Scottsville News: We are sorry to hear that Dr. Kendall will soon emigrate to Oregon with the intention of making that place his future home.
"County Clippings," Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, August 24, 1893, page 2


    Rev. R. P. Kendall, wife and daughter of Mitchell County, Kansas, arrived here on Friday and took the afternoon train on U.P. railway for Medford, Oregon, where they will make their future home. Mr. Kendall has done mission work here for the Episcopal church in days gone past and we were '49 and his views on the silver question. We trust they will have had a pleasant and satisfactory trip and that their future home may become all their heart's desire.
"Personal," Solomon Sentinel, Solomon, Kansas, November 8, 1893, page 1


    They said, "Don't start upon Friday; it's bad luck." Well, then, [we] will go to Beloit on Thursday to be ready for the U.P. on Friday morning. "Well, that is a start, and will break the luck."
    The sale had been well attended, and Mr. Dawson's auction on the same day was a success, and so no regrets dogged our footsteps. At the hotel table the "professor" held forth upon silver, monopoly and bible. One guest said, "If the government were to demonetize gold tonight, tomorrow it would pass current one hundred cents to the dollar, and if at the same time silver were made the ultimate redemption, it would fall to sixty cents." The professor demanded proof; for once, said he, silver was at a premium.
    But with some changes in baggage and freight next morning by the gentlemanly U.P. officials, our household embarked in good order. The taking away of the second passenger train makes too long waits at Solomon City for the westbound traveler, and this was chosen as the least of the two evils.
    An hour was spent with the Solomon engineer in the shops, and then a call was made upon E. B. Burnett, of the Sentinel. To the question propounded to Cadden's fireman if the Solomon engine could haul the usual Union Pacific passenger, the reply was made that it could readily be done, but not as good time could be made as with the large locomotive.
    But waits, like stories, have an end, and shortly after 5 p.m. the delayed "Pacific Express No. 7," billed for Portland on the next Tuesday morning, came along.
    The train, notwithstanding its portentous name, traveled only at a moderate pace. We had desired to see the cultivated plains of Kansas shade off into the wastes, or cattle ranges of Colorado, but night soon drew her sable curtains and closed all passenger eyes in Pullman tourist car No. 965 until morning opened up in the latter state in sight of Pike's Peak.
    After much switching and change of front upon the "Y" at Denver, we got off towards Cheyenne, and noticed the work of a just closing snowstorm upon the summits of the Rockies. Much change was visible everywhere since passing over the road eleven years before. In December, 1882, scarcely a field or even a stack of native grass was seen. This time field after field came in quick succession, and large alfalfa ricks were too numerous to count; and the hamlet of Greeley had grown to an electricity lights city. The shabby station house at Cheyenne had been changed for a huge depot like a statehouse. At the latter city we were joined by a sergeant and twenty-three privates of the U.S. army, for four different points on the Pacific Slope. The sergeant and all but five men left our company at Ogden and went on to the Presidio, San Francisco, by the San Francisco "No. 7." Private Parkes, a soldier of eleven years' service, led the four remaining as far as Pendleton before he left our "Portland No. 7." He it was that remarked that desertions were far too frequent yet, in spite of the better regulations and presumably better men. He said it was the first year of service that tried all recruits, no matter if their characters were of the best in the beginning. The new life is not hard, but it is to any newcomer monotonous and tiresome, with its never-ceasing daily routine of unchanging duty. If the recruit gets safely past his first year he is then sure to remain a satisfied and reliable soldier. In addition the arrangements are such that a soldier can buy his time and be honorably discharged. What could be expected, he said, but that nearly all the German recruits turned back all their pay to the U.S. paymaster and received time certificates at four percent per annum compounded every six months.
    But we return to say that the plains were very dusty, and the first morning duty was to dust the blankets and quilts; a dirty job, and unavoidable under any circumstances. About mid-afternoon of Saturday, the 4th, the train made the usual stop at the "Ames" monument, on the summit of the Rockies, where, as always, several tourists descended in order to pick up specimens of any curious stone to preserve as mementos. Now, Mr. Editor, try to persuade Kansas people to quit using the word "souvenir," for not over one in ten pronounces it correctly. We had almost forgotten to tell that during the first night we were treated to two showers of an overpowering scent not used by the fashionable world, except in infinitesimal dilution as "musk." Two striped animals with large bushy tails no doubt met an untimely end, with no monument but some traveler's diary. Once again we met such on the Utah Northern, and an additional one on the Oregon Short Line, in the Snake River Valley. Fortunately the perfume each time staid but four or five minutes.
    The "lie over" for the Portland-bound in Ogden was not unpleasant, for our party passed a pleasant two hours in going to a handy Episcopal church and witnessing a communion service. Then, too, the "tourist" was not crowded and the company quite agreeable. It must here be explained that the baggage remains at Granger to await "the flyer," No. 1, which is made up twelve hours later, but the passengers are taken to Ogden because a pleasanter place to "lie over." Here our party bought supplies as cheap as in Beloit. On the morning of reaching Ogden we saw the Pulpit Rock in Weber Canyon, on the right-hand side of the train, upon which, in their first migration, the assembled hosts of Mormonism were addressed by their leader, Brigham Young.
    A short distance below, the "Thousand Mile Pine Tree" with its big white sign hove in sight on the left side. Since Mrs. K. passed it in June, 1891, some vandal has burnt its base enough to kill, and unless some sprouts soon grow, in a few years the tree will be a mere memory.
    A Poughkeepsie photographer watched for the Devil's Pass or Hellgate. His children called Poughkeepsie, "P'kip'sy."
    We're again too fast, for we had intended relating E. B. Burnett's anecdotes of the Chicago fair, which came under his eyes. On no evening while he was there did the crowds find adequate transportation out, and every car saw numbers clinging to other men's clothes, who had to call upon the police to club them off. The egress was a death struggle for hours into the night. It is said that the entire plant of foreign characteristics is to assemble at San Francisco this winter, and hence the Pacific hopes to see the best part of the great show at small expense.
    When the "Overland Flyer" took us in tow at Pocatello it brought into our car a facetious fellow of Yakima, Washington, whither he was returning with his family from a visit to Brown County, Kansas, where all their folks lived. He had seen a large part of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington and yet declared that Kansas was worth them all. He had spent over five years on the Pacific Slope, and intended next spring to return to Hiawatha. In reply to the question if he would sell out his farm in the Yakima, he said that he had none to sell, and did not want it, for he'd consider it an insult for any man to offer him real estate in Washington. He said that he worked on the Sound in summer to escape the heat of interior Washington, which, in his estimation, was equal to Hades, and then worked in Yakima in winter to avoid the everlasting rain and bottomless mud of the Sound in the winter.
    As we rumbled on down Snake River the "bunchgrass" grew greener and better. Farms by the score had been opened since 1885, and the country was seemingly well supplied with large ricks of alfalfa, some of which was just being hauled and stacked. Of course our old Oregon acquaintance, sagebrush, was nearly always in sight, and flourishing.
    At Hailey Junction a Japanese and his wife came aboard. He was educated in the East, and talked as an American. His wife knew but few words. He had a son twenty-four years old who took charge of his store in Nampa, Idaho, and we later learned that he was in the employ of the Union Pacific as paymaster and accountant for all the coolies and Chinamen in their employ. He dropped off at Huntington, while the wife went on to Portland, where doubtless she found acquaintances and company.
    Late Monday night we entered the moist area of the Columbia, where all our household contracted bad colds, as well as many others on the train, the mother the worst.
    We were busy at Portland, for there were many errands while awaiting the Southern Pacific from the Sound and Northern Pacific. The mother was about laid up, but was ready for the south when train was announced. A whole night up the Willamette, over the Calapooias and next morning into the heart of the Siskiyous, where all was debarked, and we were met with open arms and driven to the homes of Aaron Andrews and Joseph Poley. Mother was the sickest woman we ever saw ride thus, but she insisted upon going.
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, November 30, 1893, page 7


    Safely through, in respect to all but health. It is reported by two residents of the Rogue River Valley that all coming in at this variable season of the year contract virulent and distressing colds, which soon pass away and leave the system acclimated. The cashier of the Rogue River Valley Bank said: "My parents came in about two weeks prior to you and have fully recovered from the characteristic colds. I was at the depot, saw you alight and remarked that you had the acclimation distemper." But ours began when we descended the Blues of Eastern Oregon and entered the damp latitude of the Columbia which partakes quite largely of the winters of the areas west of the Cascades. In fact we found rain as soon as we got down the Blues, in which snowstorms had been sporting for two days; and mud was seen as far southeast in Idaho as nearly to Shoshone. We had never before seen rain in the latter state. The rain in the Columbia Valley increased all the way to Portland; but ceased long before we reached the head of the Willamette. No rain showed when we crossed the first range of the Calapooias and began to ascend one branch of the Umpqua through the famous "Cow [Creek] Canyon," over thirty miles long with six short tunnels where turns of the river were too short to follow. It is one of the prettiest canyons we have ever seen, and the stream is an ideal romance. How the boys would enjoy a fish in its pellucid and rippling waters! Several placers were noticed and in some men at work. Near the head of the canyon it began to drizzle, which ceased as soon as the San Francisco made a dodge out of the canyon through a small pass and landed us at a small station on the summit, a lumber camp. The path up the canyon showed no large sticks but fir; but as soon as the summit was gained yellow pine became numerous, and inside of a mile it began to predominate. When we reached the level of the Rogue it was all pine. This river is much like the former but a great deal larger. Since reaching our destination we are told that the Rogue has now [an] abundance of salmon. Where we are writing, forty rods from Aaron Andrews, the surrounding mountain timber is fir containing some pine; in fact we write on a rustic deal table in a fir-log, one-story house, pretty well up in the foothill mountains, six miles from the city of Medford, whither we move tomorrow, having secured a two-story frame house with four rooms and having attached three acres of garden and seven acres of pasture. From our window we see two ranges of mountains with two snow peaks in the range behind, "Three-Fingered Jack" and "Thielsen." They were the southernmost snow peaks of the Cascades, in plain sight when we traveled the sage plains and juniper deserts of Eastern Oregon in the early '80s. Three nights since we helped Joe, our host, hull soft-shell almonds which were gathered from trees in the edge of the main valley three miles away and many hundred feet below. Yesterday we removed the historic piano--Joe and me--from the Medford depot to the house for which we have paid our month's rent. Last March the Call contained a romantic account of the removal of a piano from the Beloit depot to Gilbert upon a sexagenarian wagon, and that the instrument would displace an organ which was destined for some lonely dwellers in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon. Well, that venerable wagon took the organ also to the depot and we saw the instrument today, and the veteran vehicle also returned to the depot the piano to be shipped to Medford, in the heart of the Siskiyous. The honors to the superannuated "dead axle" did not stop with carrying the piano to Beloit, for at the sale it brought one dollar and seventy-five cents. Our nearest neighbor had said that he would bid five cents and did not expect any competition. Man proposes, God disposes! Some of the mountaineers are having mild attacks of the grippe, Aaron Andrews among them. Yesterday an old Illinois acquaintance, Stewart of Payson, was shipping a carload of pears in boxes to Portland, and said it was the sixteenth car which he had dispatched with fruit. But as an offset we saw also an orchard full of fine-looking apples badly infested with leprosy scab. People were invited to take them gratis, but only one was availing himself of the invitation. He would select the finest and risk the harm from use. But we return to the start to say the U.P. graciously, through T. H. Jones, placed at our disposal a section of a tourist sleeper gratis. We were loaded with bedding and knew that entire comfort was possible. At Solomon about 4:30 p.m., "Pacific Express, No. 7," drew up and the party went aboard. After the start and glances to the right and left and rear, Mrs. K. intimated to the porter the condition; to which he replied, "I knew that before leaving Kansas City." Hence Agent Jones had performed his entire duty. "But," said the porter, "the Pullman company can't afford so to do." "You said you were fully notified?" "Certainly; but this is only a ruse of the U.P. to secure passengers." "Are we directors or guardians of either Pullman or the U.P?" "Of course not; but do you know that you can have no use of the Pullman specials?" "Most assuredly we are prepared for all requisitions; not one wanting." "But this is an imposition upon the Pullmans." "Why didn't you complain to headquarters of each at Kansas City?" "There were the orders and no one would listen." "Neither shall we." So the porter of Tourist Sleeper No. 9650 quit pomposity and began a course of wheedling, the animus of his first course appearing further on. The Pullman Tourist Sleeper, when fully furnished, so called, in daytime is as uncomfortable as possible, for its bare seat and back are as hard as any other smooth board. With our own furnishing our seats could be what we chose. A traveler aboard from far Washington state informed us that the N.P. furnished upholstered seats free with no charge unless coverings and curtains were demanded. When our long layover came at Ogden we gave the porter a quarter to watch our luggage while we went to church. After that he was all smiles and courtesy; and this doubt in his mind was probably the cause of his inexcusable intrusion at first. This is a wonderful fruit country and a special
prune area, of which specimens will soon be sent to Beloit in order to find an earlier market than by waiting until the market season here begins. The person who plans the departure has an especially fine lot. Wagonloads of good apples will go to waste. All late grapes were some frosted and will be ungathered in the main; and yet they taste pretty well. One day we ate two bunches twice the size of any in Kansas. One man has a small pawpaw orchard which is a perfect success. Joe plans to go a-fishing; if so a report may be made.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, December 1, 1893, page 5



    The others are nearly well, but emigration in November westward don't seem to agree with the father, and he stays that same old "two and sixpence."
    But the mountain landscapes and phenomena are interesting. A blue haze has painted the north end of the Siskiyou and all the Umpqua Range, with a light cloud hanging over all.
    The Pitt Range to the east has been much the same, except a small snow cloud on one peak, and a big snowstorm may be on Pitt itself, but we being in the valley it is below our horizon, notwithstanding Andrews may see it plainly.
    To the south a snowstorm has been in action in the Siskiyous nearly all the time for sixty hours, and the Klamath summits have had a share. The clouds form and dissolve but we have never yet seen any motion in them. If a breeze sets in from the north or northeast the clouds are dissolved and no new ones are formed while from that quarter. There is seldom an actual wind, but if a breeze sets in from any other quarter than the two named, clouds will collect and rain or snow may fall. The true "rainy season" does not normally set in until Christmas. But this country did have an extra rainfall in September and October which extended to Washington and Montana, and damaged the harvest in the two latter to the verge of a general calamity. Upon the Pacific, north of the latitude of the Umpqua, harvest is always very late, never earlier than September. Snow, even, fell upon the oat fields of Montana before they were harvested. Stock seems to be worth almost nothing. Last week a herd of cayuses came through, which the owner offered at four dollars per head for the lot; then no offer being made, he offered to sell the choice at the same price. They were unbroken. An unbroken herd around at Mt. Pitt was offered upon the halves to any one who would break the owner's share. Men ask one hundred dollars for a horse until obliged to sell, and then they take twenty-five dollars or less. Andrews says he can buy the best horse in the country for twenty-five dollars if the owner must sell.
    The electric, cable and steam transit of the great cities has destroyed the market for the horse car and coach horse. No doubt the bicycle has added its baleful influence, but this coast does not propose to found a political party to correct the condition.
    Three nights ago a genial old gentleman, Mr. Conkling; called. From his narrations we guess him an old hero. He and his family had once suffered shipwreck in the Caribbean Sea, and two years ago he moved down by rail from near Dayton, Washington. We proffered to write his history but he declined to have his name mentioned in the papers. In time we hope to persuade him into it. How many families we encounter with interesting and even thrilling histories!
    Although this is a romantic country, nothing of the kind is seen among the people; they are all plain, matter-of-fact. We haven't seen a polished black shoe even upon the feet of the aristocratic lawyer of the town! On Sunday we were too sick to go to meeting, else we might have observed more. No much-dressed woman has been on the street, but all were well behaved, and two noticeably disfigured.
    We meet here no pretense to wealth, notwithstanding two men hold half the stock in the bank, owning also the grist mill. Sinister "style" would be worth far less than in Kansas. Hence it would be vanity to wear, presumably, gold chains, watches, diamonds, etc., unless able. All the old men are mellow; that is, they have had enough trying experience to make them very charitable towards others, and consequently they are never officious or self-assertive. Women are women, not female men. We haven't seen any style of the "loud" woman.
    A distillery is in operation and maintains the price of corn and wheat. Nobody is made the poorer by it. The hotel has a barroom into which we have not looked, but no one is ever disturbed in passing. No drunk men have been seen.
    Day before yesterday we saw the boys and girls in line playing "sling dirt" or "crack-the-whip." How it pleases the average boy of nature to pretend to be "slung" heels over head so that he can have a right royal tumble! So was it here, and how the girl of nature did laugh at the boys' monkeyshines! The latter were dirty, but not ragged.   
    The half of the mountaineers come down in the winter to occupy little houses in order to send their children to school. Seven teachers are in the one large building, and one lady alone has seventy-eight, mainly from the hill families. Someday we will try to visit the school, for it is nearby.
    Three o'clock, p.m. The storm all around in the mountains finally let down rain in the valley, and consequently the father, having no rubbers, can't go for milk! Fortunately the other two have the necessary foot gear, and the dairy is only one block away. Cows run free upon the commons and find a living. Full and grade Jerseys are abundant and cheap. No ranging swine are seen, but we are told that no law hinders. Acorns and manzanita berries are abundant and furnish subsistence for hogs, and bear! Significant hunting is done. One man in the Pitt Range subsists by it, and he has a family. No bear are hunted until frost has fallen in the valleys, and this hunter has secured six large pelts, the meat and pork yielding him a year's supply. If he tans the hides properly they will yield twenty-five dollars each, probably. Andrews says that he often sees deer. Pheasant and two kinds of quail are plenty. The magpie, so universal over the Pacific, we have not yet seen. Black topknot blue jays are abundant. The hooting owl, seldom seen west of the Missouri bottoms, is often heard, and Andrews reports often seeing one kind of which we had never before heard, which does not heed man's presence.
    Poultry in and near the timber and hills has many persevering enemies among both large and small vermin, and they cannot safely wander ten rods from the house. The cougar watches for pigs, but an old sow or boar is more than a match for him; and even a bear is not eager to attack an old boar and two sows. Of course the grizzly is excepted; but the pigs are not likely to wander so high as his range. It is a curious study to observe the natural limitations of all wild animals.
    Thus in the Himalayas of Asia the wild sheep stay mostly above the limit of the wild carnivore, and are thus as safe as in a barnyard. Domestic sheep, from the Rockies to the Pacific, if pastured above the timber line, are pretty safe from even the golden eagle. He cannot float or soar well in the rarefied atmosphere above the summits. Timber wolves and coyotes are never seen near the upper timber line. Grizzlies, nevertheless, often have their homes amongst the crags of a bleak summit, while their foraging for food is done at a much lower altitude.
    Deer, like the elk, goat and bighorn, love the heights even in midwinter, and we have seen them with field glasses, on the bleak top of "Cinnabar" in the Blues, plowing roads through the deep snow and pawing to clear a clump of moss, which they love. Both elk and deer multiply exceedingly when unmolested by man. An old Oregonian in the John Day once told me that the elk always goes to the summits near a good spring to bring forth her calf. Where numerous enough they stay in herds like buffalo or domestic cattle; but the bucks and bulls do not follow to the summits, for instinct teaches that the females will be safe. Sometime we hope to meet the hunter of Mt. Pitt and get some of his wood and mountain lore; but we'll promise not to indulge in any bear hunt.
    All the old soldiers rejoice at the "avalanche" of '93, which means more and better to them than the "landslide" of November, 1892.
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, December 7, 1893, page 2


EDS. CALL:
    This strange climate! Yesterday Mrs. Kendall said to a newly found neighbor, "When is winter coming?" "This is it now." So this morning frost is on the window glass, on the planks and on the grass--Fahrenheit 26 above. Yesterday we went over by the depot to see the tramps camped under some white oaks where they had two big fires. A carpenter's bench was utilized for a table, upon which they had their kitchen, which consisted of empty five-gallon coal oil cans for cooking and quart fruit cans to hold their coffee and soup. Their utensils reminded us of prison life in Cahaba and Libby; but the "tramps" seemed cheerful and happy, and two were getting shaved by their comrades. "Cold comfort," said we. "Best we can do; and better this than no shave," quoth they. True philosophers. "Whence and whereaway boys?" "We are from the blarsted harvest fields of Washington and are better off than those who stayed." This was lamentably true, for our private correspondence from both Washington and Montana told of the calamitously unseasonable rains and snows in those high latitudes and altitudes which had brought even the well-to-do to the "slough of despond." Scores of fields were never harvested; and hundreds of harvests rotted before the weather got dry enough to thresh. Even that which was threshed was nearly all unmarketable from sprouting, moulding and smut. Those who could, borrowed and paid their hands; scores of men could not do that; could not even borrow for their own personal necessities. How sad that a financial crisis should have aggravated the general gloom. The tramp crowd were about eighteen in number and very civil. Just at this point a citizen of about fifty years came up and said, "Didn't I hear you make an address in the Presbyterian church at the Bible Society meeting?" "Yes, we were there and perpetrated some such." "Well, you didn't tell me anything new; and why didn't you tell these men how to make a living; why don't you tell them how to cultivate ten cents worth of self-respect and go to work. Here you are getting your magnificent salary--in fact all of you are the same--and why don't you come down from your loftiness and have some sympathy for the poor laboring man?" The haranguer then paused to catch his breath, when we mildly intimated that all the salary we had got or expected for the past three months would not till one tramp's mouth. Then when he had again got his wind, he continued. "Huh, poor preacher, poor pay!" Just at this juncture a tramp stepped up to him and said, "See here, Mr. Man, we don't want any more of your insult and you'll much oblige by not compelling us to remove you out of harm's way." Then he said to us, "Then you are acquainted with these men?" "No, never saw them before, but their camp fire reminded of soldiering and emigration. And not only that, twice in life we were stranded and had to beg meals and shelter. Tramping is no disgrace when it is inevitable." "Are you a populist?" quoth he. The same tramp again stepped up and said, "We will not hear you talk any longer and will see if your mouth can't be shut." We forgot to say that once in his harangue he accused them of not wanting employment. Several crowded around and caused him to conclude to retreat. Afterwards they told me that their original numbers had been decreased one-half by hiring, that three had found work the day before and that two had a prospect for that day. They had hopes of all getting places before reaching San Francisco. Thence we found our way to the packing house where a hog's head was obtained for a dime, from which would be made head cheese and "punhoss," Pennsylvania for Yankee "scrapple." We are utterly unable to unravel the etymology. But our party has learned something about coffee. Begin with a clean vessel four to six hours prior to the meal. Put in both coffee and cold water to soak until mealtime. Then near mealtime set the pot where the water may merely heat and not boil one iota. When hot enough to drink, take off for use. It is then clear as crystal, strong and full of aroma which is driven off by boiling. The grounds can be left in until too large a body; for they do not become muddy as always when boiled. Once we said that clouds here did not move but merely formed, perhaps precipitated rain or snow, and then melted away or were reabsorbed into the atmosphere, but they have since been seen moving twice, but stopped before reaching the opposite summit and hung until dissolved. They came from the western summits driven by the trade wind from the Pacific. We often wonder what has become of the play phraseology of school days, for frequently we have stopped and listened to the marble game for the familiar cry when two were knocked--"doubs" in order to secure both if the opposite "side" did not forestall with "fen-doubs!" which would compel the shooter to put one back in the ring. Then if the "toy"--shooting marble--unfortunately roll into a depression: "ups" or "fen-ups." Then if the "fen up" get in his work first he has the privilege of bidding the unfortunate "Knuckle down old fellow"; then all he can accomplish is to get a few inches away from the hole. "Rounds" if he wanted a better chance and "fen" did not block his way. How in vain we have listened for the familiar cries and the utter absence has made the games seem so spiritless.
    One at our elbow says that base ball with its new and attractive terminology has done the work of almost totally revolutionizing schoolboy life. There is one advantage in this, and that is to make boys more exact in their game laws and language; and there was truly a large margin for improvement, we old ones must confess; and so we will discuss the matter in a more favorable light.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, December 22, 1893, page 5


    Two days and the intervening night, a dense fog; and of course damp and chilly. Even the Presbyterian church yesterday afforded no comfortable warmth, and the sermon failed to compensate, notwithstanding characteristically creditable to the preacher, whose text was taken from the lamps of the wise and foolish virgins. His opinions of the congregation were not accurately defined.; but he did not, as another two weeks before, in a different building, pray for the "strangers in the pews!" To a probable question we reply, Our church has yet no regular ministrations in this valley, and it requires time to arrange a programme. Nevertheless, religion and piety are not wanting, and no semblance of an oath has yet been uttered in the hearing of any of our family. Perhaps the "west side" may be the circumspect and aristocratic quarter of the city! Then, too, the students' "brass band," performing five days in a week, may be the potent cause of the regular and exemplary living! These "students" are only the pupils of the city schools; but the whole mass enters and departs to the tap of the bass drum, occasionally reinforced by the snare, played by a small boy, not larger or older than Freddy Moon. It sounds all right and in time to us, but we are not connoisseurs. The boys and girls keep step well, and one often thinks how it fills up a boy's ideal of desirable and active life. Several other boys handle the drumsticks well; but we have not yet learned that any girls are emulating Alf. Mann's daughter. A little tad, scarcely as old or large as Alfred Hillman's curly-haired boy, plays a bugle; but we are not enough au fait to tell accurately its key. One boy has a gold inlaid horn which cost his father two hundred dollars; but he is able to bear the expense. The band teacher also happens to be one of the school teachers, and has a silver instrument, inlaid with gold, whose value has not been told. The performers have yet no uniform, but expect to earn it by playing, and a small fund has already accumulated. We have yet heard no remarks intimating that the music interferes with school studies, like preparations for "exhibitions."
    Ten days ago a grade Jersey was engaged, and the Dane said he would bring her on Sunday, because he could get help upon no other day; which all might appear rather irreverent and inconsistent did he not belong four miles outside the city, on the opposite side from our domicile! Nevertheless a Disciple preacher, a cousin of John C. Wigle, of West Asher, told us that the Scandinavian was the very soul of honor, and that he could be relied upon implicitly! This man and his brother live upon "doby" soil, and cannot get their land plowed within the limit of favorable time for stirring unless they work seven days in a week; and the large body of soil within our present vision is just such material! That soil is productive; and in 1892 bore a good crop of peaches, when the hardpan and friable soils bore nothing. Our soil is hardpan--the desert, underlaid with a too-continuous cement floor, or subsoil. This "cement" is conglomerate, or pebbles cemented together like brittle rock, and only occasionally allowing water to leach through readily. The cow man was a railroad conductor in Denmark for fifteen years, and knew something of the world. The brother once lived in Phillips County, Kansas. They have now seventy Angora goats, for whose fleece they get eighteen cents a pound, and each full-sized animal shears two pounds. They roam in a large mountainside pasture, and get only what they find for feed, and are always fat. The wethers and a few kids go to the butcher. A widowed sister lives with them, whose two daughters are active school teachers. The octogenarian mother has not yet learned English, and, obviously, never will. So you see that these people are not dregs, and we must try to explain the Sunday anomaly, which may get notice in some future chapter. The cow did come, is as represented, and possibly is better than any we sold on Dry Creek, at the Brownsville Manor.
    Aaron Andrews has contracted to sell his Illinois property at a nice advance, and all the documents have been transmitted; bought by a St. Louis man.
    Grippe is prevalent, but not virulent, and none fatal.
    Merchants complain of unusual dullness in the holiday goods trade; and even lawyers complain. The second-hand store says its trade is almost nothing. There is some demand, but would-be movers, from whom he gets his stock, are too poor to emigrate, and there is no surplus of tools. The main emigration away, he says, is in the spring. Last week a boy brought him the pelt of a half-grown bear; but he would not pay the sum demanded; and so it was left to be sold with some beef hides from the butchers. The animal had been captured when a small cub, kept as a pet, and had become too cross to be allowed to live.
    Pat. Daily has not yet appeared, notwithstanding we have been expecting a call.
    Our fruit man, Stewart, has sent two cars of apples to the States, in addition to many to Portland and San Francisco. Dried fruit has not yet begun moving out. Hogs are very healthy, no kind of disease appearing; and one weighing four hundred and eighty was butchered on the 11th; but the majority seem quite long-snouted. Only a few miles away, on the Pitt plateau, it is very cold, the mercury coquetting with zero; but even there a number of men have grass and stock ranches, and "bunchgrass" begins to appear in quantities, which increase means increase of subsistence. Also, an old hunter tells me that in the summits, beyond the plateau, elk are found, and increase east and north.
    Our old hunters are publishing warnings to "pot hunters," unscrupulous deer slayers, who are flagrantly violating the game laws.
    More new gold placers are being worked this winter; and one miner found $4000 in one small "pocket." Occasionally the whole community gets excited and starts out prospecting. For three days last fall Aaron Andrews and his son George went on just such a tour, and did not neglect their own premises! They found "color" in several places. Several old miners search with a $5 gold coin, a vial of quicksilver and a divining fork of peach or witch hazel, by some process of incantation; and in some future chapter it will be described.
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, January 11, 1894, page 4


