Page:A La California.djvu/96

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72
IN THE MISTS OF THE PACIFIC.

aggregate is something more bulky than Mount Diablo, and it would take more figures to express it than are required in the annual exhibit of our national debt.

"Pescadero" is the Spanish for "fishery," and the name is indicative. The creeks which come down from the mountains all alone: this coast swarm with the spotted trout of California, and afford fine sport in the early part of the season. In places along their banks, the honeysuckle bushes and other shrubs and vines form a chapparal so dense that you must wade for miles to whip the stream; but one hundred, two hundred, or even three hundred trout are often basketed in a single day's fishing by one individual. It does not rain here from April until the last of November or December; but as the days become shorter, and the sun's rays less powerful, the evaporation which caused the streams to dwindle to mere strings of detached ponds decreases, and all over the State, especially in the Coast Range, the rivers commence to rise. Thompson, a hospitable landlord, took me down to the mouth of the Pescadero for a little sport. We sent a Mexican after worms for bait. The Mexican sent a negro, and we sent a Chinaman after the negro, and got them all at last. The row down the creek was short. We saw hundreds of mallards and teal, which we could not shoot, because the law forbids it—very properly—until the 15th of the month, and large flocks of long-billed curlew and other birds, such as crows, buzzards, gulls, etc., etc., which we did not want to kill. There is a bar at the mouth of the