716 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



view a party of three, consisting of Mr. Greene, Mr. Eedeliff, and myself, 

 started one July morning on horseback for an expedition up the river, 

 bringing a fourth horse along with us to carry our blankets and provisions. 

 Taking the narrow Indian trail on the west side of the river — for there 

 are no roads on either bank — we followed it for eight miles to Mr. 

 Campbell's ranch, where we forded our horses and took the trail on the 

 east bank of the river. There are no white settlers above this point, and 

 our ride from here was through a country wild and picturesque in the 

 extreme. The trail, probably the same that the Indians have traveled 

 for centuries, Avound over the cliffs and around the hills of the canon, 

 among some of the most magnificent landscapes in the world. We were 

 soon inclosed in a circle of almost inaccessible mountains, where high, 

 precipitous cliffs extended down sometimes to the water's edge, and 

 through which the McCloud somehow wound its tortuous way, not so 

 much a river here as a succession of foaming cascades. The Yosemite 

 Valley is sublime and stupendous in its grandeur, but there is a 

 brilliancy and enchantment about the beauty of the Upper McCloud 

 that I have never seen in the Yosemite or anywhere else. Our path, 

 as may be supposed, was far from being smooth or safe. Being very 

 little traveled, as there are but few Indians so far up in the mountains 

 as this, the trail was sometimes so rough and narrow that it seemed as 

 if horses could not possibly keep their footing ; and, rough and narrow 

 as it was, the trail sometimes led along the very edge of rocky, precipi- 

 tous bluffs, where a misstep of two or three inches from the path would 

 throw horse and rider down hundreds of feet into the canon below. Our 

 horses, however, were sure-footed, and about nightfall we safely reached 

 the mouth of ISTosonnie Creek, where I had been informed there was a 

 good site for trout ponds. As we approached the creek, we saw, across 

 an intervening gulch or two, a waving field of wild oats, yellow and 

 bright as gold, where we decided at once to camp for the night, the 

 long, clean oat straw furnishing a luxurious bed for the campers as 

 well as abundant food for the horses. The night, passed under the open 

 California sky on our deep beds of straw, was delightful, and we awoke 

 the next morning rested and refreshed, having been disturbed but once 

 in the night, owing to the approach of a bear or panther which partially 

 stampeded the horses. 



The next morning we made a thorough examination of the creek and 

 found it wholly unsuitable for a trout-breeding station. The gulch 

 through which it flows is narrow and almost a solid mass of bowlders. 

 The water was warm, which implies droughts in the summer and floods 

 in the winter, and what was alone sufficient to settle the matter, the 

 approach to the creek was altogether too difficult to make a location 

 there at all desirable unless the place furnished great counterbalancing 

 advantages. This not being the case, and as any more distant point 

 would be out of the question, we took up our line of march down the 

 river again, keeping on the east side trail all the way. We crossed sev- 



