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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, OREGON,
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, OREGON,
AUTHOR OF "CALIFORNIA: FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE," &c., &c. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congr
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
The favor with which my previous volume on California was received by the public induced me to prepare the present volume, which concerns itself, as the title sufficiently shows, with the northern parts of California, Oregon (including a journey through Washington Territory to Victoria, in Vancouver's Island), and the Sandwich Islands. I have endeavored, as before, to give plain and circumstantial details, such as would interest and be of use to travelers for pleasure or information, and enable
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
The Hawaiian group consists, as you will see on the map, of eleven islands, of which Hawaii is the largest and Molokini the smallest. The islands together contain about 6000 square miles; and Hawaii alone has an area of nearly 4000 square miles, Maui 620, Oahu (which contains Honolulu, the capital) 530, and Kauai 500. Lanai, Kahoolawe, Molokai, Niihau, Kaula, Lehua, and Molokini are small islands. All are of volcanic origin, mountainous, and Hawaii contains the largest active crater in the world
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
Hilo, as you will perceive on the map, lies on the eastern or windward side of the Island of Hawaii. You get there in the little inter-island steamer Kilauea , named after the volcano, and which makes a weekly tour of all the Islands except far-off Kauai, which it visits but once a month. The charge for passage is fifteen dollars from Honolulu to Hilo, and twenty-five dollars for the round trip. The cabin is small; and as you are likely to have fine weather, you will, even if you are a lady, pas
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
Maui lies between Oahu and Hawaii, and is somewhat larger than the first-named island. It contains the most considerable sugar-plantations, and yields more of this product than any one of the other islands. It is notable also for possessing the mountain of Haleakala, an extinct volcano ten thousand feet high, which has the largest crater in the world—a monstrous pit, thirty miles in circumference, and two thousand feet deep. There is some reason to believe that Maui was originally two islands, t
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
Kauai lies farthest to leeward of the main islands of the Hawaiian group; the steamer visits it usually but once a month; and the best way to see it without unnecessary waste of time is to take passage in a schooner, so timing your visit as to leave you a week or ten days on the island before the steamer arrives to carry you back. We took passage on a little sugar schooner, the Fairy Queen , of about seventy-five tons, commanded by a smart native captain, and sailing one afternoon about two o'cl
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
As we rode one day near the sea-shore I heard voices among the rocks, and sending the guide ahead with the horses, I walked over to the shore with the lady and children who were my companions. There we saw a sight characteristic of these islands. Three women decently clothed in a garment which covered them from head to foot, and a man with only a breech-clout on, were dashing into the surf, picking up sea-moss, and a little univalve shell, a limpet, which they flung into small baskets which hung
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
Commercial relations form and foster political alliances, especially between a weak state and a strong one. The annual report for 1872 of imports and exports, made up by the Collector-general of the Hawaiian Kingdom, shows how completely the Islands depend upon the United States. Of 146 merchant vessels and steamers entered at Hawaiian ports during 1872, 90 were American, only 15 were English; 6 were German, 9 belonged to other nations, and 26 were Hawaiian. Of a total of 98,647 tons of shipping
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
So much has been said and written of late about the disease called leprosy and its ravages in the Sandwich Islands that I had the curiosity to visit the asylum for lepers at Molokai, where now very nearly all the people suffering from this disease have been collected, under a law which directs this seclusion. The steamer Kilauea left Honolulu one evening at half-past five o'clock, and dropped several of us about two o'clock at night into a whale-boat near a point on the lee side of Molokai. Here
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
The State of California extends over somewhat more than ten degrees of latitude. If it lay along the Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast, its boundaries would include the whole shore-line from Cape Cod to Hilton Head, and its limits would take in the greater portion of ten of the original States. It contains two great mountain ranges—the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range. These, running parallel through the State, approach each other so closely at the south as to leave only the narrow Te
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
I have now seen the grape grow in almost every part of California where wine is made. The temptation to a new settler in this State is always strong to plant a vineyard; and I am moved, by much that I have seen, to repeat here publicly advice I have often given to persons newly coming into the State: Do not make wine. I remember a wine-cellar, cheaply built, but with substantial and costly casks, containing (because the vineyard was badly placed) a mean, thin, fiery wine; and on a pleasant sunny
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
While you are talking about redeeming the New Jersey marshes these go-ahead Californians are actually diking and reclaiming similar and, in some cases, richer overflowed lands by the hundred thousand acres. If you will take, on a map of California, Stockton, Sacramento, and San Francisco for guiding points, you will see that a large part of the land lying between these cities is marked "swamp and overflowed." Until within five or six years these lands attracted but little attention. It was known
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
