Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands written by Charles Nordhoff

C >> Charles Nordhoff >> Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

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A large part of the lumbering population consists of bachelors, and for
their accommodation you see numerous shanties erected near the saw-mills
and lumber piles. At Mendocino City there is quite a colony of such
shanties, two long rows, upon a point or cape from which the lumber is
loaded.

I had the curiosity to enter one of these little snuggeries, which
was unoccupied. It was about ten by twelve feet in area, had a large
fire-place (for fuel is shamefully abundant here), a bunk for sleeping,
with a lamp arranged for reading in bed, a small table, hooks for clothes,
a good board floor, a small window, and a neat little hood over the
door-way, which gave this little hut quite a picturesque effect. There
was, besides, a rough bench and a small table.

It seemed to me that in such a climate as that of Mendocino, where they
wear the same clothes all the year round, have evening fires in July, and
may keep their doors open in January, such a little kennel as this meets
all the real wants of the male of the human race.

This, I suspect, is about as far as man, unaided by woman, would have
carried civilization anywhere. Whatever any of us have over and above such
a snuggery as this we owe to womankind; whatever of comfort or elegance
we possess, woman has given us, or made us give her. I think no wholesome,
right-minded man in the world would ever get beyond such a hut; and I
even suspect that the occupant of the shanty I inspected must have been in
love, and thinking seriously of marriage, else he would never have nailed
the pretty little hood over his door-way. So helpless is man! And yet
there are people who would make of woman only a kind of female man!

As you travel along the coast, the stage-road gives you frequent and
satisfactory views of its curiously distorted and ocean-eaten caves and
rocks. It has a dangerous and terrible aspect, no doubt, to mariners, but
it is most wonderful, viewed from the shore. At every projection you see
that the waves have pierced and mined the rock; if the sea is high, you
will hear it roar in the caverns it has made, and whistle and shriek
wherever it has an outlet above through which the waves may force the air.

The real curiosity of this region is a logging camp. The redwood country
is astonishingly broken; the mountain sides are often almost precipitous;
and on these steep sides the redwood grows tall and straight and big
beyond the belief of an Eastern man. The trees do not occupy the whole
ground, but share it with laurels, dogwood, a worthless kind of oak,
occasionally pine, and smaller wood. It is a kind of jungle; and the
loggers, when they have felled a number of trees, set fire to the brush
in order to clear the ground before they attempt to draw the logs to the
water.

[Illustration: VICTORIA HARBOR, VANCOUVER'S ISLAND.]

A logging camp is an assemblage of rude redwood shanties, gathered about
one larger shanty, which is the cook-house and dining-hall, and where
usually two or three Chinamen are at work over the stove, and setting
the table. The loggers live well; they have excellent bread, meat, beans,
butter, dried apples, cakes, pies, and pickles; in short, I have dined in
worse places.

A camp is divided into "crews;" a crew is composed of from twenty to
twenty-six men, who keep one team of eight or ten oxen busy hauling the
logs to water.

A "crew" consists of teamsters, choppers, chain-tenders, jack-screw
men (for these logs are too heavy to be moved without such machinery),
swampers, who build the roads over which the logs are hauled, sawyers,
and barkers. A teamster, I was told, receives seventy dollars per month, a
chopper fifty dollars, chain-tenders and jack-screw men the same, swampers
forty-five dollars, sawyers forty dollars, and barkers, who are usually
Indians, one dollar a day and board besides, for all. The pay is not bad,
and as the chances to spend money in a logging camp are not good, many of
the men lay up money, and by-and-by go to farming or go home. They work
twelve hours a day.

A man in Humboldt County got out of one redwood tree lumber enough to make
his house and barn, and to fence in two acres of ground.

A schooner was filled with shingles made from a single tree.

One tree in Mendocino, whose remains were shown to me, made a mile of
railroad ties. Trees fourteen feet in diameter have been frequently found
and cut down; the saw-logs are often split apart with wedges, because the
entire mass is too large to float in the narrow and shallow streams; and I
have even seen them blow a log apart with gunpowder.

A tree four feet in diameter is called undersized in these woods; and so
skillful are the wood-choppers that they can make the largest giant of the
forest fall just where they want it, or, as they say, they "drive a stake
with the tree."

