<h2 id="c26">ON THE SAN JOAQUIN.</h2>
<p>It was in the latter part of the month
of March that we started out from Fresno
for a day’s outing on the San Joaquin
river, hunting for hawk and owl eggs.
The day was bright and warm, and we
keenly enjoyed the ride of nine miles
across the plains. Out past the old,
deserted Holland Colony, where stumps
of vines showed that the settlers had once
made an honest attempt to win their daily
bread out of the hard pan. The last
half of the way lay across the hog-wallow
country, that peculiar effect which has
puzzled many scientists, but which all
attribute to the action of water in long
past ages. The rolling motion of rising
over and descending these mounds was
like the riding of a small boat over the
waves of the sea. Here and there a burrow
in the top of one of the mounds, the
domicile of the frisky ground-squirrel or
the billy owl, gave the landscape the appearance
of a dish of mush cooking, with
the air bubbles swelling up, and some
bursting, leaving the little holes. On
across canals, past a wheat country, and
then the virginal hog-wallow lands that
no plowshare has ever touched, covered
with a short green growth which gives
nourishment to bands of sheep, dirty, and
with numerous lambkins, guarded by a
few sagacious shepherd dogs and lonely,
and equally dirty, bearded Mexican herders.</p>
<p>The mounds grow higher and the hollows
deeper until we wonder if they
stretch on forever and if we are lost
among them, when all at once we come
out right on the top of a high bluff overlooking
the San Joaquin. The unexpectedness
is quite startling. One could not
possibly have suspected a moment before
that we were within miles of a great river
bed more than a mile wide, with steep
bluffs more than 300 feet high on either
side and a swift river sweeping down its
channel in the center, but here we were
right on the edge of it. We can look
down almost perpendicularly and see,
three or four hundred feet below us, great
green meadows stretching to the north
and south and to the trees and thickets
that edge the river. The river from this
distance and height seems but a thread in
its once vast bed. What a sight—what
a power it must have been when once it
filled all this vast bed, which often is more
than a mile across from bluff to bluff.
On the further side a few trees grow
right on the edge of the water, and then
the bluff rises abruptly even higher than
on our side. Buzzards and hawks are
sweeping around us in the air, and dark
spots in the tops of far-off trees betoken
the presence of the objects of our search,
the nests of the hawks. We begin the
descent, which at first seems extremely
hazardous, and even on further trial sufficiently
steep to make walking down
more of a pleasure than riding, as we
find. The road or path winds around and
around, as necessarily it must unless one
would go head-first to the bottom. It is
narrow and steep and the ruts deeply
worn in places by the action of water.
About half way down we come upon
what was once a canal, and we can see
the level ridge of its embankment stretching
away above and below us along the
side of the bluff, as it curves in and out.
What a vast undertaking it must have
been to build this great waterway along
the face of the bluff. As we near the bottom
clumps of elderberry and scraggly
greasewood appear, and we come upon
two little white eggs of the dove, laid in
a hollow in the ground—an early bird
surely.</p>
<p>At last we are safely down in the valley
and across the meadow, which is one
vast bed of poppies, a field of the cloth
of gold. Then we come down among the
huge cottonwoods and river oaks that
line the river bank and unharness our
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span>
horse and tie him where the grazing is
good and then start on our search. We
first make our way down to the river’s
edge and, lying flat on the sand and
rocks, drink to our content of the cool
water fresh from the snow of the Sierras.
The river is about five hundred feet
wide and varies from two hundred to a
thousand at this point. It is not high
now, for the spring floods come later,
with the melting of the snow, and in its
deepest part is not probably over eight
or ten feet, but it is swift—terribly swift.
It is a good swimmer that can hold his
own with the current for five minutes,
and in the swiftest part it is impossible
for a man to make any headway. The
bottom is of shifting sand and the channel
is ever changing. It is a deceitful
and treacherous river, though laughing
and sparkling in the sun to-day. It has
taken value for value for all the gold it
has given up. Here and there in the
deep places under the shadow of the bank
we can see catfish and big carp moving
lazily about. The catfish and a fish known
as the river trout can be caught with a
hook and line, but the carp never touches
bait, but there is considerable sport in
spearing them.</p>
<p>We pass up the stream with our eyes
directed at the tree tops, but now and
then at the ever-changing aspect of the
river, taking in all the beauties of
nature and the curious formation of the
steep sides of the bluff. The face of the
bluff represents excellently the different
geological layers of soil and stone, here
chalky, there slaty, and here gaudily
daubed with all the brilliant hues of a clay
formation. The cottonwood and the willows
are just beginning to show green.
Now and then we come upon a nest in
the cottonwood trees, far out over the
water. Sometimes it is an old one, but
often we are convinced otherwise by the
sudden departure of a screaming hawk as
we throw a dead limb in that direction.
