Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 17

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, been made of tobacco raised in California.

There has, however, been no lack of efforts to produce here tobacco fit to manufacture into cigars and for smoking and chewing purposes. The soil in many parts of the State is peculiarly adapted to this plant; the climate, mild and regular, favored its growth and hastened its perfection. The best seed was procured from Connecticut, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida, and Cuba.

But for many years the product was rank, coa.r.s.e, and fitter for sheep-wash than for any other purpose.

Meantime, however, not a few men familiar with the old processes of raising and curing the plant have tried their best ingenuity to improve the quality. It was thought that the soil was too rich, because the tobacco makes a rapid and heavy growth; but planting on thinner or older soil did not answer. Several methods of curing were contrived, and there is now reason to believe that the one known as the Culp process, from the name of its patentee, will produce the desired result. I had heard and read so much about it, and about the merit of the tobacco produced by it, that I went down to Gilroy, seventy or eighty miles south of San Francisco, to see what had really been accomplished. The account I give below will probably interest many tobacco growing and manufacturing readers, while it will, I fear, painfully affect the spirits of the anti-tobacconists; for there is reason to believe that tobacco will become presently one of the most important and valuable crops of this State.

I must premise that I am not an expert in tobacco, nor familiar with the methods pursued in the East. I have seen a tobacco-field and the inside of a Connecticut curing-house, and that is about all. I give, therefore, not opinions, but facts.

Gilroy stands in a long and broad plain, a very rich piece of alluvial bottom, with water so abundant that artesian wells are easily bored and very common. At the depth of one hundred and thirty feet they get flowing wells, and it happened in one case of which I heard that the water came up with such force as to prevent the casing going down into the well, and the pressure of the water broke away the ground, enlarged the bore of the well, and threatened to flood a considerable area, so that the farmers gathered in force, and by means of an iron caisson loaded with stones, and with many cart-loads of stones besides, plugged up the dangerous hole.

The land is a deep alluvial loam, easily worked, and here, and in some neighboring valleys, many tobacco growers have been engaged for the last ten or twelve years. Mr. Culp, who was a tobacco grower, and, if I understood him rightly, also a manufacturer in New York for some years before he came here, and who appears, at any rate, to be a very thorough farmer and a lover of clean fields, has planted tobacco here for fifteen years. He has a farm of about seven hundred acres, four hundred of which have this year been in tobacco. From him and others I learned the following particulars of the way in which they cultivate the plant in California.

They sow the seed from the 1st to the 10th of January, and sometimes even in December. The beds are prepared and sown as in the East, except that they do not always burn the ground over, which, if I remember rightly, is invariably done in Missouri and Kentucky. In this season, the days are always warm enough for the little plants; but there are light frosts at night, and they are protected against these by frames covered with thin cotton cloth.

The fields are plowed--by the best growers--ten inches deep; cross-plowed and harrowed until the soil is fine, and then ridged--that is to say, two furrows are thrown together. This saves the plants from harm by a heavy rain, and also makes the ground warmer, and is found to start the plants more quickly.

Planting in the fields begins about the 8th of April; and the plants are set a foot apart in the rows, the rows being three feet apart, if they are from Havana seed; if Connecticut or Florida, they stand eighteen inches or two feet apart in the rows.

They had grown, besides Havana and Florida, for their crop, Latakia, Hungarian, Mexican, Virginia, Connecticut-seed Standard, Burleigh, White Leaf, and some other kinds, by way of experiment.

Cultivators and shovel-plows are used to keep the soil loose and clean; if the weather should prove damp and cold, the shovel-plow is used to make the ridges somewhat higher. They go over the fields twice in the season with these tools, using the hoe freely where weeds get into the rows. Last year, in twenty-six days after they were done planting, they had gathered two bales of tobacco. This, however, is not common, and was done by very close management, and on a warm soil.