    On the 23rd of December we saw two boxcars of "household" undergoing unloading at the Medford depot, livestock among the lading. What a blunder those men commit! Horses are 50 percent cheaper than in "the States," and cows about 40. Quite a number are arriving, mostly because a smooth-tongued preacher, perhaps under special pay, has been in Iowa and one or two other places "booming" this valley. Many a man is reverting to the time when he had a good farm in "the States," and hasn't anything like the same independence here--and never will: for "the Pacific" has no sympathy for the man who has "lost his grip."
    Had we been here one month earlier, apples, pears and peaches could have been laid in at 12½¢ a bushel. A lessee would have looked wild when compelled to pay cash $10 per acre for his bit of leased land! In 1892 he could have got from 75¢ to $1.50, but he would have had but few bushels in some orchards, and none in others. Frosts fall very late, and often too early. The puzzling problem presents itself, why Rogue River, with wheat at 40¢, can afford flour at 70¢ per sack, while Kansas, with wheat at the same price, can afford flour no lower than $1.15 or $1.20. True, Kansas flour is better, but it surely costs no more to make.
    One of our fellow citizens is wealthy, from an often-repeated experiment. He sells any tract of land for part down--say one-half--and then gives "title bond," or deed with security of mortgage. The wise take the former; the others, the latter. In about four years the purchaser discovers he can't pay, and surrenders. If he has taken title bond he has paid no tax. If a deed, he has paid all taxes and, unfortunately, most do so. Every four or five years he gets half or more value for the land and has the taxes paid! Not only this, but he gets all the improvements gratis. Nearly all land for sale can be had upon time, by paying part down. Hence the conclusion that not more than one out of five can pay even half the price of a tract of this land from its own productions' The gold mines yield over two thousand dollars per week, and are the real reliance of this region; just as the pension "mine" supports Kansas in a bad year. Yes, this is a fruit country, or, rather, was this year. (?) We see the flow and hear the ripple of the undercurrent!
    We repeat, that the climate and conditions suit us exactly; but we do not now, and never shall, try to make a home pay for itself. If anyone has an income independent of this valley, and is not greedy to accumulate, he will find here abundant means of enjoyment, and can pass time very pleasantly.
    On the Sunday before Christmas we two old ones trudged through the rain to hear a characteristically good sermon from the Presbyterian pulpit, which talked of "Advent Season, Te Deums, cathedrals and decorations" like an Episcopalian! but the tide of revolution from Drs. Stearns, Briggs and Henry P. Smith had not reached his study and desk any farther than to prevent his using the term "Virgin," but he read and allowed the choir to sing "A Savior from King David's line." The wave has struck Jacksonville, and the intellectually conscientious, in Dr. Smith's view, would require the pulpit to say, "Omit the --th verse." The church we attended was appropriately decorated inside with fir. The organ and singing were very good. The South Methodists have a new and handsome house of worship; but their ways belong to the first half of the century. The Disciples, North Methodists and Baptists all have good buildings.
    The wind blew all Saturday night, a mere breeze. Our apples and potatoes stay in a sack in an outhouse!
    Finally the old "Argonaut" concluded that we might take notes and write his "story," but when we got well to work he grew nervous and said we'd postpone! But our hands are full in another direction. The Ohio reminiscences are nearly completed.
    Christmas morning, sunshine. Snow is on the eastern mountains nearly to their base, and on the summits only of the western hills, or Coast Range. Only a light rainfall in the valley. One day last week Poley reported the ground frozen for several entire days in succession up in the mountains, while here there was no iota of freezing! The point where he lives does not seem over 1000 feet above us.
    The merchants yet report a poor holiday trade, and a young man from Ashland says the same; nevertheless this was the phenomenal fruit season, with abundance of hay and grain.
    One man told that not a bushel of grain could be sold beside that needed by the local mills, because someone had chartered all the tramp vessels on the coast for some purpose--perhaps to "bear" the grain market!
    No whys or wherefores are given in the papers; and quite probably no one here has any conception of the true situation.
    A hero of one of our stories went today as guide to our exploring party to see a tract of sugar pine timber, which is superior to the yellow or hard pine, but inferior to the white pine of the Alleghenies, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The party expect to be gone a week. We said to Poley that one person visited had such worn-out furniture; and he replied that one of the wealthiest farmers in the valley hadn't a chair worth five cents! and that many such did not seem to want anything better, while their houses were innocent of paint, inside or out; and that a man's appearance or dwelling was no indication of wealth or poverty. Many a well-to-do farmer is patched until his clothing seems fearfully and wonderfully made.
    A very cheap farm, twelve miles north, is advertised, and a neighbor said, "Yes, the whole quarter is available, well fenced, well set in orchard, and excellent buildings; nothing wanting but freedom from anguish concomitants!" Nevertheless, more building is in progress in this city than would be deemed possible in hard times.
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, January 18, 1894, page 4


    This morning such odd phenomena present. We are nearer the east side of the valley, while its length extends north and south. Directly west, near Jacksonville, the light clouds were stationary. On the north end of the fixed point, the light clouds were floating northward; on the south of the same point they were drifting southward. Then we turned "about face" to the opposite mountain and exactly the same phenomena presented. At the point of observation, only a perceptible breeze from the west could be detected, and smoke showed the same. Clouds, the merest haze, overhead moved eastward. Then we looked to the west to see what geographical contour could make the divergent wind, possibly on entering a creek or a pass in the summits, but only the bluff unchanging face of the western Coast Range presented. Then again we turned attention to the east for a solution of the mystery of the divided drift but only the smooth face of "Roxy Ann" presented. True, that face was a broad depression or shallow bay while the summit did show a slight pass; but apparently no sufficient cause for the contrary winds. Just at that point in the observations, the haze began to precipitate rain, but attention was not thereby diverted from observing the trend of the clouds. Both south drifts met on the smooth face of South Griffin Mountain and did not follow onwards up Bear Creek as one might logically suppose; and the spot where the drift met on the slope of the heights named presented only a stationary cloud much denser than the rest. The view to the northward is so extensive, thirty-six to fifty miles, that nothing could be determined beyond the fact that the Umpquas seemed to be totally overhung by denser, inmoving cloud masses which obscured the summits and some of the slopes. The four days' fog passed away finally, but he did not know of its limits until a man coming from Jacksonville said that at the latter place the sky was blue, the sun shining brightly and that he did not enter the fog until after putting nearly half the intervening space behind him. An old resident told that always sometime during the winter months this low valley would have a continuous fog spell lasting from four to fourteen days, hence, possibly, during the remainder of this winter we may not have another persistently long fog. No objection will be offered by "refugee" Kansans.
    An error crept into the estimate of the bank capital of this valley which is corrected by saying that Ashland carries the heaviest, $100,000.00. Alfred Hillman's uncle Dan has just sold some property in the latter city. But perhaps Jacksonville's bank, with a modest capital of $55,000.00, represents in its stockholders the heaviest backed names of one, and possibly another represents $400,000.00 of valuable property. At least two lease gold mines on shares from which large incomes are obtained. More about the mines comes to us daily and sometimes the fear arises that temptation will come strong enough to coax one of the "refugees" upon a prospecting tour when spring fully opens. But we had not exhausted the subject of banks, for a cashier said yesterday that banking was so much overdone in this valley that existing institutions could not make paying dividends, and that a new one would starve. But that is usually the "outside" cry of any successful business.
    This afternoon, the 22nd, the public school is giving holiday songs by the entire body and instrumental entertainment by its brass band elsewhere mentioned. It is a pleasant note, "Good Will Toward Men," when men can forget the gruesome enunciations of popular pulpits.
    Said last month an intelligent and leading lady of Jacksonville, "Will the new 'mind' be guided by reason or by the antiquated canting fashion and ranting cant of the ages?" The reply was, "This age seems to be verging into demanding a reason for even conventionally sacred things." "Yes," rejoined the lady, "many of us are persuaded that the intelligent rising generation will gradually throw off the shackles of blind, unreasoning credulity and will demand a commonplace reason for all things." She is sixty-five years old, believes in Jehovah and Jesus, but not in many words reported of them by irresponsible monographs from the impenetrable mists of antiquity.
    On the twenty-first, two amateur hunters shot a five-hundred-and-fifty-pound bear on the back boundary of Aaron Andrews' place. Andrews and his boys, George and Alan, went up to view the carcass.
    This state has taken an advanced step in enacting that after January 1st, no fees will be due any elective officer for any act whatever; but his fixed salary is increased materially. We have not heard specifically of marriage fees, but presume that they are included. Two years since it also enacted compulsory drug clerk licensing, but the standards are not unduly high, and the "scientific," as usual, will continue to make their blunders.
    Most of the professions on this coast are very much moderating their fees, but physicians, like in Kansas, continue sky-high charges which warn people that it is "cheaper to die."
    Wheat has fallen to forty cents but flour remains seventy cents per sack. Corn meal is "dessert"--three cents per pound.
    Six times per day the miniature Jacksonville train passes carrying the smallest and youngest conductor in the United States, perhaps, "Johnny Barnum," not quite twelve years old. His father is engineer. The boy wears the full uniform and badge. One day his only passenger was a "pigtailed" Chinaman dressed in the finest of black broadcloth and wearing a fine, stiff, broad-brimmed black hat. Only the conductor's cap shows above the seat back when he sits down. The track has half-weight rails and wide-asunder ties, but the trail is regulation width, and standard cars are taken up to Jacksonville when necessary.
    This place has a population of fifteen hundred and nevertheless the entire commercial industry did not perhaps sell as much Christmas goods as Martin Emmert. We make the estimate upon the basis of what has transpired in Kansas in bad crop years. This country has had good crops.
    The heroine of our last story lost both parents by Indian massacre in 1861 on the North Platte near Ft. Laramie, when one year old, and the husband lost his father by an Indian bullet while he was yet unborn. The husband, at fourteen, left home to try misty Idaho, arriving footsore, hungry and penniless, having footed the entire distance across Oregon via Camp Harney, Canyon City, Baker City and Burnt River. The heroine's foster mother's aunt was captured and held a long time by Indians during the Pontiac or Tecumseh wars in Illinois. The heroine was carried on to Boise by the next train, where she found foster parents. At five they returned to Missouri and when she was eleven they again traveled with canvas-topped wagons to the former home in Idaho, passing over the same trail. The footsore fourteen-year-old boy was set at herding ponies for a mining camp and in four months had $500 in yellow gold.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, January 19, 1894, page 1


    Last week's Gazette (Jan. 25), contained some information from Perry Tanquary which we meet by saying that we buy the same kind of "flour" (?) at from five to ten cents less per hundred for our cow! But of course she is a grade Royal Jersey.
    On the 28th of January our party met at the home of Dr. Wait, in the evening, a select few to practice the chants of the Episcopal church, and, of course, hymns. One gentleman had been in the boy choir of St. Paul's, London, and, of course, was au fait. The Doctor's wife, in conversation, said that the present year was the best financially they had ever seen, and that when seven years ago they came to the town a dollar was an unusual apparition; and, in fact, for the first year they got little but produce, which was all well enough, for bread and meat was their principal subsistence for the first year.
    The Oregon & California Railroad reached this far only eight years ago, and was completed through to the Sacramento about 1887. The Doctor came from Nebraska, Richardson County, to California. Hence, we must call this "good times" from the standpoint of a Southern Oregonian.
    A few days ago Mrs. Kendall was at a neighbor's whose husband owns a large tract of "sugar pine" near Crater Lake, at the head of Rogue River, who inquired if we would go on a week's "outing," expenses paid, and write [it] up. Yes, we'll go, for it is a vast arena of sightseeing, and takes us to the eastern declivities of the Cascades, where we overlook the "lake country" and sage plains for one hundred and fifty miles. The nearest stopping point will be seventy-five miles. The name is [Erick G.] Salstrom--Scandinavian. He has offered the new "Southern Short Line" eighty acres of soil gratis for a station, reserving the timber. Elsewhere it has been explained that "sugar pine" is superior to hard or yellow pine, and little inferior to soft or white.
    Crater Lake can be better described after seeing, but those who have observed tell us that it is on the highest of the surrounding Cascades, nearly up to the summer snow limit of "Thielsen" (Teelsen), a "snow cap." At one time the immediate walls were so perpendicular that no one attempted to reach it, and the United States troops once at Fort Klamath, now abandoned, constructed an approach. It is said to be well stocked with trout, but how they got in no one can even surmise, for there is no visible indication of an outlet. We'll know more someday, perhaps. On this tract the Rogue River in four leaps descends two hundred feet--a magnificent water power.
    It is said that the railroad will resume work by April first, and has for its ocean terminus Crescent City, where the California boundary strikes the Pacific. When the road is completed freights will be reduced one dollar per hundred from San Francisco. It is a curious circumstance that all San Francisco heavy freight comes to this valley by way of Yaquina Bay over a "stub" of this "Southern California." Why we don't know.
    Aaron Andrews talks of sinking the funds from his Illinois speculation in some of the dirt of this valley. Some of us decidedly disapprove, for he has already a good enough home in the mountains, all paid for and not a cent of debt. He has been surveying a ranch and some mining claims on Applegate, a stream twenty miles west, flowing northward to Rogue River, and has a few more jobs to complete over eastward on Antelope and Butte creeks.
    Our folks make three times the butter we use, but have been able to sell but once. Thirty pounds will glut the market for a week, and after it has been in the store for three days smells like cheese. No iota can be shipped. The trade in eggs and fowls, nevertheless, is brisk, for they bear transportation. The market is supplied well with the best of salmon. At supper on "groundhog day" we had all we could eat for ten cents. We get as much beef for the money as we used to find at Geenen's or John Franz's.
    The "peanut roaster" railroad changed crews two weeks ago, but the new fireman could not "raise the steam," and so the old hand was brought back, and now they drive twice as fast as before.
    A week ago Mrs. K. and Abby took a ride on it, and they stopped at our gate. Some time ago we described the road as five and a half miles long, connecting Jacksonville with the "Southern" at this place. The young conductor of course is off, but he is a lovely and unassuming little fellow.
    The grippe has not quite abandoned this land, but is not severe; and the writer just now has a touch. Immigration has stopped, no one having come for a month. Mr. Craven, the Methodist minister, has a brother--a Quaker--in the Grellet neighborhood, and once lived at Burr Oak. White, from Smith Center, seems to be getting into business, and is much liked. Our old friend, Prof. James Cox, talks of coming to this county to teach.
    So far we have seen no wild meat is brought in to sell, and only one lot of fowl, and they small ducks, scarcely half as large as mallards. Nevertheless, one was a "redhead."
    Today a neighbor young lady came to ask for skim milk. Abby poured out a lot, and the lady said: "How much?" "Nothing, it is skim milk." "Why, we've been paying four cents a quart for the same kind!" Now the "women" have a trade on foot.     Tonight Andrews and George are here, and the former is discussing prunes and apples with Mrs. K. The fruit crop was a failure last year in the "States," and yet fruit, especially the dried, is here a drag. At the fruit house apples with a mere speck on each can be bought for twenty cents per bushel. Hog packing is well over, and farmers have netted an average of seventy-five cents per bushel for their wheat fed to the animals. The mill and feed stores pay forty cents for wheat, and retail it at sixty. No, the millers give no money, but pay in any product of the establishment.
    Nearly all the accessions to the Methodists at the "revival" joined by letter and were mainly quite recent immigrants; hence they represented church elsewhere. At the Disciples all but one or two were renewals. One man said, "Oh yes, I belong in the States, but my bible don't describe any of the bodies here represented; and God is said to know the end from the beginning; guess I'll wait for a revelation." The Presbyterians claim quite a number of unattached and begin a protracted meeting in two weeks to compass their acquisition. The Christian Endeavor is here in some force but are discountenanced by the regular clergy. The Y.M.C.A. seems to be paling before other agencies on this coast, and a grey-headed Presbyterian elder remarked that it had outlived its days of usefulness and had never benefited the church.
    A new addition has been plotted on [the] west side of town just beyond us, in acre lots, sixty dollars each.
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, March 1, 1894, page 4  This letter was abridged on the front page of the Medford Mail of March 30, 1894:




    The appearance of the Sentinel on my table reminds [me] of a postponed duty. No doubt you are waiting to know how we have settled down and our impressions of this American Italy? Many in Kansas read much of the fruit capacity of this region and are anxious to get the opinions of anyone supposed to be impartial; and we can only say that we have no interest in any property to sell or enhance in value and expect to stay three years, if not much longer. It will not pay to buy, for good residences can be rented at three and a half to four percent. The lowest point reached by the cold in this average winter was sixteen above zero. Hence chilblained feet are unknown, and only the typical "tenderfoot" attacks some newcomers, its cause not being known. Our daughter had it for over two months.
    All kinds of groceries, except kerosene, are as reasonable in price as in Kansas. Kerosene is much dearer, but infinitely better. The best flour is very cheap, only seventy cents per sack.
    Of course the winter is normally damp, but one out of four is dry. Mud is not bottomless, but can be navigated with only a little more exertion than that of Kansas when thoroughly wet up.
    The country contains lots of poor--hopelessly poor--people; more than Kansas. Economy, grinding parsimony, must be set on foot by the poor in order to get property, and this is too late a day for such practices. It required much study and observation in order to adapt oneself to the circumstances; for all's radically different from the States. It requires much moral courage to refuse to enter numberless enterprises; and the prudent must learn "to don't."
    The majority of the farms are held at fancy figures, but occasionally a good, cheap one can be found. Locally, little or no raw or dry fruit can be sold. Two extensive orchard men export much, but the small proprietor is "bottled up"; there is no dealing. The best dried fruit here is worth only four cents; and this is the winter and spring following a nearly total failure of fruit over the Mississippi Valley and Atlantic Seaboard. California alone can supply the continent! True we have financial depression which accounts for dull times in fruit, but if the non-protection Wilson Bill is passed, the fruit would not pay for the picking. Besides nearly all fruits have far more insidious enemies than in Kansas. The Kansan, who owns a good "quarter" and is out of debt, is a "baron upon his vast acres" compared with nineteen out of twenty in this valley. Money in Kansas goes begging for long loans--while here every offer is grabbed for by from a dozen to a score. "Call" and "short-time" funds command from three to four percent per month. The state has driven out capital, by taxing from the mortgage records no matter if a nonresident!
    Assessments are high--cash and credits at face--two percent for county and same for city, four percent for city dwellers.
    Good schools are plenty and people are civil and duly religious.
    During the wet months about twelve hundred dollars monthly are deposited in Jacksonville from the gold placers and hydraulics. Grants Pass and Ashland get also nearly as much each. A large number of pensioners scatter money every quarter. Hence no one seems to starve.
    Our county treasurer decamped last August with eight thousand and so; reflecting citizens are quite sober.
    Protracted meetings have been held in all churches but Episcopalian; and the only result has been recoveries and transfers. The state is trying the experiment of maintaining a higher department to its smaller cities. Result, grinding taxation for a bubble! And the deluded people are persuaded that somebody has graduated. But the graduation is all in the experience of the pocket.
    The "higher criticism" has reached this valley and one worthy pastor indulged in violent invectives against it: Vain struggle! It has come to stay, for it alone seems to have any common-sense argument.
    The man who defends the present Congress has not yet been found. Democrat, Republican and Populist have about equal numbers, and there is some talk of a fusion of discontented elements to rout a formidable ring which shields the defaulter, as well as his sureties.
    The old soldiers seem well united upon pensions, but quite a number of recipients have lately been cited before boards. Here is the first place where I have heard the pensioner stigmatized as a chronic deadbeat, the malady antedating the war! The Grand Army post in this town numbers fifty and the Relief Corps has the usual proportion.
    But in conclusion I will say that if anyone with substantial backing and fair prudence wants an enjoyable climate in a romantic, mountain country, here is the identical location.
Solomon Sentinel, Solomon, Kansas, March 28, 1894, page 4


    "Up to the hills I lift my eyes," sings the devout Scotchman, and we, too, did the same last week, but claiming the religious motive. Our course, Joe. A. and ourself, lay up Griffin Creek, past fields of luxuriant alfalfa and gorgeous wheat, making glad the heart with a prospect of as much crop as last season; so different from the frostbitten and wind-shattered plains. Upon reaching the Coast Range we found crops and fruits in good condition, and the latter will yield more than the domestic supply.
    The folks had a narrative that a neighbor, Andrews, had had an adventure with a lynx. The glutton, or as the French Canadians term him, the "carcajou." He is execrated by them, why we don't know, and his name is always preceded by "d-----," "because," say they, "he can spit out bullets as fast as you can shoot them into him." The animal has little courage, although as large as a good-sized dog. Andrews, his son Alan and the dog, were out on an expedition with no gun, when the dog began a contest with something in the brush too much obscured to see from their position, and they hurried up and found four creatures in a three-to-one contest, the dog playing the 'lone hand" with a mother lynx and two kittens as large as full-sized cats, which had been roused from a bed of leaves under heavy brush. The dog's attention was directed to demolishing the kittens, which were making good use of their claws in spats of scratching and of the mouth in spitting hisses. The mother, of course, was trying to drive the dog away to toll off her young. The bipeds, as related, had no arms, a curious circumstance for mountaineers, but found a heavy club and "sailed in," leveling one kitten and then made after the old one which retreated with such speed that no blow could be delivered, and soon hid herself away in the dense brush with which the range abounds. The boy had stayed with the dog and remaining kitten, and when Andrews returned the animal was about finished by the dog. Had Andrews carried a proper weapon he would have taken the dog and followed up the brute, and in fact had he been prepared, plenty of chance offered to shoot prior to the escape. The kittens were shouldered and carried home, where another son, the oldest, took the best skin and stuffed it. The other was left hanging in a tree, for it was then evening. During the night a disturbance arose amongst the poultry and the dog barked. Andrews went out, but it was too dark to see and no search was made, but in the morning the unskinned kitten was gone and the two chickens which roosted outside were away from the roost, but appeared before sunrise. The climbing of the animal had scared them off and perhaps it had seen them first and may have thought them her kittens.
    Then, too, Andrews had an experience with his pigs, eleven of them in one litter, in the fact that after selling the mother to Hartley's in order to get rid of her marauding, and to wean the beauties, the flock scattered all through the timber and he was having a serious time gathering them, only three at last advices being found. The moral is that such a good mother should have been kept and better fed, for she was truly "the goose that laid golden eggs."
    On Monday our host drove to Jacksonville to vote and then got us to Medford in time to perform the same patriotic duty; but we've since been advised to furnish three pitch pine sticks to fire up the engine to take the trip up classic "Salt River," Mr. Brouse promising to furnish three additionals.
    John Griffin said afterward that if Andrews had thrown his coat over the lynxlets and saved them alive, he could have got twenty dollars from any garden or menagerie.
Medford Mail, June 22, 1894, page 4


    Last year the observer was in the East, where he met an interesting deaf mute in her teens, the daughter of a former schoolmate, who could not enunciate a single syllable, but it was the plan to add oral language to her course in the Ohio institution for such unfortunates. Last week a letter from the father said, "Lena has just come home for vacation, went for the mail and upon return said as correctly as you or I, 'Here is a letter from K----,' and at the close of her course she will have the choice of a tutorship in the institution or to continue at her profession of compositor."
    Recently two gentlemen were met who represent a new church in our community, similar to the "Come Outers" of England and the eastern states, who term themselves "The Congregation of Christ's Flock" and are little, if any, different from orthodox Baptists. Their prominent claim is that when one is "converted" as they are, all difficulties disappear from the text of scripture and that then the meaning becomes as clear as the azure sky, and also they affirm that they have an illumination and exaltation of soul far above any mere human conception. They revive the fifth article of the "Five Points of Calvinism" in assuring the "Final Perseverance of the Saints" no matter how deep a fall may occur. They are well worth a hearing. This incident reminds that the intelligent Christian world of religion, in general terms, is divided into two great camps: the High and the Broad, in relation to the Bible. The overwhelming part of the Roman Church, the Church of Scotland, a minority of the Church of England, the majority of the General Assembly Presbyterians, all Calvinistic and all "Immersionist" bodies teach "plenary" inspiration of the Bible, or that all is more or less by the divine aid and countenance, and hence is infallible. Because so much of scripture seems to human reason inconsistent and erroneous, most Roman authorities withhold the book from the laity, claiming that church by divine power and aid sees clearly and can properly and sufficiently teach orally. They lead, in point of age, the "High" camps. The historical and typical Church of England, a small minority of the Church of Rome, one-third of the General Assembly Presbyterians, perhaps one-half of the Episcopalians in the United States, a large proportion of the Lutheran bodies, the large majority of Congregationalists, all Unitarians, all Quakers and most Universalists deem the apparent inconsistencies and errors in the Bible to be what they seem, of human and fallible origin. The historical Church of England, in age, leads the army of the "Broads." The pulpits of the valley, as far as known, belong to the camp of the "Highs." All observed Sunday school instruction in Rogue River Valley seems to come from the same source. It might be a pleasure to quite a number to have a "Broad" Sunday school, and one pulpit from the same camp.
Medford Mail, June 29, 1894, page 2


    "It's a long time between drinks," said Sam Houston in his Lone Star campaign, and the cause of this long silence is the demoralization consequent upon cutting the foot and getting up "Recollections of Judge Walker," to the extent of two hundred and forty-three pages of the largest tablet size. I caught the man himself "on the fly" and held him about ten days, a few hours at a sitting. It also laid open another fine field which. I begin upon shortly.
    In April a merchant tried the experiment of a carload of fowls to San Francisco. The creatures went through safely, but the sale went through the merchant to the tune of "did you see any sign of a stray one hundred and twenty-five dollars?" Hence the fowl market is not gorgeous. Eggs are lower than in Kansas and butter unsalable. Wheat has advanced ten cents but no reason is known, for it is lower in "the States."
    I cannot chop or walk as well as in Kansas, but it is not the fault of the climate for no one else complains except two fleshy ladies.
    We all have had spells of rheumatism and neuralgia, a usual course with emigrants.
    The city council shut up all stock on the fifteenth of April and we reaped the benefit by having a big pasture which we got cheaply. The cows put in yield one dollar per month each, thus paying half the rent of both house and pasture. The measure was unlucky for two score or more poor people, and the street and "commons" grass is not being utilized except by the cows that go into our lot, the owners holding them a half hour or so when going or coming. Country people had complained of the annoyance of animals eating food from their wagons and there are five or six other trading points in the valley.
    There is not much opposition to free silver amongst Republicans, its greatest enemies being found among the Democrats. The latter favor low tariff on all eastern or northern interests, and high upon Pacific products. A few Democrats favor absolute free trade and want a revenue obtained exclusively from the wealthy by a direct tax.
    No grass seems to grow wild, but a sustaining bunchweed, "alfilaria" or "al-fil-a-ree"--accent on the last syllable--is the main reliance of stock. Alfalfa makes about half the crop it does in Kansas. Wheat will be scarcely fair, for we had a four weeks' drought just before it headed. Rains are plenty now. Peaches were a long time blooming and a late frost blasted three-fourths of the crop. Spring dallied a long time.
    I have not yet looked up my soldiers' supplementary but they are safe from "jumping." Lands are falling in price very materially, and will go lower.
    Some time after I cut my foot an old soldier, Miller, came to borrow a cutting tool, saying, "I want to punish that ax for cutting you."
    'The washout on the short line through Idaho deprived us of mail for over a week. Mail service is not supplemental by sending over other lines, for they will not carry without extra compensation at premium rates.
    In April an extra Hambletonian of speed and pure pedigree, which had been bought in Illinois for $1200, sold for $500; the owner glad to do so. Horses are dull sale and dirt cheap. If anyone wants information about this country he'd better ask privately.
    I am sorry someone degrades the dignified name "Gilbert" into insignificant "Gilbertville," which can never have an official or authoritative recognition. Then, too, we were disappointed in having a rehash in one or both sheets under the same "nom de plume."
    When Mrs. Andrews, of Glen Elder, was on her Pacific tour she brought to Mrs. Kendall from San Diego a night-blooming cereus, an almost princely gift. Our flowers of all kinds are one hundred percent handsomer than in Kansas.
    In reply I say, "Yes, there are homesteads in these mountains and in the sugar pine territory that will make good homes, if you are frugal, economical and prudent."
    An attractive land investment south of Solomon City offered in April, and for land it is preferable to anything I've yet found here. Tenants here are not as reliable as in the Sunflower State.
    Harry Andrews, of Glen Elder, sent in his mother's baggage, a handsome set of harness to Aaron (Rouney), and when he showed it to the harness maker here the latter named a fabulous sum as the probable cost. We expected Andrews to ignore his former acquaintances, but he did finally condescend to notice them.
    Until April quite a number had come in from the East but since then only a couple.
    I was astonished a short time since to find the leading Democrat here a pronounced protectionist, but in the state at large the party is rather noncommittal.
    Mrs. Andrews of Glen Elder was somewhat favorably impressed with this climate on her trip through.
    I have had little talk with People's Party men here, but they seem to favor the party from which they came on the tariff.
    I was glad to read the letter from I. M. Temple, for I have always prized his friendship and admired his sincerity and honesty of purpose.
    We have fed two tramps, the last of whom showed us his muster roll, which was on a piece of cardboard. He had lost an arm in the employ of the Colorado Central and was on the return to them. He said the prospect of returning over the Nevada deserts was too gloomy and he preferred the short line Union Pacific. He was right. He called himself a "Coxey" but did not contemplate going beyond the Colorado Central, which would give him employment. At the depot he "struck" for the price of a meal and I asked if he would go with me to get a meal and he said yes. So Mother was told to feed my tramp well and he shipped a fair cargo.
    The Democracy proposes to revise the Constitution and radically change the school system, but I did not hear or read the plan. We hope all but enabling acts will be repealed and let the people do as they please.
    A Mr. Grant, a disciple minister, is on the road to the higher criticism in biblical matters, and is the best talker of that persuasion here. Some object to his mixing a little in politics unless perhaps he espoused that one's views.
    A few from here have seen the Midwinter Fair and seem gratified fully.
    About a month ago we saw a large bear led behind a wagon, while the road was dusty, and twice he laid down and was dragged. Afterwards it was learned that he had been found when a mere cub in the Pitt Range and was brought up in a family. He is as tame as a dog and has been taught some tricks. Anyone can handle him which is a little bit of an exception, for usually when half grown they grow too vicious and must be slaughtered.
    We were shocked and grieved to hear of the death of old comrade Fisher; but also we had often been pained to see his almost constant suffering and maybe the Allwise thought better to thus relieve the unceasing agony. We bow to His will but if ever we return we shall sadly miss him and Emmor Dilworth.
    Medford is not as lively as in Kansas and Saturday is no brisker in this city than in Beloit on Tuesday.
    Since that "screed" about the uncomfortable tourist sleepers and the knowledge of the upholstering of them on the Northern Pacific, all such have been upholstered on this and other lines coming to this coast, we hear but do not know from experience.
    The man whose adventures have been written was lame, only one leg to use, and got around on a crutch--his warfare with nature and circumstances--and the whole story looks improbable, but people here assure that the narration agrees with their knowledge.
    Letters from W. S. Search tell of good prospects in Oklahoma, and the Kansas colony here rejoices that Mitchell is in the promising belt of Kansas.
    At the great Democratic gathering, where their candidate for governor spoke, he directed no shots at the People's Party and did not explain why. None of the speakers did differently. The candidate for Congress promised to labor and vote for free silver. The People's Party hope to get the balance of power in order to send Pennoyer in the Senate and some think it quite probable.
    Roswell G. Horr has been through, spoke here, and has aroused much more feeling than existed before. The people here turn out en masse. A People's Party man told me that at the Democratic meeting, where myself was present, that nearly one-half the audience were Republicans. Many People's Partyites that I knew were sitting in the immediate neighborhood, and probably formed fully one-fourth, for scarcely one-fourth made any demonstration by cheering or hoodooing, and few shook hands with the speakers. I saw three Republicans, stalwarts, join in the handshaking with the "would-be" governor, who is said to be very uptight, privately and officially. The fact is, from what is heard, all three parties have nominated quite exceptional characters. But the fact is that Democrats are not friendly to Pennoyer, judging from observation. Cleveland still draws support from his people but not much from the newspapers, and the San Francisco Examiner seems implacable.
    Yesterday a cloud came from the southeast, greenish, and acted much like a Kansas gale. Hail fell in streaks and most of it soft.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, June 29, 1894, page 4



