[Illustration:  STREET IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON TERRITORY.]

The poor Indians have rapidly melted away under the fervent heat of forty-rod whisky, rifles, and disease.  This whole Northern country must have been populous a quarter of a century ago; General Bidwell and other old Californians have told me of the surprisingly rapid disappearance of the Indians, after the white gold-seekers came in.  It was, I do not doubt, a pleasant land for the red men.  They lived on salmon, clover, deer, acorns, and a few roots which are abundant on mountain and plain, and of all this food there is the greatest plenty even yet.  If you travel toward Oregon, by stage, in June, July, or August, you will see at convenient points along the Sacramento parties of Indians spearing and trapping salmon.  They build a few rude huts of brush, gather sticks for the fire, which is needed to cook and dry the salmon meat; and then, while the men, armed with long two-pronged spears, stand at the end of logs projecting over the salmon pools, and spear the abundant fish, the squaws clean the fish, roast them to dryness among the hot stones of their rude fire-place, and finally rub the dried meat to a powder between their hands, or by the help of stones, when it is packed away in bags for winter use.

What you thus see on the Sacramento is going on at the same time on half a dozen other rivers; and I am told that these Indians come from considerable distances to this annual fishing, which was practiced by them doubtless a long time before the white men came in.  Not unfrequently in these mountains you will find a castaway white man with a half-breed family about him; “squaw-men” they are called, as a term of contempt, by the more decent class.

As you drive by the farm-houses on the road, you may commonly see venison hanging on the porch; and every farmer has a supply of fishing-rods and lines, so that you can not go amiss for trout and venison.  Few of them know, however, that a trout ought to be cooked as quickly as possible after he is caught; and if you do not take care, your afternoon fish will appear on the table next day as corned trout, in which shape I have no liking for it.

The Shasta Valley contains a good deal of excellent farming land, but it is used now chiefly for cattle and sheep, and in many parts of it the grazing is very fine.  There are a number of lesser valleys scattered through the mountains hereabouts.  Indeed, the two ranges seem to open out for a while, and Scott’s Valley on the west, and the Klamath Lake country to the east and north-east from Yreka, are favorite grazing regions.  Here there is occasional snow in the winter, and some cold weather; the spring opens later and the rains last longer.  The streams in all this region bear gold, and miners are busy in them.  Yreka, in the Shasta Valley, is the centre of a considerable mining district, and therefore a busy place, even without the Modoc war, which gave it a temporary renown during the winter and spring.  Now that the Modoc war is closed, no doubt the famous lava beds will attract curious visitors from afar.  They can be reached in thirty-six hours from Yreka; and that place is distant thirty-six hours from San Francisco.