As you ascend the valley, the madrone, one of the most striking trees of California, becomes abundant and of larger growth, and its dark-green foliage and bright cinnamon-colored bark ornament the landscape.  The laurel, too, or California bay-tree, grows thriftily among the hills, and the plain and foot-hills are dotted with oak and redwood.  This valley is as yet somewhat thinly peopled, but it has the promise of a growth which will make it the equal some day of the Santa Clara, and the superior, perhaps, of the Napa Valley.

[Illustration:  INDIANS SPEARING SALMON, COLUMBIA RIVER.]

CHAPTER VII.

AN INDIAN RESERVATION.

A part of Round Valley, in Mendocino County, is set apart and used for an Indian reservation; and, under the present policy of the Government, an attempt has been made to gather and keep all the Indians of the northern coast of California upon this reserve.  In point of fact they are not nearly all there.  One thousand and eighty-one men, women, and children, according to a census recently taken, or nearly one thousand two hundred according to the Rev. Mr. Burchard, the Indian agent, are actually within the reservation lines; and about four hundred are absent, at work for themselves or for white men, but have the right to come in at any time to be clothed and fed.

Round Valley is a plain surrounded by high mountains.  The plain is mostly excellent agricultural land; the mountain slopes are valuable for grazing.  The reservation contains, it is said, sixty thousand acres; but only a small part of this is plain, and the reservation occupies about one-third or perhaps only a quarter of the whole valley.  The remainder is held by white farmers; and there is a rude little town, Covelo, in the centre of the valley, about a mile and a half from the reservation house.

The reservation has a mill, store-houses, the houses of the agent and his subordinates, two school-houses, and the huts of the Indians; the latter are either rough board one-roomed shanties, or mere wigwams built by the owners of brush, with peculiar low entrances, into which you must creep on all-fours.  These they prefer for summer use, and I found that a number of the board-shanties were empty and the doors nailed up, their owners sensibly preferring to live in brush houses during the hot weather.

When I arrived at the agency the Indians were receiving their ration of flour, and, as they gathered in a great court-yard, I had an opportunity to examine them.  They are short, dark-skinned, generally ugly, stout, and were dressed in various styles, but always in such clothing as they get from the Government; not in their native costume.  Among several hundred women I saw not one even tolerably comely or conspicuously clean or neat; but I saw several men very well dressed.  They carried off their rations in baskets which they make, and which are water-tight.  The agent or superintendent, Mr. Burchard, very obligingly showed me through the camp, and answered my questions, and what follows of information I gained in this way.