were often mere saloons or summer hotels which had been built in boom times at the mineral springs but which had never become popular as there was too much fog. So the Bartlett Mineral Hot Springs, Sonoma, and Paso Robles interior resorts and Santa Cruz and Pacific Grove were preferred. Many of these hotels were torn down for the lumber or burned down. Another trial to make a summer resort of San Francisco which failed. Another failure to make the older Southern life grow on the Coast was that of a Southern planter who came with many negroes, former slaves who had been freed, and a pack of hounds to start a new plantation. For a couple of years they gave merry chase, hunting deer and running across the farms of the Fosters' and others. The old master got gout and his faithful slave took him to the Paso Robles mud bath springs to treat him for his many sores, caused by the severe gout, Southern ailment. His wife's niece married a thrifty rancher with a big barn on one side of the road and the house upon the other side. The children went to school with Foster's Lucy, riding a pony. It became frightened at a pig running under it one rainy, slippery day, throwing her. Instead of landing on her feet as usual she landed on her head. The hired man, Pyster, a new arrival from Germany, picked the nine-year old Lucy up for dead, carrying her to the rancher's house, where the rancher's wife resuscitated her. The frightened hired man often told of how white and soft she was, and he thought her dead. Thus began a friendship between the families, and when the Fosters came to Santa Barbara the family of Bailards and the hired man, Pyster, came too, settling on the Carpinteria side of Santa Barbara. The old plantation master came, too. The hounds and horses had grown old as well as he. The great grandchildren are now on a trip around the world together at this writing. Their parents' walnut, olive and fruit orchards in the two valleys attest to the thrift of the two families of pioneer parentage. THE REDWOODS The forests of the Coast were along the deep canyons with streams, the steep hills covered with brush which had to be grubbed out with grub hoes or mattocks. A man threw his leg around the bush six to eight feet high and cut the roots around the outside, a real trick as there was a sort of center connecting the branches. The redwoods were in places immense. In a canyon where one of the first mills was built with the homes of the men around it, is still to be seen a stump sixteen feet through which was chopped by an expert axeman, and fell between two houses not forty feet apart. Felling trees so as not to crush them in the steep canyons, and to avoid laying them in inaccessible places was an expert job and men prided themselves on doing the almost impossible. Most of them came from the Canadian woods. First the fine-grained shingle timber for split shakes; then the hard timber for lumber; then in after years the worthless curly redwood, each in turn becoming more valuable. The canyons became again beautiful with the undergrowth of ferns and huckleberries. TRIP TO SAN FRANCISCO One of the circuit ministers who always stayed at the Foster home on his rounds suggested taking the daughter to San Francisco with him, leaving her with her aunt, Mrs. Cummings, as he was to meet his wife coming from the east. So, as it was summer vacation, she went. The minister had a brother, captain of a government boat which made trips daily to the prisons located on Angel Island, and he invited the aunt and niece to make the trip with himself and wife. The brother told the aunt so much about the minister that she did not let the niece go again or go home with him. He had abandoned his wife and family, and all his brother said proved true, as he again left his wife destitute. The daughter went home by train and stage alone, a great trip for the twelve-year-old girl. The mother, more than convinced of the "hypocrite," as she termed that minister, felt that their love of ease and chicken dinners did not compensate for their company in any way. Again this girl went down to the uncle's place of business, and instead of down Montgomery as she should, or waited for her uncle, she cut across by Jackson street, amid scenes which had to be explained to so young a girl. But the scenes and the explanation made her self-reliant and conscious of that knowledge acquired ever after. THE GERMAN TRADER After the war a German with two sons, a big covered wagon, two big horses and a stock of goods made the rounds of the coast every two weeks. One half his wagon was given over to chicken coops. He was a trader, not a peddler. Peddlers came, but they carried their packs on their backs, armed with soldering irons to mend things. This man dealt in eggs, butter, chickens, at first; then some groceries, and taking orders for shoes, suits for boys or men, and exchanging dry goods, shoes, blankets, linen, and boxes of pins, thread, scissors, needles, combs, knives and cotton, woolen by the yard, great bundles to choose from; things wanted would be brought next trip. It was a great convenience. He built up his trade until his sons started a commission house in San Francisco for farm