    Our business college has just closed its session and has a fine attendance. The principal's father is a Dunkard preacher. [Edward E. Phipps was the principal; his father apparently lived elsewhere.] Times are growing duller and have been all the time worse than Kansas. Movers are beginning to pass north from Southern California where great drought has already made widespread disaster and poverty. The arid territory comprises more than half the state from the Mexican line. Kansas knows nothing about hard times comparatively.
    Six weeks ago Ashland, twelve miles from here, had a jollification over the discovery of a rich ledge of quartz gold which will make money flow into the town and country.
    Plenty of rains lately and field crops will be fair. Wheat has raised to fifty cents.
    On April 10, a woman came from the head of Butte Creek in the Pitt Range, thirty-five miles riding on a horse and leading another, upon which she would pack back a supply to last for two months. The road lay through three feet of snow. They have a good homestead in the sugar pine territory which lies at a high altitude away from sawmills. The family made the house entirely from split lumber, and the woman said the house was made as nice as our residence. There are scores of just as good homesteads. She came because her husband was unwell; but he had the children with him. That's what women can do.
    Politics are now lively. The big 'Frisco Examiner (Democratic) is opposed to Cleveland and is for protective tariff. The president don't seem to have any warm friends on the Pacific. Our election comes upon the fourth of June. The People's Party hope to hold the balance in the Oregon legislature in order to elect Pennoyer to the Senate. He has no friends amongst the Democrats here, and if elected it will be for the sole purpose of beating the Republicans. Roswell G. Horr came through and put Populists in a bad, bad humor, and they will lose votes.
    Not many have seen the Midwinter Fair, but visitors were all pleased, and the enterprise was a financial success.
    Three weeks ago a man led a large bear along the road that was very tame, and the fellow went through several tricks. He had been captured as a mere cub and seems as harmless as a sheep. While passing along the animal would rear up and walk both forward and backward. He was taken to a school picnic and gave a great deal of pleasure to the children and their parents (?).
    The same bear was led behind a wagon a month before the time named and deliberately laid down to be dragged in the dust. The dust will always tempt him to stop and roll. A few days ago he was taken away to go on the road for a performer. I had supposed that none but the bear from the Pyrenees could be so taught.
    Fruit here is infested with the "scab," a small insect, both on bark and fruit which in time kills the tree.
    The city council banished cows from the streets, and I have some in my pasture at a large price per month; but the ordinance works a hardship upon the poor. The surrounding farmers had complained of the nuisance and the city authorities felt obliged to heed. The reflection arises: "The city is dependent upon the farmers, and when a competing town is nearby the city authorities must yield or drive trade elsewhere."
    In April we heard the first thunder, which was in the Siskiyou Mountains, but only a slight rain fell.
    Our town has a full-fledged nobleman who got his orders from the now defunct monarchy of the Sandwich Islands. He was invested with the "Order of Kapiolani" by "letters patent" from King Kalakaua, all of which the writer has seen. The insignia are of ribbon, gold and silver. He lived in the Islands from twelve years of age until two years ago--some twenty years--attending school for six years in both English and Hawaiian, and then went into Hawaiian law. In one district he was prosecuting attorney for twelve years, where he was surrounded by only natives nearly all the time. He represents that in Honolulu an American will see only what reminds him of the ways of United States people. But he seems to me a little different from this coast in that he is more frank than others. He is a man of means, but is in the clock, watch and jewelry line.
    "Judge" [Charles] Walker has been my subject for over a month, and one of his anecdotes is this: A loyal South Carolinian who carried the U.S. mail in 1861 across the Klamath River bought him a U.S. flag a few days after the news of the fall of [Fort] Sumter which he tacked to a fifteen-foot pole and nailed it to the gunwales (gunnels) of the ferry flat, for he himself was the ferry owner and operator. Then when anyone would cross he would draw attention and ask if he didn't want to salute? Quite all did voluntarily either by taking off the hat or of cheering. Mischievous people reported that he demanded "salute or drown" and several said it sounded just like him; but he said that he never threatened anybody. It would consume too much space to relate his formation of a "Union League Club." His "recollections" filled two hundred and forty-three pages of the largest tablets for the first volume and a second may come in six months. He was the first U.S. Judge in Eastern Idaho, then called "Boise Basin."
    The Democrats are not enthusiastic and in their speeches, as far as known, never antagonize People's Party, yet despising their principles, if one may judge by common conversation. They doubtless deem it a "self-limited disease" which will soon pass away and, like measles, leave the system safe from any fear of return. Roswell G. Horr has placed the People's Party upon a bed of thorns and nettles.
Solomon Sentinel, Solomon, Kansas, July 11, 1894, page 1



    We clip the following paragraphs from a communication from Dr. Kendall, at Medford, Oregon, which is too long for our columns:
    "A not very recent letter from Mrs. Edwin Brown, of Fossil, discussed a return to Brownsville (the pioneer neighbor of Gilbert) at no distant date."
    "On this coast little mercy is shown delinquents; Kansas is a paradise, comparatively."
    "Aaron Andrews and his second son accompanied by the dog had a 'set to' on the mountain with two young lynxes and the 'tabby' mother. They were hunting stock and had no gun, hence the old one escaped. The oldest boy stuffed the least damaged kitten. Foxes take his fowls in open day and the lynxes doubtless do the same, but they make their appearance only when the sun is declined."
    "In the last days of May we were shocked to hear of the death of the brother Henry's wife while out on a ride in her carriage. Heart disease of over two years' standing."
    "Pat. Daily has been often met and is still a solid Democrat; he has a school two and a half miles east of 'Roxy Ann.' Once he remarked that his correspondents reported that Ellis would carry his district."
    "Joseph Foley and wife, with Poley's brother, Charles, paid a visit to a brother-in-law at Myrtle Point, Dr. Reader, and while there met R. W. Lundy and James M. Cox. The latter navigates the schools."
    "The Call's discovery that Ramsay was an aristocrat is rather diverting. He has three neighbors in the same box--one a Republican and the others Populists. In fact, all respectable people both there and in the 'Hills' seem about the same."
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, September 13, 1894, page 4


EDITOR SENTINEL:
    Former annotations close early in September and we begin with the Southern Oregon Soldiers' Reunion at Grants Pass from the 11th to 15th of said month when your correspondent's name was proposed for an office "in sight" but failed only because membership had not become completed. His papers being wrong had to be returned to Mitchell County, Kansas for correction. An attack of malaria was not quite subdued and hence was not present; in fact failed to ask what the office was. From what could learned more pranks were indulged than common and the camp was one scene of continuous mirth. Unfortunately melon season hail just begun and several gormandized to sickness.
    The summer was long and dry but no crop was harmed for no wind existed to signify. In the sun it was hot--aplenty so! but in the shade one could rest in comfort.
    Early in October we hired a team and driver for two dollars per day to take us--the mother and me--to the other, east side of the eastern butte, Roxy Ann, which is more than a mile in altitude. Arriving at the eastern, or far declivity we found a Kansan from Cloud, on Granny Creek. Stinson had built a cabin from his timber and moved upon it. He had been here two years farming on a wide swale upon the eastern face of the same butte, having moved to Oregon from Cloud by wagon, two and a half months in passage. We moved in the edge of the so-called "desert" upon which nothing profitable grows but a nutritious bunch wire grass upon which many cattle were feeding and doing well. A charter company offers to furnish all water needed for irrigation from Butte Lake, which lies at a high altitude in the Pitt Range, for a rent charge of $2.25 per acre per annum. But ranchers say they cannot pay so much unless times materially improve.
    On the return by another route we encountered an old Missourian who lived on Wilson's Creek and visited the battle field three days after the action where he and some neighbors found a large number of dead Union soldiers dumped into a sinkhole and covered only with brush and stones. Elsewhere bodies were found buried so shallow that hands and feet protruded. They then went off and collected enough force to bury and rebury all. Honor to the loyalist! The old gentleman offered to sell his farm of 120 acres, mostly bottom, for twenty-five dollars per acre. The whole trip was pleasant and we reached home by sunset.
    One week after the same party went westward over the near range to see the mining region on Sterling Creek. One large chartered company by hydraulics is taking out from $6,000 to $10,000 monthly and many individuals and small partnerships are operating successfully all through the ranges with fresh discoveries every month and every week. Our curiosity was well repaid but we got dust and fatigue, and this time reached home by sunset. Since September fish and venison have been plenty and half the price of last winter. There are occasional chances of tasting bear, one hunter having bagged five last week. One morning in October Daughter came in and reported a tramp in the hay mow. Fifteen minutes later three fairly dressed men came out and went on their way westward without asking for breakfast; no harm done.
    Not long after a married daughter in her hack with nearly all her "tribe" met a coyote which stood still not twenty feet from the wagon and took a good look at their costumes. He was no doubt the friendly fellow who had taken their poultry and felt acquainted. They live pretty well up in the near spur of the Siskiyou Mountains. One of the children fancied that the brute laughed at them.
    We have seen some attempts at raising sorghum but they were flat failures. No kind of grapes matures well and, I surmise, that nothing saccharine conies to perfection except the prune and almond. Sorghum is only a large grass like "Johnson." Alfalfa succeeds well and timothy will grow where scattered in the timber. The three native nutritious clovers disappeared years since. As usual rain held off four months but it hurt no crops but pasture. Of course plowing could not begin until rain fell at mid-October.
    Raw fruit disagrees with us all, and with "paterfamilias" in particular, who has been losing flesh ever since.
    When Bishop Morris was over on a visitation he told of a large ship loading at Portland with nineteen-cent wheat. The elections raised the grain fourteen cents, or rather the price went up after that time. Also he narrated how choice forequarters of mutton sold for twenty cents, and beef at such low rates that forty cents a week would feed considerable family.
    About 20th of October went up into the mountains to visit and found the son-in-law had built a barn himself on a venture, but it was not quite plumb. Here in these mountains farmers; shoe their own horses and don't wait for a carpenter to build a fair house or barn, and of course the log cabin is easily found.
    Real estate is falling as it has been for years. Sixteen years ago, seven before the railroad, it was more than twice as dear as now. Owners sold "climate" by the acre and threw in the land. Now they are beginning to sell soil approaching more nearly to its value.
    The elections have electrified all--some positively, others negatively. Anti-Cleveland Democrats profess to be pleased, and their tribe is numerous. No one says much on any subject, and so great is the depression that the "Holiness" flourish, in one sense; "nobody cares so you keep off his toes."
    The Ladies Aid Society of the Presbyterian church gave a successful entertainment by which they canceled the church debt, and two weeks later the Episcopal Ladies' Guild gave another which yielded still better--not to pay debt, but to make good pews--having had only rude benches. A Presbyterian lady said yesterday that people generally in this valley [omission] well equally in such matters; and in our "broad" churchmanship we give utmost credit.
    Plenty of poor people here, incidentally and accidentally, for nearly all immigrants have been starved out elsewhere, and a few came away from good places and would like to return.
Solomon Sentinel, Solomon, Kansas, December 5, 1894, page 4


    We clip the following paragraphs from a letter from Dr. Kendall, at Medford, Oregon. The first shows that farmers is in harder lines out there than here:
    When Bishop Morris was over last month he told of mutton quarters (fore) being sold in Portland for twenty cents each and boil beef at a ridiculously low figure, which reminded us of our own economics! He told also of a large shipload of the finest wheat which was loaded at nineteen cents per bushel!
    But the sensation of the hour which paralyzes us all is the election avalanche! Words cannot express the feelings; and no demonstration was proposed or conceived. Anti-administration Democrats seem as reconciled as Republicans.
    Aaron Andrews, of course, is gratified that his brother "Heck" was elevated to the legislature by Phillips County.
Beloit Gazette, Beloit, Kansas, December 6, 1894, page 4


    It has been a long time since the last from the Pacific, but the "canvass" left no room for mere correspondence.
    Our "scrap bag" begins by saying that Senator Holt (People's Party) in reply to question, said, "No, I can't take my roll of blankets to reunion for the reason that I must go on down to Salem and can't be burdened." He is one of the active bodies in the party, is an East Tennesseean and was one of the heroic unionists that helped carry "Old Glory" back to her roosting place amongst the undaunted and loyal mountaineers. The reunion was at Grants Pass on the banks of Rogue River, thirty-six miles away, from the 11th to the 14th of September.
    Tell N. W. Allen, John Abbott and George Brinen that I found here a member of the "Blind Half-Hundred"--wide awake and duly sober--Francis Marion Stewart of Payson. While on a jaunt with a comrade--the mother and I--we asked Mr. Garrett where Patrick Daily was teaching. "Pat?" said he. Yes. "Why, Pat is our teacher and the house is a mile and a quarter south." But the house was beyond our turn point and we failed to see it; but being after four we met Miss Garrett going home. He is said to rank amongst the good teachers.
    A. Andrews bought an enormous salmon for twenty-five cents and reported to us that they could not get it eaten. The next day his oldest boy in reply to queries said, "0 pshaw, Pa himself couldn't eat [it] and thought we couldn't; but we did finish it in fine style."
    Many fine placer and quartz claims are being found. A neighbor, Davis, has a good one of the former in whose newly made ditch he found four nuggets ranging from three to seven dollars in value. This Davis is the same man who cordially invited ourself to come over and lie in the shade of a big white oak and watch them dig gold.
    On the first of October an Indiana man remarked that the hard times here were not a "patchin" to what it was in his state. About the same time an odd character was encountered who narrated that many years ago his wife had died leaving two boys over whom he disliked to place a stepmother; but the younger, now eighteen, had run away and he was going to hunt a wife. Of course we encouraged the plan.
    The mother had laid an injunction, so when the fish man came we got some salmon at four cents a pound. He had no wrapping paper but we used a willow twig for a handle, and thus the precious morsel was transported.
    Davis said also that the man who did not work got as much gold as those who toiled all day. Eggs and butter bring twenty-five cents, but market is often glutted with the latter. One merchant won't buy a pound of butter, for if he did, he says, he could soon fill his house and find no sale. The making of much butter is discouraged.
    A. Andrews three weeks ago met Dave Miller and John Griffin on the trail into the mountain for bear, Dave having two pups along to train. Miller runs a good hardware store but delights in the chase, having lived here twenty-five years, long before a "Southern Pacific" was prophesied, and is an Iowan.
    Farms are growing cheaper and an old soldier who came here in '78 says that when he came farms were held twice as high as now--that is, they sold "climate" at so much an acre and "threw in the land."
    A family from Idaho went into our son-in-law's cabin three weeks ago and to his remark that it was a poor excuse they replied, "Wish we had as good a home." How I pity them--homeless, hopeless, wanderers.
    Republicans have not in any manner "jollified" over their victories, but a bank president (also a Republican) said, "The majorities are too great and as a consequence they may be tempted into extravagant legislation which would precipitate another panic before recovering from the past."
    Three weeks ago, when up to Andrews', Mt. Pitt in the eastern horizon had more snow apparently than other and higher peaks, and no reason was assigned. That reminds us that at the Episcopal "entertainment" in the opera house, the curtain, as supposed, contained a picture of the above mountain, and Dr. Geary was asked if it was a representation of Mt. Pitt. "No," said he, "It is a misrepresentation."
    Nearly all fruit is a disappointment to our family; the only exceptions, the plums and prunes. No fruit trees are long-lived if they yield nice fruit, but seedlings are hardy.
    We have found a man with team that drives us around all day for one dollar. Neither did we "beat him down."
    Men ask $1.50 for labor, but will take 75 cents.
    The assessor did not visit our domicile, and hence our household is happy.
    In September an acquaintance drove to Crescent City on the Pacific and got into rain when halfway. It rained half the time while he sojourned and on the return rain ceased at the halfway, Kerbyville, and the remainder of the road to this place was dusty.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, December 14, 1894, page 1


    An apology is needed for this unusually long silence. Very unusually occupied. We have passed through this inclement term with so little change that winter has scarcely been realized.
    This town shipped immense numbers of the finest turkeys I've ever seen to San Francisco. Several "toms" were handled, each of which weighed thirty pounds! The "bronze" predominate. An acquaintance, Jacob Lame, says that the largest come from the "desert" because it so teems with insect life--namely crickets.
    The "tale" just dispatched is much sprinkled with historic characters of the plains and mountains: Meek, Sublette, Beuts, Bridger, Jed S. Smith, etc.
    My daughter has met a treasure in an old graduate of the conservatories of Leipzig and Boston, sojourning here for his health--a man who is "au fait" in all pertaining to music; and had inspired her with an ambition to attend at the "New England." It is within the bounds of both possibility and probability. That condition creates a little more anxiety about Kansas crops! But the professor is the oddest character and has the funniest cackle for a laugh, but it's far better than no smile.
    It used to be Thursday, now it's Wednesday, when the usual greeting met myself on entering after having been downtown. "Did you get the Beloit papers?" and they would be grabbed for before anything else in the shape of literature was even noticed. Once I had expectations of seeing the Courier but it has never appeared.
    Yesterday I dropped into a newly formed Y.M.C.A. and found them lively with some of the best material of the town and suburbs: The pastors seem to favor, but just why I do not know. I once heard an aged pastor say that it brought few recruits to church. But if they only led men into morality, that is a great point gained.
    Sometimes it may be wondered at why trains are detained in the Siskiyous by snow when not elsewhere. Well, in order to cross the pass the trains must rise a mile high; tunneling can't be done, the distance through being too great. Hence the track passes for over a mile right under an everlasting glacier where snow is falling when nowhere else. The "chinook" comes from the Pacific and loosens a large lot which does not have a long slope of surface, rocks and trees to stop it; but the first obstacle is the track or often a passing train.
    In speaking of irrigation, Roper, who once owned the Beatrice mills, tells that once when he was ranching near Kearny the soldiers had a garden not two feet above the current of the Platte and by going half a mile above they could have taken out an irrigation ditch, but they seemed to know so little that they let it burn up by the drought.
    In one sense this seems a very "poverty-stricken" country, for the Episcopalians fail to pay the railroad fare of the missionary who comes in at irregular intervals of one or two months.
    The post and corps had a joint installation at New Year's, then a modest "campfire" followed by a bean bake. A week ago the corps had an entertainment of recitations and songs to raise money for a banner. Both organizations are getting numbers of new members, and are lively enough. The lady officers were some of the best readers I have ever heard and two gave very good addresses.
    At a Sunday school here the superintendent said that Mary had taught Jesus before he was twelve that Joseph was not his father. But a teacher drew his attention to the fact that Mary a few verses after said. ''Thy Father and I have sought thee." And Jesus says, "I go to my Father and to your Father." Maybe none of them had natural fathers and all originated as he.
    Some weeks ago a man came to me and said he wanted to saw wood to get flour. I went and ordered a sack and reported the case to the Ladies' Benevolent Society who next day sent him an express wagon load of various groceries, and he was happy.
    A Sunday school superintendent here was asked if one of Adam's descendants could not have fallen even if he didn't. His reply was, "The opinion was that they would not, for the promise to bless the seed of the righteous would keep all right." It was a pity then that Jesus did not have a like-minded wife to raise children so that people could see the other side of the question. But Jehovah "got such a bad scald" upon the first, that he feared another experiment.
    Here men are agitating a removal of the courthouse when the county has a $90,000 debt. Some are proffering for this city to build the courthouse by subscription and then the old one at Jacksonville could be sold for an orphan or lunatic asylum.
    I have lost forty pounds by a reductive process which I am continuing with a prospect of a farther fall of fifteen or twenty. It is nice with no unpleasant features or results.
    The Presbyterians had a protracted meeting which went as follows: Three to Disciples; four to North Methodists; two to Baptists; two to South Methodists and two to Episcopalians.
    Men are glad to get work at fifty cents per day.
    Aaron Andrews while pruning trees cut his arm badly.
    We have yet no team and hack, and Mrs. Kendall declared that we can never have them until safe back in Kansas. She and Abby are disgusted with so much walking and consequent fatigue. Aaron Andrews drives a more Godforsaken team than you ordinarily see in Kansas, and he would neither have nor use such in the Sunflower State but it is quite common here.
    The pastor got incensed over whist parties, denounced them roundly, and declared that Puritan persecution and witch-burning morality was far better.
    Times are very hard and real estate continues to depreciate. Stock sales seem dull except when fattened for market.
    A new and good gold-bearing ledge has been discovered in the Jacksonville mountains. This latter item amused your correspondent's cupidity, but it will perhaps have no other effect.
    Two of the shrewdest men here declare that we have not yet reached the bottom of the crisis. Lamentable. No Kansas or Nebraska men seem as well off as when in those states.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, March 22, 1895, page 3


    A letter dated March 5 from Rev. R. P. Kendall of Medford, Oregon, formerly of Mitchell County, Kansas, says:
    "Spring and frogs have been here over two weeks, but we have an occasional frost. Plenty of unemployed men who are glad to get fifty cents per day and board themselves! Very little capital comes with emigrants, all poor and seeking employment. There are so many Godforsaken teams in this country; feed scarce and high. It costs $40 a year to feed our cow, but we sell $25 worth of milk and butter. My people long for the plenty, the team and hack of Kansas! They tire of extended pedestrian exercises! Oregon gave a full trainload of supplies to Nebraska. How our country delights in benevolence! We think Columbia beats all the world now or the entire past in beneficence!
    "So far, fruit is all in good shape--last year we had almost a failure. Old residents say that two failures have never occurred in succession, but it is no guarantee of the future. May is the critical month. Much garden is made and we have planted some potatoes. The distillery is yet silent, and the 'factor' says that such plants are the pulse of business--the entire United States having fallen off at least one third in business--and that when the crisis is relieved the institution will resume. A short time since the storekeeper reported over 900 barrels, with fifteen or twenty going out each week.
    "Money very close and practically none for a long time. County scrip discounted at from 20 to 25 percent; city a little lower."
Solomon Sentinel, Solomon, Kansas, March 27, 1895, page 1


    A long time again since the last; too busy. Over two weeks of the delay will be accounted for a piece onward.
    Our city of Medford needs a little competition, for just after my last, when I wished to buy a cheap United States history for a boy I found it only in a second hand bookstore, much defaced and dirty but contents intact. "How much?" "Well, I guess one dollar and twenty-five cents," replied the merchant. It reminded me of trust-ridden Kansas, imposed by their own votes, where school books were from three hundred to four hundred percent higher than in Japan and the isles of the ocean, where "men let business alone."
    The Oregon legislature the past winter tried to modify the mortgage laws so that capital could be invited, but the scheme failed and we must wait another biennial session.
    Even the great mass of gold output must find its way out. Nevertheless the yellow metal gives quite a stimulus to business before it disappears. Just after my last I heard of a claim to sell in a good part, for seventy-five dollars, which had a field cleaned and fenced and a good log cabin. The owner had become homesick to go elsewhere. Cheap claims and deeded lands are becoming much cheaper.
    At a bible society meeting in March one preacher recounted that one man asked who Jesus Christ was, for he was not familiar with the name. This was surely a put-up job on the preacher.
    When the plan of improving the additional homestead and buying a timber filing was discussed, the rest of the family demurred to any further appropriation of funds, and suggested that we must turn our faces towards the Solomon. But drought was not then threatening in Northern Kansas.
    On the twentieth of March a land office matter called me to Jacksonville, a distance of four and a half miles, and the trip was made by pounding ties, the round journey. So you observe considerable vigor.
    On March twenty-fifth we had a little appearance of spring, but the almond and peach blossom come in their season, no matter how cold, and we wore as much bedding as in January.
    All older orchards are overrun with the "San Jose scale," for which spraying was supposed to be the only remedy, but lately a species of ladybug has lately been imported which is more effective, but birds are its enemy.
    Just lately a Kansan from Washington County, who owned a nice place beyond Bear Creek, half mile from the city, gladly exchanged for a tract in Missouri, and moves in two months.
    Rumors of railroad seem to have no authority and so no report can be made of a new road to compete with the Union Pacific on the north and the Southern Pacific on the south.
    On the fifth of April, in company with John L., a cousin of John C. Wigle, the business academy was visited. The pupils seemed to have been well drilled, but the financial condition of the institution is not enviable, payment of stock dues having encountered the chilling influence of the 1893 crisis.
    A man of means engages to build a large hotel if the city will furnish sewerage to the river, but it is deemed too burdensome; hence the business part of the town has abundant odors of all brands.
    The G.A.R. has had several excitements in relation to a building of its own whose lower story could be leased to merchants; but like railroads never get beyond conceptions. The old boys are too much in the sere and yellow leaf.
    Finally all dried fruit has found a market and it proved true that a smaller volume than common passed through the kilns. An immense crop of pears is on the trees in this valley and all kinds are in fair quantity. The hay harvest has begun and the yield is satisfactory.
    Men vainly wish for the capital and men to push enterprises. A large lumber venture will commence now that a capitalist has won his timber case before the Interior Department. The mills will be at the falls on Rogue River which have before had notice in these notes.
    A man with two long-eared hounds settled a quarter of a mile from Aaron Andrews and vermin quit molesting the hen roosts; hence the good of a right kind of dog was abundantly proven.
    Andrews had quite an experience with his "nannies, whose udders furnished too much for the single kid of each, and so the older boy regularly milks them, thereby adding materially to the lacteal stores of the family. All are as tractable and jump on boxes to be operated.
    The church people were one day surprised by the apparition of a new boardwalk, five feet wide, from the sidewalk to their building, and on inquiry it was learned that an attorney, Capt. Crowell, once in the consular service at Shanghai, had, without advice, done the praiseworthy act. Hence your correspondent was placed under obligations to acknowledge the courtesy.
    We see all varieties. Early in April quite a retinue of men, pack animals and dogs passed through to hunt bear in the Pitt Range where in addition an occasional grizzly or a cimarron may be met. Nothing unusually large or fierce presented in the pack and, to me, some seemed mere curs, but D. H. Miller, who knew all parties, said that every animal was well trained for bear.
    Presbytery sat here and its leading liberal commended the broad church work that had been done and expressed himself pleased with the advance made. From the pulpit the new moderator, Mr. Mosser, in relation to bible study, "show it no favor, but bring it to the test for all other books."
    So many mint-new dollars appear here that some surmise a coinage plant is not far away. So far no base pieces have been seen, but the certain one hundred percent profit from bullion precludes the necessity for using inferior metal.
    Communication with Boston unearthed a lady earning some four thousand per year at teaching and entertainments, at whose house I had attended preparatory school in the early forties when she was seven years old--a talented, simple-hearted family.
    A Dr. Danielson tells of a Klamath Reserve Indian who was called "Doc," and someone present inquired as to why such a person had the appellation. After repeated urgings one of the lot said that he was informed that it was "because he was a 'd----d fool.'" It is a curious coincidence that an unfortunate who held down William C. Ingram's homestead in Lulu was "Doc" Lloyd, and perhaps for the same reason.
    The same medicus relates that upon the recovery of a critical case someone asked what cured the man and the physician replied, "I don't know." "Then," his tormentor added, "how could you knew what was the right medicine to give if you don't know what cured."
    We have here a linguistic oddity. The son of purely American parents ran off to sea when quite young and enlisted upon a man of war whose crew was composed of nearly all Germans. He was then about thirteen. He returned at twenty-one with the brogue of a German but a few years in the country and does not improve.
    The unique Sunday school superintendent again expressed odd views about Christ. In reply to an intimation that Jesus should have been married in order to set an example, he said, "Jesus could not have married because he was only typical perfect humanity. A monstrosity? No, he was not that, but was not sexually differentiated, presumably was like the angelic world which was not married or given in marriage."
    On the morning of the twenty-third of May, before sunrise, our select party of me and myself set out with valise on shoulders as knapsack, umbrella strapped on like a musket, and pants rolled up a la Knickerbocker. The neighbor remarked that appearances indicated travel, and a beeline was made for the Southern Pacific track, along which the line of march was laid. Good time was made to Phoenix, an old town and once county seat by one authority. [Phoenix was never the county seat of Jackson County.] A few minutes' rest were indulged in and then the band trudged on to Talent where a drink was indulged from the best water ever tasted. The line of march thence onward was flanked at every twenty rods with old or present gold placers whence hundreds of thousands have been taken and more coming every day. Pretty soon thereafter came several auriferous quartz veins and workings and one stamp mill was making an awful din, the worked leads being all good. Near Talent is the big Dunkard mission, reported the largest on the coast. A zealous man, Salisbury Sherman, invited your correspondent to hold meetings on every alternate Sunday in the town, a vacant day. He had been acquainted with Bishop Walker of Dakota and used all the familiar phraseology of the Episcopal churchman. At 10:30 destination, Ashland, is reached, having well measured fourteen miles. The ultimate objective point was to take notes from the lips of the only "Argonaut" of 1843 accessible and able, a giant in free silver politics on the soil of Oregon and well known over the Pacific Coast, General Elisha L. Applegate, of whom the next letter will treat. Three hundred and ninety pages of pencil notes are the result, and tomorrow begins the work of preliminary codifying followed by several weeks with the goose quill.
Western Call, Beloit, Kansas, June 21, 1895, page 1


