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Larkin, we left Sonoma about two o'clock in the afternoon, riding at the usual California speed. After leaving Sonoma plain we crossed a ridge of hills, and entered the fertile and picturesque valley of Petaluma creek, which empties into the bay. General Valléjo has an extensive rancho in this valley, upon which he has recently erected, at great expense, a very large house.
"I meant I should be glad to go if I can be of any service to you," said Renshaw, hastily. "You kin ketch the seven-o'clock boat this morning, and you'll reach San Rafael at ten" "But I thought Miss Rosey went to Petaluma," interrupted Renshaw quickly. Nott regarded him with an expression of patronizing superiority.
Two of us drove a light wagon from Petaluma to Ukiah, and then put saddles on our horses and started over the mountains to the valley. We took a cold lunch, planning to stay overnight at a stockman's ranch. When we reached the place we found a notice that he had gone to a rodeo. We broke into his barn to feed our horses, but we spared his house.
We spent a day very pleasantly with him, and learned that he had come to California some years before, at the personal advice of Daniel Webster, who had informed him that sooner or later the United States would be in possession of California, and that in consequence it would become a great country. From Bodega we traveled to Sonoma, by way of Petaluma, and spent a day with General Vallejo.
Here, in 1776, Captain Quiros came up Petaluma Creek from San Pablo Bay in quest of an outlet to Bodega Bay on the coast. And here, later, the Russians, with Alaskan hunters, carried skin boats across from Fort Ross to poach for sea-otters on the Spanish preserve of San Francisco Bay.
Opposite, on the other side of the bay, lies the Russian River Valley, as beautiful naturally as that of the Santa Clara, and of which Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, and Cloverdale are the chief towns.
Harwood, in the World's Work for May, 1908, after describing the "City of a Million Hens," raises the question, "If in Petaluma, why not anywhere?"
We spent a day very pleasantly with him, and learned that he had come to California some years before, at the personal advice of Daniel Webster, who had informed him that sooner or later the United States would be in possession of California, and that in consequence it would become a great country. From Bodega we traveled to Sonoma, by way of Petaluma, and spent a day with General Vallejo.
"They cut this trail 'way back in the Fifties," Billy explained. "I only found it by accident. Then I asked Poppe yesterday. He was born in the valley. He said it was a fake minin' rush across from Petaluma. The gamblers got it up, an' they must a-drawn a thousan' suckers. You see that flat there, an' the old stumps. That's where the camp was. They set the tables up under the trees.
Here the last Spanish mission was reared; here the Bear flag was raised; and here Kit Carson, and Fremont, and all our early adventurers came and rested in the days before the days of gold. We swung on over the low, rolling hills, through miles of dairy farms and chicken ranches where every blessed hen is white, and down the slopes to Petaluma Valley.
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