As the rains began in November 1861 in Northern California

Up and Down California in 1860-1864;
The Journal of William H. Brewer:
Book 2, Chapter 6
NAPA VALLEY AND THE GEYSERS

Thursday, November 14, we had some rain, but not much, and we made a long march, stopping at Suscol once more. We had landed on the shores of California just a year ago this day and had intended to celebrate it, but our only celebration was sundry glasses of larger and punch in the evening, which was dark and rainy. It rained most of the night, and at morn it had not ceased. So we took our breakfast at the neighboring “hotel”—there are no “taverns” here—loaded up in the rain and pushed on. Luckily I had an old overcoat, one left by Hoffmann, which protected me much. It continued to rain much of the way to Benicia, where we arrived at 2 P.M. It was uncomfortable enough—roads muddy and slippery, the deep dust of two weeks ago slippery mud now, a drizzling rain in our faces as we plodded on our slow way.
At Benicia we put all our things in the wagon, harness and all, and I sent Averill and Peter on to Clayton at the foot of Mount Diablo, with the mules, where they are to be kept during the winter. That night Mike and I took the steamer for San Francisco, bringing the wagon along. It lacked only a week of a year that we had been actually in the field.
Then came getting ready for office work, clearing up, etc. And now we are fairly at work—and irksome enough it is, I assure you. To sit down in the office, write, compare maps, make calculations, and plot sections, is harder work than mountain climbing. I begin to long for the field again—were it not so wet, for it has rained much since.
A few items in summing up. I have been the entire year in the Coast Range between San Bernardino and Clear Lake. The Coast Range is not a single chain, nor even parallel chains, but a system, radiating, like the spokes of a wheel, from a point near the great mass of San Bernardino.⁹ I find on looking at my notes, that since taking the field I have traveled 2,650 miles on my mule; 1,027 on foot, and 1,153 by other means—total in the field, 4,830 miles. During the same time my letters, official and otherwise, have amounted to just 1,800 pages (note size), of which 604 (including this letter) were my “Home Journal,” and about 400 were my letters to Whitney reporting progress, etc. In addition to this, over a thousand pages of “Field Notes” of about the same size—some writing to do amid the inconveniences of camp life, surely! These figures will show that I have not been entirely idle, as the data are strictly accurate.
Last Saturday my friends, Blake and Pumpelly, sailed for Japan. They go at the invitation of the Japanese Government, to aid in developing the resources of the mines in Japan. Blake stuck hard to have me go with them, but my place looks too secure here, and that looks precarious. Had I been free I would have rejoiced at the chance.
On the other hand, some most influential men of the state want me to go as commissioner to London next spring, in charge of the California collections at the World’s Fair. There is much scrambling and wirepulling for the office of commissioner, but I could get it if I would put in. But the Survey here is a surer thing for me. I have proved myself capable of successfully managing a party, carrying it through times of discomfort, and even hardship, accomplishing much labor, and doing it economically. Whitney feels that I cannot be spared here. I have assurance that should our appropriation next year be cut down I will be the last man discharged—that is, should it be too small to keep a larger party in the field, I will have my place if no one else stays but Whitney. All this is very gratifying, for the actions of legislatures in such matters are very uncertain. We will, of course, get some appropriation, it remains to be seen how much. The present tardiness in paying us up is most unfortunate. It is a very great inconvenience. Even the Governor has not been paid any salary since May last. We hope for better things soon.
I have a pleasant room, hired by the month, and eat my meals at restaurants. I may take board by the week soon—am not yet decided.
Thankful to an overruling Providence who has thus far guarded me and kept me in times of danger—this is Thanksgiving night—I have just returned from a dinner at Professor Whitney’s.

NOTES

1. Serranus Clinton Hastings (1814-93) was a native of Jefferson County, N. Y. He lived for a time in Indiana, then in Iowa, where he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after serving a term in Congress. He came to California in 1849 and settled at Benicia. He was immediately appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (1849-51). In 1851 he was elected Attorney-General and served two years. Turning to business and the practice of law, he made a large fortune from lands and was reputed to be worth nearly a million dollars in 1862. He founded the Hastings College of Law in 1878. His wife, Azalea Brodt, of Iowa, died in 1876. They had four sons and four daughters (History of the Bench and Bar of California, ed. Oscar T. Shuck [Los Angeles, 1901

2. The name Sebastopol was retained until about 1867, when it gave way to Yountville. There is a Sebastopol in Sonoma County, with which this place should not be confused.

3. George Yount was one of the outstanding American pioneers in California in the period preceding the gold discovery. He was born in Burke County, North Carolina, 1794, whence the family moved to Missouri. He enlisted in the War of 1812 and then, and subsequently, engaged in Indian fighting. After several years of farm life in Missouri, during which he married and had children, he set out for the west and engaged in trapping. He was with the Patties on the Gila in 1826, and came to California with Wolfskill in 1831. After hunting sea otter near Santa Barbara, he came to San Francisco Bay and settled for a time at Sonoma, where he became acquainted with M. G. Vallejo. He obtained a grant of land in Napa Valley, the Caymus Rancho, which was confirmed in 1836. To obtain land it was necessary to be baptized a Roman Catholic, and it was thus that he obtained the middle name Concepción. He died at the Caymus Rancho in 1865 and was buried at Yountville with Masonic honors (“The Chronicles of George C. Yount,” ed. Charles L. Camp in the California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. II, No. 1 [April, 1923]).

4. Joseph Henry (1797-1878) of Princeton and of the Smithsonian Institution. The name was never adopted and the mountain is now known as St. John Mountain (2,370 feet).

5. Calistoga.

6. The maps referred to were probably editions of Colton’s Map of California, published from 1855 to 1860. Much of the detail of the Colton maps agrees with that on Goddard’s map, published by Britton & Rey, San Francisco, 1857. The Whitney Survey added something to the topographical knowledge of this region, but even today there are no reliable maps of the portion of California north of Sonoma and Napa counties.

7. Torreya californica.

8. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey gives the height as 4,338 feet. The first known ascent was in 1841, when a party from the Russian settlement at Fort Ross visited the mountain and gave it its name. For several years there was on the summit a metal plate bearing the names of Wossnessenski and Tchernich, with the date 1841. Dr. W. A. Wossnessenski was a naturalist traveling under auspices of the Russian Government; E. L. Tchernich was proprietor of a ranch at Bodega Bay. In one account it is said that Princess Helena de Gargarine accompanied the party to the summit and that she christened the mountain for her aunt, Helena, the Czarina. It is somewhat of a speculation as to whether the name should be Mount Helena, as named for the Czarina, or Mount St. Helena, as named for her patron saint (Honoria Tuomey and Luisa Vallejo Emparán, History of the Mission, Presidio, and Pueblo of Sonoma [1923]; History of Napa and Lake Counties, California [San Francisco, 1881]; Whitney Survey, Geology, I, 86-87).

9. This conception is erroneous; more extensive knowledge later disclosed a different relationship. 

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