All the tobacco growers with whom I spoke a.s.sert that they are not troubled with that hideous creature, "the worm." They attribute this in part to the excellence of their soil, and partly to the abundance of birds and yellow jackets. They do not "worm" their crop, it seems, which must give them an enviable advantage over Eastern growers.

They do not always "top" the Havana, and they do very little "suckering."

If the ground is clean, they let the suckers from the root grow, and these become as large and heavy as the original plant. They believe that the soil is strong enough to bear the plants and suckers, and that they get a better leaf and finer quality without suckering.

The planting is continued from April until the latter part of July, so as to let the crop come in gradually; the last planting may be caught by an early frost, but whatever they plant before the 1st of July is safe in any season. Cutting begins about the 4th of June, and this year they were cutting still on the 19th of October. The earlier cut plants sprout again at once, and mature a second and even a third crop. Mr. Culp told me that he had taken four crops of Havana in one year from the same field, and I saw considerable fields of third crop just cut or standing; but in some cases the frost had caught this. "If the soil is in perfect order, we can here make a crop of Havana in forty days from the planting," said he.

One man can prepare and take care of ten acres here, keeping it in good order. For planting and cutting, of course, an extra force is used. One man can set out or plant three thousand plants in a day of Havana; of the other kinds from fifteen hundred to two thousand.

The tobacco is cut with a hatchet; if it is Havana, the toppers usually go just ahead of the cutters in the field, or they may be a day ahead.

Florida is topped ten days or two weeks before cutting. You must remember that after April they have no rain here, so that all field work goes on without interruption from the weather, and crops can be exposed in the field as a planter would not dare do in the East. Up to the cutting, the methods here differ from those used in the East, only so far as climate and soil are different.

When the plant lies in the field Mr. Culp's peculiar process begins; and this I prefer to describe to you as nearly as I can in his own words.

He said that tobacco had long been grown in California even before the Americans came. He had raised it as a crop for fifteen years; and before he perfected his new process, he was able usually to select the best of his crop for smoking-tobacco, and sold the remainder for sheep-wash.

One year two millions of pounds were raised in the State, and, as it was mostly sold for sheep-wash, it lasted several years, and discouraged the growers. Tobacco always grew readily, but it was too rank and strong. They used Eastern methods, topping and suckering, and as the plant had here a very long season to grow and mature, the leaf was thick and very strong.

The main features of the Culp process are, he said, to let the tobacco, when cut, wilt on the field; then take it at once to the tobacco-house and pile it down, letting it heat on the piles to 100 degrees for Havana.

It must, he thinks, come to 100, but if it rises to 102 it is ruined.

Piling, therefore, requires great judgment. The tobacco-houses are kept at a temperature of about 70 degrees; and late in the fall, to cure a late second or third crop, they sometimes use a stove to maintain a proper heat in the house, for the tobacco must not lie in the pile without heating.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN CRADLE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON TERRITORY.]

When it has had its first sweat, it is hung up on racks; and here Mr.

Culp's process is peculiar. He places the stalk between two battens, so that it sticks out horizontally from the frame; thus each leaf hangs independently from the stalk; and the racks or frames are so arranged that all the leaves on all the stalks have a separate access to the air.

The tobacco-houses are frame buildings, 100 x 60 feet, with usually four rows of racks, and two gangways for working. On the rack the surface moisture dries from the leaf; and at the proper time it is again piled, racked, and so on for three or even four times. The racks are of rough boards, and the floor of the house is of earth.

After piling and racking for three weeks, the leaves are stripped from the stalk and put into "hands," and they are then "bulked," and lie thus about three months, when the tobacco is boxed. From the time of cutting, from four to six months are required to make the leaf ready for the manufacturer.

"Piling" appears to be the most delicate part of the cure, and they have often to work all night to save tobacco that threatens to overheat. Mr.

Culp thinks the dryness of the climate no disadvantage. I was told that they find it useful sometimes to sprinkle the floors of the tobacco-houses.

