START MICROFILMED 1985 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY GENERAL LIBRARY BERKELEY, CA 94720 COOPERATIVE PRESERVATION MICROFILMING PROJECT THE RESEARCH LIBRARIES GROUP, INC. Funded by THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION Reproductions may not be made without permission. CU-B SN oougs.2 THE PRINTING MASTER FROM WHICH THIS REPRODUCTION WAS MADE IS HELD BY THE MAIN LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CA 94720 FOR ADDITIONAL REPRODUCTION REQUEST MASTER NEGATIVE NUMBER §5-/1543 AUTHOR: Holder, Charles Frederick., 121-1915" TITLE: Life in €he open..- PLACE : New YorK.and Londen DATE. (1306 VOLUME F867 CALL H1 MASTER 5° NO. NEG. NO. /S43 {CCE CEOS Epos — F867 Holder, Charles Frederick, 1851-1915. WHT Life in the open; sport with rod, gun, horse, and hound in southern California, by Charles Frederick Holder ... New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s sons, 19006. xv, 401 p. front, illus, 66 pl. 25, Lach chapter has illustrated half-title. 3060 1. California — Descr. & trav. 2. Hunting — California. 3. Fishing — California. 1. Title. o 6—12862 I Library of Congress i SK55.H72 Copyright A 142072 er | FILMED AND PROCESSED BY LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CA 94720 Jos NO. 85 | 5 eel 65 1. = — br. REDUCTION RATIO 8 DOCUMENT rss "SOURCE THE BANCROFT LIBRARY —— I 10 ih Rr = | Ll £ fis | 20 == fl 25 fie pee MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS-1963-A (ALLEL LY | ™ 1 | | 10 11 12 13 14 1S ROD, GUN, HORSE AND HOUND IN SOUTHERN | CALIFORNIA TI a SEU UF UIT SE SP SN oC pe Y ~ ; k i EI SL aS tae Bs N, a QA IAAN — = 2 [ati a il Retake of Preceding Frame ® PUTNAM of Preceding Frame or rie EAT Te A ET perms i Life in the Open | Sport with Rod, Gun A Horse, and Hound ¥ LE In aw Cae Southern California i > & = Bp hres» Py ; ; | 1.3 51 dia snol aki JL sop gi ET ahr Yo ti aid] By i i ; riod a Er 5 Charles Frederick Holder Author of ¢¢ Life of Charles Darwin,’’ ¢¢ The Big Game Fishes’ i 21 ¢¢ The Adventures of Torqua,’’ etc. & { ! | Be | Illustrated bl | G. P. Putnam’s Sons | New York and London A The Knickerbocker Press 1906 BELCH: COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER The Rnickerbocker Press, New pork Preface N presenting these impressions of outdoor life and sport in Southern California during twenty or more years along shore and the Sierra Madre, I should perhaps say that the point of view has been one of personal experience alone, and the hunting days described are as I found and tried to make them. My conception of sport does not include a desper- ate killing, a plethoric bag or creel ; the game is merely an incident in the day, and in the splendid cafions of the Sierra Madre, I confess, has often been forgotten. A hunting day, at least to my mind, should include a drawing for all the senses, not game alone, but the enjoyment of the flora, the variety in mountain view, the vistas of different kinds, the charming changes of colour and tone that sweep over the range as the hours pass, and the thousand and one diversions which nature always affords. Southern California lends itself particularly to such a definition of sport; its hunting grounds are staged with unwonted effects—lofty mountains, pallid deserts, seas of turquoise abounding not only in countless game fishes, but in a marvellous variety of living forms which appeal to the sportsman and fill out his days with as- thetic as well as practical experiences. iii fam TS ———— iad RARER SE MR SAS & 4 jo T iP ol 18 LE i: ¥ Preface There is hardly wild game, big or small, in America that is not menaced by the spectre of extinction, and were it not for game laws, clubs of gentlemen, sportsmen of various kinds, wild life would in a short time disap- pear from the face of the earth. It should be the duty of every sportsman to conserve the gifts of nature. Sport with the gun, rod, spear, and hound is legitimate and manly, but there is an unwritten law among gentle- men that no sportsman will kill more than the camp de- mands, or rational sport justifies. The rod catch of tarpons last season at Tarpon, Texas, was nearly eight hundred fish, yet every one not needed as a trophy was released. I can conceive no greater example of self- control than that illustrated by the angler who stops fishing when but two tunas have been caught, though the waters are covered with schools eager for the lure ; yet I have witnessed this marvellous thing. Southern California is an open book the year around. Every day, winter or summer, has its invitation to the lover of sport or nature; not only in the south but throughout the length of the land. The present volume is confined to Southern California, as to cover the en- tire State adequately would require much more space. Northern California possesses even greater natural wonders than the south and more big game, at least among land animals. The section de- scribed includes the region south of Point Concep- tion, the counties of Santa Barbara, San Buenaven- tura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, Preface v and San Diego, or, in brief, the lower part of the State. The conditions are so different from those in Easter i i i n America, the winter being the season of flowers, the entire year an open one, inviting sports and varied pastimes, that I have tried to convey to the reader some idea of “life in the open” in the various seasons, what to expect winter, or summer, in this land of the palm and orange, and to a certain extent to answer some of the questions relating to the country which I have often been asked. Thus, to the world at large Southern California is merely a winter resort. This is a popular misconception. It is, to my mind at least a far better summer resort, and the dwellers along te shores and among the channel islands know an almost perfect summer climate, and never experience the intense often deadly, heat of the Atlantic seaboard. The truth about Southern California is that it is an all-the-year- round land, where it can honestly be said the disagreeable features of life and climate are reduced to the minimum. Southern California is so cosmopolitan that it belongs to all America, and in this oasis between the desert and the deep sea the country has a possession that will prove in years to come one of its most valuable assets. Yesterday it was a great ranch; to-day it is a principal- ity, and has taken its place among the great and active centres of life, health, and commerce of the world. C. EH, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, Contents CHAPTER 1 Across COUNTRY WITH GREYHOUNDS CHAPTER II. HuNTING THE LYNX CHAPTER III. DEER-HUNTING IN THE SOUTHERN SIERRAS . CHAPTER 1V. WATER FowL CHAPTER V. Fox-HUNTING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHAPTER VI. A RAINBOW IN THE SIERRA MADRE CHAPTER VII. FoLLowING THE LowLAND WOLF CHAPTER VIII. SHORE AND OTHER BIRDS CHAPTER IX. THE BIGHORN CHAPTER X. Tue HoME oF THE MouUNTAIN LION. vii PAGE 17 37 49 63 79 I0I 119 127 135 A SS - SE EN TE Lo i Biadt RAIA fe Be rs i TS in tS viii Contents CHAPTER XI. Tue VALLEY QUAIL CHAPTER XIL THE HEART OF THE DESERT CHAPTER XIII EL CaMmiNO REAL CHAPTER XIV. LIFE IN THE SIERRA MADRE CHAPTER XV. Tue WILD GoaT ON ORIZABA CHAPTER XVL Tue RISE oF DON ANTONIO CHAPTER XVIL THE RovaL CATCH CHAPTER XVIII. SANTA CATALINA ISLAND CHAPTER XIX. THE SEA LioN’s DEN CHAPTER XX. TROLLING IN DEEP WATER CHAPTER XXI. TaE CALIFORNIA WEAKFISH PAGE 153 179 209 223 235 259 273 299 307 Contents CHAPTER XXII. A WINDOW OF THE SEA CHAPTER XXIII. CRUISING AMONG THE CHANNEL ISLANDS CHAPTER XX1V, THE STILL ANGLER CHAPTER XXV. THE TRIBE OF SERIOLA CHAPTER XXVL THE CLIMATE APPENDIX GaME Laws : . INDEX . 1x PAGE 315 327 341 349 359 381 387 397 or mt A en Plain ae TN on RON UN EM SR ra 3: & Yr | | Illustrations CHARLES F. HOLDER AND THE VALLEY HuNT HOUNDS. Frontispiece | WINTER BLossoM oF THE EucaLyPTUS . . ‘ . | Ruins oF THE CHAPEL MIsSION OF SAN JuAN CAPISTRANO, ; oN EL CaMINO REAL : ‘ . ‘ bl A SUDDEN TURN, OBSERVED BY THE AUTHOR . ‘ . fil CHARLES WINSTON’s SUNNY SLoPE HOUNDS . . . 1 Photo by Crandall REAL i : . . . ¥ : | WALK AT THE MISSION OF SANTA BARBARA ON EL CAMINO | | THE TREED LYNX . . . . | Lynx HUNTING, CANADA SANTIAGO, NEAR ORANGE ‘ J TREED LYNX. SANTIAGO CLUB, NEAR FULLERTON A fil THE BELLS OF MissiIoON SAN GABRIEL ARCANGEL, NEAR PASADENA ‘ . . : ‘ . ‘ ‘ ‘ VALLEY HUNT Fox HOuNDS—PASADENA : : . Photo by Crandall THE TrAIL oF THE LYNX HUNTERS, NEAR EL TORO ; Photo by Graham CALIFORNIA HoLLy, ADENOSTOMA . . : . : HE VISITS RANCH GARDENS EARLY IN THE MORNING XI PAGE 12 14 17 22 24 28 30 34 37 ae OR 3 $1 ORT i OR > A ON ME SN wii 5 os Dai ve | || | oo Jd xii Illustrations | PAGE wl DEER IN THE OPEN : . . ; ; . J ‘ 46 i BRINGING IN THE Ducks AT Barsa CHICA . ‘ ‘ : 49 . MissioN OF SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO ON THE KiING’s HIGHWAY 54 h A GooDp Day FOr Canvas-Backs AT Barsa CHICA ' . 53 | AN HouRr’s GOOSE SHOOTING ‘ ‘ ‘ i . . 6o bi Tae TrReep Fox . . : ‘ ‘ : . : ; 63 I {| | WINTER LIFE IN THE OPEN NEAR PASADENA : . . 70 | Photo by Graham It | Fox-HUNTING COUNTRY NEAR ORANGE, SANTIAGO MTs. 74 Photo by Graham ( RAINBOW TROUT—BEAR VALLEY LAKE : ; 79 i! | | THE STAIRS OF THE MISSION OF SAN GABRIEL ARCANGEL, Hy NEAR PasapENA oN THE King’s HIGHWAY : . 84 i Photo by H. A. Parker A | DocTorR PAGE CASTING IN THE UPPER BiG Poor, DEEP | CREEK, SAN BERNARDINO RANGE . ‘ : : i 88 fh ) WINTER IN THE SIERRA MADRE NEAR SAN DIEGO ‘ . 92 fi i Tug NorRTH FORK OF THE SAN JACINTO RIVER, SAN JACINTO | MOUNTAINS ‘ : . ‘ . : : : 98 Hh i THE SANTIAGO HUNT . ‘ . : . ‘ . . 101 IN AT THE DEATH, SANTIAGO HUNT NEAR ORANGE . 108 gan Luis Opispo DE TorLosa on EL Camino ReaL (KING's Hl HIGHWAY Point Ee en te Ty og | ) Photo by Putnam & Valentine | SANTIAGO HUNT BREAKFAST NEAR SANTA ANA . . . 116 THE WAVES AT CORONADO ‘ . ‘ + In GuLLs AT AVALON BAY . . . . . 122 RUINS OF THE MISSION OF SAN ANTONIO DE PALA Illustrations CASTLE Rock, SANTA BARBARA . . MOUNT SAN ANTONIO FROM REDLANDS . g . ‘ MouNT SAN JACINTO GARDEN OF THE MISSION OF SANTA BARBARA IN EL CAMINO Bear Photo by H. A. Parker HAuNTSs oF THE MOUNTAIN LioN, AND GRIZZLY PEAK ‘ PAasADENA IN WINTER. FLOWERS AND Snow HAuNTS OF THE VALLEY QUAIL NEAR PASADENA COUNTRY CLUB . 3 . . ‘ ‘ , : . Photo by Graham DecaNso BAY—A WHITE SEA-BAss CORNER,SANTA CATALINA Photo by Chas. Ironmonger A Cactus GARDEN . . . ‘ . . . A DEgSeErRT FOREST. NATIVE PALMS NEAR PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA " : ‘ ‘ ‘ : : Photo by Putnam & Valentine CANDLE CAcTUS. LOWER CALIFORNIA AND ARIZONA . Photo by Putnam & Valentine MISSION OF SANTA BARBARA . : . ‘ . Pampas Grass, SAN DieEGco, oN EL CAMINO REAL ‘ . Photo by H. A. Clarke PALMS oF THE MissioN OF SAN FERNANDO REY ON THE King’s HiGHwaAay . : ‘ . . : ‘ Photo by C. C. Pierce AN AVENUE OF PALMS, Los ANGELES MissioN OF SAN DiEco DE ALCALA AND DATE PALMS ON EL CaMINO REAL ‘ ; S . Photo by C. C. Pierce MissioN OF SAN Luis Rey DE FrRaNCIA ON THE oLD KING’s HiGHwAY ‘ : , ’ : . . PAGE 124 127 135 140 144 153 158 160 165 170 174 179 186 190 194 202 - iP Sa Hi i J { Bp, = Re podem TT IT NR IR al mE i SS xiv Illustrations ORANGE TREE : . . ; . i . . MissioN OF SAN BUENAVENTURA ON EL CAMINO REAL Photo C. C. Pierce ELEPHANT HEADS AND CAVES OF LA JOLLA NEAR SAN DIEGO SANTA ANITA RANCH, ARCADIA, SAN GABRIEL VALLEY Photo by Putnam & Valentine CLusTER LiLy, BRODIZA . . . WiLDp GOAT SHOOTING FROM A BoAT, SANTA CATALINA A Brack SEA-BAss TOURNAMENTS : . . . . CATCH OF A BLACK SEA-Bass wiTH Rob AND REEL . Photo by Chas. Ironmonger LA PurissiMA CoNCEPCION MissioN ON THE KING’s HIGHWAY MissioN oF SAN Mi1GUuEL oN EL Camino ReaL (KinG’s HiGH- way) . ‘ . : ‘ : A MORNING CATCH BY THE AUTHOR . : . : LANDING THE LEAPING TUNA ’ : ; y . Photo by Chas. Ironmonger LerTiNG THEM OUT . . " ‘ . . . ” S1x-IN-HAND SWINGING AROUND THE Loop y : BirD’s-EYE ViEw oF THE CoACH ROAD : . . : SEA-LION ROOKERY ‘ . ' . . ‘ . SEA-L1ON ROOKERY AT SANTA CATALINA ISLAND . . Typical FisHING BoAT AND YELLOW-FIN ALBACORE . . CaTcH OF BLACK SEA-BASS AND ALBACORE AT SANTA CATALINA BY A WAITING MEMBER OF THE ANANIAS CLUB THE OCEANIC BONITO . . . . . i . Photo by Chas. Ironmonger MR. HARDING'S RECORD WHITE SEA-BASS PAGE 209 212 214 218 223 228 235 240 254 259 268 273 278 284 28% 294 299 302 304 Illustrations MouNT SAN ANTONIO (10,120 FEET), HOME OF MOUNTAIN SHEEP . ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ . THE GLASS-BoTTOM BOATS OF AVALON ; . BLACK AND WHITE SEA-URCHINS ‘ . . : . Photo by P. Reise IN THE HANGING GARDENS . . : . . . Photo by Chas. Ironmonger THE GrAss-BorToM BoAT, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND . AvALON ‘ ‘ ‘ . THE BAY AND VALE OF AVALON ‘ . . . : Photo by Chas. Ironmonger FErN CANON, SANTA Cruz ISLAND ‘ ‘ . Photo by P. Reise THE VALE OF AVALON. PICTURESQUE GOLF LINKS AT SANTA CATALINA. . ‘ : . : . : . GAFFING AT SHEEPS' HEAD, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND ‘ BeacH FISHING FOR LEAPING SHARKS, CATALINA HARBOUR Photo by Chas. Ironmonger A 300-FooT WAVE AT SAN PEDRO ‘ . ‘ Photo by Graham A MorNING’S Rob CaTcH oF YELLOW-T AIL TAKING THE YELLOW-TAIL . . . . : A GooDp CORNER FOR YELLOW-T AIL . ‘ . THE GoLD oF OPHIR ROSE . . : . . . WINTER FLOWERS AT ALTADENA, SAN GABRIEL VALLEY . Photo by H. A. Parker WINTER VERDURE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 5 . : Photo by H. A. Parker A REDLANDS ORANGE GROVE AND HOME IN WINTER . . PAsSADENA'S VARIED CLIMATES . i . : . PAsaDENA’s VARIED CLIMATES (Continued) . ‘ ‘ : XV PAGE 312 315 318 322 324 327 332 336 338 341 344 346 349 352 356 359 362 366 368 374 378 JSC LT ——— - urge td i 5 sh as on a - Sr gone 6 Bi Saban: 23: chefs ro rm AR 7 ¢ eS LT Ry SA SY NE Ss Vid ae Rapin ag ST ——— 4 - : if { il i I; bh i it Ki 0. | 1 4 i 3 | p \ i oo | Chapter I 4 i a j Across Country with Greyhounds 1 : ; : 1 HE first rain had come. The mountains were #1 4 smiling at the distant sea, the air was clear i as crystal, and had a rich vibrant quality. The 8 } long, feathery lines of white clouds which marked the s on time of rain had disappeared. No more the dust spout A BRAR- . ‘ : : i | | SR: ) | sailed swaggering down along the Puente Hills; instead, i Si A g . . i i | UNIVERS / i processions of geese and cranes flew along the high 4 I AL Fon | Sierras, headed to the south. The grey hills were 3 pot melting into other and deeper tints, and the seeds of 1 | alfileria, that had formed a grey mat almost everywhere, t i ! were twisting, boring into the ground, and painting the | i | g g g p g | 1 hills, lowlands, and mesa in emerald hues. There was a i Hh : ‘ Hi | crispness to the air; every tree and bush was washed wll 5 . i | . : clean ; the groves of the tall plume-like eucalyptus seemed 4 1 nearer and greener, and along the highways vivid pink qh mattings were growing, telling that a marvellous change 1 I was imminent. In a word, it was near Christmas time in Southern California, and uncompromising winter, Cy with its roses, its fields of wild flowers, was setting in. 4 Life in the Open In the valley, one could hear the clang of bells of the Mission of San Gabriel as they rang out, three miles away, and beyond El Toro, over the divide Don Benito, listen to the chimes of San Juan Capistrano as they chanted to the sea. On such a morning I came down on to the mesa from Las Cacitas, a spur of the Sierra Madre, where I was living, rode through the deep cafion, whose oaks and bays were dripping with dazzling radiance, and as I came out on to the mesa, from which I could see the islands offshore, fifty miles distant, I heard the tremulous melody of a horn. It came from the direction of Los Robles, and as I rode on through the brush, my horse tossing the odours of sage and other fragrant plants into the air, out from the long lines of eucalyptus trees came the hunt, the horses with their Spanish saddles and fascin- ating montadira, and in a blue and tan bunch the dogs, greyhounds of high degree, that had left San Marino an hour or more before. The country was open for miles near the Sierra Madre, which rose abruptly from the mesa, the land sandy below Las Cacitas, and covered with sage and low chaparral ; here an eucalyptus grove, a young olive orchard, and a vineyard, but in the main, open country, so that one could see several miles in almost every direction. This was the home of the jack rabbit or hare, said to be the fastest runner and to possess better staying powers than any animal known, a tree girdler, an enemy of the rancher. Sure of his powers, he lived in Ruins of the Chapel, Mission of San Juan Capistrano, on El Camino Real. a - sina. To— = « Pin NAIR Ae pn SY LI MR SR hal 5 OB Ba Across Country with Greyhounds { the open, affecting the most barren places. A bit of I tar weed or sage was enough for him, and even when Hi chased he despised cover and always turned to the il grim mountains and ran up grade, doubtless to wind i : the horse. \ There were twenty or more hunters, all well mounted | on wiry fast-running horses, the master of the hounds k in the lead behind the dogs. There were greetings, ] mutual congratulations that you were alive in God's country on such a day, and some men took off their i! sombreros at the splendid tints and colours of the : mountains that, a wall of rock, five or six thousand feet i high and forty miles wide, shut out the land and valley from the rest of the world. La The hunt moved slowly along the eucalyptus groves, ve 3 then at the word turned in, each horse taking a line TE A SENET Sf 3: aie SE Hr or avenue, the dogs spreading out. Down the long, . leafy parterres you could see blue vistas of sky, catch | glimpses of distant mountains, while the air was filled with the aroma of the eucalyptus as the horses’ hoofs ih cut the underbrush. i | 3st SMG pies The plan was to sweep through the grove and drive hil out any jack that might be lying there. When half- Cv TAS IY IE ARIS way through, a quick cry from the master of hounds gave the word to the dogs, that dashed ahead, out into the open, twenty yards or so behind a jaunty, fluffy, tall-eared thing that bounded on as though its feet bore rubber cushions, while with a roar of sounds the hunt swept on in a long line at full and splendid speed. He 6 Life in the Open There is nothing more inspiring than a cavalry charge, and this hunt was a diminutive replica of one. The horses were eager for the chase, knowing well the meaning of the shout, and at once broke into a wild run: and when they cleared the grove the dogs could be seen reaching out in long lines and the bounding jack melting away into space. At this stage of the run he is enjoying himself at our expense. His long ears are up, and as stiff as rods of steel. He runs by bounds and has an air of disdain. The speed is increasing every moment. The master of the hounds by virtue of his office is directly behind them, and after him, never overriding the pack, come the fortunate ones who can keep their place. Already some are left far behind, but a few horses are well to the fore and running at a pace, that considering the country, would bring a cheer from the grandstand at Ascot. The jack runs through a patch of sage-brush, then turns slightly and crosses an orchard, and here is turned cleverly by old Ramon. He runs over a great white wash, bounding down its dangerous sides until it ends, then alarmed by the determined thunder of bounding hoofs, he turns gradually and makes for the upper mesa. Suddenly the master of the hounds shouts a warning. Some turn at the brink of a knife-like cut or wash, ten feet deep, over which the jack goes like a cannon ball. You see that he is taking in sails, is not so disdainful ; his ears are lying partly back over his shoulders, and the won- derful hind legs are working quicker and driving him 3 3 h H P be | : Across Country with Greyhounds ahead like piston rods. The dogs have lost some time at the turn, and he is two or three hundred feet ahead. Half the horses are out of the game, the wash is a dis- courager, and two philosophers are walking back, tak- ing the chance of being in at the death in a double ; but a small bunch of riders are well in, and riding like the wind. Long ago it was a runaway race; no attempt is made to stop or check the horses; it is their race, and some will not be stopped. The wind cuts the face, and gravel fills the air, picked up by the flying hoofs ; while the long lines of blue and grey are creeping up, and on in a mysterious fashion. Perhaps you are with the master of the hounds in the lead where you can see every move of horse, hound, and game. You watch the marvellous machine just ahead; the dogs shooting forward, then dropping behind. You hear the on of the hounds speak to them; now quickly as the jack runs into the brush, where they lose sight of the game and are at sea. You see them look at him and spring in the airin great steely bounds, glancing quickly ly then, following the direction indicated by his horse, rush- ing out into the open. The hare is running down a vineyard, doubtless hoping to throw some unfortunate riders on to the black ugly stumps, just leafing out. But the horses know the place well, and just at the end the dogs close in and turn again, forcing the hare down through the level field. You see him now, not fifty feet ahead ; not the jocund tree girdler that bounded out of the eucalyptus grove half an hour before, but epi ot Xd Eg Semin ti REN 3 weiss ce Le RE ME <0 & Si Aa ARE map . ag Ant Romo go ——_— wo 3 Life in the Open a long grey object with ears flattened out upon his back a sure signal of distress—and a certain halting motion that those well in the front take as an indication of a coming trick, a “ grandstand play ” for which the game is famous, and here it is. The jack apparently disappears; horses are jerked on to their haunches, a cloud of dust rises, dogs reach out and snap at something as it passes, phantom-like, and you and I and the master of the hounds are away on exactly the back track, and the jack has gained one hundred feet. If you have been at the front you will know what it all means. The jack stopped suddenly, turned about a clump of sage in the open, and dashed back directly beneath the horses’ feet. Mouse, my own hound, misses him by the length of a tail, and other hounds snap at him as he goes by, unable to stop themselves, while the clever hare, taking all the chances, dashes beneath the horses, and makes a splendid play for liberty. This turn is shown in the accompanying pic- ture! by Brewer, from a sketch of my own made from memory as I saw the manceuvre, the jack running directly between the feet of my horse, which should be