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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There is thus inevitably a considerable waste of eggs. I asked some of the
eggers how many murres nested on the South Farallon, and they thought at
least one hundred thousand. I do not suppose this an extravagant estimate,
for, taking the season of 1872, when seventeen thousand nine hundred and
fifty-two dozen eggs were actually sold in San Francisco, and allowing
half a dozen to each murre, this would give nearly thirty-six thousand
birds; and adding the proper number for eggs broken, destroyed by gulls,
and not gathered, the number of murres and gulls is probably over one
hundred thousand. This on an island less than a mile in its greatest
diameter, and partly occupied by the light-house and fog-whistle and their
keepers, and by other birds and a large number of sea-lions!

When they are done laying, and when the young can fly, the birds leave the
island, usually going off together. During the summer and fall they return
in clouds at intervals, but stay only a few days at a time, though there
are generally a few to be found at all times; and I am told that eggs in
small quantities can be found in the fall.

The murre does not fly high, nor is it a very active bird, or apparently
of long flight. But the eggers say that when it leaves the island they do
not know whither it goes, and they assert that it is not abundant on the
neighboring coast. The young begin to fly when they are two weeks old, and
the parents usually take them immediately into the water.

The sea-parrot has a crest, and somewhat resembles a cockatoo. Its numbers
on the South Farallon are not great. It makes a nest in a hole in the
rocks, and bites if it is disturbed. The island was first used as a
sealing station; but this was not remunerative, there being but very few
fur seal, and no sea-otters. This animal, which abounds in Alaska, and
is found occasionally on the southern coast of California, frequents
the masses of kelp which line the shore; but there is no kelp about the
Farallones.

In the early times of California, when provisions were high-priced, the
egg-gatherers sometimes got great gains. Once, in 1853, a boat absent but
three days brought in one thousand dozen, and sold the whole cargo at a
dollar a dozen; and in one season thirty thousand dozen were gathered, and
brought an average of but little less than this price.

[Illustration: THE GREAT ROOKERY.]

Of course there was an egg war. The prize was too great not to be
struggled for; and the rage of the conflicting claimants grew to such
a pitch that guns were used and lives were threatened, and at last the
Government of the United States had to interfere to keep the peace. But
with lower prices the strife ceased; the present company bought out, I
believe, all adverse claims, and for the last fifteen or sixteen years
peace has reigned in this part of the county of San Francisco--for these
lonely islets are a part of the same county with the metropolis of the
Pacific.

[Illustration: INDIAN GIRLS AND CANOE, PUGET SOUND.]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND PUGET SOUND--HINTS TO TOURISTS.

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 anxious
skipper; and was answered,

"I don't know about that, captain; but he's been taking all sorts of
things 'straight' over the bar for about twenty years, to _my_ knowledge,
and I should think he might manage the brig."

The voyage from San Francisco is almost all the way in sight of land; and
as you skirt the mountainous coast of Oregon you see long stretches of
forest, miles of tall firs killed by forest fires, and rearing their bare
heads toward the sky like a vast assemblage of bean-poles--a barren view
which you owe to the noble red man, who, it is said, sets fire to these
great woods in order to produce for himself a good crop of blueberries.

When, some years ago, Walk-in-the-Water, or Red Cloud, or some other
Colorado chief, asserted in Washington the right of the Indian to hunt
buffalo, on the familiar ground that he _must_ live, a journalist given to
figures demolished the Indian position by demonstrating that a race which
insisted on living on buffalo meat required about sixteen thousand acres
of land per head for its subsistence, which is more than even we can
spare. One wonders, remembering these figures, how many millions of feet
of first-class lumber are sacrificed to provide an Indian rancheria in
Oregon with huckleberries.

On the second morning of your voyage you enter the Columbia River, and
stop, on the right bank, near the mouth, at a place famous in history and
romance, and fearfully disappointing to the actual view--Astoria. When
you have seen it, you will wish you had passed it by unseen. I do not
know precisely how it ought to have looked to have pleased my fancy, and
realized the dreams of my boyhood, when I read Bonneville's "Journal" and
Irving's "Astoria," and imagined Astoria to be the home of romance and of
picturesque trappers. Any thing less romantic than Astoria is to-day you
can scarcely imagine; and what is worse yet, your first view shows you
that the narrow, broken, irreclaimably rough strip of land never had space
for any thing picturesque or romantic.