    Rev. Reese P. Kendall, who with his family left Medford a few weeks ago for Boston, Mass., sends us this week a very terse, well-written account of his trip from ocean to ocean, which we print below.
    A host of valued friends at the Medford depot wished us God speed which we long remembered. Conspiracies of exigencies even prevented making a final visit upon our chosen friends, and this is a humble apology. The delay of train did not change equilibrium, for we felt that all would come right to the righteous. Even flitting fancies of the road agent in Cow Creek Canyon did not hinder a good sleep in the well-prepared "tourist bunks," for which the sable guardian got his douceur. Smoke, as feared, masked the landscapes, and no view was had further away than half a mile. We rolled up to the Portland depot on time and were met by Mr. A. D. Charlton, assistant passenger agent of the Northern Pacific, who did all in his power to arrange matters to our satisfaction. Then two old friends were found, with whom the necessary wait seemed too very short. The flight along the southern bank of the Columbia and crossing upon the large ferry kept us busy watching the changing panorama, and then we looked for the much-discussed Sound, where was met our first contretemps in a gray-haired official requiring us to occupy the smoking car, but which was corrected by telegram from Portland before leaving Ellensburg, where we lay down in comfortable bunks to sleep and ride over one of the best roadbeds in America. Thereafter no trouble disturbed the even tenor of our ways as long as we stayed under the care of the Northern Pacific, but "the best-laid plans of men rind nice gang aft agley" for all western roads--always alive to the comfort of people of modest means, find themselves bridled, bitted and saddled with the incubus of codfish as soon as they cross the meridian of the Mississippi and ask the same courtesies extended onward to the Atlantic. Common sense, common decency and humanity ask why the eastern roads should draw a line and say practically, "Pay an exorbitant price or you shall have no comfort at all." Well, we don't understand why the very reasonable sum of one dollar per night on a double berth on the Southern Pacific tourists to Kansas City could not be afforded continuously to the Atlantic. No, unless you pay thirteen dollars more for a so-called first-class Atlantic ticket you can't even sleep in a five-dollar-a-night bed, which is twice as much as the dearest hotel in the universe charges. The holder of a second-class ticket rides in just as good a day coach as the road owns, right beside a first-class passenger, whose only advantages are, stop off, which not one in ten uses, and is no particle of harm or trouble to the road, and the privilege of being sandbagged by the payment of five dollars per night for a bed no better than the Northern Pacific tourist. I don't care about him, for that is the price he pays for being a codfish, but I do speak for the hundreds of plain people who are compelled to suffer when they are willing to pay a good price for comfort.
    In St. Paul we got aboard the Wisconsin Central for a night's travel to Chicago, and in these cars we and all our fellow passengers did penance for all our sins, past and future. But; as their affairs have just fallen into the hands of the Northern Pacific, will soon have all as good as their own, unless hoodooed by codfish. In Chicago your correspondent got lost twice in a five-hours' wait.
    Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana presented scenes of plenty and comfort. Smoke masked nearly all the summits and quite all the prominent peaks, even in the Rockies, and hence we were not rid of it until far out on the plains.
    One and a quarter days marked our stay in the Langham, on Washington Street, and then we found rooms at 76 East Newton Street in South End, Boston. Only two blocks away is the immense west end of the harbor, where many vessels are unloading lime, sand, stone, coal, coke and lumber. Three piano factories are near, and today we were in the establishment which makes the kind we sold in Medford. Abby tried several of their highest priced and pronounced them no better than Mrs. Morine's. By paying more rent we got gratis the use of a piano with all the heat and light needed--the light from the gas works. The rooms are full furnished and with a free bathroom, hot and cold water. But expenses will be more than in Medford, while fish are twice as dear. Today we went to see the historical common, where the boys complained of the redcoats to their general, and visited also the gorgeous public gardens, all worth traveling far to see. The California Battalion spent $200 and expenses per capita upon their outfit. About 25,000 Templars for visitors! Overwhelming! Well, Americans don't do anything by halves.
Medford Mail, September 13, 1895, page 7


    Reese P. Kendall and wife, also Miss Abbie of Oregon, are visiting relatives here. They will remain a few weeks yet.
"Liberty, Illinois," Quincy Journal, Quincy, Illinois, December 31, 1895, page 5


    St. Alban's (near Highland Park)--Morning service at 10:30. Rev. R. P. Kendall will give discourse.
"At the Churches," Quincy Journal, Quincy, Illinois, February 20, 1897, page 4


    Rev. R. P. Kendall will not preach here on the fourth Sunday in this month but on the first in March.
"Marysville," Evening News, Jeffersonville, Indiana, February 23, 1899, page 2


    In looking up the record we are surprised that nigh two months have elapsed since the last. Now, hereafter when anyone tires of waiting let him dispatch a card and we will at once wake up. Also, in the interim, we have removed one block north to 1186 Sherman Street.
    We did not tell all about our visit to Santa Cruz, and especially about the whales and barracuda. The Santa Cruzans said that the school had come into the bay so often that they did not seem to fear and were looked upon as pets and even property. None have ever been molested except the individual once named which went into the flats (shallow water) when the tide was ebbing and left him grounded in a foot of water.
    The barracuda (fish) was served on the table; and pitifully dry feed it was.
    The divorce matter gets quite a stirring up, and in October the national Episcopal convention will discuss as well as vote. One representative clergyman said the church would make no change.
    One of our neighbor boys, Swain, was in the roof disaster in San Francisco, where so many had climbed up to see the great ball game. In three weeks he recovered and went back to work in the Union Iron Works.
    It was odd to see green grapes and stems on vines as late as December 1. Then, too, that the grape shoot was similar in nature to the tendril was evidenced by the fact that a number of snipped tendrils did develop fruit from four or five up to twenty berries.
    Our union Sunday school had another entertainment in Pomona hall where a graphophone gave lots of pleasure and the Sunday school fund got a good lift.
    We must advert to the strange climate where the miles of slopes above us have no iota of frost. But where we lived on Strawberry Butte, Oregon, the valley far below was much the colder.
    Not long since an Irishman called attention to the fact of so much money in the national treasury and our bankers loaning to foreign governments. A neighbor said that the man had, for the first [time], voted for the Republican nominee.
    A neighbor made the discovery that he had had a mouse penned up in the toe of his shoe all day.
    On the 19th of December the conservatory had its commencement; its years coinciding with the almanac. Daughter had grippe in her throat but performed her part with nonchalance. The institution deserves a hearty support.
    Three weeks ago a neighbor, sixty-five years old, said that a few days before he had taken his first railroad car ride. In his teens he had worked for Majors, Waddell & Russell, at Leavenworth, and made many a trip to Santa Fe and Taos. Someday we'll coax him to "cough up" a good yarn for literary work.
    The power house last week was put upon a petroleum furnace; but they have lots to learn; too often let out too much black smoke from the stacks. Yesterday a car was stalled and they said some affair was at fault is the furnace. The great consumption of oil will reduce price of fuel by $2 per cord, says Carroll, the fuel man.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, February 7, 1901, page 4


    Scarcely twenty-four hours passes without a "temblor"--a slight tremor of earth, which causes some to remark that a catastrophe will someday take place, because such were not common before ten years ago.
    Not long since a young woman in the city took carbolic acid because no one was good enough to tell her that the United States recognized her "common law marriage" and would defend her title. How pitiful the lack of moral courage to teach that "common law" is the heritage of righteousness and is not repeatable by any but once by numskulls in the "forties" in Illinois and, in a small way, emotional ninnies in California.
    That blunder in Suckerdom was corrected by the next legislature. The mistake of California makes bigamy and trigamy legal by Nevada on one side and the United States over all. When a lawyer is questioned [he] will usually smile and remark: "People, religion and politics are queer in tolerating antagonistic autonomies." An exceptional one vouchsafed, "Yes, I wish that code was abrogated." A bystander asked, "Who will do it, or has the right?" The attorney was only "talking to the galleries."
    In the Platt Home is a lady nurse who believes in John Alexander Dowie, of Chicago, and his "Zion Church of Christ," and who also loans his papers to people. It is one phase of Christian Science, but more in practical business lines. When officiating Dowie wears the garb of a lay church bishop in the Episcopal Church. He calls himself "Overseer" or English for bishop. His wife, also overseer, wears the same official robes.
    A Presbyterian minister, who was calling at the same institution, in reply to question said: "I believe that the spirits of the dead visit and surround us and see all that is transpiring."
    The through new Coast Line has a press of business and now does three times the work before filling of the gap.
    The fruit combine reduced prices and is now selling twenty carloads of dried fruit per day. They had held prices too high.
    This country is so full of sham and poppycock that one grows ashamed of being a human. But your correspondent feels better than for twelve years, and the family participates in the good health. Hope to write once more before migrating.
    A brother claims to have captured the first confiscated Confederate flag, credited to the Sixteenth Illinois, and now in the state house at Springfield. He and his corporal's guard did the work in May, 1861, at Hannibal, Mo.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, April 25, 1901, page 10


    Dr. and Mrs. R. P. Kendall and their daughter, Miss Abbie Kendall, of San Jose, Cal., are visiting Mr and Mrs. Joseph Poley.
"Ashland," Sunday Oregonian, Portland, August 11, 1901, page 18


    Again a long silence and we are penitent. Shortly after our last, an estimable trained nurse in the Pratt Home persuaded us to attempt a picture of herself and charge.
    The result was absolute "caricatures," but the good woman urged a fresh trial. This time the pictures were quite good, but a different artist developed. The truth may be that the failure was in the artist mainly. Nevertheless we are the poorest amateurs, but accumulating a small film of valuable experience.
    Californians are excitable and are much exercised over "Dowie," Christian Science and Dr. Da Costa, who is "exposing" Episcopalians.
    Dowie has more admirers than had been imagined and they believe him a very prophet of God. He has wonderful magnetism and business capacity.
    Christian Science keeps itself so hidden that we have been able to observe little in several months. Dr. Da Costa was forgotten in a week after departure.
    Father Sasia, of the Catholics, has again been saying that miracles are necessary to sustain the church.
    Here we have odd paradoxes--north winds in summer accompany heat, while the south breezes are cool. These latter come through Pajaros (path row) Pass from Bay of Monterey. The south wind also brings rains in the proper season.
    During the past hot term Los Gatos, 600 feet higher and in the mountains, had it five degrees hotter than here, but no one had sunstroke. Myself was more oppressed than any other heated term in this locality.
    We have an entertaining neighbor, a veritable globetrotter, and a successful teacher of violin, mandolin and guitar. He was born in Malta and talks Maltese, fair English with an accent, Italian, Spanish and Arabic. His father was pilot and part owner of a Mediterranean trader to Algiers, Gibraltar, Alexandria, Jappa and Constantinople. His ancestors were long lived, his grandmother having been active and pursuing her profession--midwife--at ninety-nine. The females of the family have been in the same profession from time immemorial.
    "Bunker Hill" anniversary was celebrated on June 17th, at Los Gatos by the "Bunker Hill," "Sons of the Revolution" and "Pioneer" societies, and like always on this coast, they had a rousing good time.
    People get off to the mountains and seaside late in June or early in July and stay till late August. Tents on various beaches can be had at ten to fifteen dollars a month--unfurnished or furnished--but rooms (furnished) at the hotels can be had at $1.25 a week. Fair meals can be got for fifteen cents.
    The "Seventh Day" Adventists have set up a large tent near and are having fair attendance. Their preachers are pretty good but the discourses all have the same general color, "drab Saturday"
    We are gradually packing up and will embark on the S.P. for Medford, Oregon on August 6th. Hence that will be our address until we move again.
    The strikes are making distress and hard times in California.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, August 15, 1901, page 4


    On the 5th of August at 4:30 p.m. we set sail from San Jose for the Siskiyous and Rogue River Valley, having first got our piano and freight into the hands of the S.P., which charged enough, but we were more than compensated because the road is more than kind to the "cloth," conceding to the whole family half first-class fare with privileges of stopoff. At Niles we exchanged to a through train where, on starting, our handsome fox terrier, given by George, gnawed off his rope and before the train got many rods he jumped from the baggage, probably not hurt but somebody else's pet, and we hope they will learn his many diverting tricks. The baggage master recounted the story and we gave him our right, title and interest, promising to describe his many accomplishments, if requested. No word yet. The bullet sped on up the east side of the bay and soon we landed in the spacious depot at Oakland Mole where Abby, now our guide and mentor, found coffee for the party and  inside forty minutes we were in a high-backed seat on the Shasta Route rolling away into the night and soon after crossed an arm of the bay in a huge ferry to Benicia and were soon speeding to Sacramento to take up all overlanders bound northward. But it is night and we do not see the famous Sacramento, so dear to the argonauts, the "Days of old, the days of gold, the days of forty-nine."
    When daylight broke upon us we had struck McCloud Canyon, an affluent of the Sacramento, and were slowly ascending its very tortuous meanderings. The water was clear and was being utilized to float down a large lot of straggling cordwood, much of which was lodged on rocks in the channel and bends of the stream. The entire course seemed rock and gravel, no dirt, no mud, no sandbars. But it is the heated, dry term, and we wonder what the domestic animal lives upon, to which a pleasant Portuguese matron replied: "Eat tree, browse." There is no carpet of grass as in Kansas, only here and there a small patch of uninviting stubble. How dreary, how desolate. and again the Portuguese lady replies: "Chop wood and kill deer to live.'' In one yard she explained, "Some tree, fig-a.'' Here her boy of 8 or 9 had laid his head for some time in Mrs. K----'s lap to sleep in the early morn, because he was a "nice little fellow." All Portuguese children born in America are said to be phenomenally bright and mainly civil.
    Geographically the country has all the jagged irregularities of the lava beds, but the mountains did not seem to mitigate the awful swelter in which we started until reaching Shasta Soda Springs, of which we quaffed to our (stomachs') content. We gazed much at Castle Craig and later feasted our eyes upon white-headed old Shasta for hours. Its glaciers may have been filling its four rivers for a hundred thousand years. The snow line was still far above our highest course, but at the high elevation we did have a cool atmosphere and refreshing breath. The soda cost "00" per gallon. Going up to Shasta Summit we made a triple loop three miles long, and all within a stone's throw of each other most of the way. On Shasta Summit was an immense lumber camp of pine and fir. As soon as we began to drop down again to the Klamath, the heat set in again so strong that the women declared they were ashamed of having boasted that we were on the road to cool Oregon. At the Klamath the heat was worse than ever--stifling. The ascent of the Siskiyous is made also by loops, but not so long as on Shasta. As we ascended the temperature decreased and we had some lightning and thunder, but it was hot all the way to Bear Creek Valley and Ashland where we had our first stopoff. That night rain laid the dust and we could breathe and steep in our daughter Josephine's house. Many tunnels were met on Shasta, but they were short. On the Siskiyous the summit tunnel was 1,400 feet and the lamps had to be lit. Of course all windows and ventilators were closed. At Ashland we met Wayne Grubb, of White Rock, in hardware and farming near town.
    Next day p.m. we board train and sail twelve miles to Medford where we take two furnished rooms in the Halley Block until [a] suitable dwelling can be found. On the 14th we move into a very nice 7-room dwelling and the next day comes in, two doors north, Patrick, a brother of Dr. Daily, of Beloit. He is father of Patrick Jr , superintendent of Jackson County schools. Patrick Sr.'s daughter, Mrs. Stinson, once from Granite Creek, called on the 17th. Stinson's homestead is on the east slope of Roxy Anne mountain, while our additional fifteen acres is on the north face near [the] foot. He brings fuel to the Dailys. Our well is some thirteen feet deep and as good drinking as the pioneer in Brownsville, or even E. F. Brown's house well. Good farm butter is 20 cents and fowls $2.50 to $3 per dozen. Sugar and kerosene are dearer than anywhere, but beef is reasonable.
    The weather is hotter here than in San Jose, California, and your correspondent languishes.
    We are glad to hear of Kansas rains, but sorry to hear of the Delphos calamity.
    Have met Rouney and Harry Andrews. The latter perfected claim to a fine timber quarter at head of Trail Creek, thirty-five miles north, on the Umpqua plateau.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, August 29, 1901, page 8


    You will be astonished to learn that this town is noted for its absence of theft ever since we went to Boston in 1892, and the suggestiveness bears heavily upon your correspondent. One neighbor said that he had not locked for years, but did not intimate that he would continue the habit. It is true that much valuable movable stuff is constantly exposed. We found no place in California in such condition. Here no windows are broken in vacant houses, brass fixtures suffer no removal. This house was unlocked when hired. The bucket and rope to the well were intact The house we contemplate buying has had no tenant for three weeks and yet has met no larcenies.
    Nevertheless, the place has four saloons and one recognized social-evil house. In six weeks we have seen one drunkard only and he was so sensible as to say to a hint: "I know I'm drunk and I'm going to get towards home as fast as I can."
    The climate has been the hottest in its history and your correspondent has actually felt the depression--even to clammy perspiration. Vegetation has dried worse than we have ever seen here. Still, hay crops were passable, while flour is 75 to 80 cents per sack.
    Merchants say that trade is good, notwithstanding six offer to sell out--one at 90 and another at 50 cents. One bankrupt stock is being sold out by "wreckers" at any price bid--piecemeal, retail. Upon being asked if they had any good congress shoes the response came: "Haven't seen a good shoe in the stock."
    Real estate in the residence quarters is much shrunk in commercial value. Some we have bought yielding 10 percent net in rents, which have not fallen one cent. Ashland is about the same, while Jacksonville rents have also fallen. Grocerymen report sales never better. One man of that tribe we believe implicitly and he endorses the sentiment.
    Andrews' oldest son, George, reports Modoc County, California, in such glowing colors that we are "almost persuaded" to go over and inaugurate a cattle ranch with an eighty-acre patch of alfalfa. He is offered $35 and board for the winter. Last summer he broke a number of range horses to harness in the hay wagons. Once they hitched two green ones, whereas one at a time with an old worker was the custom.
    The big ditch is being built from Fish Lake which lies on the lower slopes of Mt. Pitt, whose summit is in the regions of snow. The stream will run on the highest point on the upper side of our additional homestead, so that every foot can be irrigated. Hence, good luck camps on our trail yet once more. One other irrigation scheme with possession of 10,000 acres irrigable soil has been brought to our attention. The capitalization is $30,000 to $50,000, but enterprises galore fill the speculative atmosphere; it ain't too dull for that.
    Syndicate has gobbled the lumber output and has advanced all grades 100 percent, nevertheless building is unusually brisk. The head of this trust is in Grants Pass.
    We have never seen a more civil town, and the "hoodlum bell" is rung at 9 p.m. No rowdyism is allowed on the streets. We have been here during the heated term and have found a very sparse Sunday school at the Presbyterian church--only three small classes. This may be well due to the great temperature. Congregations are reported scanty, perhaps for the same reason.
    An academy has been opened here for normal and college preparation, with an enrollment of approaching 150 if all subscribed come in, and the tide is coming as fast as it can be accommodated. It ought to give the place an impulse.
    "Pat" Daily has moved over here because a suitable residence could not be had in Jacksonville. His father has been hired in Bradbury's planing mill as "handy man." Labor is certainly in demand--almost anyone can have a job. Also men are picked up for Sunday work, in fruit, who have already bad six days' duty at usual avocations.
    Tomorrow we begin drying cull apples from the packers, half a cent a pound, merely small specks or bruises.
    Rouney and Harry Andrews, with three others, go soon to appropriate a quarter each of fine timber and grazing lands. We wish them luck. Harry is on a harness deal.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, October 3, 1901, page 8


    Your correspondent is just recovering from a fall which "laid him up for repairs"--now into the fifth week. Got on clothes today and made quite a stagger of crutching from bed to table. We'll make it on lounge and chair the rest of each day, going to bed only for sleep.
    Not long ago we had the pleasure of the company of Warren Parker, of Coos Bay, who told all about the famous sawmills and schooner building. His own father had been interested in such and had left his family well-to-do. He tells a facetious story of a British barge going to pieces on the beach because the drunken captain would not pay a tug to haul her off, declaring that she was "hoodooed" anyway, and had never made any money. They got the insurance, but she was a nice, big steel vessel. That happened while on the way to Ashland before the calamity fell.
    The President's funeral was observed by union services at the Presbyterian church, which was filled full. The same day I met a German, four years in this country, who had not learned to talk enough to bargain for potatoes. He said his wife was the same, but they had sixteen children, most of them attending school. He is a man of means and of course gets on well. They were Reformed church.
    Rouney and Harry Andrews are a second time gone to Trail Creek to secure a second quarter of the gorgeous timber of the Umpquas. Rouney's second son, Alan, was with the party the first time and broke his gun by striking a pheasant which he had wounded. Boys must get experience.
    We have indulged in a little more real estate and got first rent yesterday, which was much better than paying. Another holding is in view for a home, but it has a good tenant and how we should dislike to oust him.
    All carpenters are now busy and we have done our share towards their employ.
    October has been giving lots of rain and everything is growing. Plowing has been unlimited for a month.
    The new academy has been well patronized.
    Pat. Daily has bought property in Jacksonville, which he must generally overhaul prior to use. 
    No "Halloween" was in this town last night, and we make a long, red credit mark. Kansas can't make any such boast.
    Pat. Daily's father, who sold out on Granny Creek in October, is seeking a residence here as well as will purchase a good farm. His son-in-law, Stinson, is very prosperous.
    Abby has to carry the purse and do all the business nowadays.
    Mrs. K. has been tormented with backache four or five days.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, November 7, 1901, page 10


    In this wonderfully civil city we had so little roistering on Christmas that one not on the main street would not know that it was a holiday!
    Our son in Spokane writes that railroad wrecks are so numerous that the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific from November 1st, to December 31st, have had 25 engines wrecked. Consequent upon much quitting and increase of business those roads are compelled to accept all (so called) skilled labor in order to maintain enough crews.
    At Christmas Mrs. K. attended a formal dinner at Wayne G. Grubbs in Ashland. Grubb was a former White Rocker and about 1890 went with a colony to Louisiana.
    The Presbyterians have not secured a pastor; the trustees complaining that a sufficient salary has not been subscribed to justify "calling." Congregation (parish) seems indifferent or hard to suit. At Christmas all the churches were dressed in evergreens.
    Patrick Daily's family contracted bad colds when they moved and Miss Nannie is quite unwell. He has also bought a nice farm some eight miles away on which his son-in-law, Stinson. is now living. The writer will take a trip to see the farm as soon as spring opens.
    E. W. Andrews, "Lishe,'' discusses buying a farm near Rouney, and he will do well; but for some unknown motive he is attending the Academy for one term. Mr. Andrews has about completed the addition of four more rooms to his house. One of his little girls got scalded on the leg but bore it well, because she is a phenomenally patient body.
    The winter is open, fine and too dry for the miners, but farmers are content.
    On New Year's Day we were taken by surprise at the appearance of Maurice Brown, and no one could have been more welcome. So he ate New Year's dinner with us. His wife was in California with relatives. His brother has made large investments in the Klamath country, east of the Cascades, and is an altogether stockman, and we predict that he will do well. Should Maurice emigrate to this region the people would be gratified for he is a valuable acquisition and makes himself useful wherever found. We are glad of the report that Kansas stock will winter through all right and not starve.
    We are to have two new spur railroads; one to extend eight miles southeast to a newly found bituminous coal deposit, and the other to run thirty miles up Rogue River to tap a rich timber region in the Umpqua and Cascade mountains.
    The S.P. will tap the coal beds while Barnum of the "Rogue River R.R." will bond his road for the material to build to the timber. Barnum has no debts. His present style of rails and ties can be laid for a modest sum and he can probably get all the backing he needs here in Jacksonville and Medford. The project will improve this place and give constant employment to many.
    On the 5th of January your correspondent fell at Bradbury's gate and wrenched his former hurts, laying him up for four or five days, but is afield again with crutches as prior to the second fall. Walking was resumed on the 9th.
    Pat. Daily Jr. seems to be a popular superintendent, at least no complaints are heard.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, January 23, 1902, page 4


    We beg pardon for delay and trust such long silence shall not soon again occur.
    Some time ago the Mannings moved in, two doors from us, north, and we soon found that the wife had been a Miss Mills, whose father, Dr. Mills, had resided on Rattlesnake, a neighbor to Rev. Mr. Henry, of the U.B. church, of Hiel Smith and several others. Some time after, they removed to a tract lying between Dr. Perdue's and Mrs. J. J. Baird, near Beloit, where the Dr. died and Rev. Henry buried him, as well as one more of the family which we have forgotten. She recalls with much satisfaction an esteemed member of the Henry family who became Mrs. Charles Burt, and seems to dwell with much pleasure upon her former Kansas environment. Two months ago they lost an infant. After leaving Beloit they went to Vancouver where the marriage took place and then all went to Bellingham Bay. at Whatcom, to engage in lumbering, where they did well, but the rain drove them to this region where they operate a saw mill twelve miles from Ashland. On March 3, the same day we move to our own home, they migrate back to the mill.
    Here also lives the character--Patterson--who found the first gold in Canyon Creek, Canyon City, John Day River, Eastern Oregon, where Horace Stansell and his son, Ed., formerly of Beloit, now reside and carry on business. As soon as normal locomotion be established your correspondent will "write up" the said Patterson, who owns a nice property two doors south.
    It has been represented that vegetables would grow in this valley without irrigation, but it applies only to the varieties which mature by mid-June.
    Strange to tell, all this winter it has been colder in the valley than in and almost to the summit of the mountains. Mannings, early in January, did a small job of chopping up in Griffin's mountain, near A. Andrews' place, and reported that they hardly realized winter while on the job. Thermometer has this winter been down only to 12 below.
    Miss Nannie Daily got married last month to Oscar Stinson, who has a good, large farm of his own. A lucky girl, she deserves such.
    Natives deem this winter "bleak" because four degrees colder than common. See record above.
    We have had some very heavy precipitations of rain which are Godsends to mining.
    We registered before Notary F. M. Stewart, who will be remembered by all the Fifth Illinois men in Beloit, Lulu and Solomon Rapids.
    Again Mr. Barnum reports her husband planning to run his railroad thirty miles up Rogue River to the heavy timber, and he hopes not long hence to join the Columbia Southern, coming from the Columbia over the elevated Des Chutes Plateau to Prineville and thence, in time, to the Klamath region and over here. He was much gratified when told of our George taking the third construction engine on that new road. The other two are driven by George's old chums from the Northern Pacific, and so he will be at home on April 2, when he takes charge. Barnum lives a block away and is our present landlord. Two wealthy men in this valley take part with Barnum, and Enyart, cashier of the Bank of Medford, says the money is in this valley to build the road. Quite a group of men of means can be collected in this region. They talk "close cooperation" and "threefold expansion of snares," but your correspondent don't know "the turn it is done with," notwithstanding he'd like to be "on the inside." Mrs. Barnum said the new rails would be steel and longer than those of the old road, but she didn't think ties would be nearer, for some time at least. Their son, Willie, plays the clarinet in the orchestra which meets at our house for practice in band. Mrs. Barnum herself is learning 'cello. An S.P. employee, Mahoney, is a splendid cornetist.
    Harry Andrews reports business good in Ashland.
    Rouney nowadays flourishes like the "green bay tree."
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, February 27, 1902, page 8


    We are ashamed again of the delay. This time an error in the Times which brought a reproach from the outside accusing of misrepresenting, should be corrected. We wrote: "12 plus," which means above zero; but the Times construed and printed "12 below." Below zero is written (12°-) "twelve minus."
    Municipal justice is much discussed, saying that "Justice is a scarce article." Many advocate the Australian plan of government, righting all wrong upon its own responsibility and charge, requiring only that the wronged one shall make his statement and will be directed to the proper officer in plain and implicit words.
    This state has Australian land title law, if requested, but it costs too much; also is not obligatory upon all real estate transactions. Nevertheless, any holder can take his abstract, if  showing clear title, to the recorder who will certify: "This title perfect to this point," and then all "going back" is fully barred. The fact is that the plan of abstracting in this state is so abstruse that only an expert can understand. On the other hand Kansas abstracting is the "beau ideal" of simplicity and clearness.
    Also, many favor the revival of castigation for crime where the culprit's family need his money and time.
    Our hard-shell almond is fully two weeks behind the soft in blooming; but all fruit so far bids fair to set a full crop.
    Our garden and orchard are fertilized and plowed, and planting is in full blast. Mrs. K. does an unusual lot at it, being cheered by the consciousness of ownership.
    A paper from Northport, Washington, tells of the marriage of M. E. Stansell's second daughter, Chattie (Charity) to a Mr. Miles. Myron owns a fine farm twelve miles from Northport, near Rice.
    Last week we insured piano and household for $700 and now can dwell in peace; in fact all our holdings here are in the same category of security.
    Harry Andrews has had a severe attack of jaundice and gastric fever but is convalescing. The Woodmen took entire charge and did it well.
    Our Academy now numbers 120 and must be called a decided success. Some citizens even discuss a college.
    Eggs are only 10 cents and the best butter, 20¢ to 25¢. Wheat has risen to 60¢. Banks report a sufficient demand for money. Immigration is pretty lively. Horace Ashland has the contract of moving one thousand U.S. soldiers 150 miles, to near Crater Lake.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, March 27, 1902, page 8


    This town had the honor of entertaining the Presbytery of Southern Oregon, at which only one minister, C. S. Strange, of Ashland, was present, who was on duty when Presbytery convened here in 1895. Unfortunately for Ashland and many admirers, of whom the writer confesses to being one, Mr. Strange has had a call to Marshfield, Oregon, and will accept. Two of his sons volunteered for the Spanish war and one lost his life in the Philippines. This latter catastrophe endeared the family to all patriots. Hospitality was more easily found on this occasion, for we were not called upon as in 1895 when we gladly accommodated the general missionary.
    We were entertained by Fletcher, a boss miner, with a graphic description of "bean pies," with which he had somewhere been regaled. But his wife declared that such could be rendered quite palatable. Someone else may eat them.
    An unusually extensive mass of snow is on the summits, insuring late melting and rains which will assure the crops, berries and fruits. But an old settler expresses fear also of frosts late in May.
    Maurice Brown's brother, William, and family, from Texas, arrived here the day before himself. Maurice's family arrived in splendid condition, but two weeks after Miss Nina had an attack of malaria which was readily controlled by a few doses of quinine. Both families are in one big house and happy--except over the persistent Kansas drought. ("Kansas drought" busted; plenty of rains and prospects flattering.--Ed.)
    William has been over to Klamath where he found very good locations, but the prospect of railroads inflated prices so unduly that he has turned attention to this valley where prices are more moderate when markets are taken into account.
    A ranch of 800 acres with immense range on mountains is now under discussion. Sheep will be his specialty and Maurice debates taking a share.
    We much feel the loss of D. A. McKechnie and M. H. Dooley. The former was much the longer known and no man could challenge our greater honor or attachment. His kindly countenance and greeting will be sadly missed.
    In response to inquiries a letter came from Cyrus H. Walker, of Albany, the first white male born west of the Rockies. He is well educated and gave many points in relation to the "Pacific trail," just out in Chicago and corrections for the prospective "Tales of the Argonauts." Our son, George, is on the Columbia Southern and has the best locomotive ever turned out by the Baldwin shops. It cost $17,000 and is named Consolidation. His family will live at Biggs on the Columbia River.
    Eleven days ago Maurice Brown drove with his sister-in-law, wife and ourself to Rouney Andrews, Jacksonville, Central Point and home, 19 miles, the first ride since the accident, and we enjoyed it greatly.
    Mrs. Brown discovered cress in a small slough and wanted to gather some but the driver was obdurate and would not stop.
    The shaft and drift have finally struck coal quite as good as ordinary "Colorado" and are beyond the exclusive lignite stratum.
    On the 12th our 73rd anniversary was celebrated by the Andrews coming down and partaking of a spread.
    Harry Andrews attends to his sales but can work only a trifle; hence he contemplates selling out the business.
    Garden truck and all kinds of vegetation is growing well and the prospect for fruit is fine, the only danger now being frost.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, June 5, 1902, page 5


