A California tramp and later footprints : or, Life on the plains and in the Golden State thirty years ago, with miscellaneous sketches in prose and verse : illustrated with thirty-nine wood and photo-engravings

Front matter

a

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Preface

and loose manuscript, and rewrote, excised and added ; although occasionally for want of time I was obliged to let them stand as written. This state of things comes in good play, for whenever the critical reader takes exception to the use of flowery language, redundant or rapturous adjectives and prosy description of route or scenery within the volume, I can lay it to the pen of the young ox-driver.

There was a physiological law contemporaneous with my school days, that the human system was changed once in seven years; that all that was there on the first year was expelled through natural causes by the seventh and replaced with new material. If this is in being yet and has not been relegated into mythical nothingness by new and iconoclastic school-books, along with the accounts of the “ Maelstrom ” and Sea Serpent, and the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, which were established facts as far as descriptive text and wood cuts could make them, I am more than four removes from the young traveler and ranchero of thirty years ago. Therefore should anything be found in the book which makes a favorable impression credit it to his mature successor or evolvent, who is palpable and capable of feeling praise or blame. The other party is away in the shadowy realms of the past, and unsensitive to both. In fact, so disassociated is he from myself, that I can give his portrait, as well as full-length representations of him in connection with other illustrations, with no more feeling of egotism than if I were showing off the features of one of his fellow cowboys of the plains.

Who reads this volume with the impression that it is full of wild hunting adventures and narrations of murders and rob-

PREFACE.

beries indigenous to an unsettled country will be disappointed. My mode of travel precluded Nimrodic pursuits, and had it been otherwise I don’t imagine the wild animals of the Wild West would have been noticeably reduced in numbers. As for scenes of violence, although there were opportunities to participate therein, I left them for others who saw more fun in them than I did myself. It is true, this book would have been more replete with interest could I have given personal narrations of these; but as participation might have been only another name for annihilation, I don’t regret that lack of individual experience has enabled me to be in a position to write an autographical and more commonplace account.

As for the “Later Footprints” following “A California Tramp,’’ I will only say that among the prose sketches the article on John Burns should be worth attention as far as it furnishes facts proving the old man was a real militant in the Battle of Gettysburg; and as to those in rhyme, simply state that some of them had the questionable fame of newspaper republication.

When an author apologizes for literary defects, and airs the difficulties he has labored under, it is generally assumed that he could have done no better under favorable circumstances, and by implication is assured that if the work was so burdensome the reading public would have excused him from its performance. Nevertheless, I will say that the preparation of this volume was made before and after business hours since the preceding winter, and when it is understood what a disadvantage this disconnected procedure has when compared with continuous work, 1 hope the literary imperfections involved will be overlooked.

PREFACE.

The illustrations, while not up to the high art standard, picture scenery and incidents of which I was a part sufficiently well. The most of them are from original sketches redrawn and made available through wood and photo-engraving. In a work of so limited a circulation they involved an outlay hardly warranted, except by my desire to represent and perpetuate what has been heretofore unillustrated and now nonexistent save in memory.

I have now accomplished what until lately I never seriously thought of doing — written a book. This act is what Job wanted his enemy to do; either because he would lose money or be criticized beyond the punishment of personal boils. But hoping that the miseries of authorship only existed in the imagination of that synonym of Patience, and that the perusal of this work will add a mite to the pleasures of my readers, I remain

Their friend,

The Author.

d>ontent^

I. Preliminary 9

II. To the Land of the Buffalo 20

III. A Day on the Plains 31

IV. Along the Platte to Fort Laramie 49

V. To the Great South Pass 69

VI. Among the Mountains 86

VII. In the Valley of the Shadow 95

VIII. The Saints’ Rest 104

IX. Among the Mormon Settlements 120

X. Along the Desert Border 139

XI. On the Great Sandv Desert 153

XII. From the Kingston Springs to San Bernardino 171

XIII. To Pueblo De Los Angeles 184

XIV. From Los Angeles to San Francisco 197

XV. On the Tramp 210

XVI. Ranch Life 231

XVII. In and Around San Francisco 252

XVIII. A San Franciscan Day 264

XIX. The Bit Theatre 271

XX. Homeward Bound— Southward 278

XXL Homeward Bound — Northward 291

XXII. In New York 300

XXIII. Conclusion 310

Sketches in Prose.