shown nearer in the illustration. It is here that the hunter who has given out and is looking on from some comfortable vantage-ground, often comes into his own without the attendant exertions, as the jack comes back, and possibly is killed in front of him. In five minutes the horses and riders that have stood 1 Page —. uma A Sudden Turn observed by the Author. _ Tem sss i as Si i AER MAT Sl Se TT £ SE ————— gy =p — Across Country with Greyhounds Ee | the pace are again surging to the front. The horses I are wild with excitement; it is their hunt and they 4 | know the finish is near. Several miles have been left behind, and the run has been over unbroken country. Now a blue dog seems to shoot ahead of the jack. He has been behind all the time, and you have half expected 5 to see him drop out; but Pasqual has come into his second wind and makes a turn that brings a shout from ht every saddle. “Good Pasqual!” * Bravo, Ramon!” He turns the hare that is met by Mouse; but she misses. There is a flurry, and away down the mesa into a spreading wash they go, over into an orange grove, with a roar of sounds, and the jack in a desper- ate effort to wind the horses takes the long palm-envi- roned drive toward a ranch house, and like a whirlwind the horses and dogs follow. en The ranch house is straight ahead, and my friend ty has a long wide hall running through it, for which the jack apparently is headed. Iam wondering whether will object to the hunt running through his home, when out he comes with arms uplifted. He does object, there is no question as to that, but it is the finish. A long, tan-coloured hound shoots ahead, a fluffy hare goes up into the air, and the hounds close around, while one of the hunters in a desperate attempt to stop his horse and keep him from a flower garden goes on, and—tell it not in Gath—lands on his back among the pansies. Hl It is a famous run. The death or finish was three ih miles from the start as the crow flies. The dogs are lying rg Det TOTES Ee Se Sa | 4, CF THE TRY \ sof oS eS ST vt § 3 sei NRL RTI ARIES a mst 10 Life in the Open flat, panting like machines, but happy, delighted, and rolling a glance of congratulation at you, or giving you greeting by a wag of the tail. If they could speak they would all say it was the run of their lives. Along comes the man with a canteen, each dog drinks and its face and mouth are washed, and each master and mistress tells each hound just what he or she thinks, and compli- ments between man and beast fly thick and fast. The sad- dles are uncinched, the horses walked up and down and given a drink when cooler. The stragglers have come in, and the hunt, refreshed, stands in the cooling shade of the eucalyptus grove, and discusses the situation. Such was a typical run with the San Marino or the Valley Hunt hounds of Pasadena; hard, furious, dangerous sport, the hare having an open country and by far the advantage. To ride over such a region with its washes and burrows, the rider took every chance, and the game often escaped ; wearing out horse, rider, and hound. There can hardly be any pastime within the realm of sport more exciting than this. It was my for- tune to act as master of the hounds in many hunts, and my place was directly behind the dogs, where every move "of hound or game could be seen; and as a study of strenuous sport it was without peer; horses and dogs enjoyed it, the jack being the only exception, and he was a pest and menace to the rancher. The hunt, refreshed, winds out of the grove and turns in the direction of the mountains, following along the slopes. It is midwinter in the East, the whole land Across Country with Greyhounds I is in the grip of ice and snow; but here the air is soft on the cheek, the carol of countless birds fills the air, and drowsy butterflies, yellow and white, are flitting about the fields—harbingers of spring. On one side the wall of the Sierras stands menacing and grim, cut by many cafions, rich in deep greens, that like rivers wind skyward. Near at hand the mountains are grey and green in patches; but as they reach away toward San Antonio they become blue painted with ineffable tints. Ahead the San Rafael Hills rise in velvet mounds, with radiant lights and shades, telling of rippling oats and barley ; like great billows they are tumbling on and on to the distant lowlands. To the south but turn the eye, and the green slope of the Sierras is seen reaching the distant sea; a fantasie in colour; squares of green and yellow, blocks of vivid green, mounds of undulating emerald, and beyond the line of silver surf and the blue sea with its caps of islands. A fairer land, a fairer hunting day you will rarely find under this Christmas sun. Another hare is started and the hunt is again in full run, sweeping up to the foot of the mountains, down into vineyards, where often several jacks are started ; but the hounds concentrate their attention on one, and the finish comes up near the entrance to the cafion Las Flores, where the drags, coaches, and carriages have met. Lunch is laid under the trees in some adjacent grove, and the incidents and events of the hunt are again dis- cussed and good dogs are rewarded. Such a hunt well GS a Se a IS, 12 Life in the Open illustrates life in the open in Southern California and its possibilities. Many towns and cities have spread out over the land, and Southern California bids fair to become over- civilised and settled up. But the jack rabbit is not to be crowded out. A wily fellow lives near my home, and I have seen him entertaining himself by leading the dogs down a wide avenue, a fashionable thoroughfare of the town : and in the suburbs he may be always found. This is true of all the foothill cities from Pomona and Ontario to Riverside and Redlands and beyond, while San Diego and Coronado afford excellent fields for this adventurous pastime. There is also excellent sport to be had on the ranches near Santa Ana and Orange, and in valleys near the San Joaquin, one of the most successful hunts in the his- tory of the Valley Hunt of Pasadena being near Orange, where it was the guest of the Count and Countess von Schmidt. In the vicinity of Los Angeles the best hunting localities are the San Fernando Valley and the lower reaches and washes of Baldwin’s ranch, which may give one an excuse to ride through this splendid domain, with its groves of eucalyptus, orange, and lemon, and its charming vistas of land and laguna. Some of the best hunting I have had in Southern California has been in the southern part of this ranch and near Sunny Slope ranch, where a pack of fine greyhounds is maintained to reduce the tree and vine girdlers; and nearly all a PR an ar er SANE Tat) Fo onsite + Go ipa: 0 mean § i ey . Charles Winston’s Sunny Slope Hounds—La Manda 2 Across Country with Greyhounds 1; large ranches keep greyhounds to kill off this menace to the crops. The jack rabbit is a hare, and nests on the surface, rarely if ever taking to burrows or anything of the kind. He prefers to run in the open, to dodge behind hedges and trees. For many years I hunted with my own dogs, and, when President of the Valley Hunt, often acted as master of the hounds, when it was my duty to keep up with the pack and direct it on the runs; con- sequently I had many opportunities to watch the dogs and game in all stages of the chase. The Valley Hunt pack of ten or fifteen hounds was in charge of a hunts- man or keeper, and generally there were two masters of hounds, members of the club, who took charge of the dogs on a hunt, and went with them, a hard riding position. Courtesy required that the hunt should not pass him ; indeed, it was the duty of the one in charge to see that excited members did not override the hounds. The hunt could keep as near the master of the hounds as it could get, but could not pass. When the game reached cover, he had to keep the jack in sight, and see that the dogs obeyed his call ; and so well did the hounds understand this, that often they would not lose a foot, though they lost sight of the game for several minutes. A greyhound named ‘ Mouse ” would, in high grass, leap on to my horse behind my saddle, and, with one arm over her, I would ride slowly along. When a hare was started she would see it, note its direc- tion, leap down, and rarely miss it. It is sometimes said i Se BR 14 Life in the Open that greyhounds lack intelligence and affection, but never was there a greater mistake. A good greyhound is one of the best of dogs, of aristocratic mien, a type of strength, power, and staying qualities, with a love for hunting, cleanly, beautiful, and affectionate. The jack will often nonplus a very clever dog. Tonce made a long run nearly to the mountains, and when at the upper rise of the mesa, horse, dog, and hare began to give out. After a while we came down to a trot, then to a walk, and the jack, apparently scarcely able to move, ran to a big fir tree, and around it several times, chased by the hound, that was so desperately winded that she could not catch the jack. I reined in my horse, not twenty feet distant, and watched the absurd dénodment, laugh- ing heartily at my dog Mouse, a very clever animal. She soon became dizzy and stopped running, then walked uncertainly over to me in a most shamefaced manner and sat on her haunches, while the jack faced us for a second in sheer amazement. He had doubtless been the hero of numerous chases and was bewildered, but the dog and I agreed that he had earned his lib- erty, and we sat and watched him limp away into the chaparral. Such sport as this is not to be confused with “ coursing "—a cowardly, brutal game that cannot hold its own in any country among gentlemen. The hare is released in an enclosure and chased by hounds, with no possible chance of escape; while in the open, in a fair chase across country, the chances are against the rider, “\} Walk at the Mission of Santa Barbara on El Camino Real. ne PNT Gh a >. cn SEs ee SIRE, rg aS ve 2 T&L TY RE IRE od Across Country with Greyhounds 1; and the tree girdler has every opportunity to escape, as where horses are in trouble he flies over the ground like a bird and often lives to run another day. The hunt breakfast ends, the well-rested horses and hounds walk slowly down the valley again, on the look- out for game, the carriages and drags following, stop- ping here and there to see the exciting runs; and late in the afternoon, perhaps, the hunt winds down the long sweeping mesa, headed for home, that may be ten miles away, if the run has led them down to the Baldwin wash, or it may be but a mile; but no matter where, the weary riders have the panorama of the hills as in- spiration. As the sun sinks behind the western peaks of the Coast Range, a splendid transformation scene is staged on slope and mesa. The tips of the Sierras are wreathed with light, and out from each cafion and gulch dark shadows creep, encroaching slowly on the fields of yellow and gold. Slowly the hills take on a roseate hue that grows in intensity and splendour as the sun drops into the sea. Deeper it becomes; now crimson, then scarlet, a gorgeous drapery that slowly fades and melts into purple until the entire range, except where the snow-caps of San Antonio are bathed in the fiery glow, is invested with the deep panoply of night. From down the valley, filtering through the wind- breaks of eucalpytus trees, comes softly on the wind the flute-like tremulo of the horn—the adios of the huntsman and his hounds. = i se TSS A 8 oc : —c EG Ea in Wd Si M,C Te rie wi TTR eg TR ET ITE rr Gr STRSTR & I aT HE TI. 1 Ng RE - wip v _u - -~ na sig - ? : R— Sp — a — - aar— ~ - a CECE ES ni Se SS HO i ee : m— HE oe sas —- gree : ~- a Ee es am ve aoc sma ae -— ma etm Si _— — a es = gar = = a mS ——————— eT —————————————— F = — a An A — . Chapter 11 Hunting the Lynx NE of the charms of Southern California lies in the fact that the towns and many cities are within a stone’s throw of the open country, or the mountains. Los Angeles is but thirteen miles from the main range of the Sierra Madre, a jumble of mountains so steep and forbidding that trained mount- aineers have been confused by their precipitous cafions and sharp divides. There is hardly a village, town, or city where wild country is not available in some form in a short distance. The stroller up the east branch of the Los Angeles River, the Arroyo Seco, is led by agreeable paths on this winter day into a cafion, down which a small stream flows, now on the surface, again sinking beneath it, flowing on and on to the distant sea. Here it has high banks, and has cut into a series of hills that are a blaze of yellow, carpeted with a small daisy-like flower. Everywhere the river-bed is filled with polished stones, and along the banks patches of silver foxtail grass nod in the sunlight, and in the shallows windrows of mica gleam in lines of gold. 19 2 f C1 c— al 2 le oh pom ze a. — ee re I 20 Life 1n the Open The hills grow higher. Here they are undermined, the talus partly covered by masses of wild oat whose surface ripples in catspaws in changing tints of green. Along the low left bank are lavender flashes among the rocks, telling of the wild pea, while the yellow glow of the primrose and the blue of the larkspur are caught against the green of the chaparral. Soon the arroyo widens, and live oaks are seen in a little basin. The sullen roar of the city is still heard, but the sky is bright, the sweet song of birds fills the air. Surely it is not February along this verdant arroyo? You may climb the hill and look out over distant fields of rippling grain and a marvellous coat of green that robes the land from mountains to the sea. Winter it is, fair and uncompro- mising, permitting flowers, soft air, and clear skies. Not the winter of the tropics, hot and enervating, but 4 winter of content, crisp, with just a soupcon of frost in the early morning to make the scent good and clear. The scent, ah! that is what you are after. Are you not on horseback ? and there, standing under the oaks, is Don A with his famous foxhounds, Melody, Music, and others, and coming down the road are other hunters and the hounds of the Valley Hunt. The meet is at the czenaga, and it is proposed to work the green hills to the east and south for the lynx, common game in Southern California, game that uses the big arroyo and washes as highways from the mount- ains. All the hunters are mounted, and Don A Hunting the Lynx wi sounds his silver-throated horn, calls in the straying dogs, and outlines the plan of action. A few hunters are to go around the hill with the hounds, the rest are to remain in the arroyo and keep the game within bounds. You elect to go, and, making a long detour, climb the slopes, the hounds entering the hills. Already Music has the scent, and the blood-stirring melody, like nothing else in the world, comes rippling through the air, 0-0-0-0, and is taken up by Melody, who is standing looking at the scenery for a second, then she sends the news down to the hunters below that not many hours before a soft velvet-footed lynx passed that way from some looting, and is not so far away. Again comes the baying of the hounds, pouring over the hill and dropping into the little cafiada, to be taken up by others. The hilltops here, six or eight hundred feet above the sea, one hundred or more above the arroyo, form a spur of the Sierra Madre, that reaches down toward Los Angeles and to the east, merging into the Puente Hills, a splendid winter highway for game where there is cover, and for coyotes at any time. On the surface were disconnected bunches of low brush, giving the slopes a park-like effect, and farther on groves of white oak with spreading branches beneath which nodded the shooting-star, the mariposa lily and the graceful stalks of Brodeaa. Into this garden of the hills the hounds ran just ahead of my horse, following the scent, now and then baying soft and low, working through the tall grass 22 Life in the Open until they came to the oaks, when Music gave the signal and the entire pack broke into the volume of sounds that tells of fresh scent. Few horses with a drop: of sporting blood in their veins can resist the sound, and mine reared, plunged, and pawed the air in eagerness to run: but the hounds had not found the game, and I followed slowly while they made the welkin ring. I could hear the answering baying from over the cliff in the arroyo as I rode into the oak grove, then over the divide to the south slope. The hounds were now running at full speed, past the cactus patches, along rocky slopes, down into a deep cafion where the baying broke into a roar, and then over the edge of the arroyo a fourth of a mile above, where my horse, settling down upon his haunches, slid down with the miniature avalanche, then running down-stream at full speed to find the hounds out on the face of a cliff crawling along on narrow ledges, slipping and rolling, while in the very centre of the stage, in full sight, was the lynx. She appeared to ignore the hounds, stopping now and then to glance behind, then picking her way along, step by step, looking down at the horses, again stopping to weigh the chances of the situation. It seemed impossible for a dog to reach her, but Don A and 1 knew that Music was a sort of canine fly, and he quickly gave a vivid demonstration of it, crawl- ing out on the trail of the big cat, now perfectly silent, while other dogs made the arroyo ring with sounds. The lynx was surrounded. She faced a dog in front, @ Bo a « St o — < 5) a < of « = = [3] wn [}) ji [] 3 1s = [5] Q ob a = a ie wo " = ~ bd Hunting the Lynx 23 others were above and behind, and the hunt stood in the stream, one hundred feet below. There was wager- ing among the lookers-on as to what she would do, but she quickly decided it. Music reached within ten feet of her short tail, when she turned and came down the face of the cliff like a rubber ball, bounding from rock to rock, and when within a few feet of the bottom with a savage front sprang fairly into the pack and horses. It was a brave and clever trick, as a dozen jaws snapped at her, but when she struck the rock she seemed to bound into the air, and dashed among the feet of plunging horses, making a run of perhaps one hundred yards, and when the hunt recovered from its surprise she was sitting in the top of a large oak, her eyes gleaming fire, her short tail twitching, treed, but not caught, and around the trunk gathered the pack baying, filling the air with what were now menacing sounds. The trunk of the tree stood at an angle, and Ranger, an old tree-climber, was presently fifteen feet up and out on a limb, from which he had to be helped down. Some of these dogs were marvellous tree-climb- ers, but even a dog is helpless where he can fall. I hauled myself from the saddle into the tree and climbed slowly upward. The lynx did not move until 1 had reached a point within twenty feet of her, where 1 sat a moment and looked her over. She was a minia- ture lynx, with small tufted ears, a rich spotted coat, and pronounced reddish “ whiskers.” The head was large, 24 Life in the Open and the eyes, which looked into mine, blazed with the same yellow light you may see in the glance of the black leopard. When I made an offensive movement, she stood up, showing the long, powerful legs and the short tail, which was twitching from side to side in a significant fashion. I climbed higher and thrust a branch at her, whereupon she darted out on to a limb, and with one glance and snarl at me, went crashing down through the resilient screen of green into the pack. When I dropped on to my horse again, the hunt was sweeping up the arroyo and through the chaparral; coming to a cliff the lynx clambered up the side, but was again driven out, two dogs rolling down forty or more feet, then forced across the stream and treed in a dense patch of brush, into which the infuriated hounds vainly essayed to climb. From here she was finally dislodged, and in making the leap she missed me by a very few inches. I had dismounted and was holding my horse when I saw her coming by my head, literally dropping out of the sky, four paws out; when she struck she bounded upward like a ball, and the pack literally fell over me in their attempts to reach her. But some miraculous dodging power aided the tribe, as she again eluded them, and was treed after a hard run through the chaparral, from which she ran down through an arcade of wild grape vines and reached the hills again, where she threw the dogs off. A long stretch of country was scoured before a pl Si Treed. Lynx Hunting, Santiago Club, near Fullerton. he Hunting the Lynx 25 the scent was picked up, and after another run the game was treed in a large sycamore. Two hours had slipped by, and the excitement and speed of the runs had told on the dogs, which were yelping with rage and disappointment. They now ran about the tree baying in ominous tones, their tongues hanging out, and the long mournful O-0-0-0, O-0-0-0, ris- ing on the air like the tolling of bells. Up into the tree went another hunter, and the hunt backed off to give the animal fair play, that was the essence of the sport. She waited until he reached her, snarling at him viciously, then creeping out on to the tip of a limb, glanced about, and made one of the pluckiest jumps I have ever seen or heard of, going down clear forty or fifty feet, bound- A3 IV TRA IN OF THE N\ UNIVERSITY of then fighting her way through the dogs, cutting as she LTTE SQLronnk went. She ran fifty feet on the level, when Music shot ing on her rubber-like pads several feet into the air, ahead and rolled her over, and bedlam broke loose as the pack poured in. At least half the hounds were cut or slashed by this vicious animal that fought with tooth and claw, throwing herself upon her back, and snarling like a fiend. Several dogs were retired before she suc- cumbed. Hanging from my saddle she nearly touched the ground, a fine specimen of lynx, in good condition. On her skin, which I had mounted as a rug, various young hounds were introduced to their first game, and it is fair to say that they ultimately wore out the rug in these practice hunts. The hunt now worked up the arroyo beyond the | | 26 Life in the Open Hunting the Lynx 27 1. Grama snes cee Bone. Aoelen, 104 the gulch forming the western boundary of Pasadena. own p er = where the dogs took a scent As I write, two minutes’ walk from its fragrant edge, over entered a Dass which I can see the tops of its trees from my lawn, I hear | and ran a mile along the San Rafael Hills. The scent grew fresher, until finally a roar of sounds indicated something brought to bay at the foot of