Chapter 4

When we got up a hare, away we went after the dogs, just as fast as our horses would carry us. The sport was hard on horseflesh, so much so that my father finally forbade me running any of our horses after the hounds. There lived in our neighborhood a man who owned, and who had put upon the track some of the fastest horses in the State. At this time he had retired and raised horses for the fun of it. He also had some good hounds. He enjoyed the sport as much as I did. Having plenty of good horses, he furnished me with as many as I needed. We spent many days in trying to determine which of us had the best dogs. Incidentally, we wrecked some promising thoroughbreds. The question of the superiority of our dogs was never settled. We always left the door open for one more race.

Our place was the haven of all the boys of my acquaintance. When I was attending school at Marysville some boy came home with me nearly every Friday night. We would work at whatever was being done on the place Saturday forenoon, but the afternoon was ours. With the old gun we took to the pasture, hunted for game, for birds' nests and even turtles' nests. The mud turtle, common to all California waters, laid an astounding number of very hard shelled, oblong, white eggs, considerably larger than a pigeon's egg. They deposited them in the sand on the shores of the slough, covering them up, leaving them for the sun to hatch. They always left some tell-tale marks by which we discovered the nest. Often we got several hundred eggs in an afternoon. They were very rich, and of good flavor.

There were many coons and a few wildcats in the pasture woods. With the aid of a dog we had great sport with them. Hard pressed, they would take to the trees, from which we would shoot them. On one occasion we found four little spitfire, baby lynx, which we carried home and later traded to the proprietor of a menagerie. We got some money and two pair of fan-tail pigeons in exchange for them. When quite small they were the most vicious, untamable little varmints imaginable, and as long as we had them our hands were badly scratched by them.

On the bottom land, each year, we had a large and well assorted vegetable garden. It produced much more than we could possibly use. We boys would sell things from the garden for amusement and pin money. During one summer vacation, a boy, one Johnnie Gray, a brother of L. D. C. Gray of this city, was visiting me. We took a load of vegetables to Marysville. After selling it, getting our lunch, paying for the shoeing of our horse (which in those days cost four dollars), and buying some ammunition for the gun, we had $1.50 left. We quarreled as to how we should spend this remnant. Not being able to agree, we started home without buying anything. On the outskirts of Marysville was a brewery. The price of a five-gallon keg of beer was $1.50. We concluded to take a keg home with us. It was an awfully hot summer day, and the brewer was afraid to tap the keg, thinking that the faucet would blow out under the influence of the heat before we got home. He gave us a wooden faucet, and told us how to use it. "Hold it so," he said, showing us, "hit it with a heavy hammer, watch the bung, and when you have driven it in pretty well, then send it home with a hard blow." We were sure we could do it. We drove home, put the beer in the shade by the well, spread a wet cloth over it, and then put our horse away. My parents chided us for throwing our money away on beer. In the cool of the evening we concluded to tap the keg. One of us held the faucet and the other did the driving, but we did not have the success predicted for us by the brewer.

At the critical moment we drove in the bung, but not with sufficient momentum to fasten the faucet. It flew out of our hands into the air, followed by the beer. In about a minute the keg was entirely empty. We were overwhelmingly drenched and drowned by the escaping beer, but never got a single drop of it to drink.

On another occasion some of us children were coming home from Marysville. We were driving an old white horse, named "Jake," who knew us and loved us as only a good horse can. He submitted to our abuses, shared in our pleasure and would not willingly have hurt any of us. We were in a small, one-seated spring wagon. While driving through a lane, moved on by the spirit of deviltry, one of us whipped Jake into a run, and the other one threw the reins over a fence post. The result was as could have been expected by any sane-minded individual. The horse stopped so suddenly that he sat down on the singletree, and broke both the shafts of the wagon. We were hurled out with great force, and got sundry bruises and abrasions. We wired up the shafts and got home as best we could, and, I am sorry to say, we lied right manfully as to the cause of the accident. We told a story of a drunken Mexican on horseback who chased us a considerable distance, and finally lassoed the horse, bringing him to so sudden a stop as to cause the damage. Instead of being punished, as we should have been, we were lauded as heroes of an attempted kidnapping.

