FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. 7, 1909. 
218 
Flocks of quail, some of the birds not larger 
than swallows, rose from the chaparral as the 
stage approached, and a bobcat crossed the 
road ahead, loped a short distance up the hill, 
then stopped and impudently sat upon its 
haunches and watched us as we passed. 
Staging is as nearly extinct in California as 
it is in most other sections of the country. Our 
present conveyance was an open three-seated 
two-horse vehicle of the type known years ago 
in Nevada as a “mud wagon.” I rode with the 
driver, and as we ambled along at about a six- 
mile gait, memory harked back to the first 
Washoe mining boom in the early sixties, when 
the splendid four-in-hand Concord coaches of 
the Overland Stage Company plunged, at dou¬ 
ble our present speed, down the magnificent 
grades leading to Dutch Flat and Placerville, 
driven by such whips as Hank Monk, George 
Smith and Doc. Benton, around curves where 
a slight deviation would have hurled the outfit 
down a thousand feet into the gorge of the 
North Fork of the American or Bear River. 
To ride with the driver in those days was a 
most enviable privilege, and if at the end oi 
the route he condescended to join* you at the 
bar, you looked upon it as a most distinguished 
honor. They were the aristocrats of the Com¬ 
stock lode, ranking with Sharon of the Cali¬ 
fornia Bank and John B. Winters of the Yel¬ 
low Jacket mine. All these have gone s>ver the 
range. The only one who, to my knowledge, 
is still alive is Johnny Dallas, a lesser light, 
who in those days drove the stage from Dayton 
to Virginia City, and now, old and crippled, 
runs a cigar store at Lorin. a little town on 
the east side of the bay. 
We stopped at noon for lunch and a change 
of horses twenty-five miles out, and about 5 
p. m. reached our destination, the ranch of 
John Pfeiffer, forty miles south of Monterey. 
The Pfeiffer estate of about 3,000 acres, 
through which the Sur River runs, is owned by 
the father and two sons. Its western boundary 
is the ocean, and Pfeiffer’s Point is a prominent 
landmark on the coast survey chart. Much of 
it consists of rugged chaparral and sage-clad 
hills that are practically worthless, but many 
of the draws and gulches are heavily timbered 
with fine redwoods and along the narrow river 
bottom grow sycamore, oak, cottonwood, laurel 
and alders. 
It seemed an ideal region for deer and I 
think they were fairly plentiful. I saw no 
bucks as they were probably still drying their 
horns upon the bald peaks, but does and fawns 
were occasionally seen, and old Mr. Pfeiffer, 
who lived nearer the coast, frequently had to 
drive them from his garden, for they are par¬ 
ticularly fond of his green peas. No shooting 
is done out of season by any of the family, and 
as far as possible they encourage the deer to 
live near them by never shooting any in the 
open season within two or three miles of the 
house. A spotted fawn, gentle as a kitten, 
spent most of its time in the kitchen, and was 
always on hand at meal time for a sop of bread 
and honey. 
Quail were more abundant than in any sec¬ 
tion I have visited for many years, and large 
flocks could be found at any time within five 
minutes’ walk of the house. Tree squirrels, 
jays, yellowhammers and red-headed woodpeck¬ 
ers were numerous, as were also coons and 
foxes, which gave the orchard their special at¬ 
tention, and secured more of the cherries and 
apricots than were consumed in the house. 
Several were caught while I was there and 
strange to say, three of the foxes were captured 
alive in a box trap. The coons were more 
easily taken in steel traps set in the lower forks 
of the trees. No bear had been seen in that 
vicinity for several years, but lions —(Felis con- 
color )—are very common and destroy many 
deer. Mr. Pfeiffer once shot one that was tear¬ 
ing at the throat of a deer it had just pulled 
down. 
The house stands on a sloping bench about 
fifty rods from the river and its interior with 
bare floors and walls destitute of plaster or 
cloth and paper, seems a combination of fron¬ 
tier mansion and a hunter’s lodge. 
There are fifty or sixty acres of arable land 
around the house devoted to orchard, garden 
and grain, and above on a higher ridge among 
the brush stand a hundred hives of bees that 
furnish delectable honey. Here stood a tall 
dead, fire-scarred tree, with a few stubby 
branches still remaining, and every night from 
this point of vantage two great owls searched 
the clearing for mice and moles or serenaded 
us with their melancholy hoots. 
A few yards from the kitchen door is a tall, 
venerable redwood, whose decayed upper 
branches are thickly studded with woodpecker 
holes, which—much to my delight—were inhab¬ 
ited by a colony of martins, the charming little 
feathered friend of my boyhood that I had 
never before seen west of the Rockies. 