Astoria, in truth, consists of a very narrow strip of hill-side, backed by
a hill so steep that they can shoot timber down it, and inclosed on every
side by dense forests, high, steep hills, and mud flats. It looks like
the rudest Western clearing you ever saw. Its brief streets are paved with
wood; its inhabitants wear their trowsers in their boots; if you step off
the pavement you go deep into the mud; and ten minutes' walk brings you
to the "forest primeval," which, picturesque as it may be in poetry, I
confess to be dreary and monotonous in the extreme in reality.

There are but few remains of the old trapper station--one somewhat large
house is the chief relic; but there is a saw-mill, which seems to make,
with all its buzz and fuzz, scarcely an appreciable impression upon the
belt of timber which so shuts in Astoria that I thought I had scarcely
room in it to draw a full breath; and over to the left they pointed out
to me the residence of a gentleman--a general, I think he was--who came
hither twenty-six years ago in some official position, and had after a
quarter of a century gained what looked to me from the steamer's deck like
a precarious ten-acre lot from the "forest primeval," about enough room to
bury himself and family in, with a probability that the firs would crowd
them into the Columbia River if the saw-mill should break down.

On the voyage up I said to an Oregonian, "You have a good timber country,
I hear?" and his reply seemed to me at the time extravagant. "Timber?" he
said; "timber--till you can't sleep." When I had spent a day and a half at
anchor abreast of Astoria, the words appeared less exaggerated. Wherever
you look you see only timber; tall firs, straight as an arrow, big as the
California redwoods, and dense as a Southern canebrake. On your right is
Oregon--its hill-sides a forest so dense that jungle would be as fit
a word for it as timber; on the left is Washington Territory, and its
hill-sides are as densely covered as those of the nearer shore. This
interminable, apparently impenetrable, thicket of firs exercised upon my
mind, I confess, a gloomy, depressing influence. The fresh lovely green
of the evergreen foliage, the wonderful arrowy straightness of the trees,
their picturesque attitude where they cover headlands and reach down
to the very water's edge, all did not make up to me for their dreary
continuity of shade.

Astoria, however, means to grow. It has already a large hotel, which the
timber has crowded down against the tide-washed flats; a saw-mill, which
is sawing away for dear life, because if it stopped the forest would
doubtless push it into the river, on whose brink it has courageously
effected a lodgment; some tan-yards, shops, and "groceries;" and if you
should wish to invest in real estate here, you can do so with the help of
a "guide," which is distributed on the steamer, and tells you of numerous
bargains in corner lots, etc.; for here, as in that part of the West which
lies much farther east, people live apparently only to speculate in real
estate.

An occasional flash of broad humor enlivens some of the land circulars and
advertisements. I found one on the hotel table headed "Homes," with the
following sample:

221 ACRES,

Four miles east of Silverton; frame house and a log house (can
live in either); log barn; 20 acres in cultivation; 60 acres
timber land; balance pasture land; well watered. We will sell
this place for $1575. Will throw in a cook stove and all the
household furniture, consisting of a frying-pan handle and
a broomstick; also a cow and a yearling calf; also one bay
heifer; also 8400 lbs. of hay, minus what the above-named
stock have consumed during the winter; also 64 bushels of
oats, subject to the above-mentioned diminution. If sold,
we shall have left on our hands one of the driest and
ugliest-looking old bachelors this side of the grave, which
we will cheerfully throw in if at all acceptable to the
purchaser. Old maids and rich widows are requested to give
their particular attention to this special offer. Don't pass
by on the other side.

* * * * *

HOME, SWEET HOME!

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home!

We still have a few more "Sweet Homes" for sale, consisting
of, etc., etc., etc.

[Illustration: pointing finger] Title perfect--a Warrantee
Deed from the hub of the earth to the top of the skies, and
Uncle Sam's Patent to back us!

A further-reaching title one could scarcely require.

I don't know where I got the belief that the Columbia was a second-rate
river. There must have been some blunder in the geographies out of which I
got my lessons and my notions of the North-west coast at school. Possibly,
too, the knowledge that navigation is interrupted by rapids at the
Cascades and Dalles contributed to form an impression conspicuously wrong.
In fact, the Columbia is one of the great rivers of the world. It seems to
me larger, as it is infinitely grander, than the Mississippi.

