11 11 CHAPTER I. MY FIRST PASEAR

The Sierra Morena and the Redwood Forest of San Mateo and Santa Cruz.--The Sportsman's Paradise.--Looking back at the Golden City.--Yesterday and To-day.--Along the Bay of San Francisco.--The Valley of San Andreas.--Harry Linden's Speculation in Oats.--Good Resolutions and what came of them.--A Dream of Tropic Life.--An Evening on the Mountains.--A Scene of Wonderful Beauty.--The Avalanche from the Pacific.--Descending the Mountain by Moonlight.--The End of my Pasear.

STRETCHING away southward from the Golden Gate, at the northern point of the peninsula of San Francisco, through San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties, in Alta California, and thenCe on down through the entire peninsula of Lower California to Cape St. Lucas, on the border of the tropics, is an almost unbroken range of mountains, known at different points by different names, and presenting the wildest Variety of scenery to be found in any mountain range in North America.

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Just back of the Mission Dolores, on the southern boundary of the city of San Francisco, they rise from low hills into minor mountains, and are known as the Bernal Heights, and Mission Mountains. Farther southward they increase in height, and become clothed in forest. Twenty miles south of San Francisco they form a majestic sierra, and thence, for some distance, are designated as the Sierra Morena. Still farther south they are known as the Coast Range of Santa Cruz, and farther yet as the Gabilan Mountains. Along this range, in San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties, is one of the largest, if not the largest, of the redwood forests of California. This forest-belt is from ten to twenty miles in width from east to west, and from thirty to forty miles in length from north to south, and contains timber enough to build twenty San Franciscos. The redwoods nowhere come down to the Pacific coast, and the traveler on the San Francisco and San José Railroad catches so few glimpses of them that he would never dream of the existence of such a forest; while from the decks of passing steamers one sees only small patches of them in the cañons, miles back in the interior. The giant redwood--to which family the big trees of Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Mariposa Counties belong--flourishes best at a high elevation and in a warm, moist atmosphere. This great forest, like that of Mendocino, crowns the mountains with tropical luxuriance, and is watered by the mists which, rising for a considerable part of the year from the bosom of the Pacific, are driven inland by the trade-winds and condensed on the mountain 13 13 slopes, keeping the rank vegetation which clothes them almost perpetually dripping. The redwoods themselVes rise to a height of one to three hundred feet or more, and attain immense size. Beneath their shade springs up an almost impenetrable undergrowth of flowering shrubs and trees--California lilac, tea-oak, pine, ceonotus, laurel, or the fragrant bay, buckeye, manzanita, poison-oak, the giant California honeysuckle, which, half bush, half vine, rises to a height of ten to twenty feet, and from its thousands of trumpet-shaped flowers, tinted like the wild crab-apple blossoms, loads the atmosphere with a delicious perfume and last, but not least, the madroño, pride of the forest, and fairest of all the trees of earth. These woods are for the most part in a native state. Here and there the axe and saw-mill have made sad havoc, but in the more mountainous and least accessible localities the forest stretches unbroken for miles and miles, and silence reigns supreme. Horse trails are few, and the dense undergrowth and the ruggedness of the country make traveling almost impossible. Here the grizzly bear hides in security, and from his mountain fastnesses sallies forth at intervals to forage on the flocks and herds, orchards and gardens, that dot the lowlands. Here also the California lion ,wolf, fox, mink, raccoon, wild-cat, lynx, deer, eagle, and great vulture abound, within hearing of the whistle of the locomotive which sweeps through the valley of Santa Clara, and almost within reach of the echoes of the guns of Alcatraz, and the bells of the Golden City. It is still, to the great majority of the residents even of San Francisco, a 14 14 terra incognita , and for years to come will be a veritable hunter's paradise. Quail, doves, pigeons, rabbits, squirrels, hares, and other game, are found everywhere, and the pure mountain streams swarm with the beautiful spotted trout of California.

Parties of ladies and gentlemen from San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Jose, Santa Cruz, and Pescadero, skilled in woodcraft and wise in the ways of adepts with the gun and rod, make excursions into this tangled wilderness, camp out, hunt, fish, pic-nic, and enjoy themselves for weeks at a time annually; but to the general tourist and the great world at large the country is as little known as the savage and inhospitable wilderness of central and northern Australia.

Between this forest and mountain country, and the shore of the Pacific, there is a narrow but productive farming and grazing country, but seldom visited by travelers, as it lies off the main lines of communication, though quite readily accessible from San Francisco. This too has its attractions for the tourist who is not sight-seeing by the guide-book, and much that is novel, curious, and enjoyable may always be found there.

The Spanish language has many words and terms having no equivalent in the English tongue, which are so identified with the geography and every-day life of California that they have become engrafted upon our local vernacular, and must forever form a part of it. Among the most expressive of these is the paseár . Literally it means to walk, or to take out upon a walk, but conventionally it is a journey 15 15 devoid of business object, a quiet pleasure jaunt, a trip for rest, relaxation from care and toil, for recreation. When the lazy days of summer come, you ask for your San Francisco friend the doctor, the lawyer, clergyman, or merchant, and the chances are that you will be told "he has gone on a paseár " to the Yosemite, to Lake Tahoe, to the springs, or to the mountains where the trout-streams abound.

The country of which I have been speaking is just the country for an enjoyable paseár , and many times; when incessant toil in a close, dark office, or the too bracing winds of San Francisco had worn me down, and made rest, recreation, and a change of air imperative, I have shouldered my gun, mounted my horse, and galloped away to these mountains, there to find refuge from care, anxiety, and exhausting labor, purer air, lighter spirits, a better appetite, and, in the end, perfect health again.

It was a bright September afternoon when I started on my last paseár out toward the Sierra Morena, mounted on brave old Don Benito, a veteran campaigner in Algiers and Mexico, who had borne me many a weary mile over the hot sands of the desert, up and down the red mountains, and through the Apache-haunted wilds of Arizona. My son and namesake,--I would say heir, were it not that it would seem like A. Ward's last joke, in view of the present extent of my landed estates and the condition of my exchequer,-----as bold a rider a skillful fisherman as any boy of twelve may be; accompanied me, mounted on his plucky and spirited little California mustang, his pet and companion for 16 16 years. Out through the dusty streets of the city proper, and through the Mission Dolores, we rode at a gallop, and only paused, at length, to allow our fretting horses a moment's rest, and look back upon the city we were so gladly leaving behind us, from the heights beyond Islais Creek. It is, after all, a goodly city, and a goodly sight to look upon from these hills; and as we look down upon it, and upon the ancient mission which stood there, as it stands to-day, when the site of San Francisco was a track-less, uninhabited waste, the beautiful lines of one of California's most gifted writers, Ira D. Colbraith, come vividly to our memory: "Little the goodly Fathers,Building their Mission rude,By the lone untraversed waters,In the western solitude,"Dreamed of the wonderful city,That looks on the stately bayWhere the bannered ships of the nationsFloat in their pride to-day;"Dreamed of the beautiful city,Proud on her tawny height,And strange as a flower upspringingTo bloom in a single night."For lo! but a moment liftingThe veil of the years away,We look on a well-known pictureThat seems hut as yesterday."The mist rolls in at the GatewayWhere never a fortress stands,O'er the blossoms of Sancelito,And Yerba Buena's sands 17 17 "Swathing the shores where only The sea-birds come and pass, And drifts with the drifting waters, By desolate Alcatraz;"We hear, when night droops downward, And the bay throbs under the stars, The ocean voices blending With ripple of soft guitars;"With chiming bells of the Mission, With passionate minors sung, Or a quaint Castilian ballad Trilled in the Spanish tongue."Fair from thy hills, O city, Look on the beautiful bay! Prouder far is the vision Greeting our eyes to-day;'Better the throngéd waters, And the busy streets astir, Purple and silken raiment, Balsam and balm and myrrh;"Gems of the farther Indies, Gold of thine own rich mine, And the pride and boast of the peoples, O beautiful queen, are thine!"Praise to the goodly Fathers, With banners of faith unfurled! Praise to the sturdy heroes Who have won thee to the world!"

LEAVING TOWN.

Descending from these heights, the road--the San Bruno turnpike--winds in and out for miles along the bluff shores of the Bay of San Francisco, and the views, changing at every turn, are wonderfully diversified and beautiful. At one point we saw a land-locked basin, in which a dozen Italian fishermen's boats lay rocking idly, and at another we 18 18 paused to watch a party of "dagos," who were wading in the bay up to their necks, hauling a seine, while their felucca-rigged craft rode at anchor as it might have done in the Levant or the Grecian Archipelago. Cut out that section of the blue bay, with the felucca and its crew of red-capped fishermen, put it into a frame, and you have a matchless "Scene in the Levant," by one of the very oldest of the masters. Great white pelicans winged their way in silence over the waters, and flocks of gulls, shaugs, and crooked-billed curlew, rose as we galloped along. Long streamers of snowy vapor hung out like flags of truce from the summits of the mountains on the west, and looking back to the north we saw the mist driving in through the Golden Gate and scudding across the bay.

Leaving the shore of the bay at last, some ten or twelve miles from San Francisco, we galloped over an open plain, and at San Bruno crossed the Southern Pacific Railroad track, and turned by a by-road into a long, winding cañon leading up to the summit of a range of hills to the westward, between which and the higher and forest-crowned Sierra Morena, still farther on towards the sea, lies, hidden wholly from the outer world, the lovely valley of San Andreas. The plain upon the western shore of the bay, and all the Contra Costa and Alameda valley and hill country on the eastern side, was brown, and dry, and sear as it ever is in the interior of California in summer and autumn; and the valley of San Andreas, embowered in shade, and the cool, green, mist-nourished forests on the mountains beyond 19 19 it, grew more beautiful by the contrast as we approached them.

The Spring Valley Water Company, which derives its water supply for San Francisco from the head of the Pillarcitos Creek, in the redwoods, some forty miles south of the city, and has a beautiful lake for a reservoir in the mountains, was here building another reservoir, equal in size to anything on the continent. A dam, seventy feet high, with foundations sixty feet deep, has been thrown across the valley and the waters of the San Andreas, thus thrown back, form a lake two miles and a half long, and containing one thousand million gallons. This is held as a reserve supply for dry seasons. John Chinaman did the work, with white men as superintendents, and, as is his custom, did it well. He was then at work, in the same quiet, methodical way, making bricks for the barriers of the flood-gates. John is a law unto himself, and can do a wonderful amount of minding his own business within a given time. Pay him regularly what you agree to, give him his New Year's holidays, and a chance to supply himself with chicken and duck for his Sunday dinner and rice for his regular daily rations at fair rates, and he is contentment itself. The question of woman suffrage does not worry him, eight-hour laws he holds in contempt, and no lazy, jaw-working demagogues can fool him with their plausible sophistries into agrarian combinations, strikes, and riots. He is a philosopher in his way, and not without claims to respect and better treatment than he usually gets from his Caucasian "betters,"

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Winding down the hill-side and around the great reservoir, we enter the valley of San Andreas just as the sun is sinking in the roseate bank of fleecy mist which, like a great snow-drift, is piled up against the mountains on the west to their very summits. The bare plain, and brown, verdureless hills weary the eye no longer, but instead fresh green chaparral and tall, full-foliaged trees stretch out on every side, and we ride down a road embowered with shrubbery, and dark with the cool shadows of evening. Coveys of tufted quail rise and whirr away as we gallop on, and rabbits creep into the bushes at every turn in the road. At the entrance of a cañon stands a cottage, shaded by broad, spreading oaks and fragrant bay-trees; and by the door, book in hand, sits a fair young daughter of California, with great brown eyes, as beautiful as those of a sea-lion,--I can think of no more complimentary simile. She tells us that game is swarming, and that there will be rare sport for the hunters after the 15th of September, when the prohibition on shooting is removed. A huge grizzly took possession of the pasture on the hillside opposite the house some weeks previously, and stayed there undisturbed for a fortnight, only leaving when the wild clover, upon which he came to luxuriate, failed. Deer are seen almost daily, and a few days before a lynx, or wild-cat, or California lion,--the women could not tell which,--came down to the cottage in broad daylight, caught a fowl, and sat down by the door to eat it. A lady threw a shoe at the creature, which thereupon trotted off, with a growl, carrying his stolen dinner with him.