    We, too, have excitements. Grants Pass lost her sawmill and large lumber yard by fire. Unfortunately, only a nominal amount had been insured.
    Maurice Brown and Lily had quite an adventure a week ago out in the mountains with a large music rig selling pianos and organs. They encountered desperate roads, one night getting no supper and another finding no shelter until eleven o'clock.
    We were disappointed that [the] May 22 Times was only a half sheet.
    For some time we had been fearful that Browns would get swindled, but they appear to have abundant caution.
    Desirable locations present but are held too high by sixty percent. The "Kansas Colony" here is glad of the rains amongst the sunflowers. We see no thrift here like in jayhawker territories.
    Your correspondent is so rheumatic that he may be driven to some other clime to get cured. The remainder of the family is very well.
    A famous singer here has a fob chain made of old Spanish picayunes, bits, quarters and half dollars, such as we had not seen for forty years--all in plain coinage. We yet deem those Spanish designs the handsomest we have ever seen. On June 2 Mrs. K. and self fixed screens to a tenant house in the intervals of showers and then p.m. went to the polls and voted one of four straight tickets only in Jackson County. Rouney Andrews said he intended to look up the other "three." More "scratching" was indulged than ever before in the history of the county.
    A few nights ago, at a "musicale," Miss Lily Brown sang with an unusually sweet voice and elicited more applause than the rest. A neighbor remarked that she indulged no "mouthing" or squawking, but enunciated each word as if united. The fact was that the accompanist did not drown the voice by pedaling.
    State, counties and railroads urge immigration, but we repeat that the country cannot dispose of any large, sudden influx unless accompanied by money. We have all the labor needed; a large part of the year labor is slackly employed. The country will not support a population like east of the Rockies.
    William Brown goes this week to Mendocino County, California, to look up location. If pleased Maurice will also take a look. Real estate is much cheaper and quite as good for pasture much better. One resident last week tried to sell us a tract and afterward explained that he had deemed us "tenderfeet."
    Both Mongolian pheasant and native quail are developing domestic habits. One of the latter has a nest in Andrews' yard while a second has her nest in the barn near a hen's and does not fly off when looked at. One bird laid four eggs in a hen's nest and they will be left in to hatch.
    The alfalfa crop is fine everywhere and grain hay will be good. Very little timothy or red clover is grown.
    Men still discuss a local college but no charter has been reported. The "trustees" offer to give privilege of naming for a donation of $325,000. The "Kansas Colony" does not contemplate action. Such an institution cannot be well founded upon less than $500,000.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, June 26, 1902, page 1


    Just prior to vacation the town was well supplied with recitals and musicales from the various music teachers, furnishing abundance of entertainment. We must explain that here "recital" means in public halls and churches, while "musicale" is limited to private houses, and only the especially bidden come. Of course parents of pupils attend.
    Two children, Bertina and Armand Boffa, recounted to your correspondent that on the Fourth of July Earl Hammond, nine years old, had held the butt of a firecracker in his teeth and had his nose, eyelashes, eyebrows and hair pretty well scorched, and did not wince. The Boffa boy, seven years of age, added: "Why, he didn't even say "ouch." We just felt compelled to respond, "That boy Earl was a real soldier."
    A lady here in the southwest part of town has been exercised over the taste of petroleum in her well water. Someone may have attempted some mischief.
    At the time of the Martinique disaster the word was heard over town that Crater Lake was boiling and the external springs hot, but it was soon explained that Mt. Lassen, in California, was meant. The state has made all popular and newly found springs free, never to be closed to the public, to date from some time back. A doctor here did enclose one and charge a fee, but no one heeded, hence he pulled down the fence.
    On the Fourth our band and orchestra went to Grants Pass, thirty-five miles, while Grants Pass musical bodies went to Jacksonville, four miles away. Ashland had a free barbecue.
    Maurice Brown's brother, William, had no success in Mendocino, California. We hope to hold him yet.
    Snow is nearly all gone from Wagner Peak and all usual placer mining now stops from want of water.
    The Times errs. Arpie Kay is not attracting immigration, it is only a coincidence. Two families from California discuss moving to this region.
    Bertino Boffa, twelve years old, accompanied by Daughter, gave a violin recital before the Southern Oregon Chautauqua, Ashland. Henry Watterson gave them one of his famous discourses on "Abraham Lincoln."
    This valley has an unusually good crop of hay and grain. We had a regular Kansas wind from the west which blew off fruit disastrously,
    Last week Rouney Andrews' George drove us very carefully and dustlessly to his father's for an overnight visit. All went off well. From there we had a good view of Mt. Pitt, a snow peak, which had lots of white streaks and spots.
    On June 28, Josephine's birthday, she got a gold watch chain and a set of silver teaspoons. The lady was heard to say that she hoped such would come to every anniversary, and then she would not fear to tell her age.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, July 31, 1902, page 1


    Here we are again after another long wait; our excuse: awfully hot weather which wilted your correspondent.
    The heat was so intense that it killed trees and scorched fruit in the low broad valleys.
    Aaron Andrews has gathered his harvest, and it is one of the best crops ever raised.
    Harry was down from Ashland on a visit to Andrews' and us. His business is a pronounced success but he is not well enough to do much work.
    Corn on "dobey" land is good and will make an average crop. Desert corn will be passable. "Sediment" corn will make a good crop.
    People are filing on public land, timber, in droves.
    The Free Methodists had a big tent meeting for a week but made no progress, so they went to Ashland.
    One man offered his four-hundred-acre tract for $320 per acre and three weeks later fell to five.
    Big "ask" and big "fall" occur here often.
    A spinster of 33 at Ashland remarked, "The engine men work hard day and night in grease, heat and dirt to earn money which their wives squander."
    Your correspondent can testify that some engine men spend their own earnings and their wives help them do the saving. Our George still runs the big engine "Consolidation" on the Columbia Southern, but has to lay off three weeks to allow of some big deal or change.
    The awfully sultry dog days brought thunder, lightning and a good rain on Aug. 11. Also a heavy downpour two days later.
    Grass and all kinds of vegetation are luxuriant and in the best possible condition.
    We were sorry to hear of the dry weather in your part of Kansas. (We have had an abundance of rain the past two weeks. Previous to this it was quite dry, but the state will have a good crop. Ed.)
    Your correspondent has had two light attacks of hay fever. He was subject to severe attacks from six to twelve.
    One of the Kansas colony has filed on "Horse Tail Fall" on Horse Tail Creek, just over the range from the head of Trail Creek. He built his cabin only four rods from a never-failing creek of pure cold water. He never will need a well or spring.
    Tomorrow night we are to eat ice cream in honor of Maurice Brown's anniversary.
    Empty houses are being again filled up for schools.
    The Academy is expected to open on Sept. 20.
    The Normal took our popular president, but we are promised one equally as good.
    There are no necessarily idle laborers here.
    Banks report a good business and a fair demand for money.
    Two weeks ago we saw a big gold brick worth $2700 that was brought over from the Sterling hydraulic. Smaller parcels of gold dust come in often.
    From now on much money will be paid out to fruit pickers and packers in this section.
    Daughter is very busy with music--teaching, and orchestra.
    A lady from here, Miss Webber, was chosen to teach music in the Normal at Ashland.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, September 4, 1902, page 5


    Harry Andrews heard that his claim was to be contested and so hitched up and, taking a witness, went over to occupy it. No contesting has been in fashion until lately.
    Miner's big tract of sugar pine got an offer of $23 per acre last month. It was refused. Timber grows in value and the mills fail to clean up contracts.
    Maurice Brown drove the writer to Jacksonville to deliver a copy of "Pacific Trail" to a Dutchman who celebrated Lincoln's first election with a flintlock musket. The act was embalmed in the volume.
    Our five-mile Rogue River railroad is being extended three miles up into the Griffin Mountains to carry out lumber from the sawmill of Ernest Hart & Co., which is now in operation. He is a brother of former Banker Hart, of Mitchell, and the company is from Sioux City, Iowa. The road is owned by Barnum. He and his three boys do nearly all of the running and repairs.
    A millionaire--Ray--is building a dam at Tolo, ten miles distant, with which he will irrigate fifteen hundred acres and operate all the machinery in this valley with a huge dynamo. He gave a grand barbecue and ball last month.
    Our son's railroad has ceased operations for awhile and he takes second engine on the new Columbia Northern. Operations are delayed by the forest fires which burned their bridge timbers in the yard of the Bridal Veil mills. The new road is on the north side of the Columbia, beginning at Lyle and running to Goldendale and Horse Heaven.
    The death of Mrs. I. M. Temple reminds us that although she was the first stricken, the whole family died before her. We have pleasant memories of the family and regret the premature annihilation.
    Mrs. K. has sold her Illinois property and is negotiating here.
    We have here a new branch of a larger loan and building association.
    Our business college opened October 1 with flattering prospects.
    Andrews' son, George, took a two-horse load of pears to the Klamath country, selling out well. The closing half bushel--all damaged--he traded to an Indian for a pup.
    Two weeks ago two itinerant Quaker doctors, at Ashland, had street performances and sold quantities of medicine. They bought it wholesale, from formularies, of the druggists, Poley & Sherwin.
    For a while we had smoke and a yellow fog which made many sick, but none fatal.
    Last week we took a trip to Aaron Andrews', He and his two boys, George and Alan, are drying prunes on his mountain ranch. We went to try to get well from the fog fever, but the altitude made us no better.
    Labor is in demand in all directions. Dr. Ray, who is building the big dam in Rogue River, wants ten wood choppers at $1.25 per cord.
    On the morning of October 13 Maurice Brown's family boarded the southbound train for Kansas. We trust all will soon return to Southern Oregon.
    A neighbor family has just returned from a four months' stay on Little Applegate, beyond the Rogue River mountains. We asked the little girl, Mattie, if she'd seen any bear? "No," she replied, "only some tracks." In answer to another question she said: "Yes, we saw hundreds of deer tracks and Papa shot one." Neither the mother nor children got lonesome in their isolation. The father was developing a cinnabar lead for Reed & Fletcher, at an altitude of 4,000 feet.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, October 23, 1902, page 8


    Again apology is due for long silence. The fact was that people have been too busy to take time to make news. And now that the Republicans have "won out," no leisure will be certain and all will be compelled to be very busy to keep abreast with the times. In fact, we shall have no rest until Democrats get control of the Administration.
    Yes, we had the total eclipse. Our visitors that evening were W. I. Brown, wife and shepherd dog. A few felt fright at the weird picture of a blotted moon in a clear sky; while, strange to relate, several were met who had not noticed the event.
    Shortly after that came the burning of the big Klamathon sawmills and lumber yards--incendiary work from discharged men. Vigilance committees seem needed.
    Maurice Brown's nephew, 19 years old, has a position in the New Adria quicksilver mines, California, as clerk, which yields him $50 per month and board.
    Crops are immense--wheat fine, and yet flour is thirty cents a sack dearer than '93-'95, when grain was a slim, poor crop.
    Rouney Andrews is just wallowing in fine crops and good prices. I saw, also, Harry, whose trade is driven from morning till night. He and W. E. have been occupying their claims to legal extent. Also Joseph Poley and wife (our eldest) three weeks ago occupied their claim and got two fine bucks (silver bullets), with eight pair of antlers. One we will fix up for a hat rack. The venison was fine. Should prices be maintained all these can soon sell their timber and hold the "soil" for a home.
    Saplings grow densely and rapidly so that in ten or twelve years hundreds of loads of poles can be cut every year. Those altitudes are very moist. Hence a man has an everlasting crop and the tracts will also support a moderate herd of cows and horses. Garden and hay can be grown here very well. When Poley was up (4000 ft. altitude) no frost had fallen. Gardens green.
    Some man wrote "Rev. M. Brown," in the Gazette; but his friends here were not advised of his ordination.
    We took a trip to Ashland where we noted many new buildings and were informed that rents were $2 and $3 more than here. Some streets were too steep for your correspondent. Rains (winter) have set in too soon causing many to lose their prunes by mold on the wet soil. Andrews lost what would have yielded 600 lbs. dried.
    Tons of grapes and common apples are going to waste offered at ten cents a sack---grain sack. Andrews sold his marketable apples at 85¢ a box. Others, no doubt, did as well. Lishe marketed the whole season in a big drier. The apple market is far better than ever before. Some varieties--everywhere fine--have no market.
    We were disappointed in fowls. They are not as faithful in laying eggs as in Kansas. Three hens lay an average of one egg per day.
    Our George reports Myron Stansell elected Senator (legislature) from one of the northern districts of Washington. Myron told George that his parents were coming soon on a visit. Whoever would have conceived that Mrs. Stansell could have survived so long. In 1871 she was nearly dead with asthma. Following Myron to the Blue Mountains no doubt prolonged life. How much this deponent would like to see them. They live at Canyon, Oregon; Myron at Northfield, Wash. Our boy runs an engine from the latter to Spokane.
    On the 13th, M. Brown's brother drove us to "Big Sticky," to see the man who "surrounds" our "additional homestead." He desires to buy and so that course will terminate all homestead matters. For over two miles, out and in, our poor nag had to pull through dobey-gumbo sticky; and it was horrid. The tract lies seven miles north and east of this city. Nearly the all distance was level or slightly undulating. We engaged three turkeys for Thanksgiving from F. G. Stinson--our  surrounder; Brown, Rouney and us.
    This country begins to seem better and we conclude that poor men have a fair show to prosper and lay up. Homesteads are attainable here yet and it is hoped that some of the houseless friends can avail themselves of the chances.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, November 27, 1902, page 8


    This town may be short on fuel. Fortunately our wood house is full, with two additional cords bought but not delivered.
    The farmer who promised the Thanksgiving turkey failed to appear. Hence we began to believe the report about farmers.
    We have a new fish market with stock from Puget Sound. One day he was cutting steaks from a six-foot halibut at 12½¢ a pound.
    For a wonder pension day was so rainy that we were compelled to postpone until next day; the only occasion in over twelve years.
    Evangelists closed the big tent meeting ten days ago and the Disciples report much benefit. The big caravansary has gone south.
    The finest saloon on this coast has just been opened and our informant says I ought to just take a look; rent is only $50 per month.
    A three days' fog makes it gloomy enough, and we had it without a break here. Ashland saw the sun some; it is four hundred feet higher.
    Andrews supposed he'd sold all of his dried fruit, but the graders threw out some eight hundred pounds--too small. All such find a market east of the Cascades.
    A tremendous demand for labor all over the coast. A month ago Portland and vicinity wanted 1500 more, The "Columbia Northern" advertises for 250 additional. It is opposite The Dalles.
    The apple crop has dropped to dull sale again, but shippers say it will revive later. The cider factory closes this week. Plenty more apples but they have all they want. Six immense tanks full, lots of the best hard cider, yet twenty cents a gallon.
    We had contemplated a two-hundred-acre farm but our informant said that nearly all renters had one-sided ideas and we'd get hardly enough rent to pay tax. That made us wish for some Kansans. The Oregon farmers go to district school and Sunday school and hear plenty of preaching. Rents are paid well in the two cities. Hence, only farmers grade low. This is unfortunate, for Palm--an agent--tells of a fine, rich, smooth eighty near Brownsboro at $5 per acre,
    Many missed turkeys at Thanksgiving because all offered were shipped to San Francisco. Even one dealer who had consigned six hundred said he had failed to save one for himself. Some, like us, repaired to a good restaurant where we got him sure. A church had a fine "layout," but it was up long stairs in a hall and cost ten cents more. The worst feature was that all turkeys that we saw or heard of were poor compared with Kansas.
    A few days after we took train to Ashland to close up Mrs. Kay's [Mrs. Kendall's] deal for a second house. On the return we had to wait for three hours belated train, but were so fortunate as to meet people with lanterns to light us good to our own door. Robert Reame, the "Bridal Veil" hero, went north on the same train to resume duties as a sawmill boss at the foot of Mount Hood. He saved a great deal of the company's apparatus and several fine teams in the great forest fire. A slight frame and yet capable of so much.
    Immediately after prune drying Alan, Andrews' second, concluded he'd take a hunt on the summit, back of the ranch where he had found bear tracks, "but Don,'' said he, "would not track them. He needs to be trained with John Griffin's pack. What? Oh, his pack is all right although he lost the best one a year ago, who died of old age. Why, Grandpa, the papers told all abut how John trained him and kept account of all the bear the old fellow had tracked and helped kill, It was an even hundred."
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, December 25, 1902, page 4


    This city sees itself full of people--every shack occupied. In Ashland people are in tents and barns awaiting houses, or were so a few weeks ago when we were up.
    Rouney and Harry Andrews went to their claims a few weeks ago and had quite a lot to report. One claimant could not find the tract and had to employ a local hunter, Bill Cushman, who found the spot promptly. One lady claimant failed also and applied to Miss Martin who scolded her for crying "like a baby." But the woods girl got the crying lady on one of her horses and then striding her own set off on the quest. In this country all the females ride astride in the mountains and on the
range. The claim lady fell off three times and aggravated Miss Martin to the verge of saying, "Why are women so helplessly brought up that they can't ride even a gentle horse." The mother told of a traveler who couldn't eat bear, but partook heartily of some nice fresh pork. Afterwards he was told it was bear and he turned all sorts of colors. He almost collapsed. At another time another party denounced panther as no better than cat and was at the same time eating fine, fat panther meat
from an old varmint whose teeth were worn down smooth. After supper he was told the fact. He did more than the bear eater, for he went out and "threw up" the entire supper.
    During the "closed season" venison is termed "coyote" and the Andrews found aplenty--under that name.
    Mrs. Martin and her family have a ranch on Trail Creek and are prepared to entertain travelers and moving droves of cattle and horses.
    The squib in the Gazette about "How to be Famous" hits the nail on the head.
    Out here we much enjoy John Garner's letters, and by the way, we have had a letter from Mrs. Sarah E. Simpson, Ilocos, Philippines. It is a good, long effort, and was accompanied by a publication telling of some Kansas (Philippine) soldiers. She will return to Kansas,
    At Christmas we had a present of a globe lantern from the Andrews family. This means, "Guard your footsteps well," "Forewarned is forearmed."
    Two weeks ago Signor Boffa's son of six, who was acquainted with Peking ducks, reported to us, "Some calls ducks ganders."
    Episcopalians had a full attended "watch meeting," All churches except Baptist joined in the entertainment and festivities. The rector invites all to Communion who are "in good standing on their own records."
    In one letter we made temperature too low for this winter; it has been no more than 21 degrees above. An excellent letter we've had from Mrs. Fisher, who, we regret, is suffering.
    Rouney Andrews is on a new circuit of Free Rural Delivery and the road is only fifty feet from his door. Good luck seems to strike round his camp frequently. His son George was down to set trees for us last week and discusses going next summer with three other to east of the Cascades to enter land near Wagon Tire Peak where there is much good area. And right here may be said that Central Oregon has a large mass of good public land.
    We are now promised a railroad--40 miles long--up Rogue River to dense timber, a cannery and a creamery. Someone also discusses a narrow gauge up Crater Lake mountain to the rim of the lake. Also another party contemplates a narrow gauge up Trail Creek to near the Andrews' claims, with a saw mill somewhere on the line. "Where so much smoke there must be some fire."
    The bishop of Oregon was here and confirmed eight, a Brown in the number. This reminds us that 20 days ago the San Francisco Examiner had an illustrated article showing that [the] Park St. church was to be remodeled, renamed and the minister would wear Episcopalian habit and use the prayer book in John Wesley style. It is Methodist and he claims the right, averring that his parish is wealthy and highly cultured and demands an elaborate service. He further asserts that Episcopalians there have gone on a quest for Catholicism, and that St. Andrews (the new Park St.) will be the only true law church Episcopal. He is depicted as wearing the high church cassock and cotta, almost universal in the middle diocese of California. In this connection it is interesting to note that the synod of San Francisco, late last fall, almost unanimously decided to begin soon to wear robes and have a liturgy (Synod, a Presbyterian division).
    Just now we are getting sluices of rain and the soil is as full as a wet sponge.
    Times are good, work for all able.
    Automobiles are growing so cheap that your correspondent is almost resolved to get one.
    A great deal of eastern money is being spent here on dams and ditches, and this city is promised two more lines of illuminating wire, one of which can also deliver all the mill and factory power wanted.
    Some immigration is also dropping in, and the country is encouraged.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, February 5, 1903, page 8


    On January 24th, the southbound Southern Pacific reached Ashland at noon and at 3 p.m. next day the train was still there. The cause was that the awful rains to the south had broken the track badly. But the passengers had a good time strolling around town and could find plenty to eat and it was easy to have fires in all stoves. Abby was caught at Ashland because northbound was in same condition. So next morning her brother-in-law, Poley, hitched up and drove her home.
    Every winter the S.P. has trouble with slides in three ranges: Umpqua, Siskiyou and Shasta.
    Streams are all full and placer miners are happy. Gum boots are in unusual demand.
    On Groundhog Day we forgot to notice at exact 12. An hour before the sky was a bit hazy but the sun shone. Mr. Editor: How does it happen that "His Groundhog Majesty" is such an exact astronomer so to set that special day and hour?
    For some reason money has put on new value here and there is much demand for ten percent loans free of taxes, but not is banks, where rates are unchanged.
    One man was heard complaining that times were good only in lines and areas, but all are employed at better wages than for fifteen years.
    Smallpox is here and schools have bidden pupils to be vaccinated or stay at home. Several families chose the latter, while several arms are in bad plight. The epidemic shows a mild type. In fact people don't seem to dread it any more than mumps or chicken pox. Ashland brags of one family with the genuine seven-year itch. They are quarantined, of course.
    After all, the S.P. expert, Owens, reported none of the coal deposits worth working. He then was ordered to Southern Utah where deep snow prevented surface exploration.
    Two churches here have had successful revivals and a third is reported in satisfactory progress. The chariots of Eternity seem to be traveling in both medieval and modern roads.
    Farmers have been hindered in seeding during February (the best time), because soil is as full as a wet sponge where not well drained.
    It is true, Mr. Editor; no complaint is heard of "no employ."
    Some are reverting to seedling peaches, because of the want of flavor in the budded, although they are large and pretty.
    Pat Daily's father is absent so much at his ranch that he has not been seen, by us, for four months. The mother is unable to walk more than a block, so that Miss Bertha has much of the household duty. Pat has not recovered fully from the attack of acute rheumatism and must spend some time is warm and dry South California.
    On the 8th your correspondent was reported dead but he was never more alive, and does not know the excuse.
    In 1864 a Wisconsin surgeon was killed in skirmish a day prior to "Tupelo." Ourselves heard the firing and in three quarters of a mile reached the place, but the matter was over. Waterhouse had lost two horses of his battery, but had captured two fine "napoleon" (heavy brass ordnance). Your correspondent picked up a fine carbine dropped by the confederates. Should add that the day of reported death we taught the bible class in St. Mark's S.S.
    We regretted Mr. Shane's resignation; deeming him the very man for Beloit. We predict to get easily another as good not so promising.
    Your "Vancouver" seems as good as Frank G. Carpenter. John D. Fletcher--the expert boss of the enterprises of Larrabee, Reed & Larrabee--corroborates her report and says that "everything that swims and flies" is just that plenty and cheap, but adds, "She does not tell all of the dampness. I was there on Oct. 5, and a rain was in progress. I went on a trip for the firm to mountains and when I returned Nov. 25, the same storm was 'doing business'--not a minute of stop."
    On the 13th a boy of St. Mark's S.S. was accidentally shot in the groin by s small swan shot rifle in his brother's bands. Fortunately only a small charge of powder. Will recover soon, but brother is overwhelmed.
    Say, Mr. Editor, we have a sensation. The elder of the firm Larrabee, Reed & Larrabee has moved into a house not a block away on our street and we asked Mrs. John D. Fletcher what they were like. She replied that they were thoroughly unassuming and "wouldn't hurt anybody." The "nub" is this; they are reputed millionaires. Prior to this episode our valley had held no one higher than $150,000.
    Last night we had a call from a young married lady who, a few years ago, was a frequent buckaroo (vaquero cowboy) for her father on the boundary of Shasta and Lassen counties, California. She is pretty and deliciously nice. When told the episode of Miss Martin and the lady claim-hunter on Trail Creek, she responded, "Miss Martin was right. It is a shame to bring up a girl unable to ride a gentle horse. Why, I often went after the cattle with only a surcingle. Hold on? Why easy. I just grabbed the surcingle when we went fast, or were in a bad place."
    Just an hour ago had a call from O. C. Applegate, U.S. Superintendent of the Klamath Indian Reservation, and captain of an Oregon company in the Modoc War. He is a brother-in-law of Col. Sargent of the regular army who was commander of the main column in the Philippines when Lawton was killed. Sergent was also author of "Analysis of Napoleon's Battles." Capt. Applegate called to learn where he could get a copy of "Pacific Trail," but we had none and referred to a dealer in Ashland.
    Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] is again perfectly well. Abby is recovering from severe grippe; and the same of Rouney Andrews.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, March 5, 1903, page 4


    Dr. Kendall (Arpie Kay), of Medford, Oregon, writes us that he is prostrated with a recurrence of his army wound trouble aggravated by la grippe of the limbs and stomach. He also says the Andrews family has had a siege of the grippe, Mr. Andrews being the greatest sufferer.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, April 9, 1903, page 5


    The "point" of that quotation from the skirmish prior to the battle of Tupelo failed to appear, but it was this: "Your correspondent was reported killed and it was not corrected until the medical director of the 16th corps cleared up the matter."
    The copious rains, reported in our last, continued and so interfered with transportation that Mrs. K.'s train, due at 5 p.m., did not appear until next day at 10 a.m. Our long tunnel on the Siskiyous caved in at three points inside four days.
    One of our Sunday school boys, Johnnie Goodwyn, related to us how old Mr. Halley got knocked off the track by a slow-moving train but only suffered some bruises, of course partially deaf. Johnnie added; "I never want to be more than fifty years old."
    Here we have a unique family whose father has been most of his life in the navy, and is now "boatswain's mate" on the Pacific training ship. The two boys are saving to go to college and then to Annapolis. Willie and Herman have accumulated over $136. We knew their great-grandfather at Payson, Illinois--William Stewart, an extensive fruit nurseryman.
    On March 3rd, Maurice Brown, of Blue Hill, became possessor of a brand-new niece, brought to these latitudes by a Holland stork.
    A couple of weeks ago we rode over to Jacksonville to pay the wife's taxes, but the matter had had attention. By reason of being left by the S.P., the place [Jacksonville] is some in the shade, but your correspondent would prefer it for residence, our water supply being inferior while Jacksonville has [a] good mountain source.
    Grippe has been quite severe over this valley and some have succumbed, mainly the aged.
    Aaron Andrews' whole family had a serious time with la grippe and had two spells in bed . Others had excruciating headaches and pleurisies. We fought it long and finally one day collapsed outdoors and could hardly be gotten into the house. On April 1st we felt able to get out of bed and dress up again, but recovery is awful slow: no hunger, little appetite. We felt it a "close call."
    Spring is tardy but our garden is in fair shape and orchard plowed.
    Last week Harry Andrews proved up on his second claim and now has 360 acres of splendid lumber timber. Rouney's George has gone over the Siskiyous into California to work in a logging camp.
    Many enterprises are discussed and some will materialize. New people are coming in every few days and all dwellings are occupied. No idle people.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, April 16, 1903, page 1


    Our town, like elsewhere, often takes on a fright. Not long since our cigar factory of twenty-five operatives was reported on the point of migrating to Portland and much consternation arose, but in was proven a false alarm, and even your imperturbable correspondent was glad.
    Frequently the orchestra meets at our house and then we have a treat. One lady vocalist is the superior of Emma Nevada. She is a native of Belgium; and has been many years in the United States. It is her thirteen-year-old daughter who is the phenomenal violinist and soon starts upon a career.
    Such a land as this is for perfumes, and nearly all is rancid, raucous, penetrating and offensive. "Jockey Club" is one of its numberless names and combinations. It all has distilled myrrh and aloes for a basis, to which it reverts after the first whiffs of some volatile perfume.
    One new man, who bought near Andrews, was astounded when told that he must plow at the right time; vitriol the seed wheat; poison the diggers; spray for scale; spray for moths, etc. He was incredulous but plowed only half his area and is wondering "what  next." No one can be too cautious.
    Ashland had a fine Knights Templar celebration in the Episcopal church. Members attended from all over the valley. Then the Episcopal people had an entertainment which gave pleasure and was a great financial success. It was in the new opera house with Boffa's orchestra.
    All but socialists are discussing Roosevelt to be at Ashland on the 20th. The Democratic papers show much regard for the President.
    The writer was much astonished last month when a member of the Seventh Illinois Infantry of the Civil War remembered all about our personality and even full name. He lives in Josephine County--brother of a near neighbor. He told of us at the battle of Belmont.
    Our creamery will soon be ready for milk; all appliances are on hand.
    Work has begun on a new railroad from Grants Pass to the ocean at Crescent City.
    Much early fruit was killed, but the country has plenty.
    This territory will not have the best hay crops. Soil has too much "run" and packed by heavy rains; and now too dry.
    Andrews says the first crop of alfalfa will be light.
    Old hay is worth 15 to 16 dollars a ton.
    Tell "Vancouver" that we would like to live on the Sound after all has been said.
    Our millionaire has gone and no revolution followed.
    Two ladies from Portland are touring the state; one for the Lewis and Clark Exposition, and the other for impartial suffrage. They will be here soon.
    We had some burglars but nearly all stolen valuables were  returned.
    Daughter will play for the star girl, thirteen-year-old Bertina Boffa, on the violin. Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, May 21, 1903, page 8


