But deeper still their secrets spread,
That travel with their drifting dead.
Monday, Dec. 7. The simplest article for the table is often beyond the reach of your money here. I have found it so difficult to procure a few eggs, when required, that I have at last gone to keeping hens. I purchased six of an Indian woman for six dollars, and a rooster for fifty cents. On asking the woman why she charged only half price for the rooster, she replied that the fellow laid no eggs, and as for his crowing that did nobody any good. Sounder reasons than these could not be furnished in a much higher place than a hencoop. The habits of these hens are a little singular. They are perfectly tame, and are as much at home in the kitchen as the cook. They never trouble themselves much about a nest, but deposite their eggs where they find it most convenient; one takes the tea-tray, another the ironing-table, a third the oven, and there is one that always gets into the cradle. She is not at all disturbed by the tossing of the little fellow on whose premises she is obtruding. Neither she nor any of her feathered sisters cackle when they leave the nest. They don’t seem to think that any thing worth making an ado about has come to pass. The rooster, it is true, perks up a little, and perhaps feels a feather taller. But this is the vanity of his sex. There are a great many who crow over what others have done.
Tuesday, Dec. 8. The banditti, that have hovered for some weeks past in the vicinity of Monterey, have made it unsafe to venture out on our hunting excursions, unless in sufficient numbers to repel an attack. But last evening, the want of exercise, and of something to relieve the endless monotony of beef on the table, induced me forth. I took my boy, and put into his hands one of Colt’s revolving rifles, and took myself the fowling-piece. We had hardly got a mile from town, when two horsemen broke from the covert of the woods, and dashed down in our direction. I had but little more than time to exchange pieces with my boy, when they were within rifle shot. Their garb showed them to be Californians. My heart beat a great deal louder than usual. But they suddenly wheeled, and soon disappeared behind one of the hills which look out on the bay. They had no arms, except pistols at the saddle-bow. Whether they had hostile intentions, I know not: their movements had very much that appearance; and I must say I never before experienced so fully those feelings men describe in going into battle. They are not fear so much as an intensity of excitement, which seems as if it would suffocate life: it is dispelled with the first gun. I had once occasion to repel an exasperated Spaniard with a pistol, and though I had anticipated his attack, was prepared for it, and believed that the aim of the pistol would make him sheath his knife; still there was for a moment an intensity of feeling that would, if prolonged, destroy one. We continued our hunting, but changed our ground to the vicinity of the sea, and brought home a dozen curlew, which almost rival in flavor the canvas-back duck.
Wednesday, Dec. 9. The horses of California are of a hardy nature; and it is well for them that they are, considering the inhuman manner in which they are generally treated by the natives. If a man wants to ride forty or fifty miles from his residence, he mounts his horse, and spurs off upon the gallop. On arriving at the place of his destination, he ties him to a post, where he stands two or three days, waiting for his master. During this time he is not once fed, and is quite fortunate if he gets a swallow of water. At last, his rider comes, mounts him, and he takes him back again at the same free and easy gait with which he first started. This, of course, is confined to the summer season, when the grass has the most substance and nutriment: still it is almost incredible. Besides the weight of his heavy rider, the horse generally carries fifty or sixty pounds in the gear of his saddle, and double this in a soaking rain. It requires two large tanned ox hides to fit out a Californian saddle; then add to this, the wooden stirrups, three inches thick, the saddle-tree, with its stout iron rings and buckles, a pair of goat-skins across the pommel, holsters and pistols, and spurs at the heels of the rider, weighing from four to six pounds, and we have some idea of what a Californian horse has to carry. Still he is cheerful and spirited, and never flags till nature sinks with exhaustion. A man who can abuse such an animal, ought to be bitted and saddled himself.
Thursday, Dec. 10. The old as well as the young are coming over the mountains. I had an emigrant to dine with me to-day, who has recently arrived, and who is seventy-six years of age. His locks are as free of gray hairs as those of a child, and his eye still flashes with the fires of youth. He is among the volunteers, and you may see him every day on a spirited horse, with a rifle at his saddle-bow. He has four sons with Col. Fremont. They enlisted before they had time to unpack their saddles, and have with them the remnants of the biscuit and cheese which they brought from the United States. I asked the old man what could induce him at his age to come to California. He said his children were coming, and so he determined to come too. I asked him if he had no compunction in taking up arms against the inhabitants the moment of his arrival. He said he had Scripture example for it. The Israelites took the promised land of the East by arms, and the Americans must take the promised land of the West in the same way. I told him that would do, if he could show the same high commission. But I find this kind of parallel running in the imagination of all the emigrants. They seem to look upon this beautiful land as their own Canaan, and the motley race around them as the Hittites, the Hivites, and Jebusites, whom they are to drive out. But they have gone at it with other weapons than ram’s horns, except as powder-flasks.
Friday, Dec. 11. The grizzly bear is the most formidable and ferocious animal in California; and yet, with all this ferocity of disposition, rarely attacks a man unless surprised or molested. The fellow never lies in wait for his victim. If the hunter invades his retreat or disputes his path he will fight, but otherwise contents himself with the immunity which he finds in the wildness of his home and the savage grandeur of his nature. It is never safe to attack him with one rifle; for if you fail to hit him in a vital part, he is on you in the twinkling of an eye. Your only possibility of escape is up a near tree, too slender for his giant grasp; and then there is something extremely awkward in being on the top of a tree with such a savage monster at its root. How long he will remain there you cannot tell; it may be a day, and it may be a week. Your antagonist is too shrewd to hand you up your rifle, or let you come down to get it. You are his prisoner, more safely lodged than in a dungeon, and he will set you at liberty when it suits him. He sleeps not himself at his post; day and night his great flashing eyes are fastened upon you. The lyre of Orpheus may have lulled to sleep the sentinel of Hades, but its magic tones have never charmed to slumber the sentinel of the California forest.
The full-grown California bear measures from eight to ten feet in length, and four or five in girth. His strength is tremendous, his embrace death. Had the priest of Apollo fallen into his folds, he would have perished without any of those protracted agonies which the sympathetic muse has wailed round the world. Nature has thrown over him a coat of mail, soft indeed, but impervious to the storm and the arrow of the Indian. The fur, which is of a dark brown color, is nearly a span long, and when the animal is enraged each particular hair stands on end. His food in the summer is chiefly berries, but he will now and then, on some of his feast days, slaughter a bullock. In winter he lives on acorns, which abound in these forests. He is an excellent climber, and will ascend a large oak with the rapidity of a tar up the shrouds of his ship. In procuring his acorns, when on the tree, he does not manifest his usual cunning. Instead of threshing them down like the Indian, he selects a well-stocked limb, throws himself upon its extremity, and there hangs swinging and jerking till the limb gives way, and down they come, branch, acorns, and bear together. On these acorns he becomes extremely fat, yielding ten or fifteen gallons of oil, which is said to be sufficiently pungent and nutritive as a tonic to tuft a statue’s marble head.
The she bear has one peculiarity that must puzzle even the philosophical inquirer. As soon as she discovers herself with young, she ceases to roam the forest, and modestly retires from the presence of others, to some secluded grotto. There she remains, while her male companion, with a consideration that does honor to his sex, brings her food. She reappears at length with her twin cubs, and woe to the luckless wight who should attempt to injure or molest them. They are guarded by an affection and ferocity with which it would be madness to trifle. For them she hunts the berries, and dislodges the acorns. Her maternal care is a beautiful trait in her savage nature, and
“Shines like a good deed in a naughty world.”