Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1868-07-21
California.

How big bear did you say you had seen %
A small party had CHANGED to meet at little
station where towing to defect in the track
both trains were detained; many of them were
ex-Californians, and the conversation naturally
turned upon that country, and the big things"
they had seen there.
Itw stranger-a quiet, inoffensive man
that asked the question of Joe Ransom, who
was somewhat fond of drawing the long bow
when he thought he could gull listeners.
About four to five tons, answered Joe with
out even the ghost of smile. Il was freed by
one once for four days, the brute. -
Didn't you get hungry questioned Tom
Perkins.
Hungry? Not bit. went two weeks
once there without so much as a swallow of wa
ter; but tell you made square meal when
| got chance A whole deer first, and then
finished off with couple of waterinelons each
as large as hogshead.
"Ahl'' interrupted the stranger, "the veget
able productions must grow to an immense size
in that country.
You bet on that [ was at the State Fair
at Sacramento once and saw cabbages stripped
of their outside leaves and ready for boiling you
know that were as large as a coach body, and
weighed from four to FIVE hundred pounds each.
AS for the beets, you wouldn't have known
them from pine tree stripped Of its bark
There we're potatoes nearly the size of a. -four
barrel turnips that wouldn't go in bushel
basket; onions that it took only one to make a
peck; grapes that weighed forty pounds to the
bunch; pears as large as the pumpkins here
and-but speaking Of pumpkins, they just took
the rag clear off the bush. | saw one that a
man had scooped the inside cut of and used for
house.
st must have made large number of pies,
said the stranger.
Pies [ am glad that you reminded me of
that, for helped to eat couple of hundred.
Pies? had the figures in my pocket book for
a long time, and remember them. There was
a regiment of dragons camping there at the
time, and they lived on pumpkin pies for nine
weeks. Beside, every one who visited the fair
had one given to carry home. | tell you it took
a power Of milk and eggs, and -four to make
them. Here are the figures, and [ will swear
to them any day in the week. Twenty-seven
thousand gallons of milk; one hundred thous-
and dozen of eggs; five tons of butter and lard.
and just an even clipper ship load of -four
did you ever see the great trees?" quered
the stranger, as if intent upon gaining all the
information possible.
Joe winked at his friends, took an extra pull
at his cigar. and continued in the most matter
of fact manner possible.
10 be sure did-camped under them of
ten. There were the thee sisters and the
old Main. and the latter just beat anything
ever saw.
'Have you any idea of It's dimensions %
Il should rather think | had Jim Town
send and | started to measure it with tape
line one morning. and we didn't get round it
till after shutdown. don't distinctly remem-
Der the extra feet and inches, but it girted over
ten miles A big tree trunk that, stranger,
but it was nothing to its height [ saw an ca
gle try to fly to the top once, and it had to rest
at least twenty times before it got up. I got
an old Vermont lumber man to scale it, and
he said it would cut something over nine hun
dred million feet of lumber, clear~stuf at that,
and that there would be about FIVE hundred
thousand cords of wood left. | tell you, big
things grow in the Golden State stranger
81 am satisfied Of that. Particularly one
thing"
"What is that?'' asked Joe, turning around
sharply, and fearing that he had forgotten an
article upon which the stranger could overlap
him.
LIARS u
Toe arose, buttoned his coat, drew himself up |
and said with dignity:
Grows. | shall never speak OF the big things
# California again, after having my Veracity
,nce questioned"