Terms, Five Dollars a Year. 
Ten Cents a Copy. 
NEW YORK, THURSDAY. APRIL 13, 1876. ■j IT Chatham St' (CHyllall St|r.) 
CALIFORNIA. 
[A Poem, reprinted, from ike Brooklyn Eagle, with mar- 
final note* and emendations, and Dedicated to "Emma Mine."] 
BY CHARLES HALL0CK. 
T HERE’S a land of rare fame, 
California by name. 
Which lies in a far distant region, 
Where placers of gold, |V| 
Of value untold, 
Are “struck” in veins that are legion. 
Where the turmoil and strife 
Of everyday life 
Are flecked With hues that are golden; 
And the “goose” [4] hangeth high 
In a halcyon sky, 
By rainbows of promise upholden. 
There padre and priest 
Still thrive and exist 
In unctuous primal condition; 
And doze o’er their wine 
’Meath the wide-spreading vine 
That shades the old Spanish mission. 
And pistol and knife, 
In each petty strife, 
Usurped the place of the ermine. 
In all of those cases, 
Occasions, and places, 
Which judges were loth to determine.) 
There lizards and toads, 
In sandstone abodes, 
Promiscuous lie strewn all around, 
And petrified trees 
Stand stiff in the breeze, 
Pull five hundred feet from the ground. 
And the great mastodoif, 
Whose tusks weigh a ton, 
With other defuucL-looking fossils, 
In petrified slumbers, 
Are found in such numbers, 
As to puzzle the thirteen Apostles. 
There Nature expands in a wonderful way; 
Mushrooms, like mountains, spring up in a day; 
Waterfalls drop into bottomless chasms, 
And the whole region writhes in volcanic spasms. 
Grapes grow as large as a Japanese gong, 
Pumpkin-vines measure full half a mile long; 
Bees, big as sheep, are foddered ou corn, 
And boys become men before they are bom. [y.J 
There every known joy, 
Without, much alloy, 
Is bestowed on meanest of sinners— 
Though the ways of the land * 
(As we all understand) 
Are rough on verdant beginners. 
For grizzlies, unkempt, 
Quite frequent [c] pre-empt 
The claims taken up by the miners; 
And the “heathen Chinee,” [d] 
In ways strange to see, 
Tries his luck with evil designers. 
There the wild mountaineer, fe] 
In barbarous gear, 
Hunts Redskins who steal for a living, 
And often gets square 
By lifting their hair, 
In manner not always forgiving. 
There antelope meat, 
In chunks big and sweet, 
And buffalo humps rare and tender; 
Also noggins of rye, 
In measure termed “dry,” 
Are swallowed by folks of each gender; 
APOSTROPHE TO THE EL DORADO. 
Oh I golden land of Ophirl 
Oh, pleasure ground of gain! 
Where earth’s remotest loafer 
Seeks Paradise in vain; 
Where coin is legal tender, 
And greenbacks are a drug, 
And money pays the lender 
A profit mighty snug! 
Where roseate buds of Sharon 
Develop into bloom 
Amid vast deserts barren 
And speculative gloom; 
While shares of gold and silver 
Like waves upon the sea 
Take up-and-downward motion, 
To be or not to be; 
I fain would sing tby praises 
In more praiseworthy song, 
But, better homely phrases 
Than polished words of wrong. 
Ohl golden land of Opliir! 
Oh, pleasure ground of gain! 
The world will have to go far 
To find tby like again. 
Swallowed “straight” are the same, 
By the flickering flame 
Of pine knots swung in the timber,— 
While the mug circles round 
To fiddle-string’s sound, 
Till tongues grow waggish and limber. 
There Mexican maid, 
In serape and braid, 
And deftly worn scarlet reboso— 
With bosom displayed 
In fashion not staid, \f] 
And leggings and limbs vastly more so— 
This Mexican maid, 
In serape and braid, 
Beguiles the love-stricken ranger, 
Till jealous Pelado, 
In drunken bravado, 
Lets daylight “plum” through the stranger. 
(Such pastimes occur: 
Or rather, they were 
Quite frequent in circles termed social, 
In those earlier days 
When manners anti ways 
Were ruled by the code bragadocial. 
When monte and brag 
Would take off the rag, 
From almost any profession— 
Excepting, of course, 
The potential resource, 
Of Legislators deeply in session. 
[a]. Gold—lOe precious ore that helps a man to paddle bis own 
canoe successfully through tbe troubled sea of life. 
[*]. This is tbe eoose that won “golden opinions," but invariably 
paid in bad eggs when her luck changed. 
[c] . Grammar not essential to the sense of the poem, but a serious 
obstacle to the versification. 
[d] . Heathen-Chinee —An ingenious work of Harte, of which it may 
be proper to remark that the designers have made all they coaid out of 
him. 
[»]. “Mountaineer” does not refer to any contiguous ground of lofty 
elevation, although the mirage, so frequent upon the prairies, will often 
distort and magnify a man so as to make him appear a mountain near. 