Between Astoria and the junction of the Willamette its breadth, its depth,
its rapid current, and the vast body of water it carries to sea reminded
me of descriptions I had read of the Amazon; and I suspect the Columbia
would rank with that stream were it not for the unlucky obstructions at
the Cascades and Dalles, which divide the stream into two unequal parts.

[Illustration: SALEM, CAPITAL OF OREGON.]

For ten miles above Astoria the river is so wide that it forms really a
vast bay. Then it narrows somewhat, and the channel approaches now one
and then the other of its bold, picturesque shores, which often for miles
resemble the Palisades of the Hudson in steepness, and exceed them in
height. But even after it becomes narrower the river frequently widens
into broad, open, lake-like expanses, which are studded with lovely
islands, and wherever the shore lowers you see, beyond, grand mountain
ranges snow-clad and amazingly fine.

The banks are precipitous nearly all the way to the junction of the
Willamette, and there is singularly little farming country on the
immediate river. Below Kalama there are few spots where there is even room
for a small farmstead. But along this part of the river are the "salmon
factories," whence come the Oregon salmon, which, put up in tin cans, are
now to be bought not only in our Eastern States, but all over the world.
The fish are caught in weirs, in gill nets, as shad are caught on the
Hudson, and this is the only part of the labor performed by white men. The
fishermen carry the salmon in boats to the factory--usually a large frame
building erected on piles over the water--and here they fall into the
hands of Chinese, who get for their labor a dollar a day and their food.

The salmon are flung up on a stage, where they lie in heaps of a thousand
at a time, a surprising sight to an Eastern person, for in such a pile
you may see many fish weighing from thirty to sixty pounds. The work
of preparing them for the cans is conducted with exact method and great
cleanliness, water being abundant. One Chinaman seizes a fish and cuts off
his head; the next slashes off the fins and disembowels the fish; it then
falls into a large vat, where the blood soaks out--a salmon bleeds like a
bull--and after soaking and repeated washing in different vats, it falls
at last into the hands of one of a gang of Chinese whose business it is,
with heavy knives, to chop the fish into chunks of suitable size for the
tins. These pieces are plunged into brine, and presently stuffed into the
cans, it being the object to fill each can as full as possible with fish,
the bone being excluded.

The top of the can, which has a small hole pierced in it, is then soldered
on, and five hundred tins set on a form are lowered into a huge kettle of
boiling water, where they remain until the heat has expelled all the air.
Then a Chinaman neatly drops a little solder over each pin-hole, and after
another boiling, the object of which is, I believe, to make sure that the
cans are hermetically sealed, the process is complete, and the salmon are
ready to take a journey longer and more remarkable even than that which
their progenitors took when, seized with the curious rage of spawning,
they ascended the Columbia, to deposit their eggs in its head waters, near
the centre of the continent.

I was assured by the fishermen that the salmon do not decrease in numbers
or in size, yet in this year, 1873, more than two millions of pounds were
put up in tin cans on the Lower Columbia alone, besides fifteen or twenty
thousand barrels of salted salmon.

From Astoria to Portland is a distance of one hundred and ten miles, and
as the current is strong, the steamer requires ten or twelve hours to make
the trip. As you approach the mouth of the Willamette you meet more
arable land, and the shores of this river are generally lower, and often
alluvial, like the Missouri and Mississippi bottoms; and here you find
cattle, sheep, orchards, and fields; and one who is familiar with the
agricultural parts of California notices here signs of a somewhat severer
climate, in more substantial houses; and the evidence of more protracted
rains, in green and luxuriant grasses at a season when the pastures of
California have already begun to turn brown.

Portland is a surprisingly well-built city, with so many large shops, so
many elegant dwellings, and other signs of prosperity, as will make you
credit the assertion of its inhabitants, that it contains more wealth in
proportion to its population than any other town in the United States.
It lies on the right bank of the Willamette, and is the centre of a
large commerce. Its inhabitants seemed to me to have a singular fancy
for plate-glass fronts in their shops and hotels, and even in the private
houses, which led me at first to suppose that there must be a glass
factory near at hand. It is all, I believe, imported.