Company Trials 374

Sketches in Rhyme.

In the Shadow of Round Top 378

Jennie Wade 397

The Old Grist-Mill 398

Lyric of the Cuttalossa 401

Dickens 407

The Old Saw- Mill 411

After-thoughts 414

(#?fu&fraiTori$

Frontispiece — Up the Valley of the Platte.

A Plain Sketch — Title page.

Portrait 8

A Country Call in Kansas in 1858 14

Making our Mark 17

The Corral 32

The Lead Team 37

The S Straightens to an I 39

The Sleeping Herd 51

Fording the South Platte 59

Chimney Rock 65

The Devil’s Gate 80

Down Provo Canon 92

Through the Streets of Lehi 98

Main Street, Salt Lake City 106

The Tabernacle 108

Great Salt Lake in the Twilight 118

Approach to the Valley of the Rio Virgin 148

The Ruins of Las Vegas 163

Our Camp at Kingston Springs — Bently and his Dog 171

Marching to the Sea 185

Field of Cacti 194

The Wine Team 201

San Pedro in 1858 204

Entrance to the Golden Gate 208

Oakland in 1858 — Contra Costa Mountains in the Distance 215

Largest Ferryboat in the World, Plying between San Francisco and Oakland, 216

Looking at Monte del Diablo 220

Straits of Carquinaz 222

“Scottie” and I 225

Bird’s-Eye View of San Francisco — Golden Gate in the Distance 249

San Francisco Bay in the Good Old Time 253

How they Built the Ships in 255

The Old Mission Dolores 257

Mission Dolores as it is now 259

The Plaza, San Francisco 268

San Francisco in 1847 272

Robert Kenderdine. Portrait 316

Charles Dickens. Portrait 407

■/? ©alifopnia irarop.

i.

reading of Fremont’s Narrative and other works 5|c^ of Western adventure gave me, during the last two JIL or three years of my minority, a great desire to travel over the trans-Mississippi plains and mountains. The departure of a friend and schoolmate for Oregon, on a surveying expedition, still further unsettled me, and showed my prosaic home life in yet more unfavorable contrast with the possibilities which Western travel would furnish; and when, in the spring of 185S, I secured a situation in the interior of Michigan, I concluded I had made one step in the coveted direction, and was partially satisfied.

I never shall forget the night when, having bid farewell to the home circle, I left Philadelphia for the West. The hour was eleven of the clock; darkness all around and the weather stormy; and not knowing a soul on board, or in my prospective home, I sank into a fit of the blues, not of the “ deeply, beautifully” sort, but rather, from the sensations I felt, as if tinged

A CALIFORNIA TRAMP.

with blue vitriol. In those days the Western trains started from Eleventh and Market streets, and were drawn by mules to the suburbs. The drift of the rain on the car windows almost hid the lamp lights as we slowly passed out the drenched streets; until, when beyond the Schuylkill, a locomotive displaced our long-eared propellers. There were no sleeping-cars then to mitigate the sorrows of all-night travel, so I had ample time, in my wakefulness, to think over past deeds and the future troubles my leaving home might bring. To cheer myself up I bought a comic book of one of the juvenile fiends who, even in those times, made travelers miserable; but its overdrawn humor and stale jokes so increased my unhappy feeling that I put it away in disgust. Ever since I have had a horror of books of the alleged “funny” order, a feeling which extends even to works of the “Mark Twain” class, books whose humor generally is made at the expense of religion and morality. The night passed at last, and when morning brought a clear sunrise and a view of the beautiful valley of the Juniata, I began to takea more cheerful view of life.