To chop down a redwood-tree, the chopper does not stand on the ground, but
upon a stage sometimes twelve feet above the ground. Like the sequoia,
the redwood has a great bulk near the ground, but contracts somewhat a
few feet above. The chopper wants only the fair round of the tree, and
his stage is composed of two stout staves, shod with a pointed iron at one
end, which is driven into the tree. The outer ends are securely supported;
and on these staves he lays two narrow, tough boards, on which he stands,
and which spring at every blow of his axe. It will give you an idea of the
bulk of these trees, when I tell you that in chopping down the larger ones
two men stand on the stage and chop simultaneously at the same cut, facing
each other.

They first cut off the bark, which is from four to ten, and often fifteen
inches thick. This done, they begin what is called the "undercut"--the cut
on that, side toward which the tree is meant to fall; and when they have
made a little progress, they, by an ingenious and simple contrivance,
fix upon the proper direction of the cut, so as to make the tree fall
accurately where they want it. This is necessary, on account of the great
length and weight of the trees, and the roughness of the ground, by reason
of which a tree carelessly felled may in its fall break and split
into pieces, so as to make it entirely worthless. This happens not
unfrequently, in spite of every care.

So skillful are they in giving to the tree its proper direction that they
are able to set a post or stake in the ground a hundred feet or more from
the root of the tree, and drive it down by felling the tree on top of it.

"Can you really drive a stake with a tree?" I asked, and was answered, "Of
course, we do it every day."

The "under-cut" goes in about two-thirds the diameter. When it is finished
the stage is shifted to the opposite side, and then it is a remarkable
sight to see the tall, straight mass begin to tremble as the axe goes in.
It usually gives a heavy crack about fifteen minutes before it means to
fall. The chopper thereupon gives a warning shout, so that all may stand
clear--not of the tree, for he knows very well where that will go, and in
a cleared space men will stand within ten feet of where the top of a tree
is to strike, and watch its fall; his warning is against the branches of
other trees, which are sometimes torn off and flung to a distance by the
falling giant, and which occasionally dash out men's brains.

At last the tree visibly totters, and slowly goes over; and as it goes the
chopper gets off his stage and runs a few feet to one side. Then you hear
and see one of the grandest and most majestic incidents of forest life.
There is a sharp crack, a crash, and then a long, prolonged, thunderous
crash, which, when you hear it from a little distance, is startlingly like
an actual and severe thunder-peal. To see a tree six feet in diameter,
and one hundred and seventy-five feet high, thus go down, is a very great
sight, not soon forgotten.

The choppers expressed themselves as disappointed that they could not just
then show me the fall of a tree ten or twelve feet in diameter, and over
two hundred feet high. In one logging camp I visited there remained a
stump fourteen feet high. At this height the tree was fourteen feet in
diameter, perfectly round and sound, and it had been sawn into seventeen
logs, each twelve feet long. The upper length was six feet in diameter.
Probably the tree was three hundred feet long, for the top for a long
distance is wasted.

So many of the trees and so many parts of trees are splintered or broken
in the fall, that the master of a logging camp told me he thought they
wasted at least as much as they saved; and as the mills also waste a
good deal, it is probable that for every foot of this lumber that goes to
market two feet are lost. A five-foot tree occupies a chopper from two
and a half to three and a half hours, and to cut down a tree eight feet in
diameter is counted a day's work for a man.

When the tree is down the sawyers come. Each has a long saw; he removes
the bark at each cut with an axe, and then saws the tree into lengths.
It is odd enough to go past a tree and see a saw moving back and forward
across its diameter without seeing the man who moves it, for the tree
hides him completely from you, if you are on the side opposite him. Then
come the barkers, with long iron bars to rip off the thick bark; then the
jack-screw men, three or four of whom move a log about easily and rapidly
which a hundred men could hardly budge. They head it in the proper
direction for the teamsters and chain-men, and these then drag it down to
the water over roads which are watered to make the logs slide easily; and
then, either at high tide or during the winter freshets, the logs are run
down to the mill.

The Maine men make the best wood-choppers, but the logging camp is a
favorite place also for sailors; and I was told that Germans are liked as
workmen about timber. The choppers grind their axes once a week--usually,
I was told, on Sunday--and all hands in a logging camp work twelve hours a
day.