I saw racks, too, in the fields--portable, and easily carried anywhere; and on these a great quant.i.ty of Florida tobacco, used for chewing and smoking, had been or was getting cured. It was piled in the field where it was cut, and the whole curing process, up to "bulking," is carried on in the open air. Havana "fillers" they also cure in the field, as the fine color is not needed for that.

Mr. Culp thought his method of horizontal suspension allowed the juices from the stalk to be carefully distributed among the leaves. He told me that a fair average crop was about 1500 pounds of Havana, or 2500 pounds of Florida, per acre, of merchantable leaf. In favorable localities this was considerably exceeded, he said. For chewing-tobacco, the cut plant is piled but once.

For four hundred acres of tobacco, about one hundred and twenty-five Chinese were employed in cutting and curing. After planting and up to the cutting season they had but fifty men employed. The Chinese receive one dollar a day and board themselves, living an apparently jolly life in shanties near the fields.

They get their Havana seed from Cuba. The Patent Office seed did not do well. They do not like to risk seed of their own plants. He used home-grown seed for nine years; he could not say that there was a serious deterioration or change in the quality of the tobacco, but a singular change in the form of the leaf took place. That from home-grown seed gets longer, and the veins or ribs, which in Havana tobacco stand out at right angles from the leaf stalk, take an acute angle, and thus become longer and make up a greater part of the leaf. Of Florida tobacco the home-grown seed comes true.

In summer the roads get very dusty in California, and this dust is a disadvantage to the tobacco planter. On the Culp farm I found they were planting double rows of shade trees along the main roads, and graveling the interior roads; also, they seem to feel the high winds which sweep through the California valleys, and were planting almonds and cotton-woods for windbreaks in the fields. It seemed odd to see long rows of almond-trees used for this purpose.

This process has so far won the confidence of experts in tobacco in this State, that a company with large capital has undertaken not only the raising of tobacco by its method, but also the manufacture into cigars, and plug, smoking, and fine-cut chewing-tobacco. They are just beginning operations in Gilroy, on a scale which will enable them to manufacture all the tobacco grown this year on about six hundred acres, and they mean to plant next year one thousand acres, and expect that from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres will be planted and cured by others under licenses from the patentee. Commercially, of course, their undertaking is yet an experiment, though excellent cigars and tobacco have been made already; but the year 1874 will decide the result; and if it should prove as successful as is hoped, and as there is good cause to believe it will, a new and very profitable branch of agriculture will be opened for the farmers of this State; for tobacco will grow in almost all parts of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUNNING THE ROOKERIES--GATHERING MURRE EGGS.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE FARALLON ISLANDS.

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 ma.s.ses out of the ocean, twenty-three and a half miles from the Golden Gate, the famous entrance of San Francis...o...b..y. Farallon is a Spanish word, meaning a small pointed islet in the sea.

These rocks, probably of volcanic origin, and bare and desolate, lie in a line from south-east to north-west--curiously enough the same line in which the islands of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Island group have been thrown up. Geologists say they are the outcrop of an immense granite dike.

The southernmost island, which is the largest--just as Hawaii, the southernmost of the Sandwich Island group, is also the biggest--extends for nearly a mile east and west, and is three hundred and forty feet high.

It is composed of broken and water-worn rocks, forming numerous angular peaks, and having several caves; and the rock, mostly barren and bare, has here and there a few weeds and a little gra.s.s. At one point there is a small beach, and at another a depression; but the fury of the waves makes landing at all times difficult, and for the most part impossible.