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How vivid is my recollection of my first paseár in the valley of San Andreas! I had started out from San Francisco at the urgent Solicitation of my old friend Col. Harry Linden, who then lived here upon an extensive mountain rancho, a part of the Dominge Feliz Rancho, determined to leave work and the wearing cares of business behind me, and have one good, quiet paseár with him in his bachelor haunts in the hills. I had brought along my gun and any amount of ammunition, with a good supply of fishing-tackle as well, and was determined to be up with the dawn and make it very lively indeed for everything which wore feathers, fur, or scales, during my stay. In the early evening I arrived at the house, and was warmly welcomed by Harry, and introduced to the ladies of the family; it was not exactly a bachelor's lot after all, and Harry, as I found, was a boarder and a petted member of a pleasant and refined social circle, not the solitary tenant of a comfortless lumberman's or ranchero's cabin, as I had fancied him. We left the ladies sitting under the trees, and went in to supper. Harry has always been fancying himself a farmer, and many is the good joke that has been perpetrated upon him in the agricultural line. At that time he had been doing a big thing in that way. An enthusiastic farmer of Alameda County had imported, for seed, from Scotland, at great expense, a quantity of black Scotch oats, such as are used for making oatmeal in the "land o' cakes." He was very choice with them; would only part with them at one dollar per pound, and, in his anxiety to introduce them as 22 22 widely and generally as possible among the farmers of California, had made a positive rule to sell only one pound to any one individual. Harry, not a whit less enthusiastic than himself, and, if possible, a. little more public-spirited, determined to have a field of those oats which would astonish the natives. So he went around among his friends, and got them to go one at a time to his importing friend, and purchase a pound of the precious oats, each on the pretext of desiring to plant them in their gardens to raise seed for hypothetical ranches in the country for next season. His virtue and perseverance were fully rewarded. He succeeded in getting together, in this manner, fifty-seven pounds of the coveted oats, which he proceeded to sow in a nicely prepared field of goodly extent. He had sown many a field with oats of the wildest variety in his younger days, but never had he regarded the expected crop with such blissful anticipations as in this case. He watched and waited. Days grew into weeks, and weeks into months, and still no green sprout showed itself above the surface of that promising field. Painful doubts began to oppress his bosom. He dug down and found some of the oats; they were just in the condition in which they were first put into the earth. Sore afflicted in mind, he waited yet a little longer, tried them again, and with the same result. Then he hurried away to his friend, the public-spirited importer, and sought an explanation of the mystery. It was easily given. He, the importer, had written to a friend in Edinburgh for "One thousand pounds of black oats such as are 23 23 best liked in Scotland for making oatmeal, clean and thoroughly dry before packing for shipment." The order had been filled conscientiously. The best ones for making oatmeal are of course kiln-dried , and to insure their coming in good condition the shippers had taken the precaution to have them dried in an extra hot kiln. They would have made oatmeal, a single pound of which would have kept a Scotchman on the scratch for a year; but for agricultural purposes he might as well have sown so many hailstones or shoe pegs. Had he written that he wanted them for seed, the matter-of-fact Scotch shippers would have sent him seed oats; but he wrote for best oatmeal-producing oats, and they sent them. The joke had just got out, and we discussed it at supper with hearty relish, and one joke and story brought on another until the waning hours admonished us it was time to retire for the night.

No one ever had a larger stock in trade, in the shape of good resolutions, than myself. I allow nobody to beat me in that line, whatever may be my short-comings in other matters. After a glorious night's sleep I awoke with the warm sunlight pouring in at my window, and the sweet song of wild birds falling on my ears. As I have said, I had come into this inexpressibly lovely and secluded valley to hunt wild game, and fish for mountain trout, and I arose with the firmest resolution to swallow a hasty and early breakfast, saddle up, and be off into the hills without the loss of a moment's time. The matter or breakfast was soon disposed of, and I went out into the open air and the sunshine. Great 24 24 spreading buckeyes and California laurels, the fragrant bay, stood in groups all around the house; and between two gnarled tree trunks, in the fragrant shade, I saw a hammock swinging temptingly. There was a world of romance and dreamy remembrances of other days and tropic climes in the sight, and--shall I say it?--the cherished daughter of the house, she of the soft rippling hair, and great brown eyes, sat near the hammock, in the shade, with an open book before her. To see how it would seem to swing in a hammock in the shade once more, I stretched myself therein, and, to complete the reproduction of my dream of the tropics, drew out a bunch of fragrant cigarritas, genuine Havanas, from the factory of "the Widow of Garcia,"--rolled one, lighted it, and engaged in conversation with my fair young friend. I found her highly educated, refined, accomplished, a glorious conversationalist, entertaining, and companionable. The smoke of that cigarrita, and another, and another, and another, Went curling up in blue transparent wreaths, and floated lazily away. The sunlight filtered through he leaves in rippling streams of golden glory, and the soft autumn breeze fanned my cheek and played caressingly with the locks upon my forehead, grey and harsh no more, but curly and raven-hued again, "in my mind's eye, Horatio." The view down the valley, between hills on one side clad in deepest green, on the other in brightest gold, to the great Cañada del Raymundo and the high, forest-crowned mountains of Santa Clara, enveloped ill, and glorified by, the soft blue haze of the September morning, 25 25 was poetry itself; and, beggar that I am, I swung in that hammock, smoked the fragrant cigarritas, and talked of books and poetry and travel in foreign lands, with that fair daughter of the Golden Land, until four o'clock in the afternoon.

I ought to say that I am ashamed of myself; but I am not. I glory in my shame! I would do it again, and think none the less of myself and my fellow-man--and woman--for so doing. And so would you, my reader, or you are no friend of mine,--a blockhead, an idiot, a confirmed misanthrope, or something worse. If you do not sympathize with me in this feeling, drop the book right here, and never take it up again; you and I will not do to travel together.

All earthly things end sometime and somewhere, and my siesta followed the rule. At four o'clock I saddled up old Don Benito, who had been neighing and manifesting his impatience to be off for hours, and, with Linden, rode up a long, winding pathway in the cañon, through the thick, overhanging forest of laurel, madroño, live-oak, tea-oak ceonotus , buck-eye, and wild cherry, to the summit of the high hill range, above the valley upon the west. Doves, and pretty, tufted California quail rose up and whirred away into the thickets as we rode along, and rabbits and hares ran before us in the pathway, affording us abundant opportunity for using our guns.

On the summit of the range was a fine wheat-field of two or three hundred acres, and there the birds fairly swarmed. We used our guns until the sport became such no longer, and then threw ourselves 26 26 down upon the grass under a tree to admire the quiet beauty and subdued grandeur of the scene, and talk of old times and plans for the future. Eastward, miles away beyond the valley of San Andreas, the lower hill range and the wide marsh-lands, but seemingly at our. very feet, lay the blue Bay of San Francisco, flecked here and there with the white sails of ships. Beyond this lay a bank of semi-transparent vapor, which had drifted in through the Golden Gate and over from the city of San Francisco, and grown coralline and roseate-hued with the warm rays of the setting sun. This vapor half concealed the shores of Alameda and contra Costa, on the eastern side of the bay, and made the high hills of those counties appear to come down bold and precipitous to the very water's edge, the intervening valley, miles in width, having wholly disappeared. High above these hills, magnified and lifted up as it were, and made to look-higher than he really is, loomed, like a thunder-cloud against the deep blue sky, the dark head of Mount Diablo.

Looking westward, at our feet was a deep cañon, beyond which was another range of hills, or more properly mountains, the real coast range, shutting out the view of the sea. These mountains are covered with a dark, redwood forest at the summit, kept dripping wet by the mist from the Pacific, which rolls up over them in an unceasing torrent, white as an Alpine avalanche, all day long. An effect is here produced of which I despair of being able to give anything like an adequate description. The white vapor came rushing over to the eastward 27 27 towards us, with a current like that of a thousand Niagaras rolled into one, and the beholder expects every moment to see it come down the slope, cross over the intervening cañon, and overwhelm him; but stay as long as he may, for hours, days, months, or years, it comes never a rod nearer to him. As it meets the hot air ascending from the dry valleys, it is dissipated at a certain point and disappears. You behold a mighty avalanche, white and solid in appearance as Alpine snows, ever advancing to overwhelm you, but never reaching you. Two great eagles with snow-white heads circled around and around over the dark cañon below us, in which they had their nest. There was not a sound save that of our own voices to break the stillness of the evening, and, save what I have described, not a sign of life to mar the solitude of the scene. The high, rugged mountains of Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, robed in deep-green chemisal and crowned with feathery redwoods, bounded the view on the south, and made a fitting frame for the glorious picture before us, What wonder that we gazed upon the enchanting scene, fairly reveling in the feast of beauty and sublimity nature had spread before us with such a lavish hand, until the gathering shadows of night admonished us that it was time to remount our impatient steeds and descend once more to the valley!

The full, round moon was in the heavens, throwing her mellow light o'er all that fairy landscape, as we descended from the mountain height, and in fancy we were once more wandering in the mountains of 28 28 Sonora, or in the savage deserts of Arizona, masters only of the good steeds beneath us, and trusting only to the mercy of God and the good weapons in our hands and at our saddle-bows for the safety of our lives.