The Government has lately become very strict in preserving the timber
on Congress land, which was formerly cut at random, and by any body who
chose. Government agents watch the loggers, and if these are anywhere
caught cutting timber on Congress land their rafts are seized and sold.
At present prices, it pays to haul logs in the redwood country only about
half a mile to water; all trees more distant than this from a river are
not cut; but the rivers are in many places near each other, and the belt
of timber left standing, though considerable, is not so great as one would
think.

Redwood lumber has one singular property--it shrinks endwise, so that
where it is used for weather-boarding a house, one is apt to see the
butts shrunk apart. I am told that across the grain it does not shrink
perceptibly.

Accidents are frequent in a logging camp, and good surgeons are in demand
in all the saw-mill ports, for there is much more occasion for surgery
than for physic. Men are cut with axes, jammed by logs, and otherwise
hurt, one of the most serious dangers arising from the fall of limbs torn
from standing trees by a falling one. Often such a limb lodges or sticks
in the high top of a tree until the wind blows it down, or the concussion
of the wood-cutter's axe, cutting down the tree, loosens it. Falling from
such a height as two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet, even a light
branch is dangerous, and men sometimes have their brains dashed out by
such a falling limb.

When you leave the coast for the interior, you ride through mile after
mile of redwood forest. Unlike the firs of Oregon and Puget Sound, this
tree does not occupy the whole land. It rears its tall head from a jungle
of laurel, madrone, oak, and other trees; and I doubt if so many as fifty
large redwoods often stand upon a single acre. I was told that an average
tree would turn out about fifteen thousand feet of lumber, and thus even
thirty such trees to the acre would yield nearly half a million feet.

[Illustration: PORT TOWNSEND, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.]

CHAPTER IX.

DAIRY-FARMING IN CALIFORNIA.

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 excellent
opportunity for butter-making.

But it is not necessary to use the agricultural soil for dairy purposes.
In the foot-hills of the Sierras, and on the mountains, too, for a
distance of more than a hundred miles along and near the line of the
railroad, there is a great deal of country admirably fitted for dairying,
and where already some of the most prosperous butter ranchos, as they call
them here, are found. And as they are near a considerable population of
miners and lumber-men, and have access by railroad to other centres of
population, both eastward and westward, the business is prosperous in this
large district, where, by moving higher up into the mountains as summer
advances, the dairy-man secures green food for his cows the summer
through, without trouble, on the one condition that he knows the country
and how to pick out his land to advantage.

Another dairy district lies on the coast, where the fogs brought in by the
prevailing north-west winds keep the ground moist, foster the greenness
and succulence of the native grasses during the summer, at least in the
ravines, and keep the springs alive.

Marin County, lying north of San Francisco, is the country of butter
ranches on the coast, though there are also many profitable dairies
south of the bay, in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. In fact, dry
as California is commonly and erroneously supposed to be, it exports a
considerable quantity of butter, and a dairy-man said to me but recently
that, to make the business really prosperous, the State needed a million
or two more inhabitants, which means that the surplus product is now so
great that it keeps down the price. No small quantity of this surplus goes
East, as far as New York; and it is one of the curiosities of production
and commerce that, while California can send butter to the Atlantic, it
buys eggs of Illinois. One would have thought the reverse more probable.

Marin County offers some important advantages to the dairy-farmer. The
sea-fogs which it receives cause abundant springs of excellent soft water,
and also keep the grass green through the summer and fall in the gulches
and ravines. Vicinity to the ocean also gives this region a very equal
climate. It is never cold in winter nor hot in summer. In the milk-houses
I saw usually a stove, but it was used mainly to dry the milk-room after
very heavy fogs or continued rains; and in the height of summer the
mercury marks at most sixty-seven degrees, and the milk keeps sweet
without artificial aids for thirty-six hours.

The cows require no sheds nor any store of food, though the best dairymen,
I noticed, raised beets; but more, they told me, to feed to their pigs
than for the cows. These creatures provide for themselves the year round
in the open fields; but care is taken, by opening springs and leading
water in iron pipes, to provide an abundance of this for them.

The county is full of dairy-farms; and, as this business requires rather
more and better buildings than wheat, cattle, or sheep farming, as well as
more fences, this gives the country a neater and thriftier appearance than
is usual among farming communities in California. The butter-maker must
have good buildings, and he must keep them in the best order.