[y]. Stay—A. nautical term used much in millinery. For example, 
we say either that a Bhip misa-stays, or that a young miss stays—which 
may not be correct, according to circumstances. 
[g], Wc, on this side of the continnent, have small conception of the 
magnificent scale npon which things are done in California, and the tre¬ 
mendous expenditure of raw material is working out such grand re¬ 
sults. 
Man-Eating Sharks— A gentleman sends us an inter¬ 
esting paper, which unfortunately is too long for us to 
print, in which he states that some time ago he read a par¬ 
agraph in a newspaper to the effect that no well authenti¬ 
cated case was on record of a human being having 
been injured by a shark. As the statement was entirely 
opposed to his pre-conceived notions, while sailing from 
New York to China, in December 1874, he made careful 
inquiries of the captain and mate regarding their experi¬ 
ence with sharks. Although these men liad navigated 
nearly all waters infested with those monsters, neither had 
known an instance of a person being harmed by one. He 
wishes to learn from the readers of Forest and Stream 
anything that will throw light on this subject. It is possi¬ 
ble, he says, that all the marvelous stories afloat have 
arisen entirely In the imaginations of those who have told 
them, 
For Forest a,nd Stream. 
'tibt’iidor L and tty J?7. ^twrenef. 
Notes of a Trip to the Fishing Posts on the Labrador Coast 
and Visits to the Light Bouses, <£v., in the Gulf qf St. 
Lawrence and Straits of Belleisle. 
BY J, U. GREGORY, OF QUEBEC, 
r , 
I WAS commissioned by tire Government of the Pro¬ 
vince of Quebec, to visit the fishing posts ou the coast 
of Labrador, the inhabitants of which were reported in a 
state of great distress, consequent upon the failure of the 
fisheries. The undertaking was attended with much 
anxiety and fatigue, and occupied over a month’s time in 
its execution. I had also to visit and supply several light 
houses, and humane establishments. 
I left Quebec on the 22d of September, on board the 
government steamer Napoleon 1U, which is one of the 
several vessels of which I am the manager. She was com¬ 
manded by tbe late Captain Eugene Gourdcau. Mr. John 
Smith, Superintendent of light houses, and his daughter 
and the Rev. Mr. Butler, Congregational Church Mission¬ 
ary to Labrador, were also ou board. We had a pleasant 
run down the river St. Lawrence, and on the morning of 
the 24Ui at 7 o’clock, reached the first light house at Point 
des Monts, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A 
large amount of supplies hud to be lauded here, by boats 
from the steamer, which lay off at some considerable dis¬ 
tance from the shore. The light house is a round '’tower 
built of stone, 100 feet high, in the lantern of which are 
placed seventeen lamps, with silvered reflectors twenty-one 
inches in diameter; it is a fixed white catoptric light seen 
fifteen miles off, and consumes about 400 gallons of oil 
every season, being lighted up from the 1st of April to the 
20th of December. The entrance to the tower is a round 
room about fifteen feet in diameter, which serves as a 
kitchen, The next room above, slightly smaller, is used as 
a sitting room and parlor; those above as bed rooms for 
the keeper’s family and assistants; there are five in all, the 
highest being the room in which the man in charge of the 
lights at night keeps watch, and from which frequent visits 
aro made to the lantern, to see that the lamps are kept 
properly trimmed, to maintain a perfect uniformity of 
light, from sunset to sunrise. Outside near the tower is a 
comfortable house for the purpose of lodging any ship¬ 
wrecked mariners cast away in the neighborhood, and a 
store house adjoining, contains a supply of flour, pork, 
peas, lea, sugar, medicine, and clothing, which is renewed 
as fast as consumed, or found damaged by age or other 
causes. At some distance is a stone powder magazine, in 
which is constantly kept 2,000 to 4,000 pounds of powder 
for the fog cannon, which the keeper is obliged to fire every 
hour during fogs or snow storms, to warn vessels beating 
up, not to approach the treacherous shore nearer than they 
can hear the report. The keeper is furnished with a horse, 
carts, and sleigh, to haul water and fuel for bis use. His 
only neighbors are a few Canadian 'fishermen and Indians, 
the former engaged in fishing, the latter in seal hunting and 
trapping wild animals for their oil and fur, which they dis¬ 
pose of for provisions, to trading schooners, during the 
Bummer. At noon, having landed all the supplies, we got 
under way, and the same evening at 6 o’clock reached 
Seven Islands Bay, where we remained at anchor until 4 
o’clock next morning, when we crossed over to the west 
point of the Island of Anticosti, which we reached at 9 
o'clock A. M. Taking my gun with me, I roamed around 
the point, shooting plover, ducks, and the guillemot, of 
which I killed in all about fifteen. The light house here is 
similar to the one at Point des Monts, with fog cannon and 
humane or provision depot. 
IVe lay to, all night, and left again at day-light, reaching 
the southwest point at 9 o’clock A. M- This very inter¬ 
esting locality is noted for the immense amount of fossils 
found on its rocky shore. The- tower here is similar to 
Point des Monts; there is no fog cannon, but there is u 