After supper we sat.beneath the trees around the hospitable casa of our friend, and rehearsed the adventures and scenes of old times with a relish the stranger to wild frontier life can never know. Harry Linden is my senior by some years, and in the ordinary course of nature and civilized life should have lost his early penchant for Robinson Crusoe-like adventure; but such is the fascination of border life that I believe that at this very hour he would exchange all the comforts of the most elegant home in San Francisco or New York, and the best spring mattress ever made, for a seat by the camp-fire in Apache land, and a blanket and the warm sand of the desert for a bed,-and I am just boy enough to do the same at a moment's notice, did opportunity offer and duty permit. Sitting here under the trees in the valley of San Andreas, surrounded by appreciative friends and the enjoyments of refined society, he tells us of a long-planned expedition to the least known of the island groups of the Pacific, how one of these days he means to have his vessel rigged, manned, and provisioned for the trip; and laugh as we may at the idea of his going on such a voyage at his age, nothing will shake his earnestness in the project, or make him admit for an instant a doubt of his ultimately carrying it out successfully. This charm of danger needlessly incurred, 29 29 toil self-imposed, and reckless adventure in unknown lands, once felt, becomes a part of one's very being, and never fully loses its influence while life remains.

Next day my fair friend showed me where to fish for the largest trout, helped me with her own white hands to prepare the tackle, and took part with us in the sport A few more hours of swinging in the hammock, the last cigarrito was smoked, the last story told, and reluctantly I bade my kind friends of the valley of San Andreas good-by, beneath the laurel--and the buckeye--trees, and, mounting old Don Benito, galloped away toward the Golden City.

We are always happier for having been happy once; and I have lived longer, and I hope better, and enjoyed life more, for the recollection of that first paseár to the valley of San Andreas. And here, as we meet again to-night, the pleasant memory comes back to us and we talk it over once again with keenest satisfaction. In taking leave of our fair young friend I tell her that I start for Mexico in a few days for a long paseár under tropic skies; and, as we ride away in the gloaming of the evening, she bows gravely, and, in the soft Castilian tongue, as is the custom of the people in Spanish lands, bids me " Adios, Amigo !" adding, with a trace of something more than mere conventional politeness In tier voice, "And the peace of God be with you!"

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CHAPTER II. IN THE MISTS OF THE PACIFIC.

The Crystal Springs.--The Music of the Night.--The California Night Singer and the Legend of the Easter Eggs.--The Cañada del Reymundo.--Over the Sierra Morena.--Down the Coast.--Pescadero and its Surroundings.--Pigeon Point and the Wrecks.--A Shipwrecked Ghost.--The Coast Whalers and their Superstitions.--An Embarcadero on the San Mateo Coast.--Ride to Point Año Nuevo.

RIDING on southward down the valley of San Andreas in the cool, quiet evening, we came to the Crystal Springs, one of the most beautiful of the summer resorts in the vicinity of San Francisco. There is a fine, large hotel, with a broad piazza all around it, just the place to sit and smoke a good cigar, have a quiet talk with your friends, and admire the beauty of the surrounding scenery, brought out in all its loveliness by the full autumn moon which was pouring down its full flood of mellow light upon the scene. The San Mateo Creek runs through a wild, tangled thicket in front of the house; parterres of flowers of every hue, in full bloom, till the intervening grounds; and on the west the steep mountain sweeps around in a grand curve, forming a magnificent amphitheatre beside which the Coliseum is but the toy playhouse of a child. Away back in 31 31 the air, cutting sharply against the horizon, stand great pines, from whose broad-spreading branches float long steamers of green-gray moss, giving an air of great age and venerableness to the forest. Densely wooded are all the intervening hill-sides with the fragrant laurel, tea-oak and many flowering shrubs interwoven with the glorious madroño, whose crown of bright-green leaves contrasts so pleasingly with its bark of brilliant scarlet-the madroño ought to be the favorite tree with the Fenian Brotherhood, who are so fond of seeing the green above the red. Sitting on the broad piazza, in the cool evening, we hear the whistle of the locomotive at San Mateo, only four miles away over the hills to the eastward. As the last faint echoes die away in the cañons, a coyote wolf, which has been prowling stealthily in the vicinity of the hotel, sets up a sharp, shrill yell in answer. Other wolves, far and near--there may be half a dozen of them, but it seems as if there were a thousand--take up the cry, and in an instant the woods and the night are filled with music, not exactly such as Longfellow sings of, but which for want of better will serve to induce "the cares which infest the day" to "fold their tents like the Arab, and as silently steal away."

Half a dozen huge Newfoundland dogs, good-natured, lazy fellows enough at the best, but anxious to convince the generous public that they are of some importance in the world, and make a show of earning their bread and butter now that their master is at home, roused from their slumbers by the howling 32 32 of the coyote, with loud yells dash off into the woods, as if determined to exterminate the whole vile race right there and then, taking good care, however, to yelp their very loudest at every jump, that the gentlemen in gray may have abundant notice of their coming, and get out of the way ill time to avoid unpleasant results to either party. I have known valiant duelists start out from San Francisco to shed each other's blood, but manage to produce much the same result by simply making so much noise as to attract the attention of the police, and insure the arrest of one or both parties before reaching the field of honor. Instinct and reason are much the same in their practical workings after all.

When the wolves have decamped, and the dogs, with the air of conquering heroes, have returned from the bloodless Campaign, and turned in for the night, the cigars are smoked out and the stories told, our company breaks up, and we retire for the night. Through the open window comes at intervals a sweeter music than that to which we have just been listening: the low, Sweet song of a little bird of the finch species, which is found, though not in great abundance, in all the coast range country of California. This little night-singer stays concealed in the thickets all day, uttering no note to give notice of his whereabouts; but when the cool shadows of the evening fall it comes forth into the gardens, and through all the long hours of the otherwise silent night, pours out its sweet and plaintive song as if in mourning for the loved and lost. In 33 33 size and form it is not unlike the common wild California canary, to which it is doubtless allied; but,' curiously enough for a night-singer, its plumage is far more brilliant and beautiful, ---- green, orange, and blue, with a narrow bar of red on the wings. I have never been able to see it save in captivity, but many a night have I lain awake in my home on Russian Hill, in San Francisco, and listened to its plaintive little song as it flitted among the shrubbery in the garden, wondering what manner of bird it might be. One day a Mexican residing in the western part of the city, who gains a livelihood by trapping canaries and linnets, offered me a pair of these little beauties for two dollars, apologizing for the high price by saying that they were very rare and caught with difficulty. Struck by their beauty and delicate brilliancy of plumage, I asked him if they ever sang. "Oh, yes, señor; but only in the night. You must remember the story of the bird which sang all night before the tomb in which lay the body of the Saviour of the world"--touching his hat respectfully--" after the crucifixion? Well, señor, these birds are of the same!"

Then the story of the Easter-night singer of far-off Palestine, as I had heard it told in other lands, came back me; and going home I read with fresh interest the beautiful lines by Fitzjames O'Brien: You have heard, my boy, of the One who died,Crowned with keen thorns and crucified;And how Joseph the wealthy--whom God reward--Cared for the corpse of the martyred Lord,And piously tombed it within the rock,And closed the gate with a mighty block.

34 34

"Now, close by the tomb, a fair tree grew,With pendulous leaves and blossoms of blue;And deep in the green tree's shadowy breastA beautiful singing-bird on her nest,Which was bordered with mosses like malachiteAnd held four eggs of an ivory white."Now, when the bird from her dim recessBeheld the Lord in his burial dress,And looked on the heavenly face so pale,And the dear feet pierced with the cruel nail,Her heart now broke with a sudden pang,And out of the depth of her sorrow she sang."All night long, till the moon was up,She sat and sang in her moss-wreathed cupA song of sorrow, as wild and shrillAs the homeless wind when it roams the hill;So full of tears, so loud and long,That the grief of the world seemed turned to song."But soon there came, through the weeping night,A glimmering angel clothed in white;And he rolled the stone from the tomb away,Where the Lord of the earth and the heavens lay;And Christ arose in the cavern's gloom,And in living lustre came from the tomb."Now the bird that sat in the heart of the treeBeheld the celestial mystery,And its heart was filled with a sweet delight,And it poured a song on the throbbing night;Notes climbing notes, still higher, higher,They shoot to heaven like spears of fire."When the glittering, white-robed angel heardThe sorrowing song of that grieving bird,And heard the following chant of mirth,That hailed Christ, risen from the earth,He said, `Sweet bird, be forever blest;Thyself, thy eggs, and thy moss-wreathed nest."And ever, my child, since that blessed night,When death bowed down to the Lord of light,

35 35

The eggs of that sweet bird change their hue,And burn with led, and gold, and blue;Reminding mankind, in their simple way,Of the holy marvel of Easter-day."

I know that in a little time the march of reason will sweep this old tradition, as it has already swept away others which were once regarded as essentials of the Christian faith; nevertheless I envied the simple, uneducated bird-catcher his childlike, unquestioning belief, and the song of the sweet night-singer of California will ever henceforth fall upon my ear more gratefully for its pleasant association with that story of holy marvel, which, although some of us may doubt, we must surely all alike admire.

The sun was high in the heavens, next day, when I said good-by to Albert at Crystal Springs, and rode away into the Sierra Morena Mountains. It was a California autumn morning,--and, in saying that, I have left nothing unsaid in the way of description. Turning southwestward, the road, one of the finest I have ever ridden over, winds round and round, in and out, along the steep sides of a deep, rocky carton, for miles, ascending by regular and easy grades the dividing ridge between the Bay of San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean. When nearly at the summit I paused to rest my panting horse and look back upon the scene below. And such a scene! It was a variation of that described' in the story of my paseár , but, if possible, even more entrancingly beautiful. Eastward, the Bay of San Francisco, calm, unruffled, and blue, glittered in the 36 36 sun. The ocean mists rolling in through the Golden Gate half hid the towns which skirt the bay. The hills of Alameda, high and etherealized, rested like great straw-colored and purple clouds against the horizon; while Mount Diablo, monarch of the inland country, reared his dark head into the blue sky, above the mists and the lower mountains, like some great rocky island, seen from the shores of an unknown sea. Southward, between the hills of San Mateo and the Sierra Morena, stretching away for miles toward the redwood-covered heights of Santa Clara, lay the ever-beautiful Cañada del Reymundo. Live-oak groves are scattered through it, and near its centre rests a quiet little lake, with an island of green tules in the middle. All around the sides of the Valley, among the groves.in the little cañons, nestle quiet farm-houses, ad in the centre, upon an elevated mesa , stands the last relic of the old semi-feudal Spanish-American times. This is an adobe house of one story, with broad veranda, formed by the wide roof being carried out all around. No garden, no grainfields, not a single fruit-tree flourishes near it. The ranchero who built it and dwelt here among his herds, and paid tribute to the Holy Mother Church and the Most Catholic monarch, Don Carlos "of Spain, and India King," some eighty years ago, thought the country capable of no higher improvement, and dreamed not of the paradise it was to become when he and his should give place to the stranger who dwelt beyond the great Sierra Nevada somewhere. He built no roads, planted no trees, and left behind only 37 37 ??? low-roofed jaical , and the musical Spanish name which he gave to the valley.

On again. One of those curious blue-and-brown birds, with peaked cap and tail as disproportionately long as that of a peacock, called here a "Road Runner," and in Mexico " El Correro del Camino ,"--the courier of the road,--which never flies if it can avoid it, but runs with a speed which distances the fleetest horse, darted along in the road ahead of us. I galloped after it, vainly trying to get within shooting distance, until, tired of the sport, it jumped over the side of the mountain and disappeared in the bushes of the cañon below. The road is cut most of the way out of the solid rock, and you look down from time to time almost perpendicularly into cañons hundreds and hundreds of feet. It is a succession, on a modified scale, of Cape Horn and the scenery on the South Fork of the American River in the Sierra Nevada, on the Central Pacific Railroad route, and at the same time on a scale quite large enough to try to the utmost the nerves of timid travelers.