From Portland, which you can see in a day, and whose most notable sight is
a fine view of Mount Hood, obtainable from the hills back of the city, the
sight-seer makes his excursions conveniently in various directions; and
as the American traveler is always in a hurry, it is perhaps well to show
what time is needed:

To the Dalles and Celilo, and return to Portland, three days.

To Victoria, Vancouver's Island, and return to Portland, including the
tour of Puget Sound, seven days.

To San Francisco, overland, by railroad to Roseburg, thence by stage to
Redding, and rail to San Francisco, seventy-nine hours.

[Illustration: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.]

Thus you may leave San Francisco by steamer for Portland, see the Dalles,
the Cascades, Puget Sound, Victoria, the Willamette Valley, and the
magnificent mountain scenery of Southern Oregon and Northern California,
and be back in San Francisco in less than three weeks, making abundant
allowance for possible though not probable detentions on the road. The
time absolutely needed for the tour is but seventeen days.

Of course he who "takes a run over to California" from, the East,
predetermined to be back in his office or shop within five or six weeks
from the day he left home, can not see the Columbia River and Puget Sound.
But travelers are beginning to discover that it is worth while to spend
some months on the Pacific coast; some day, I do not doubt, it will be
fashionable to go across the continent; and those whose circumstances
give them leisure should not leave the Pacific without seeing Oregon and
Washington Territory. In the few pages which follow, my aim is to smooth
the way for others by a very simple account of what I myself saw and
enjoyed.

[Illustration: VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA.]

And first as to the Cascades and the Dalles of the Columbia. You leave
Portland for Dalles City in a steamboat at five o'clock in the morning.
The better way is to sleep on board this steamer, and thus avoid an
uncomfortably early awakening. Then when you do rise, at six or half past,
you will find yourself on the Columbia, and steaming directly at Mount
Hood, whose splendid snow-covered peak seems to bar your way but a short
distance ahead. It lies, in fact, a hundred miles off; and when you have
sailed some hours toward it the river makes a turn, which leaves the snowy
peak at one side, and presently hides it behind the steep bank.

The little steamer, very clean and comfortable, affords you an excellent
breakfast, and some amusement in the odd way in which she is managed. Most
of the river steamers here have their propelling wheel at the stern; they
have very powerful engines, which drive them ahead with surprising speed.
I have gone sixteen miles an hour in one, with the current; and when they
make a landing the pilot usually runs the boat's head slantingly against
the shore, and passengers and freight are taken in or landed over the
bow. At the wood-pile on the shore you may generally see one of the people
called "Pikes," whom you will recognize by a very broad-brimmed hat, a
frequent squirting of tobacco-juice, and the possession of two or three
hounds, whom they call hereabouts "hound-dogs," as we say "bull-dog." And
this reminds me that in Oregon the country people usually ask you if you
will eat an "egg-omelet;" and they speak of pork--a favorite food of the
Pike--as "hog-meat."

The voyage up the river presents a constant succession of wild and
picturesque scenery; immense rocky capes jut out into the broad stream;
for miles the banks are precipitous, like the Hudson River Palisades, only
often much higher, and for other miles the river has worn its channel out
of the rock, whose face looks bare and clean cut, as though it had been
of human workmanship. The first explorer of the Columbia, even if he was
a very commonplace mortal, must have passed days of the most singular
exhilaration, especially if he ascended the stream in that season when the
skies are bright and blue, for it seems to me one of the most magnificent
sights in the world. I am not certain that the wildness does not oppress
one a little after a while, and there are parts of the river where the
smoothly cut cliffs, coming precipitously down to the water's edge, and
following down, sheer down, to the river's bottom, make you think with
terror of the unhappy people who might here be drowned, with this cold
rock within their reach, yet not affording them even a momentary support.
I should like to have seen the rugged cliffs relieved here and there by
the softness of smooth lawns, and some evidences that man had conquered
even this rude and resisting nature.

But for a century or two to come the traveler will have to do without
this relief; nor need he grumble, for, with all its rugged grandeur, the
scenery has many exquisite bits where nature has a little softened its
aspect. Nor is it amiss to remember that but a little way back from the
river there are farms, orchards, cattle, and sheep. At one point the boat
for a moment turned her bow to the shore to admit a young man, who brought
with him a wonderful bouquet of wild flowers, which he had gathered at
his home a few miles back; and here and there, where the hill-sides have a
more moderate incline, you will see that some energetic pioneer has carved
himself out a farm.

