Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast, its boundaries would include the whole shore-line from C

proach each other so closely at the south as to leave only the narrow Tejon Pass between them; while at the north they als

lakes-the Tulare, Kern, and Buena Vista-and is now drained from the south by the San Joaquin River, flowing out of these lakes, and from the north by the Sacramento, which rise

its eastern side were the scene of the earliest and longest continued, as well as the most successful, mining operations; partly because the Sacramento River is navigable for a longer distance than the San Joaquin,

e upper part of the valley they sometimes see snow; there is not the same necessity for irrigation as in the lower valley; and though oranges flourish in Marysville, and though t

rysville lay Sutter's old fort, and near Marysville is Sutter's farm, where you may still see his groves of fig-trees, under whose

than some States, and counted his cattle by the thousands-if, indeed, he ever counted them-who lived in a fort like a European noble of the feudal times, had an army of Indians at his command, and occasionally made war on the predatory tribes who were his neighbors, now lives upon a small annuity granted him by the State of California. He saved little, I hav

verage rain-fall of about twenty inched, and eighteen inches insure them a full crop on soil properly prepared. In 1873 they had less, yet the crops did well wherever the farmers had summer-fallowed the land. This practice is now very general, and is n

south, but the difference is slight; and as far north as Red Bluff, in the interior, they begin their harvest earlier than in Monterey County, far south but on the coast. Snow rarely lies on the ground in the northern counties more than a day. The best varieties of the foreign grapes are hardy everywhere. Light frosts come in December

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turesque white oaks, which relieve the solitude of the plain, and make it resemble a well-planted park. Wherever the valley is settled, you will see neat board fences, roomy barns, and farm-houses nestling among trees, and flanked by young orchards. You will not find a great variety of crops, for wheat and barley are

y miniature mountain range, having its peaks, passes, and ca?ons-all the features of the Sierra-and it is well worth a visit. Butte is a word applied to such isolated mountains, which do not form part of a chain, and w

the uplands when the rains begin to fall. But much of this swamp and tule land has been drained and diked, and is now used for farm land. It produces heavy crops of wheat, and its reclamation has been, and continues to be, one of the successful speculations in lan

d their bottoms have been raised from twenty to thirty feet by the accumulation of the washings from the gold mines in the foot-hills. It is almost incredible the change the miners have thus produced in the short space of a quarter of a century. The bed of the Yuba

rable as well as very profitable business. Dried plums, in particular, sell at a price which makes the orchards of this fruit very valuable. Excellent raisins have also been made, and they sell in the open market of San Francisco for a price very little less than that of the best Malaga raisins. The climate, with its long dry summer, is very favorable to the drying and curing of every fruit: no expensive houses, no o

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His house is often shabby, even though he be a man of wealth, and his table is not unfrequently without milk; he buys his butter with his canned vegetables in San Francisco, and bread and mu

hich is always the most costly, put to its best and most profitable uses. They talk here of steam-plows and steam-wagons for common roads, and I have no doubt the steam-plow will be first practicall

of acres, but he will have his wheat growing up to the edge of his veranda. If he keeps a vegetable garden,

ies of the soil and climate. Near Tehama some Chinese have in the last two years grown large crops of pea-nuts, and have, I was told, realized handsome profits from a nut which will be popular in America, I suppose, as long as there is a pit or a gallery in a theatre; but the pea-nut makes a valuable oil, and as it produces enormously here, it will some day be raised f

e railroad company to be obtained so cheaply that, whether for crops or for grazing, it will be some time before the mountainous lands and the pretty valleys they contain, n

ent view of Lassen's Peaks on the east-twin peaks, snow-clad, and rising high out of the plain-and also of the majestic snow-covered crag whi

rth a visit as any part of the western coast. The Sacramento River, which rises in a large spring near the base of Mount Shasta, has worn its way through the high mountains, and rushes down for nearly a hundred miles of its course an impetuous, roaring mountain stream, abounding in trout at all seasons, and in June, July, and August filled with salmon which have come up here through the Golden Gate

a Spring, fourteen hours by stage from Redding, kept by Isaac Fry and his excellent wife-a clean, comfortable little mountain inn, where you get good and well-cooked food, and where you will find what your stage ride will make welcome to you-a comfortable bath. The river is too cold for b

told me that this ridge is sharp enough to straddle, and that on the other side is an almost precipitous descent, with a fine lake in the distance. If you wish to hunt deer or bear, you will find in Fry an expert and experienced hunter. He has a tame doe, which, I was told, is better than a dog to mark game on a hunt, its sharp ears and nose detecting the presence of game at a great di