But, besides these smaller dairy-farms, Marin County contains some large
"butter ranches," as they are called, which are a great curiosity in their
way. The Californians, who have a singular genius for doing things on
a large scale which in other States are done by retail, have managed to
conduct even dairying in this way, and have known how to "organize" the
making of butter in a way which would surprise an Orange County farmer.
Here, for instance--and to take the most successful and complete of these
experiments--is the rancho of Mr. Charles Webb Howard, on which I had the
curiosity to spend a couple of days. It contains eighteen thousand acres
of land well fitted for dairy purposes. On this he has at this time nine
separate farms, occupied by nine tenants engaged in making butter. To let
the farms outright would not do, because the tenants would put up poor
improvements, and would need, even then, more capital than tenant-farmers
usually have. Mr. Howard, therefore, contrived a scheme which seems to
work satisfactorily to all concerned, and which appears to me extremely
ingenious.

[Illustration: POINT REYES.]

He fences each farm, making proper subdivisions of large fields; he opens
springs, and leads water through iron pipes to the proper places, and
also to the dwelling, milk-house, and corral. He builds the houses, which
consist of a substantial dwelling, twenty-eight by thirty-two feet,
a story and a half high, and containing nine rooms, all lathed and
plastered; a thoroughly well-arranged milk-house, twenty-five by fifty
feet, having a milk-room in the centre twenty-five feet square, with a
churning-room, store-room, wash-room, etc.; a barn, forty by fifty
feet, to contain hay for the farm-horses; also a calf-shed, a corral, or
inclosure for the cows, a well-arranged pig-pen; and all these buildings
are put up in the best manner, well painted, and neat.

The tenant receives from the proprietor all this, the land, and, cows to
stock it. He furnishes, on his part, all the dairy utensils, the needed
horses and wagons, the furniture for the house, the farm implements, and
the necessary labor. The tenant pays to the owner twenty-seven dollars
and a half per annum for each cow, and agrees to take the best care of the
stock and of all parts of the farm; to make the necessary repairs, and to
raise for the owner annually one-fifth as many calves as he keeps cows,
the remainder of the calves being killed and fed to the pigs. He agrees
also to sell nothing but butter and hogs from the farm, the hogs being
entirely the tenant's property.

Under this system fifteen hundred and twenty cows are now kept on nine
separate farms on this estate, the largest number kept by one man being
two hundred and twenty-five, and the smallest one hundred and fifteen. Mr.
Howard has been for years improving his herd; he prefers short-horns,
and he saves every year the calves from the best milkers in all his herd,
using also bulls from good milking strains. I was told that the average
product of butter on the whole estate is now one hundred and seventy-five
pounds to each cow; many cows give as high as two hundred, and even two
hundred and fifty pounds per annum.

Men do the milking, and also the butter-making, though on one farm I found
a pretty Swedish girl superintending all the indoor work, with such skill
and order in all the departments, that she possessed, so far as I saw, the
model dairy on the estate.

Here, said I to myself, is now an instance of the ability of women to
compete with men which would delight Mrs. Stanton and all the Woman's
Rights people; here is the neatest, the sweetest, the most complete dairy
in the whole region; the best order, the most shining utensils, the nicest
butter-room--and not only butter, but cheese also, made, which is
not usual; and here is a rosy-faced, white-armed, smooth-haired,
sensibly-dressed, altogether admirable, and, to my eyes, beautiful Swedish
lass presiding over it all; commanding her men-servants, and keeping every
part of the business in order.

Alas! Mrs. Stanton, she has discovered a better business than
butter-making. She is going to marry--sensible girl that she is--and she
is not going to marry a dairy-farmer either.

I doubt if any body in California will ever make as nice butter as this
pretty Swede; certainly, every other dairy I saw seemed to me commonplace
and uninteresting, after I had seen hers. I don't doubt that the young
man who has had the art to persuade her to love him ought to be hanged,
because butter-making is far more important than marrying. Nevertheless,
I wish him joy in advance, and, in humble defiance of Mrs. Stanton and her
brilliant companions in arms, hereby give it as my belief that the pretty
Swede is a sensible girl--that, to use a California vulgarism, "her head
is level."

The hogs are fed chiefly on skim-milk, and belong entirely to the tenant.
The calves, except those which are raised for the proprietor, are, by
agreement, killed and fed to the pigs. The leases are usually for three
years.

