The farmer in this State is a person of uncommon resources and ingenuity. I think he uses his brains more than our Eastern farmers. I do not mean to say that he lives better, for he does not. His house is often shabby, even though he be a man of wealth, and his table is not unfrequently without milk; he buys his butter with his canned vegetables in San Francisco, and bread and mutton are the chief part of his living, both being universally good here. But in managing his land he displays great enterprise, and has learned how to fit his efforts to the climate and soil.
The gathering of the wheat crop goes on in all the valley lands with headers, and you will find on all the farms in the Sacramento Valley the best labor-saving machinery employed, and human labor, which is always the most costly, put to its best and most profitable uses. They talk here of steam-plows and steam-wagons for common roads, and I have no doubt the steam-plow will be first practically and generally used, so far as the United States are concerned, in these Californian valleys, where I have seen furrows two miles long, and ten eight-horse teams following each other with gang-plows.
Withal, they are somewhat ruthless in their pursuit of a wheat crop. You may see a farmer who plows hundreds of acres, but he will have his wheat growing up to the edge of his veranda. If he keeps a vegetable garden, he has performed a heroic act of self-denial; and as for flowers, they must grow among the wheat or nowhere.
Moreover, while he has great ingenuity in his methods, the farmer of the Sacramento plain has but little originality in his planting. He raises wheat and barley. He might raise a dozen, a score, of other products, many more profitable, and all obliging him to cultivate less ground, but it is only here and there you meet with one who appreciates the remarkable capabilities of the soil and climate. Near Tehama some Chinese have in the last two years grown large crops of pea-nuts, and have, I was told, realized handsome profits from a nut which will be popular in America, I suppose, as long as there is a pit or a gallery in a theatre; but the pea-nut makes a valuable oil, and as it produces enormously here, it will some day be raised for this use, as much as for the benefit of the old women who keep fruit-stands on the street corners. It would not be surprising if the Chinese, who continue to come over to California in great numbers, should yet show the farmers here what can be done on small farms by patient and thorough culture. As yet they confine their culture of land mainly to vegetable gardens.
To the farmer the valley and foot-hill lands of the Sacramento will be the most attractive; and there are still here thousands of acres in the hands of the Government and the railroad company to be obtained so cheaply that, whether for crops or for grazing, it will be some time before the mountainous lands and the pretty valleys they contain, north of Redding, the present terminus of the railroad, will attract settlers. But for the traveler the region north of Redding to the State line offers uncommon attractions.
The Sacramento Valley closes in as you journey northward; and at Red Bluff, which is the head of navigation on the river, you have a magnificent view of Lassen's Peaks on the east—twin peaks, snow-clad, and rising high out of the plain—and also of the majestic snow-covered crag which is known as Shasta Butte, which towers high above the mountains to the north, and, though here 120 miles off, looks but a day's ride away.
Redding, thirty miles north from Shasta, lies at the head of the Sacramento Valley. From there a line of stage-coaches proceeds north into Oregon, through the mass of mountains which separates the Sacramento Valley in California from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The stage-road passes through a very varied and picturesque country, one which few pleasure travelers see, and which yet is as well worth a visit as any part of the western coast. The Sacramento River, which rises in a large spring near the base of Mount Shasta, has worn its way through the high mountains, and rushes down for nearly a hundred miles of its course an impetuous, roaring mountain stream, abounding in trout at all seasons, and in June, July, and August filled with salmon which have come up here through the Golden Gates from the ocean to spawn. The stage-road follows almost to its source the devious course of the river, and you ride along sometimes nearly on a level with the stream, and again on a road-bed cut out of the steep mountain side a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the river; through fine forests of sugar-pines and yellow pines many of which come almost up to the dimensions of the great sequoias.
The river and its upper tributaries abound in trout, and this region is famous among Californian sportsmen for deer and fish. Many farm-houses along the road accommodate travelers who desire to stay to enjoy the fine scenery, and to hunt and fish; and a notable stopping-place is Fry's Soda Spring, fourteen hours by stage from Redding, kept by Isaac Fry and his excellent wife—a clean, comfortable little mountain inn, where you get good and well-cooked food, and where you will find what your stage ride will make welcome to you—a comfortable bath. The river is too cold for bathing here in the mountains because of the snow-water of which it is composed. About ten miles south of Fry's lies Castle Rock, a remarkable and most picturesque mountain of white granite, bare for a thousand feet below its pinnacled summit, which you see as you drive past it on the stage.
Fry's lies in a deep cañon, with a singular, almost precipitous, mountain opposite the house, which terminates in a sharp ridge at the top, one of those "knife-edge" ridges of which Professor Whitney and Clarence King often speak in their descriptions of Sierra scenery. If you are a mountain climber, you have here an opportunity for an adventure, and an excellent guide in Mr. Fry, who told me that this ridge is sharp enough to straddle, and that on the other side is an almost precipitous descent, with a fine lake in the distance. If you wish to hunt deer or bear, you will find in Fry an expert and experienced hunter. He has a tame doe, which, I was told, is better than a dog to mark game on a hunt, its sharp ears and nose detecting the presence of game at a great distance. If you are a fisherman, there are within three minutes' walk of the house pools abounding in trout, and you may fish up and down the river as far as you please, with good success everywhere. In June and July, when the salmon come up to spawn, they, too, lie in the deepest pools, and with salmon eggs for bait you may, if you are expert enough with your rod, take many a fat salmon.