    The Episcopal pastor of St Mark's fell seriously ill so the vestry sent him to Portland to be treated while R. P. Kendall was instructed to carry on the work in his absence.
    Last week we took an outing at Rouney Andrews' for three days. He is carving success out of crudeness. In leading water from the spring seven hundred feet away and six feet above the outlet, silt settled in the depressions of the pipe and so he had to add a small pitcher pump to draw the sediment; but it needs pumping only one day in ten from the standpipe (hydrant) under a large oak tree in the front yard--horizontal with the kitchen exit. The barn trough is always full except where the brutes drink and they never drink it empty. It gets the drip from a leaky spigot and occasionally overflows. On the mountain ranch an ice cold flowing spring is in the dooryard.
    A granddaughter of Patrick Daily, sen., takes weekly lessons from Daughter, coming eight miles from the Stinson homestead. Her grandfather's homestead and farm is only one and a half miles further. He was in luck to purchase a ranch and then find a U.S. tract adjoining to homestead. He reports all crops doing well. He also possesses a nice residence in Medford. Stinson emigrated in 1892 by wagon from Jamestown for his wife's health. Long since she grew hearty. He has a homestead and is thrifty. Young Pat is not yet rugged.
    An editor's wife died a month ago and left him the most affected person you ever saw, but not one bit unbalanced. Every time you see him he looks [of] unutterable woe.
    A carpenter related today that not one plank of best lumber and very little of number 2 can be had; all contracted for Australia and South Africa.
    The Southern Pacific passenger traffic is so increased that trains often have three divisions twenty minutes apart.
    The new creamery churned four hundred pounds of butter and three hundred the next day.
    Three weeks ago Rouney Andrews came down to buy hay; all engaged by other parties at sixteen dollars a ton. But soon harvest began and one man sold alfalfa at five dollars a ton in the shock. The "swath" was better than expected.
    Wheat is a dollar a bushel.
    Andrews intends to try Johnson grass in his pasture as soon as the fall rains begin.
    Mrs. K----. was near the president at Ashland and heard every word. Abby saw him here and I saw his train roll by. His reception seemed very enthusiastic. Many Democrats joined in the hilarity. Everywhere he met a bombardment with bouquets.
    Much complaint is heard of postal carelessness in the West.
    On the sixth of June the thermometer registered 102 degrees above in Medford.
    We read of the flood in Kansas. In 1892 we saw drift in the trees on Hanson's and the school section bottoms as high as the head. Two old stubs on the edge of E. F. Brown's best mow-patch had drift higher than the head and he wondered if water could ever have been at that height.
    Two weeks ago Mrs. Andrews and her three children drove within twelve feet of a pair of Mongolian pheasants which seemed tame and the male crew like a bantam rooster.
    Daughter was with the orchestra and "star child violinist" at Grants Pass the forepart of this week.
    In 1878 a waterspout flooded Dry Creek of Lulu until it ran over the railroad levee. A general precipitation like that would easily equal the "Sin-Flood" of June 1903.
    Historians of "Santa Fe days" report a higher flood in 1844. An old lady, our neighbor remembers it well.
    Elisha planted two acres of potatoes on Rouney's new ground and supposed gophers had eaten nearly all the seed, but last week they found all growing well. Here was glory enough for one family.
    Everyone seems well employed at fair wages.
    The town raised $168 in a few hours for the Heppner flood victims.
    We heard today that Kansas had a repetition of the flood, but trust it is a mistake.
    Elisha has been prospecting for gold over in the western mountains and with a companion explored a cave half a mile in.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, July 2, 1903, page 8


    Nearly six weeks of a "tarry" and we are ashamed; but it is the dull, heated term in which we could not get any news.
    We visited the Olwell vinegar plant last month. So far they are making a success--excellent product. After reaching a certain grade of acidity, they trickle the cider through two huge vats filled with clean corncobs, at the bottom of which the sour cider flows out perfect vinegar into barrels. If it proves a success a market will be created for scores--hundreds of wads of cuttings hitherto wasted.
    Mrs. K., with Rouney, Mrs. A., baby and Anna Marie, rode to the mountain some weeks ago; but such trips are not pleasant, too much dust.
    John D. Fletcher was sent by the millionaire firm of Reed and Larrabees to Alaska to look up openings on Copper River, across the bay from Nome; but at Seattle he could get no room for his freight and so quit and came home.
    One of our wealthies a month ago intimated a boom at Medford, and some guessed a railroad twenty miles away to the Butte Creek timber.
    Since a former occasion the Andrews have heard another Mongolian pheasant crowing like a rooster. A neighbor found a nest of twelve eggs and placed them under a setting hen. All hatched but all soon died. Like the quail, the Mongolian likes the proximity of the inhabited farm.
    Crops are, finally, better than anticipated and hay may not increase in price. If it does, a livery man says he can get at a reasonable price from the Willamette Valley--baled, of course,
    This country lacks exceeding in pasture and we propose to try Johnson grass. Rouney Andrews will sow his pasture. Some say it spreads from the roots and overruns the neighborhood. This threat don't daze anyone here because we reason that it is better to be overrun with such a forage plant than to have so much bare surface. Arthur R. Goodwyn, of Eureka, in 1860, had a field of it and declared it a nuisance although good forage; he could not get rid of it. We hope someone will tell us about it.
    Some three or four weeks ago four men were fishing in Rogue River and had weighted gum boots on hip high. Presently a holler waked them up and one was seen out in deeper water bobbing up and down. Before the rest could go to shore and pull their boots and get to him he was down the last time and was gone. The next day the body was raised about fifteen feet from where he went down. He was no swimmer, but could not have saved himself had he been. The others were swimmers, but could do nothing with the weighted boots.
    People here spent the Fourth at home or at picnics; no promising celebration near.
    Who was to blame in printing the wrong date about the drift in the trees on Plum Creek bottom, 1892, we do not know; but it should have been 1872. True, some of the old high drift might have been observed in 1892.
    We were surprised when the agent of the ''International Correspondence School'' landed here and we found in their catalogue the name and picture of H. Williams in its faculty. He created a decided interest and established an agency.
    Andrews and Allen have ''got out'' the timbers for a big hay barn and a ''framer'' is at work.
    Thomas F. Jonah, a Baptist missionary from Cuernavaca, Mexico, made us a present of a cane of Mexican wood, curiously fashioned into an umbrella, crooktop cane--looking for all the world like a snake. It was the production of an Aztec Indian, one of his converts. The missionary had come here for the benefit of his wife's health, and that being restored, he returns to field of labor soon. The minister and writer were both born in Cincinnati; hence the fraternalization.
    Dr. James R. Reader, the Oregon commissioner to the Japan World's Fair, writes that in Honolulu he met evidences of enlightenment in a sign reading, ''Republican Headquarters,'' and apropos to that--a Democrat here told us that Roosevelt was sure to be elected if nominated. He also said that Democracy was hopelessly divided upon Cleveland and Bryan--that not one former gold man of the party would uphold Bryan or vice versa. He is one of the slow, seldom talkers, and is very deliberate in any expression.
    Senator Dolliver was at Ashland Chautauqua and ventured the sentiment that morals and manners were deteriorating in the United States. We beg leave to differ. In our youth men committed outrages that were smiled at, which would meet Judge Lynch or consigned to the penitentiary for life. We demur to any return to the old standards.
    A family from four miles east of Randall will return this fall, displeased with Oregon.
    Dealers are laying in all the fuel attainable, expecting higher prices next winter. This will drive people to coal oil or gasoline.
    The S.P. will put in petroleum burners by the date of the disappearance of their present supply of wood fuel. They have a large tank at Ashland which they are filling as fast as they can find a tank car not bespoken.
    An acquaintance in the mountains uses a sack (100 lbs.) of sugar every two months in his family--no hired men--saying it is as cheap as any purchased food. He uses an extra sack in the canning season.
    We read of a third bank at Logan and wonder how much money Kansas has anyhow.
    A fellow traveler, who lives near, informed us last week that she had ridden with the Wheelers (Sarah Andrews) from Glen Elder, Kans., and so the next day Andrews posted off to seek the newcomers at Ashland. We heard that the new arrival could have machine work at the S.P. roundhouse. If so, good luck.
    Elisha Andrews is at work on the big "Ish'' ranch and is a much desired man-of-all-work.
    Patrick Dailey 's granddaughter still takes music lessons. Pat Jr. is not yet rugged.
    Tomorrow the Governor and a company of notables land here from the S.P. to make a visit to the Crater Lake.
    Your correspondent has tangible evidences as to the prosperity of the Beloit banks.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, August 13, 1903, page 8


    The son-in-law drove a couple to Trail Creek to get homesteads. The timber is meeting takers rapidly.
    A sister in St. Louis High School has had her salary increased, hence age seems no bar.
    An immense crowd landed from the train last month and visited [Crater] Lake. Several state officials were among them.
    Timber owners are trying a new game which suits the lumbermen. They sell all timber above a certain size and give a long time for removal. Thus someone interested in watching fires is there without cost to the lumbermen. This plan looks commendable.
    How sober the record looks. Our old friends dropping. N. W. Allen was one of the last. He was indeed one of the solid men and we regret his death.
    Forest fires are masking the mountains and making the atmosphere sultry.
    Rouney Andrews is narrating some experiences with deer and cougar on his mountain ranch. He, Lishe and Alan were the actors. The ranges are well supplied with deer. The cougar were watching at the spring for deer.
    Dr. Reeder and wife (the Oregon commissioner) gave us a long report of their observations at and about the Japanese exposition. All the old cities have neither sewers nor privacy. People ease themselves in either yards or along the roads unhidden or with no attempt to do so.
    The Mongolian pheasant, introduced years ago, are becoming numerous. We have mentioned them twice, but lately we are told of their marvelous increase and great tameness. In two years they will be as thick as prairie chickens ever were. Lishe, on the Ish place, mowed over two nests that were full of blue-colored eggs the same size as prairie fowl eggs, The hens stood not twenty feet away. He bound up the hay and "stood" the sheaf over the nests. The creatures are as rich in colored plumage as a peacock. Game laws don't allow them to be hunted or killed for some years to come.
    The heat of the summer has been so oppressive that another season we must seek better quarters.
    Dr. Reeder tells us of reading McCarthy's book "On the Line" where the author asserts that during our Civil War more than half of the Parliament and administration of Great Britain believed the Mississippi ran east and west and was a perfect separation between the North and the South. The Doctor mentioned it to an English passenger who responded,  "Well, ain't it?"
    The Doctor saw the Kyoto palace made of bamboo and mud. He wanted to cut a native sprout of wood but was told none such existed outside of the remotest mountains. Nothing but large, tough bamboo. The schools were good, all having Japanese, Chinese and English teachers and classes. Their English was correct but the words were too short--chopped off.
    The drought has caused fruit to fall very much over the valley, but not so much among the foothills.
    Sarah (Andrews) Wheeler has secured a fine timber claim and is proving up.
    Slight rains began on August 25 which increased as soon as September began. A Mrs. Ream reports thing dry and dusty over south.
    Discounts have improved and banks are getting two percent additional on loans.
    F. M. Stewart looked for Capt. C. W. Culp at San Francisco but failed in the search. Eight went from here--all members of the G.A.R.
    Fuel grows dearer and people discuss petroleum and gasoline. There is no scarcity of wood but so few use it.
    The G.A.R. saw San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley which they pronounced overrated. Too many dying and dead orchards and crops very slow, also soil poor and exhausted and evidently God Almighty has favored that country very little.
    Ringling's show was here ten days ago. It was far better than ever before.
    We were at a German Lutheran picnic a week ago yesterday. They had three discourses, one in English and the others in German. Every one of the adults was so phenomenally quiet and patient. The children also had a celebration. Even when the picnic closed, no one seemed in any hurry to go home.
    W. E. Andrews is about to secure a good timber claim. They are raising in price.
    On Sunday we saw a pitiable lame woman fall on the sidewalk and asked if she was hurt. She was not. To a question she replied, "There are no faith healers here now, but I never saw any do any good."
    Many Kansas people are met in this valley and quite a number are from Mitchell and Cloud counties, with four families from Minneapolis. Two families returned to Jewell a month or so ago.
    Rains have set in but not heavy. The weather has been cooled much so the climate is tolerable.
    We sometimes long for Kansas, where people have hope and energy. The poor and middle classes here talk and act so untrusting as to the future and the men seldom work with vim and alacrity.
    All enterprises, with but few exceptions, drag.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, September 17, 1903, page 8


    It lacks but three days of a month since the last writing but somehow news doesn't transpire as rapidly as could be wished.
    Last month we met Gen. Shafter, who with wife and daughter had been rusticating and fishing up Rogue River for over a week. In discussion he urged removal to San Francisco where are a number who had parallel experiences with ours--from the Civil War volunteers, through the colored service to the regular army. He added, "Lots of us there and you'll find the summer to suit you exactly." The latter part had been our opinion for several years and we may migrate. In the Civil War he had the 17th while your correspondent had the 11th, he as colonel, and we were two steps lower.
    Not many days after Mrs. K------, Abbey and myself drove to Andrews' and saw the suction pump which clears the depressions of the long pipe out of a spring several feet higher, free from silt (heavy sand and iron sediment), keeping the entire line clear and always running. Since that success, a number who have had clogged pipes have applied the same remedy.
    W. E. Andrews killed a fine deer and so both families had a long feast.
    Rogue River Valley had a veteran reunion from Sept. 14th to 19th
and declared it the best of its twelve. The drum and fife corps were veterans, rendering in the old style and waking us up.  "Prisoners of War" had only one delegate, myself. One veteran of the 9th Illinois Inf. remembered us and even name. Capt. Culp will remember F. W. Stewart of the 15th Illinois Inf., a Payson man.
    The prune crop is almost an entire failure--too small but plentiful. That is the deficiency this far north "deterioration " Andrews is so convinced that he will grub up all but a few for family use, sowing alfalfa or planting pear and apple trees in their place. He  is also preparing to sow a bushel of Johnson grass seed in his woods, pasture and bare spots in the meadow. One warned him that it was a
nuisance and would overrun his place. "That would be a blessing," he replied. "I am tired of bare surface and annually burning up pasture." The writer would be glad to see this whole territory well grassed and raising 100 percent more beef cattle.
    A couple of weeks ago saw us at Ashland and calling upon Harry Andrews and Sarah Andrews Wheeler. The former does a fine business but fears depression from the stagnation caused by strikes. His eastern correspondents intimate as much. The latter is in a comfortable house of her own, two blocks from our people, seemingly as happy as mortals need be. She avers that she loves the mountains. The nearest soaring to eternal snow--highest of the Siskiyous.
    A very intelligent dentist discusses the Presidency and declares that he will need to vote for one who has not his full respect because of failure of moral courage. "But," he add, "we dare not swap horses in midstream" and are compelled to "let well enough alone."
    Last winter a tax law was enacted so faulty that last spring's assessment was probably illegal, and so a "moot case" has gone to the state supreme court. Hence the legislature must be called soon, probably, or the state may lose one entire year of taxes. Then, too, the unintentionally dropped exemption may be replaced.
    W. E. Andrews has secured recognition of his timber claim at Mountain Falls.
    The S.P. again discusses a third passenger service for through fares--the present still being always two and occasionally three sections.
    The Ray Company sluiced Rogue River so effectually that they emptied the bed and soon cleaned up $30,000 from the crevices. No one doubts their getting back cost of the dam which is to furnish power for all machinery and lights for fifty miles.
    Last week a lady canvasser asked, "Is this a dead town?" She was prospecting for subscribers to a monthly in the interest of the coming Lewis & Clark Exposition, published by the Oregonian. The town seemed indifferent to the Exposition and gave little heed to her appeal.
    John D. Fletcher says that no railroad can enter or leave this valley without the consent of the Southern Pacific, as it owns all the feasible passes and right-of-way through them. A complete cinch. The hundreds who are acquiring timber land for a prospective market and great profit may see their hopes go glimmering. Hence, S.P. alone is arbiter of the future and fate of all this extensive territory.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, October 15, 1903, page 8


    "Arpie Kay," Dr. Kendall, writes us a postal card as follows:
    CHEVIOT, OHIO, Oct. 29.--Dear Times: I hope to find material soon. This is a country of great changes. The sleepy hamlet has been absorbed by the swelling Cincinnati. Had a comfortable passage except on the Des Moines, where the track was as rough as a ragweed. Cincinnati has never had a boom, but has quietly absorbed much territory. The trestle work of the new elevated Chicago line is immense.
Merely on a business excursion, home at Medford, Oregon.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, November 5, 1903, page 5


    All the way across the continent we had Indian summer, even weather. On approaching St, Louis a brakebeam collapsed and a wheel fell from the engine, causing a delay for fresh engine and so lost an hour.
    The sister was anxiously awaiting the train, as well as another lady. On emerging from the union depot gate, the other lady exclaimed "There comes ------." She proved an intimate friend of years ago, once Miss Marshall, of Hamilton, Ill.
    In St. Louis an automobile is not unusual and one is met every few minutes. The city spreads rapidly and will soon count a million. The din is deafening and all seem in a hurry. Railroads are planning to get passenger trains away from the suffocating tunnel.
    Across Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, the panorama is entrancing to one who has been seeing the bare surface of the Pacific region.
    Cincinnati is increasing and invading all surrounding territory. Nevertheless it does not affect real estate twenty miles away. Seventeen miles from here good hill farms can be bought for twenty-five dollars per acre. This was told by reliable parties. Pastures are good everywhere. Inside city and suburbs real estate is constantly appreciating. Nevertheless lands eight miles from the city hall at $200 per acres ten years ago can be bought for $100. Booms come and go. Electrics penetrate everywhere--even to the farm territory--and are profitable.
    On the 8th we rode eleven miles for a dime, crossing the suspension bridge over the Ohio. The trolley has superseded the  railroad in the suburbs. The B&O takes no traffic nearer than Aurora, 26 miles from the city. The C.H.&D. takes only through passengers over twelve miles.
    Telephones, trolleys and railroads are demanded faster than they can be made. Labor is in constant demand at $1.50 per day for roustabouts. Meat cutters are on a strike while non-union girls and women come forward to take their places.
    We will start home on the 19th by Chicago and Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, on the Great Northern Railroad.
    Hay fever has bothered us some but not enough to hinder our business or pleasure.
    We have had two thunderstorms since coming here.
    Indian summer is still here. Too much smoke and fog; we don't fancy the climate. But it may be better farther away from the city.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, November 19, 1903, page 8


    The last was from Ohio. The day after (Nov. 19th) was the coldest of the entire trip. We were four and a half miles from the railroad, but an electric put us at Brighton with thirty minutes to spare. Soon the Chicago express--Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton--hove in sight and we clambered aboard. No stop was made until we reached Hamilton, eighteen miles from Cincinnati. The reason for no stops is because the trolleys do all the work that far. The stop at Brighton is to accommodate a large suburban territory, only "No. 40" stopping. The space passed over after leaving Mill Creek Valley was undulating, nice to cultivate but fertile only as manured.
    Hamilton has 25,000 people, nearly as large as Cincinnati in 1839, and almost as good a farmers' market.
    After crossing the Big Miami, we strike an upland country which presents a fairly strange anomaly, fairly improved farms at $25 per acre. In the former letter we told of farms 18 and 20 miles from Cincinnati having fallen in price since 1893.
    We bowled on toward Lake Michigan; we passed through the poor hills of eastern Indiana and into fertile reaches through Indianapolis and Lafayette--a ceaseless panorama of fine farms--into Chicago, one hour late.
    Our nieces, Caroline and Ruth, were at the depot to greet and guide the wayfarer over the "elevateds" to their home, six miles distant. Here the surface car strike was on but we saw no violence or terror, the police having learned that numbers have no more rights than individuals. Men were arrested even on suspicion. Hence order reigned. We bought tickets here over the Great Northern and O.R.&N., for Portland.
    We observed the strong current through the Chicago River caused by the drainage canal and so gave thanks for that blessing to the city. That reminds us that St. Louis demurs, but chemical analysis proves that Illinois River water, four miles below the mouth of the canal, is purer than above. Nevertheless, Chicago boils its drinking water from three miles out in the lake and renders it flat and insipid. They talk "typhoid," and we answer "bosh," St. Louis does the same with a like result.
    At Milwaukee we met brother Ed in a nice suit of soldier clothes.
    Thence onward to the Rockies; an inch of snow lay everywhere except where blown by off by the wind. West of Havre our engine broke down and we lost two hours waiting for another. Inside the mountains the snow varied from six to twelve inches in depth.
    It measured the latter at Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, where we halted and passed five days with George, who runs the only engine on the Kootenai Branch. He makes three trips a week--thirty miles--on a mixed train. The train stops anywhere to ship or land. Hence all along the way the people are friendly and donate lots to the crew. The engineer gets all the apples and potatoes he needs gratis.
    He helped us aboard the train bound for Spokane. We arrived there after a three and a half hours' ride, and put up at the "Pedicord," a nice, modest hotel. The next day before leaving for Portland we took a trolley ride to view Spokane Falls, a panorama well worth seeing.
    At Portland, Miss Mary Louise Douthit took us to a meeting of the "Society of Jewish Women," 250 strong, who are foremost in all benevolent work. At this meeting, besides the regular routine of work and the considering of a report from an industrial school, they had discourses and talks from four pioneers which were very interesting. One speaker had quite a German brogue and narrated that pioneer women did not discuss "bonnets" much because they had none to quarrel over.
    On our arrival at home at 11:40 a.m., Daughter was on hand at the station. But the worst came when we learned that our brother, Henry, had died from peritonitis on Nov. 25, the day of our arrival at Bonner's Ferry. He was sick only three days. We had seen no premonitions.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, December 17, 1903, page 6


    Rouney Andrews very much regrets the killing of the three young bear because he felt an attachment for them and often saw their tracks; also, they had been many times in the blackberry patch and vineyards, but they eat no berries or grapes until fully ripe. "In fact," said he, "I believe that only one met his death because the stories are inconsistent." The one he knows of he helped to eat.
    A large planing mill and box factory is being moved over from Jacksonville, to be re-erected two blocks east of us. The businessmen gave a $3000 bonus and deposited it the bank, to be paid over when it is completed. George A. Andrews thinks that sum won't pay all the expense of removal. The company has leased a small saw plant to place on Coleman Creek to cut a body of timber they have bought. George fires until he has fully read up on motives and then takes one of the engines. Reading up in approved authority is required by all companies. The operators cannot get enough tenements; every shack occupied and so four families remain at Jacksonville.
    Ernest Hart has not yet been met but we hope to have a look at him soon. He is a brother of deceased Frank Hart, the early Beloit banker whom he helped until he sold out.
    The writer is not so well, perhaps the result of a nine days fog. We deem this locality not overly healthy. Migration is discussed after sale of several buildings.
    Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] recovered from la grippe last week. The post office almost goes begging ($1100) because four wealthy men do the securing and so dictate. The endorsers are three Republicans and one Democrat. "Security" is unpopular in this valley. It will be a good plan to let it go out of fashion tee totally so far as mere individuals are concerned.
    Our orchestra maintains practice and on Christmas night gave rare music.
    The Glen Elder Wheelers, Harry and Will, have conjointly bought a 120-acre farm seven miles out.
    Ashland has voted to be a "dry" town, but elected a "wet" mayor.
    An Ashland undertaker expressed his joy at Dr. Reader's return from Japan by saying, "My business was dull during your absence."
    The new decision about homesteads will probably prevent any more, for if requires residence the WHOLE time. Only the wealthy can perform such requirements. Like all other absurd laws it will be so utterly ignored that barefaced fraud will run riot.
    The Lutherans had a notable Christmas Eve and Abby played. She was the recipient of an ebony silver ornamented dressing case and a gallon of candied honey. Other churches also had pleasing programs. Very little shooting--some giant crackers. We went to Andrew's restaurant for turkey, etc. The hotel bad two grades of tables, 50¢ and 25¢, both said to have been satisfactory.
    Some are saying that the approaching presidential canvass is already affecting business and that depression is sure in the spring; but the writer sees no sign and feels almost assured that times will remain much as now.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, January 14, 1904, page 8


    Again too long a wait, but the volume of intelligence was slow in filling.
    On January 2, sound, yellow apples were picked from our trees and were found to be fair eating, but we suffer for the mildness.
    A trip to Ashland last month gave us rheumatism and worse catarrh.
    Our coldest has been but 26 degrees.
    What shows up well for business is that when Hart & Co. moved over their planer and box plant  the town lacked for tenant houses and so the men had to remain in Jacksonville. But now two large dwellings are in process of erection, each of which will accommodate two families.
    For good fir wood we must pay $5.50 per cord--nine years ago it was from $3.50 to $3.00.
    We had in January an unprecedented fog lasting ten days. News from the Willamette reported men shoveling it like snow.
    We went to the charter election where a sharp contest was waged between "Saloon Sunday Closing" and those opposed. In this ward "open Sunday" polled ninety votes against thirty for "closed," and nevertheless five churches are in this territory against three in the other two wards where closed saloons got a much better vote. This looks inconsistent.
    Three weeks ago some Illinois-California people passed through to Aberdeen, Washington, stopping two days with us.
    Ashland has a temperance dilemma. A receiver is selling out a saloon and contends that no state law dare molest. The town had voted "dry." When searched, the legal books showed no solution and the case continues. It may create an unfortunate precedent--as tough a knot as New Jersey charters. What is the plain fact? This state has the same stultifying restrictions upon drug stores as Kansas; but a late decision quashes all pharmacy boards as well as barber commissions. The latter have consequently intermitted all examinations. Also has laws against quackery.
    Your correspondent had quite a tussle with catarrhal fever in January and feels like "vamoosing." Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] had quite a severe attack of the grippe, but is now in better health than for a year.
    We hear, at second hand, of a prospective purchase of a large area of the Minor-Doolittle lumber territory up Rogue River, by the Hafer-Hart Company. We repeat that this is Ernest, a brother to Frank. Their buildings and yards are about complete. We hear that many sawmills are closing down in Washington.
    Homesteading goes on--a son-in-law, his son and daughter have each discovered and entered good quarters, two of which can be seen from our door yard; or rather the timbery ridge is in view. We opine it to be a good stroke.
    Some people imagine a fog to be a warming scheme, but old settlers affirm that the coldest weather ever experienced here, zero, was during a fog.
    In consequences of dear wood fuel, many are hoping for the day of petroleum burners. Today a black oil-burner locomotive went through pulling a freight. It had no wood pile or coal tender; only a few billets for kindling.
    Last week, Jan. 30, found more good apples on the trees.
    Socialists here are growing very confident and declare that they do intend to divide up all property equally and to build each family a palace, superior to any on Lincoln Avenue, Beloit, at the date of 1897. The 4-, 5- and 6-room houses may be turned into pig pens and cow stables. Your readers may smile, but a pamphlet on our table and a leader, Mr. Drumhill, unblushingly argue and defend in just these terms.
    Your correspondent looked longingly for an automobile to carry family and sufficient comforts over these or any mountains where horses could draw, but learned that it would require a 20 horsepower, costing $2000.
    The children are said to be bad in school, but they are very civil on the streets, and molest vacant property not oftener than once a year. Our school system is defective and unsatisfactory. A bright girl of thirteen said she read in the Third Reader and the eight-year-old brother said he was in the Primer. For dullness and want of progress and life this can be exceeded no place where people are alive to school matters. The old-style schools could show far speedier progress, but might not afford so many "smart aleck" pupils or depreciative teachers, few of whom are masters. The old style develops the Continental and the Grand Army of the Civil War. Who stands higher in the annals of the times? No, Mr. Editor, no state can show more civil children (boys in particular) on the street than this same town.
    Your correspondent has disposed of all real estate in this city and if health does not improve, may migrate to California. Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] has sold half of hers in Ashland.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, February 18, 1904, page 8


    Our last was February 10, and now the writer feels that better habits are being learned.
    A teacher reports that her boys are so excited over the Russo-Japanese War that they bring newspapers to school to show the skirmishes, movements and battles, and their sympathies are so decided that they always add, "what Dewey would do," and "how Schley would fix 'em."
    One little tot of a girl came to tell us that "In 1803 the United States bought Louisiana from Napoleon," and in reply to the question of the other name she gave "Bonaparte." She don't attend school but is taught at home, mainly by her brother and two sisters. We inquired of the baby, who is not 3 until August, "Oh, she knows most of her letters now and can spell some." The seven-year-old "1803" reads the papers like the older.
    On the other hand the cashier of the bank tells of a Chinese who writes English perfectly and a financier who in reply to an inquiry replied in "pidgin," "I want Looshy whip 'um Japanese--evly felly good. Me don't like Japan."
    Not long ago an old settler and wife reported that some thirty years ago snow fell in this valley till it was breast deep to horses, making it hard work to navigate, but in a few days [a] "chinook" took it quick.
    On the 12, 13 and 14 snow and rain was so copious on the eastern slope of the Sierras that a mile of snow shed was broken down and mails are not yet on time. The Oregon & California has also had heavy slides, and traffic is much disturbed.
    On the 17th turnips in the soil were yet pretty good to eat, but were growing pithy. Beets are perfect yet. Evergreen blackberries have some foliage--purple green. Peach trees are full of bloom buds.
    Haven't yet met Ernest Hart.
    Wheeler and Andrews are putting in heavy blows on their ranch and Will has worked off some flesh. The Dailys are seen occasionally. The mother can't get away from the home on account of rheumatism. Bertha does much housework and attends school, also takes music lessons biweekly.
    A Chinese lady in Ashland, Mrs. Wah Chung, attends ladies' parties and gives them herself. She attends Disciple meeting occasionally, but has her own altar and joss. It is seen that social recognition will solve the Chinophobia problem--thus checking the persecuting proclivity of some. Religion has a fine opportunity to evince its claim to be follower of Christ.
    A strange phenomenon. In the states the white is the best fuel of the oaks, here it is the poorest--very little better than buckeye.
    Edwin Root, of Iowa, sawed our wood and ate dinner twice. He is from near Clinton and his father was a graduate of West Point. Both were in a cyclone in 1860 or 1861 and were seriously hurt. The son's mind was affected for some years.
    Last year's prune crop was so decidedly disappointing that grubbing and re-grafting with peach is quite extensive. As before stated, all are alarmed at the limitation of fruit. Only one orchard holds its ability over twenty years. Pears, alone, have not yet declined.
    John Olwell says their big cider tanks develop slowly into vinegar, the fluid is in too cool a storage. Farmers say that single barrels sour sufficiently in 6 months, and occasionally in a shorter time.
    We have paid our taxes, they were lower than last year because $500,000 was added to the assessment of Jackson County.
    The high waters here washed off much valuable soil.
    William I. Brown is expecting his brother, M., from Blue Hill, Kansas.
    Our family discusses migration to Southern California this summer. The elders need some more salubrious climate.
    We note that William A. Reeder is much quoted and opine that he may again be a successful candidate.
    Oregon has more lunacy than any place we have ever resided and noticed. This territory holds too many hopeless people.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, March 10, 1904, page 8