Nevertheless it is with a sense of relief at the change that you at last
approach a large island, a flat space of ten or twelve hundred acres,
with fences and trees and grain fields and houses, and with a gentle and
peaceful aspect, doubly charming to you when you come upon it suddenly,
and fresh from the preceding and somewhat appalling grandeur. Here the
boat stops; for you are here at the lower end of the famous Cascades,
and you tranship yourself into cars which carry you to the upper end, a
distance of about six miles, where again you take boat for Dalles City.

[Illustration: MAP OF PUGET SOUND AND VICINITY.]

The Cascades are rapids. The river, which has ever a swift and impetuous
current, is nearly two miles wide just above these rapids. Where the bed
shoals it also narrows, and the great body of water rushes over the rocks,
roaring, tumbling, foaming--a tolerably wild sight. There is nowhere any
sudden descent sufficient to make a water-fall; but there is a fall of a
good many feet in the six miles of cascades.

These rapids are considered impassable, though I believe the Indians used
sometimes to venture down them in canoes; and it was my good fortune to
shoot down them in a little steamer--the _Shoshone_--the third only, I was
told, which had ever ventured this passage. The singular history of this
steamboat shows the vast extent of the inland navigation made possible
by the Columbia and its tributaries. She was built in 1866 on the Snake
River, at a point ninety miles from Boise City, in Idaho Territory, and
was employed in the upper waters of the Snake, running to near the mouth
of the Bruneau, within one hundred and twenty-five miles of the head of
Salt Lake.

When the mining excitement in that region subsided there ceased to be
business for her, and her owner determined to bring her to Portland. She
passed several rapids on the Snake, and at a low stage of water was run
over the Dalles. Then she had to wait nearly a year until high water on
the Cascades, and finally passed those rapids, and carried her owner, Mr.
Ainsworth, who was also for this passage of the Cascades her pilot, and
myself safely into Portland.

We steamed from Dalles City about three o'clock on an afternoon so windy
as to make the Columbia very rough. When we arrived at the head of the
Cascades we found the shore lined with people to watch our passage through
the rapids. As we swept into the foaming and roaring waters the engine was
slowed a little, and for a few minutes the pilots had their hands full;
for the fierce currents, sweeping her now to one side and then to the
other, made the steering extraordinarily difficult. At one point there
seemed a probability that we should be swept on to the rocks; and it was
very curious to stand, as General Sprague and I, the only passengers, did,
in front of the pilot-house, and watch the boat's head swing against the
helm and toward the rocks, until at last, after half a minute of suspense,
she began slowly to swing back, obedient to her pilot's wish.

We made six miles in eleven minutes, which is at the rate of more than
thirty miles per hour, a better rate of speed than steamboats commonly
attain. Of course it is impossible to drive a vessel up the Cascades, and
a steamboat which has once passed these rapids remains forever below.

At the upper end of the Cascades a boat awaits you, which carries you
through yet more picturesque scenery to Dalles City, where you spend the
night. This is a small place, remarkable to the traveler chiefly for the
geological collection which every traveler ought to see, belonging to
the Rev. Mr. Condon, a very intelligent and enthusiastic geologist,
the Presbyterian minister of the place. You have also at Dalles City a
magnificent view of Mount Hood, and Mr. Condon will tell you that he has
seen this old crater emit smoke since he has lived here.

There is no doubt that both Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens have still
internal fires, though both their craters are now filled up with ashes.
There is reason to believe that at its last period of activity Mount Hood
emitted only ashes; for there are still found traces of volcanic ashes,
attributable, I am told, to this mountain, as far as one hundred miles
from its summit. Of Mount St. Helens it is probable that its slumbering
fires are not very deeply buried. A few years ago two adventurous citizens
of Washington Territory were obliged, by a sudden fog and cold storm, to
spend a night near its summit, and seeking for some cave among the lava
where to shelter themselves from the storm, found a fissure from which
came so glowing and immoderate a heat that they could not bear its
vicinity, and, as they related, were alternately frozen and scorched all
night--now roasting at the volcanic fire, and again rushing out to cool
themselves in the sleet and snow.

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