A few campers were tenting along the stream, 
and a mile below Pfeiffer’s in the redwoods a 
little back from the river was a bungalow in¬ 
habited for several months every year during 
the fishing and hunting season by Mr. and Mrs. 
Wright of Pacific Grove. She was a gentle, 
refined lady in rather delicate health but an 
ardent lover of nature in all its various phases. 
He was a thorough sportsman, a fine fisher¬ 
man and a crack shot. His skill in trapping 
was such that he was able to outwit the most 
cunning “varmints” of that section, and it was 
he who caught the three foxes in a box trap 
while I was there. 
He was a keen observer and his intimate 
knowledge of the pools'and habits of the fish 
in that section enabled him not only to fill his 
creel any day in a short time, but also made 
him an invaluable source of information which 
he freely imparted to his friends. 
The trout of the Sur are mostly steelheads, 
although several miles up the stream we caught 
other species. They ranged from five to four¬ 
teen inches in length, the latter size being the 
largest taken while I was there, although 
earlier in the season several of four or five 
pounds were caught. The pools were numer¬ 
ous and as a general thing quite accessible; 
indeed I have seldom fished a timbered stream 
that was as easily exploited as the lower reaches 
of the Sur. The fish were abundant and a good 
average angler could easily get the state limit 
of fifty in a day, after he had become familiar 
with the best localities. On days when they 
were biting lively he could do it in a few hours. 
But the almost tepid waters of the Coast 
Range are not the home par excellence of the 
mountain trout, and I missed the vigorous tug 
and vaulting prowess of the hard-meated splen¬ 
did fighters of the snow-fed Tuolumne and 
Kern. They seemed to show some little dis¬ 
crimination, however, in the matter of flies, 
and we found that the brown hackle and royal 
coachman were the most seductive lure of our 
inventory. 
After a week at the ranch I was made happy 
by the arrival of a business friend from the 
bay. who, although many years younger, proved 
to be capable of perfectly filling the void left 
by the absence of my old camping friends, 
Born and reared in the mining camps of Sierra 
and Shasta counties, an ardent lover of nature, 
the birds and wild animals of that section had 
been the study of his boyhood. Snowed in as 
they were several months every winter, life 
trapped squirrels, foxes and the pretty little 
animal peculiar, I believe, to this coast, called 
in some counties the mountain and in others 
the civet cat. All these made fine pets, and 
served to while away what must have been at 
best a rather tedious confinement. 
Reared amid such surroundings with thews 
and sinews toughened by the conquest of those 
rugged peaks, agile and sure-footed as a goat, 
the lure of the wild had in these later years 
all its pristine fascination for Morrich. He was 
always ready for any trip or adventure that 
promised something novel, and proved to be 
equal to any situation that was ever encoun¬ 
tered. 
The discoverey of the Uncle Sam mine in 
Shasta County where he lived for a number 
of years was so singularly romantic and inter¬ 
esting that I think it could hardly fail to inter¬ 
est your readers. 
A prospector known as Modesto lived back 
in the range several miles from the-town ot 
Kennett on the railroad running from Sacra¬ 
mento to Portland, Ore. Few of those old 
migratory worthies bore their baptismal cog¬ 
nomens in the mining regions, and it is prob¬ 
able that this was not his real name, but was 
that of the town he came from in the southe'rn 
part of the State. His only companion was 
a large brindle dog. They were inseparable 
and everyone in Kennett, where he went for 
his groceries, knew Modesto and his dog. 
Game was plenty and of course formed a large 
part of their food. One day while in pursuit 
of a wounded deer Modesto fell from a ledge 
of rocks and fractured the bones of his leg in 
two places. The situation was one calculated 
to test nerves of steel. Lying helpless with 
a broken leg high up in a heavily timbered 
gorge, ten miles from the nearest habitation, 
most men would have despaired of succor. 
But the brindle dog was there and by some 
means Modesto contrived to make the dog un¬ 
derstand that he must go to Kennett for help; 
and go he did. 
The appearance of the dog in town without 
his master soon attracted attention and com¬ 
ment, but nothing was done for at least twenty- 
four hours, when, seeing the dog still lingered 
around the town and manifested great uneasi¬ 
ness, the men began to fear trouble of some 
kind, and a party was organized to investi¬ 
gate. They started for Modesto’s cabin, but 
the intelligent dog at once placed himself at 
the head of the party, and led them straight 
to his master. 
Although it was nearly two days after the 
accident that the rescuers arrived, Modesto was 