One of my uncles made for us a four-wheeled wagon, the hub, spokes and axles being made out of California oak--such a wagon as you can buy in any store today, only a little larger. We made a kite of large dimensions, and covered the frame with cotton from a couple of flour sacks. At certain times of the year, the wind across the Marysville plains blew with great velocity. This kite, in a strong wind, had great pulling capacity. We would go out into the plain, put up the kite, and fasten the string to the tongue of the wagon, three or four of us pile on, and let her go. The speed that we would travel before the wind by this means was marvelous, but we tried the kite trick once too often. We got to going so fast we could not slow down nor successfully guide the wagon. It ran over an old stump, spilled us all out, and kite and wagon sailed away clear across Feather River into Sutter County and we never saw either of them again.

The boys of the present age have no such opportunities for out-of-door sports as we did in the olden days. Now it is baseball, automobile exhibitions and moving picture shows. Increased population, high-power guns, cultivation of the soil, the breaking up of large ranches into smaller holdings, have resulted in the disappearance of much of the game with which the land then abounded.

Fifty years ago in California, conditions of rural life were necessarily hard. Our habitations were but little more than shelter from the elements. We had none of the conveniences of modern life. At our house we always made our own tallow candles. We hardened the candles by mixing beeswax with the tallow. We made the beeswax from comb of the honey taken from bee trees. We corned our own beef and made sauerkraut by the barrel for winter use. We canned our own fruit, made jelly and jam from wild berries and wild grapes. We selected perfect ears of corn, shelled it at home, ran it through a fanning machine, and then had the corn ground into meal for our own consumption. We raised our own poultry and made our own butter and cheese, with plenty to sell; put up our own lard, shoulders, ham and bacon and made our own hominy. The larder was always well filled. The mother of a family was its doctor. A huge dose of blue mass, followed by castor oil and quinine, was supposed to cure everything, and it generally did. In the cities luxuries were few. To own a piano was the privilege of the very wealthy.

Speaking of pianos, in the flood of 1863, before Marysville was protected by its levee, which is now twenty-five feet high, the family cow swam into the parlor of one of the best mansions of the town, through the window. When the flood waters had subsided, she was found drowned on top of the piano.

Life under the conditions here given was necessarily hard. Our amusements were few. We, who lived in the country, had plenty of good air and sound sleep-two things often denied the city resident. Our sports were few and simple, but of such a nature that they toughened the fiber and strengthened the muscles of our bodies, thus fitting us to withstand the heavy drafts on our vitality that the hurly-burly of modern life entails upon the race.

Last Quail Shoot of the Year 1911

Were I musically inclined, I could very appropriately sing, "Darling, I Am Growing Old." The realization of this fact, as unwelcome as it is, is from time to time forced upon me.

On Friday, November 10, 1911, I went to the Westminster Gun Club, in an open machine, through wind and storm. Got up the next morning at 5 o'clock, had a duck shoot, drove back thirty miles to Los Angeles, arriving there at 11:30 a. m. At 1 o'clock I drove to my home, and at 2 o'clock was off for Ferris Valley on a quail shoot. Had a good outing, with much hard labor. The next day I got home at half past five, completely done up.

As I went to retire, I had a good, stiff, nervous chill. So you can well see that I can no longer stand punishment, and am "growing old." As I lay there and shook, I said to myself, "Old fellow, you will soon be a 'has-been.' Your gun and fishing rod will soon decorate your shooting case as ornaments, rather than as things of utility." Ah, well, let it be so! The memory of pleasant days when youth and strength were mine; days when the creel was full, and game limits came my way, will be with me still. I would not exchange the experience I have had with rod and gun for all the money any millionaire in the world possesses.