a giant syca- | more in an almost impenetrable jungle of scrub oak, tall | briar rose, and other brush. Using my heavy crop I | broke a way in, to find one of the dogs wedged in a | hole, surrounded by others who were so crazed by the proximity of the game that they fell all over me. I i a Eid ting tt a managed to seize the hound by the hind legs and pull Lgl ; Sin er : him out by main force, and with him came, not a lynx, E $ Youna ootprint of the lynx, with that of a but a raccoon, which had seized the hound by the paw i raccoon or possibly a fox. Indeed, the casual stroller and held on with the grip of a bulldog, held on until I | | pulled it completely out, and the dogs fell upon it. 14 The arroyo was from fifty to one hundred feet deep here, its sides precipitous, filled with underbrush and | large trees ; sycamores and black oaks growing on the } banks, cottonwoods, alders, and others in the centre and hh I | on the sides, with little meadows here and there above the melody of a hound calling, O-O-0-0, telling me that somewhere in its green heart the foot-cushions of a lynx have left their imprint on the yielding sand. I some- times go down in the afternoon and smooth it over in the middle of the moist stream-bed, then visit it in the morning to read the story. Here are quail tracks, the long foot of a cottontail, the sinuous trail of a snail, the through this green arroyo in winter might never see an animal larger than a quail or rabbit, yet the sandy trails tell of a diversity of game that walks abroad o’ nights or 4 comes down the dry green river from the mountains to ¢ “visit the haunts of man. i Nearly every cafion in Southern California has its quota of lynxes, generally of two kinds. Those leading from the main range are most frequented, but in nearly every arroyo of any size where there is underbrush and trees there will be found the gamy and savage enemy of the rancher. All along the Sierra Madre, from San Luis Obispo the stream. The wild grape had climbed many of the | trees and interlaced them in a radiant drapery of green, \ forming a natural jungle for the wildcat, raccoon, and | fox. The hounds presently caught a scent, and after a | short run treed a large lynx, a process that was repeated | i iin. SE A | The Arroyo Seco, a river of verdure if not water, i reaching down from the mountains, is a natural park, . | | half a score of times before she was finally captured, to San Diego, the sport may be 0d, and servers] wel i J san] known packs of hounds are kept in California—nota- i | proving 2 mos gamy anime’. bly the Kentucky pack of thoroughbreds of Mr. William G. Burns, of the Pasadena Country Club. These hounds Po Ld — > er e m— em 28 Life in the Open are trained to drag-hunting as well, and have made some spirited runs over the beautiful country at the head of the San Gabriel Valley. There are two or three small packs of hounds in and about Pasadena; one in the vicinity of the San Fernando Valley, and per- haps the best and largest in the Santiago Cafion, a val- ley to the south of the San Gabriel, reaching down to the sea. Here, extending out from the foothills which constitute a sort of coast range ten Or fifteen miles from it, some of the finest lynx or wild cat hunting in Cali- fornia is found. The country is beautifully situated, being in the main a splendid oak park with a series of well-wooded cations. Nearly all are occupied by ranchers, and well up Santiago Cafion is the attractive mountain home of Mr. J. E. Pleasants, Master of Hounds of the Santiago Hunt Club of Orange, whose hospitality and meets are well known. This club has hunted the country nine or ten years, and game, fox, coyote, and lynx, is so plentiful that there .« constant exercise for the pack. The dogs, Trilby, Don, Pluto, Mack, Diana, Flash, and many more, are from Southern stock, recruited from Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama, and some of them, owned by the hunt and Dr. Page of Pasadena, are remarkable hunters. The master of the hounds lives up the cafion twenty miles from the city of Santa Ana, and twice a year, in May and October, special hunts are enjoyed that have a wide reputation. They are held in Orange County Park, a fine piece of well-wooded country about “iy * The Bells of Mission San Gabriel Arcangel near Pasadena. 7 / OF THE UNIVERSITY \ \ A / Hunting the Lynx 29 ten miles from Santa Ana and stretching along the south face of the foothills. Several hundred people attend them, and go in conveyances of all kinds, and with tents camp out in the grove, forming a small village. Famous cooks, the Serranos, are on hand, and after the hunt there is a barbecue, Mexican fashion, where chili con carne, chili colorado, tomales, and Zortillas are served, and ‘f the hunter is not fired by the hunt he is by the feast that savours of the days of Lucullus. It is worth a trip to California to see Sefior Serrano and his brother bar- becue a steer, and toss or turn the meat with a pitchfork by the light of the moon as it pours down through the great black live oaks. The hunts average twenty lynxes and fifteen foxes a year, and in the driest weather the hounds have no difficulty in taking the foxes. These meets are looked forward to with pleasure and delight, and in the gloom of the live-oak forests one meets many famous Califor- nians and lovers of sport, none of whom are more enthusiastic than Dr. Benjamin Page, who can tell you every hound by his voice and the exact stage of the game, just as he knows the highest peaks of the Sierras, the deepest cafions, and all the famous trout pools of Southern California along the high Sierras as they over- look the great desert of the south. It is good to see the old-time hunting gentleman imparting his enthusiasm to the younger generation and handing it down as a legacy. The Southern California lynx, Lynx rufus, 1s a handsome spotted animal, weighing sometimes fifty 30 Life in the Open pounds; there are two distinct forms here recognised by hunters. 1 have seen a large lynx, a tall, long- legged, scrawny creature, that could run like a deer and was treed with difficulty. It had tassels to its ears, and the fur on its cheeks was very long or pronounced, while another has more the appearance of a large, overgrown domestic cat, yet with tassels and beard. The red lynx, Lynx rufus, 1s found across the con- tinent to California and into Texas. It has short red- dish hair, while the spotted lynx, a larger form, has a striking spotted coat, and ranges all through Southern California and down into Mexico. This lynx is a powerful and savage animal. I have seen one for a few moments fight off a pack of hounds, lacerating them badly ; and when I saw one coming from a tree in my direction I always gave it the right of way. They are very uncertain game ; no rule can be applied to them. Some tree repeatedly, and I have worked nearly half a day on a lynx in an oak grove, the animal repeatedly ascending trees and refusing to run. Again in the same Cafiada Valley I have seen a large lynx leap from an oak and deliberately take to the open in a long run of mar- vellous speed. The Valley Hunt Club of Pasadena maintained a pack of greyhounds and a pack of foxhounds for many years, the latter being used for lynx-hunting almost exclusively, not being fast enough to run down a coyote in the open country. The pack was a gift of Dr. F. F. Rowland, who brought them to California from the Rose Tree Hunt of I , Tm RR BT VRE CRE BT Se BERTIE ROSES PETIA C0) GE Ca aha eS hg i a SEL Se CoE ee ST gn ca ¥ Sha giln Valley Hunt Foxhounds, Pasadena. RAR 7 3 OF HE ¥ ¥ UNIVERSITY Xa {IF SAL Foen'® RL foun Hunting the Lynx 31 Pennsylvania. I hunted the hounds about twice a week with a friend, and as they did not have sufficient exer- cise our experiences became a part of the history and traditions of the club, often at our expense. We in- variably ran down game. If it were not a coyote, fox, or wildcat, it would be a Chinaman, a burro, or a dog. These hounds would have something, and when we started out or entered a town, every living thing took to the woods. One day we were moving through one of the cafions of the Puente range, about seven miles from home, when we came upon a herd of sheep on the crest of a hill. The hounds had drawn a blank, and when one sighted a sheep he ran it down, possibly mistaking it for a coyote; at least we claimed this for the hound. But before we could reach it the pack had killed the sheep, which rolled down the hill. Presently the herder, a piratical-looking Basque, ap- peared, headed for us, and we prepared for trouble, as a matter of precaution keeping our horses above him, as he came stalking along. We braced ourselves for the explanation and were ready to apologise and settle, when the man came up and taking off his hat said in a Basque patois, “Will the gentlemen pardon my fool sheep? They run and excite the hound. I am very sorry”; then he waited and—well, we accepted his apology with dignity, and, of course, insisted upon paying for the sheep. Another day the pack took up a scent and with a roar of sounds swept over the mesa like the wind. 32 Life in the Open There was no telling what the game was, but after along run we went through the main street of a little village like a whirlwind, An incautious Newfoundland dog came out of a German's yard, followed by his master, to see what it all meant, and the strenuous Valley Hunt hounds fell upon him. The German doubtless thought he had been attacked by wolves as he fled, and the scene of action was changed to his house and piazza. We threw ourselves from our horses and rushed into the melée, my companion to save the German and I to :ntervene with the hounds with my crop on the part of the Newfoundland. It was one of those experiences which drop out of clear skies upon peaceful lovers of nature—a rude blast on an otherwise peaceful sea. It took fifteen minutes to convince those hounds that the German gentleman was not some kind of game, and that they believed the big dog to be a bear there could be no question. Having succeeded in driving the pack out of the little garden, now a wreck, I began to think of escape, but it was an evil day. Our horses had run away and there was nothing to do but face the irate German, who stated that he had a brother-in-law who was in some way related to the Lieutenant-Governor of California, and the latter was to be summoned at once. It was fortunate that in those Arcadian days telephones had not disturbed the peace of suburban communities, or we should doubtless have been held and hauled before this official. As it was we faced the irate citizen, and in a Hunting the Lynx 33 short time the entire village gathered. There was but one thing to do. We were in the enemy's country, the situation required quick action; we decided on that foundation of all American diplomacy, a bluff. Call- ing aside the German's wife, a ponderous but amiable lady, I confided to her that her husband, was liable to get ‘nto serious trouble. He had insulted my friend, who held a very high office in the neighbouring city. Her husband had allowed his big Newfoundland to attack Herr 's hounds and had led them into her house; did he do it to obtain possession of the hounds or what? I stated the case strongly, dwelling upon the grossness of the insult to my friend and through him to the city he lived in, ending the peroration by expressing the hope that her husband would not have any serious trouble. The lady appeared dumbfounded at this phase of the question, as well she might, and I saw that my argu- ment had produced an effect, the lady was anxious to consult her excited husband. But he was being inter- viewed by my companion, who told him that it was unfortunate that he had seen fit to attack a man so prominent as his friend, Herr School Trustee, a high educational official under the municipal government of a neighbouring city, and he wished it understood that Je would not be responsible for anything that should happen to a man who used decoy dogs to attract visit- ing hunts. This convincing logic came in the nature of a shock to the German, and he no longer quoted the 3 _.__ 34 Life in the Open classics or referred to the Lieutenant-Governor, retiring with his wife to the house for a conference, while we, having hired a boy to follow the horses, stood as models of outraged dignity. American diplomacy succeeded. The worthy couple soon appeared ; the husband said he had misunderstood the situation, and begged the gentlemen to overlook it. The gentlemen thus appealed to took it under advise- ment and finally concluded to accept the apology on account of the lady. Thus was the incident closed. The boys brought our horses, the German gentleman and his wife bowed low over the wreck of their holly- hocks, the prominent city officials gave a profound salute, the boys, having been tipped, raised a cheer, and the Valley Hunt rode proudly down the long country road in the direction of San Gabriel. Below the mission was a vast vineyard, and beyond were fields of nodding grain that rippled and laughed in the sun as the wind caressed its surface. Then there were great open stretches covered with alfileria, and along the sides of the road were lines of wild oats, the yellow violet, and little blue cup-like flowers, while in the fields grew masses of wild daisies of a score of kinds, the plume-like painter's brush, the yellow mimulus, and over them, like the background of a Japanese picture, towered a mountain of snow, a sil- ver liberty cap, a California Fuji-yama ten thousand feet in air. Near here the hounds gave tongue, the baying in- The Trail of the Lynx Hunters near El Toro. Hunting the Lynx 35 J creased, and we forgot our troubles in the cheering, tremulous music, the rolling, deep-throated sounds— 0-0-0-0-0-0—that have a direct appeal to the man who is susceptible to such influences. It is a language, this baying, a language of tones and inflections, and any lover of foxhounds will translate it for you. There isa cry of anticipation, another when a light scent is picked up, another when it deepens, still another when the game is near, and when it is sighted—and who can mis- take that splendid booming tone that tells the hunt that the game is treed !| Then when a lynx makes the mad jump and the hounds miss it and are running, how easily understood by the rider far away ! All these variants in the language of the hunt were heard by us, and as the pace grew fiercer, the cries wilder, we closed in and swung into a field and at full speed ran at a mammoth pile of brush, reined up amid a cloud of dust, and swung ourselves from the saddle, to confront—ministers of grace defend us!—a huge pig with a large and interesting family. She did not even rise ; she merely grunted, while our eyes wandered over the astonished pack and conjured up wild schemes of revenge. It must not be thought that the hounds were useless ; quite the contrary, they were not exercised sufficiently and literally went wild when we took them out. No bet- ter dogs ever took the trail of a fox or wildcat, but when not worked they insisted upon divers diversions, and they had them at our expense. It was uncertain | ! ¢ ' ! hd i i 4 4 1 ‘H { d 31 } BERT | i] 4 . a ry t \ 5 H ] ‘ 4 2 } ¥ fl 1 15 ! FEL TREY HW t 11 EL NE i #1 A | > Wi ud i ¥ | B { ett —rn 36 Life in the Open pastime. One day we had invited a party from Los Angeles to meet us midway between the two cities. The keeper of the hounds threw open the corral, which was on the arroyo road, and the pack took a trail at that spot and, in full cry, started for the arroyo. The bank here was one hundred feet up and down. I be- lieve the pack went over it, and we slid down a small path and followed. Once I heard the echo of a bay several miles to the south ; later in the day I heard it somewhere to the west, and two days later a letter came from a rancher up the San Fernando Valley, twenty miles away, to the effect that the Valley Hunt hounds had just passed ; did we want them ? The days with these hounds in the deep arroyo, or in the open, in the floral winters, despite their occasional vagaries, are among the pleasant memories of the earlier California days, and there are still Newfoundland dogs, wildcats, lynxs, hounds, and, above all, winters when the palm leaves rustle in the soft wind, and petal snowflakes drop from the orange, lemon, and lime. Chapter III Deer-Hunting in the Southern Sierras HEN living on the immediate slope of the Sierra Madre, I was within rifle-shot of three cafions down which tumbled the waters from the upper range. Sometimes the water ran under leafy arcades where the fragrant bay quivered in the soft wind, then out into the open, above which the dark blue of the larkspur stood out in relief against the green of nodding brakes, then gliding down the face of some green slide where dainty maidenhair and other ferns trembled in the rush of air. Then the water would gurgle and leap through polished rocks, dart out into the open again, and swing merrily along, bearing freight of acorns, pine needles, oak leaves, or a branch of trailing vetch to strand them on a mimic bar of shining sands. These sand-bars were found everywhere in the arroyo. I established relations with and consulted them as to the coming and going of the forest animals, and if word had been left me, the message could not have 39 40 Life in the Open been plainer. Here was the soft footprint of a wildcat, the dainty trail of a snail; here a cottontail had crossed at full speed, and, deep in the yielding sand, the hoof- prints of the black-tailed deer. He had cooled his hoofs in the stream, then started back to drier ground, where, with ears alert, he stood listening. It did not require a mystic to translate the story of the footprints in the sand that perhaps were effaced by the night's rain, or by the rising of the stream-—a dreamer of dreams could read it. Several times, in wading down the stream, looking through some leafy covert, I came upon a deer, and sometimes in the fall, along the unfrequented slopes, one would be seen in the blue haze of early morning. During the hot day he has been lying on the summit of the range in some little clearing, or on the north and cool slopes ; but in the cool evening or morning he is abroad, pushing through the chaparral, showering him- self with crystal drops, sniffing at the perfumed panicles of the wild lilac, and nipping the green tips of the Adenostoma. Down he comes, crossing the divide, looking out into the valley filled with silvery fog, through which the tops of hills emerge like islands. He brushes aside the trumpets of the mountain mimulus, starts at the mur- mur of the deep-toned pines, stands and listens until the mimic echo of the sea dies away, then pushes out into the stream and takes the trail along whose sides grow the viands of his choice. He nibbles at the wild honey- Deer-Hunting in Southern Sierras 41 suckle as it falls over the scrub oak, stops at the tall arrow grasses, thrusts aside the wild sunflowers, and leaps from the rocky pass into the open where the arroyo ends. He may wander down the stream, or perhaps climb up the sides and stroll out on to the west mesa, hiding in the little washes where the wild rose fills the air with perfume, feeding here and there as his fancy dictates. At such times I have seen him, when the eastern sky was ablush with vivid tints, the snow-caps of San An- tonio suffused with the golden light of the coming day. You look twice and again, so well does he match the chaparral, so harmonious the tint; indeed no one would suspect that this placid-faced, large-eyed creature stand- ing like a statue, big in the haze, was a grape-eater, that he had pillaged the ranch below Las Cacitas the night before, and the one before that had played havoc in a Caiiada ranch. But it is the same, and you have laid in the chaparral waiting for him night after night, and now he is gone, and off somewhere with lowered head he creeps through the bush and makes good his escape. All the ranges of the southern Sierras abound in the black-tailed deer; an attractive creature, at the present time difficult to shoot if fair play is given. Indeed, I can conceive no more difficult sport than to hunt the deer in the Sierra Madre without dogs. The extraordi- nary character of the mountains, the steepness and depth of the cafions soon tire out the hunter. I had hunted deer in the Adirondacks, in Virginia and Florida, 42 Life in the Open following them over the country, and my first effort along this line in Southern California demonstrated that for me at least, where deer were not very common, the sport merged into work of the most arduous nature, and after that I hunted deer with hounds, skirting the slopes of mountains, using the dogs to start them in the lower cafions but not to run them down. A single hunt may illustrate the arduous nature of the sport if followed with enthusiasm. By sunrise we were riding down the Cafiada between the Sierra Madre and the San Rafael Hills, the road lying between the ridges in the centre of a wide valley. It was Septem- ber, the last of the long summer. The alfileria that swept along the valley in the early spring, clothing it with green, was dead, and the open country bore a brown and burnt-umber shade. The vineyards, orange and lemon trees were green, but the tall mustard stalks that had been laden with gold, the clovers and others were dead, and their tones and shades combined with the barren spots in rich neutral tints. The sun was just rising, the ranges were clothed in purple hues, and far to the east a scarlet alpine glow appeared growing and spreading over the world. The deep shadows crept out of the cafions, the divides became more pronounced, the distant ranges assumed deeper blues, and finally the big trees that fringed the summits were silhouetted against the blue sky as the sun climbed up out of the desert and looked down on California. We drove through a long line of ranches for five He visits ranch gardens early in the morning . ANAT EB rer A ARR R BS Cl ai SIRES og Deer-Hunting in Southern Sierras 43 miles, turned to the south into a narrow green caifion, then wheeled sharply to the right, and up among the cactus and chaparral of a little valley pulled up beneath the live oaks. The hounds jumped out, my guide un- harnessed, fastening one horse to the tree and saddling the other for my benefit, and we started up the caiion. I thought of my last deer hunt not a mile from Ned Buntline’s old home in the open at the foot of Blue Mountain in the Adirondacks, where I stole through the forest over a bed of leaves, resting