Then comes the hard climb, the toilsome
shin to reach the first limb, with knees
and elbows hugging tightly the smooth,
slippery bark, taking advantage of every
little knot and twig, and then, the limb
gained, up from limb to branch, up into
the air, into the cooling breeze, feeling
for the instant the life of the birds, up
into the swaying lesser branches, up to
the tip-top, where the big, rough nest of
sticks is firmly placed, the nether end of
a jackrabbit carcass half hanging over the
edge, and numerous ears, paws and small
bones along the rim, and inside four
handsome, large, speckled brown eggs of
the squirrel hawk. Into our little sack
they go, regardless of the remonstrances
of the angry hawk, which is circling
around overhead, and with the sack firmly
held in our teeth we descend to the
ground, pack the eggs into our case and
go on. Sometimes in the distance huge
clumps of mistletoe on the river oaks look
like nests, but nearer approach shows the
difference. Mistletoe is very plentiful
here. What a place for a party of girls
and boys to spend Christmas. Now we
come upon a bend in the river where the
ground is all strewed with driftwood left
by some winter freshet. There is enough
to keep many families in fuel for a long
time, but it lies there untouched, inaccessible,
to be carried on at the next flood—on
to where? Who knows the ending
of the travels of a piece of driftwood
that starts from the mills far up in the
Sierras? The wood is washed smooth
and round and into every conceivable
shape. At places we pass through thickets
of rose bushes, blackberry vines, and
elderberry, which grow profusely all
along the river. In a many-limbed willow
tree, an easy climb and not a high
one, we find the nest of a horned owl,
with five round white eggs within. The
old bird stayed on the nest until we were
nearly to it and then, with a peculiar cry,
scrambled over the side and fell to the
ground as if shot, then arose to a neighboring
branch and sat there, uttering a
cry like a cat and swelling out her feathers
angrily, but all in vain. Further up
the river ran in close to the bluff on our
side, and as the traveling was rather difficult
along land that lay at an angle of
only five or ten degrees from the vertical,
we scrambled to the top, at times slipping,
and often pulling ourselves up by the
weeds, so steep it was. A misstep would
have sent us rolling into the river below.
In the face of the bluff squirrels had their
homes, and we found the dwellings therein
of two handsome big snowy owls, but
they had wisely chosen them in places
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span>
where the five degrees of slope was in
under us and a crumbling of the sand
meant a straight drop of fifty or sixty
feet, so we left them with “requiescat in
pace.” For a quarter of a mile we followed
along the top of the bluff, watching
the river and the tree tops below us.
Flocks of ducks were flying up and down
the river, quacking vigorously. Now and
then a big, ugly “shack” rose from a
stump and flapped across the river. Isles
big and little and middlesized were dotted
in the stream, all heavily covered with
underbrush, an excellent refuge for the
ducks in their nesting season a little later
on. A big white pelican sat on a log
watching its victims in the water. The
river curves and bends and doubles on
itself, and never goes straight for forty
yards at a time. At a bend we came upon
a scene that delighted our ornithological
eyes. One hundred feet below us, in the
tops of a clump of cottonwoods, was a
heronry. Dozens of big, basket-like nests
blackened the tree tops, and perched on
the very topmost branches were dozens
of long-legged, crooked-necked, great
blue herons. As we came upon them they
started up, flapping their wings, stretching
out their necks and pulling in their
legs behind them. Uttering cries like
those of the seagulls, they flapped off and
lit away upon the plains, but within sight
of us, and seemed to be holding a consultation.
We could see into the most
of the nests, and they were all empty. It
was a little too early for the birds to begin
nesting, and they were evidently mating
and perhaps deciding who should
have first choice. Some nests looked like
old family residences of many generations,
for they had several stories and
additions, porticos and dormer windows,
so to speak, in abundance.</p>
<p>We passed on, and when the valley
widened out again we descended and sat
down under the oaks to eat our luncheon.
It soon disappeared, the last morsel, and
we were on our way again. At long intervals
farm houses appeared on the edge
of the bluff, and in the river below one
of them, on the opposite side of the
stream from us, was a curious old water-wheel
on a flatboat securely moored to
the trees on the bank, and which laboriously
and noisily jerked water up
through a pipe to the bluff above. The
meadows along the river are the pasturage
of big herds of horses and cattle, and
one is lucky if one’s perambulations are
not interrupted by some inhospitable bull.
As we ascend the river it grows swifter
and more rocky and the top of the bluff
rolls higher and higher and the hills appear
in the distance. When we came to
the first of these low hills we climbed the
bluff and ascended it. It was a peculiar
formation of stone resembling sand in
softness or sand resembling stone in
hardness, we could hardly determine
which. It was seamed and ribbed, projecting
cliff-like into the air, with boulders
lying about and with caverns and
precipitous sides. As we scaled to the
top of it we scared away a number of
turkey buzzards that had been watching
our ascent, and it was evidently their
nesting place, as we discovered traces of
old nests and a good many bones of the
hapless denizens of the plains. We started
several of the big boulders at the edge
rolling and plunging down, and, though
most of them broke up in their downward
career, they stopped only when, after a
great plunge, they settled in the bed of
the river. Sometimes as they thundered
down they would startle a rabbit from
his repose, and off he would scamper in
great affright. But it was getting near
sundown and we were miles from our
wagon, and even when we reached that
we would be ten miles from home, so we
set out on our return with spirits not
lacking, but appetites sorely pressing. The
miles of climbing up hill and down hill
in the pure air had done us more good
than months in a gymnasium, and when,
long after dark, we reached our home in
Fresno town, what a supper we did eat.</p>
<p><span class="lr"><span class="sc">Charles Elmer Jenney.</span></span></p>
<div class="fig"> <ANTIMG src="images/img1037a.jpg" alt="" width-obs="680" height-obs="500" /> <p class="caption">BENGAL TIGER. <br/>(Felis tigris.)</p> </div>
<div class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</div>
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