William Bartlett - A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.

These funnel-shaped willow baskets, lodged here and there along the banks, are the salmon traps of the Indians, which have done duty until the spring run was over. When the salmon has once set his head up stream, he never turns it down again until he has reached the extreme limits of his journey and accomplished his destiny. The Indians understand this; and these long willow funnels, with a bell-shaped mouth, are laid down in the spring – a clumsy contrivance to be sure; but the salmon enters and pushes his way on, while this willow cylinder contracts until it closes to a small nozzle. There is daylight ahead; the stubborn fish will not back down, and he cannot "move on." When an Indian gets hungry, he pulls up this willow trap, runs a spit through his fish, holds him over the fire a little while, and his dinner is ready.

There is no fish story which one may not believe when in a gentle mood. And thus, when farther down the stream, a settler showed us a wooden fork such as is used to load gavels of grain, with which, in less than an hour, he pitched out of this same stream a wagon-load of salmon – why should we doubt his veracity? No lover of the gentle art is ever skeptical about the truth of a fish story. Faith and good luck go together. How was our faith rewarded soon afterward, when, taking a "cut-off," at the first cast under a shelving rock, a half-pound trout was landed! It was a grasshopper bait, and another grasshopper had to be run down before another cast. It is wonderful what jumps this insect will make when he is wanted for bait, and the run is up the hill. Another trout snapped illusively, and we had him – larger by a quarter of a pound than the first. It was getting interesting! No doubt the settler pitched out a load of salmon with a wooden fork. A kingdom for a grasshopper! There they go in all directions – and the rascals have wings! The clumsy stage-wagon is creeping far up the hill. A beetle is tried; it won't do – no decent trout ever swallowed a beetle. A dozen splendid game fish were left in that swirl under the rock. Was there too much faith in that wooden fork story, or not enough? There was a hitch somewhere. But it was all right when the passengers dined that day on fried bacon, and we on mountain trout. If the grasshoppers had not been too lively, there would have been trout for all.

Anderson Valley is about eighteen miles long, and half to three-fourths of a mile wide. The hills on the left are belted with a heavy growth of redwood, in fine contrast with the treeless hills on the right, covered with a heavy crop of wild oats, all golden-hued in the August sun. The farms extend across the valley, taking a portion of the hills on either side. There has not been a Government survey made in the valley, but every man was in possession of his own, and did not covet his neighbor's. Land-stealing requires a degree of energetic rascality and enterprise wholly wanting here. So near, and yet so remote! It is as if one had gone a two-days' journey, and had somehow managed to get three thousand miles away. I heard of a man in the valley who took a newspaper, and was disposed to sympathize with him in his misfortune. Why should the spray of one of the dirty surges of the outside world break over into Arcadia? Everybody had enough, and nobody had anything in particular to do. The dwellings had mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside, and an occasional bake-oven garnished the back yard. At the little tavern, such vegetables as strangers "hankered for" were procured at the coast – a distance of twenty-six miles. An old man – he might have been seventy, with a margin of twenty years – had heard of the rebellion, and lamented the abolition of slavery – a mischief which he attributed to a few fanatics. The world would never get on smoothly until the institution of the patriarchs had been restored.

Oh, venerable friend, dwelling in Arcadia! there is much broken pottery in this world which is past all mending; and more which is awaiting its turn to go into the rubbish heap. All that was discovered in the interior of a Western mound was a few fragments of earthenware; for the rest, Time had beaten it all back to the dust. The images, whether of brass, wood, or stone, could not be put together by any of the cohesive arts of our time. It is appointed for some men to go through the world, club in hand, and to break much of the world's crockery as they go. We may not altogether like them. But observe that the men who are stoned by one generation are canonized by the next. There was the great ebony image set up and so long worshipped by the people of this country. How many sleek, fat doctors climbed into their pulpits of a Sunday, to expatiate on the scriptural beauties of this image, and the duty of reverencing it as something set up and continued by Divine authority! It took some whacking blows to bring that ebony idol down; but what a world of hypocrisy, cruelty and lies went into the dust with it! Was there ever a reformer – a genuine image-breaker – who did not, at one time or another, make the world howl with rage and pain? Now, truth is on eternal foundations, and does not suffer, in the long run, by the world's questionings or buffetings. But a consecrated falsehood – whether sacerdotal, political, or social – is some day smitten, as the giant of old, in the forehead, and falls headlong. After all, it is by revolution, that the world makes most of its progress. It is a violent and often disorderly going out of an old and dead condition by the regenerating power, not of a new truth, but of an old one dug out of the rubbish, and freshly applied to the conscience of the world. How many truths to-day lie buried, which, if dug up, would set the world in an uproar! The image-breaker often heralds a revolution. He overturns the idol, of whatever sort it is, letting the light into some consecrated falsehood – not gently, but very rudely, and with a shocking disregard of good manners, as many affirm. This rough-shod evangel, with the rasping voice, and angular features, and pungent words – we neither like him nor his new gospel at first. But he improves on acquaintance, and some day we begin to doubt whether he really does deserve eternal burning.

The world is full of cant; it infects our common speech. The odor of sanctity and the form of sound words are no nearer the living spirit than are those petrifactions which present an outline of men, but never again pulsate with life. Once in every half a century it is needful that the image-breaker should come along and knock on the head the brainless images of cant. The sturdy man of truthful and resolute speech! How irreverent and impious he is! He makes the timid hold their breath, lest he should break something that he ought not to touch. What has he done, after all, but to teach men and women to be more truthful, more courageous, and less in love with shams.

At the close of a little "exhortation," something like this, the old man said – rather dogmatically, I thought – "Stranger, them sentiments of yourn won't do for this settlement." No doubt he was right. They won't do for any settlement where they build mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside of houses, and fry meat within.

It is good to get into a forest where there is not a mark of the woodman's axe. The redwood is, after all, one of the handsomest coniferous trees in the world. It grows only in a good soil and a moist climate. There may be larger trees of the sequoia family in the Calaveras group, but that presumption will bear questioning. A guide offered to take us to a group of trees, distant about a day's ride, the largest of which he affirmed was seventy-five feet in circumference, and not less than two hundred and sixty feet high. Larger trees than this are reported in the Coast Range; but we have never yet seen a redwood which measured over fifty feet in circumference, nor can any considerable tree of this species be found beyond the region of sandstone and the belt of coast fogs.