On my trip to the grounds of the Quail Valley Land Company, some thirty miles below Riverside, two members of the club and my wife accompanied me. We were in one of my good, old reliable Franklin cars, and from Ontario to Riverside we bucked a strong head wind that was cold and pitiless. It necessarily impeded our progress, as we had on a glass front, and the top was up, and yet we made the run of seventy-six miles in three hours and a quarter without ever touching the machine. In fact, none of the party got out of the machine, from start to finish.

The big, open fireplace at Newport's home, and the bountiful, well-cooked supper with which we were greeted, were well calculated to make us happy and contented. The long drive in the wind rendered all of us sleepy, and by 9 o'clock we had retired. I never woke up until 6 o'clock next morning.

Shooting Grounds.

After breakfast we proceeded in our machine to the shooting ground. The sky was heavily overcast with watery, wicked looking clouds. Rifts in the sky, here and there, let some frozen looking sunbeams through, but there was no warmth in their rays. We had our first shoot on the edge of a grain field, but the birds quickly flew to some high hills to the west.

Rounding the pass through these hills, I never saw the Perris Valley more weirdly beautiful. The clouds were high. On the north Mt. San Bernardino loomed up, grim, snow-capped and forbidding. To the east old Tahquitz, guardian of the passes to the desert, reared his snow-capped head, far above the surrounding country. To the south Mt. Palomar stretched his long, lazy looking form, with his rounded back and indented outline, from east to west. His distance from us made him look like a line of low, outlying hills, instead of the sturdy old mountain that he is. All of these mountains bore most exquisite purple hues. The same coloring was assumed by those groups of lesser hills that, cone-like, are scattered over the easterly edge of the Perris Valley, and which separate the Hemet and the San Jacinto country from the rest of the valley. The coloring of the floor of the valley itself was particularly exquisite. There was just enough light, just enough of sunbeams struggling through the sodden clouds to illuminate, here and there, an alfalfa field, or here and there a grove of trees, so as to bring them out in startling contrast to the somber colors of the shaded portions of the valley. But with it were signs of the dying year, a premonition of storms to come, storms unpleasant while they last, but revivifying in their effects.

Many Quail--Too Cold.

In the fifteen years during which I have shot upon these grounds, I never got up more or larger bands of quail than we did that morning. The day was too cold for good shooting. Give me the good old summer time, with the thermometer about 80 degrees, for good quail shooting. In the cool days the birds run or get up and fly a half mile at a time. They will not scatter out and lie close, so that you can get them up one by one and fill your bags. On the cold days they also break cover at very long range. They led us a merry chase up the steepest hills and down the most abrupt declivities. All of the time we were slowly making good.

Lloyd Newport was there on his buckskin horse. Now you could see him way up on a hillside, then again down in some deep valley, running like mad to check the flight, or turn the running march of some band of birds that was leading those of us on foot a double-quick run. Shooting as he rode, now to the right, now to the left, then straight ahead, he got his share of the birds.

Little Fred Newport, only 14 years old, was shooting like a veteran, and long before the rest of us had scored, he proudly announced that he had the limit. The final round-up found us with 109 birds for seven guns--a good shoot, under very adverse circumstances. We had the satisfaction of knowing that we left plenty of birds on the ground for next year.

The quail shooting of 1911 is at an end. Only the memory of it remains. I shall cherish the memory deeply in my affections, and let it stir my enthusiasm for the out-of-door life when the world seems all balled up, and things are going wrong.

The Rattlesnake.

While proceeding along an unfrequented road, with sage brush on each side of it, we ran across a rattlesnake, about four feet long, and of good circumference, twisted up into a most peculiar position. Investigation found that, notwithstanding the coolness of the day, he was foraging for game, and was engaged in swallowing a good-sized kangaroo rat. The tail of the rat protruded several inches from his mouth. The snake glared at us, but made no effort to escape or fight. He seemed dazed, probably half choked by his efforts to swallow the rat. We straightened him out on the ground and blew his head off with a shotgun. We then disgorged the rat, which was at least four or five inches long, and an inch and a half in diameter. The snake was then quickly skinned. He had eleven rattles and a button.