Around curves, by heavy grades and through gloomy tunnels, and the Alleghenies were passed; and at two o’clock in the afternoon the smoke- plumed chimneys of Pittsburgh came in sight. The coming night was passed on a Lake Erie steamer, and the next afternoon found me at my destination.

The party who employed me turned out to be a visionary — a “crank ” he would be termed now. The large tract of land he was on he was simply superintendent of, instead of owner, and the business I was to have charge of was simply his mental tenant, without prospect of the remotest materialization. So in course of a month I discharged my employer; and with ten dollars and a pair of boots I had earned, I re-obeyed Greeley’s as yet unspoken command to “ Go West, young man ” — an order, it will be noticed, I obeyed in instalments.

I stopped one day in Chicago, then on jack-screws and work-

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ing its way up. The sight of houses rising Phoenix-like from the mud, with the people dwelling therein, living and dying as usual, was an edifying one, but as a canvas of the town showed it could get along without me, I shook the mud aforesaid from my boots and left it to its fate; certainly not a luckless one, with real estate so rising.

Money being the root of all evil, I felt myself as harmless as Mary’s little lamb when preparing to leave what, from a severe strain on the imagination, was called the “ Garden City.” I was compelled to buy a second-class ticket to Kansas, where destiny and inclination seemed to call me. My departure was in an emigrant car at midnight; my only companions two drunken bandits, armed with guns. The car was dark, and I always hailed the conductor’s advent with his lantern, from my place in an unobtrusive corner, with silent orisons. In St. Louis I only stopped long enough to note how similarly the streets were named to those of Philadelphia. I left there at ten o’clock on June 2d, and passing over a country of alternate prairie land and wooded streams, reached Jefferson City late at night, where I boarded the “Polar Star” steamer; the Western railroad system then not reaching beyond that town.

At that time the only railroads reaching beyond the Mississippi were the Missouri Pacific and the Hannibal and St. Jo. The latter had not reached the Missouri, so part of the road was made by stage, and consequently was the least popular way to Kansas, as by the former route the whole journey could be made by boat and rail; a great favor in the days of border ruffianism, when Free State emigration by private conveyance was often checked or turned back by pro-slavery highwaymen.

Four days I endured the discomforts of deck passage, many and many a time wishing myself an Astor or Girard that I might climb out of it to the beatitude of the cabin above, where amid high living and luxurious surroundings the first-class

A CALIFORNIA TRAMP.

passengers’ lives slid along. My companions were the lower order of emigrants, foreign and domestic, and the deck hands or “ roustabouts.” Many of the latter were desperadoes, whose gashed faces showed the effects of personal encounters. My sleeping places were on bundles of freight, and my provender the rude fare I bought at the landings. My impression had been that deck passage simply meant absence of state-room and dining privileges, but I soon learned that the enjoyment of the upper deck was fruit forbidden, and that the officer in charge knew a steerage passenger by a sort of instinct as a personage who was to be hustled down the gangway on sight. So I perforce passed my time below, with one eye on my belongings, lest they should be stolen, and the other on the scenery and surroundings generally. The shriek of the “calliope;” the cough of the exhaust pipe, as that of an asthmatic giant; the escape of the angry steam; the roar of the mudvalves, when the sediment of the river water was forced from the boilers; the cursing of the crew by the mate on duty; the mutterings and low spoken threats of the former, and the sing-song call of the leadsmen, as the treacherous channel was sounded, I still seem to hear. In my vision are the unwashed passengers ; the grimy stokers feeding the fires under the high-strung boilers; the vile deck hands on duty, or eating their fried bacon and hard tack, with their feet hanging over the muddy water, into which they now and then dipped their tincups for drink; the envied cabin passengers promenading the upper deck and occasionally coming down to our purgatory to see the possibility of endurance; the mile-wide river with its driftwood and caving banks, its shabby towns and wood-yards; our wooding up at night in the glare of pineknots, when, like fiends in their glare, the aroused crew carried armloads of billets on a run, under the occasional stimulus of a kick or blow. All these sights and sounds are bright in my memory now. I became so disgusted with my surroundings

