The river and its upper tributaries abound in trout, and this region is famous among Californian sportsmen for deer and fish.  Many farm-houses along the road accommodate travelers who desire to stay to enjoy the fine scenery, and to hunt and fish; and a notable stopping-place is Fry’s Soda Spring, fourteen hours by stage from Redding, kept by Isaac Fry and his excellent wife—­a clean, comfortable little mountain inn, where you get good and well-cooked food, and where you will find what your stage ride will make welcome to you—­a comfortable bath.  The river is too cold for bathing here in the mountains because of the snow-water of which it is composed.  About ten miles south of Fry’s lies Castle Rock, a remarkable and most picturesque mountain of white granite, bare for a thousand feet below its pinnacled summit, which you see as you drive past it on the stage.

Fry’s lies in a deep canon, with a singular, almost precipitous, mountain opposite the house, which terminates in a sharp ridge at the top, one of those “knife-edge” ridges of which Professor Whitney and Clarence King often speak in their descriptions of Sierra scenery.  If you are a mountain climber, you have here an opportunity for an adventure, and an excellent guide in Mr. Fry, who told me that this ridge is sharp enough to straddle, and that on the other side is an almost precipitous descent, with a fine lake in the distance.  If you wish to hunt deer or bear, you will find in Fry an expert and experienced hunter.  He has a tame doe, which, I was told, is better than a dog to mark game on a hunt, its sharp ears and nose detecting the presence of game at a great distance.  If you are a fisherman, there are within three minutes’ walk of the house pools abounding in trout, and you may fish up and down the river as far as you please, with good success everywhere.  In June and July, when the salmon come up to spawn, they, too, lie in the deepest pools, and with salmon eggs for bait you may, if you are expert enough with your rod, take many a fat salmon.

[Illustration:  A BOTTLING-CELLAR.]

It is astonishing to see how the salmon crowd the river at the spawning season.  The Indians then gather from a considerable distance, to spear and trap these fish, which they dry for winter use; and you will see at this season many picturesque Indian camps along the river.  They set a crotch of two sticks in a salmon pool, and lay a log from the shore to this crotch.  Upon this log the Indian walks out, with a very long spear, two-pronged at the end and there armed with two bone spear-heads, which are fastened to the shaft of the spear by very strong cord, usually made of deer’s sinews.  The Indian stands very erect and in a really fine attitude, and peers into the black pool until his eye catches the silver sheen of a salmon.  Then he darts, and instantly you see a commotion in the water as he hauls up toward the surface a struggling twenty-five or thirty pound fish.  The bone spear heads, when