Snakes eat the eggs and the young of the quail. In view of the ravages by snakes, hawks, weasles, skunks, wildcats and coyotes I do not see how there are any quail left for the sportsmen. The fight of these marauders is constantly going on, while the sportsmen's efforts are at present limited to a very short period.

At a quarter after two we left Newport's for home. We took in a little gasoline at Riverside. This was the only stop made on the home run, which was accomplished in three hours and a quarter (seventy-six miles) with a perfect score so far as the machine was concerned.

Nature at Her Loveliest.

We did not encounter the cruel wind in returning that buffeted us on the outward trip. I never saw the San Gabriel Valley more beautiful than it was that afternoon. As we bowled along the road this side of San Dimas, the entire valley lay before us. To the west were the rugged Sierra Madre Mountains; on the east, the San Jose Hills. They connected with the Puente Hills to the south. West of these came the hills of the Rancho La Merced, running from the San Gabriel River westerly, and still west of them come the hills, which run east from the Arroyo Seco, north of the Bairdstown country. From our position these hills all seemed to connect without any breaks or passes in them. Thus the valley before us was one mountain-and-hill-bound amphitheater. The sky was overcast by grayish clouds. The sun hung low in the west, directly in front of us. How gorgeous was the coloring of the sky and valley! How the orchards and vineyards were illuminated! How the colors lingered and seemed to fondle every growing thing, and paint each rock and point of hill as no artist could! The sun hung in one position for quite a time before taking its final dip below the horizon. The clouds assumed a golden tinge, turning to burnished copper. Through breaks or irregular rifts therein, we got glimpses of the sky beyond of an opalescent blue in strong contrast with the crimson coloring of the clouds, all of which were intensely illuminated by the setting sun. Underneath this vast sea of riotous coloring there was a subdued, intense light, which I can not describe or account for. It brought every object in the valley plainly into view, lifted it into space, and illuminated it. After we had passed Azusa we chanced to look back at "Old Baldy" and the Cucamonga peaks. They were in a blaze of glorious light, purple, pink, crimson, fiery red, all mingled indiscriminately, yet all preserved in their individual intensity.

Oh, land so rare, where such visions of delight are provided by the unseen powers for our delectation! As I surveyed this vast acreage, evidencing the highest cultivation, with princely homes, vast systems of irrigation, with orange orchards and lemon groves in, every stage of development, from the plants in the seed beds to trees of maturity and full production, I congratulated myself on living in such an age, and amid such environments.

Let us appreciate, enjoy and defend until our dying day, this glorious land, unswept by blizzards, untouched by winter's cruel frosts, unscathed by the torrid breath of sultry summer, a land of perpetual sunshine, where roses, carnations, heliotrope, and a thousand rare, choice and delicate flowers bloom in the open air continually, where in the spring time the senses are oppressed by the odor of orange and lemon blossoms, and where the orchards yield a harvest so fabulous in returns as to be almost beyond human comprehension.

An Auto Trip Through the Sierras.

Tule River and Yosemite.

I have been in California fifty-four years. During all of this time I had never visited the Yosemite. Before it was too late I determined to go there. We started in June, 1911.

Accompanied by Mrs. Graves, my son Francis and a friend, Dr. A. C. Macleish, we left Alhambra, June seventh of this year at seven o'clock a. m. We passed through Garvanza, Glendale and Tropico, and were soon on the San Fernando road. The run through the town of that name and through the tunnel, recently constructed to avoid the Newhall grade, was made in good time and without incident.

Newhall.

At Newhall we procured and carried with us a five-gallon can of gasoline. A short distance out of Saugus, we turned into the San Francisquito Canyon road. Shortly afterwards a brand new inner tube on the right rear wheel went completely to pieces. It had been too highly cured and could not stand the heat. We replaced it with another one, and were soon crossing and recrossing the stream which meanders down the canyon. Constantly climbing the grade, we were whirling from sunshine to shadow alternately as the road was overhung with or free from trees.