The flying mists, which had been scudding in broken clouds over the sierra, lifted and rolled away as I crossed the summit and began to descend towards Spanish Town. The Pillaritos Creek murmured hundreds of feet below, in the narrow cañon, near the mouth of which, half hidden iii shade-trees, is the hamlet of Spanish Town. Beyond rolls the deep-blue waters of the broad Pacific, and Half-Moon Bay lies a few miles to the northward. I pass a wayside house where the yard is 38 38 full of goats and everything speaks of Spanish-Americanism.

A woman with lustrous black hair and eyes, and oval, olive-hued face, comes out with her black shawl or rebosa , folded Andalusian fashion around her head and shoulders. The Moors left those eyes, and that oval face and tawny-olive skin, in Spain; but the little girl who follows her has a fairer complexion, a sharper-cut face, and light-brown hair. Thus, little by little, we are conquering Spanish-America. At a little roadside grocery a whole family of Mexican or native Californians are in attendance. I called for a real's (ten cents) worth of apples, and they weighed me out four pounds; one holding the scales, another putting in the apples in a pail which a third held, while the rest looked on. It took the whole family to sell just ten apples; but such is " el costumbre del pais, señor' "--the custom of the country, sir; and who is to commit the sacrilege of innovation?

Two miles above Spanish Town, at the toll-gate, is a small, neat farm, owned by an intelligent American, past the meridian of life. As he came out to take the toll, I engaged him in conversation. He has one hundred and sixty acres, nearly one hundred of which are under cultivation. In the valley he raises beans, onions, fruit, etc., and on the hilltops he has his early potato-fields, from which he sends to market the finest potatoes in December, January and February, after the lowland crops have become "old" and less salable, He has three acres of strawberries in full bearing. These he irrigates, 39 39 and thus secures fine crops all the year round. He sometimes gets as high as a dollar per pound for strawberries at Christmas and New Year's, and he estimates that the crop yields him, on an average, twenty cents per pound in coin the year round. He has no family, and wants to sell out and go to Santa Barbara, where he has relatives. He thinks his farm, with improvements, is worth forty dollars per acre. The potato and onion-fields he rents to a party of Portuguese. There is a family of Mexicans upon the upper end of his ranche, but most of his neighbors are Germans though the population of the town is about equally divided between native Californians, Americans and Europeans. His sole companion is a Chinaman, who carries on the strawberry culture and does the housework, and is, as he told me, worth any other two men, though he gets but two thirds the wages. He could not say much for the society of the neighborhood, nor can I.

Spanish Town contains little to attract a stranger. Turning southward here, the road runs through a rich, sloping plain, between the ocean and the mountains, and for eight on ten miles poses through one continued grainfield The country was parceled out at first in great ranches of many thousand acres, each held under Spanish or Mexican grants. These have been sold to Americans, and cut up to some extent into smaller portions, but the farms are still immense, and far too large for the most profitable cultivation. Barley and oats, principally the latter, are cultivated. The crop was cut months ago, but owing to the lack of "steamers," as the inhabitants 40 40 here term the Steam thrashing machine, most of it still lies in the fields ungathered. The straw becomes blackened by the fog, but the grain does not seem to suffer much. Thrashers were at work all along the road, and great piles of grain in sacks waiting to be hauled to Half-Moon Bay and shipped to San Francisco, were seen in many fields. The harvesting is done mainly by extra hands hired by the day. I met dozens of them tramping along the dusty roads, with their blankets on their backs. They do not stay long in a place, but get from two to three dollars in coin and their board for such time as they work, and then move on. Some of the old California Mission Indians still reside here, and work in the fields; and Chinamen are making their way on the farms and in the dairy. They get from fifteen dollars per month to nine dollars and fifty cents per week, and board themselves. A few get as much as two dollars per day in the harvest fields, and are highly spoken of by the farmers, many of whom, however, are laid to give them employment, lest their fields of grain and stacks should be fired in revenge by the European laborers, who are savagely opposed to them. The farms in the hills are smaller and more closely cultivated. Onions, beets and mustard are largely grown.

The great beets of California are among her vegetable wonders, and have often sorely taxed the credulity of Eastern people. Californian though I am, I must own up that there is something just a trifle like an imposition on outsiders in this matter of the production of these mammoth beets. This 41 41 is the way the thing is done. The largest beet in this soil may attain a weight of fifty or sixty pounds the first year; I do not think any grow larger. One is Selected, carefully dug up, so as not to injure the root, in the fall, and housed during the rainy season. Then it is replanted in the spring, and instead of going to seed, as it would if left in the ground all winter, continues growing, and in the fall it is again dug up and housed, having probably attained a weight of eighty or ninety pounds. Next year it grows perhaps to one hundred or one hundred and ten pounds--the largest on record weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds, and was raised in Santa Cruz county--but now it is "played out," in California parlance, and wild not grow another year. How they manage to raise lettuce seven feet in circumference, and cucumbers five feet two inches long and eight inches in circumference, such as are often on exhibition in the California Market, San Francisco, I do not know--but they do it.

The soil here is wonderfully rich, and often, as I have seen myself, from ten to twenty feet in depth, of a black loam, like that of the western prairies.

The road winds along the bold shore of the Pacific for miles-now passing over steep divides, and again descending to the bottom of precipitous cañons. At times the view of the ocean, for a long distance up and down the coast, is unobstructed, and from one height I counted not less than fifteen whales spouting at intervals as they sported in the calm blue waters, or sought their accustomed food 42 42 along the edges of the kelp-fields, which in many places extend far out to sea. Whales have their parasites and minor annoyances as land-lubbers have, and sometimes they become so annoyed by the barnacles which fix themselves upon them that they run into shallow water and endeavor to rid themselves of their tormentors by rubbing their huge carcasses upon the sandy bottom. It not unfrequently happens that in so doing they venture too far in shore, and, being caught by the surf or the receding tide, are stranded and finally left to die high and dry upon the land. Every year whales are thus stranded on the beach in the Vicinity of San Francisco, and their bones may be seen at frequent intervals scattered all along the shore from Point Lobos southward for many miles.

Meeting by the way an old Mission Indian, who, as he told me, was born and had always lived near Pescadero, ad could hardly speak a word of English, though well posted in the Spanish tongue, I asked him how far it was to Pescadero. "Possibly a mile, or a league, or two leagues, señor." "Well, how far is it to Point Año Nuevo?" "Oh, señor, it must be a very long way! I think it is in the neighborhood of the other world!" I have never yet been able to get the remotest approximation to a correct statement of distance from a California Indian, those who were reared and educated by the old padres at the Spanish missions being as utterly ignorant on the subject as the diggers of the mountains, who never knew or cared to know anything beyond the condition of the grasshoppers on 43 43 which they fatten in the summer season, and the acorn and piñon crops on which they subsist during the winter.

After a ride of thirty miles from Crystal Springs, done at a gallop, up hill and down, nearly all the way,' and in just four hours and ten minutes, I reached the little town of Pescadero, in a small but fertile valley some two miles from the ocean, a popular summer resort for San Franciscans, and a favorite head-quarters of the hunters and fishermen of the coast. The long ride had given me a savage appetite, and as the fog had drifted in from the ocean, and shut down cold and damp on the landscape, a broiled trout dinner and a warm wood-fire never seemed more welcome than they did that evening at Pescadero.

The population of Pescadero does not exceed three hundred souls, who depend on the lumber-mills in the great redwood forest, the dairies, the grain and potato ranches, and summer visitors from San Francisco, for life and trade. The heavy fogs, and cold, raw ocean winds are unfavorable to grapes and other fruits, but potatoes thrive wonderfully, and are extensively cultivated on the rich bottom lands around the town. Half the "ground fruit" consumed in San Francisco comes from this section of the coast. An old ranchero told me that for ten years the average price of potatoes had been one dollar and twenty-five cents per hundred pounds, and the usual yield from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five bags, at one hundred and twenty-five Pounds each, per acre. The digging 44 44 is done by native Californians, or "greasers." Land, in the great ranches back on the road to Spanish Town, is worth from forty to fifty dollars per acre, but the potato lands, near this town, are worth one hundred dollars, or even more. A few old California Indians work in the fields quite faithfully after their fashion, but none of the old hands equal the Chinaman "year out and year in." Much lumber is hauled from the mountains, and, with potatoes, grain and vegetables, is shipped for San Francisco from the embarcadero at Pigeon Point, six miles south of Pescadero.

My stay in Pescadero being limited, mine host of the Swanton House volunteered, Californian-like, to take me down the coast to see the sights. A six-mile ride over an open, rolling country, devoted chiefly to grazing, brought us to Pigeon Point, a famous place for wrecks, and a depot of the coast whalers. It gets its name from the wreck of the Carrier Pigeon, a noble clipper-ship which drifted in here one night in the winter of 1853-4, and was shattered To pieces upon the terrible reefs running out from the foot of the bold promontory. Here, on the high headland, are clustered some dozen cottages, inhabited by the coast whalers and their families. These men are all "Gees"--Portuguese--from the Azores or Western Islands. They are a stout, hardy-looking race, grossly ignorant, dirty, and superstitious. They work hard, and are doing well in business. As we rode up, two long, sharp, single-masted boats, with odd-looking sails, shot out to sea. On the Point, by the side of flag-staffs, on

PIGEON POINT

45 45 which signals were to be hoisted to guide the boats in their pursuit, crouched two of the party with their sea glasses, intently watching the boats and sweeping the horizon.

Are there any whales about? Oh, yes, plenty! and the speaker handed us his glass. About three miles out was a large school of the black, hump hack species sporting in the nearly smooth sea, rising to the surface to blow, showing their black hacks, and going down again among the sardines on which they were feeding. The boats run out with sails set, and do not take in their canvas until a whale is harpooned. If a new school is discovered, the boats are signaled by the party on the Point. Looking through the glass we saw the boats running for different whales. All was bustle and excitement on board, the harpooners standing in the bows ready to strike, and every man at his post. One of the signal men could speak a little English, and thus soliloquized for our benefit: "E blow, e blow! One close herd starboard boat! Carraho, now he run! Ze son of seacook, how he run; dam a he! Believe myself he get away!" Then, carried away by his feelings, he proceeded to curse in good Portuguese, honestly and squarely, for fifteen minutes, and I felt my respect for him rising almost to the point of admiration.