    Just a month since the last letter. It is possible that the next may be from California--the date of sailing, about April 28.
    A. Andrews thinks the winters are growing wetter; but, like Kansas, the weather may be governed by cycles. Kansas from 1875 to 1878 was so wet that everything planted grew well and matured with little cultivation. From 1889 to 1893 was a dry cycle.
    People coming from Kansas don't seem to grow better off. Some have lately returned and one family wants to go very much.
    Rains have delayed grain sowing so much that wheat must be a short crop but grain can be shipped in. Hay may be plentiful. It is not as dear as in the winter.
    One of our banks is heaping up big surplus while the other lays by only the legal ten percent of the earnings. But the surplus heaper is not always the better financier.
    This city voted upon the question to sell the light and water plants to a private company. This would have decreased the debt $25,000--a desirable condition but it failed to carry. Under private ownership the people would pay no more but while public property it gives such a good chance for "graft."
    A while ago the north side of the Siskiyous was so universally soft and boggy that trains had to transfer mail and baggage leaving freight locked up.
    Three families will come to compensate for our removal--one from California and two from Spokane. These we had known in Ohio from the '30s to '50s.
    We repeat that this country is not as good as Kansas for poor people--the rich can live anywhere.
    Parker, of Ashland, was so injured by a premature mine blast that he died in five days.
    George A. Andrews runs the "Iowa Lumber Company's" big sawmill engine--having fired and studied until he could pass examination.
    Again a talk of a railroad up Rogue River to Butte Creek--thirty-five miles where a $50,000 plant is to be erected to cut lumber. The survey will begin next week. But we deem it as probable of the Denver extension of the Central Branch.
    Again we record spring as alarmingly late. Apricots, peaches and plums should have been in full bloom two weeks ago. The buds show color, but do not open.
    California and Oregon make herculean efforts to attract immigration Many do come and some fewer go away.
    Miss Mary Louise Douthit, of Portland, is canvassing this country for subscriptions to "Souvenirs of the Louis and Clark Exposition" next summer and also for a volume of notices of pioneers--in extenso--from the families of all who entered prior to 1854. She gets fair encouragement.
    Our removal to National City, Cal., is on account of poor health. We stop a few days in San Jose and then two or three at Los Angeles to call on Francis Culp, Samuel Miller and Thomas J. Crawford.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, April 7, 1904, page 8


    Finally we are getting in one more from this state, but next week we migrate.
    Our neighbor, Mrs. Elizabeth Reames, was nominated for county school superintendent by the Socialists, who seem to be increasing. In reply to inquiry would say that she is as well equipped as anyone we know. The place requires little ability. Some states have no such officers except fixed examiners of teachers.
    Your correspondent is very rheumatic and can hardly navigate.
    Last year the Fish Lake Ditch Co. offered free irrigation water to six farmers, but all refused.
    The huge Iowa Lumber Co. has about crushed the other two planers in the opinion of some, but well-informed mill men declare there is enough business for all, had the smaller plants a little energy.
    Immigration has again set in and one mover from California says that a dozen will come if he is pleased. He came for health; we go for the same object.
    Rouney Andrews may sell--he has put his ranches on the market. It looks odd to see people moving both ways for health, but change is often a benefit.
    Your Mormon story revives a tradition of "walking on the water" of Golden Creek, Hancock County, as seen by Captain Wagoner's people. The situation had been detected and the "saints" had been invited to perform in daylight, but they declined. In that case a candle was placed near the outcome in line with the submerged plank to guide the pedestrian.
    Great demand for tenant houses has sprung up in this town--the Iowa Lumber Co., no doubt, giving the impulse.
    Ten days ago the weather was hot as Tophet--93 degrees and some said it was above that. Now we need fires.
    Mrs. Charlotte Boffa is again practicing for concerts at Grants Pass and Medford. The wonderful girl violinist has made great progress.
    The family discuss going to Los Angeles soon.
    On April 17 a big slide in the the Siskiyous delayed all trains seventeen hours.
    The death of H. C. Owen revives the melancholy recollection that he and two others made us the first call late in May 1870, while Capt. Moore, Edwin F. Crown and myself were yet in Moore's tent on Dry Creek, on what was afterwards Brown's preemption which he subsequently homesteaded. Henry was ever ready to welcome newcomers and was quick to extend friendship. The next spring we met Mrs. Owen--a mere slip of a girl in her father's dugout near his present residence. His sturdy independence and hearty good will were much appreciated by your correspondent, who also admired his exemplary faith and perseverance. Our memory now is that Will Owen and John Quackenbush were Henry's companions at that first informal "call" among the original "society" of Dry Creek, then called Antelope Plains, afterward Eden Valley and now, prosy "Gilbert."
    The new law requiring voters upon school bonds to be taxpayers found only two men eligible to vote in Ed. Stinson's district. He married Pat. Dailey's sister. The question was to move one school house to a more central point--on bonds. Each voted opposite. Ed. pays only $4.00 tax upon his 160-acre, proven-up homestead. He offers to sell at $4.00 per acre, fenced, orchard, dwelling house and barn. Prolific soil on the eastern slope of "Roxy Ann"--pretty steep. But, what a cheap home.
    At Ashland four tramps began pilfering and were finally jailed. One resisted and opened fire with a revolver. He was speedily dropped but not dangerously wounded.
    At Talent, four boys were arrested for injuring a dwelling and its contents. The (or one) father promises to reimburse or replace. Such things are not perpetrated by Medford boys.
    One minister in this valley has been admonished by the "session" to hand in his resignation. None of the laity seem to know the cause of such action. The pastor seemed an efficient pastor in filling church and Sunday school--no one ever more so. The Disciple Evangelist has quit and left his parish demoralized, a fair man with a family, but methods based upon the dim past. Churches seem distraught.
    We return to boys. Many seem to think boys learn mischief on the street, but home is responsible. Sinister discussions around the fireside and smiling in commendation of turpitude against one whom "you don't like." How easy it is to poison the infant mind.
    Ashland has families that objected to a Chinese girl entering public school. Griffin Creek school welcomes any and all.
    Jacksonville, which lost the box factory, was heard to predict a collapse of the plant. The company concedes losses hitherto, but hopes to recover fully soon. They have more orders than they can execute.
    The big plant for Butte Creek is said to be a sure thing, now getting ready. Hence the railroad is pretty sure, for the mill was to be built only upon the assurance of the railroad. All rejoice. What a godsend for the hundreds who have been securing claims and homesteads in view of avenues for lumber and produce.
    Oregon nominated her hard worker, Hermann, by acclamation and rejoices that the "Kansas Sixth" has done the same. Democracy here is also very harmonious.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, April 28, 1904, page 8


    On the 25th of April George A. Andrews related about a dog that would "worry" the logs as they glided along the chute at a fearful speed and so delayed the launching of the next. The boss had tried chaining him but he made too fearful a "racket" and so had to be loosed. Finally the boss said, "Don't wait for him, let it go." The animal was struck and the hands found only three pieces. The creature learned a lesson.
    On the 29th of April we boarded the cars for the southland of California. On the summit of the Shasta Range (not the peak) we were in the snow line for two miles. No, it was not cold, as the rare atmosphere melts the snow slowly.
    Soon after descending by the "3-mile parallels" of track we stopped at the Soda Springs, where Daughter filled a new teapot with the pungent fluid. The women did not fancy the drink, but the writer did and had to empty the residue for fear he'd "waterlog" himself. Two ladies in the seat back of us asked for a taste, but spat it out disgusted.
    Before nine the next morning we reached Sacramento. Thence to Oakland all the lowlands were under water from the floods in the Sacramento. By dinner time we were in San Jose, at the Russ house (noon dinner) getting ready to treat our appetites.
    Two changes of cars were made, at Oakland and Niles. Of course that part of California is gorgeous. San Jose has improved since we left in August, 1901, and rents have advanced. We did not meet all our old acquaintances because the stop was only two days.
    On May 2nd, Monday, we again boarded the cars for the south. The Santa Clara Valley was delightful and so was the Montery Bay region.
    Just prior to entering Pajaro Pass we rolled through the headquarters village of the famous cattle barons, Lux, Miller & Co. In that spot the soil is so productive that hundreds of Chinese hire hundreds of acres to grow gardening for San Francisco. On southward we moved from Castroville up Salinas River Valley, where potatoes are grown for a vast territory.
    In forty miles we passed this garden spot and struck the dried country of San Luis Obispo County, fit only for raising cattle and horses upon measurably free range. All dwellings were shacks, and fences were just excuses. Just where the river forked, vegetation grew better and habitations improved. Here also was one of the historic Catholic missions, San Miguel, partially a ruin.
    A couple of miles south of the mission the train dove through a long tunnel and emerged upon the ocean side of Santa Cruz branch of the Coast Range. Here were deep gulches and high mountains, but nearly all surface was green with vegetation. Soon we stopped twenty minutes for dinner in beautiful San Luis Obispo. Shortly after starting we struck the beach and forty miles of almost continuous sand dunes blown into ridges and even domes by the sea wind, which here is very strong. A steamer was pushing on north some six miles out.
    This drifting sand has temporarily spoiled a number of farms, but it contains a considerable matter which is finally fertile, growing grass and vegetables.
    We had to lie over one night at Los Angeles and had good rooms and beds in the "Matson" at reasonable rates.
    On the third of May we rode our concluding 33 miles, landing at 11:10 a.m. and finding temporary rooms in the Chandler block at Santa Ana.
    Expenses are moderate except flour and fuel. Flour is $1.50 on credit, $1.30 cash. Wood, $8 for the best; $4 all else. Our gas stove costs $1.50 per month. Milk a quart per day, a month, $1.75.
    On the 5th Tom. Crawford came and drove us out 3½ miles to his place. Here we met his two brothers, Frank and William, as well as Reuben Shadowen and wife. Reuben hailed us: "You look just as you did in Kansas." On the return Mrs. Crawford loaded us with a peck of oranges, a half peck English walnuts and a wad of other good things. Crawford's orchards are in the Santa Ana Mexican grant which carries water right from all Santa Ana River. Outside this grant the drought season and poor soil show plainly--dying, dead orchards, poor grass and crops. The grant is an Eden and consumes all the river water for seven months. For five months other people get some water.
    The orange market is overdone and no more will be offered until the new crop matures.
    All kinds of religion here but Dowie and Mohammed are seen.
    Mrs. Shadowen's health is improving. Expenses no heavier here than elsewhere. We get a nicely furnished new bungalow of six rooms, and use of a good upright piano, for $15 per month. We get more beef for the money than in Medford, Oregon.
    Tom. Crawford has an empty ostrich egg which must have weighed two pounds when full. Abbie visited the ostrich farm in San Jose; there were 20 birds. They lay from 12 to 13 eggs at a clutch and make nest on bare ground, preferring a sandy or dry soil. The male broods all night, going on before sunset, and comes off after sunrise. The female (hen) does duty during daylight.
    The climate here somewhat resembles San Jose, but is decidedly different from any we have ever encountered. Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] is decidedly recovering from all ailments and, consequently, in good spirits.
    Population of Santa Ana is estimated at 6,000.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, May 19, 1904, page 8


    While at Thos. J. Crawford's we learned much of this region. Oranges left on the tree to ripen are much superior to the commercial articles; but one soon tires of even the best. The orchardists soon become surfeited. The picking is very exacting and each must be cut from the stem with stout shears like pruning nippers. Mrs. Crawford plucked a branch with eight nice, large oranges attached and they hung on our bracket over a week. The fruit decays as rapidly here as anywhere unless kept in a cool place or even cold storage. We have had two light and one heavy rains since our residence. On May 11 we removed to a five-room, furnished cottage, but are on the "qui vive" for one such containing a good piano at three dollars advance. Five quite large English walnut trees are on these premises, containing quite a lot of growing nuts. The city water is very good on this place, but people complain that its alkalinity affects the kidneys of many. There is very little pilfering. This house was unlocked for a week and not an article taken! Also the place (town) 1s ""dry." The landlady is United Presbyterian--the drayman the same, and former landlady was "General Assembly" Presbyterian. A near neighbor is South Methodist. Lots of people go to church--the sparest audience, Episcopal. A girl of fourteen was seen operating an auto last week; and was moving moderately. The rashest chauffeurs are men from nineteen to thirty years old. A wealthy lady purposed buying in time said that she would not be rash because she had never urged a horse beyond a jog trot. So far the greatest heat has been bearable. On May 14th took a trip to Newport Beach, where were a good many loafing and  playing in the clean white sand which soils not even the whitest clothes. The season for bathing not on hand--must wait until June 10. The pier--300 feet long--extends to forty feet ebb tide. A great deal is shipped at this point to all ports. We observe nightingales and think one has a nest near. Found a feed store man here whose father had homesteaded near Concordia in 1871. The same merchant had done business in Jamestown. Bought a tier of stovewood from him.
    On May 18 took a steam trolley trip to Orange--3½ miles--a neat place with a bank and a newspaper, The Post. Saw an eating place with board at door which said "Good meal for 15¢." On that trip an Indiana doctor said, "The Russians pray too much and fight too little; hence are getting it in the neck." He also ventured to remark that "No doctor of sense ever used calomel." Said he was a nephew of former Surgeon General Hammond--of Civil War times.
    Our old friend, S. S. Strayer, reports Pasadena as a very desirable place, containing twenty millionaires. It has 9000 population. We are using the public library which complains of theft of books. The officials seem as circumspect as possible. Plenty of fresh fish at moderate prices: barracuda, bass, mackerel, etc. The first is our choice--fat like catfish in right season. Fine fishing at Newport Beach piers the entire year.
    Our Main Street has no outlet west for nine blocks. The well-to-do will not allow their property pierced or condemned. Our street is "Twelfth" and has but one number: "118"--three doors from Main. No "Thirteenth," only Washington Avenue, thence "Fourteenth,."
    Your correspondent drinks from a medicinal spring, two miles north, the water brought in bottle. It is said to cure rheumatism, but as yet experience no benefit. Shall drink two more gallons and if no benefit seen, then we'll try a sulfur spring. Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] improves undoubtedly.
    On May 21 Thos. Crawford, wife and Etta dined with us. At 2 p.m. all but Mrs. Kay went out to a basketball game at the high school yard. Here the local team and one from Riverside came out a tie. Two different classes, "'04" and "'05," indulged their class yells in ear-splitting style. Also many smaller boys performed a number of amusing "stunts," one walking on hands and feet, back down, better than we had ever seen it done. We said: "Bully for the glorious boys," but the policeman drove them away.
    One young lady remarked of the basketball girls, "They make a holy show of themselves." A widow, Mrs. Collins, tells of Catalina Island and its town, Avalon, where she once spent several days, and wants to go again this season. It is thirty miles from our beach, eighteen miles long, six at the broadest, mainly a sheep pasture. Climate is the same the year round. The hydrant water here is so hard it requires more sal soda to break than any other place we've sojourned. It decidedly affects the neural system of some but, as intimated, tastes well. On Memorial Day we assisted the rector of the "Church of the Messiah," who had a wretched cold.
    Upon Decoration Day we donned all our insignia and set out to find the field of action, but could not catch on and observed only one flag displayed. A Post and a Corps are here, but they have not been met. One woman said Ladies of the Grand Army are here but they also have not been encountered.
    Times are a bit hard--an insufficient demand for labor. An advertisement for three to pick berries brought sixty applicants. One man said, "Oranges no good and walnuts diseased." The nuts are unmercifully culled.
    Too many desire to sell; it argues badly. This is no place for a poor man, unless he has very true friends. Still, in many ways, here is a paradise.
    One feels relieved--doctors charge moderately. Mrs. Strayer related, "I broke my wrist and Dr. Ball came, set it and made two more calls. His bill was $5 only." The doctor lives opposite us and is among the skillful. Vegetables are cheap; butter, reasonably good.
    Today I went down to county clerk to prepare pension voucher. Samuel S. Strayer was there to identify. No charge, no postage. "The county does it all--even to mailing," explained the friendly clerk. At Medford, Oregon, all pay 25¢, but the notary furnished envelope and stamp. Not as great a crowd as at Beloit or San Jose.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, June 16, 1904, page 18


     The Times made some awful blunders in the former. This correspondent writes very plainly.
    One day a carpenter opposite fell from porch roof and broke his leg. Dr. Ball happened to be right there and gave attention.
    One day, on the way back from [the] beach, a gentleman asked if any had extra tickets on coupon list? We had, and he sat down by. Of course paid up, but it could not be separated until the conductor came. We found him a genial high school professor of German and Latin, who often for recreation rode down to the beach. He seemed better versed in German than are Americans usually, and was ready for any conversation. The school campus is only two blocks from us. In reply to question, Miss Beatty said, "No more basketball till next session." We often revert to Kansas and recall its magnificent distances and romantic bluffs. In 1871, to cure a long array of sleepless nights, we emigrated to then frontiers of the Sunflower State to enjoy its bountiful ozone, flavored by the peculiar smell of buffalo grass. The restoration was complete and the complaint never returned.
    Here is one sort of a paradise, but all three often long for Antelope Plains (Lulu).
    We found an excellent piano to let, or sale, at a ridiculous figure--the lady owner becoming homesick to see her girlhood's home in the States. We bought and so are "at home" in music.
    Vegetables in the market and with hucksters are nearly all execrable, but on the farms fresh from the soil are very good. Apricots, though small, are better flavored than those from San Jose northward. Berries are too dry, the dewberry ranking the best. All kinds of fruits and nuts must be sprayed from three to five times. No one realizes the hard work until here to see.
    On the twelfth of June your servant began to walk about premises without cane; a long siege of two years and eight months. On the 22 June Thos. J. Crawford drove us to see Reuben Shadowen's purchase. He will do well with alfalfa--seven crops a year. He has plenty of water from the Santa Ana during July and rumor says more will follow suit. Union services are much indulged in during vacations. All trolley work has stopped--hence much disappointment.
    Buzzards and carrion crows are much in evidence during and after irrigation, to devour the many gophers driven out by the water and slain by dogs.
    This is also a wonderful pumpkin country; they thriving on alkali soil where irrigated. They are also planted in field corn and yield well. All stock eats them, and being sweet, many pies are made. Thos. J. said that the finest melons were grown. We saw also John Crawford's beginning fruit ranch which is well situated to get abundance of water.
    Saw a patch also of Johnson grass which Thomas J. said was a nuisance because hard to extirpate. The patch was in the road and resembled dwarfed sorghum. He surmised that it had been deposited from an overflowing ditch. The surface seemed near level and yet we were surprised to see the current very swift along the cemented ditches.
    Thos. J. pointed out a man from Nebraska five years ago who could have been well off were he not everlastingly trading or swapping. One lemon orchard looked large and full enough to supply several states. Three ten-acre patches of peanuts were passed; also large areas of bunch lima beans and potatoes. Several fine lots of field corn also. For dinner Mrs. Crawford set on the best sweet corn we have ever tasted new. Apricot drying has begun. Another bunch of fine oranges upon the branch again adorns our bracket.
    For four years this region has been growing drier and many ranches fail to get as much water from the ditches as once.
    On June 24, the schools closed the session, but boys are not obtrusive--much like Medford, Oregon. We have been here nearly two months and have heard no profanity.
    One man was heard scolding another for "butting in," but he used no ill words. People are wonderfully civil.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, July 7, 1904, page 12


    Automobiles are put to various uses. One very large, carrying eighteen, runs regular trips to Laguna Beach, which has no rail service. By the way, our former Oregon neighbor, Ashland, has two ordinary autos used for livery rigs and will soon have a large bus like that here.
    We got blackberries at two cents a box and pick them. But apricots at one cent a pound and gather. They are excellent in flavor and we dried a lot of them.
    On the Fourth the entire family repaired to Newport Beach where a crowd, estimated at five thousand, tried to divert itself, many indulging in bathing, which a few denounce; but the human wants recreation. It is surely less harm than dissipation.
    Some Dunkard acquaintances had a picnic dinner and invited its to participate. Their pastor, Rev. Eby, was present. Many old persons were in the great gathering.
    We heard, and heard of, no patriotic oratory. Some said the attendance was double it had ever been. It truly taxed the S.P. to the utmost, being compelled to run trains every two and a half hours, the 10:20 and 3:20 trains being packed like sardines. The 2:15 was run out on the "Y" and several of us stayed in because better seats than elsewhere. It rested only 30 minutes and then backed to the depot to take its load. Lucky for our party the seats were not fully filled. Santa Ana was said to have looked deserted from 12 to 3.
    Democratic newspapers, except the Hearsts', discuss the presidency very little.
    The apricot crop has some deficiencies--shriveled from drought and dwarfed in size a large percentage, while the scale scabbed many. Many trees remain unpicked.
    Your "Vancouver" grows into a splendid correspondent.
    Too much property for sale. Over half.
    This country subsists upon tourists and tenderfeet. One man from Iowa bought 20 acres for $17,000. His family came in on the same train with us and say that they can't net over three or four percent from all crops. That tract once sold at $600 per acre and was later bought at $175. Our neighbor, an old resident, says that a slump is beginning. So many we meet want to sell and return to the States. The beaches and newspapers keep up the "racket" that attracts.
    The Concordia people here are the princes. Much spare funds--seven lenders to one borrower. A neighbor tells of hearing of a borrower for $1500 and posted off instanter, but another had seized the chance.
    A man at the apricot tables reported bees in the mountains laying up no honey to spare, a result of the long drought.
    The Iowans and Californians "jour" (jawer) all the time over the merits of the two states. The Californians denounce Iowa for cyclones and waterspouts, while the Hawkeyes retort: "Well, lots better to have a cyclone or flood once in ten years than to be everlastingly drouthed and nothing a-growing naturally." Our thirty-year resident raises the chorus: "This is no place for the poor; it is impossible to rise."
    On the 19th our outhouse, by some unknown means, got afire, but a stream from a garden hose on each side soon subsided it. A fence got scorched--that was all, notwithstanding other structures were near.
    Hobson made a "holy show" of himself at the St. Louis convention, on the color line. Booker is evidently his superior. How easily some shoot off their mouths, both committing and compromising self. So say some stalwarts here.
    Dried apricot wholesale market opens out at fair prices. Hope the growers will make something.
    Yes, the large supply of money here is maintained by the constant influx of tourists and settlers. A purchaser is liable to rue his action, but if he stays long, will become wonted.
    A lady who "scoured" a suit for us said that in eight years she had fully paid for a house which rented constantly $12.50 per month. But she was the expert in dyeing and scouring. We never had a better job.
    A Scotch watchmaker put in a crystal for your correspondent at 25¢ and cleaned Abby's for one dollar. Ours had been given up at Medford, but this man made it go tiptop, scarcely to be excelled on time.
    Here and in Los Angeles the W.C.T.U. are to look out strangers and guide them to honest hotels at fixed and reasonable prices and accommodations. We have seen some of this "wood bee," but find policemen far more reliable.
    A Boston family, not long since from San Diego, report the long drought causing insufferable dust and heat and so reducing water supply that San Diego can't keep her lawns and shade trees green. The beaches, say Burns, have poor and dirty free drinking and cooking water. Los Angeles at last has no water for streets and so must use petroleum. But the latter is more effective.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, August 11, 1904, page 4


    Real estate in this section is a puzzling study. T. J. Crawford's brother had an opportunity to buy a tract for $9,000 that once sold for $19,000. The soil is so "spotty" that one twenty-acre tract may be worth five times as much as the one adjacent. The value of much of the land cannot be determined until it has been tried, some of it five or six years. The appearance is often deceiving.
    We have moved a block east and are now in plain view of the Santa Ana Range; have more breeze, better location and well-furnished house at the same rent.
    For several nights we have seen lightning beyond the mountains, storms in Arizona and rain in the San Bernardino Range. The former is now a wet region instead of arid as heretofore.
    The San Bernardino are well supplied with bear, deer, elk and other game.
    The National Bank cashier said our neighbor was mistaken in saying there was little demand for long-time money. He can loan any amount if he strikes the right kind of an avenue.
    Apricot driers are getting seven and eight cents, which is a good price.
    The U.S. Commission reminded us that the water is limited and people must not open more irrigation farms. Much good area has no water but is available for low-grade pasture. Los Angeles will enter suit to enjoin irrigation pumping upon an area over twenty miles square, a large portion of San Fernando Valley, the city claiming "pueblo" rights.
    The Los Angeles papers contained the unique cablegram engagement in the Simpson-Schungel families. We all say O.K.
    Our individual improvement in health is altogether too slow to suit. A full sulfur course may be needed.
    Los Angeles recently had a heavy rain and wind which blew down trees and did a great deal of damage to fruit.
    N. F. Axelson, our landlord, was formerly a Kansan. In the pioneer days he took up a homestead near Solomon and Limestone Bluff, but the talk of Indians and raids drove him away. He served in the 43rd Illinois in the Civil War and was wounded at Shiloh.
    We have musical neighbors. The youngest child can scratch fleas with one foot and not interfere with rhythm of bow or work of fingers on the violin.
    Reuben Shadowen was cut short on two crops of hay but the recent rains have improved things and increased the volume of water. All users have equitable shares.
    Arizona continues to have rains every two or three days.
    A delegate to the triennial convention was sent to ask our help to conduct morning services, Sundays for 8 or nine weeks, the place being 44 miles from here. Clerical help just now seems a bit limited. We will get a look at the Pacific each Lord's day. Have been once and met the families of F. Culp and Samuel Miller who seem comfortably happy and thrifty. Mr. Culp has been Deputy U.S. Marshal 5 years.
    Los Angeles is a very active and thriving city. Four miles west are some good oil wells, and new ones are being bored. They are all making money. The city is oiling many of the streets instead of sprinkling. Central Avenue, which runs near Mrs. Annette Allen Tobin, is thus sprinkled. It is one of the much-traveled streets.
    Near the sea it is but a little cooler than in Santa Ana.
    Los Angeles County near the sea has some extra good farming lands, which raise crops independent of irrigation, the heavy fogs protecting the crops. This land is worth $500 per acre. This increase in value has taken place in the past 20 years. In all that territory electric railroads are much in evidence. The rails are heavy enough to accommodate all moderate-sized engines and cars. The piers are busy with lading from all parts of the maritime world.
    We lodged one night with a "longshoreman" (stevedore), James Baldwin, who had boarded at F. U. Culp's four years.
    Samuel Miller raises fine crops of corn, barley and potatoes without irrigation.
    Rentals here are one-fourth delivered.
    There are immense fields of lima beans grown here. We saw one tract of 130 acres planted to beans.
    We met a German Lutheran from Bessarabia, Russia, the other day in the depot. He had first settled in South Dakota, sold his farm for $50 per acre and moved to Monroe County, Miss., where he bought a good 160-acre farm for $12.50 per acre. He traveled with a native of Baden, Schwarzwalder, who had nearby the same experience. The Badener was a Catholic and argued that Russians, being of the Greek Church, never would make a good republic in their own land, as they must come to America to learn how. The Lutheran was of the large migration from Germany during the reign of Peter the Great, who invited them to his country to assist in civilizing his crude Tartars, primeval Russians.
    I also saw an Armenian family, just from Turkish Syria, parents and five children. The father only could talk a few words of English, but wrote his own language well and English fairly well. He was a shoemaker by trade and was on his way to Frisco, where he and she each have a brother. He had a certificate from his pastor in both tongues, Evangelicals. Bitlis, Armenia, had been their home.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, September 1, 1904, page 8


    "Yes," said our informant, "our drought has been on for seven years--less moisture every year. What next?"
    Mrs. Kay [Mrs. Kendall] visited Lordsburg, sixty-four miles, to see Illinois friends and found the climate drier, hotter and more dusty. But the place has a Dunkard college with a full faculty of teachers. Also many well-to-do make it a residence. Many orange groves were suffering from drought and neglect. The water in irrigating wells is low and requires improved devices to raise it.
    On September 4 the thermometer all over was up to 104 in the shade; and yet a sea breeze was in motion where it had free course. Our landlord said that some years ago it was hot enough to kill chickens and scorch exposed fruit on the trees.
    On account of Sunday and Labor Day following pensioners had to wait until the sixth to have their vouchers signed; but California is kind to veterans, the county clerks furnishing the envelopes and stamps--in Oregon they pay twenty-five cents.
    The water contest between Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley ranchers is now in court. Of course there are differences of opinion about rights and law. The Mexican "pueblo" grants conferred sweeping titles; but an impartial observer notes that the water supply is alarmingly short and diminishing and a crisis impends. This territory has more population than it can sustain from its own resources. We repeat that a constant stream of tourists and tenderfeet is needed to supply the pocketbook.
    A new disease has attacked the orange, a rot.
    This coast--a week ago--for forty miles had a strong tidal wave which did much damage to piers, sidewalks and small shipping; but little harm to human life. The fish fled to the deep bottoms.
    A gypsy woman came along three days ago and asked some if "they wanted their fortunes told." She slighted us entirely.
    The most pleasant location in summer we ever encountered was in Canyon City, Oregon. The next was at San Jose, California. Oppressive heat never occurs in Eastern Oregon--almost universally--especially in elevated valleys. Winters also in that land are very bearable. In Mitchell County in 1871-2-3 the summers were very mild; no one could ask better.
    Last week a large load of gigantic sweet pumpkins passed our door. How we longed for "pie."
    Eight thousand orange trees (navels) have gone from here to Joppa, Palestine, and more will be shipped. In one invoice of 3000 only fifteen died.
    Negroes are encouraged to immigrate, this land of sultry heat needing them. But soil must be sold cheaper else it will not attract them nor anyone else. Near us is a lot held at $1200 and another at $800. Such can be got at San Jose or San Francisco at about half.
    At Santa Monica we found Samuel Miller (of Lulu), a very thrifty man, owning his town residence and farming 115 acres outside. His son, Hugh, is also a thrifty person. Mrs. Miller still suffers from her railroad accident but does her domestic work.
    On the road home our Santa Ana street motor died from an exhausted oil tank and so had a task to get it into the "barn" to fill up. A big load was lost from a later train--the whole mass tucking up dresses and walking home. Your correspondent "froze" to his seat for an hour and a half and was finally set down at the right place.
    On the interurban lines the people are quite cosmopolitan. Between Sawtelle and Los Angeles a Chinese arose to give his whole seat to a lady who curtly said "no" and sat down by him. A Jap was sitting by a young man (white) who had motioned to the Mongol to do so. Then a gentleman bought a packet of lemon drops from a "peanut" boy and proceeded to divide--first, 5 or 6 to an old Jap--then a few to two little white girls. Mr. Editor, ain't that more like it? This condition is much due to the Los Angeles Times, which is very fearless and not afraid "to speak out in meeting." We are proud to say that the sheet is well supported. More and more papers are following his lead. (Urge J. G. to write more. )
    In the past two days weather has much moderated and natives say the extreme heat is past. (Stir up "Vancouver.")
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, September 22, 1904, page 8