Old Memories Aroused.

I could not help recalling my trip over the same road with my old friend, Mr. A. C. Chauvin, on the third day of October, 1876. The road was fairly good. Our machine was working nicely, the day a pleasant one, and the trip enjoyable. In a few hours we reached Elizabeth Lake. I pointed out the very spot at which Chauvin and myself camped thirty-five years before.

Ah, the fleeting years! How quickly they have sped! What experiences we have had! What pleasures we have enjoyed! What sorrows endured in thirty-five years! Well it is, that then the future was not unfolded to me, and that all the enthusiasm and hope and ambition of youth led me on to the goal, which has brought me so much joy, as well as much sorrow. Momentous events have affected not only my own life, but the life of nations in these thirty-five years.

Crossing Antelope Valley.

We passed the lake, turning down the grade into Antelope Valley. After several miles of very rolling country, we halted under some almond trees in a deserted orchard for lunch. The grasshoppers were thicker than people on a hot Sunday at Venice or Ocean Park in the "good old summer time." We managed to eat our lunch without eating any of the hoppers, but there wasn't much margin in our favor in the performance. Before starting we emptied our can of gasoline into the tank. Soon we intercepted the road leading from Palmdale to Fairmont and Neenach. We passed both of these places, then Quail Lake and Bailey Hotel. We were soon at Lebec. Then came the beautiful ride past Castac Lake, and down the canyon, under the noble white oak trees, which are the pride of Tejon Ranch. We passed through Ft. Tejon with its adobe buildings already fallen or rapidly falling into ruinous decay. Still descending through the lower reaches of the canyon, we took the final dip down the big grade and rolled out into the valley. A pleasant stream of water followed the road out into the plains, at which sleek, fat cattle drank, or along whose banks they lolled listlessly, having already slaked their thirst. We whirled past the dilapidated ranch buildings put down in the guide books as Rose Station. From this point, since my trip over this country a year ago, much of the road to Bakersfield has been fenced.

Cloud Effects.

While crossing Antelope Valley during the afternoon, I observed a most wonderful cloud effect. A perfectly white cloud hung over Frazier Mountain. Its base was miles long and as straight as if it had been sheared off by machinery. Its top was as irregular as its base was finished. It extended into the sky farther than the blue old mountain did above the surrounding country. Irregular in shape, it assumed the form of mountains, valleys, forests, streams, castles and turrets. I watched it for hours, apparently it never moved. It hung there as immovable as the mountain beneath it. It was at once an emblem of purity and apparent stability. After we had passed Fairmont, my attention was diverted from it for a short time, not over ten minutes, and when again looking for my cloud, it was gone. Every vestige of it had vanished completely, and in its place was the blue sky, its color intensified by reason of its recent meager obscuration.

Bakersfield.

We reached Bakersfield early in the evening, having made the run of one hundred and forty-six miles, over a heavy mountain range, on fifteen gallons of gasoline. This I call a good performance for any six-cylinder car. Coming down the Tejon Canyon, we passed the only Joe Desmond of Aqueduct fame, with some companions, taking lunch by the roadside. He had come from Mojave. He was bound for Bakersfield to buy hay.

Off for Porterville.

We left Bakersfield at seven a. m. next morning, over an excellent road, for Porterville. Fifty miles after starting we picked up a nail and had a flat tire. Porterville was reached at eleven o'clock. As a side trip we were going to a camp of the San Joaquin Light & Power Company, way up on the Tule River, for the purpose of visiting a grove of big trees located in that vicinity. As we had many miles of uphill work ahead of us, we concluded not to delay at Porterville for lunch. We replenished our lunch basket of the day before from a grocery store, filled our tank with gasoline and sped on. At twelve o'clock, a few miles beyond the small village of Springville, which will shortly be connected with the outside world by a railroad now in process of construction, we halted for lunch in a shady spot on one of the forks of the Tule River.