Tired of watching, we at last started off to see what else there was of interest at the station, When we returned, near Evening, the boats were far down on the edge of the horizon, and had apparently fastened to a whale, while another large 46 46 school was playing undisturbed within half. a mile of the shore. The trypots were placed on the other side of the Point, and there we found a party of men busy extracting the oil from heaps of blubber ready cut up from a huge humpback whale; flukes and wreck lay on the beach below. They were dripping and fairly saturated with the oil, and everything around was in the same Condition. The stinking fluid had run down the face of the bluff to the water's edge, and the whole place was redolent of the perfume. A row of casks filled with oil testified to the success of the business. The tryers told us that they had cut up twelve whales already that season, and had killed and lost ten more. The fall season usually begins in October, but that year the whales had come down from the Arctic regions a month or six weeks earlier, and business had opened good. est year they caught only two humpbacks, the rest being "California grays." This year, thus far, the whales killed had all been humpbacks. A good big fellow will yield one hundred barrels of oil, but the average is perhaps thirty-five. Whale-fishing is carried on in this manner at San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and other points all along the coast down to Cape St. Lucas. On the hill I noticed a pile of the blubber scraps from which the oil had been boiled, which are used for lighting fires to guide the boats hoe on dark nights Did it ever by any possibility occur to these guileless Gees, that' a fire thus lighted at this high point on a dark night might possibly be mistaken for a lighthouse light, and thus a noble vessel, freighted

TRYING OUT.

47 47 with precious lives, and freight liable to get badly scattered when cast ashore by the waves, be lured to destruction? There have been many wrecks along this rocky coast, and underwriters seldom secure much of the cargo

There are no real harbors between San Francisco and San Diego, about four hundred miles south, and very few places where a vessel can in the fairest weather run alongside a wharf to load or unload. At Pigeon Point there is a semicircular bay, partially sheltered from the northern winds, but the heavy swells rolling in from the southwest prevent any wharves being erected. Out about two hundred yards from the shore is a high monument-like rock, rising to a level with the steep rock bluff which half incloses the bay. From the bluff to the top of this rock stretches a heavy wire cable, kept taut by a capstan. A vessel rounding the reef runs into the sheltered cove under this hawser, and then casts anchor. Slings running down on the hawser are rigged, and her cargo lifted from her deck load by load, run up into the air fifty to one hundred feet, then hauled in shore, and landed upon the top of the bluff. Lumber, hay in bales like cotton, fruit, potatoes, vegetables, dairy products, etc., etc., are in like manner run out and lowered at the right moment upon the vessel's decks. If a southwester comes on she slips her anchor and runs out to sea till it is over. This system is in extensive use along the coast, though in some places lighters and tugs are employed to load and unload.

This part of the coast has a terrible name, and 48 48 may well be dreaded by sailors. Six miles south of Pigeon Point is Point Año Nuevo (New Year). The shore between bends inward, and all along black reefs of rocks rear their ugly fangs, like wild beasts watching for their prey. A current sweeps in from Point Año Nuevo toward Pigeon Point, and many a vessel has been drawn in in the fog, to be dashed on the rocks. Off Point Año Nuevo is a desert island of three or four acres of sand and rocks, a favorite resort of sea-lions and sea-birds. On this island the United States government proposed to erect a lighthouse, but the owners of the great Spanish ranch of seventeen thousand acres, to whom it belongs, asked forty thousand dollars for a deed of it,--they bought the whole grant originally for about twenty thousand dollars, and have realized twice that sum from partial sales; and so it was decided to place it on Pigeon Point, where a site equally as good was secured for five thousand dollars. Ultimately the demand for a site at Point Año Nuevo, at something like a reasonable rate, was conceded, and there will soon be a lighthouse on both points.

The most noted wrecks hereabouts have been as follows: 1. The clipper-ship Carrier Pigeon, of eleven hundred tons, from Boston, wrecked at Pigeon Point in, the winter of 1853-4, the vessel and cargo being a total loss, although the crew escaped. 2. The ship Sir John Franklin, from Baltimore, with the cargo of the Pennell, condemned at Rio de Janeiro; lost at Point Año Nuevo, six years ago; captain, first mate, and eleven of the crew drowned. 3. The 49 49 British iron bark Coya, from Newcastle, with coal and passengers; wrecked between the two points, four years ago. No danger was suspected in this case, until in the early part of the night the vessel, supposed to be forty miles off shore, was discovered to be among the breakers. Before she could be put about she struck the reef, rolled over into the deep water beyond, and went down in an instant, carrying with her twenty-seven people, including three women. Two men and a boy, half naked, benumbed and exhausted, were cast upon the rocks, and reached a ranch, the only survivors of the thirty souls on board. 4. The ship Hellespont (British), from Newcastle, eleven hundred tons of coal, lost near Pigeon Point one night in the winter of 1869-70. Seven men perished, but a portion of the crew, naked, bleeding, bruised, and more dead than alive, succeeded in reaching the fishermen's station.

On the sandy bluff at Point Año Nuevo is an inclosure within which lie buried, side by side, forty of the victims of these terrible disasters. Others were removed by their friends, and one, the mate of the Hellespont, sleeps, undisturbed by the merry prattle of the children or the wild screams of the sea-gulls, beside one of the whalers' houses at Pigeon Point.

"You see that grave right behind that house?" said my companion. "That is where we buried the mate of the Hellespont. She went ashore in the night within a mile of the Point, and, owing to the roar of the breakers, the whalemen knew nothing about it. One of the sailors, bleeding from many wounds, more dead than alive, and wholly naked, 50 50 every rag having been torn from him in his buffeting with the waves, managed to crawl up the bluff, and, groping in the darkness, stumbled upon the trail leading to the Point. Just as the day was breaking, he had crept within sight of the cottages. One of the whalemen coming out met the poor fellow at the door, and raising the cry, `A ghost! a ghost!' ran back with such speed as his trembling limbs would give him. The supposed ghost, seeing a chance for life, and being too cold to speak, staggered after him. In his terror the Portuguese stumbled and fell headlong upon the floor, and the shipwrecked mariner stumbled also and fell upon him. The other Gees, hearing the outcry, ran to the spot. and fell over the prostrate couple, and the horrible and grotesque were strangely mixed. At last the ghost related his story, and the frightened fishermen started down in search of the other survivors, two or three of whom were met crawling along the road. The bodies of others were lying on the beach, or tossed to and fro by the breakers, while the fragments of the wreck strewed the shore for miles. There is a telegraph station on the Point, communicating with the Merchants' Exchange in San Francisco and with the station at Pescadero. and the news of the disaster was soon known along the coast. We placed the body of the mate into a coffin, and asked the Portuguese to help us to bring it to the Point for burial, but the superstitious fellows would not touch the corpse for love or money. I coaxed, and pleaded, and appealed to their humanity, but all in vain. Then I swore that I would get even 51 51 on them. We went up there and commenced digging a grave. When they saw what we were doing, they began to comprehend the Situation, and so far conquered their prejudices as to offer to help us carry the corpse up the hill. `Not much, darlings of my heart; I have change my mind!' I said; and I had. I meant to give them a lesson which would last them a lifetime, or make them move their quarters. So three of us lugged it to this spot, and buried it beside the cottage, and his ghost has annoyed them every stormy night since, and will probably worry them as long as they stay here."

Thus chatting, we rode on down the coast, and when abreast of Point Año Nuevo, drove up to the door of the hospitable proprietor of Steele's Dairy.

52 52

CHARTER III. IN THE MISTS OF THE PACIFIC.

Steele's Ranch.--The Model Dairy of California.--Captain Graham.--A Semi-Tropical Garden.--Frightful Contest With a Grizzly.--Bear and for-Bear.--The True King of Beasts.--The Model of Conservatism.--How the Hunters lay for Bruin.--A Foolhardy Feat.--An Adventure on the San Joaquin.--A Bear on a Spree.--Don't stand on Ceremony with a Bear.--How a California Bear entertained a Mexican Bull.--How Native Californians Lasso the Bear.--How a Yankee did it.--The Bear ahead.--Pebble Beach of Pescadero.--Cona.--The oldest Inhabitant.--Don Felipe Armas.--Don Salvador Mosquito.--The Man who was a Soldier.--A Hundred Years ago.--Catching Salmon Trout.--Shooting Sea-Lions.--Wild Scene on the Sea-Shore.

STEELE'S is one of the largest dairy ranches on the Pacific coast. It is owned and run by the brothers Steele, formerly of Delaware County, New York. General Steele, who served in the Union army during the war, and the deputy-sheriff of Delaware County, who was murdered by the "Anti-Renters," some years ago, were brothers of the proprietors. There are two fine two-story frame houses on the ranch, a fourth of a mile apart, which, unlike the majority of houses on this part of the coast, are elegantly finished, surrounded with shade-trees and gardens, and provided with all the comforts of life. We found one of the Steeles at home. He told us that in the earlier part of the 53 53 season they milked between six and Seven hundred Cows; but as the feed grows Shorter with the advance of the dry season, the number gradually dwindles down twenty-five to fifty percent. As fast as the cows dry up they are sent to the mountains and allowed to remain until the rains commence, in November and December. The Steeles came here about nine years ago, and rented this ranch of seventeen thousand acres for six thousand dollars per annum, with the privilege of purchasing all south of the Gazos Creek for six dollars per acre. The ranch was granted under the Mexican Republic to old Captain Graham, a Cherokee Indian half-breed, formerly a Rocky Mountain trapper. He had no business tact, and old age and aguardiente combined had completely unfitted him for carrying on this estate, and the still larger and more valuable one known as Seyante, near Santa Cruz. Mortgages and lawsuits eat it all up, and it passed out of his hands for the beggarly sum of twenty thousand dollars. it was considered one of the most barren and unattractive localities on the coast, but the Steeles saw its capabilities, and settled upon it. They soon purchased seven thousand acres of the land in the vicinity of their present homes, and went into the dairy business on a large scale. Others imitated their success on a smaller scale, and there are now over fifteen hundred cows on the ranch. These are fed only on the native "wild oats," which in place of grass cover all the open country of California, but with proper effort vegetables could be raised, to double the milk-producing capacity of the 54 54 ranch. Alfalfa might flourish in some localities and thus largely increase the feed; but the long dry season, extending from the first of May to November or December, is too much for the tame grasses of the Atlantic States, and no improVement in that direction appears practicable. The natiVe wild oats, however, furnish both green feed and nourishing hay naturally, no cutting or housing being required. As the ground grows dry under the heat of the summer sun, the oats dry up and become of a bright golden color. All the nutritious properties are perfectly preserved, and so long as no rain falls upon this standing hay, it is eaten with avidity by the cattle and keeps them sleek and fat. When the first rain comes, the oats break down and fall upon the earth, and in a few weeks totally disappear, leaving nothing whatever for the cattle to feed upon until the seed, which during the summer has been sowing itself in the cracks and crevices of the earth formed by the drying up of the soil, and been trampled in and covered up by the hoofs of the animals, starts into new life and in a few days clothes all the hills in vivid green again.

