sacramento, some thirty miles up among the
mountains, there is a rich timber country, whose saw-mills supply the
northern part of the valley with lumber, sugar-pine being the principal
tree sawed up. The valley begins to narrow above Red Bluff, and the
foot-hills and mountains still abound in wild game. Hunters bring their
peltries hither for sale; and this has occasioned the establishment
at this point of a thriving glove factory, which turned out--from an
insignificant looking little shop--not less than forty thousand dollars'
worth of gloves last year. Two enterprising young men manage it, and they
employ, I was told, from fifty to eighty women in the work, and turn out
very excellent buckskin gloves, as well as some finer kinds. Such petty
industries are too often neglected in California, where every body still
wants to conduct his calling on a grand scale, and where dozens of ways to
prosperity, and even wealth, are constantly neglected, because they appear
too slow.
This whole country is only about four years in advance of the lower or San
Joaquin Valley, and the influence of climate and soil in bringing trees to
bear early was shown to me in several thrifty orchards, already beginning
to bear, on ground which four years ago was bought for two dollars and
fifty cents per acre. The habit of raising wheat is so strong here, that
almost every thing else is neglected; and I remember a farm where the
wheat field extended, unbroken, except by a narrow path leading to the
road, right up to the veranda of the farmer's house. His family lived on
canned fruits and vegetables; and except here and there a brilliant poppy,
which stubborn Dame Nature had inserted among his wheat, wife and children
had not a flower to grace mantle or table. I confess that it pleased me
to hear this farmer complain of hard times, because, as he said, the
speculators in San Francisco made more money from his wheat than he did.
If the speculators in San Francisco teach the farmers in California to
grow something besides wheat, they will deserve well of the State.
The upper waters of the Sacramento run through mountain passes, and
between banks so steep that for miles at a time the river is inaccessible,
except by difficult and often dangerous descents; and an old miner told me
that when this part of the river, between where Redding now lies and its
source, near Mount Shasta, was first "prospected" for gold, the miners or
explorers had to build boats and descend by water, trying for gold by the
way, because they could not get down by land. In those days, he said, if a
company of miners could not make twenty dollars a day each, the "prospect"
was too poor to detain them; and they made but a short stay at most points
on the Upper Sacramento.
The country was then full of Indians; and it was very strange, indeed, to
hear this miner--a thoroughly kind-hearted man he was, and now the father
of a family of children--tell with the utmost unconcern, and as a matter
of course, how they used to shoot down these Indians, who waylaid them at
favoring spots on the river, and tried to pick them off with arrows.
I remember hearing a little boy ask a famous general once how many men he
had killed in the course of his wars, and being disappointed when he heard
that the general, so far as he know, had never killed any body. I suppose
a soldier in battle but rarely knows that he has actually shot a man. But
one of these old Indian fighters sits down after dinner, over a pipe, and
relates to you, with quite horrifying coolness, every detail of the death
which his rifle and his sure eye dealt to an Indian; and when this one,
stroking meantime the head of a little boy who was standing at his knees,
described to me how he lay on the grass and took aim at a tall chief
who was, in the moonlight, trying to steal a boat from a party of
gold-seekers, and how, at the crack of his rifle, the Indian fell his
whole length in the boat and never stirred again, I confess I was dumb
with amazement. The tragedy had not even the dignity of an event in this
man's life. He shot Indians as he ate his dinner, plainly as a mere matter
of course. Nor was he a brute, but a kindly, honest, good fellow, not in
the least blood-thirsty.
[Illustration: STREET IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.]
