But, to tell the truth, the Indian women are homely to the last degree. "Ugly,"said an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of squaws—"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized, thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's Rights movement has succeeded, and when women, dressed like frights in such Bloomer costume as may then be prescribed, go out to their daily toil like men, and on an equality with men—when they have cast off the beauty which is so scornfully spoken of in the conventions, and have secured their rights—whether they will be any better off than these squaws. When you have thoughtfully regarded the Indian woman perhaps you will agree with Gail Hamilton that it is woman's first duty to be useless; for it is plain that here, as in a higher civilization, when women consent to work as men, they are sure to have the hardest work and the poorest pay.
As you ascend the Sacramento you near Mount Shasta, and when you reach Strawberry Valley, a pretty little mountain vale, you are but a short ride from its base. It is from this point that tourists ascend the mountain. You can hire horses, guides, and a camp outfit here, and the adventure requires three days. You ride up to the snow-line the first day, ascend to the top the following morning, descend to your camp in the afternoon, and return to the valley on the third day. Mount Shasta has a glacier, almost, but not quite, the only one, I believe, within the limits of the United States. The mountain is an extinct volcano. Its summit is composed of lava, and if your eye is familiar with the peculiar shape of volcanic peaks, you can easily trace the now broken lines of this old crater as you view the mountain from the Shasta plain on the north.
There are many extremely pretty valleys scattered through these mountains, and these are used by small farmers, and by sheep and cattle owners who in the winter take their stock into the lower valleys, but ascend into the mountains in May, and remain until October. This is also a timber region, and as it is well watered by permanent streams you see frequent saw-mills, and altogether more improvement than one expects to find. But, proceeding further north you come upon a large plain, the Shasta Valley, in which lies the considerable town of Yreka, notable during the last winter and spring as the point from which news came to us about the Modoc war.
From Yreka you may easily visit the celebrated "lava beds," where the Indians made so stubborn and long-continued a defense against the United States troops; and at Yreka you may hear several opinions upon the merits of the Modocs and their war. You will hear, for instance, that the Indians were stirred up to hostilities by mischievous and designing whites, that white men were not wanting to supply them with arms and ammunition, and that, had it not been for the unscrupulous management of some greedy and wicked whites, we should not have been horrified by the shocking incidents of this costly Indian trouble, in which the United States Government for six months waged war against forty-six half-starved Modocs.
The Shasta Valley is an extensive plain, chiefly used at present as a range for cattle and sheep. But its soil is fertile, and the valley contains some good farms. Beyond Yreka gold mining is pursued, and, indeed, almost the whole of the mountain region north of Redding yields "the color;" and at many points along the Upper Sacramento and the mountain streams which fall into it, gold is mined profitably. One day, at the Soda Spring, several of us asked Mr. Fry whether he could find gold near the river. He took a pan, and digging at random in his orchard, washed out three or four specks of gold; and he related that when he was planting this orchard ten years ago he found gold in the holes he dug for his apple-trees. But he is an old miner, and experience has taught him that a good apple orchard is more profitable, in the long run, than a poor gold mine.
A large part of the Sacramento Valley is still used for grazing purposes, but the farmers press every year more and more upon the graziers; and the policy of the Government in holding its own lands within what are called "railroad limits"—that is to say, within twenty miles on each side of the railroad—for settlement under the pre-emption and homestead laws, as well as the policy of the railroad company in selling its lands, the alternate sections for twenty miles on each side of the road, on easy terms and with long credit to actual settlers, prevents land monopoly in this region. There is room, and cheap and fertile land, for an immense population of industrious farmers, who can live here in a mild climate, and till a fertile soil, and who need only intelligence and enterprise to raise profitably raisins, orchard fruits, castor-oil, peanuts, silk, and a dozen other products valuable in the world's commerce, and not produced elsewhere in this country so easily. It is still in this region a time of large farms poorly tilled; but I believe that small farms, from 160 to 320 acres, will prove far more profitable in the end.
The progress of California in material enterprises is something quite wonderful and startling. A year brings about changes for which one can hardly look in ten years. It is but eighteen months ago that the idea of a system of irrigation, to include the whole of the San Joaquin Valley, was broached, and then the most sanguine of the projectors thought that to give their enterprise a fair start would require years, and a great number of shrewd men believed the whole scheme visionary. But a few experiments showed to land-owners and capitalists the enormous advantages of irrigation, and now this scheme has sufficient capital behind it, and large land-holders are offering subsidies and mortgaging their lands to raise means to hasten the completion of the canal. Two years ago the reclamation of the tule lands, though begun, advanced slowly, and arguments were required to convince men that tule land was a safe investment. But this year eight hundred miles of levee will be completed, and thousands of acres will bear wheat next harvest which were overflowed eighteen months ago. Two years ago the question whether California could produce good raisins could not be answered; but last fall raisins which sold in the San Francisco market beside the best Malagas were cured by several persons, and it is now certain that this State can produce—and from its poorest side-hill lands—raisins enough to supply the whole Union. Not a year passes but some new and valuable product of the soil is naturalized in this State; and one who has seen the soil and who knows the climate of the two great valleys, who sees that within five, or, at most, ten years all their overflowed lands will be diked and reclaimed, and all their dry lands will be irrigated, and who has, besides, seen how wide is the range of products which the soil and climate yield, comes at last to have what seems to most Eastern people an exaggerated view of the future of California.
But, in truth, it is not easy to exaggerate, for the soil in the great valleys is deep and of extraordinary fertility; there are no forests to clear away, and farms lie ready-made to the settlers' hands; the range of products includes all those of the temperate zone and many of the torrid; the climate is invigorating, and predisposes to labor; and the seasons are extraordinarily favorable to the labors of the farmer and gardener. The people have not yet settled down to hard work. There are so many chances in life out there that men become overenterprising—a speculative spirit invades even the farm-house; and as a man can always live—food being so abundant and the climate so kindly—and as the population is as yet sparse, men are tempted to go from one avocation to another, to do many things superficially, and to look for sudden fortunes by the chances of a shrewd venture, rather than be content to live by patient and continued labor. This, however, is the condition of all new countries; it will pass away as population becomes more dense. And, meantime California has gifts of nature which form a solid substratum upon which will, in a few years, be built up a community productive far beyond the average of wealthy or productive communities. This is my conclusion after seeing all parts of this State more in detail than perhaps any one man has taken the trouble to examine it.