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that I made an effort to exchange my deck for a cabin passage. Watching my chance, I ascended to the celestial regions to see the clerk about it, but his manners and figures had such an altitude that I was fain to retreat before, mistaking my errand, the mate accelerated my steps. Like all tribulations, mine passed away, however, and with several dollars saved for future needs by my privations, I at last landed at Leavenworth on the 7th of June, feeling just as well as if I had fared on the high living of the upper cabin, instead of on the husks, in the shape of bread and bolognas, I ate on the lower deck.

I had come these hundreds of miles to hunt work, but with dull times and no friends to help me, I was sore beset to find anything to do. I tried around the city, then a place of from one to two thousand people, but I did not seem necessary to the growth of the town any more than I was to that of Chicago. At that time there was one business open to young men of easy conscience, and that was to go out in the country, take up claims, make affidavits that they pre-empted them for their own exclusive use, and then sell out for a stated sum to their employer. The law required that a habitation twelve by twelve must be built thereon before the claim could be held. This was accomplished by the erection of a Liliputian residence of twelve inches square, or by a simple rail pen of the required dimensions in feet. A young Kentuckian, similarly situated financially as myself, and I walked a long distance out of town one day to see a real estate agent who gave men this questionable employment. On this journey I learned how they made country calls in Kansas thirty years ago, of which I give an illustration drawn from life. We did not go up to the door and ring the bell for two reasons: there was no bell to ring, and we were afraid of the dogs. We just stood out in the road and shouted “Hello!” If no response were made we would scream, “Call your dogs off',” this soon becoming a necessity If the party called on had any politeness, they would rush out

A CALIFORNIA TRAMP.

with clubs or boot-toes and extricate us, otherwise they would give the dogs aid with their guns in helping the intruders off. This seemed like queer doing to me, but they were natural to my comrade from the “ dark and bloody ground,” and under his tuition I soon grew familiar with them. AVe at last found the agent we were after, but on learning there was more or less of perjury connected with the business, although we were as-

A Country Call in Kansas in 1858.

sured that custom sanctioned and semi-legalized it, we resolved to touch not the unclean thing, although “there was money in it.”

Hearing there were ox-drivers wanted at Kansas City, to take a train to Santa Fe, a place I had a desire to visit, I lugged my trunk down to the steamboat wharf, for I was always my own porter, and when the next

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packet came along went down the Missouri. This time, as the trip was short, I took cabin passage and enjoyed the privilege of the saloon and “texis” deck and was as good as the best of them. I could see the “ calliope ” man playing on his instrument of torture; the silk-hatted gamblers playing at cards; I could lounge on a sofa, and do other acts and things lately forbidden. Arrived at my destination I soon hired with a transportation agent to drive team, and forwarded my trunk home. The sending of this, which contained nearly all of my civilized belongings, seemed like burning the bridge behind, and that I had entered on a dangerous, half savage life, from which I might never return. Before leaving the agent, I made some inquiries of him in regard to the scenery on the route, and other matters, which smacked more of the tourist than of the experienced ox-propeller I professed to be. The next morning, rigged out in my roughest clothing, I reported for duty at the wharf, where a train was being made up. What was my mortification when my yesterday’s employer told me curtly he did not want me. “ Why?” I asked. “Anyone who asks such questions as you did, is too smart for an ox-driver,” he roughly answered as he turned away. I resolved that next time I would guard well my tongue.

Concluding to return to Leavenworth and again try my luck there, I passed the coming night waiting for an up steamer. A dismal wait it was; till midnight in a foul smelling saloon, and after that was closed, on the dark levee, by the side of the rushing river. Towards morning a boat came along, and on it I returned to the above town. Here I again hired as an ox-driver, trying to look as rough and unkempt as I could, that I might seem worthy the vocation. My destination was Salt Lake. This time I was careful to ask no questions, though I shrank from the rough life before me.

