Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 15

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 sh.o.r.e. 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VICTORIA HARBOR, VANCOUVER'S ISLAND.]

A logging camp is an a.s.semblage 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, b.u.t.ter, 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 s.h.i.+ngles 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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+fted to the opposite side, and then it is a remarkable sight to see the tall, straight ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.u.t.ts 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORT TOWNSEND, WAs.h.i.+NGTON TERRITORY.]

CHAPTER IX.

DAIRY-FARMING IN CALIFORNIA.

The great valleys of California do not produce much b.u.t.ter, 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 fas.h.i.+on in this State, there is no reason why stall-fed cows should not yield b.u.t.ter, 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 b.u.t.ter-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 b.u.t.ter 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 gra.s.ses during the summer, at least in the ravines, and keep the springs alive.

Marin County, lying north of San Francisco, is the country of b.u.t.ter 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 quant.i.ty of b.u.t.ter, 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 quant.i.ty 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 b.u.t.ter 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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.ter-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 "b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter-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 s.h.i.+ning utensils, the nicest b.u.t.ter-room--and not only b.u.t.ter, 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 la.s.s 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 b.u.t.ter-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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter-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."