EARLY CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS. BEAR AND BULL FIGHTS AT RECESS. Y first schooling in this State was counties, an area of seventy five hundred square miles, as large as the combined States of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island, and which now contains over five thousand children. The next year a school was opened in the town of Quincy and was taught by a queer-looking, hump-backed but kindhearted little man, known as Daddy Logan. The site of the schoolhouse is now occupied by the Plumas Hotel. Near the schoolhouse stood during a part of one summer a large wooden edifice that had great attractions for us. It was a circular wooden pen thirty or forty feet across, with circles of high seats around it. Within this enclosure there was to be a combat between a wild Mexican bull and three bears. Two of these bears were owned by a playmate named William Yates, son of Sheriff James H. Yates. He had reared the young bears and would sit down between them, feeding first one and then the other with lumps of sugar, while the rest of us stood at a respectful distance, preferring to make their acquaintance at longer range. They were kept chained to trees, but at last became so savage that it was dangerous to approach them and they were sold to be turned loose in the big pen against Chichuachua, the bull. The latter was a lithe, active, tawny, sharp-horned vicious brute, fully as dangerous as any wild animal. From our acquaintance with the two smaller bears and the bull we felt a deep interest in the fight. The fourth animal was a full grown and very savage bear that had recently been caught. On the day the contest took place every schoolboy was on hand and sat in the highest row of seats, so as to have the best place to see and at the same time be out of danger. Hundreds of miners, fully one half of whom wore revolvers or large bowie-knives slung to their leather belts, filled the circle. The betting was all in favor of the bears. We had watched the big bear brought to town, had seen his huge cage placed near the arena, had keenly inspected from the topmost rail of a high fence the driving of the wild bull into the small corral near the big pen, and our expectations were wrought to the highest point. We had heard much of the savage bears and their tremendous powers, but we knew the bull well and had faith in his long, sharp horns. When the big wooden. doors of the cages were lifted and the bears shuffled forth with their hair on end, making them look twice as big as they really were, we began to feel Chichuachua had more than met his match, but the bull did not think so. Without a second's hesitation he made a dash for the big grizzly, and a terrible fight ensued, in which the bull's head and nose were torn and bitten and his body was ripped and gashed. While every eye was fixed upon the combatants, one of the smaller bears dug a hole beneath the edge of the ring and made for the thickly-wooded cañon back of the little town. Within a moment fifty men and every boy, with at least a dozen dogs, were in pursuit. The bear was at last treed and shot, and by the time the body was brought back in triumph the fight in the big pen was over, and Chichuachua was the victor. The crowd of miners sought the nearest saloon, which was in the American Hotel, filled the bar-room, and lined the long piazza in front of the dining-room. The vaqueros now undertook to drive the bull back to the pasture, but he was in such a violent rage that when he saw the crowd of men on the porch of the hotel, he made a dash for them, scattering all right and left and then sprang into the bar-room. Some of the miners broke out through the doors and windows, others crawled under the billiard table, and others on top of or behind the counter. The bull rushed out through the rear door and off toward the cattle in the pasture. During the remainder of the summer the bull and bear pen was our favorite playground, and one of the favorite games was to imitate the fight we had here witnessed. Daddy Logan was a firm believer in good spelling, and when winter set in we had an evening spelling school once a week. I had to walk two miles to school, but the spelling school was the one mental excitement, so I did not mind the walk of eight miles a day when the eventful night came, although I was not counted among the best spellers. During these evening walks we often heard coyotes and wolves howling but were never molested. a common log cabin with a big wooden door, two small windows without glass, and the cracks between the logs were chinked with clay. Our desks were long slabs turned rounded side down and fastened to the sides of the building. The seats were similar slabs with sticks for legs. These slabs were cut from logs with whip saws, there being no sawmills within a long distance and not a wagon road within many miles. Supplies of all kinds were packed on the backs of mules. We used old-fashioned foolscap paper, wrote with goose quill pens made with a knife by Mr. Gates, and shook black sand from a tin box over our writing to prevent it from blotting. Blotting paper to us was unknown. No two arithmetics or geographies were alike, but most of us had McGuffey's readers and the Webster spelling book. Our games partook of the occupation of the miners. We had a little quartz mill run by water power from the ditch that was near the schoolhouse, ran tunnels into the deep red clay of Indian Hill, had miniature sluices with sets of riffles in them, and quite often picked up pieces of gold from our play mining. The gravel on Rich Bar was so rich that it was then being worked for the third time. When the first miners struck it in 1851 it was fabulously rich, and men could make from one hundred to five hundred dollars a day, yet so avaricious were some of the men that within two 1 None of us had ever seen a church, and during the years that I lived there we heard but two sermons. Sunday, most of the miners came into the little town to sell their gold dust, buy supplies of all kinds, gamble, and get drunk. Footracing, jumping, and all kinds of sports, took place on Sunday. Miners were liberal with their money and I recall on one occasion when a company gave a theatrical performance that the spectators threw half-dollars on the stage where a girl was dancing until the stage was nearly covered. To gather fruit we had to climb, a mountain six or seven thousand feet high, where wild plums were found. One of the cruel