One thing that reconciled me to engaging in this journey

A CALIFORNIA TRAMP.

was that a congenial young fellow whom I got acquainted with at my boarding-house, named Will Finlay, was going with me; in fact, the enterprise was a mutual affair. I knew from the class of men I saw about the departing trains, that I would want some one like him for a comrade, and thought, from the spirit he showed, he would stick to me. Still, as he had been brought up to gentle ways and had joined the train out of a spirit of adventure, I do not wonder that he afterwards deserted me, weighed down as I was with such surroundings.

Some of the particulars of my campaign life I will tell in a chapter entitled “ A Day on the Plains.” For a few days Ave were engaged in loading the huge wagons and branding cattle. The mark was an ox-yoke burned in front of the right hip. This was the private brand of Russel, Majors and Waddell, the most extensive freighters who ever crossed the plains, with whom I had hired. We branded five hundred in one day. The groans of the struggling oxen and the smell of their burning flesh sickened me, but the fear of another rebuff made me hide my emotion and feign that just such work Avas what I Avas suffering for.

The feAv days Ave Avere waiting to start on our journey I lived at a place called the “Outfit.” Our sleeping quarters were full of vermin, but these Avere less disgusting than a portion of my human associates, many of whom Avere merely Avaiting for the time for their clothing to be dealt out to them, Avhen they AA'ould run off. Some of them Avere jailbirds and other desperadoes, and petty thieving Avas common. In their talk they Avere the vilest of the vile, yet on account of a feAv semi-respectable felloAvs among them, I concluded to not back doAvn, but to folloAv out my resolve to go to Utah, to which place avc Avere to take supplies for the army sent to subdue the Mormons, then in rebellion. The soldiers around the Fort made it a lively place, but their numbers Avere so small compared with the million or more avIio sprung to arms four

Making our Mark.

A CALIFORNIA TRAMP.

years after, that they are unworthy of notice. I think they were not over four thousand men under General Johnston, commanding the Utah army, the most of which had preceded us. Still their white tents among the greenery of grass and trees, with the moving columns of horse, foot and artillery around them, formed a scene to be remembered.

Before we started each man was given a whip, with a lash ten feet long. These were but toys to what supplanted them when they wore out. With a sort of poetic injustice, from the skins of cattle which died of hardship, lashes were cut and plaited five or six yards long, to facilitate the turning of the hides of other oxen into whip material. These scourges were from an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half in thickness at the “ swell,” one-fourth the way from the stock, from which they tapered each way, with a buckskin “cracker,” and in the hands of an expert they did murderous work.

Each train had a box of medicines which was kept in the train -master’s wagon, along with the revolvers and ammunition, which was its proper place. If I remember rightly, the basic matter of the contents was composed of calomel, laudanum and Epsom salts, with a few outlying adjuncts for doing their work. These, in the hands of an ignorant practitioner, were capable of much mischief. I think the quack who had his medicines numbered to suit the ills inherent to flesh, and when he was out of the required number G, gave numbers 2 and 4 as an equivalent and promptly killed his man, was a wagon-master. I knew I fought as shy of that chest as a fox would of a box-trap. When a little out of sorts or low-spirited, the old professionals would make things worse by telling what became of the teamsters when'' they died, that is, in this world ; for it is pretty easy to tell where most of the “ bull-whackers ” went, unless orthodox theology is at fault. These Job’s comforters told how the translated unfortunates were buried in scant roadside graves, in boxes made from the sideboards of

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their wagons. I, however, made up my mind not to stay sick or downhearted and patronize the death-trap in the master’s wagon, and thereby keep the wagon body as well as my own and soul together. But for all that, I would sometimes think in the dark hours of the night I was lying in a prospective coffin!

II. ©Jo the TsaniL of tfte Suffafo

WE at last got under way, but on account of unbroken teams, ignorant drivers and desertions, it was several days before we got in working order. Sometimes the whole night guard, with their outfits, would decamp in a body, leaving the cattle to wander over the country. The deserters were replaced by better men obtained from returning trains, with which we sent back our sick.

After some days of tribulation we crossed the valleys of the Big and Little Grasshopper, and reached Walnut Creek on the 8th of July. Here we saw our first deer, which our wagon-master gave chase to on his mule, but with limited success. On the night of the 17th, when one hundred and twenty miles on the road, we had the most terrible thunder-storm I ever saw. I was out all night herding the cattle, and the glare of lightning and crash of thunder rendered them hard to manage. They hardly lay down all night, but wandered fitfully about, which made it hard for us. However, the sun rose bright and warm the next morning, when we could hardly realize what a night we had passed.

Our next night’s cam]) was by the side of the new-made grave of a teamster, who had been run over by a stampede of oxen. A mound marked the spot on our arrival, but by morning the herd had so trampled down the wet earth that no

TO THE LAND OF THE BUFFALO.

trace was visible of the resting place of the poor fellow, even the rude headboard, on which was his name, being displaced.

On the 20th we came to Marysville, on the Big Blue. Here was a mission and reservation of the Otto Indians. While descending the bluff one of our oxen died ; but the noble red men, when apprised, soon had him skinned, cut up and carried to their village. These Indians shaved their heads and were otherwise as near naked as they could well be. Still, the weather was warm.

The valley of the Big Blue was swarming with mosquitoes, and that night while herding cattle we were badly pestered with them. They bit through our clothing and sang merrily at their work. We wrapped ourselves from head to heels in our blankets to fence them off, though the air was oppressively sultry, but in spite of that they bit us so we were covered with a rash the next morning. To their shrill tenor a band of wolves on the adjacent bluffs howled a blood-curdling baritone. The howl of one wolf is enough, but when a band of this species get down to their work, it is more than that. They commence with a shrill whine, which increases and deepens until it ends in an unearthly yell which you feel in your bones.

We crossed the Blue on a rope ferry, swimming all the oxen except what we wanted to pull the wagons on to the boat. My friend Finlay and I were sent to herd cattle on the other side of the river, where we were kept till night with nothing to eat. When we were relieved, we had to swim the river to our wagons which were not ferried over. The river was swollen, so that we landed far below in the darkness. The next morning we found our shoes stolen as well as some of our clothing, which we had left on the other side.

After crossing the rest of the wagons, the guards were rearranged,and our rifles and a few rounds of ammunition given us, as we were getting among hostile Indians. There were

A CALIFORNIA TRAMP.

pistols also in the train arsenal, but for motives of policy they were not given out. Some of our men could punish one another with fist and tooth sufficiently without using these. At noon on the 25th we met a part of the troops sent to Utah, returning. They were artillerymen, with some cavalry or dragoons, as they were then called, and General Harney, still living in 1888, was with them. They had gone four hundred miles before taking a return course.

We reached the valley of the Little Blue on the 26th of June. This was full of mosquitoes, and at night noisy with wolves. While herding that night, a wolf crossed a knoll within twenty yards of where I was lying down, looking in silhouette against the clear sky to my excited fancy as large as a horse.

Our route lay the next day along the valley of the Little Blue in the direction of the Platte River. The road was miry and lined with the carcasses of dead oxen lost by preceding trains, which filled the air with sickening odors. We afterwards left the valley and crossed high ground, from which we had a fine view of the lower country to the south. Broad vistas of verdure, traversed by belts of darker green, marked the timber-lined streams. The main trunk was the Blue, and from this extended short branches.

The 1st of August found us among a range of sand hills which announced our approach to the valley of the Platte. These were a succession of knolls and ridges from thirty to sixty feet high. Amid their defiles our wheels sunk deep in the sand, and we frequently doubled teams in order to get through. From these we came to the broad, level bottom of the river, which was marked by numerous wooded islands. In the distance we saw Fort Kearney, the low buildings of which were just visible above the prairie. When within a mile the train was stopped, and orders given for each man to overhaul his load, and put the flour which was in any way