In the last year I have received a good many letters from persons desirous to try sheep-farming in California, and this has led me to look a little closely into this business as it is conducted in the northern parts of California. There is no doubt that the climate of California gives some exceptional advantages to the sheep-grazer. He need not, in most parts of the State, make any provision against winter. He has no need for barns or expensive sheds, or for a store of hay or roots. His sheep li
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
As I crossed from Oakland to San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon last July, there were on the ferry-boat a number of Chinese. They were decently clad, quiet, clean, sat apart in their places in the lower part of the boat conversing together, and finally walked off the boat when she came to land as orderly as though they had been Massachusetts Christians. There were also on the boat a number of half-grown and full-grown white boys, some of whom had been fishing, and carried their long rods with t
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
Some of the most picturesque country in California lies on or near the coast north of San Francisco. The coast counties, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Klamath, and Del Norte, are the least visited by strangers, and yet with Napa, Lake, and Trinity, they make up a region which contains a very great deal of wild and fine scenery, and which abounds with game, and shows to the traveler many varieties of life and several of the peculiar industries of California. Those who have passed through th
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
A part of Round Valley, in Mendocino County, is set apart and used for an Indian reservation; and, under the present policy of the Government, an attempt has been made to gather and keep all the Indians of the northern coast of California upon this reserve. In point of fact they are not nearly all there. One thousand and eighty-one men, women, and children, according to a census recently taken, or nearly one thousand two hundred according to the Rev. Mr. Burchard, the Indian agent, are actually
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
Some years ago, before there was a wagon-road between Cloverdale and Mendocino City, or Big River, as it is more commonly called up here on the northern coast, the mail was carried on horse—or, more usually, on mule—back; and the mail-rider was caught, on one stormy and dark night, upon the road, and found himself unable to go farther. In this dilemma he took refuge, with his mule and the United States mails, in a hollow redwood, and man and mule lay down comfortably within its shelter. They had
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
The great valleys of California do not produce much butter, and probably never will, though I am told that cows fed on alfalfa, which is a kind of lucerne, yield abundant and rich milk, and, when small and careful farming comes into fashion in this State, there is no reason why stall-fed cows should not yield butter, even in the San Joaquin or Sacramento valleys. Indeed, with irrigation and stall-feeding, as one may have abundance of green food all the year round in the valleys, there should be
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
General Bidwell, of Butte County, raised last year on his own estate, besides a large quantity of fruit, seventy-five thousand bushels of wheat. Dr. Glenn, of Colusa County, raised and sent to market from his own estate, two hundred thousand bushels. Mr. Warner, of Solano County, produced nine thousand gallons of cider from his own orchards. A sheep-grazer in Placer County loaded ten railroad cars with wool, the clip of his own sheep. For many weeks after harvest you may see sacks of wheat stack
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
The manufacture of cigars is one of the largest industries of San Francisco. Last year the Government received taxes on 78,000,000 cigars made in the State of California, and in September alone taxes were paid on 8,000,000. But, though the State has thousands of acres of land well fitted to produce tobacco, and though the "weed" has been grown here for twenty years or more with great success, so far as getting a heavy crop is concerned, I doubt if even 1,000,000 of cigars have, until this fall,
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
If you approach the harbor of San Francisco from the west, your first sight of land will be a collection of picturesque rocks known as the Farallones, or, more fully, the Farallones de los Frayles. They are six rugged islets, whose peaks lift up their heads in picturesque masses out of the ocean, twenty-three and a half miles from the Golden Gate, the famous entrance of San Francisco Bay. Farallon is a Spanish word, meaning a small pointed islet in the sea. These rocks, probably of volcanic orig
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
In less than forty-eight hours after you leave San Francisco you find yourself crossing the bar which lies at the mouth of the Columbia River, and laughing, perhaps, over the oft-told local tale of how a captain, new to this region, lying off and on with his vessel, and impatiently signaling for a pilot, was temporarily comforted by a passenger, an old Californian, who "wondered why Jim over there couldn't take her safe over the bar." "Do you think he knows the soundings well enough?" asked the
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APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
[I am indebted to Mr. William T. Brigham, of Boston, the translator of the following "Contributions of a venerable Savage," and the author of a valuable treatise on the volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands, as well as of several memoirs on the natural history of the Islands, for his kind permission to use this very curious fragment, with his additions, in my volume. The original I have not been able to lay my hands on. It gives a picturesque account of the Hawaiian people before they came into rela
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NOTES.
NOTES.
[Additions by the translator are inclosed in brackets.] (1.) The name of Alapai is not found in the genealogy published by David Malo. Nevertheless, we have positive information from our old man and other distinguished natives that Alapai was supreme chief of Hawaii immediately before Kalaniopuu. (2.) Poi is a paste made of the tuberous root of the kalo ( Colocasia antiquorum , var. esculenta , Schott.). More than thirty varieties of kalo are cultivated on the Hawaiian Islands, most of them requ
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