The poor Indians have rapidly melted away under the fervent heat of
forty-rod whisky, rifles, and disease. This whole Northern country must
have been populous a quarter of a century ago; General Bidwell and other
old Californians have told me of the surprisingly rapid disappearance of
the Indians, after the white gold-seekers came in. It was, I do not doubt,
a pleasant land for the red men. They lived on salmon, clover, deer,
acorns, and a few roots which are abundant on mountain and plain, and of
all this food there is the greatest plenty even yet. If you travel toward
Oregon, by stage, in June, July, or August, you will see at convenient
points along the Sacramento parties of Indians spearing and trapping
salmon. They build a few rude huts of brush, gather sticks for the fire,
which is needed to cook and dry the salmon meat; and then, while the men,
armed with long two-pronged spears, stand at the end of logs projecting
over the salmon pools, and spear the abundant fish, the squaws clean the
fish, roast them to dryness among the hot stones of their rude fire-place,
and finally rub the dried meat to a powder between their hands, or by the
help of stones, when it is packed away in bags for winter use.
What you thus see on the Sacramento is going on at the same time on half
a dozen other rivers; and I am told that these Indians come from
considerable distances to this annual fishing, which was practiced by them
doubtless a long time before the white men came in. Not unfrequently
in these mountains you will find a castaway white man with a half-breed
family about him; "squaw-men" they are called, as a term of contempt, by
the more decent class.
As you drive by the farm-houses on the road, you may commonly see venison
hanging on the porch; and every farmer has a supply of fishing-rods and
lines, so that you can not go amiss for trout and venison. Few of them
know, however, that a trout ought to be cooked as quickly as possible
after he is caught; and if you do not take care, your afternoon fish will
appear on the table next day as corned trout, in which shape I have no
liking for it.
The Shasta Valley contains a good deal of excellent farming land, but
it is used now chiefly for cattle and sheep, and in many parts of it
the grazing is very fine. There are a number of lesser valleys scattered
through the mountains hereabouts. Indeed, the two ranges seem to open out
for a while, and Scott's Valley on the west, and the Klamath Lake country
to the east and north-east from Yreka, are favorite grazing regions. Here
there is occasional snow in the winter, and some cold weather; the spring
opens later and the rains last longer. The streams in all this region bear
gold, and miners are busy in them. Yreka, in the Shasta Valley, is the
centre of a considerable mining district, and therefore a busy place, even
without the Modoc war, which gave it a temporary renown during the winter
and spring. Now that the Modoc war is closed, no doubt the famous lava
beds will attract curious visitors from afar. They can be reached in
thirty-six hours from Yreka; and that place is distant thirty-six hours
from San Francisco.
Aside from the public lands still open in small tracts of eighty and
one hundred and sixty acres to pre-emption by actual settlers, under
the homestead law, and the railroad lands, to be had in sections of
six hundred and forty acres, the Sacramento Valley contains a number of
considerable Spanish grants; and the following account of these, which I
take from the San Francisco _Bulletin_ will give an Eastern reader some
idea of the extent of such grants, their value, and how they are used:
"The first large tract of land north and west of Marysville is the Neal
grant, containing about seventeen thousand acres. This grant is owned by
the Durham estate and Judge C.F. Lott, though Gruelly owns a large slice
of it also. The Neal grant is mostly composed of rich bottom-lands; nearly
all of it is farmed under lease; the lessees pay one-quarter to one-third
of the crops as rent. They do very well under this arrangement.
"The next grant on the north is that of Judge O.C. Pratt. It contains
twenty-eight thousand acres of bottom-land. Butte Creek skirts it on one
side for a distance of seventeen miles, and a branch of that creek runs
through the centre. Nearly six thousand acres are covered with large
oak-trees. There are about one hundred miles of fences on this rancho;
there are about ten thousand sheep, twelve hundred head of cattle, and two
hundred horses on it; the land has been cultivated or used as pasturage
for about fourteen years. About ten thousand acres of it, I am informed,
would readily sell in subdivisions for fifty dollars per acre; ten
thousand acres would sell for about thirty dollars, and eight thousand
acres at twenty dollars per acre. There are many tenants on this tract,
having leases covering periods of three to five years; rent, one-fourth of
the crop raised; the owner builds fences and houses for the lessees. The
average quantity of wool annually grown on this rancho is sixty thousand
pounds; beef cattle, two hundred and fifty head; value of produce received
as rent from tenants, twelve thousand dollars per year. Judge Pratt is
willing to sell farms of one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty
acres at about the rates named, and on easy terms.