Six years ago the Steeles made, from one day's milk of their own cows, a cheese of the richest description, weighing within a fraction of four thousand pounds (two tons), which they presented to the Sanitary Commission. It was exhibited in San Francisco until it had produced several thousands of dollars, and then cut up and sold at one dollar in gold per pound for the benefit of the cause. A cousin of the family, who lives with them, enjoys the 55 55 rare distinction of being the only man in California elected, in 1869, to the Legislature fairly and squarely on the Fifteenth Amendment issue. They find their business so profitable that they have bought another ranch of only forty-five thousand acres in San Luis Obispo County, which they were then stocking. They intend to carry on both dairies, but the business of each will be kept separate, and the style of the firms will be "Steele Brothers of San Mateo," and "Steele Brothers of San Luis Obispo." For the prices realized for their butter and cheese--they are too far from the city to sell their milk--see the market quotations in the San Francisco dailies. Yet California imports immense quantities of butter and cheese annually, while there are still millions of acres of cheap, unoccupied grazing lands scattered all through the State, from San Diego to Del Norte, and from the coast to the far recesses of the Sierra Nevada.

Mr. Steele asked us to walk back into the garden, and see what could be done in six years in the way of fruit-raising on land which had, until quite recently, been supposed fit only to raise jackass-rabbits and long-horned, worthless, and savage Spanish cattle. A little "arroyo" comes down from the capon in the mountains near the house, and makes a bend around the ground selected for the garden. Along the bank of this "arroyo" willows and other trees were planted to aid the large, scattered live-oaks which stood there in breaking the winds. Thus sheltered, the apple, pear, fig, plum, apricot, peach, soft-shelled almond, and other trees, grew up like weeds, and 56 56 soon were loaded with luscious fruit. From one apple-tree, the second year after it was planted out, Mr. Steele picked two bushels of the finest apples. The pear-trees I found had every branch propped up separately, and on some the fruit would weigh at least four times as much as the entire tree, roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. The figs were covered with the second crop of the season, nearly ripe, and the plums were like great yellow balls of sugar and butter. All the fruit is perfect; even the grapes, which flourish best in the hot, sunny valleys, being large and delicious. Every variety of vegetable seemed to flourish; golden squashes and pumpkins covered the ground, and luscious melons lay ripening in the sun. Among the curiosities we noticed a bed of peanuts. These pets of the Bowery patrons grow luxuriantly in California, being largely cultivated by the Chinese in Sacramento Valley, and are larger and better than any imported; the tops look something like alfalfa. All this without irrigation or other cultivation than spading and hoeing, in the most inhospitable climate found in California below the snow-belt of the Sierra Nevada.

The grizzly bear still prowls in the redwoods, and occasionally comes down to levy tribute on the rancheros. My friend showed me where two huge grizzlies were seen lying in an arroyo sunning themselves only a few days before. The party who saw them had lost no cattle of that description, and he, in the expressive language of California, "got up and dusted" in the opposite direction as fast as his horse could carry him. And well he might. Mr

LASSOING A GRIZZLY.

57 57 Steele pointed out where a fearful scene was enacted just above his garden in 1867. An old she-bear came down with her two cubs in the day-time and seized a hog. Two men employed on the ranch, both Portuguese, started to rescue the hog. One had a gun, the other only a garden mattock. They found her by the fence eating the hog, and yelled at her to drive her away. She accepted the challenge, and with a growl dashed over the fence and after them. The man with the gun pointed it full-cocked at her head, but, as he afterward admitted, when he felt her hot breath in his face, became demoralized, dropped the weapon and jumped over the fence. His companion followed his example, and they jumped back and forth for some minutes with the enraged brute in close pursuit. At length the man who had the mattock started to run across the field toward the house; but the bear caught him, threw him down, bit him through the thigh, and then started after the other assailant. Had the wounded man feigned death he would have been saved; but not understanding grizzly fighting, he jumped up and began shouting for help. At this she turned upon him more infuriated than ever, and, seizing him by the side, literally tore him in pieces, killing him instantly. The other man escaped. The next morning the bear, bear-like, returned to finish the hog, and was shot by a party lying in wait for her.

Three or four years ago a San Franciscan staying at the Forest Home, on the mountains between Santa Cruz and San José, a few miles east of this place, was one day digging up a honeysuckle bush 58 58 near the house, when he saw something stir in the bushes and gave it a poke with the hoe. A moment later the ladies saw him vault over the fence into the door-yard, with a grizzly at his heels. He managed to escape, but left a portion of his pantaloons behind as a keepsake. That night the family slept in the second story of the house with the windows fastened down.

Almost every schoolboy in America is familiar with stories of the savage ferocity and immense strength of the grizzly bear of California. As a rule as I think I may have intimated elsewhere, hunters stories may safely be taken with some grains of allowance. The lion has generally been represented as the "King of Beasts," and numberless are the stories of his courage, strength, and ferocity. The truth is, the lion is nothing but a great overgrown cat, and his courage is just that of the cat on a large scale, and nothing more. A cat will fight when cornered, from sheer excess of cowardice, but she always prefers running. Find the weight of a cat and that of a lion, and just so many times as the lion is heavier than the cat, just so much more fight and courage of the same character exactly you will find in him. But the stories of the dangerous character of the grizzly, unlike those relating to the lion, are not and cannot be exaggerated. I know from observation that the oldest hunters are the most afraid of a contest with the grizzly, and take the greatest pains to avoid one. It is always the young, inexperienced hunter who sallies out half armed and alone to fight a grizzly; and one dose 59 59 is generally found quite enough to cure him of such folly.

The-plain truth is, that the grizzly is much better entitled to the title of King of Beasts than the lion. He fears neither man nor beast, and, instead of waiting to be attacked, will, if hungry or in any way out of humor, invariably become the attacking party whatever the odds against him. A lucky shot penetrating the heart, breaking the vertebra, or entering the brain, will sometimes cause almost instant death; but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the first shot only enrages and infuriates him, and renders him the most dangerous animal on earth to fall into the clutches of

The bear, like the hog, is "set in his ways," obstinate, and inclined to adhere, with unflinching pertinacity, to established customs and habits. He never goes back on the traditions of his race. He is the true natural conservative, believes to the utmost in the wisdom of his ancestors, and hates innovation. He forgets nothing, and learns nothing from experience. You can always count on his doing a certain thing in a certain contingency; as they say out west, "he averages well." He invariably buries his prey where he kills it, and returns at night to feed upon it. The knowledge of this fact has before now saved many a hunter's life. The man who has the courage and nerve to lie still as if dead, and never cringe when he is lifted by the bear's teeth, stands a chance of being buried under a pile of loose leaves and rubbish, and left for hours or until night; but woe to him if he moves so much a finger before 60 60 he knows that the bear is out of sight; his fate is then certain. Rancheros who are annoyed by the killing of their stock by grizzlies take advantage of this habit of the bear, and, on discovering where one has buried a steer, hog, or sheep, construct a platform high up on a large tree, if one is convenient, or dig a pit if no tree is near, and on the platform or in the pit await the bear's return at night, prepared to give him a volley from the largest and most formidable guns obtainable. I have often seen these platforms in the Sierra Nevada and Coast Range, and listened to the stories of the hunters who "went for" the grizzlies there.

On the 14th of March, 1871, George W. Teel, a youth of seventeen years, employed as a stock-herder on the foothills of the Mount St. Helena range, only five miles from Calistoga, discovered the track of a grizzly near his camp, and, boy-like, determined to lay for him. Six hundred yards from camp he dug a hole in the ground deep enough to wholly hide him, then hung a piece of venison on a tree near by, loaded his double-barreled gun with all the powder he dared place in it, and two-ounce slugs, and commenced his nightly vigil. About two o'clock in the morning he heard the snorting of a grizzly, and on looking up, he beheld, about eight feet off, two glaring eyes in the head of a large-sized bear. It was quite dark and foggy. The young man leveled his gun, took aim, and as he saw the bear raise his head, he fired, and the ball entered the animal's neck, breaking it, the slug ranging along the back and lodging under the skin. The

A CHANGE OF BASE.

61 61 bear was so close that the powder singed the hair on its breast. The grizzly had grasped in its teeth an oak bush, and in one leap fell dead at the feet of its captor.

Young Teel, having been successful, retired to his camp contented. At daybreak he left his couch and went to the place where he had killed the animal, and to his surprise found he had killed a grizzly of the size of an ox, weighing fully eight hundred pounds. He was in luck.

About the same time an experienced hunter in Southern California met with a terrible adventure, with more serious results. The affair is related by the Los Angeles Star , of February 19th, 1871 "John Searles, well known in this section of the State as an expert miner, left Soledad Cañon a few days ago, with a couple of friends, on a hunting expedition into the mountains north and east of La Liebre Rancho, which abound in deer and bear. Wednesday evening, the party encamped at the foot of a large cañon, and, leaving his friends, Mr. Searles took his rifle, a Spencer, and went up the cañon hunting; about a mile from camp, he killed and dressed a grizzly. Judging from the fresh sign that bear was plenty, he went on up the cañon, looking for a good place for a hunting camp. Half a mile from where he left his horse, in very thick brush, he came suddenly upon a large grizzly, breaking down the chemisal, in a thicket. After waiting in the trail a few minutes, with his gun ready, the bear emerged from the bush and made a rush at him. A ball from the Spencer knocked it down; but, almost immediately 62 62 rising, the bear--one of the largest kind--closed with him. The Spencer missing fire three times, a terrible hand-to-hand combat ensued, the man fighting for life with his fists, and the bear fighting for death with teeth and claws. The unequal conflict was not prolonged. The bear, weakened by loss of blood which poured from the rifle-ball wound, left the man for dead, and crawling into the brush, bled to death. After the bear left, Mr. Searles, who had feigned death, arose and examined his wounds. A bite from the bear had broken his lower jaw in several places, one of his arms were broken, and terrible wounds in the breast and side were bleeding fast. In this condition he crawled to his horse, mounted and rode to camp. He was brought to this city last night, by his friends, and best surgical aid summoned to his assistance, although it is feared that his injuries are fatal."

"If you play with the bear, you must take bear's play," is a common saying, but its full force and significance can only be appreciated by one who has had a tussle with a California grizzly.

The Stockton Republican of March 14th, 1871--the very day on which both the last related affairs occurred--gave the following account of a grizzly fight which occurred in the Valley of the San Joaquin a few days previously: "W. D Fowler and George Day were out hunting in the hills near Oristemba Creek, on the west side of San Joaquin River, in Stanislaus county, and came upon a large female grizzly bear, which they commenced firing at. The bear retreated slowly, and finally went to her lair 63 63 in some underbrush. The men kept up a steady fire at her at long range, the bear fighting desperately, tearing the brush and breaking limbs, but refusing to leave her position. After awhile, they noticed her carry off, one at a time, two small cubs and hide them in the bush. Finding their range too long to be effective, the hunters undertook to reach a position nearer the bear by going around a hill, and just when they were ascending the knoll to get a sight of her, she suddenly came over the brow and dashed at them in the most ferocious manner When discovered, she was so near them that escape was impossible, and the men stood their ground. On she came, tearing up the bushes and biting the shrubs. When within ten feet of Fowler he fired, and the shot broke her neck. She fell, and a shot from Day's rifle passed through her heart. It was a narrow escape. The hunters captured the two cubs the mother had hid in the brush, and another, which still remained in the nest. The two cubs hidden in the brush were colored precisely alike, while the one remaining in the nest was somewhat darker, from which the hunters concluded that the old bear they killed had only secreted her own young, and that the one remaining in the nest belonged to another bear and another family."

