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.