"The Hensley grant, lying north of Judge Pratt's rancho, contains five
leagues. It was rejected by the United States Courts, and was taken up
by, and is covered with, settlers, who own one hundred and sixty to three
hundred and twenty acres each, worth forty to sixty dollars per acre.
Little or none of that land is for sale, the owners being too well
satisfied with their farms to sell them, even at the highest ruling rates.
"General Bidwell's rancho adjoins Judge Pratt's. It contains about twenty
thousand acres, of which about one-quarter is of the best quality, and
would readily sell at fifty to sixty dollars per acre. About five thousand
acres more, lying along the Sacramento River, are subject to overflow.
That portion is very rich grazing land, and is worth fifteen to twenty
dollars per acre. The other ten thousand acres lie near the foot-hills;
they are extremely well adapted to grape culture, and are worth five to
twelve dollars per acre. General Bidwell is not willing to sell.
"The next rancho on the west is owned by John Parrot. It contains about
seventeen thousand acres, and lies on the east bank of the Sacramento
River. It contains about four thousand acres of first-class wheat or corn
land; the remainder is composed of excellent pasturage; there are only a
few thousand sheep, and a few cattle and horses on this rancho. It has for
several years been cultivated by Morehead and Griffith, under a private
arrangement with the owner. It is understood that Parrot would sell,
either in a body or in small tracts, to desirable purchasers; his prices
would probably range from fifteen to fifty dollars per acre.
"The next large rancho is that of Henry Gerke, living twenty miles above
Chico. It now contains about eighteen thousand acres, of which a large
portion is suitable for wheat or corn growing, and grazing purposes. One
of the largest and finest vineyards in the State is on this rancho; and
the wine it produces has a large sale in the State. The most of Gerke's
land is devoted to wheat raising; eighteen hundred tons of wheat were
raised on it last year, and about twenty-two hundred tons this year. It is
mostly tilled by tenants. The land is worth from twenty to fifty dollars
per acre. The owner would sell the whole rancho, but it is not known
whether he would sell in small tracts or not. He has a standing offer of
six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the land, vineyards, and
improvements.
"General Wilson owns several thousand acres of the original Gerke grant.
His land is altogether devoted to wheat growing, and is worth forty
dollars per acre.
"A.G. Towne's grant adjoins Gerke's on the north and west. It now contains
about twelve thousand acres; much of it is devoted to wheat growing, and
is worth fifteen to forty dollars per acre, or an average all round of
twenty-five dollars.
"At Tehama, on the west side of the Sacramento River, is Thome's grant.
It contains about twenty thousand acres, one-third of which is of the very
best quality of wheat land, the remainder good grazing. It is understood
that this land can be bought either as a whole or in small farms. The
best of it is worth about forty-five dollars an acre; the body of it about
twenty dollars.
"The next grant, on the north, is that of William G. Chard. It is nearly
all cut up and owned in small farms. Colonel E.J. Lewis, a well-known
politician, is one of the largest owners on the Chard tract. He is
extensively engaged in wheat raising.
"Ide's grant is adjacent, on the north; it is also mostly divided and
owned in small tracts of one hundred and sixty to four hundred acres each.
"The Dye grant lies east of and opposite to Red Bluff. It was originally
a large grant, but has been partially subdivided. It contains some good
bottomland, but is mostly adapted to grazing.
"The most northerly grant in the State is that formerly owned by the late
Major Redding. It is partially subdivided. Like the Dye grant, it contains
some rich bottom-land, but, like it, is mostly adapted for grazing and
grape growing. Haggin and Tevis lately bought (or hold for debt) about
fifteen thousand acres of this rancho, which are worth about one hundred
thousand dollars, or about seven dollars per acre. It is understood from
inquiries made from the owners of these two last named tracts, that they
are willing to sell grain lands at about an average of thirty dollars per
acre."
Of course these grants make up, in the aggregate, but a small part of the
arable land of the Sacramento Valley.
[Illustration: "TACOMA," OR MOUNT RAINIER.]