    Some odd episodes transpire in this Godforsaken land. Near T. J. Crawford's a dairy is operated with Jersey cows. A steer calf, if not fit for veal, is fed to the hogs. T. J. pities the little creatures and so takes them to raise. He has no pasture and so pickets them along the hedges where they manage to live, although little grass or browse is attainable. This is a famous country for poor cattle (cows principally), and it requires a large number to furnish milk and butter to the cities of Los Angeles--150,000--and San Diego--13,500. Nevertheless, people won't sow "Johnson grass"--an excellent forage plant--because it is hard to extirpate. It ought to occupy the whole of this desert territory, which requires four times as much moisture as Kansas to make crops, except barley in a limited area, less than a tenth of the cultivatable space.
    Proprietors are unbalanced upon lot values. A limited trolley system is promised, but little more than we now have, and people have raised prices, already above San Francisco, San Jose or San Diego and no seaport nearer than nine miles. Also no large factory of any kind--don't even make enough ice. The service promised has two-hour waits--and not before five months.
    On the 28th of September the Kansans had a picnic at Orange Canyon and to remind of the sunflowers had a dust storm half the day; the only one since our residence. Your correspondent escaped the whole "show" because we were visiting at San Diego (National City) visiting, as will appear further on.
    A large number of people are coming in and thousands want to sell. Still all say it is no place for the impecunious.
    Los Angeles County and part of Orange had a heavy rain on September 25, which did some harm to beans and grapes, but no repetition came and so these crops were only slightly damaged.
    On September 27th your correspondent boarded the Santa Fe for San Diego to visit Captain F. T. Moore, an army comrade who once had the homestead later occupied by George Briner, on Little Plum Creek. His buggy was to be at the "L" on 22nd Street where the overland turns to return to Santa Ana, thence by Riverside across the continent. But to return to the trip. Before we reached Capistrano most of the agricultural area had disappeared, all the rest pasture with nothing green except stunted shrubs and scraggy sycamores. Dry vegetation sustains life because no rain falls to soak and destroy its virtues. Hence, even stubble is eaten to the surface. At Capistrano the old mission, though dilapidated, shows its once huge proportions of front and towers, all adobe and heavy beams over the doors and windows. It is well worth coming a long distance to see. Priests are yet alive and able for duty who once saw it in all its original magnificence. In fact American energy and enterprise did not begin to change conditions which needed the structures until 30 years ago. Also because tourists, and even residents, set such store by them. All seem to regret that they were ever allowed to fall to ruin. At this place were old apple orchards filled with fruit and in the pass fine English walnut groves. The soil of the pass seemed blacker and richer than on either side of the coast Range. San Juan River (creek rather--dry as a bone) here cuts through the range to the ocean. Inside this pass some grass grew, also brush and trees were greener, showing that moisture was shallow or near. At the sea end of the pass is the old town of San Juan, a few houses, its importance arising from sulfur springs and mud baths three miles back up a mountain valley. Capistrano monopolizes most of the notice of health seekers because more enterprising. The mission laity, although they dropped their Indian languages and adopted Spanish, never developed any energy beyond providing for the present. Nevertheless the clergy (the padres) could persuade them to lay up immense stores of grain, wines and dried fruits in the church warehouses, hence they never starved in a bad year. Aboriginal children when in company with Caucasians (especially in school) show brightness, the females developing lovable traits. Once before we reported them claiming them to be Spanish, and they are, not one in a hundred knowing more Indian than the Mexican Spaniards or Americans.
    After emerging upon the Pacific we saw miles and miles of magnificent surf with sandy beach. One could not ask better bathing, apparently; but we had no one to indicate the depth. The deep edges must be only where stone precipices abut.
    On southward the slopes of the range are considerably set to eucalyptus, which, if they survive, will make all the fuel a considerable town would need. But like Kansas, groves have limitations, most of them already showing dwarfing and death. Osage orange would be much more reliable, but the thorns would be objectionable perhaps. A few plowed fields came to notice with an occasional pile of baled grain hay; but nearly all surface was pasture--arid, dry and desolate-looking and the cattle poor. The surf villages, Oceanside and Delmar, looked well where irrigated, desolate where not. Then loomed up San Diego, where all but your correspondent climbed out. A train hand reminded us that here was the end, but we replied, "Our man is at Twenty-Second Street." He responded, "Very well--all right." Men were busy cleaning cars while we moved to the "Y." Here the rest backed up and we swung down. There was our man with the old army hail: "Hello Doc," before we'd fairly landed. Of course the response came "Hello Cap." We were safe to his buggy in two minutes ambling toward the home 2½ miles distant, National City.
    Then began the reminiscences and questions: George Hostlers, Bowkers, Bakers, Beers, Dockums, Beloit, Asherville, etc. Poor fellow! Experience was all he ever got on Little Plum, and many of the pioneers whom once he had well known were utterly forgotten. He occupies his own property with his third wife--an estimable physician. The earliest wife's two living children, Frank and Susie, are married and doing for themselves. This wife's "Tom" is 18 years old. He is a bright, handsome fellow and a comfort to his parents.
    That afternoon we called upon John G. Fonda, a lieutenant during the Mexican War in Company G, 2nd Illinois and a Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General in the Civil War. He is slowly recovering from a stroke of paralysis of the lower limbs.
    Next day we drove over San Diego, finding it dry, dusty and hot. As in a former letter, we found it with a scant water supply, hence few green lawns and suffering shrubbery. But business is fair and the city grows some.
    Then he turned the horse's head across the ferry where we rambled over the Coronado Beach and island until time to feed team and lunch. The great tent city is now silent, the veterans having all gone and the tents nearly all struck. The company will rent tent alone or furnished, or will let the space and platform. The place is fully supplied with cold water and complete sewerage.
    Only three large vessels were in port, a naval reserve boat, a U.S. torpedo boat destroyer and a large four-mast sailer; an immense lot of small craft.
    On South Coronado was a tank of four fur seal, the handsomest creatures we ever have seen. Many fine residences but few occupied. A large hotel of 700 rooms.
    National City is dry but not dusty or hot. The houses are much scattered and many eucalyptus trees which are scraggy but well alive.
    San Diego has three salt works, making the article from sea water by solar evaporation. Sea salt is preferable to any land product, except Kanawha, for preserving meats and fish.
    Santa Ana had one of those dust storms and our people had to shut doors and windows.
    From Sea Diego one sees the Mexican mountains and also immense rocks in the Pacific Ocean, inhabited only by sea birds and frequented by seal and sea lion. One can travel in Mexico only by paying $20 duty for a horse and $30 for a wagon, hence Lower California is about shut out to Americans.
    A neighbor says this country raises plenty of fowls, eggs, butter, etc., but people have agreed to a trust and won't reduce prices for overproduction, as in the States. Eggs and butter have cold storage, the creamery having 39,000 lbs. of the latter.
    Captain Moore thinks Lower California is committing suicide in locking out Americans. You see, Mr. Editor, each estate and territory make their own laws, and as prohibitive as possible. The federal government is not so inclined.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, October 20, 1904, page 5


    We meet a peculiar condition of the beef market--that although not dear, the meat is lean and flavorless. In fact we have a suspicion that some chemical is applied which preserves and dries the substance and confers the peculiar taste.
    Fish are cheap. While at National City one gets a huge specimen for 25¢, enough for 3 meals for six persons.
    Additional rains delayed long enough in Los Angeles County to enable growers to harvest bean and grape crops only slightly damaged. Immediately after harvest rain began again, one river bed near Norwalk beginning to fill where had been dry soil.
    Arthur Gaylord, senior warden of St. Augustine, Santa Monica, informs us that in C. P. Huntington's time he got an appropriation from Congress to make a breakwater for Port Los Angeles (Santa Monica Bay) which would have given a great impulse to Santa Monica; but on Huntington's death other influences set up a protest and so San Pedro Bay got the breakwater which is now being made. But Santa Monica Bay is a fine harbor and roadstead, getting some of the heaviest lading and discharging of the largest vessels.
    The apple crop here is wormy, black rot and small in volume, hence we must look to Oregon and Colorado.
    John Crawford's orange grove has been struck with root rot in spite of the best of care. He talks of a devotion to polytechnic studies and may turn his attention that way. He has the ability.
    T. J. Crawford is just in with black hands from gathering English walnuts, whose hulls stain as thoroughly as do the American. Fair crop and prices good.
    On Oct. 17 we had another desert wind, nearly as bad as Kansas dust storms, which, in gradually waning fierceness, lasted five days and part of nights. It dried articles more than the hottest sun. It is expected every I5 or 20 days throughout the winter.
    Last month Santa Monica had a "quake" which lasted thirty seconds and frightened some.
    The huge English ship the "Speke," which has been anchored at Port Los Angeles over two months, has finally got off to Australia with a "shanghaied"crew. The genus sailor is a curious "chicken"--no account unless doped with whiskey and then shipped. After anchor is weighed (up) and sails set he goes about his duties in fair shape. Nineteen out of twenty must be so treated for sailing vessels. No wonder shipmasters prefer Chinese--they have far more personal pride and reliability.
    This Pacific seaboard fully expects to boom when the Panama Canal shall reach completion. Both parties favor the measure and support Roosevelt. But the canvass has dulled maritime affairs on the Pacific, say many.
    The only music dealer here has closed, the market being demoralized by oversupply of instruments and slack demand.
    The rainy period has stopped in Arizona but it did not shift to this coast as all had hoped.
    The injunction upon San Fernando Valley irrigation pumping holds; but it will pauperize 1500 ranchers. The City of Los Angeles holds the prior right. The general subterranean supply sinks at the rate of three feet per year. It is questioned if ever a copious winter rain can ever fully stop the shrinkage.
    A Canadian shoemaker here was a classmate of Sir Wilfred Laurier--Canada's premier--and graduated with him. He has twelve children of whom none are dead.
    Just at midnight the Halloween "White Procession" passed our dwelling. Many sat up to look for it--two houses near were lit up in front until after it passed. We heard of no pranks or significant damage. The "ghosts" sang as they marched and so perhaps furnished enough entertainment.
    A half-block from us a well-to-do will buy two good dwellings and large lots to remove the tenements in order to build one huge castle. Somebody can get the removed houses cheap.
    Yes, we repeat, this land is maintained by the wealthy and tenderfeet.
    The climate is unmistakably heavy, murky, sultry, enervating, debility and catarrh-breeding; the undercurrent of displeasure is heard after long residence and not at first sight.
    Just when ranchers could least afford it, alfalfa has fallen to four dollars per ton.
    Last Friday came "Teddy's Terrors" with their unearthly calliope. Our Columbian Marching Club joined in the uproarious racket
    The Los Angeles Sunday Times of Nov. 6, thus reports: "Miss Maggie Hawkins, whose father is organist at St. Augustine (Episcopal) at Santa Monica, is filling an engagement at the Broadway theater." The writer recalls well her sister and herself as faithfully in St. Augustine's choir for the nine Sundays that he officiated for Archdeacon Brown, and can testify that it was the most ladylike and gentlemanly band he had ever met.
    Yes, dear Times, our household will remove, on the 10th to San Jose, California.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, November 24, 1904, page 8


    On November 8th we met two acquaintances at Santa Ana who were trying to sell in order to migrate to San Jose. We had formed first acquaintance in Medford, Oregon, in 1894. People are uneasy and also conditions do not always suit. These are Dunkards and estimable people.
    On election day a fire broke out in a wood house a block and a half away, and only two minutes elapsed until the new engine dashed by, hauled by the handsome blacks raised by William Crawford, brother of Tom J. Before your correspondent could reach the corner to see the conflagration the firemen had it fully under control and the bystanders were hurrying back to business. It did not hinder the voting. The city and most of the country gave two votes to Roosevelt to one for Parker. One precinct gave three to Roosevelt and one to Parker, another nine to Roosevelt and one to Parker. But the 10th of November dawned and in the afternoon we three hied ourselves to the depot where Tom and Etta saw us off for the north. Six days before starting Mrs. Shadowen and a friend took dinner with us and we filled the time with pleasant recollections of her grandparents and Kansas. As we started dust wind from the Mojave desert was in operation--the third day. It is much similar to Kansas hot winds. The desert wind whistled as we neared Los Angeles, where we stayed overnight at the Matson, near the S.P. depot. Here was staying, with his family, a man whose neck was broken in 1888 by a fall from the top of a freight car, caused by the brake wheel coming off. He fell outside of the train but broke both arms, both legs and his neck He moved around as well as anyone, but had a stout brass rod from back of belt, curved over the top of his head with a hook in the end to hold adhesive straps to each side of the head. Our informant explained that the head would fall over on the shoulder should the supports be taken away. Also he could not occupy a bed but must sleep in a reclining chair.
    In Los Angeles Mrs. Kay found a [omission]
    We must return to Santa Ana to relate that a streetcar motorman remarked to our crowd that the country was sustained by greenhorns from the east.
    Living is moderate in cost here, although rents are higher than four years ago. Climate is quite pleasant. Butter at Santa Ana was 30¢ a pound, hare 20¢. Meats are fine and very reasonable in price. Real estate, away from business districts, is moderate in value. An English (Yorkshire) family opposite has been here a year and is not homesick. The lady is a cheery little woman. This valley has many English, mostly well to do.
    Great numbers of water fowls are on all collections of water and thousands are shot every day. Land for truck and farming is let at one-third to the landlord.
    At Thanksgiving we went to the "Russ" and found a crush. We got our fill by a wait. Turkey and cranberry, but no pumpkin pie. Every price charged at the various resorts; 25¢, 50¢ and 75¢, and all well patronized.
    This valley has an abundance of water, but is just now in a struggle to prevent a San Francisco company diverting a large volume towards the great city. San Jose is extending its boundaries and new additions are being plotted--more westward than any other direction. Plenty of rain.
    Yesterday we were shown a San Juan Hill veteran, who on that occasion was shot through, but seems now a lively person. He was in the 9th U.S. cavalry.
    On Sunday, 4th, we rode on the new electric line, eight miles to Saratoga. The line is well patronized and extends four miles beyond to Los Gatos, service every thirty minutes, long cars. Our errand was to officiate for a nice audience, St. John's Mission. Plans are on foot to make more electric lines, one to reach Gilroy, thirty miles south.
    Your correspondent is using soda-sulfur water from the fountain in Alum Rock Park, and he imagines some benefit. Winter is upon us, the coldest ever falls here.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, December 22, 1904, page 4


    One unique feature of this city's ways was "not a shot of any kind at Christmas." Some shooting and firecrackers New Year's, but not a fourth as much as elsewhere. Upon inquiry people said that Christmas firing never had taken root, while explosives at other times was discouraged by the police. Japanese take part in our holidays and use Chinese fireworks much. On the night of the 14th of January Japanese from far and near joined in the celebration of the fall of Port Arthur. Three made excellent speeches in the American language. Their first exercises were in Turner Hall; then they adjourned to St. James Park, to the McKinley statue, where all could hear. In both places the flags of the U.S. and Japan were intertwined. Next day an Oriental said to the writer: "We had a big time." They all read and write their own language, while a number are educated in English. All born or brought up here talk and eat like Americans. In San Francisco they have a daily in their own language and it has many subscribers here. Nearly all Chinese born here also speak and dress like Americans (the women) but the dress is more expensive and showy than the similar American sets.
    This town is too much burdened by labor unions, hence prices are up on many small industries. The cobbler charges a quarter for a patch or two pieces on a heel; a shine is a dime; the drayman is dearer than at other places we have been. The condition makes times duller--we have many complaints. Fuel is dear with millions of cords in plain sight; $7 a cord for good wood. Coal is $12 a ton, but we find it cheaper to burn. Groceries, vegetables and meats are very good and cheap. Flour, $1.05 a sack, excellent quality. In summer we use coal oil for cooking.
    Three different corporations in electrical roads are contending for the franchise of this city and valley. Money for the purpose seems plentiful.
    We found an apparently Mexican family in charge of the suburban grocery two blocks distant, but when interviewed they were American. The family had a flock of sheep near Virginia [City], Nevada, and so much open air work had browned them well. On the opposite corner is a Chinese billiard room. Chinatown proper (Heinlenville) is two blocks beyond the grocery.
    The child violinist, whom we had known in Medford, came here and surprised all by her performance; thirteen years old. Her father, her teacher, proves superior talent. Her first appearance in public was before the Burns celebration. The participants were mainly Scotchmen of learning and wealth.
    The writer's lameness seems benefited and he hopes for restoration; still using the sulfur waters from Alum Rock Park. No snow in sight yet this winter. No blizzard, no temblors.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, February 9, 1905, page 1


    Dr. Reese P. Kendall informs us that himself, wife and daughter will remove to Ashland, Oregon, in about a month, to a greater altitude--1600 feet above sea level. At San Jose, Calif., it is only 90 feet and the atmosphere is too debilitating while fleas are eating the life out of some members of the family.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, March 23, 1905, page 5


    It is not unusual here to note cruelty to beasts--horses in particular. The perpetrators are native American Californians and Italians. Greasers (aboriginal Californians) are just the reverse--they are never seen belaboring their ponies which are usually hitched double to rattletrap buggies and delivery hacks, ordinarily in good order or fat, jogging along at any easy gait.
    Fruit men continue dejected; fine crop prospect, but last year's crop too generally on hand. Nevertheless, Wiley B. Allen advertises to take prunes (dry) for pianos from one up to ten tons.
    The independent wine growers overstepped discretion when they undersold the San Francisco association. The latter will now inaugurate cut prices which will bankrupt the independents who do not produce the best grades. Such "smart alecks" cannot let well enough alone. The Association had maintained prices by withholding an immense volume from the market, much of it low grades. They will throw all this at once upon the market and moderate prices.
    This valley has been so wet and vegetation so rank that much malaria has been bred, mostly dumb ague. Grippe also has been rife. Real estate dealers deny it, but doctors concede.
    Two weeks ago a large building was moved past our place by a threshing engine and it was hauled along at a good gate, stopping only at telephone and telegraph wires which were handled by two men on top with  rubber gloves. It was by far the most expeditious and easy we had ever witnessed.
    Two blocks away is a large, nice Japanese boarding house. The  inmates are mostly well dressed. Three or four wives and eight children are amongst the boarders (or keepers) and dress gorgeously.
    Your correspondent has just emerged from a three weeks' contest with grippe and dumb ague. About 30 pounds of weight were sweated out. One man said he'd had malaria off and on for two years, the outset in San Francisco. Our altitude is ninety feet while for eight months the climate has been too sloppy.
    Your informant about taking plumes from the ostrich knew nothing about it. The plume quill is cut with shears. The creature or fowl is not hurt one iota. In two or three weeks the stub dies and is pushed out by a new plume, at first snow white, and when near maturity turning black in the buck and grey in the doe.
    One day a citizen said: "People are suspicious and refuse to vote taxes to make and repair pavements. Want of confidence is too apparent." Very true. Little has been accomplished when means were on hand. One becomes disgusted with the everlasting blow and bluster. California has but two independent and manly newspapers--as far as this deponent has observed. The longer one stays the less confidence he cherishes.
    The sole survivor of Balaclava, "the Six Hundred," Captain Ward, is here in Sheridan-Dix Post. He was also in the Union army during the Civil War. King Edward writes to him once a year.
    Tourists and immigration have very much slackened. All over California vacant houses are increasing in number beyond normal.
    "Norris and Rowe's Circus" has just gone on the road, having wintered in Agricultural Park, nearby. Many visited to observe the training. They have a flock of hogs, sheep and goats that have learned tricks not before expected of such animals.
    Music is poorly patronized. Not a church pays finely trained singers. Organists are niggardly paid, while some perform gratis. Theaters of all stamps are finely patronized.
    The "Big Basin" bill was vetoed; righteous. A corporation would build a road did it not require double the cost for bribes and blackmail. This condition is universal. A corporation attempts nothing until so well entrenched that it can push on with cheek and bluff. In the '80s men told, unblushingly, of how they "held up" Uncle Sam almost universally.
    Girls roam the streets until 3 a.m. without chaperones. Parents themselves to blame; exert no authority, themselves indulging in much "Mardi Gras" dissipation, club upon club, society after society. The lunatic asylum is overflowing and they are compelled to build. One level-headed lady proposed to convert the big prune houses into asylums.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, March 30, 1905, page 8


    The boys of our next-door neighbor have a young fox, captured a month ago on the east side of Mt. Hamilton by a Portuguese homesteader. Portuguese and Mexican look much alike, and it may have been a greaser. Many of either kind take up U.S. homesteads and a rough mountain home is far better than none. On the day of the capture the greaser routed out five pups from their nest under stump roots, but the rest made their escape. The fox fears any but the one bey and the mother. He is kept tied up most of the time, but once a day the boy leads him upon the street for a walk and exercise. At that time he is a show for all near and passersby. His food is mainly milk, and he gets plenty. He eats not much else and spends most of his life in sleeping in his kennel or outside with his long bushy beautiful tail coiled nearly around his body. The boys paid fifty cents for the animal. We once saw a gray fox following a man and acting just like a dog. In Lulu we saw domesticated coyotes at Dan Lane's acting much like dogs.
    The morning of the 15th of April was propitious--except a lame back--and so we moved all our goods to the San Jose broad gauge depot preparatory to migration. By noon the elements let loose and precipitated rain for several hours, slacking in time to allow us to board the S.P. for the north. The Oregon express, because of repairing the Benicia ferryboat, came to the south end of the bay at Niles and there bore off east through Livermore Canyon to Stockton. At Niles we looked about for our lost fox terrier but saw no sign of it. At Irvington we saw Phoebe Hearst's place where a notable scion of nobility is making a temporary stay. Eight months of abundance of this romantic canyon as well as the entire territory perfectly gorgeous.
    The Overland makes stops only at junctions; other trains do local work. Her regular train begins at Sacramento and we must wait until the westbound overland brings mail and passengers from the States. Near midnight we were off in a comfortable chair car. By daylight we were at Redding and had the pleasure of seeing an old-style coach starting for the mountain districts--up Clear Creek in the Shasta Range and over to Weaverville on Trinity River. Oh, there is oceans of romance in Northern California. At Redding is a Carnegie library a half a block from the track. Here Abby made a reconnaissance and got a supply of fair hot sweetened coffee. The "elderlies" are too clumsy nowadays and Daughter must do the scouting.
    At Shasta Springs none cared for a drink of the natural soda water, and so the girl could rest from her labors.
    A while in the afternoon we had a fair view of the mud eruptions at Sisson, but they are truly a trifle, having been wretchedly overdrawn, merely the oozing of a quagmire and unconnected with any deep subterranean action. At 4:15 we pull up at Ashland, on the 16th of April and so, henceforward, shall write of OREGON.
    From two favorable points we have a view of glaciers upon three different snow peaks, Ashland, Siskiyou and Wagner. The mountains here the past winter have not had the normal snow fall, but the glaciers are inexhaustible and the creeks will not suffer. In the Cascades the fall of snow has been more normal.
    Across the way we met a bit of a girl 3 years old--not beyond the age of delight in "peek-a-boo," whom her mother sends to the store with money and messages which she executes with an exactness hardly expected from a youth of 7 and 8.
    The Presbyterian minister is termed by some of his own flock "high" because he wears a black gown like the Evangelical Lutheran; whether he affects "bands" or not has not been certified. The "Liturgy" is perhaps only that in the parish psalmody authorized by the general assembly. The pastor at Medford introduced the Liturgy in 1903 but wears no vestments. The new Psalmody contemplates amens at the close of hymns and chants, but Medford does not heed. The "Disciples" have a liturgical Lord's Prayer.
    The Episcopal people have a rector who enunciates so well that the dullest reasonable ear can grasp easily, so the old folk delight to listen, and the Disciple is about as good. Your correspondent enjoys this because for four or five years he has listened in vain.
    The Episcopal spoiled his "tout ensemble" by wearing a short, slim "hole-in-the-day" surplice and no cassock; which made him awfully "leggy." Without cassock a minister should have a "cathedral' (round cut) reaching to the shoes. Scotch Presbyterians are all full reaching to the shoe buckles and with flowing sleeves to the thighs. The most appropriate choir surplice in our purview are like those in St. Paul's, Beloit. Such the choir at Santa Monica, California, had last summer.
    Living and rents are 25 percent higher than elsewhere in this extensive valley. Those who have teams and are not too busy drive to one of the neighboring towns to trade. The result is more vacant houses and duller trade. One dealer declared to us, "We have much better goods." A real estate man reports that all who inquire fully about markets never settle and if they go away never return. The matter does engage attention, and merchants are proposing remedies for it. The town had a boom 12 years ago and they dislike to recede. They are also trying prohibition--have persevered three years.
    Upon May 2, Norris & Rowe's show gave exhibitions and were fairly well patronized. No disturbances or thefts were reported. That much to our credit.
    On May 5, a carload of Belgian stallions came to Mitchell's barn to be sold from $1500 to $3000. Judges pronounce them superb and sure to sell soon. But the close of the Eastern war will surely depress the horse market. Cattle are now falling while milch cows are down to $25 to $30.
    The grippe of last February and March still hangs to our anatomy, while we have an occasional "dumb ague." But pedestrianism seems to improve appreciable.
    W. H. Andrews is seen occasionally. The Wheelers and Lishe flourish. Rouney, George's wife, has a boy baby and now your correspondent is a great-grandfather.
    Where in the Philippines are the various Simpson families? Tell us what they are doing.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, May 18, 1905, page 8


    On May 12 your correspondent celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday and had for guests six of the Andrews and all of the Poleys, and "joy was unconfined." The sky was clear, without wind, and hence the future was deemed auspicious. Mrs. Wolfkiel's substitute is well up to the work. But where has J.W.G. hidden? The sulfur spring whence we draw our medicinal water proves poor stuff and only irritates the renal system, hence another will be tried. A family from Michigan--Sturtevants--came here to cure two of the family of catarrh, three sons, 16, 18 and 20 years of age. The mother had never prior been out of her own county. They had a bear dog, a long-eared black and tan, and much discussed a bear hunt. But in just a week they moved--seemingly restless people.
    On the 13th of May Dr. J. K. Reader and Joseph Poley had a house full of their relatives, and also a Dunkard preacher, to celebrate their 59th. Ice cream and cakes were indulged in, while toasts flew thick and fast. Both were in the Civil War, in an Illinois regiment, the doctor subsequently marrying Joe's sister, Louisa.
    A Disciple preacher, E. A. Childs, teaches the secret of health and long life, charging a dollar, which he unselfishly bids the donor give to one of their missionary boards. He himself is on the hither side of forty.
    Upon May 16th spring opened with a heavy thunderstorm with rain which over in California turns to a terrific and destructive hailstorm. Two weeks ago the Rogue River mountains under Wrisley Peak suffered a hail precipitation which injured George Andrews' fruit, to what extent we do not yet know. Continued dampness has injured over half the first alfalfa cutting, but the second will be heavy to compensate. Also on that 16th was our forty-seventh wedding anniversary. The golden is near.
    The San Francisco Call, of the 17th of May, contained an extended notice of the death of Tim Hersey, at Castle Rock, Washington. We knew him well and the news gave us a pang. Thus we feel toward all the early settlers of North Central Kansas, especially of Mitchell, Jewell and Cloud counties. The Union soldier draws our intense admiration and the pioneer has our deep respect.
    Please correct "Ronnie, George's wife." It should be "Ronnie's George's wife."
    Last winter's legislature made no appropriation for the normal schools (four) and so teachers and officials had to sell paychecks at 85 percent. It is doubted if the schools dare open for next session. A rumor obtains that all are to be consolidated into two, and perhaps only one, and that at Monmouth. The proceeding will hurt this city. Legislative sessions are biennial, hence none next winter. Many believe that the high schools can furnish all teachers needed. Both California and Oregon carry taxation to the point of making people squeal.
    The Presbyterian choir here does sing the "amen" to hymns, and a prominent member says that they want a prayer book; also preferring the white (Scotch) surplice for the minister. "Cumberlands" consented to unite if allowed autonomy for the individual parishes on this coast. We have not seen full reports But surmise that the "consideration" was conceded.
    Word came that the Southern Pacific would have an additional train during the Portland fair but none have seen it.
    On May 30th a "merry-go-round" was erected and is still in operation. Report says that it is well patronized. Daughter hears the grind of its hurdy-gurdy, but the elderly ears do not absorb its ravishing strains.
    Our city council insists upon improvements and consequent tax, causing many to complain and protest. Opposition is perhaps in all towns. Sewage is much urged, notwithstanding no wells in the city, and the surface is much sloping everywhere, some areas even steep. Typhoid is supposed to lurk, but we have seen it on elevations and in isolated farm houses. Hundreds of stout boys and girls have come from scores of homes where there is little attention paid to scientific sanitation.
    June 1 was opening day for the Lewis and Clark Exposition, but this territory gave no heed, buying and selling all day. Yes, the governor set aside the date for holiday. On May 30 they had had their one extra day for the week.
    A real estate agent reports the vacant houses again filling. He also expects the great fair to bring investors.
    June 5th we paid 75 cents for twenty-four boxes of strawberries to can.
    It is sometimes said that vegetation does not grow above snow line, but quite large trees are plainly seen above our everlasting  glaciers. One peak, the lowest of the three, has not a shrub even on its summit (Wagner). All rules seem to have exceptions.
Beloit Weekly Times, Beloit, Kansas, June 22, 1905, page 8


Medford Mail, August 4, 1905, page 1


    A somewhat eccentric character in the person of the Rev. Reese P. Kendall has crossed the line that demarcates the living from the dead. News comes to Beloit that the sad event occurred on Wednesday, July 26 at his home in Ashland, Oregon, to which place he moved about six years ago from this city, where he had resided for some months, though his home in Mitchell County was mostly on a farm in Lulu township, of which vicinity he was one of the oldest settlers. Dr. Kendall, who died from malarial fever, must have been well along in years, as he served in the Union army as a surgeon in the Civil War. For many years while a resident in Mitchell County he was a missionary clergyman of the Episcopal church and conducted services all over this territory. He used to own a fine half section of land in Lulu township but sold it shortly after moving out west. He leaves a widow and two daughters, one of them being the wife of Mr. Andrews that used to live on the farm on Plum Creek now owned by Mr. G. Hodler, the other being Miss Abbie Kendall, who used to be a music teacher when she lived in Mitchell County. Many of our people will remember Dr. Kendall with the kindliest of feelings, and be sorry to hear of his departure.
Beloit Daily Call, Beloit, Kansas, August 7, 1905, page 1






Last revised June 18, 2022