But neither ants nor fleas ever troubled our persons; the skins were always sent down to the river whilst yet warm, and the common precautions I adopted in-doors insured us against all annoyance.
It now commenced to rain very heavily, but not before I had, fortunately, completed a shed, and laid in a stock of fire-wood, and had also erected an additional room for drying wet clothes, &c., and for sheltering the dogs. The first rain lasted for four days without cessation; and here again I am unable to state, scientifically, the quantity of water that fell in inches, but on the fourth day the water laid on our valley of such a depth that it just plummed the top of a pair of Cording’s fishing-boots, which came up to about my knees. All the fruit trees and garden seeds were in the ground; and as we had no immediate use for our oxen, and they were up to their bellies in water, we let them run over the hills. Shortly after this the weather cleared up, and we were much distressed at missing my slot-hound. Many days elapsed before we gained any clue to his fate, until, beating up some new ground one day, I came upon what remained of the poor old fellow,—his skin and bones. He had broken away and indulged in a midnight ramble, and had evidently been attacked and overpowered by coyotes, of which two carcasses lay near him. We all felt much regret for the old fellow, for he was a good staunch dog, and had been a great favourite of my late father. We buried his remains and erected a mark to his memory; but, although I experienced the same feeling of regret that most men do when they lose a favourite and faithful hound, I shall refrain from inflicting upon the reader the doleful stanzas which are generally addressed “To my Dog,â€� on these occasions.
January 1. For two months we had alternate rain and sunshine, and nothing of moment occurred. The farm was by this time entirely enclosed, and the onions with which Barnes had planted an acre, began to appear above the ground. We had also large patches of vegetables for home consumption.
When returning one day from an excursion, we found that the Indians had paid our valley a visit, and rifled our house of everything they thought valuable; cooking utensils, blankets, clothes, and tools had disappeared,—but we had taken the precaution of depositing our powder in a secret place which they did not discover. Our rifles, and one blanket each, we had with us on our excursion. The two principal annoyances that resulted from this were, firstly, that the nights being very cold indeed now, and our house very thin, our blankets were a serious loss; secondly, they had stolen all our candles. They also stole our skins; not that I ever intended to bring these trophies away for the benefit of the public, for with the exception of the puma-skin, and some of wild cats, they were of that mild description which are only exhibited in tailors’ shop-fronts, where they assume the form of gentlemen’s hunting inexpressibles. The Indians, it afterwards appeared, were in the habit of annually following the course of our stream to gather the wild grapes which grew on its banks. These people will eat anything, but how they manage the wild grapes is a mystery, for these grapes never ripen, and green gooseberries give no conception of their acidity. In pursuit of these luxuries, however, they came upon our camp, and took away whatever they thought they understood the use of, but evidently departed in a great hurry. I never saw an Indian during the whole of my stay in that part of the country; but, after this robbery, had any ever come within rifle range either of my hut or March’s, he would have been shot like a coyote; for once let an Indian think he can steal with impunity, he will soon attempt to murder you for the clothes on your back.
Although I had determined, after Sheldon’s casualty, upon following no more bears into the bush, which is here too thick for the use of the rifle, I still hoped to kill a bear during the winter, trusting to a chance meeting under favourable circumstances; and in this respect I was gratified, inasmuch as I killed a bear to my own gun. Now, in writing from memory, one might almost be excused for a little inaccuracy in point of size and weight; and I must confess that I have an almost irresistible temptation to forget the real dimensions of the animal that surrendered life on this occasion, and, calling it simply a bear, leave its weight and ferocity to be conjectured from my general description of the species. In fact, it was a cub, that I once found playing by itself among some rocks. I should have liked to have taken him home alive, but although his movements were excessively infantine and playful to behold, I have no doubt that had I attempted to capture him, he would not only have bitten me until I had let him go, but would have hallooed for his parents, and brought those amiable persons to the rescue. So I shot him; and I had quite enough to do to carry him home dead, for he was very fat. I must mention here, that although we walked this country for nearly nine months, and continually alighted on the fresh “sign� of bear, with the exception of those that visited our hut at night, and the others above mentioned, our party saw but three bears, two of which were wounded, but escaped; and this is probably attributable to the fact that the bear’s sense of hearing enables him to follow up his natural impulse of avoiding the hunter.
A Colt’s revolver is invaluable to the deer-hunter, both for self-defence and killing wounded game. Perhaps the best praise I can award to this weapon is in saying that I have had mine for four years, during which time it has been much used and more abused, but at this moment it is perfect in every respect, and has never required repair.
We searched, or “prospected� the adjacent hills on many occasions, to discover if gold existed in the surface soil, but without success. It is worthy of remark, that this district of country is similar in every respect to that of the mining regions. Here, as there, is a succession of red gravelly hills, interspersed with veins of quartz, all of which have been subjected to volcanic agency that would long ago have ejected the gold from the quartz had there been any in it. But the mountain in labour here brought forth a mouse; whilst a few miles further south it has produced results of a much more satisfactory description. We, however, did discover a peculiar blue quartz, which, upon assay by fusion, was found to contain a large quantity of gold. The presence of silver in small quantities was also evident in another rock we discovered. But, with these exceptions, we found no trace of any description of metal but iron.
It was now spring, and I started alone, on foot, for San Francisco, where business required my presence. On arriving at Russian River I found the stream much swollen, but I struck a part of the river where I knew one of the hunters had a log-hut and a dug-out, or canoe. I reached the hut and found no one at home, but the dug-out was hauled up and the paddle was in it.
It was easy to launch the dug-out, which was very long and thin; so, seating myself in the stern, I was at once in the current. I need not say that I should never have dreamt of paddling myself over a swollen river in a canoe, had I not accustomed myself to them when in the Borneo rivers; but when I reached the middle of the stream I found the eddies made the dug-out so unmanageable, and the current was so much stronger than I imagined, and the water hissed and bubbled about me to such an extent that I had to keep the dug-out’s head nearly straight up stream, and I began to get quite giddy and bewildered, and wished I was safe on shore. I did effect a landing, an hour afterwards, about a mile lower down the river; I had just strength enough to land, and just sense enough to feel excessively grateful for not having been carried out to sea, or, what is more probable, capsized in the eddies of the stream.