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at the end and there armed with two bone spear-heads, which are fastened to the shaft of the spear by very strong cord, usually made of deer's sinews. The Indian stands very erect and in a really fine attitude, and peers into the black pool until his eye catches the silver sheen of a salmon. Then he darts, and instantly you see a commotion in the water as he hauls up toward the surface a struggling twenty-five or thirty pound fish. The b

of their food. Of course they kill a great many thousand female salmon during the season; but so far, I believe, this murderous work has

at the sand off the shoals with their tails, until often a female salmon thus labors till her tail fins are entirely worn off. She then deposits her eggs upon the coarse gravel, and the greedy trout, which are extravagantly fond of salmon eggs, rush up to eat them as the poor mother lays them. They are, I believe, watche

old that the young salmon stay in the upper waters for a year, and go to sea about eighteen months after hatching; and it is not uncommon, I believe, for fishermen hereabouts to catch grilse weighing from two to four pounds. These bite sometimes at the fly. The salmon bite, too, when much smaller, for I caught one d

are a mountaineer, will take you a dozen miles through the woods to other streams, where you may fish and h

s rifle and his pipe. Him followed, at a respectful distance, his squaw, a little woman not bigger than a twelve-year-old boy; and she carried, first, a baby; second, three salmon, each of which weighed not less than twenty pounds; third, a wild goos

f a piece sufficient for dinner, lights a fire, and cooks the meat. This done, the noble red man, who has calmly or impatiently contemplated these labors of th

makes her; what hopes he holds out; with what enticing views of wedded bliss he lures the Indian maiden to the altar or whatever may be the Digger substitute for that piece of church furniture. One wonders that the squaws have not long ago combin

ul, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights movement has succeeded, and when women, dressed like frights in such Bloomer costume as may then be prescribed, go out to their daily toil like men, and on an equality with men-when they have cast off the beauty which is so scornfully spoken of in the convention

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ture requires three days. You ride up to the snow-line the first day, ascend to the top the following morning, descend to your camp in the afternoon, and return to the valley on the third day. Mount Shasta has a glacier, almost, but not quite, the only one, I believe, within the limi

the mountains in May, and remain until October. This is also a timber region, and as it is well watered by permanent streams you see frequent saw-mills, and altogether more improvement than one expects to find. But, pr

r war. You will hear, for instance, that the Indians were stirred up to hostilities by mischievous and designing whites, that white men were not wanting to supply them with arms and ammunition, and that, had it not been for the unscrupulou

;" and at many points along the Upper Sacramento and the mountain streams which fall into it, gold is mined profitably. One day, at the Soda Spring, several of us asked Mr. Fry whether he could find gold near the river. He took a pan, and digging at random in his orchard, washed out thre

icy of the railroad company in selling its lands, the alternate sections for twenty miles on each side of the road, on easy terms and with long credit to actual settlers, prevents land monopoly in this region. There is room, and cheap and fertile land, for an immense population of industrious farmers, who can live here in a mild climate, and till a fertile soil, and who need o

land-holders are offering subsidies and mortgaging their lands to raise means to hasten the completion of the canal. Two years ago the reclamation of the tule lands, though begun, advanced slowly, and arguments were required to convince men that tule land was a safe investment. But this year eight hundred miles of levee will be completed, and thousands of acres will bear wheat next harvest which were overflowed eighteen months ago. Two years ago the question whether California could produce good raisins could not be answered; but last fall raisins which sold in the San Francisco market beside the best Malagas were cured by several persons, an

d down to hard work. There are so many chances in life out there that men become overenterprising-a speculative spirit invades even the farm-house; and as a man can always live-food being so abundant and the climate so kindly-and as the population is as yet sparse, men are tempted to go from one avocation to another, to do many things superficially, and to look for sudden fortunes by the chances of a shrewd venture, rather than be content to live by patient an

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