on fern-covered trunks coated with moss, every leaf, twig, and branch scintillating with moisture. Here the only dampness for six months had been the fog and dew; not a drop of rain had fallen, yet the chaparral that robed the mountain was rich in greens, a mantle undulating and beautiful, at a distance, but, to hunt deer in, an impene- trable maze. This chaparral was composed of Adenostoma, a thick, sweet -scented bush from four to six feet high, spreading and stiff, so that when it bent back and struck one on the return, it was a flagellation. With it were masses of Heteromales covered with white flowers, sumac, wild lilac, scrub oak, and others, with here and there in the clear places a Spanish bayonet or yucca with a thousand daggers en guard. Imagine acres of this, bound together in a more or less compact tangle, with patches of dead wood, remains of ancient fires, which were stiffer and more offensive than the rest. My guide said there was a trail, and leading the way 24 Life in the Open I followed the path, so called by courtesy. There had been one, but the chaparral had closed in upon it like the waves of a sea, and in ten minutes my faithful and well-trained horse was butting through and I was swept off and carried away. I then took the animal by the tail and fell into his wake, and so we literally butted up the side of the mountain several hundred feet until the semblance of a trail became more evident, when I again mounted. We were on the side of a deep and well wooded cafion, a vast basin of green without a break, reaching up to the summit nearly four thousand feet. Already I could see over the hills and look down into the San Gabriel Valley, while the back and distant peaks of the Sierras began to unfold and range into line. My guide now took the hounds down the slopes and began to work up the cafion, while I kept along the trail, that was a mere depression in the chaparral. Out of the gulf of green now came the splendid baying of a hound, a bay of inquiry, answered presently by another not far distant, taken up by still another, and far below me I could see the low chaparral waving as they worked along. I gradually moved upward ; now skirting the cation and where occasion offered making a zigzag climb ; now going ahead to break down the lilac brush or to push the greasewood aside for my patient horse, then climbing into the big Mexican saddle to sit, rifle over the pommel, and watch in silence for a deer. Again came the flute-like baying, growing in intensity until there was a continuous volley of sounds which re- Deer-Hunting in Southern Sierras 45 verberated from side to side of the cafion, arousing all its dormant echoes. The hounds had passed me, so I plunged into the chaparral, reaching an open place near the summit as they came up the slope. There they missed the scent and swept down again, and I worked my way upward to a spur near the peak where I seemed to be above the very world. Away to the south was the Pacific like a mass of cloud. I could see the long line of surf, the islands twenty miles out to sea, fifty miles distant, like some huge monsters. Occasionally I heard the baying, and dismounting lay in the bush and looked down into the matchless abyss watching for the game. An hour later I saw it across the caiion, about the size of a large dog, too far away it seemed. But I fired and repeated the shot several times, emptying the magazine, as a flash of dun dashed along the side of the cafion; then my guide appeared on a lower grade, plunging down the side of the mountain, breaking through the chaparral, and later I saw him climbing up the opposite side, from which he brought the deer. It was high noon and the summer sun beat fiercely down, while we ate jerked venison, and waited for the afternoon ; then we changed to another peak, seeing deer but getting none, though on a steep slope I came upon a fine buck that doubtless had been shot and lost some days previous. If there had been no game, there would have been the view. The San Fernando Valley was at my feet with its shimmering sands, its scattering masses of chaparral, and winding through it the white, p { ’) | | u i! [| } h EI 4 i fd | I { U a H ¢ ‘ { § % | i / Bi : { g ‘W er ( TR ¥ Hi | ' RK & 3 "1 iF | | MM 0 x ‘WY il . TH Hl b [ \ . I | 1 ih { » J i h i ‘ py 3 ‘ ; | F W \ | hi | | i EN AN | / i A iy | y A Hl! fi i. | IRIIR hi il ; i i i | | R | { {iH J { IR | . at | { nl Y ! | OA Li a T i tA + HM } ki { ig Ig i) 46 Life in the Open silvery bed of the Los Angeles River, while beyond rose the Sierra Santa Monica range reaching away, literally plunging into the distant Pacific. One must climb to such a height to appreciate the mountains of Southern California and obtain an intimate glance of the land. It is a good principle and safe in such hunting to keep to the trails. Led by exuberant fancy and a desire to see other parts of the mountains I rode down a long limb of the mountain over a coyote trail, in a short time finding myself involved in the chaparral. If I could have gone down on my knees and crawled I might have made some progress, but the breaking through was deadly. I came out into an area that had been burned over, and as my horse pushed aside the branches they sprang back like steel springs. For a time I was seri- ously involved and came out, as General Gordon has ex- pressed it, “worn to a frazzle,” having learned the lesson to keep to the trails and not attempt in summer to ride a horse through the chaparral on the south side of a Southern California mountain that has been burned over. There are mountains back of Santa Barbara and in San Diego and other counties where deer-hunting is not so difficult, where the game is more plentiful and can be followed in the Eastern fashion. Again, in some of the less frequented regions it can be found in the low- lands along the base of the mountains, especially over the line in Lower California ; but some of the finest sport can be had in season on the great slopes of San Jacinto, Deer in the Open. Deer-Hunting in the Southern Sierras 4; San Gorgonio, San Bernardino, and others. At Bear Valley there are long stretches of park-land and forest five or six thousand feet above the sea, where the country is more or less open and level, presenting an inviting prospect to the deer hunter. No Eastern sportsman should go on a deer hunt on the south side of a California range in summer without a competent guide and a thorough understanding of the country and the conditions. I have known men who had hunted deer in the East for years to come to grief not ten miles from Los Angeles. They became involved in the hot, stifling chaparral, and were rescued on the slopes of steep cafions with difficulty. In all the towns which stand on the foothills skilled deer hunters can be found, and if sport is to be had they should be employed. Again, the Sierra Madre are dangerous to inexperienced men. They appear smiling and beautiful in the cafions, but they abound in steep precipices and are often cov. ered with a mass of brush or chaparral that is most diffi- cult to penetrate, wearing and deadly to the man who is lost and confused. The entire range abounds in large safe caflons and trails, but the inexperienced sports- man, the “ tenderfoot ” who attempts to cross the range as he might the Adirondacks, or any Eastern range, by going directly ahead, up and down, will soon come to grief. The moral, then, is to go well equipped, with some one familiar with the mountains, and if this is not possible, keep to the big cafion trails. — > ————————— ———— i — = A WR Co Hi NE rrr rr Chapter IV Water Fowl HE coast of Southern California is, in the main, a long stretch of sand dunes changing every hour and moment in the wind that heaps them up into strange and fascinating shapes. In many in- stances they form breakwaters, damming up the waters that flow down the cafions’ stream-beds from the interior. Thus all the country to the south of the Palos Verde, near San Pedro, and extending to Long Beach, is a shallow back bay, a series of lagunas or canals, often running back into the country to form some little pond or lake. At Alamitos, where the San Gabriel River reaches the sea, and at Balsa Chica, one of the finest preserves and clubs in the country, and other places along shore to San Diego we shall find these lagunas, or sea swamps, the home of the duck, goose, and swan. The season begins in November, and if there has been an early rain the country is green and beautiful. The long summer is a vanishing memory ; the air is clear, and the distant 5X Hr j 1 I ee a EE. TE Fe pose Sie pm CR 52 Life in the Open mountains stand out with marvellous distinctness; the days are shorter, there is a crispness to the air, and the mountains—what tints of blue, what ineffable shades, suggestions, and tones of this splendid colour! The main range is of turquoise, of old India mines; the sec- ond, lapis lazuli; the third is the tone I have seen in labradorite ; then the spur farther still is azure ; but here your blues give out and fail, as have the greens long ago. Suddenly one day there comes from somewhere over your head or high in air wild and vociferous sounds, and leaping out into the open every vagrant fog fleck seems to have given tongue, and a great, white aérial maelstrom is forming before your eyes. Around it whirls, rising upward; now dazzling the eye with glittering silver, as though some prodigal hand had tossed newly minted dollars into the air, then disap- pearing to come again; flashing, scintillating against the blue of the heavens. Up it rises; then a single goose, almost reaching the empyrean, turns, followed by the flock, which lengthens out into a long angle and sails, slides down-hill along the face of the Sierras—a token by which you know that ducks, geese, and cranes are going south and that winter and the shooting season has arrived. No more beautiful sight than this can be seen in Southern California when these vast flocks pass up and down, silhouetted against the chaparral of the mountain slopes. If you live in the mountains this call comes every few hours. Near my camp, on a spur of the Sierras, in Water Fowl 53 October I could hear geese and cranes many times a day; sometimes so near that they were killed by rifle- shots ; again half a mile in air, coming down the aérial toboggan slide of Southern California, their habit being when they reach a point too low for safety to stop and, with vociferous cries, whirl about, climbing the air as described, and then, on reaching a high altitude, soar- ing, not flying, away to the south along the mountains, in this way covering four or five, possibly ten miles, when another break occurs and they climb again. In this way the geese and cranes migrate to Southern California. At this time the oranges are turning to gold; the land that was brown and grey is green; the Heteromeles flashes scarlet on the slopes of the cafion down which you pass, and the lowlands, where the wild rose garlands some little runaway through the hills, are rich in sweet odours. Then, from high in the air, comes the honk, honk, honk of the wild goose, and you are away to some little laguna you know well, far down by the sea. There I found myself one morning before daylight sitting in the barrel blind on the edge of the laguna, with decoys all about, and the air filled with the gutter- als of swamp birds and the cries of myriads of black- birds. The high fog was going out to sea, and away to the north was seen the long line of the Sierras, the tall peaks, as San Antonio, standing out like sentinels, while to the west rose a wall of green weed, its tall spikes re- flected in the water in lines of vivid colour, bending here 54 Life in the Open and there under scores of blackbirds. It may be my imagination, but if there is not organisation of some kind among these birds, the imitation is perfect. I had my decoys well placed, and was out of sight before 2 bird left the weeds where they spent the night, but the first glimpse of the sun started them, and a roar of sounds filled the vibrant air. They thronged the bend- ing reeds and, suddenly silenced, a flock of four or five hundred rose, as though by concert, and flew away; then bedlam broke loose again—png zeee ce ping zeeee, and countless sounds,—followed by silence, when a new army would rise. For an hour I watched these delega- tions leaving, each going in some different direction thus dividing up the great blackbird army ; some flying to one ranch, some to another. This lot perhaps se- lected Balsa Chica, the next the San Joaquin, another the Aliso, and so on until quiet settled down over the laguna, and the coots and rails had the field to me — vo ———__ ee a themselves. If one does not bag his ducks or geese there are the charms of the swamp, the variety of animal life, the strange sounds to listen to—all compensations. But what is this, far to the south where the laguna reaches away to the sand dunes and sea? Several black spots appear, standing out with vivid distinctness. On they come, now resolving into birds—ducks coming in from the sea perhaps, to feed on wild celery, grain, alfileria, and the choice grasses that carpet the soft adobe down to the edge of the water. They are coming directly Mission of San Juan Capistrano on the King’s Highway. Water Fowl 55 in. I can almost hear the hiss of their wings; then they turn and I watch their graceful movement and am wondering what deflected them, when around they whirl ; they see the decoys, turn, and literally drop out of the sky in that splendid curve that I break, and take what fortune and the morning wind has brought; one to the right, dropping it directly into the decoys, while the flock, pounding the air, turns violently. I fire my left directly over my head and see the duck coming down on me. Probably every old duck hunter has had this experi- ence, but it has occurred to me but once. I dodged, and the heavy “sprig” came tumbling down, like a meteorite dropping out of the sky, struck the edge of the barrel, and rolled in at my feet. The flock has swung around, passing over another blind on its way to the sea again, and so is depleted as the white puffs of smoke rise over the green. The sprig is the early bird in Southern California, the first to come; a fine big fellow, robed in black, brown, and white, with scintillations of violet, gold, and green. In the old days, or twenty years ago, before California was invested, I have seen the waters of the lagoons covered with them, while the adjacent lands and mounds would be white with cranes and geese. In those days the lagoons were no man’s land; duck clubs were unknown, and there was good shooting in a little lake south of Raymond Hill, Pasadena, in the foot- hills after a rain, not to speak of the reservoirs. Then a ——— rr mentite vs C—O pc —————— EET ps merge 56 Life in the Open the irrigation ditches were alive with game, and it was a question on some ranches in the San Joaquin how to drive the geese off, so regardless were they of the rights of man. This has all changed : almost every foot of good duck shooting in Los Angeles County, and from Santa Monica to Laguna, is taken by private clubs ; were this not so, every duck and goose on the coast would be killed off by the pot-hunter, the running mate of the man who dynamites trout streams. As it is, the birds are pro- tected, and it is not difficult for gentlemen to obtain access to the shooting privileges of some of the clubs along shore. Sport is not alone the object; the birds are conserved, protected, and fed, and intelligent laws devised for the conduct of the sport. While we are digressing, white spots are coming up the channel of the slough, and you see the king of all ducks—the canvas-back. The first one I ever shot from a blind in the Chesapeake Bay gave me the duck fever ; it was not the bird, but the fact that a flock of canvas-backs and others covering acres, sO it seemed, came swimming around a turn, out into the bay, so that when 1 sprang to my feet that I might not commit murder on the high seas, the air was filled with climb- ing forms. On they come straight for the decoys, and as the white puff drifts away, I see the canvas-back lying among them, while the rest of the flock are whirling away seaward. Water Fowl £7 The sportsman will find nearly all the ducks of the East along shore in Southern California : the mallard gadwall, baldpate, green-winged teal, blue-winged - cinnamon teal, spoonbill, sprig, wood duck, red-head canvas-back, wing widgeon, buffle-head, Amerions scooter, white-winged scooter, surf-scooter, and ruddy duck, some of which, as we might say of crow, are more pleasing to the eye than the stomach. Of geese there are the lesser snow goose, greater snow goose, Aspesican white-fronted goose, Canada goose, Hutch- in’s goose, black brant, and trumpeter swan. Phere is a constant coming in, on this splendid shooting ground. Here is the cinnamon teal with beau- tiful colouring ; its gray wings striking the air like whips its bars of celestial blue, its velvet beak blazing like a jewel,—the humming-bird of the duck tribe. It 1s one of the commonest of Southern California ducks found along shore all summer, spring, and fall, ading farther south in midwinter. In May, its ont and eggs may be found in many of the protected lagoons. How far this fine bird goes to the south is not known but it is seen in Central America in February, and one of the most attractive of its kind. To see it pad- dling in some snug harbour, shut in by tules, its tints blazing in the sunlight, is a picture too beautiful to always interrupt when there is other game to be had. The mallard is a favourite duck of the people, and one of the cleverest. It comes up the little channel, ap- proaches the decoy, then has a presentiment (surely it Ee JE == Se ar —— — = a] BE BE eRe Fe = ye y at Ee 58 Life in the Open sees nothing), and then literally shoots up through the air in a climb into the empyrean. I shall never forget my first experience with this manceuvre. I sat and looked in sheer wonderment, and when my old darkey com- panion, who lived in Hampton, on the creek, asked me why I didn’t fire,—why, I gave it up. In the old days these birds could be seen in large numbers in all the lagoons along shore, becoming rarer and wilder as the country became settled, and towns and fantastic cities rose in a night in the lagunas and swamps that once knew them well. The commonest bag along shore is the green- winged teal. No one can watch its flight, its dash and swiftness, without becoming enamoured with it as a game bird. I have seen a flock whizzing along, have fired and missed, recovering from my surprise only to be thrown into deeper chagrin and confusion as the same flock that had dodged my ammunition came whirling back at me, so near that I threw up my hands, figura- tively, and let them go. I was not out for murder or sudden death without an excuse or justification. The mornings out on the edge of the lagoon are often cool, but soon the fog creeps away, the sun comes out, and all the life of the tule appears. Coots make the acquaintance of your distant decoys. Wilson's snipe come whirring in and alight near you in the mud, and the solitary sandpiper flies down from the pasture lands where it has been feeding to leave its footprints in the soft mud. A Good Day for Canvas-Backs at Balsa Chica. wm AN EO q eT a ns - = a a " Be ——— ~ 5 AR A Or THE NIVERSITY Al F FORNB_~ ¥ \ Water Fowl 59 If you are in good luck, while waiting you may see the least sandpiper, the avocet, and that living colour- scheme the gallinule creeping in and out among the tall reeds. In Florida I have often kept this bird as a pet, it being very amenable to domestication. Few birds have a more beautiful or more expressive eye than this gentle creature. If the sportsman finds some section of the country nota preserve and unfrequented, he will see many old friends of the East. A few years ago I could count scores of herons in the country back of Playa del Rey, splashes of white against the green; and once I hunted a flock of the snowy herons for hours in this lagoon. 