In the mean time I had proved up on my preemption,
and had all my land fenced in with a picket fence made of red wood
pickets. I had also got sick and tired of ranching, not but what I
had done fairly well, but it was too much bother for a man that
had been raised as I had. I went to San Francisco and placed my
land in the hands of a real estate agent for sale, and it was but
a short time when he sent two men out to look at it. This was the
fall of the year when my fruit was just beautiful and the grapes
ripe in the vineyard, and we were not long in making a trade.
In less than one month I was without a house or home, so I placed
my money in the bank and arranged to get my interest semi-
annually, and made up my mind to take things easy the balance of
my days.
About one year from that time I succeeded in getting up a hunting
party, and we went up into the mountains in Mendocino county,
where we found game in abundance, deer, elk and bear. I stayed out
in the mountains nearly three months, during which time I killed
the largest grizzly bear I have ever seen, weighing net, eight
hundred and sixty pounds. This bear I killed at one shot, and it
is the only grizzly that I ever killed at one shot in all my
hunting. We also killed ten large elk. One man in the party killed
an elk that the horns measured from tip to tip, five feet and four
inches, and those horns can be seen at the Lick House in San
Francisco.
Pages:
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561