sights of those days was the driving of beef cattle from the mountain valleys and shutting them up in strong corrals for several days without a mouthful of food ere they were slaughtered. I have known the last animal to be kept five days without anything to eat. Illustrating early schools and the use of firearms, I remember that one of the parents came to the teacher, Mr. Gates, with some complaint, and in the dispute threatened to whip him. Mr. Gates promptly drew a large revolver when the man prudently retreated. From Rich Bar I moved in 1859 to Indian Valley. The mines here were quartz and none in the valley itself. Here our games again partook of the occupations of the people. We each had a pair of spurs and leggins, and each owned a lariat or rawhide. Every boy was an expert rider, and we helped drive cattle, brand colts and calves, and practised upon pigs, chickens, and each other, with the lariats until we were proficient. rode on the saw logs that floated in the millrace, fished, swam, and in winter coasted down the hills on sleds or on the long Norwegian snowshoes. No one who has not lived in the high Sierra can form We an idea to what extent these shoes are used in winter. About La Porte, How land Flat, Port Wine, Gibsonville, Morristown, and other localities in Plumas and Sierra counties, from five to seven thousand feet in altitude the snow falls from ten to twenty-five feet deep, and if the schools are open in winter the teachers and pupils must all travel on these. snowshoes. It is an odd sight to see near the schoolhouse twenty or thirty pairs of these shoes stuck on end in the snow until the pupils are dismissed. The games in these localities often consist of snowshoe racing, and so great is the speed attained on a good track and with the most expert runners that a mile a minute is made. In the mountain valleys sleighing and skating are among the sports, but in the high mountains there is too much snow, for roads cannot be kept open. Even the horses attached to the mail sleighs must go on snowshoes, round ones of rubber and iron, larger than a dinner plate, and the animals can only go in a walk with these on their feet. At Prattville, where I taught, fishing was one of the most common sports, but the manner was rather novel. One boy used a long sharp spear as he knelt in the bows of a huge Indian dug-out, a second kept the fire of fat pine faggots replenished, while a third would paddle the boat to the best fishing grounds. I have seen hundreds of fish caught in this way during a single night. Professor Joel Snell says this plan of fishing was quite common in Modoc County, at the head of Fall River, and occasionally nearly the whole school would go to Big Springs, at the head of the stream, and spend almost the entire night in spearing fish from boats. Mr. Snell says the first school he attended was in the Sacramento Valley, and he and a playmate named Louisa Wilkinson each had a pet antelope that accompanied them to school. The animals would feed about the schoolhouse, play with the dogs, and make themselves at home generally, until school was dismissed, when they would follow them home as contentedly as a dog. During the high water of 1861 both of these animals sought refuge on the highest ground near the Snell residence, but the flood grew so great they were swept off and drowned. In the backwoods district wild animals were frequently seen by pupils going to school or returning. I have often seen deer on my way to school, as well as foxes, coyotes, and other animals. Miss Mary Snell taught at Danaville and crossed over to Soldier Meadows at times on snowshoes, the distance being between eight and nine miles. She rarely made a trip that she did not see deer, twice saw bears, and once saw a California lion. Miss Kate Hutchins while teaching at Lovelock in Butte County saw a bear not a great distance from the schoolhouse, and Superintendent of Schools G. H. Stout of Butte killed two California lions near his schoolhouse at Yankee Hill. During one summer I taught in Red Clover Valley near-Beckwith Pass. Squirrels were numerous and two or three used to come into the schoolhouse when the door was left open. They would get into the children's dinner pails and eat portions of their lunch. One boy tied a paper over his pail but this a squirrel tore off, then he got a tin cover. After trying in vain to scratch this off, a squirrel apparently in a fit of anger ran under the seat and bit the boy's bare foot. Quails and sage hens. were often seen near the schoolhouse. Professor Snell tells us that at Cedarville in Modoc County a large new brick schoolhouse had been finished, and on the first day of school a number of boys VOL. xxvi. 45. found a large quantity of dynamite and giant caps that had been left in a closet by the contractors. One of the boys was just in the act of exploding a cap when the Professor caught his arm. Another second and the cap would have fired, which would have caused the explosion of the other caps and the box of dynamite, and killed every boy and wrecked the schoolhouse. At Sisson he found half a dozen boys engaged in loading a cannon that had been left there the year before by a party of soldiers. Believing the sport would result in serious. accidents, he took a file and effectually spiked the gun. Something over thirty years ago I taught in Taylorville, Plumas County, and the children wanted me to get up a Christmas tree for the school. With the help of Robert Hayden, a young friend, I got the tree, set it up, and then asked some lady friends to help decorate it. The presents began to pour in rapidly. A lawyer consented to make the required speech, and the brass band to play. For a Santa Claus Hayden made a cloth mask, got a bright red blanket and an Indian head-dress, and secreted himself at a seasonable hour in the top of the schoolhouse. A trap door opened directly over the tree, and when the right moment came he was seen amid the upper branches of the Christmas tree. Some of the children were greatly frightened, for the head-dress and bright red blanket were by no means suggestive of the traditional Santa Claus. There have been many changes in the schools of this State since I was a school boy. The short and irregular terms, the poor accomodations, the diversity of school-books, the crude apparatus, have all given way to better and more useful things in the schoolrooms. Only the common studies were then taught, the teacher wrote our copies, there were |