1 crept over the dunes, edging my way along, and watched them feeding around a little island in the swamp, with sentinels posted. But the finest bird is the sand-hill crane that may be seen in the Centinela hills, and I have seen it in the Puente hills south of Pasadena. This is the bird that makes the best displays spring and fall along the Sierra Madre. Wandering along the low region that receives the seepage of the hills you may see the spotted sandpiper, the black-bellied plover, and in the wet meadows, where the lush alfalfa stands, hear the flute-like cry of the killdeer with its ventriloquistic quality coming down the wind. The mountain and snowy plover are not strangers; and on the highlands or mesas, a few miles from the sea, the long-billed curlew is not uncommon. I located a large flock of these birds on the mesa a mile back from the 66 Life in the Open sea and north of Santa Monica some years ago, and watched them for weeks. By keeping behind my horse and working him on the flock in a circle, I approached so near that I could see their every move. They were feeding on grasshoppers. While the geese are not so common as in the old times, the grain fields of Centinela and others in ex- posed positions are still raided at night by the lesser snow goose. You may walk along the shore in the afternoon and see the white platoons far out on the water, surrounded by ducks ; and if you have patience, and the moon is bright, may see them coming in to de- vastate your alfalfa patch, or to spend the night in a revelry in your barley fields. Then there is the white- fronted goose. I found a little laguna made by the rains near the Mission hills some years ago, frequented by the Canada goose. The country near by was open and planted to barley, and when the birds had surfeited themselves, they would rise and come wheeling along, dropping down near the blind where I lay concealed. I found at first they paid little attention to my horse, which I left under a tree, and I tried to work up to them mounted, but they saw the trick at once. I reached the lake one winter morning when the fog was thick and heavy. The hills were green as emeralds, and the drenching rains had brought out the alfileria and burr clover with a host of flowers that grew down to the very edge of the little laguna. I rode up to a low hill and looked over from the saddle ; the soft verdure G gan An Hour’s Goose Shooting. ount Jaro Von Schmidt, President of the Balsa Chica Gun Club, and Mr. Irvine at Rancho San Joaquin, Orange Co. i 8 BoB A er ——— — a —— Water Fowl 61 that was ordinarily a floral coat of many colours was white with these fine birds. I crept around to a little cafion or wash, and, giving my clever horse the word, he charged them at a pace that brought me into the very heart of the flock. If the little lake had been blown up the effect could not have been more electrical, as the geese seemed to rise directly into the air with splendid reaches, while others, as though demoralised, swept around me like an aureola as I sat in the saddle finger- ing the trigger and resisting the temptation that every pot-hunter embraces. Then I took my horse some dis- tance off and hid in a brush heap from which I watched others come in graceful alignment—a splendid specta- cle. Suddenly seeing the little silver-faced lagoon, perhaps a thousand feet below them, nestled in the green, they went to pieces literally, and tumbling down out of the heavens, to alight with grace and dignity indescribable. Here, too, is Hutchin’s goose, a clever bird. All these birds present an interesting spectacle in their great migrations along the Sierras, where they are often picked off with the rifle, which, to my mind, not being in the goose business, is one of the really sportsmanlike and legitimate methods for its taking off. Game itself is but one feature of this sport ; the perfect days, the grand vistas of mountains and mesa, the hills, the sand dunes, and the roar of the distant sea as it piles on the sand beyond the lagoon, all tend to add to the charm of life along the winding lagoons of Southern California. Chapter V Fox-Hunting in California HEN the scarlet berries of the Heteromeles begin to fill and glisten in the sun, when the long-pointed aromatic leaves of the eucalyptus hang listless in the drowsy air, you may know pT TR si YR AR ty 2X RPA BR pn - I < that summer in Southern California is on the wane. Up -~r WE IYER SITY J to August, in the valleys the days have been clear and 4 wa warm ; in the afternoon a constant breeze blowing from the sea; the nights refreshing and cool. There has been no summer humidity, no enervating days that hold on the Eastern coast. Nearly all June and July a night fog has bathed the verdure and left glistening drops in the morning sun, and imparted to the air a resonance and tang that is delightful. The greens of winter have melted into brown ; the i h i i § i f \ { i it IL PR J 4 i th HI iE 1g k if 318 \! qf 1h 4 | i ol i bi \ yf uk hp 14 1) i Ih i ) i Uglke Ele 3 tt «| 4} 1 Hl ) f (it bh i i i t Ii? 11s of { If { Y Li 3 | | 1 it { il i 5 i vie i y 1 po ai | HY \ i i lower hills are rich in tones of russet and umber, or where the barley has grown a golden gray. The fox- tail grass that has rippled in the sun in rivers of green has turned to red or blue in its evolution to gleaming gold. Down the valleys great patches of vivid green 5 6s a" 66 Life in the Open are seen, the vineyards staggering under their burdens of grape, the orange groves, filled with half-grown fruit, have taken on a deeper tint, and the blaze of poppies of the highlands has been swept away. The chorizanthe, with its tender lavender hues, and numbers of summer flowers appear in wash and meadow. The sides of the little cafions pale in the blooming of wild buckwheat, and the bloom of the white sage welcomes the bees and countless insects along the range. On the sides of the arroyos the deep orange trumpet of the mimulus makes a flash of colour, and here and there a green sumach is overgrown by the deep red panicles of the wild honeysuckle. In the cafions clumps of wild roses have taken on a new and tender green, and the single petalled flowers that in spring filled the air with sweetness have gone. Climbing up to and over the cottonwoods, willows, and sycamores the wild grape has formed a dense maze that reaches from tree to tree, the highway of the wood-rat, whose ponderous nest of leaves and brush encompasses the trunks of live oaks on the ground. The summer wind has died down, the days are warm, the nights cool. Smoke rises high in air, vagrant dust spouts hang undecided in the valleys, and menacing, white domelike clouds rise thousands of feet above the wall of the Sierras, telling of the desert. The face of the land changes as the days drag along; the hills become grayer, the fiery yellow of the dodder melts into brown, and the spiked seed-pods of chilocothe hang on Fox-Hunting in California 67 the cactus, half covering the brilliant, pinkish yellow flowers, and in the washes down by Sunny Slope, and in the open, yellow gourds lie ripening in the sun. It is late in September; a yellow diaphanous haze fills the drowsy air, and the colours of cafion and mountain are intensified. The front range is a light, hazy blue. Over the divide the second range takes on a deeper tone, while the tip of some back and distant peak is purple; the entire range a maze of delicate tints, as though a great tourmalin lay glistening in the sun. The cork oaks and pines pipe fairy music in the drowsy air and the cafion streams run low, here and there dry or just moist enough to show the track of some dainty footprint,—quail, wood-rat, or snail. It is at this time, the period of dolce far niente in Southern California, that the thoughts of hunters turn to game. There has been no rain since May, per- chance, but suddenly at night comes a gentle fall. The great, white cloud mountains from the desert have been blown over into the valleys of delight, and the first rain has fallen. It is out of season, not normal, and has no significance. Hardly a seed responds, and it is just sufficient to lay the dust, to soften the sand in the arroyos and cafions, just enough to hold the scent of the little gray and red fox as he steals along the washes in search of quail or rabbit. This explains your presence in the arroyo early in the morning, while the sun is climbing over the 68 Life in the Open distant mountains, sending shafts of fiery red into the deep blue and purple cafions. The washes of the cafion are almost dry; only stepping-stones of rock tell the story of a winter stream ; but that the water is flowing along beneath the surface, the cottonwoods, willows, great brakes, and tall grasses suggest. The hounds, followed by the hunt, have wound down a little trail into the gulch, where they spread out and cover the stream and its branches. O-0-0-0/ rises the deep silvery sound floating through the trees; O-0-0-0! then faster, and the hounds stop a moment before several plastic impressions in the sands, and break into a volley of resonant bays Oox, Oo, O-0-0—that are carried far into the brush; now along the sandy reaches, up over mimic sand dunes, down into small pools where windrows of shining mica lie like gold, up the bare side of the cafion, into great masses of brakes and ferns, startling a bevy of quail, old and young, that rush away with loud wher, whey, whir of wings. Louder the deep tones rise, culminating in the ecstasy of melo- dious sounds, and the horses are rushed through the underbrush to find the pack leaping about an old oak up whose sides trail a mass of green—the wild grape of the arroyo, The dogs are looking upward; some at the foot of the tree, vainly trying to leap into it, others farther off eying the branches with eagerness, occa- sionally letting out a long, plaintive note that is borne far away through the drowsy air. I had followed the fox in Southern California before, Fox-Hunting in California 69 so kept my eye on the wild grape where it fell over and covered the limb of a sycamore. As I looked, out from among the long broad leaves I saw a small, black-gray face, a pointed muzzle, and big ears. It was Reynard, and in defiance of any Eastern or English code of fox ethics, he was in the tree-top very much at home, embowered with the grape, and under a canopy of light-green mistletoe. The dogs had not discovered him ; they were still playing on the accuracy of their scent. Then some one lifted an old hound into the tree and the dog began to pick his way upward. Any one who has never seen a tree-climbing hound will hardly believe how high a clever and eager dog will go in a slanting oak or sycamore. This hound felt his way up and literally bayed the fox from its arboreal cover. Out it sprang, in full sight of the hounds that went baying mad; it ran along the grape highway, as nimbly as a wood-rat, leaped into the sycamore, out upon a long branch to plunge down the vines, and as quick as a beam of light, dropped into the chaparral and disappeared with the hounds in full cry. It was my good luck to fall into line directly behind the hounds and I saw the fox take an oak. It did not spring, but deliberately shinned up the small trunk, reaching a limb upon which it swung, then leaped into the thick branches and ran from tree to tree with a speed with which I could not keep up, owing to the thickness of the trees, reached the opposite side of the arroyo, and from a small sycamore sprang into the 20 Life in the Open underbrush. Directed by me the hounds soon took the trail and followed the fox for half a mile along the edge of the bluff ; now under scrub oaks, out by great clumps of Heteromeles, whose berries were swelling in the sun, then passing down a little side cafion it made for the main branch, and went up and over the ridge, to be fol- lowed by the baying of the hounds. The hunt was forced to go around, and after a long ride through the chaparral came upon the pack. They had run the fox up into the thick branches of a “holly,” where, not five feet out of reach, this diminutive Rey- nard sat snarling and growling at them, to make a brave jump and carry the hunt a hundred yards, where on the edge of the cliff it was caught, carrying one of the dogs over into the green abyss, rolling down, fol- lowed by the baying, yelping pack and the hunters, who, dismounting, slid down into the green to secure the brush, which was presented to the lady of the hunt whose plucky riding had commended itself. The game was hardly half as large as the ordinary fox of the East, and known as the coast fox; found all along the Californian shores and on all the islands; ranging from Costa Rica to the north-west, varying in appearance in seasons and in localities. The tail is about the length of the body in the average animal. I have seen a specimen in the mountains of Santa Catalina where it was a splendid ornament. The tail has a black stripe above, and the fur of the body is dark, even almost black above and reddish below, with variations Winter, Life in the Open near Pasadena. » 4 i i AATHATTE / - « THE or UNIVERSITY ~ Fox-Hunting in California 71 :1 colour. The sides of the muzzle and the chin are black, which gives the fox the appearance of a raccoon and withal a very pleasant face. It has a large head, quite as large in some instances as that of the gray fox, but in habit the California fox is entirely different. The gray and the red fox are runners, while Reynard of Cali- fornia rarely makes a very long run, and always takes to trees when hard pressed, leaping into them when it can, “shinning” up when it cannot. I have watched these foxes at night by the light of the moon, when they thought they were chased by a coyote. They went up the straight trunk of an orange tree by this process, “hitching along,” embracing the tree like a cat, and once on a limb reaching the others and the top of the tree in a marvellously short space of time. I once kept two foxes as pets. A pazsano brought them to me and said that they were tame, but I learned later that one bit him eight or ten times on the way down from the mountain. I fastened them to a tree as I would dogs, and invariably found them in the tree-top in the morning. In the arroyo the fox lives in the thick masses of vine during the day, makes his den in some hole in a cliff, coming out mainly at night, though I have often met them in the daytime in the chaparral that covers the lower hills. Any cafion that comes down from the Sierras is the home of this little red and gray fox. You may find him at Santa Barbara, in the beautiful glens and defiles of the Santa Ynez, or along and around Bear Mountain, back of Santa Paula. He 72 Life in the Open looks down upon the mountains from the Strawberry Valley, around Idlewild, and the great slopes of San Antonio and the clefts of Mount Wilson are his home ; or you may find him in the Santiago mountains, where he forms the game par excellence for the Santiago Hunt Club, and doubtless helps himself to the chickens of the master of the hounds when the pack is away on a hunt: indeed you may find this little fox on San Nicolas Island, and on San Clemente, where he is smaller than ever. Everywhere he preys upon quail, or small birds, varying this diet with tuna, wild grape, or chilocothe. Fox-Hunting in California 73 great abandon. I remember well a “fox hunt” on the mesa in my early days in California. A fox having been located in a little woodland on a wide mesa that afforded a splendid running country, a hunt was organ- :sed and in due time the fox started. 1 was the Master of Fox-Hounds that day, as well as the President of the Club, and the hunt was looking to me to carry out the plan of an old-fashioned Virginia fox hunt. The hounds took the trail, and the fox responded. He dashed across the mesa, stood a second surveying the land- scape, then selecting the only tree in sight—an oak—he HRT a —————— on , hn ha’ Te EE re rl TRE SRL Ta AA WE — - a -_ a - gad ren m - . ’ i gr vo RA RIN 5 a -— ran for it, and the hunt and pack in full cry followed— for perhaps three hundred yards, then Reynard reached They are particularly common at Santa Catalina. er On the summit of this island is a range of mountains, eT a > - Ear named for Cabrillo, the discoverer of the island, which have several isolated peaks, twenty-two hundred feet in height, surrounded by a maze of cafions. In between these, running directly across the island, is a long and well-wooded cafion, in its lower range called Middle Ranch, the Cabrillo range forming the south wall of green. In camp here one is never away from the me- lodious note of the quail, while the foxes make a runway down every cafion and along the tops of the range where great reaches of low chaparral sweep away to the sea. At San Clemente they stole from my camp and came around every night. Fox-hunting is indulged in all over California, but it is a failure in the open. The fox will make a long run in the chaparral, but in the open country he will run for the trees in sight and leap up their sides with the tree, gaily bounded into it, and was placidly sitting out of the dogs’ reach washing his face when the hunt rounded up. It is best to draw a veil around so harrow- ing a scene, but I believe 1 carried that fox home, brush and all, under my arm. In the cafions the fox is another creature, or in park-like regions, as the splendid reach at Santa Anita rancho, or Santiago or Monticeto cafions. Here the hounds often have a long run and are often baffled. The Santiago Hunt Club averages about fifteen foxes a season, often taking them in September and October, the driest time of the year. The dogs of this club are doubtless the best foxhounds now in Southern Cali- fornia. Mr. J. E. Pleasants, the Master of Hounds, and Mr. C. E. Parker of Santa Ana have taken great interest in perfecting Californian foxhounds from stock from the v4 Life in the Open Southern States. An average run of this club after a fox, is given as three hours, the fox being generally treed four times in this time, and often killed in the open after a run of perhaps three hundred yards. While fox-hunting may be had in summer and as the latter wanes in October, it is better in the winter when the land is green and the herbage in secluded places damp, holding the scent. Then the country is ablaze with colour. The mesa, cafion, arroyo, and mountain slope each has its special floral offering to delight the hunter, and life in the open can be had in all the term implies. Immediately after the first rain is doubtless the most favourable season. The land is still warm and dry. Perhaps in mid October, there is no suspicion of a change, and a thick golden haze hangs in the valleys, so that one seems to see the mountains through opalescent lace. The nights are a little cooler, the wind has about died away, and for days flocks of geese and cranes have been seen flying south along the Sierra Madre. Fox Hunting Country near Orange, Santiago Mountains. You are familiar with the fog that comes in from the sea against the wind at night in an altogether incompre- hensible fashion, going out against the sea breeze in the morning, the tonic of Southern California, the balance wheel, the only fog in the world possibly that is purely harmless, crepuscular, nocturnal, and other things. But one day this fog, in a long, feathery, fan-shaped finger, is seen creeping along the slope of the Sierras in the morning. From my home in the San Gabriel at Pasadena, it appears to come up the Santa Ana River roi rm 5 SR i A er Se SS ip Be — ” ” ” ——— or . he E> Rom AEs —— » BR ate SE ST A il 05 Fox-Hunting in California 7s from the sea, while another comes stealing along the Sierra Santa Monica range, and they meet at the main range. If this is a real rain, not a false alarm, it spreads out and encompasses the whole land from the mountains to the sea, and after much coming and going, halting and coming again, the rain falls softly at night. I have known enthusiasts to go out and stand in it, when it has not rained for eight months. It rains gently all night, and in the morning the clouds slink away and leave another land. The golden haze that has filled the valley is gone, there is a new tone, a new world ; the dust has been washed out of the atmosphere, the trees are green and bright, the Heteromeles hold up their ripening berries, and wild lilac, ironwood, manzanita, and a score of trees and bushes take on rich green tints under this night's washing. The orange and eucalyptus groves are freshened up and all the earth, covered with its brown and seared mass of winter vegetation and seeds, takes on a darker brown. Then is the time to take out the hounds; the damp sand of the cafions is covered with grey leaf mould that photographs the im- print of fox or bird, and retains the slightest odour, and the hounds at once pick up the scent and follow it over and through the devious paths and trails of the deep cafions. The fox is a very minor part of fox-hunting in Southern California. I have spent many God-given days in the cafions of the range, from Santa Barbara 26 Life in the Open to San Luis Rey, where the fox was but an excuse, a leader to bring one in touch with new beauties, new scenes. I spent an entire winter in the Sierra Madre between two of its most attractive cafions, and very frequently went hunting with a grey- or foxhound. What game we found and ran to earth in these splendid glades! We found banks of wild tiger lilies, cliffs with backgrounds of bluebells ; there were brakes as tall as a man, fragrant bays, and down the valley, on the slopes by San Jacinto, the Matilija poppy with great white petals and golden centre. We hunted the fox in the splendid Santa Margarita Rancho that overlooks Elsi- nore, and wandered among the mountains that rise back of the fine old Missions of San Juan Capistrano and San Luis Rey. We hunted in the Coast Range, down the cafion of Laguna with its many caves, and along shore, where the rocks reach out into the sea. All over Southern California the little fox is found, and I commend it to the sole and tender mercies of your camera at times when the hen-roosts are not robbed. If it is a good fox-hunting winter, this first rain holds for several days and gives the thirsty earth an inch or two of rain: then watch the staging of nature's trans- formation scene. The change is so sudden, comes on so quickly that almost the following week you may see the alfileria rippling away over lowland and mesa; the rains have washed the seeds of the clovers in wind- rows, and the first green along the roads and trails comes in circles, and arcs, then fills the interstices, and Fox-Hunting in California wy a robe of verdure reaches away over the hills that daily take on richer and darker tones. From now on there is a procession of plant-life from the far north to Pa- lomar, and from Pala to the sea. TR a | A v ! 