In the spring of 1869, a grizzly of the largest size "ranched" in the San Andreas Valley, near the new reservoir of the Spring Valley Water Company,--from which San Francisco is supplied,--within fifteen miles of the Golden City, for several weeks. Nobody about there had lost any bears, and nobody 64 64 went after him, so he fattened on the luxuriant clover and wild oats until the range began to give out, and then leisurely departed for the mountains. No one asked him to come, and nobody cared to delay his departure.

The grizzly is susceptible of domestication, but his moods are varied even then. A few years ago, while a museum was being moved from one part of San Francisco to another, old Samson--who chawed up "Grizzly Adams" once upon a time and rendered him beautiful for life--got out of his cage and took possession of the lower part of the city. A crowd of excited men and boys were soon at his heels, endeavoring to corral him, but for a long time without success. At length, tired of picking up damaged fruit from the gutters, upsetting ash-barrels and swill-barrels, and frightening all the women and children on the street out of their seven senses, he took refuge in a livery stable, where he was speedily surrounded and cornered. A number of men formed a hollow square around him with pitchforks, and an Irishman with a rope formed into a noose crawled up within reach of the beleaguered animal, and would have lassoed him, but for the fact that he was afraid to attempt it. "Why don't you slip it over his nose so that he can't bite?" shouted a bystander to him. "Well, you see I would, but thin I ain't acquainted with him jist!" was the hesitating reply. "Oh, never mind being acquainted with him; don't stand on ceremony with a bear. Just take off your hat and introduce yourself!" was the jeering rejoinder; and a roar of laughter from the entire 65 65 crowd testified to their keen appreciation of the joke. In January, 1870, I saw that same bear in the Plaza de Toros, in the city of Vera Cruz, Mexico, dig a hole large enough to hold an elephant, take a bull which had been set to fight him in his paws as if he were an infant, carry him to the pit, hurl him into it head foremost, slap him on the side with his tremendous paws until his breath was half knocked out of his body, and then hold him down with one paw while he deliberately buried him alive by raking the earth down upon him with the other. Samson had not a tooth to bite with at that time, they having been in the course of years and many fights worn down to the gums; but his strength was that of an elephant, and his claws, eight inches in length, curved like a rainbow and sharp as a knife would enable him to tear open anything made of flesh and blood as you or I would tear open a banana.

I am satisfied that an average grizzly could at any time whip the strongest African lion in a fair stand-up fight, while a full-grown bull is no more to him than a rat is to the largest house-cat.

The grizzly is becoming scarce in some parts of the State, but he is still found in great numbers in the Coast Range Mountains, from San Diego to Del Norte.

The Mexican or native Californian vaqueros in Santa Barbara and neighboring counties, riding out three or four together on their fleet, well-trained caballos , will without fear attack a grizzly, lasso him from different directions, and not only conquer him, 66 65 but actually so tie him up and entangle him as to eventually tire him out, and bring him into the town an unresisting prisoner.

But it is not every man who can do that little trick. The natives relate with pardonable exultation the story of a Yankee who came to California in early days, and soon acquired the trick of throwing the lasso with considerable dexterity. Hearing others talk of lassoing the grizzly, he started out full of confidence, to show them that he could do what any other man could do in that line. He soon raised a bear, threw the lasso with unerring aim, and reined back his trembling steed to give the brute an astonisher; when the rieta --which is attached always to the pommel of the saddle--came up taut Judge of his astonishment, my little friends, when that bear quietly assumed a sitting position, took hold of the rieta , and commenced to draw it in, hand over hand! The hapless descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers stuck to the horse and saddle until he saw the slack all drawn in, and the bear id horse coming rapidly together,--with what result could not be for a moment doubted,--then hastily descended and hunted a tree, abandoning the horse to the underwriters. He had learned only half of the trick. Two skillful men, operating from opposite sides, can master a, bear and choke him between them; but with only one man, one horse, and one bear, it is "bear and for bear" all the time.

Returning from the Steele Brothers' dairy at Point Año Nuevo, we passed the famed "Pebble Beach of Pescadero," a great resort, especially for

THE PULL ON THE WRONG SIDE.

67 67 ladies and children, in the summer season. Two ledges of sharp, jagged rocks jut out into the ocean about two hundred and fifty yards apart. Between them extends a sandstone bluff some thirty feet in height, in front of which stretches the beach some twenty to fifty feet in width at high or low tide. The beach is composed wholly of pebbles, from the size of a grain of wheat to that of a good-sized walnut. They are of all colors--white, red, brown, yellow, green, and variegated. Those of a beautiful opaline hue are most plentiful, and all are highly polished by attrition. Plain agates, moss-agates, cornelians and greenstones abound; and it is claimed that the more precious stones, including diamonds and rubies, are sometimes met with. The wife of Francisco Garcia, a well-known saloon-keeper on Montgomery Street, in San Francisco, has a genuine diamond which she found here, but I am not certain that it was placed there by purely natural agencies Hundreds of tons of the pebbles are washed up by every storm, and it is supposed that there is a layer or stratum of soft rock or clay in which they are imbedded, extending out into the sea from beneath the sandstone. Every day, in summer, many ladies and children go down to this beach pebble-hunting, carrying their lunch-baskets with them. They lie down at full length upon their faces on the drifts of polished pebbles, and with a stick dig down into the mass in search of special beauties. A quart of fine ones is a good day's work, and a lady of unusually fastidious taste will frequently work all day for a cupfull. Collections of these pebbles may be seen 68 68 in most of the better class of houses in San Francisco, and along the coast, though they cannot be considered as of any great value. I walked along the beach, but did not see any diamonds, and filled my pockets at random. Some of the moss-agate and similar stones make really handsome jewelry when cut and set in gold. Santa Cruz, lower down the coast, has also a pebble beach, but it is not equal to this at Pescadero.

At the beach I saw one of the characters of the locality--Cona, an immense Newfoundland dog. One day a little girl picking pebbles was caught by a huge roller from the Pacific, and carried out into the roaring Surf. Cona dashed in, caught her by the hair, and, after a stout struggle, brought her ashore alive. Of course Cona became a hero at once, and was duly lionized and spoiled. He enjoyed his dignity for some time, but eventually, finding himself neglected, he determined, by a bold stroke, to regain his popularity. Starting off for the beach, he saw a lady out swimming. He at once rushed in, seized her by the hair, and, in spite of her frantic resistance, landed her on the beach. He has become a necessary nuisance, and now insists on rescuing every man, woman, and child whom he catches swimming. He was looking for somebody to rescue when we came along there--but looked in vain; it was not a good day for rescuing, and he was sad at heart and dejected of mien.

The age attained by the native Spanish-American and usually part Indian-inhabitants of this coast is truly marvelous. I never knew but one of them 69 69 to die, and he might have lived to a green old age had he not been knocked down and run over by a runaway flour-mill truck team, on Pine street, in San Francisco, in I He was one hundred and four years old when he was thus prematurely cut off. It is an undoubted fact that Cimon Avilos, now or recently living at Todos Santos Bay, Lower California, was one of the military guard who presented arms when Padre Junipero Serra raised the cross at the Mission San Diego, in July, in the year of our Lord and Master 1769. This old conquistador had been a soldier in the Spanish army several years before that event, so that his age to-day can be hardly less than one hundred and twenty-five years. I have half a notion to go down there some day and get the jovial young fellow to come up to San Francisco, and take a little pasear over the Pacific Rail road. At Pescadero the claim to being "the oldest inhabitant" is at issue between Don Salvador Mosquito, a Mission Indian, and Señor Don Felipe Armas, a Californian of Spanish parentage. Armas remembers that when King Kamehameha I., of Hawaii, found that the cattle which had grown up wild on his islands had become an unbearable nuisance, and sent over to this country for vaqueros to kill them off--a historical fact--he, Armas, was selected as one of the party. He was then said to be thirty-five years of age, but so many years have since elapsed that he "has lost the run of them entirely." The number of his immediate descendants is still increasing at the rate of one yearly. Salvador Mosquito was baptized under another 70 70 name, but the stout-built Mission in which the ceremony was performed has long since crumbled into dust, and the vaqueros , who, under the direction of the Holy Fathers (also dead), went out to lasso him and bring him in for the glory of God, have for many a year been hunting ethereal cattle on phantom steeds over the ranchos of the blessed. I saw him the other day. He came down to the grocery to get a bottle of whisky, to which he is very partial when he cannot get milk, which is usually the case. This antidiluvian joker is always as dry as a fish. They trust him at the grocery until his bill amounts to two or three dollars, and then demand the coin. Lifting his hands, with the expression of a dying saint, the old rascal ejaculates, " Yo muy pobre, señor! Yo tengo nada, nada, nada! señor !" with solemn earnestness and every appearance of perfect honesty. But the clerk invariably goes for him in the most business-like manner Placing his elbow against the venerable patriarch's windpipe, he pushes him back against the wall, and, bringing the pressure up to about the point of one hundred and sixty pounds to the square inch, gradually cuts off his supply of breath and consequent power of resistance; then running the other hand into his pocket produces a more or less well-filled purse, from which he repays the establishment and squares the account. Then Don Salvador denounces the act as a "damned Yankee trick," goes out in front of the store, spits in the dust, mixes up a little mud, in which he dips his finger, and making crosses and other cabalistic signs upon the door, and windows, and walls, calls down the

THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL.

71 71 vengeance of an offended Heaven on the accursed tienda and everything therein. "May its walls fall out, its roof cave in its contents be ground to powder, and its site be given over, as a last crowning curse, to the everlasting habitation and proprietorship of the worthy descendants of the chief robber, son of a priest and a woman without virtue, who now occupies it!" Then he goes home with a heart full of wrath and righteous bitterness. Next morning he returns to see the ruins, is duly astonished at seeing the place stand unharmed, goes in and commences a new account. Mosquito appears to be a man of strong but transitory prejudices. His tribe many years ago dwindled down to some forty or fifty, who, under the command of the chief, Pomponio, made their headquarters in the redwood forest above Pescadero, near to the source of the stream now bearing his name. From thence they made periodical forays on the ranchos below; but as the good Fathers had caught and "converted" all their female friends, they finally went down to the old Mission Santa Clara or San Jose--I am not certain which--and, breaking into the corral one night. carried off a "mahala" apiece from under the very noses of their pious guardians. For this daring act of sacrilege they were pursued by the Spanish soldiers to their mountain fastness and exterminated. Mosquito not being big enough for slaughter was not killed, but was caught and baptized. He is a buen Christiano , especially when about half-full of whisky. I have calculated the number of red peppers he must have eaten since that time, and the 72 72 aggregate is something more bulky than Mount Diablo, and it would take more figures to express it than are required in the annual exhibit of our national debt.