The cows are milked twice a day, being driven for that purpose into a
corral, near the milk-house. I noticed that they were all very gentle;
they lay down in the corral with that placid air which a good cow has; and
whenever a milkman came to the beast he wished to milk, she rose at once,
without waiting to be spoken to. One man is expected to milk twenty cows
in the season of full milk. On some places I noticed that Chinese were
employed in the milk-house, to attend to the cream and make the butter.

The tenants are of different nationalities, American, Swedes, Germans,
Irish, and Portuguese. A tenant needs about two thousand dollars in money
to undertake one of these dairy-farms; the system seems to satisfy those
who are now engaged in it. The milkers and farm hands receive thirty
dollars per month and "found;" and good milkers are in constant demand.
Every thing is conducted with great care and cleanliness, the buildings
being uncommonly good for this State, water abundant, and many
labor-saving contrivances used.

At one end of the corral or yard in which the cows are milked is a
platform, roofed over, on which stands a large tin, with a double
strainer, into which the milk is poured from the buckets. It runs through
a pipe into the milk-house, where it is again strained, and then emptied
from a bucket into the pans ranged on shelves around. The cream is taken
off in from thirty-six to forty hours; and the milk keeps sweet thirty-six
hours, even in summer. The square box-churn is used entirely, and is
revolved by horse-power. They usually get butter, I was told, in half an
hour.

The butter is worked on an ingenious turn-table, which holds one hundred
pounds at a time, and can, when loaded, be turned by a finger; and a
lever, working upon a universal joint, is used upon the butter. When
ready, it is put up in two-pound rolls, which are shaped in a hand-press,
and the rolls are not weighed until they reach the city. It is packed in
strong, oblong boxes, each of which holds fifty-five rolls.

The cows are not driven more than a mile to be milked; the fields being
so arranged that the corral is near the centre. When they are milked, they
stray back of themselves to their grazing places.

[Illustration: COLUMBIA RIVER SCENE.]

CHAPTER X.

TEHAMA AND BUTTE, AND THE UPPER COUNTRY.

General Bidwell, of Butte County, raised last year on his own estate,
besides a large quantity of fruit, seventy-five thousand bushels of
wheat. Dr. Glenn, of Colusa County, raised and sent to market from his
own estate, two hundred thousand bushels. Mr. Warner, of Solano County,
produced nine thousand gallons of cider from his own orchards. A
sheep-grazer in Placer County loaded ten railroad cars with wool, the clip
of his own sheep. For many weeks after harvest you may see sacks of wheat
stacked along the railroad and the river for miles, awaiting shipment; for
the farmers have no rain to fear, and the grain crop is thrashed in the
field, bagged, and stacked along the road, without even a tarpaulin to
cover it.

In 1855, California exported about four hundred and twenty tons of wheat;
in 1873, the export was but little less than six hundred thousand tons. In
1857, six casks and six hundred cases of California wine were sent out of
the State; in 1872, about six hundred thousand gallons were exported. In
1850, California produced five thousand five hundred and thirty pounds of
wool; in 1872, this product amounted to twenty-four million pounds. Thirty
million pounds of apples, ten million pounds of peaches, four and a half
million pounds of apricots, nearly two million pounds of cherries, are
part of the product of the State, in which the man is still living who
brought across the Plains the first fruit-trees to set out a nursery;
while four and a half million of oranges, and a million and a half of
lemons, shipped from the southern part of the State, show the rapid growth
of that culture.

In the northern counties, of which Tehama and Butte are a sample, they are
usually fortunate in the matter of late as well as early rains; but
close under the coast range the country is dryer, as is natural, the high
mountain range absorbing the moisture from the north-westerly winds. They
begin to plow as soon as it rains, usually in November, and sow the
grain at once. Formerly the higher plains were thought to be fit only for
grazing; but even the red lands, which are somewhat harder to break up,
and were thought to be infertile, are found to bear good crops of grain;
and this year these lands bear the drought better than some that were and
are preferred. Lambing takes place here in February, and they shear in
April. The grazing lands abound in wild oats, very nutritious, but apt to
run out where the pastures are overstocked. Alfilleria is not found so far
north as this; alfalfa has been sown all over the valley in proper places,
and does well. They cut it three times in the year, and turn stock in on
it after the last cutting; and all who grow it speak well of it.

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