products, contracting for all the eggs, butter and chickens to be had, or to be raised for them. He stayed two days at different settlements, paying two dollars in trade for his keep. He sometimes made the Foster's for lunch. He was an educated man who had served seven years in the Germany army and came to America because he did not want his three small sons to live the life he had lived in barracks for seven years. But when the Civil War broke out he "fought mit Siegel" and two of the sons, now grown, enlisted. One was killed, the other paralyzed by the bursting of a shell. He used a crutch for his withered limbs, his arm hanging useless, "and Pete he is a fool from the shot" (shell shocked). "And Siegel, he save the Union mit us to fight mit him!" So he came to San Francisco to get his sick son well in California. He kept this son with him on his rounds, the younger coming on the selling end of the business in the city. They were honest and thrifty people. In winter it was impossible to go on the hill trips, so the farmers brought their produce to the state highway. His horses, he said, "couldn't pull the hills up to the top." THE CHILDREN'S PIN MONEY The Foster sons made their spending money by trapping quail and shooting rabbits or catching them when the grain was nearly cut in summer. These they sent to the San Francisco market by stage express, keeping them in cages till the law was out. The mother said the quail sang: "The law protects me, the law protects me!" before the law was out, then scuttered for cover to hide. Their traps were square with a slide at the top to take the quail out. They were built of split shakes with a trigger. They were set all over the ranch where the flocks roamed. The daughter was paid a cent a dozen for gathering eggs, and paid by the week for bedmaking, dishwashing, and so on, so they never were without their own earned money. With this the elder brother bought his tools to build his coaster wagons and his nails. And the times they had scooting downhill, steering those wagons when they did not upset, were all any eastern child could wish. The girl was as much a tomboy at this as her brothers and used the California expression, "You bet your life!" The mother was mortified and said: "Can't you use another word for 'You bet'?" The girl wanted to know what she could use. The mother replied: "Well, use 'I'll wager you'." But it wouldn't do at all. And "you bet" those quail pies were good, the rabbit and dumpling stews delicious. They made their own candles as there was plenty of tallow from the cattle which they butchered till lamps came. They had caps to put the light out, but were not coal oil. The fruit was put into bottles from the hotels, which came from France and England with pickles. The fruit was packed with syrup poured over and placed on a rock in the boiler and cooked till done, covered with a cloth dipped in rosin and tallow, mixed and hot, then tied down. There was seldom any loss. The dried fruit came from San Jose. The wild flowers of the coast were all-the-year-round living things but the mother and all the family assisted in the garden. Roses grew riotously as did shrubs but some tender things had to be covered in the winter. To bring home from San Jose some new additions and watch their growth took the housekeeper into the outdoors,not always sunshine, for the coast is noted for its fogs and cold winds. So the father went with a party of neighbors to the south where they had heard of a big ranch being divided and sold in a rich, sunny valley. They had given up trying to get a railroad to the Coast, and winter roads were impassable. The wharves were worked out every winter after building; so the farmers who went south bought land. They were the Martins, Foster, Bailard, Kenneys and some others. Father Foster bought 13 acres as he didn't decide to come until his wife, whose health had not been the best, could make up her mind to again move. So she took a trip to San Luis Obispo county with the oldest son and Lucy in company with Mr. Delaney and wife, cousins, and E. Marten, with a cousin, a Miss V. W., a school teacher just come out. They went to San Jose, then down the Coast to Colonel Hollister's sheep ranges. One night after supper they were singing around the campfire when a party of government surveyors came over and asked to join the party, after telling how homesick they were for a 'song to cheer." 66 The four ladies could sing as well as the three men and those young men never left the campfire till midnight. And "Home, Sweet Home" left them too broken up to sing more. But the rollicking songs of the Forty-Niners were not the war-time songs. The cousin who had just come from the east had all the new ones, which the surveyors also knew, and all knew the old ones, as sweet ever after as then. There was no occasion for solemn music on that summer evening under a big oak and beside the campfire. SONGS OF '49 AND WAR SONGS Songs by Forty-Niners Roll on, silver moon, guide the trav'ler on his way While the nightingale's song is in tune; Ever more will I stray by the sweet silvery light of the moon. The Dying Californian Where the cobwebs thickly gather for a curtain |