1 | i) CSI | i] iN IF ® 15 | i | }y N \ + Mh "A { Ii ] A) A \ & | AE §] | ! a 1 8 | ik La : \ i} i il ] | \ ) Mo { me 4 8 i} 3 4 Bi Hi Sh 1 1 ' | iY ‘ER in {8 qn ] FBR i 8 0 i 4 9B 1 & He i A ‘AH ] ] 1 | : ti | 1 hg { { 5 i y 4 > i £11 Ww fh 1 H 1] = = Pe a, a ATT ES TNR Chapter VI A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre N February or March the disciple of Walton, in Southern California, begins to look over his flies and appropriate the big worms which come to the surface at this time in the gardens and ranches, as though to challenge fate. The land is still in the grasp of winter; the high peaks of the Sierra Madre, San Jacinto, and San Ber- nardino are white with snow; and over the orange trees in my garden, where the birds fill the air with melody, I see a white, fluffy, zephyr-like cloud hovering like a bird on San Antonio; yet not a cloud, but snow rolling up the north slope, to be whirled and tossed into the air, a titanic wraith, that falls and is dissipated by the soft airs that float upward from the valleys that reach away to the distant sea. There has been a snow-storm in the San Gabriel. The walks in the garden are white, and the strong west wind plays over it, robbing the violets of perfume. But the snowflakes are the petals of orange blossoms, that 8r 32 Life in the Open fll the air with fragrance, and star the green trees of the groves with silver frosting. The country in the open is running riot with flow- ers. It has been a rainy winter and the fall came early. Twenty inches have fallen, and, as though touched with a magic wand, the gray sombre beauties of the land have melted imperceptibly into green. You may almost see it spread and kindle into flame, so subtle, so rapid, is the response of nature to the call of winter or spring. Over all the land is spread a carpet of alfileria, soft as velvet, and radiant in changes of shade and tint, as the days slip away. On this carpet flowers are budding and blooming, and as the trout are pushing up-stream against the floods that are coming down, the land be- comes a garden of many colours. The upland slopes, the great mesa in the San Gabriel and beyond, are a blaze of golden yellow. The copa de oro has opened, and the land is a field of the cloth of gold, the cups of gold covering barren slopes, drawing a mantle over ragged wastes and washes, as though all the mines of Southern California were flowing liquid gold that ran over the length and breadth of the land. There is a procession of flowers as the weeks pass : bells of cream among the barley or by the roadside, bells of blue along the trails, violets of gold and brown 1 the fields or on the hillsides, radiant crucifers in yel- low and white, shooting-stars, mariposa lilies, and a host of others. While it is still winter in the East, South- ern California is a wild-flower garden. A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre 3; As the days pass, the floral display seems to attain its maximum effort, and then there comes a change; Spring is pouring her glories into the lap of Winter. The rippling fields of oats and barley take on a lighter green; the south face of the range, especially the spurs of the lower mountains, begins to turn and as- sume umber and grey tints; new and strange flowers appear ; the alfileria seeds are boring into the soil ; the wild-oat awns are twisting and untwisting, day and night, and the clovers lie brown on the surface. Tall green forms are now seen on the hills, forests of green against the slopes ; suddenly they turn to a golden hue, and over the hills the golden glow of the mustard races, bends with the wind in varying shades, until in places the entire range of hills have become mountains of gold through which one can ride, the blossoms meeting over the horse’s head. On the mountain slopes the green Heteromeles are spangled with white blossoms, and the sage-covered mesa waves in masses of gray and green spires. Along the foothills a little wash is covered with wild roses that are now in bloom, filling the air with fragrance. The Arroyo Seco, the San Gabriel, the Santa Ana, and the Los Angeles rivers have in the centre of the gravelly waste a silvery stream of water ; and so by many tokens the angler in Southern California knows that winter has waned, and April, the month of anglers, when the rod may be plied, has come. If the winter has been very rainy, if thirty or forty inches has fallen, about the annual fall 84 Life in the Open of New York, the cafion streams will be running full, and the angler will have to wait for the falling of the waters, but if the fall has been normal (eighteen or twenty inches), good sport may be had in all the streams from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. Southern California in summer has to some a forbid- ding appearance. The flowers have gone, the sunlit hills are dry, and the greens have become browns and grays of many tints, yet all attractive and appealing to the lover of colour. The great vineyards are green, the groves of lowland oaks, as at Arcadia, Pasadena, and La Manda, in the San Gabriel Valley, the Ojai, and similiar localities, are ever green, but the open, tilted mesas, except where covered with chaparral, are brown and gray ; and the streams, patches of white sand and polished gravel, lie blazing in the sun, certainly not sug- gestive of trout, rod, or reel. But these California rivers are flowing, seeping on beneath the ground, and by tracing them to the founts from which they come—the cations of the Sierra Madre, the Santa Ynez, and other ranges—the angler finds himself in another world, the home of the rainbow trout. The Sierra Madre face the sea in Southern Califor- nia. At Santa Barbara a range—the Santa Yanez— almost reaches it. The Sierra Santa Monica range leaps into the ocean, and to pass the beach the angler enters through a natural arch of conglomerate. From here the main range retreats, forms the background of the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, the valley The Stairs of the Mission of San Gabriel Arcangel near Pasadena on the King’s Highway. z FABRA R 3 oF THE JIVERSITY : “CALIFGS ——— — A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre 8s of Redlands, and so on, while a coast range, with Mount Santiago as its Titan, skirts the coast within a few miles of it far to the south. Indeed, Southern California is a maze of mountains and its towns and villages are all on mountain slopes, or in little valleys, shut in by vagrant ranges or mountain spurs that seem to crop up and to extend in every direction. The main range stands out clear and dis- tinct, a wall of rock, often seemingly bare and barren, facing the sea. It is cut and worn by the wear of centuries, and while the first impression may be disap- pointing, the possibilities of this barrier of stone, in colour making, in grand and beautiful effects of light and shade, are soon appreciated. The mountains seem to be a mass of pyramids, and are cut by innumerable cafions that wind down from the summits, each having countless branches. At irregular intervals, the cafions open into the valleys and sweep on, like the Arroyo Seco, almost to Los Angeles, ten miles distant ; cutting a deep and well-wooded gulch, which tells of the force of the winter floods that, beginning far back in the range, come rushing down augmented by thousands of smaller streams, and go whirling on to the distant sea. These cafions are the gateways to the Sierra Madre, and once within their rocky portals, all thoughts of bar- ren mountains are dissipated, as they are natural parks, filled with green bowers, sylvan glades, banks of fern, the music of the rushing brooks, and the gentle rust- ling of countless leaves; while the air is rich in the 86 Life in the Open woodland aromas—of bay and many more. The cafions are found all along the range, and nearly all have a per- petual stream like the Arroyo Seco, the San Gabriel, Santa Ana, and Santa Ynez, the cafions and streams :1 San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara, and they are stocked and protected by game-laws of the State. In the vicinity of Los Angeles the San Gabriel Cafion affords the best fishing, being a large cafion that reaches far back into the range, to appreciate which one must stand on Wilson's Peak, six thousand feet above the sea, and look down into this great gorge worn out by the water. This cafion and its forks abound in trout pools, in picturesque rocks, precipitous walls, and splendid vistas of mountains rising one above the other, peak above peak, range above range. Here the Creel and Bait clubs make their headquarters; and there are several public camps which afford accommoda- tions for the weary angler. The cafion trail crosses and recrosses the stream of clear water: now plunging into mimic forests of oak; coming out into the open to enter little glades; some- times the cafion opens out widely, again it narrows and forms great rifts in the rock. In the open places there are little mesas, often dotted with oak trees—ideal places for camps. A succession of these beautiful cafions is found along the entire face of the Sierra Madre. On the first of April every trout stream from Santa Barbara to San Jacinto and beyond has its anglers. Some idea of the A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre 8; beauties of these resorts can be had by a four-mile ride from Pasadena, at the head of the San Gabriel Valley. The town lies on the bank of the Arroyo Seco, which abounded in trout for almost its entire length some years ago, but they have been forced to the upper ranges. A fairly good trail extends up the cafion twelve or fifteen miles, taking one into the very heart of this part of the Sierra Madre. Near by is Millard Cafion, a beautiful gorge with a notable fall splashing over beds of ferns, the cafion then winding its way upward six thousand feet above the sea. The San Gabriel Cafion, the head waters of the river of that name, always has fishing unless the water is too high; but the smaller cafions fail sometimes for opposite reasons, the supply of rain often being too low for a period of years, killing off the fish. But in fishing all is not fish, and some of the most enjoyable days I have had in Southern California have been in the hey- day of the Arroyo Seco, when its pools were full, and its stream musical, laughing waters. Countless times the trail crosses the stream, and I have stopped at the crossing, and, while my horse cooled his hoofs, cast down the stream from the saddle and hooked a fish in the riffle. A delight-giver indeed was this stream. It began far away in the upper range and drained many square miles of surface; cool, pure as crystal. I often stood on its edge, or on some rock, and watched it go whirling by ; now loud and melodious, as it ran over some rocky 38 Life in the Open reach, then gliding smoothly over a moss-covered incline to rush out into the open and form a little lake where the willow leaves made an arcade of green tracery over its surface, and their red roots blazed in the shallows. Here great banks of ferns and brakes grow beneath the bays, and just above, you cast and unreel and let the capricious stream take you down the stream. It seems an impossible place, with its polished rocks, projecting ledges, the big tangles of brush, but down goes the fly to the melody of running waters. It shoots along, enters a little arcade of brakes, and then, ah! how the line straightens out; a new and unknown music, the click of the reel, breaks in upon the rush of waters and the rustle of leaves; how the slender rod bends and doubles as the gamy trout of the Sierra Madre makes its rush down-stream, dashing by polished, slippery stones, around the smooth edge of boulders, through the rift where the sun blazes brightly, and caressing the water with its sparkle, out and along the edge, to stop, double around a stone, and come up- stream with a flying rush. This is a trout stream indeed. There is not a ragged stone in sight ; the waters have worn and polished every one, so that even the tree-toads that mimic them have difficult work to hold on. This saved the day, as the line slipped deftly over their sides and came taut just as the gamy fish made another splendid rush clear away, with the reel in full cry, zee, zee, seeee, echoing musically among the willows and alders. Nowhere was the water over a foot in depth. Dr. Page casting in the Upper Big Pool, Deep Creek, San Bernardino Range. A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre 39 There were no deep pools, yet this radiant creature played his game with a skill that was marvellous. In he came on the reel, bending the split bamboo to the dan- ger point, then breaking away in the riffle, bounding on slack line into the air a foot or more, shaking himself like a black bass, landing almost in the shallows to shoot into midstream in so gallant a rush that I was forced ahead, and led down through the green where he plunged into a little cascade, made a quick turn, and dashed into a wide but shallow pool, taking his place beneath a huge combing rock to defy me, forcing me down so that I had to cross the reach and play him from a little gravel beach in the eddy. As 1 routed him out he went into the air, and for a second I saw him in a rift of the sun—a radiant, beautiful creature, too beauti- ful to catch. Time and again he manceuvred to go up or down, but by more luck than skill I kept him there, played him to a finish in what was doubtless his home, and brought him, fighting, to the net, the living rainbow of the Sierra Madre. I have landed brook and lake trout and some of the gamiest fishes of the sea, but inch for inch this trout of the Coast Range, this Salmo iridius, is the peer of them all. Perhaps it was my fancy, possibly I was carried away by the beauty of the place, the charm of the situa- tion, but I forgot certain black bass, certain brook trout, and a wild, miniature gorge I knew in New England, and mentally awarded the rainbow the palm. The fish which I took from the net weighed nearly 90 Life in the Open two pounds and was an ideal trout—a splendid fellow, that, dying, eyed me with disdain. He was well propor- tioned, and comparing him to the brook trout I saw that he had larger eyes, a small mouth, the head more salmon like. His colour on the back was an iridescent green; the sides lighter, tending to white, and dotted, stamped with small, black, velvet-like spots, while from gills to tail was a band of reddish blotches, a combination that blazed like a rainbow when the trout leaped in the sunlight. I kept on up the cafion, following the trail, then taking the stream and fishing down, in short sections, with varying success and always a splendid play from the animate rainbow. In these wilds of the Sierra Madre, at least half the charm is the environment. I walked or rode, led on and on by the constant change, then turned and followed the stream in its race to the sea, to again turn back. As I worked into the range the cafion deep- ened and large pools and deep gorges appeared. Once I crept up to one twenty feet across ; and on its rim grew masses of brakes, olive-green plumes that caught the slightest breeze. Opposite were groups of wild lilac, ‘ts delicate lavender flowers showering into the pool, while long, pointed bay-leaves, like mimic ships, and acorns nearly two inches long, that had rolled down the cafion side, floated about. On one side clumps of columbine made a blaze of colour; and on the other a vivid green carpet of moss marked the passage of the stream from the pool above; the water coming gently down like a sheet of quicksilver. A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre or Into this mirror of delights I cast, dropping a fly di- rectly at the foot of a white rock, with no response. Again 1 tried, then, failing to secure a rise, I climbed above and crept through the verdure, pushing aside big bunches of fern, to the edge and looked in. The water was a splendid emerald green, and at the bottom I made out several trout gently fanning the current. The next fly bore a worm, but not a fish moved. I tried all the flies I had, and finally in desperation caught a tree-toad from the rocks and cast. This was the lure of lures. A great trout came partly out of water, like a flash of light, and then some- thing went bounding into the air, shooting over the edge of the basin down the stream to the next pool. It is always the largest fish that escapes, and I have been told trout have been taken in this stream that weighed fourteen pounds. I think I saw one, for a fleeting moment, against the green brakes ; but it is needless to harass the memory. If one had the space and inclination to chronicle the various tales of the rainbow trout, its leaps and plays, a small volume could be made on this fascinating theme alone. A friend told me that in casting with three flies two fishes saw them coming, met them a foot or two in the air and were caught after a splendid play. Late in the afternoon I came to a deep pool of the arroyo abounding in trout of small size, and might have filled my creel, but I climbed the cafion side, made the —— 92 Life in the Open trail, and later crossed the stream and rode into camp, twelve miles from the valley, four thousand feet up, and in the heart of the Sierra Madre, with range after range between me and the sea. The camp was a log-cabin of an old mountain friend, and that night I sat by the fire and looked up the chimney and counted the stars, listened to the cry of strange birds and the weird laugh of the coyote, and breathed the rich odors of forest trees, noctes ambrosiane. Since then this attractive cafion has been swept by fire, and has lost much of its beauty ; but new trees are growing, and Nature will soon renew its delights and fascinations. The San Gabriel Cafion with its splendid reaches is the home of the rainbow trout, and some fine catches have been made here by lucky anglers. The San Gabriel River is available from several points. The angler will find the Mount Wilson Trail at Eaton Caiion, Pasadena, a delightful diversion. It carries one from Pasadena eleven miles up the slope of the Sierra Madre, nearly six thousand feet above the sea; affording innumerable views which well repay the trip, aside from the objective. The summit of Mount Wilson is an attractive park, the site of the astrophysical observatory under Dr. George E. Hale. Near here are two camps or hotels where the angler will find congenial entertainment, and the latest fish stories. The trail down the north slope is about four miles in length, and can be made by burro or horse, or on foot, and the angler will find one of the most tremendous * drops” in the Sierras, literally Winter in the Sierra Madre near San Diego. A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre ¢3 about a thousand feet to the mile. This leads to the wild and picturesque West Fork of the San Gabriel Cafion, and whether a burro with a pack can penetrate it depends upon the individuality of the burro and the effect the elements have had upon the stream during the past winter. The camp authorities will doubtless post themselves in the future as to the condition of this trail and the West Fork ; the angler can be advised in Pasadena by telephone, and if the trail down the West Fork is not available, he can have his outfit shipped to Follow’s Camp from Azusa, and make the descent of Mount Wilson in light marching order, with blankets and rations for two days. A better plan is to take a guide who will pack the light kit and leave the angler FATT full play with the rod along this fine stream, with its 7 UNIVERSITY ] thirty miles of fishing, which will bring him in two days OF ’ . CALIFORN. BA to Rincon, where the stage can be taken for Azusa. It is assumed that the angler of Southern California is a lover of mountain climbing, and this route is a con- stant delight to such an enthusiast. The view from near the pagoda-like observatory into the San Gabriel abyss :s a revelation in itselfi—a deep gulf or rift worn out by the rush of waters. It invites the angler in a thousand tongues to descend and explore, and tosses back his voice in a marvellous series of echoes. Around Santa Barbara and San Buenaventura in the Santa Ynez Mountains some charming trout streams may be found, which are now systematically stocked and protected. The Sespe, fed by cool springs and the 94 Life in the Open drainage of a large area of mountains, is one of the most attractive streams in Southern California for the early trout fishing. From Los Angeles it is reached by taking the train to Fillmore, about fifty miles distant, from which the angler goes about five miles by team to Devil's Gate, reaching Pine and Coldwater creeks and the West Fork. If the angler desires to intercept the Sespe between its rise and the sea, he can go up the Ojai Valley from Ventura. Along this road, a fine trout stream flows, a constant delight to the stroller. From Nordhoff, the little town in the Ojai Valley— one of the most fascinating bits of country in Southern California, with its big trees, its velvetlike carpet, its multitude of birds, and lofty hills all about,—the angler can ride on horseback twenty miles over the mountains, coming out at the Sespe near Sulphur Springs. Near here is the romantic Matilija Cafion; and at Santa Paula the picturesque creek of that name and the Sisar flow through a wild and attractive country, affording ideal conditions for the angler. Santa Paula Cafion is one of the most interesting in this part of the Sierras, and the accommodations at Sulphur Mountain Springs are excellent. The summit of Sulphur Mountain, easily reached from here, is the centre of a fine hunting country ; deer, dove, quail, and trout being the special attractions to the stroller through the range. The Los Angeles River as it passes through the City of the Angels is a river by courtesy at times, but after a rain in the mountains, it often runs banks full. A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre os Tracing it up, it winds through San Fernando Valley and merges into the Tejunga, its main source of supply, which with the Santa Clara River in the upper Soledad Cafion often provides the angler with fair sport. Many of these streams that sink into the sand in places, as the Los Angeles River in the San Fernando Valley, and the Arroyo Seco, and seep along beneath the surface for miles, to appear again, are sources of constant wonder to the angler who knows only Eastern brooks that always hold their own in the open, and flow through fields of nodding flowers ; but the California streams reach the sea at times in winter, though during the summer and fishing season they are often land- locked by sandy wastes. The rainbow trout is indigenous to the California Coast Range cafion streams, and ranges from the Klam- ath down to about the Missions of San Juan Capistrano or San Luis Rey, and varies much in colour in different localities. I have seen one from the Arroyo Seco upper pool that was a light olive-green, covered regularly from head to tail with small round black spots. Another trout taken in the San Gabriel was blue and had splashes of red upon the sides : the belly of pearl, with faint spots. The large fish in the streams of Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, and San Diego now range from one to two and three pounds when sea run ; but Sage gives the maximum weight of Williamson River trout as thirteen pounds, and Mr. W. H. Glass 96 Life in the Open tells me that his largest rainbow, taken in Bear Valley Lake, weighed ten and one half pounds, while another weighed twelve and one half pounds. The fame of the rainbow trout has travelled wher- ever rods are known, and the fish has been distributed far and wide, even introduced into England ; and almost everywhere, it is said, retains its wonted vigour and game qualities. The open season in California is from April first to November first, and in San Bernardino County from May fifteenth to November first. A feature of fishing in Southern California is the ease with which the mountains are reached. Los Angeles is but thirteen miles from the mouth of the Arroyo Seco, Millard, and other attractive cafions ; the Ojai Valley, Santa Paula, or Santa Barbara streams are but a few hours distant, while the San Gabriel River can be reached from the city by train to Azusa in less than an hour, where a stage takes the angler into the mountains to any of the camps along these typical Southern California streams. The camps are at an altitude of several thousand feet, where hot weather is practically unknown ; indeed, one of the surprises to the angler in this country is the summer climate: warm days come in trios and pass, but sunstroke and heat of the character that is experienced in Chicago, New York, and other Eastern cities is unknown. The available waters of Southern California lakes and streams are stocked yearly by the State Board of Fish Commissioners with rainbow, Eastern brook trout, A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre of and cut-throat trout. Black bass have also been placed in lakes and reservoirs in Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Barbara counties. Too much credit cannot be given the Board of State Commissioners, as were it not for their constant efforts trout fishing would have been a thing of the past long ago in Southern Cali- fornia. Every year, every available stream is supplied. San Bernardino receives one hundred thousand fry per annum. The Bear Valley reservoir is constantly re- stocked, as are all the tributaries of the Santa Ana River and the San Gabriel, and those in the counties of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Diego. The Rio Colorado has been stocked with black bass at the Needles, and the sun-perch placed in the artificial reservoirs on the desert at Indio, Thermal, and Mecca. Bear Valley Lake contains the rainbow and the Tahoe Lake trout, and large specimens have been taken. Dr. Benjamin Page, of Pasadena, who has camped in the splendid forests about the great lake, is the dean of the anglers and mountain lovers who fish here. He has cast a fly into every pool in the range, and has made some notable catches. One 1 recall, taken in the Bear Valley Lake in July, with rod and grey badger fly and helgramite bait, was two feet one inch in length, one foot two and a half inches in girth, and weighed seven and a half pounds. This fine fish, a Tahoe Lake trout, fought the skilled angler an hour and sixteen minutes before it could be brought to gaff, and was but one of a notable catch made by Dr. Page's party. 