Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

The one hundred and sixty-two miles from the Yosemite back to Sacramento were made in three days. On the way I dropped the machine and ran a quarter of a mile across a wheat field to see a header and thresher at work. It was drawn by eighteen mules, working six abreast, and cut a swarth nearly if not quite ten feet wide. The tops of the wheat as they fell were carried up on a cloth roller into the threshing part of the machine which worked as the machine was drawn along. Four or five men rode upon the machine, doing various work, but the result of the whole was, the wheat was cut, threshed, run into bags, and the bags tied up and thrown off, as the whole establishment went along on two immense wheels. Any farmer can judge of the great number of acres of wheat such a machine will harvest in a day.

Irrigation is carried on quite extensively here, but the source of a great part of the water supply is ordinary or bored wells. Some farms have twenty-five or thirty wells, and at each well is a wind-mill. The wind blows almost invariably from the west, every afternoon, and the number of revolving wind-mills seen over the level plains of the Sacramento Valley is astonishing. They are as thick as the chimneys in a city, and when they are all in motion, hundreds of them in all directions, the sight is quite novel to an Easterner. An ordinary good supply of water is had at a depth of less than twenty feet, but let the well be carried down fifty or sixty feet and a source of water is found that is inexhaustible, the size of the bore or the quantity pumped up not having the slightest effect upon the clearness or the supply of the water.

The dust, which to Californians must almost get to be a part of their living before the season is over, is a source of great annoyance to a wheelman who has much walking to do. The roughly worn rubber tire raises a constant cloud and the taste and smell is very offensive, but there are counter odors that are really very pleasant. The dried “life-everlasting,” that is very common among the foot hills, gives off a most delicious perfume, and there is constantly being wafted by the winds to our nostrils another scent so sweet as to be almost sickening. What the source of this perfume is I could not ascertain, for there was no shrub or bush in blossom to give off such fragrance, but a farmer told me it was the leaves of the laurel, a bush that is very common in the mountains. Crush these leaves and the smell is far from sweet; but diluted by the air it may, perhaps, be different. At any rate there is something in the hills and mountains of California that constantly throws off a perfume that is most pleasant to one breathing so much unpleasantly scented dust.

From the plains, as soon as the feed dries up in the summer, the cattle are driven up into the mountains, where vegetation is much fresher, and there they remain till fall. After making the journey once or twice the cattle start off of their own accord for the mountains when the feed gets scarce on the plains. This has the effect to diminish the milk supply among the farmers, as I found out to my sorrow, for many was the large farm-house at which I asked in vain for a bowl of milk.

Californians delight as much as do the Mormons in camping out. It is the custom, after the harvest is over, for the farmer to lock up his house, take his whole family up into the mountains and stay for weeks. Many times a day I met these parties going or coming; and taking an early start some mornings I passed men and women lying on the ground under their wagons wrapped up in blankets, sound asleep, the silent running machine not disturbing them in their slumbers. In fact everywhere, at the Big Trees, in the Yosemite, and by the roadside, along the route, everybody seems to be living out under the sky. It must be a delightful life, for the ground is warm; there is no dew, and by the side of a nice, clear, cool brook, where the fishing and hunting is good, the enjoyment must be great. I really wanted to stop with many a party I saw thus situated.

My appearance in Sacramento after a twelve days’ trip of three hundred and eighty miles in the Lower Sierras was, to put it mildly, peculiar, and the attention I attracted from every one was rather disconcerting to a modest man. My shoes had become so worn and torn, that the different pieces of canvas had to be tied together with strings in order to keep them on my feet. My stockings were little better than leggings—feet all gone—and what there was left of the uppers was very holey, in sharp contrast with the almost sole-less condition of my shoes. And the trousers,—well, not to mention one knee torn out and the other sewed up in a bunch, the part most intimately acquainted with the saddle would make a very good crazy-quilt pattern. A piece of black silk taken from an old skull cap, a portion of a pair of overalls, and a part of a pair of merino stockings were all sewed into the inside of the trousers to strengthen them, and as the different pieces wore through it left a garment of many colors, and I felt constrained to face every one. Had I brought the heavy corduroy buckskin-seated trousers, instead of leaving them at Denver, on account of their weight, I should not have been thus left at the last of the journey in such a deplorable condition, but a traveling wheelman who does his own tailoring whenever occasion suddenly requires, behind a stone wall or clump of bushes, or after he was disrobed at night, cannot stop to do a very nice piece of work even if he could. It is needless to say that my first business on reaching civilization, was in a clothing and shoe store.

OPEN-AIR TAILORING.—(Page 157.)

I had ridden from Milton that day, a distance of sixty-seven miles, and although I had eaten two hearty meals during the ride (and a hearty meal for a hungry wheelman means a good deal), yet at five o’clock, when I reached the hotel, I was half starved. At this hotel, the instant you are seated at the table a waiter on one side of you reels off: “Beef-steak, pork-steak, mutton-chop, fried tripe, corned-beef, pork and beans, fried liver and onions, bacon, and potpie,” with a rapidity that classes him as a gastronomic; and another waiter on the other side, the instant you have given your order says, “tea or coffee?” so quickly that you really believe he is about to pour from the large steaming pots which he holds in his hands, both the tea and coffee all over you if you did not respond instanter.

Before the square chunks of sugar have had a chance to dissolve in the coffee, the first waiter has returned, not only with what you have ordered, but with lots of other stuff, and as there is not room enough on the table for all the various dishes, he piles them up in a semi-circle around you, two or three layers high. I rather liked the way they had of doing business in that dining-room. Once or twice during the first meal I dug a hole through the breastwork, but at a nod the waiters quickly filled it up again, preventing my escape in that direction. I liked the place, first-rate, and so I stayed there two days—not in the dining-room, but close by. I had considerable writing to do, and thus I simply vibrated all the next day between the desk and the dining-room. It was immaterial what I ordered at the table, everything tasted so good, and so much tasted that same way. In short, I ate as never a wheelman ate before, and as this particular wheelman will never eat again, under the same circumstances. I have forgotten just what the various dishes were that surrounded me at the beginning, during the progress, and at the latter part of the supper siege, but I remember distinctly that fried liver and onions were the last to enter the list and that in a few hours, they were, like the “Bloody Sixty-ninth,” the last on the field and the first to leave it.