A La California. Albert S. Evans
eight on ten miles passes through one continued grain-field. The country was parceled out at first in great ranches of many thousand acres, each held under Spanish or Mexican grants. These have been sold to Americans, and cut up to some extent into smaller portions, but the farms are still immense, and far too large for the most profitable cultivation. Barley and oats, principally the latter, are cultivated. The crop was cut months ago, but owing to the lack of "steamers," as the inhabitants here term the steam thrashing machine, most of it still lies in the fields unfathered. The straw becomes blackened by the fog, but the grain does not seem to suffer much. Thrashers were at work all along the road, and great piles of grain in sacks waiting to be hauled to Half-Moon Bay and shipped to San Francisco, were seen in many fields. The harvesting is done mainly by extra hands hired by the day. I met dozens of them tramping along the dusty roads, with their blankets on their backs. They do not stay long in a place, but get from two to three dollars in coin and their board for such time as they work, and then move on. Some of the old California Mission Indians still reside here, and work in the fields; and Chinamen are making their way on the farms and in the dairy. They get from fifteen dollars per month to nine dollars and fifty cents per week, and board themselves. A few get as much as two dollars per day in the harvest fields, and are highly spoken of by' the farmers, many of whom, however, are afraid to give them employment, lest their fields of grain and stacks should be fired in revenge by the European laborers, who are savagely opposed to them. The farms in the hills are smaller and more closely cultivated. Onions, beets and mustard are largely grown.
The great beets of California are among her vegetable wonders, and have often sorely taxed the credulity of Eastern people. Californian though I am, I must own up that there is something just a trifle like an imposition on outsiders in this matter of the production of these mammoth beets. This is the way the thing is done. The largest beet in this soil may attain a weight of fifty or sixty pounds the first year; I do not think any grow larger. One is selected, carefully dug up, so as not to injure the root, in the fall, and housed during the rainy season. Then it is replanted in the spring, and instead of going to seed, as it would if left in the ground all winter, continues growing, and in the fall it is again dug up and housed, having probably attained a weight of eighty or ninety pounds. Next year it grows perhaps to one hundred or one hundred and ten pounds—the largest on record weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds, and was raised in Santa Cruz county—but now it is "played out," in California parlance, and will not grow another year. How they manage to raise lettuce seven feet in circumference, and cucumbers five feet two inches long-and eight inches in circumference, such as are often on exhibition in the California Market, San Francisco, I do not know—but they do it.
The soil here is wonderfully rich, and often, as I have seen myself, from ten to twenty feet in depth, of a black loam, like that of the western prairies.
The road winds along the bold shore of the Pacific for miles—now passing over steep divides, and again descending to the bottom of precipitous cañons. At times the view of the ocean, for a long distance up and down the coast, is unobstructed, and from one height I counted not less than fifteen whales spouting at intervals as they sported in the calm blue waters, or sought their accustomed food along the edges of the kelp-fields, which in many places extend far out to sea. Whales have their parasites and minor annoyances as land-lubbers have, and sometimes they become so annoyed by the barnacles which fix themselves upon them that they run into shallow water and endeavor to rid themselves of their tormentors by rubbing their huge carcasses upon the sandy bottom. It not unfrequently happens that in so doing they venture too far in shore, and, being caught by the surf or the receding tide, are stranded and finally left to die high and dry upon the land. Every year whales are thus stranded on the beach in the vicinity of San Francisco, and their bones may be seen at frequent intervals scattered all along the shore from Point Lobos southward for many miles.
Meeting by the way an old Mission Indian, who, as he told me, was born and had always lived near Pescadero, and could hardly speak a word of English, though well posted in the Spanish tongue, I asked him how far it was to Pescadero. "Possibly a mile, or a league, or two leagues, señor." "Well, how far is it to Point Año Nuevo?" "Oh, señor, it must be a very long way! I think it is in the neighborhood of the other world!" I have never yet been able to get the remotest approximation to a correct statement of distance from a California Indian, those who were reared and educated by the old padres at the Spanish missions being as utterly ignorant on the subject as the diggers of the mountains, who never knew or cared to know anything beyond the condition of the grasshoppers on which they fatten in the summer season, and the acorn and piñon crops on which they subsist during the winter.
After a ride of thirty miles from Crystal Springs, done at a gallop, up hill and down, nearly all the way, and in just four hours and ten minutes, I reached the little town of Pescadero, in a small but fertile valley some two miles from the ocean, a popular summer resort for San Franciscans, and a favorite head-quarters of the hunters and fishermen of the coast. The long ride had given me a savage appetite, and as the fog had drifted in from the ocean, and shut down cold and damp on the landscape, a broiled trout dinner and a warm wood-fire never seemed more welcome than they did that evening at Pescadero.
The population of Pescadero does not exceed three hundred souls, who depend on the lumber-mills in the great redwood forest, the dairies, the grain and potato ranches, and summer visitors from San Francisco, for life and trade. The heavy fogs, and cold, raw ocean winds are unfavorable to grapes and other fruits, but potatoes thrive wonderfully, and are extensively cultivated on the rich bottom lands around the town. Half the "ground fruit" consumed in San Francisco comes from this section of the coast. An old ranchero told me that for ten years the average price of potatoes had been one dollar and twenty-five cents per hundred pounds, and the usual yield from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five bags, at one hundred and twenty-five pounds each, per acre. The digging is done by native Californians, or "greasers." Land, in the great ranches back on the road to Spanish Town, is worth from forty to fifty dollars per acre, but the potato lands, near this town, are worth one hundred dollars, or even more. A few old California Indians work in the fields quite faithfully after their fashion, but none of the old hands equal the Chinaman "year out and year in." Much lumber is hauled from the mountains, and, with potatoes, grain and vegetables, is shipped for San Francisco from the embarcadero at Pigeon Point, six miles south of Pescaderco.
My stay in Pescadero being limited, mine host of the Swanton House volunteered, Californian-like, to take me down the coast to see the sights. A six-mile ride over an open, rolling country, devoted chiefly to grazing, brought us to Pigeon Point, a famous place for wrecks, and a depot of the coast whalers. It gets its name from the wreck of the Carrier Pigeon, a noble clipper-ship which drifted in here one night in the winter of 1853-4, and was shattered to pieces upon the terrible reefs running out from the foot of the bold promontory. Here, on the high headland, are clustered some dozen cottages, inhabited by the coast whalers and their families. These men are all "Gees"—Portuguese—from the Azores or Western Islands. They are a stout, hardy-looking race, grossly ignorant, dirty, and superstitious. They work hard, and are doing well in business. As we rode up, two long, sharp, single-masted boats, with odd-looking sails, shot out to sea. On the Point, by the side of flag-staffs, on
PIGEON POINT
which signals were to be hoisted to guide the boats in their pursuit, crouched two of the party with their sea glasses, intently watching the boats and sweeping the horizon.
Are there any whales about? Oh, yes, plenty! and the speaker handed us his glass. About three miles out was a large school of the black, hump back species sporting in the nearly smooth sea, rising to the surface to blow, showing their black backs, and going down again among the sardines on which they were feeding. The boats run out with sails set, and do not take in their canvas until a whale is harpooned. If a new school is discovered, the boats are signaled by the party on the Point. Looking through the glass we saw the boats running for different whales. All was bustle and excitement on board, the harpooners standing in the bows ready to strike, and every man at his post. One of the signal men could speak a little English, and thus soliloquized for our benefit: