timber country, whose saw-mills supply the
northern part of the valley with lumber, sugar-pine being the principal
tree sawed up. The valley begins to narrow above Red Bluff, and the
foot-hills and mountains still abound in wild game. Hunters bring their
peltries hither for sale; and this has occasioned the establishment
at this point of a thriving glove factory, which turned out--from an
insignificant looking little shop--not less than forty thousand dollars'
worth of gloves last year. Two enterprising young men manage it, and they
employ, I was told, from fifty to eighty women in the work, and turn out
very excellent buckskin gloves, as well as some finer kinds. Such petty
industries are too often neglected in California, where every body still
wants to conduct his calling on a grand scale, and where dozens of ways to
prosperity, and even wealth, are constantly neglected, because they appear
too slow.

This whole country is only about four years in advance of the lower or San
Joaquin Valley, and the influence of climate and soil in bringing trees to
bear early was shown to me in several thrifty orchards, already beginning
to bear, on ground which four years ago was bought for two dollars and
fifty cents per acre. The habit of raising wheat is so strong here, that
almost every thing else is neglected; and I remember a farm where the
wheat field extended, unbroken, except by a narrow path leading to the
road, right up to the veranda of the farmer's house. His family lived on
canned fruits and vegetables; and except here and there a brilliant poppy,
which stubborn Dame Nature had inserted among his wheat, wife and children
had not a flower to grace mantle or table. I confess that it pleased me
to hear this farmer complain of hard times, because, as he said, the
speculators in San Francisco made more money from his wheat than he did.
If the speculators in San Francisco teach the farmers in California to
grow something besides wheat, they will deserve well of the State.

The upper waters of the Sacramento run through mountain passes, and
between banks so steep that for miles at a time the river is inaccessible,
except by difficult and often dangerous descents; and an old miner told me
that when this part of the river, between where Redding now lies and its
source, near Mount Shasta, was first "prospected" for gold, the miners or
explorers had to build boats and descend by water, trying for gold by the
way, because they co