To those who derive pleasure in seeing the rough, rugged, wild face of Nature, made to wear the smiles of civilization and of progress, and to witness what money and labor can accomplish, I know of no point where they can visit to see these in all their grandeur than across the Scott's and Trinity mountains, which, in point of difficulty and rugged wildness, surpass any mountain region it has ever been my lot to travel, from the Columbia to the Missouri River. Toll roads lead over both of these mountains; one connecting Yreka with Rogue River; and the other, Yreka with Shasta. The road over Scott's Mountain is about twenty miles long, and made at a cost not far from $200,000; and the other, eight miles, made at a cost of $16,000. The mind that conceived the road, and the hand that executed it, were not cast in Nature's ordinary mould; genius of a higher order was Nature's gift to them. Those who invested their capital (for they were both built by private enterprise) are now being well repaid; of this, the long line of wagons and pack trains, freighted from Red Bluff to the northern mines, furnish unmistakable evidence.
A ride over Scott's Mountain amply repays one for all the labor required to make it; and can be made by no one who will not appreciate that bold enterprise that is to-day leveling mountains, leveeing valleys, bridging torrents, and, by the sound of pick and drill, even arousing Nature from her lethargy sleep—deep down in the very bowels of the mountains—throughout the length and breadth of California.
Leaving Rogue River, we pass at once from an agricultural to a wild, mountainous region, which constitutes the mining section of northern California, of which Yreka may be considered the center. It is a place of much trade, built mostly of brick, and presents a bustling appearance. It supports two newspapers, three or four hotels; has a large post office, and, at present, is the northern terminus of the State telegraph line. A cemetery, well arranged in its plan, forms the northern entrance to the city; the number of graves it contains shows that here as elsewhere death has done its work. A day's journey, and we come to Shasta, a mining town of one thousand people, possessing few attractions outside of a business locality. The road, approaching Yreka, winds near the northern base of Mount Shasta, a frowning snow peak, fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. Though grand and majestic, it does not compare favorably in either respect with Mount Hood—the father of all snow peaks on the Pacific. From Shasta a ride of a day brings us to Red Bluff—to which point steamers of light draught are still running from Sacramento, but with so many delays and uncertainties that the traveler prefers to continue the journey by the stage. At this point, however, we finally emerge from the mountains of California and enter upon the broad swelling prairie which constitutes the norther portion of the Sacramento Valley—where, though the country is mostly a waste, dotted here and there with clumps of oak, or openings of the same growth, yet where many large and inviting farming sections are had. At Tehama we cross the Sacramento, by a buoy-ferry, and, in a few miles, enter upon one of the most choice agricultural districts the eye ever rested upon—where grain fields are not measured by the acre, nor yet by the mile, but by the league. By a day's drive we passed through the extensive and rich fields of Major Bidwell, where eleven thousand acres of grain were being threshed—where his own mill stood ready to convert into flour the produce of his own fields; where his own mammoth store furnished hundreds of his employés with all the wants of life; where his own energy was opening, with his own means, a wagon road from the Sacramento River to the Humboldt mines; and where his own purse has already paid out $35,000, and backed by a willingness to pay as much more, in order to open up a new market for the exuberant products of so rich a soil as he himself possesses. The center of his large estate is the beautiful village of "Chico," where, in rural wealth as well as in rural simplicity, live an educated and contented peasantry, all more or less supported by the means of this bachelor millionaire—whose residence, on the banks of the Sacramento, is one of those architectural gems hid away amidst shrubs, trees, orchards, and groves, as if to avoid the gaze of him whose residence is of crowded cities and who is almost unworthy to breath the sweet perfume of a region where such bowers grow. May Major Bidwell long live—though bachelor he be—to dispense his bounties to a people who respect him for the liberal and generous manner in which he shares his wealth with those not similarly blest.