The Farallones are seldom visited by travelers or pleasure-seekers. The wind blows fiercely here most of the time; the ocean is rough; and, to persons subject to sea-sickness, the short voyage is filled with the misery of that disease. Yet they contain a great deal that is strange and curious. On the highest point of the South Farallon the Government has placed a light-house, a brick tower seventeen feet high, surmounted by a lantern and illuminating apparatus. It is a revolving white light, showing a prolonged flash of ten seconds duration once in a minute. The light is about three hundred and sixty feet above the sea, and with a clear atmosphere is visible, from a position ten feet high, twenty-five and a half miles distant; from an elevation of sixty feet, it can be seen nearly thirty-one miles away; and it is plainly visible from Sulphur Peak on the main-land, thirty-four hundred and seventy-one feet high, and sixty-four and a half miles distant. The light-house is in lat.i.tude 37 41' 8" north, and longitude 122 59' 05" west.

On our foggy Western coast it has been necessary to place the light-houses low, because if they stood too high their light would be hidden in fog-banks and low clouds. The tower on the South Farallon is, therefore, low; and this, no doubt, is an advantage also to the light-keepers, who are less exposed to the buffetings of the storm than if their labor and care lay at a higher elevation.

As the Farallones lie in the track of vessels coming from the westward to San Francisco, the light is one of the most important, as it is also one of the most powerful on our Western coast; and it is supplemented by a fog-whistle, which is one of the most curious contrivances of this kind in the world. It is a huge trumpet, six inches in diameter at its smaller end, and blown by the rush of air through a cave or pa.s.sage connecting with the ocean.

One of the numerous caves worn into the rocks by the surf had a hole at the top, through which the incoming breakers violently expelled the air they carried before them. Such spout-holes are not uncommon on rugged, rocky coasts. There are several on the Mendocino coast, and a number on the sh.o.r.es of the Sandwich Islands. This one, however, has been utilized by the ingenuity of man. The mouth-piece of the trumpet or fog-whistle is fixed against the aperture in the rock, and the breaker, das.h.i.+ng in with venomous spite, or the huge bulging wave which would dash a s.h.i.+p to pieces and drown her crew in a single effort, now blows the fog-whistle and warns the mariner off. The sound thus produced has been heard at a distance of seven or eight miles. It has a peculiar effect, because it has no regular period; depending upon the irregular coming in of the waves, and upon their similarly irregular force, it is blown somewhat as an idle boy would blow his penny trumpet. It ceases entirely for an hour and a half at low water, when the mouth of the cave or pa.s.sage is exposed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIGHT-HOUSE ON THE SOUTH FARALLON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCH AT WEST END, FARALLON ISLANDS.]

The life of the keepers of the Farallon light is singularly lonely and monotonous. Their house is built somewhat under the shelter of the rocks, but they live in what to a landsman would seem a perpetual storm; the ocean roars in their ears day and night; the boom of the surf is their constant and only music; the wild scream of the sea-birds, the howl of the sea-lions, the whistle and shriek of the gale, the dull, threatening thunder of the vast breakers, are the dreary and desolate sounds which lull them to sleep at night, and a.s.sail their ears when they awake. In the winter months even their supply vessel, which, for the most part, is their only connection with the world, is sometimes unable to make a landing for weeks at a time. Chance visitors they see only occasionally, and at that distance at which a steamer is safe from the surf, and at which a girl could not even recognize her lover. The commerce of San Francisco pa.s.ses before their eyes, but so far away that they can not tell the s.h.i.+ps and steamers which sail by them voiceless and without greeting; and of the events pa.s.sing on the planet with which they have so frail a social tie they learn only at long and irregular intervals. The change from suns.h.i.+ne to fog is the chief variety in their lives; the hasty landing of supplies the great event in their months. They can not even watch the growth of trees and plants; and to a child born and reared in such a place, a sunny lee under the shelter of rocks is probably the ideal of human felicity.

Except the rock of Tristan d'Acunha in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, I have never seen an inhabited spot which seemed so utterly desolate, so entirely separated from the world, whose people appeared to me to have such a slender hold on mankind. Yet for their solace they know that a powerful Government watches over their welfare, and--if that is any comfort--that, thirty miles away, there are lights and music and laughter and singing, as well as crowds, and all the anxieties and annoyances incidental to what we are pleased to call civilization.