7 Se aa S— aan 98 Life in the Open The pools in Deep Creek, in the San Bernardino mountains, are of great beauty and size, often chiselled out of the rocky and literal basins of stone, flanked by stupendous masses of rock, down which the clear waters splash and foam, pouring from one great pool into another on their way down the stupendous slope of the range. Such is the lower Big Pool. The upper Big Pool, Deep Creek, is even more remarkable, if possible, for its water-worn rocks, the clearness of the water, and its melody where it falls in a level sheet; then striking a sloping ledge it bounds down into the pool, a mass of molten silver, carrying life and aération into an ideal pool in the heart of the forest where the angler does not cast in vain. This fine mountain stream well illustrates the possi- bilities of mountain climbing and trout fishing, abound- ing in long reaches of forest, tumbling down great distances in short periods, at once one of the hardest streams to climb, and one of the most beautiful and satisfactory to the lover of mountain life. Deep Creek is an eastern fork and possibly the largest branch of the Mojave River, and can be traced into a desert second only to the Sahara in its terrors of heat in midsummer ; hence, one of the most remark- able trout streams in the world for its contrasts. If any one should point out this dry river-bed in the desert as a trout stream, he would be laughed at, as it is a mere streak of water-polished stones overwhelmed by sand-dunes for miles over the desert, what water there is The North Fork of the San Jacinto River, San Jacinto Mountains. BE * - gs WA Ny i o — 5 rs ~ ———— BR IRC ee 4 A —— BA -~ se ——— . - ——— . — 3 “ SH A TI La - So es a — OT TSS - A Rainbow in the Sierra Madre ——— being far below the surface or entirely gone ; but if traced up to the foot of the San Bernardino range, that rises ten thousand feet above the desert, it soon appears os and for miles climbs the Sierras as one of the most at- ———— wn = cs = a - od Mm a 2 « > < + « = = Oo v———— = Sr RIB pees BR a. Be ZBI A TY (on A DN / U LL OF N. ; ( . J SLIFoRNIA~ Shore and Other Birds 123 godwit ; and over on the laguna side, Wilson's snipe and the long-billed dowitcher. The great flock that comes whirling along between the breakers and the shore, gleaming like silver, disappearing as it turns, is the western sandpiper. As they drop down, each bird runs along the beach a few steps, with wings lifted, as though posing for its picture reflected in the water. Here are the sanderling and the marbled godwit, stand- ing by a mass of dead kelp; the western willet goes whirling by ; and among others you may recognise the tattler, spotted sandpiper, black turnstone,and several fine plovers ; not all seen in one day, perhaps, but adding to the attractions of some wandering trip along-shore. At San Clemente, Santa Catalina, and other islands you may see a variety of sea birds, attractive if not game,—those which affect the island rocks and have no interest in the sands. The best places for shore birds are where there are long stretches of beach and sand, behind which are pools and sea swamps, which afford mud flats for such birds to feed upon. Here one may see the great blue heron, the least bittern, and at times, farther in, the wood ibis, that has a penchant for barley fields and roll- ing mesas near the sea. The cafions that reach away from the ocean afford fascinating nooks and corners for birds of many kinds, as here the valley quail comes almost to the beach; and around Santa Monica and the Malibu I have seen the great California vulture or condor, that nests in this 124 Life in the Open range, and even as this is written the daily papers picture a renegade with his game, shot in this range near the sea, a splendid vulture, one of the last of the tribe, doubtless, in Southern California. In these cafions we see great flocks of mourning doves that flutter along the sands with musical flight, while at intervals bands of splendid band-tailed pigeons come down to breathe the soft air of the sea as it flows up the cafions. If the sportsman wishes this game he should watch the mountains, and after a heavy snow-storm, when they are well covered down to the three-thousand-foot level, go to the great open ranches and fields at the base of the range, where he will see this fine pigeon, evidently driven out of the range by the snow. I have seen hun- dreds on the Hastings ranch, in the San Gabriel Valley, at such a time, and doubtless many such flocks could have been found far down the range. Camping in the mouth of some big cailon, as the one at Santa Monica, Laguna, or San Juan, affords the lover of nature varied opportunities. A few steps up the cafion you find sycamores, cottonwoods, and live oaks in sight of the sea. In the chaparral are hum- ming-birds; bright-eyed lizards glance at you from every stone pile, and the sly gopher pushes up his mounds as you look and ventures out of his hole per- haps to show you how he can run back and hit it, tail first. The fields are filled with ground squirrels that only take to trees in dire necessity ; and at night a little leaping jerboa-like creature comes prowling about, while Castle Rock, Santa Barbara. SSE AR a ol OR SYR A SR RS MAAS BE SP TA EN TSN Fa r/4 SRA Ry, oO —- T A E hu 1 HV ERS TY OF “CAL 'FORNH / / Shore and Other Birds 125 the wood-rat boldly ventures into camp or lodge and robs it by the light of the moon. In almost any cafion you may find the nest of this fascinating little creature ; a mass of twigs and dead leaves, generally on the ground, but at times in trees. When chased and put to flight, the rat, which bears a resemblance to the common rat, takes to the trees, and leaps from one to another with perfect ease. A wood-rat which I kept as a tentative pet for a while would leap from a table to my desk, a distance of four feet, and a more inquisitive and thieving creature it would be difficult to imagine. Its robberies were bare-faced and open, and as I watched it one day it took a cigar from a box and hid it, then cut off a red rose larger than itself and pushed it into the hiding-place after the cigar. On the beach near the cafion you may see the print of the raccoon, and possibly the clever animal himself. In fox-hunting the dogs occasionally catch them. At night along the sands may be seen at the mouth of the cafion a beautiful little raccoon-like creature, the bassaris, with a bushy ringed tail and large expressive eyes. There are numbers of bats—one very large,—a great variety of small birds—thrushes, robins, orioles, kinglets, wrens, warblers, swallows, ravens, sparrows,— an endless procession that fill the cafions with song, while the ranches with their orchards attract other and different birds. If game is hard to find along-shore, there is the compensation in a variety of beautiful forms always in sight. Pa ) T_T ——_— re RN -— TN a oy Re ee ARI ie SE, AE ime El lr RIE rent NYT a mg er S—— Ce ER x pe ————————————————— - i. | 4 A ! 2 ! LEH ! “8 4 aE 2 i ] i H $F! i | v4 a . ) B i 54 | H | ¥ { 5 1 | : pet | 1 i i i 1 BH. | : 2] | ¥ q i ia { y 1 » 15] i i ¥ § (f Bi 3 A H i x 1 i Ie y |} p | 14 ! i be i BE H i } if i | if th { 3 3 { ‘ i i oN } : ¢ v } v | y § : ‘ . y { i f / i : | + ] & { 3 f J £ : i i § i i ¥ i ! | : {i i | i t — i — i AT ———- ee — — Chapter IX The Bighorn OU may at least look at bighorn sheep in Cali- fornia, and in attaining the glance you will climb some of the highest slopes of the southern Sierras. There is a band of bighorn sheep on the slopes of Mount San Antonio unless they have been killed recently; and others have been re- ported on Grayback or Grizzly peak, on San Jacinto, or other lofty summits from eight to eleven thousand feet above the sea. But they are protected by law, and, as I have suggested, can only be looked at or photo- graphed, which, after all, is the most satisfactory method of hunting game that every intelligent American knows is being exterminated. If the bighorn cannot be had in Southern Califor- nia it can be found over the line on the peninsula, not many miles below San Diego or Coronado, where one may take the steamer for Ensenada and there procure guide and pack train for the lofty mountains which form 9 129 Life in | the Open 130 the spinal column of the country between the Pacific and the Gulf of California. Lower California is but an extension of Southern California, growing naturally warmer as one proceeds south; as Agassiz said when he visited it on the Hassler Expedition, “It has an almost perfect climate during the winter, being similar to that of Southern California, only milder.” The peninsula is a narrow, mountainous strip about seven hundred and fifty miles long, from thirty to seventy miles wide. For the convenience of the sports- man it can be divided into three areas: one on the north abutting Southern California, two hundred miles long, is a continuation of the Sierra Madre, a fine range rising from five to ten thousand feet in air, on which one can stand and see the Pacific and the Gulf of California in one sweeping glance. These mountains abound in fine pine forests and form the source of numerous springs and small rivers, and in the lower region are some beautiful valleys where grazing and ranching are carried on. One of the most attractive is the Maneadero Valley, not far from Ensenada. Here one may see typical California ranches of the old days. Beyond this there is a central region, made up of tablelands and flat ridges, with mountains isolated and in groups, running up to four or five thousand feet. This extends for four hundred and fifty miles, which brings us to what Gabb calls the third province, extending one hun- dred miles from Cape St. Lucas to La Paz and beyond The Bighorn 131 to the cape, characterised by great granite mountains from four to five thousand feet in height, with deep and often fertile valleys. It is with the northern province that the sportsman has to do, and the splendid mountains, wild and majestic, that form the backbone of the peninsula here, afford some of the best bighorn shooting in America to-day, while in the lowlands are deer, antelope, and a variety of small game. All the ranges, seemingly culminating in the fine peak of San Pedro de Martyr, afford game of some kind. The bighorn sheep may be considered one of the forms that is gradually growing scarcer and which ulti- mately will disappear. When I reached Southern Cali- fornia in 18835, hunting it was considered one of the sports of the country, and I recall seeing two fine heads brought into Pasadena about 1887, in which year several grizzlies were killed in the mountains. The bighorns were killed on the north slope of San Antonio, about fifty miles from the city of Los Angeles, where the remnant of the herd still lives, protected by the game laws of the State. The animal is a splendid figure, with its enormous horns, corrugated, scarred, and turned back, bending down and pointing to the front again. It ranges from the mountains of Mexico north to Alaska, and is one of the splendid game animals of America that is doomed to pass over the divide sooner or later. I was once on very good terms with a tame ram in Colorado, an old-timer having one in a small corral Life in the Open 132 cheek by jowl with a mountain lion, and I spent much time in watching both. The result of my observation led me to believe that in a fair fight the ram would win, but if it were a case of sneaking up in the dark, or crawling over a cliff to drop on the game unawares, the mountain lion would be the winner. The bighorn certainly scented the lion, as it appeared to be in a con- stant “ state of mind,” which was evinced by occasionally backing off and striking the corral on the mountain lion side with a force suggestive of sudden death and the breaking in of ribs. What a splendid animal he was, and what a coward was the mountain lion! Yet I may do the latter in- justice, though he started as though he had been hit whenever the ram struck his partition and jarred the very earth. A fine animal is the mountain sheep. He is wild and loves the wild places. His home is on the lofty, wind-swept crags of high mountains. As I write, I can look over the tops of palms and orange trees in my garden and see his home—the bare, pallid rocks that form the summit of San Antonio, two miles or more above the sea. The gentle wind in the valley of the San Gabriel is barely sufficient to arouse the music of the pine needles, yet up the north slope of San Antonio I can sometimes see a mass of snow rolling on, like a great white diaphanous cloud, that rises higher and higher, a wraith of the mountains, telling of the rigours of winter in this home of the mountain sheep. The Bighorn 133 There is something in the personality of the animal which attracts one, and I well remember the old cow- man who owned the Colorado bighorn and who in- tended sending him to some zoological garden in Ger- many. “There’s game for you, gentlemen,” he said. “ The big sheep is every inch an aristocrat ; he may be a sheep, but he possesses the attributes of goat, ante- lope, and elk, so far as game is concerned.” The bighorn stands about three feet in height at the shoulders, and in his best condition weighs three hundred odd pounds, and he has a coat of various shades and tints. That of the San Antonio specimens I have seen, Ouis canadensis, was a very light brown and drab, a colour that so resembled the great cliffs and washes in which it was found that, when standing still, it appeared to melt and become a part of the basic slopes of its home. The crowning glory of the animal is its horns, which are massive, deeply corrugated, flat, and ranging from thirty to fifty-two inches in length and from thir- teen to eighteen inches in circumference. There is something about these massive head ornaments which stamps the mountain sheep as the aristocrat of his kind. I have never hunted the sheep in Lower California but am informed by Mr. Grosvenor Wotkyns and Mr. Nordhoff, who has a ranch below Ensenada, that good sport can be found there in the upper regions of the southern Sierras, which are so accessible that the Es i i Sng 134 Life in the Open localities most frequented by this splendid game can be reached on horseback, which is not often the case farther north. Once in this Lower California hunting ground, the sportsman will find himself on the very backbone of the continent, and at a glance can sweep the Pacific, the mountain ranges, the Gulf of California, and the vast desert beyond, and here, among scenes of chaos and desolation, is the home of the mountain sheep, that is sometimes followed from peak to peak, over countless divides, and into deep cafions before it is shot. The sheep are so common that a hunt is rarely barren, and several good pairs of horns will repay the not difficult trip into this part of Mexico. Chapter X I The Home of the Mountain Lion J It | 1 AMPING out or living in the Sierra Madre in | a rainy winter is not without charm and " i excitement. To look at the placid and well- 1H wooded cafion that cuts off Las Cacitas from the mesa i below in summer, one would never suspect the volume i of water which often comes foaming down during the | PERT occasional winter rains. The river course is now dry; UNIVERSITY | : the summer sun has driven the water far below the sur- “Oa 85 ai face, where it sweeps slowly along, the underground river ici that has given fame to Southern California. Yet I have | been shut in by floods on this spur of the mountains for \ three days, and kept awake at night not by the roar of 3 the waters, but by the deep, menacing sound of boulders J rolling down the bed of the stream in a neighbouring i caiion. | All these cafions, the arteries of the Sierra Madre, i have not been made by a steady, regulated wear and i ¥ tear, but by rushes of water, cloudbursts that suddenly | wipe out the fixtures of years, carrying away whole & ! 137 2 ———_— | BR I a eM i... Ee - mec Sg i en Em ET : Ea RAR . mr 138 Life in the Open mountain-sides, changing the face of the country, wash- ing out more rocks and débris than the wear of five normal years would accomplish. The caflons are a feature of the country. The little stream foams down among the rocks and boulders capriciously. In the upper range there is a series of rocky basins, the water flowing from one to another over falls of deep green moss, while the face of the rock is covered with masses of maidenhair ferns. Lower down, the stream flows over great boulders, leaping from one to the other, then out into long, pleasant reaches, to finally break away from the mountains and go swirling musically on to the sea. In the cafion I have in mind I knew several men who preferred its solitudes. One day one came up to our camp, which was on a spur of the range, and said that 2 mountain lion had killed his burro and eaten part of it during the night, and he was afraid that it would re- turn. A trip to the canon camp, a rifle-shot away, showed the evidence of guilt: a small burro had been stricken down and torn and lacerated. Several hunters agreed to stay at the camp and see if the lion returned, but it did not, though its track was seen in various places, up and down the stream, testifying to its size. Not long after I was notified that a lion had been seen near the old Mission of San Gabriel, and one morning | joined the hounds in the shadow of the old pile and followed them over ten or fifteen miles of territory. Some Mexicans reported that they had seen the Home of the Mountain Lion 4 lion creeping along at dusk. The next morning its tracks were found and the hounds readily picked them up near the old Mission tuna hedge, a mile to the east, but it was a forlorn hope. The country here was a mesa, without trees, overlooking a large vineyard some five feet lower, and every object could be seen for miles. The dogs took the trail and followed it down across country in the direction of Puente, where they lost it in the lowlands; and it was believed that the lion had made its way into the Puente Hills, crossing the entire San Gabriel Valley diagonally, so reaching the wild country about Mount Santiago. In many of the mountain towns or those near the cafions, stories are current relating to the mountain lion, but the animal is rarely seen. One was killed near the Raymond Hotel in 1898, and another was seen by a hunter on the old Mount Wilson trail, the animal slink- ing off into the chaparral. Doubtless a good pack of hounds taken up into the mountains near Barley Flats, or at the extreme head of the San Gabriel, would result in the finding of lions, but there are so few seen or heard of that hunting is rarely attempted. In the less fre- quented parts of the country, in the region back of the Santa Ynez, and between San Jacinto and the Mexican line, the deep cafions doubtless afford a home for many lions that are only occasionally heard of or seen. The mountain lion is an interesting cat on account of its wide geographical range. My guide, years ago, entertained me with stories of the panthers he had seen 140 Life in the Open :n the Adirondacks, and I heard of the animal in Ver- mont hills near Lincoln as the catamount. In Florida the camp of a party of acquaintances was robbed by a cougar that took a pig, and though they watched all night the animal leaped into the pen and secured an- other pig, making off with the game amid a fusillade from the guns of a number of frightened negro servants. This cougar swam across a Narrow channel to reach the key, or island. In South America, from Patagonia to Brazil, they will tell you of the puma and its ravages. I saw it first in the Rockies of Colorado, and the same animal appears on the coast from the far north, where it .« known as the cougar, down to Southern California, where it is the mountain lion, and periodically appears, preying upon small animals, but mainly upon the deer, which in all regions appears to be the game of its choice. In appearance the lion is a tawny cat bearing some resemblance to an Asiatic lioness, but much smaller: a typical cat, big, long of limb, muscular and beautiful. But here praise ends, as rarely will a mountain lion face 4 man, being by nature a cowardly animal, creeping upon its prey, and often intimidated by 2 single dog and hunter. The big cat killsits game by stealing upon it, generally attempting, in the case of deer, to approach from above, hurling itself from an eminence upon the black-tailed or mule deer. In Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Montana doubtless many more deer are killed by mount- ain lions than by hunters. In some parts of Arizona Garden of the Mission of Santa Barbara on El Camino Real. 0 I fd A LH WW 5 be } hy hy 1] | 1 : | I pil | i ’ ‘ } 11] { 118 iH 8 1 | | 1 ) I | \ NLR } bY «4, A o 4 \ | | | 5 by 1 3 18 LAE ifs | 1 B i | 1 Fie | I ¥ | BB 3 me 3 Ay ih if ; ho ih iy Ns RE { i £7 2f ! | { I} §E] 1 | i Is y ! ol i iE 3 1 RE) boy i i 4 A PS i iy | i 3 i ; HLS A : | Eq 3 7LHE | wl Li | Pi | i i [] 1) , REIL y i! i: "l 3 ii Blt ] : i ; { 8. 