"Pescadero" is the Spanish for "fishery," and the name is indicative. The creeks which come down from the mountains all along this coast swarm with the spotted trout of California, and afford fine sport in the early part of the season. In places along their banks, the honeysuckle bushes and other shrubs and vines form a chapparal so dense that you must wade for miles to whip the stream; but one hundred, two hundred, or even three hundred trout are often basketed in a single day's fishing by one individual. It does not rain here from April until the last of November or December; but as the days become shorter, and the sun's rays less powerful, the evaporation which caused the streams to dwindle to mere strings of detached ponds decreases, and all over the State, especially in the Coast Range, the rivers commence to rise. Thompson, a hospitable landlord, took me down to the mouth of the Pescadero for a little sport. We sent a Mexican after worms for bait. The Mexican sent a negro, and we sent a Chinaman after the negro, and got them all at last. The row down the creek was short. We saw hundreds of mallards and teal, which we could not shoot, because the law forbids it--very properly--until the 15th of the month, and large flocks of long-billed curlew and other birds, such as crows, buzzards, gulls, etc., etc., which we did not want to kill. There is a bar at, the mouth of the 73 73 creek, and we chained our boat to a high rock inside it and walked down to the ocean. The shores were lined with drift, trunks of great pine and redwood trees, timbers of wrecked ships, etc., etc., and the scenery was wildly romantic. We passed the festering carcasses of half a dozen great sea lions, which had been killed by a fishing party with Henry rifles some weeks before. The fish come into the creek with the tide, and bite best before the ebb commences. If the sea lions who cover the rocks just outside, follow them into the creek, the fish all run out--and there is no more sport that day. So the fishermen shoot some of the sea-lions to make the rest leave. Before we reached the mouth we saw two wolves on the opposite shore, running around by the edge of the breakers and playing like dogs. One ran off when he saw us, and the other lifted up his nose and voice, and treated us to the most vivid illustration imaginable of The wolf's lone howl on Onalaska's shore,"

and then followed his companion. As we rounded the bluff we saw some rocks just off shore covered with sea-lions. It was low tide, and we could run out to within fifty yards of them. I had a large-sized Smith & Wesson revolver, a capital weapon for such use, and as they threw up their heads to look at us, I sent a bullet into the side of a big spotted fellow who was lying high up and presented a good mark. The ball struck him with a dull thud, and as he rolled off into the waves the whole herd went splashing after him. Half a dozen of them 74 74 swam down in a line to within twenty or thirty yards of us, and looked at us with their great lustrous brown eyes, whether in sorrow or in anger we could not tell, until I hit one on his head, and as the bullet glanced off, he disappeared with a grunt and porpoise-like plunge. Thompson took the pistol, and as one rose again fired and hit him squarely in the mouth. He shook his head from side to side, as if blind with pain, and then went down, leaving great dark spots in the water. They all started oK' then southward, and I was not sorry. Inveterate sportsman that I have been from my youth up, I cannot get over the feeling that the killing of defenseless creatures like these, and allowing their bodies to rot on the beach, is something akin to murder.

The rocks we stood on, and which are covered at high tide were incrusted with mussels of immense Size. Some of them measure twelve inches in length,. and Thompson tells me that he has seen them fifteen inches long. They are fat and luscious, and a few epicures come down to the coast every season to indulge in clam-bakes and mussel-roasts; but this species of shell-fish is so common, and consequently cheap, that not one in ten of the people of California ever eat them. In holes in the rocks, filled with pure sea-water, we saw curious things like great sunflowers with bright-green petals. These we could not detach from the rocks, and at one touch they would curl up into a slippery ball with all the petals hidden inside.

We went back to our boat as the tide came booming

SHOOTING SEA LIONS.

75 75 in, and prepared to fish for salmon-trout, as they are called; really they are yearling and two-year-old salmon. They will bite at a worm, spoon, or fly, but best at worms. I had hardly put in my hook before a noble fellow made the line fairly hiss through the water for a few minutes. Then we drew him, panting and exhausted with his struggles, alongside the rocks, and with a landing net got him into the boat. He was twenty inches in length, and the handsomest fish I ever caught. Eight- and ten- pounders are common, and they are the most delicious fish for frying or broiling which ever swam the sea. Great crabs came in also with the tide, and we dipped several of them out with our net. In two hours we corralled fourteen salmon-trout, losing several more by hooks breaking, and then. the slack-water coming on and the fish ceasing to bite with avidity, hoisted sail and went swiftly gliding back up the stream to the hotel. It was, all in all, the best morning's sport I have ever enjoyed ill my life, and I have shot and fished from the Red River of the North to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

76 76

CHAPTER IV. PESCADERO TO SANTA CRUZ.

Down the Coast toward Santa Cruz.--The Moss and Shell Beaches of Pescadero.--A Disgusted Hunter.--A Grizzly Bear Procession.--A Mutual Surprise and Double Stampede.--The Bear Fever.--The Buck Fever and Prairie-Hen Fever.--How Jim wheeler Killed the Buck.--How Old S. killed Three at one Shot.--A Spanish-American Gentleman of Scientific Attainments and Undoubted veracity.--View of the Bay of Monterey and the valley and Mountains of Santa Cruz.

PESCADERO numbers among its attractions a "Moss Beach," where the ladies who visit the place go to gather the beautiful, delicate, many-hued sea-mosses which are found in such abundance all along the Pacific Coast, but in highest perfection on the shores of Central California. These mosses are torn loose by the storms, and thrown ashore by the tides in great abundance in some localities, this "Moss Beach" being one of them. The ladies gather them at low tide, strip them from the glutinous, leather-like substance to which they are found adhering, and place them in salt water, to be kept fresh until they are ready to dry them. The delicate sprays, with fibers finer than any silk, are with infinite labor spread out with pliers, or other small instruments, upon the open leaves of an old ledger or other book of hard paper, and pressed carefully while 77 77 drying. When fully dried they are taken off the paper carefully, and cleaned with a soft brush to remove any mold or other blemishes, and are then ready for use in the preparation of moss-baskets, pictures, etc., etc. Nothing can be more beautiful than the work thus produced by ladies of taste, and no special teaching or experience is required to enable them to do it well. These mosses, when dried ready for use, readily command high prices at the East and in California, the demand being always large. There is also a "Shell Beach" in the vicinity of Pescadero, where beautiful sea-sheik are gathered. The finest shell on the Pacific Coast il the great abalone (pron. "ab-a- lo -ne"), a mammoth univalve, which is found most abundantly and most perfect along the shores of the Bay of Monterey, and thence southwards to San Diego. The inside of the shell is rainbow-hued and very brilliant, and when the rough outside has been ground and polished away they make beautiful ornaments for the mantel and cabinet. Belt-buckles and other jewelry, which would be "perfectly lovely" if not so cheap and common, are made from these shells.

From Pescadero to Santa Cruz is thirty-six miles, by the road which winds along the coast past Point Año Nuevo and Pigeon Point to the Bay of Monterey, and thence southeastward, through a rich and highly-cultivated farming region, to the old Spanish Mission on the hill, below and around which the modern town, one of the most beautiful and thriving in California, has grown up within the past 78 78 fifteen years. What a glorious gallop we--Chirimoya and I--had over the clean, hard, undulating road on that autumn morning after I left Pescadero! Californians will understand me and pardon my enthusiasm, possibly sympathize with me in it; but you of the older and more staid and conventional East cannot do so, and I pass the description, as you would inevitably pass it if you came upon it in print. Passing over a pine-clad spur of Santa Cruz mountains, which here come close down to the coast, we halted for a time to rest and look about. This is a famous place for gathering the pine-cones, with fragments of which ladies are wont to construct elaborately wrought picture.frames and other "ornamental" work, very ugly, and very effective as dust-catchers, but excellent things for presents to religiously inclined friends, who are thereby brought to a realizing appreciation of the force of the scriptural maxim, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." A hunter, who had followed a deer down from the heights above, toward the coast, but lost him, joined me as I reclined upon the warm, dry ground upon the hill-side, enjoying the delicious sense of quiet and absence of care and life's petty annoyances which comes with solitude, mountain air, and autumn sunshine, and we swapped stories of forest and mountain life and adventure, in this and other lands, for an hour or two. He told me with infinite gusto, and a true frontiersman's rude but hearty appreciation of the grotesquely humorous, how a Fiend of his, who was, and is, a sort of 79 79 Mr. Toots in sportsmanship and woodcraft, came down here once from San Francisco in pursuit of game, and wandering out into the woods upon this same hill, fell asleep one delicious summer afternoon beneath a shady tree. When he awake it was almost sunset, and the coolness of evening was coming on. He sat up, looked about him, rubbed his eyes, wondered like Rip Van Winkle how long he had been lying there, and how long it would take him to walk back, empty-handed as he was, to his hotel. Just then a rustling and cracking noise, from a clump of chaparral about a hundred yards away. attracted his attention. Out walked a grizzly bear, a monarch of his kind; yawned, ran his red tongue lazily over the outside of his jaw, humped his back as if to test the condition and pliability of his vertebræ, then advanced directly toward the tree under which the astonished but hardly delighted. San Franciscan sat, evidently without having noticed him anti blissfully unconscious of his presence. His grizzly majesty had hardly advanced twenty yards when a female of the same species, and but a little less in Size, followed in his wake and went through almost the same calisthenic exercises. The first bear's appearance made the man of "Frisco" gasp for breath, the second sent the blood back to his heart in a torrent, the force of which almost caused mat organ to jump out of his breast. It never rains ?? a third bear followed the second, licked his chops, humped his back, gave a half growl, half whine of satisfaction and advanced in the same direction at a slow, shambling pace. Every word he had ever spoKen in any 80 80 near or remote sense disrespectful of bald-headed men flashed through our hero's mind in an instant. "Now I lay me down to slee--" the forward bear was already within thirty yards of him, and before the prayer could be half finished would be upon him. Something more energetic and positive had to be done immediately. Springing to his feet in frantic despair, the San Franciscan hunter threw his arms wildly aloft, and uttered one loud, long, terrific, unearthly yell, such as an able-bodied Irish banshee might have given on a particularly rough night, when a particularly bad scion of a particularly noble house was passing in his checks at the termination of a particularly long and infamous life. The effect was instantaneous and striking. The foremost bear, startled out of his seven senses by the yell, sprang about ten feet--more or less--into the air, knocked his nearest companion off her pins as he came down, rolled over her, gathered himself up, and bolted "like forty cartloads of rock going down a chute" straight for the chaparral again, his companions following close at his heels, and never turning to see what it was which had stampeded them. As they went bouncing and crashing away into the undergrowth, our friend, utterly oblivious from the first that he had a gun within reach of his arm, turned and ran the other way with such speed as Jackson or the Deerslayer never achieved, reaching his hotel, some miles from the spot, with his garments soaked with perspiration, hair wildly disheveled, and eyes almost bursting from their sockets, only to tell the marvelous story of his adventure to 81 81 a party of practical hunters, who, with the true California instinct, scouted the entire statement as "too thin," affirmed that there never was a bear seen within ten miles of there, hinted that he had been frightened by a drove of cattle, windi