104 



CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 



King Salmon Marked at Fall Creek 

 Hatchery. 



GAME IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY IN 1853.* 



A Little Journal of Incidents Whilst on a Surveying Party with von 

 Schmidt, Deputy Surveyor under Colonel Jack Hays, in the Fall 

 of 1853, on the Tulare Plains. 



By Colonel Andrew J. Grayson. 



Meeting my friend von Schmidt, a German by birth but raised in the 

 United States, and at that time deputy surveyor, one day as I was walk- 

 ing down one of the streets of San Francisco, and whom I hadn't seen 

 for a long time, I shook him cordially by the hand, when he told me he 

 was just making preparations for a long trip to the Tulare plains and 

 lakes to survey the Standard lines (government survey), and as I had 

 never been in this portion of California, and having heard oft of the 

 great quantities of game in this region of the country interesting to the 



♦Between the years 1846 and 1869 there lived in California a naturalist and artist 

 of so great attainment that he became knovs^n as the "Audubon of the Pacific." 

 This naturalist was Colonel A. J. Grayson. Born in Louisiana, on the banks of the 

 picturesque Ouachita River, hemmed in by pine forests and cane brakes, Grayson 

 spent most of his boyhood days rambling in the woods or along the banks of the 

 river. While still a child he manifested great talent in the drawing and painting 

 of birds and the wild life scenes with which he was so intimately acquainted; but 

 this was most vehemently discouraged by his parents and he was sent away to 

 school to learn to be more practical. After finishing college young Grayson made 

 an attempt at business, but he had no love for the drudgery of mercantile pursuits. 

 He found no pleasure but in the study of nature, so he gave it up and determined 

 to go to California where his longing for new objects of study in nature's unexplored 

 recesses might be satisfied. 



And so it was that about the middle of April, 1846, he found himself at the head 

 of a caravan composed of many well known pioneers setting out on the long 

 overland journey to the Pacific. But as they traveled westward some branched off 



