On one island is an immense smelting furnace,
the tall chimneys of which send forth volumes of poisonous smoke,
dangerous to breathe, and covering everything with a coating black as
soot. Inhaling this, some of the operators die of lead poisoning. Many
islands are here scarcely above the water's edge, having little houses
built on stilts occupied by the salmon fishers who are seen pulling
their nets, and around whose heads whirl and scream flocks of fish
hawks, ravenous for their prey.
After a successful book fight at the capital city, I went to Red Bluff
where I was broiled and roasted in a day and night temperature of a
hundred and twelve degrees in the shade. I survived only by keeping
my head wrapped in ice water; I could neither eat nor sleep, and like
Dickens, I longed to "take off my flesh, and sit in my bones." It was
a veritable hell on earth.
The county superintendent of schools here, told me he sold his prune
crop that year for five thousand dollars, and went away leaving the
purchaser to pick the fruit. On his return, he found that the red
spiders had anticipated the pickers, and destroyed the entire crop, so
that his work of years came to naught, as the buyers of course refused
to pay to feed the spiders.
Thence I went to San Luis Obispo, and on the way we struck the Coast
Range Mountains. The tortuous upclimbing and downsliding of the train
disclosed scenery imposing and grand.
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