1] \ be] Ig ) 3 | IR | Bl \ HL 58 { 1% ] IR: 11 I} 1 t i 9 ! |} "i ' \ 3 It) i &i - 8] if gt I} i I it ag IL] gi ‘ Home of the Mountain Lion 141 the mountain lions are so common, so much a menace to stock, that the cattlemen frequently combine and hunt them down with dogs. As a rule, the more difficult an animal is to take, the more eager hunters are to secure it, and I confess to many a ride up deep cafions and over narrow trails through the chaparral hoping to meet the lion of the mountain, and what I know of the mountains, their delights and pleasures, is mainly due to these quests for mountain lion and other game. I conceive, then, that the puma, call him what you will, is as good an excuse, perhaps better than any other, to induce the sport-loving reader to enter and know the Sierra Madre. He is there, but there is a more certain and definite game to be had: the impression and memory of mount- ain life, the personality and individuality of the mountains, that have peculiar charms and beauties of their own. Mountain climbing is a sport, a pastime, a science, if you will, a science blending with the gentle arts and graces, as your real mountaineer is a poet; so I com- mend hunting the mountain lion in the Sierra Madre. No more fascinating hunting-ground can be found in the south than the great range, from the head of the Santa Ynez to San Jacinto. In this restricted area are some of the most interesting peaks in America. These mountains face the Colorado desert on the east, one of the most desolate places on earth, at times a furnace: the hot air pouring upward in such volume that it leaves a pseudo vacuum, to fill which, the air rushes in from the ocean, explaining the ro Sr LL — es —— i —- Fs 142 Life in the Open steady breeze which continues in Southern Califor- nia all summer. Mount San Jacinto has fine forests and streams and long, level stretches abounding in pines ; regions that are covered with snow in winter and are gardens in summer. Here are numerous camps, reached by good trails and waggon roads—inviting to the lover of sport and camp life. The altitude is from five thousand to seven, eight, or even ten thou- sand feet, and the facilitiess are excellent. In the range opposite Los Angeles there are many good trails into the mountains. The Arroyo Seco is particularly avail- able, a deep, well-wooded cafion, which can be followed into the range for twenty or more miles. In the cafion is a fine running stream that has been restocked with trout, and which will soon be open to the public. In the San Gabriel Valley, cafions open at short intervals for miles, many being famous for their beauty. Near Pasadena are the Arroyo Seco, Milliard, Las Flores, Eaton, and San Gabriel cafions. The Mount Lowe elevated road takes one into the upper range to Alpine Tavern. Not far away, at Eaton's Cafion, is the beginning of the Mount Wilson trail, which, by an easy grade, takes the mountaineer up to Mount Wilson, where Martin's camp is stationed in a saddle just below the solar observatory of the Carnegie Institute, under charge of Professor George E. Hale. The pagoda-like observatory looks down into a deep cafion, a gulch of profound depths, the cafion of the San Gabriel River, one of the largest in the Home of the Mountain Lion 143 range. On the rushing trout stream are several camps, as Follows, where lovers of mountain life and scenery make their home ; and all along this stream private camps are found, outfitting in the towns of the vicinity or in Los Angeles, where there are houses which make a business of equipping hunting camps, providing every- thing but the game. The heart of the San Jacinto range is reached from Los Angeles on the Sante Fé road to Hemet, from which a stage takes one up the mountain trail, a mile above the sea, to Idlewild, where hotel, cottage, tent, or spreading tree can be had, trained mountain horses, and one of the most attractive regions to use as a base when mountaineering in Southern Cali- fornia, in what is virtually the heart of the California alps. No more interesting mountain road can be found in California than the one from Hemet to Idlewild, or to the upper reaches of Mount San Jacinto, two miles above the Pacific. To reach this point, the top of the world seemingly, one passes by mysterious Mount Tauquiz, about which the old Indians say strange cries and groans are heard at times, weird tremblings which make the entire mountain shake. Here we find the Tauquiz meadows with running streams eight thousand feet above the sea: and at every rise new charms of scenery appear. The trip to the summit from Idlewild is about thirty miles over a good trail, and from here hundreds of square miles of California can be seen. The changes in forest flora alone repay the trip. From willow, sycamore, 144 Life in the Open oak in the lowlands, the mountain-climber comes to spruce, firs, pine, and cedar. Farther on these be- come scarce and far apart, and near the rocky peak the trees creep along the ground, dwarfed, stunted, as though beaten down by a constant and relentless enemy. What the condition is here in winter one can imagine by watching San Antonio, seeing the dense snow clouds, hundreds of feet high, roll up its slope, rising above it like the white vapours of a volcano. The mountain lover will find a delightful region about Seven Oaks, the head waters of the Santa Ana River, the point of departure being the city of Red- lands from which a twelve-mile stage ride carries one to the half-way house. From here horses and guide are taken and the ride made up into the valley of the Santa Ana, famed for its trout streams and scenery, almost a mile above the sea. The country is well wooded with pine trees, and in the vicinity are Bear Valley and its well stocked lake, Barton Flats, South Fork, Cienega Seco, and other places of more or less interest. The San Bernardino range affords many cafions and mountain retreats attractive to the mountaineer and sportsman, among which is Skyland above San Ber- nardino, five thousand feet above the sea. This country is reached by a good trail or mountain road, once the old Arrowhead toll road from San Bernardino. Here are many cafions— Devil, Sandpit, and Dark caiions,— Squirrel Inn and Little Bear Valley, and reaching away in Haunts of the Mountain Lion, and Grizzly Peak (11,725 feet high). 7 / 7 ——— TN \% Ip TUAT 3 OF +HE Home of the Mountain Lion 145 many directions a richly wooded country that will tempt the mountain lover on into other delightful regions. All these places, particularly Fredalba, have summer camps and the amateur mountaineer can climb the range with ease, and have the comforts of civilisation; but recognising mountain climbing as a gentle pastime, I have in mind the lover of nature who would steal away from the roar of great cities and seek the solitude of the great silences of these mountains. I recall a friend who prefers to be alone in the mountains, who can be met in out-of-the-way places, generally unarmed, with a pack burro and simple out- fit; sleeping where the fancy takes him beneath the trees. Others ride to the great upland mesas on the mountains in their own carriages or on horses, carrying the outfit. The mountains of Southern California are not often inviting to observers in the valleys; their south slopes have often been burnt over, are bare, rocky, forbidding ; but the keen-eyed mountain lover will see a fringe of trees on the lofty divides that are mighty trunks. He will note the deep, blue cafions, and once in their portals and over the divide on the north and on well-wooded slopes, he will have discov- ered the charm of Southern California woodlands. Once the lower country was well wooded; the valleys abounded in oak forests: but vandal hands have cut them down, and the eucalyptus and other trees that grow rapidly have been planted by the new-comers. In the cafions we shall find tall and picturesque syca- 10 Home of the Mountain Lion 145 many directions a richly wooded country that will tempt the mountain lover on into other delightful regions. All these places, particularly Fredalba, have summer camps and the amateur mountaineer can climb the range with ease, and have the comforts of civilisation; but recognising mountain climbing as a gentle pastime, I have in mind the lover of nature who would steal away from the roar of great cities and seek the solitude of the great silences of these mountains. I recall a friend who prefers to be alone in the mountains, who can be met in out-of-the-way places, generally unarmed, with a pack burro and simple out- fit; sleeping where the fancy takes him beneath the trees. Others ride to the great upland mesas on the mountains in their own carriages or on horses, carrying the outfit. The mountains of Southern California are not often inviting to observers in the valleys; their south slopes have often been burnt over, are bare, rocky, forbidding; but the keen-eyed mountain lover will see a fringe of trees on the lofty divides that are mighty trunks. He will note the deep, blue caifions, and once in their portals and over the divide on the north and on well-wooded slopes, he will have discov- ered the charm of Southern California woodlands. Once the lower country was well wooded; the valleys abounded in oak forests; but vandal hands have cut them down, and the eucalyptus and other trees that grow rapidly have been planted by the new-comers. In the cafions we shall find tall and picturesque syca- 10 146 Life in the Open mores out of leaf hardly six weeks in the year; cotton- woods, willows, and the alder. A black and white live oak makes splendid shade in the bottoms where there is water: and down in San Diego County, in a re- stricted area near Delmar, grows the rarest tree in the world—Torrey’s pine, a dwarf species not over forty feet in height. As we ascend the slopes the chaparral becomes a factor; a dense growth often covering the hills, the home of the mountain lion, deer, and mountain quail. It is made up of several kinds of brush, at- taining the dignity of trees. This and two species of live-oak bushes and the Adenostoma or grease wood constitute the backbone of this foothill verdure. Then comes the Heteromeles, with its masses of red berries, the “holly” of the Southern California Christ- mas festival; the wild lilacs, with lavender and white clusters of flowers. Then the manzanita that here is rarely found on the lower slopes, though in the north I have seen it on sea level. This and the madrona, with several others, make up the forest of the approach to the Sierra Madre, a mimic forest ten or fifteen feet high, through which run quail, wildcat, and other game; 2 dense interlaced mass often almost impassable for man or horse. One of the most serious predicaments in which I ever found myself in California was when try- ing to make a short cut and ride down through the chaparral on a steep slope of this range. Following up the cafions there is a succession of trees and shrubs. The little cafions and valleys are Home of the Mountain Lion 147 filled with ferns and brakes, alone a magnet to attract one again and again. The common brake is the most conspicuous form, everywhere rearing its graceful shape, and in damp places we find the bladder, shield, and chain ferns, cliff brake, the coffee fern beneath some scrub oak, and mimic plantations of maiden-hair, the lace and cotton ferns; and clinging close to the ground the showy gold and silver back varieties. Here will be a clump of the huge mountain tiger-lily, six, eight, yes ten feet in height, a splendid panicle of flowers, an orange patch against the background of green. The bay is common at an altitude of two thou- sand feet, a beautiful tree pouring forth an invigorating aroma when touched. Down the sides of the cafion roll acorns two inches long, in enormous cups, started by the gray mountain squirrel with foxlike tail, that eyes you from the dwarf oak on the slopes, and as you climb up the sides a flock of dark blue mountain pigeons take flight or the long-plumed mountain quail steals away. On every hand are evidences of the war of ages. Great slides of rock pour down like rivers and are, indeed, subtle slow-moving rivers of stone. Here the half of a mountain spur has dropped into the cafion, leaving a red and jagged wound. Part of the talus has been swept away by the winter's flood ; part is covered by clustering ferns, while the young lilac and tall purple larkspurs tried to cover it with a mantle of colours. Climbing higher the chaparral grows thinner, and 148 Life in the Open hundreds of acres of titanic rocks stand bare facing the sun, with here and there trees fighting for life in the crevices. Higher yet comes the summit, 5000 or 6000 or 7000 feet above the sea. From Mount Wilson, which forms one side of the San Gabriel Cafion, one may, on a clear day, look on all the lofty peaks of Southern California. Yonder is Grizzly Peak, in the San Bernardino range, 11,725 feet high; nearer, Gleason's, 6493; Cucamonga, 8529; Mount Conejo, 3311; Argus, 6333; Brown's Peak, also in San Ber- nardino County, 5392. White with snow, and with snow clouds flying about its summit in winter, Mount San Antonio rises 10,120 feet into the empyrean, while Pilot Knob, far beyond, boasts of 5525 feet. Other sentinels to the east are Mount San Bernardino, 10,100 feet high, San Gabriel Peak, 6232, and there are countless others, indeed Southern California is an alpine country by the sea: its valleys and level slopes are easier to enumerate than its ranges. The Southern California mountains have no Marathon to look down upon, but they have the sea, and from anywhere the blue Pacific with its outline of white surf gleams brightly in the sunlight. Climbing up the mountains by the trails the scene is one of constant change. I have stood on the south flank of the Sierra Madre, four thousand feet above the Pacific, and looked down upon the San Gabriel Valley, one of the garden spots of the world. I saw its groves of orange, olive, and lemon, its palms and gardens stretching away for miles at my feet, resting in the green Home of the Mountain Lion 149 chaparral, yet in ten feet, by passing around a spur of the mountain, I reached the north side where the snow was a foot deep on the trail and every peak and slope was covered with snow as far as the eye could reach. Not only could one see winter and semi-tropic summer at a sweeping glance, but could leap from one to the other. This marvellous transformation is often seen lower down. On the upper slopes are found many pines ponderosa, albicaulis, and monticola, false hemlock, Hie cedars, and juniper, up to five thousand feet the buck- thorn, and beneath it the splendid wild fuchsia making or forming a forest garden in itself. Up to four thousand feet the great mass of the chap- arral has been made up of Adenostoma, the ‘ grease- wood” of the Mexicans, and from the heights the eye sweeps over masses of this rich green vestment that rises and falls, dips into abysmal cafions, tumbling into the valleys like waves of the sea. We may pass through a narrow belt of madrona on the three-thousand- foot level, and now see the spreading, smooth, almost polished arms of the manzanita that reaches up to the greater heights; then, if on the higher mountains, come to forests and parks of pine, and then to the summits of bare and barren rock, crowned with snow in winter and often bearing it far into the summer. The highest mountain in the southern Sierras is Grizzly Peak, or Grayback, eleven thousand seven hundred and twenty-five feet, capping the San Ber- nardino section of the Sierra Madre, and remarkable as 254 Life in the Open being the highest mountain in North America from its immediate base. Other peaks are measured from the sea level : but this stupendous shaft rises clear eleven thousand feet—over two miles—into the air from its im- mediate base, and affords one of the most profound and comprehensive views in the world. At a single sweep of the eye, the mountain-climber can face desert, ocean, and garden; almost every physical con- dition known to man is in sight. To the east lies the Colorado desert, its pallid yellow sands drifting into the distant haze. Here is the chasm of San Gorgonio, an abysmal gulf yawning nine thousand feet below. Be- yond rises, sentinel-like, San Jacinto, with rocky flanks hiding groves of pine, beautiful glens and streams, a wonderland shooting upward ten thousand feet within five miles. I have approached these mountains from the desert, where the stupendous masses of rock face a temper- ature menacing in its heat, and look down upon one of the most desolate scenes on the habitable globe. No- where is there a greater contrast than this heated wall of rock of San Jacinto looking down on Indio and Sal- ton and the Salton sink, the bottom of an ancient sea two hundred and eighty feet below the level of the Gulf of California, and the region just over the divide that forms the splendid park region of San Jacinto Mountain, with its brooks, forests, and lakes. The most stolid mountain-climber is awed and silenced at the peaks, ranges, chasms, and gulches that stretch away before Home of the Mountain Lion 151 him. To the north lies the Mojave desert, to the south a maze of mountains, billows of eternal silence rolling on into the distant haze to reappear far down be Mexico, rising in stupendous peaks, dividing the penin- sula so that one can stand on its summit, on the eyrie of the mountain lion, and glance at the Pacific on one side, the Gulf of California and the mountains of Arizona on the other. To the north-west, great ranges drop away to an altitude of five thousand feet, deeply wooded with pine leaping downward like some living thing into the Color Pass to rise a green maze to Mount Cucamonga tumbling away to the west, rising again in San Antosio to ten thousand feet, while far beyond are peaks which tell of the Sierra Nevada, taking one in imagination the entire length of this stupendous range that forms the backbone of California and stands a protecting bar- rier between the desert and the deep sea. a Chapter XI The Valley Quail NE of the last quail hunts in which I partici- pated led me over the San Rafael Hills, which rise to the west of the head of the San Gabriel Valley. Along the ridges 1 followed up the coyote trails to the summits, and looked down into a score of little valleys hoping to see a covey or hear the rich “ po-ta-toe” rising from the green depths of the chaparral or see the birds in the open, but all to no purpose. As I wandered home in the cool evening I dropped over the edge of the Arroyo Seco, crossed it, and had climbed the opposite side, hardly a rifle shot from my home, when I walked into a large flock of quail; they were running across the dusty road into a field of dried burr clover, and, once there, stood and looked at me not fifty feet away, while I, returning from my quail hunt, also looked. This is what I saw—a flock of little birds, not quite so large as the bob-white, but each bearing jauntily a plume that fell over its bill to the front, giving the 155 PRERW SICSSIREES KI y { { Fol h | \ | | n f {1 Boal | HB | 3 | EEE } : I i 4 3 ] LS 3 |) £) } { H HEF L311 '! i 1 | { | _l 4 3 1 3 IN § i} H pe iy (El ul BS : s Ha { AE LA { 4 : ‘ 4 { i] { . } i" I [i ! ¥ [(! 1 | . EN Han y ’ 156 Life in the Open bird a most débonnaire appearance. In colour they were a mass of blue ash or slate, with striped chestnut hues below, with flashes of sun gold, white, black, and tan. The throat of the male was black, and he had a white “ eyebrow ” and a collar of white around his black throat, a radiant little creature, a pheasant in its colour scheme, and the incident of our meeting well illustrates the habit of ‘the little bird. I did not fire : one cannot shoot down a neighbour in cold blood, if the laws do permit. Some of these birds nest in an adjacent garden, and I can often hear the melody of their notes in the Arroyo, or the thunder of their wings as they rise from the open and plunge down into the depths of the deep abyss. So, if one must have quail without eampune. tions of conscience, he goes away from home, out into the country in the unsettled districts where there is sport of the finest quality. When I first came to Southern California, plumed quail could be found every- where. They lived in all the cafions and little valleys of the foothills, and held high revelry in the openings where the gravel of the wash spread out, fan-like, and merged into the low chaparral. Their flute-like notes could be heard at all times—whit-whit-whit—when you were near, and when far away the loud, screeching clarion challenge ‘of the male—po-Za-te, po-fa-toe, or ca-ci-cow. But the fencing up of the country, the growth of towns, has pushed the little birds out of back yards, and to obtain good sport the outlying country must be tried, where the dainty birds are found in vast The Valley Quail 157 numbers, and the vibrant w/hé-»-7-»-»-r-r-r-» often fills the air. No bird is so disconcerting. Recently, at Santa Catalina, in the off season, I was riding along when at a sudden turn my horse faced a covey of quail in the road. Did they rise? Not at all. The hens ran down the road a way, while the cock stood his ground, walking back and forth in a comical fashion, as though saying, “You know it is not the season and I am safe.” These birds refused to fly and walked some distance down the road, then into the low bushes, where they watched me with many a note— whit-whit-whit. Laguna and vicinity is one of the best quail grounds, and there are scores of localities all down the coast as good. You find the birds, perhaps, in some little valley shut in by hills, whose sides are covered with green Ade- nostoma and whose edges, perhaps, are broken with cactus patches. The air is clear, with a marvellous carry- ing capacity, and suddenly there comes woo-w/a-ho, woo-wha-ho; and from another point or cafion rises o-4z-0, and many variants, possibly with a slightly differ- ent inflection. We are in the quail country, there can be no question as to that. They have not discovered you, and louder come the sweet notes, tuck-ca-cue, tuck-a-hoe, of the males, who are calling for the mere pleasure of it. Perhaps you are walking down the ridge and now look over; perhaps your gun has caught a sun gleam and tossed it into the next cafion, as up from the sage comes whit-whet-wihit, Ye a —— aa a TE re .