Martha of California: A Story of the California Trail
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At last we had come into California, and a beautiful country indeedit appeared to me while we remained near the river,--all the morebeautiful, perhaps, because of the suffering which it had cost us toget there. Both Ellen and I now came to believe our fathers had beenwise indeed to leave the banks of the muddy Mississippi for so gloriousa river as the Truckee.
All around us were evidences of bountiful nature, for the land wasseemingly overcrowded with game, with food on every hand for thecattle, beautiful flowers, and everything which goes to make one happy.
How long the journey had been I did not really know until Eben Jordancame to where Ellen and I were sitting on the grass with the skirtsof our gowns filled with flowers. He had in his hands a bit of paperon which he had set down, from what had been told him by the leadersof the company, the distance we people had traveled since leavingIndependence. This was no less than two thousand and ninety miles,to which one must add, in order to learn how long was our march, thedistance from Pike County to Independence, which would, so Eben said,make a total of about two thousand two hundred.
Even then we were nearly two hundred miles from San Francisco; howeverit was not the intention of our fathers to journey so far acrossCalifornia, for we had not come expecting to find gold, but to make forourselves farms, where we could live comfortably by honest industry.
Already I am writing as if we had come to an end of our journey, and soit seemed to me while we remained in camp on the bank of the TruckeeRiver; but there were yet many days of toil before we arrived at theplace where our people had decided to buy land.
It was yet necessary that we cross the Sierra Nevada, where we found aseemingly impassable trail over the mountains, yet we knew that peoplelike ourselves, traveling in the same way, had gone before us, and allthe dangers and the difficulties seemed lessened because of the factthat we had come so near to where we intended to make our new homes.
A HOME IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY
After much labor in descending the Sierras, we came upon the firstsettler's house we had seen since starting out. It stood in the valleyof the Sacramento, on what is called Bear Creek, and was owned by Mr.Johnson, who himself was a Piker.
To me the house was odd looking, not because of being so small as tohave only two rooms, but because it was built half of logs and halfof adobes, or bricks of mud which have been dried in the sun. It was arough building, and yet how homelike it appeared!
Unfortunately Mr. Johnson and his family were not at home. The buildingwas closed, and although the door was not really locked, it had beenfastened with strips of rawhide in such a manner as to show that theowner wished to keep out stragglers.
As we journeyed leisurely and comfortably down the valley of theSacramento, we saw now and then large droves of wild horses and elksfeeding peacefully on the plains, and there was never a night when EbenJordan, or some other of the hunters, did not bring in an abundance ofgame.
THE MISSION OF SAN JOSE
Then came that day when we arrived at the little village which iscalled the Mission of San Jose, and although everything about us wasstrange, we said to ourselves that at last we had come to our new home,for it was near that place our fathers intended to buy land.
The village of San Jose must at one time have had many hundredinhabitants; but when we arrived it was little better than a ruin. Thehouses, built of sun-dried bricks, were without roofs and crumblingslowly away, all of which appeared the more pitiful because of thewell-kept church and the fortlike two-story house where lived thepriests. Both buildings were in such good repair that they afforded astriking contrast to the tumble-down dwellings which could be seen nearat hand.
I would love to tell how father built for himself a house on land whichhe bought from the priests of the Mission, and how mother and I setabout making a home which should be somewhat the same in appearance asthe one we had left in Pike County, but it is not for me to do so.
OUR HOME IN CALIFORNIA
It may be that at some time when our home here is fully made as wewould have it, I can tell you how we live, what odd Spanish disheswe have on the table, how great a profusion of fruit is at our handfor the gathering, and very many other things which to me are mostinteresting.
I have learned to love this land even more than I did Pike County,which at one time I believed the most beautiful spot on earth, andalthough it pleases me now and then, when settlers come over the longtrail, to hear the younger members of the company singing "My name itis Joe Bowers," I have almost forgotten that Missouri was once my home.
I have come to look upon myself as belonging to this beautiful valleywhere Nature is so lavish with all her gifts, and therefore, instead ofcalling myself a Piker, as in the days gone by, I dearly love to writeso all may see, that I am now, and ever shall be as long as the goodGod allows me to remain in this world, Martha of California.
BOOKS CONSULTED IN WRITING MARTHA OF CALIFORNIA
BRYANT, EDWIN: What I Saw in California. D. Appleton & Co.
CLAMPITT, JOHN W.: Echoes from the Rocky Mountains. Belford, Clarke & Co.
CONNELLY, WILLIAM ELSEY: Doniphan's Expedition. Pub. by the Author.
DEXTER, A. HERSEY: Early Days in California. Tribune-Republican Press.
DRAKE, SAMUEL ADAMS: The Making of the Great West. Charles Scribner's Sons.
FREMONT, J. C.: The Second Expedition. Washington.
KNOWER, DANIEL: The Days of a Forty-Niner. Weed, Parsons Print. Co.
PAXSON, FREDERICK L.: The Last American Frontier. The Macmillan Company.
THORNTON, J. QUINN: Oregon and California. Harper & Brothers.
WOODS, DANIEL B.: Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings. Harper & Brothers.