220 THE PACIFIC SLOPE. 



to tail. Most of these waters are much frequented by resi- 

 dents of San Francisco, Sacramento, and other sea-board 

 towns, as well as by travelers. Their superabundant fish 

 afford an inexhaustible fund of food to numerous Digger 

 Indians, unkempt and squalid, who lure them by disgusting 

 tricks and low-bred subterfuges. A favorite mode of fishing 

 is to " chum " them by blowing mouthsful of bait . into the 

 water, and when numbers have been attracted to the spot, 

 catch them with rude tackle baited with worms or cut-up- 

 fish. At night they often set an old stump ablaze by the 

 water-side to allure their victims, and then the scene is 

 picturesque indeed, wjth the lurid glare lighting up the 

 darkness, and casting fantastic shadows upon the back- 

 ground. 



California has a sea-coast line of nearly eight hundred 

 miles. From the Coast Kange of mountains, which adjoins 

 the coast line for the greater part of this distance, nearly 

 one hundred rivers and streams empty into the Pacific 

 Ocean. These streams and rivers vary from twenty to sixty 

 miles in length. The drainage of the western slope of the 

 Sierra Nevada, through seven degrees of latitude, forms sev- 

 eral hundred streams, whose united waters make the Sacra- 

 mento -and San Joaquin Eivers the first navigable for a 

 distance of one hundred and eighty miles, and the last nav- 

 igable one hundred miles from the ocean. The waters from 

 the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada flow into brackish 

 and salt lakes in the State of Nevada, and have no outlet 

 into the ocean. Pyramid Lake, the largest of these, receiving 

 the waters of the Truckee Kiver, is forty miles long and 

 twenty miles wide. The inland bays and fresh-water lakes 

 of California cover more than six hundred and fifty square 

 miles an area half as large as the State of Rhode Island. 



Salmon are abundant in the Sacramento and the Joaquin, 

 and were formerly plenty in the Feather, Yuba, and Ameri- 

 can Rivers. In the first two they have materially decreased 

 of late years, while in the others they have ceased to run 



