For persons who want to begin sheep-raising on a large scale and with capital the opportunities are not so good here now; but there are yet fine chances in Nevada, in the valley of the Humboldt, where already thousands of head of cattle, and at least one hundred thousand sheep, are now fed by persons who do not own the land at all.  I am told extensive tracts could be bought there at really low prices, and with such credit on much of it as would enable a man with capital enough to stock his tract to pay for the land out of the proceeds of the sheep.  The white sage in the Humboldt Valley is very nutritious, and there is also in the subsidiary valleys bunch-grass and other nutritious food for stock.  Not a few young men have gone into this Humboldt country with a few hundreds of sheep, and are now wealthy.  The winters are somewhat longer than in California, but the sheep find feed all the year round; and they are shorn near the line of the railroad, so that there is no costly transportation of the wool.  Mutton sheep, too, are driven to the railroad to be sent to market, and for stock, therefore, this otherwise out-of-the-way region is very convenient.

Riding through the foot-hills near Rocklin—­where I had been visiting a well-kept sheep-farm—­I saw a curious and unexpected sight.  There are still a few wretched Digger Indians in this part of California; and what I saw was a party of these engaged in catching grasshoppers, which they boil and eat.  They dig a number of funnel-shaped holes, wide at the top, and eighteen inches deep, on a cleared space, and then, with rags and brush, drive the grasshoppers toward these holes, forming for that purpose a wide circle.  It is slow work, but they seem to delight in it; and their excitement was great as they neared the circle of holes and the insects began to hop and fall into them.  At last there was a close and rapid rally, and half a dozen bushels of grasshoppers were driven into the holes; whereupon hats, aprons, bags, and rags were stuffed in to prevent the multitudes from dispersing; and then began the work of picking them out by handfuls, crushing them roughly in the hand to keep them quiet, and crowding them into the bags in which they were to be carried to their rancheria.

“Sweet—­all same pudding,” cried an old woman to me, as I stood looking on.  It is not a good year for grasshoppers this year; nothing like the year of which an inhabitant of Roseville spoke to me later in the day, when he said, “they ate up every bit of his garden-truck, and then sat on the fence and asked him for a chew of tobacco.”