From Tehama the ride of half a day brings us to Oroville, a city well named, for situated as it is on the Feather River, it is in the heart of a rich mining country, where the miners have worked like so many beavers, and where the water of the Feather River is made to run in pipes and reservoirs into lakes for hundreds of feet above the level of the river, at the site of the town. This river is crossed by a ferry. A steamer is said to have once landed here from Sacramento, but such occurrences I regard as rare. The river is rapid; boils and surges over a rocky and rugged bed, and joins the Sacramento at Marysville—to which point a night's ride brings us—continuing to pass through a rich agricultural region, under a state of high cultivation. Marysville is a large, prosperous city—houses, mostly of brick—at the junction of the Yuba and Feather rivers. Thence on to Sacramento, (a journey of eight hours' staging,) the road is over a level, agricultural district, throughout which the piles of drift timber and the absence of fences, in many places, and the presence of boats and bateaux, all told that the water had been here supreme not many months past; barns with their roofs a mile distant; houses without any; outhouses and dwellings with a watermark up to the second story—and in many localities no dwellings at all, where commodious and comfortable tenements had been—all told of the presence and the power of the waters of Sacramento when charged with fullness on its way to the ocean. It seems to me that a system of high levees is the only thing to reclaim hundreds of acres of fine swamp land along the Sacramento, and to prevent the repetition of these disastrous results, which made the people poor and retard the growth of the State. Sacramento is already surrounded by a high levee which may protect it another season; but the levee should begin at Marysville and extend to Sacramento. It will, of course, be expensive, but it will repay the labor in the end.
Between Marysville and Sacramento we passed the large and magnificent claim called "Sutter's Ranch," though not under a high state of cultivation. The old pioneer is now poor, but his friends are sufficiently zealous in his behalf to see that his wants go not unsupplied. One can not pass over this region and at the same time observe how rapidly the Sacramento River is being obstructed by the immense deposits of sand and sediment which its current is daily bringing down, thus forming bars and deltas destined not only to intercept but probably to suspend at no distant day navigation to its upper waters,—without feeling the pressing importance of a railroad connection between Sacramento and the more northern regions of California. Already are parties out viewing and prospecting a road through Noble's Pass, where it is proposed by some to carry the Pacific railroad line.
That California will be covered with a network of railways is only a question of time, and that time determined by the low rates of interest that will cause capitalists to become interested in these great works of internal improvement. Local trade and travel must always be great, and must always increase so long as gold shall be mined, and that period seems to be illimitable.
From Sacramento we took passage on the fine steamer Antelope, for San Francisco, which in six hours and at a cost of $5 brought us to the end of one section of our journey. There are no opposition steamers on now and hence the monopolists command the river. The signs of the devastation of the flood marked the entire distance from Sacramento to the bay of San Francisco. But here and there we found the inhabitants raising their dwellings a story, and by levees and other improvements trying to reclaim their fields, as well as to defy the freshets of coming years. No one can pass over this exceedingly interesting region from Portland to Sacramento without feeling a thrill of pride and of pleasure to see what American energy and American capital have accomplished during the past fourteen years of its occupancy; and to picture in imagination what the next fourteen years may produce, would almost render oneself liable to such an unjust criticism that I would forbear to enter upon a theme so pregnant with interest; suffice it to say, let those who have not made the trip, make it at least once and see for themselves pleasant homes and well-tilled fields, grand mountains, useful rivers, forests of orchards, and oceans of grain; miles of sluice boxes and tons of gold; and the beauty of a region redolent with the songs of thrift and industry—and if they be not well repaid for all the fatigues of a mountain journey, the fault will certainly be theirs, and not the bounty of generous nature, who with lavish hand has spread so many pictures of the grand and beautiful—nor yet the fault of the inhabitants by the wayside, who by culture and improvement have framed these pictures in gilded and golden casements, and where contentment and happiness are the visible garments in which everything would seem to be enrobed.
INDIAN WARS OF SOUTHERN OREGON.
Address of Hon. William M. Colvig Delivered at the Reunion of the Indian War Veterans, at Medford on Saturday, July 26, 1902.