Ranch Life in California: Extracted from the Home Correspondence of E. M. H.The author, Evelyn M.H., was a young Englishwoman who accompanied her husband and his two brothers to California in 1885. Ranch life in California (1886) is based on her letters home, beginning with her Atlantic voyage and a cross-country rail trip to San Francisco. There the party purchases a ranch at Lower Lake in Burns Valley, where they find a sizable English community. Evelyn describes her introduction to the life of a farm wife while her husband and his brothers (all former stockbrokers) learn to be farmers over the next eighteen months. |
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Ranch Life in California: Extracted From the Home Correspondence of E. M. H ... Evelyn M. Hertslet No preview available - 2016 |
Ranch Life in California: Extracted from the Home Correspondence of E. M. H ... Evelyn M. Hertslet No preview available - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
50 cents acres alfalfa awful awfully barn Becky Bimbi blackberries bought boys bread breakfast butter cabin Cache Creek calf Calistoga cents chicken-house chickens CHOLERA clean cold comfort cooking cost creek delicious dinner dollars drive drove eggs elevated railway English EVELYN continued everything farm feet fence George and Laurence gone hauling heat hens hills horses huge ironing shirts journey keep kitchen Lake County land Letter from GEORGE Letters from EVELYN look lovely Lower Lake lumber maple syrup meat miles milk morning nearly nice night Omaha picket fence pleasant ploughing poison oak pound pretty quicksilver railway ranches roads rocks round San Francisco sheep sitting sitting-room skunk sort starch Sulphur Bank supper tank tell thing to-day took town turkeys valley verandah waggon washing weather week wood yeast yesterday
Popular passages
Page 168 - Tis how one in far Fiji, went beach-combing by the sea ; One in Papua pioneered and died ; One took coppers on a car, or mixed nobblers at a bar, Or in country stores forgot Old Country pride. "And how one lucky swain thought he'd just go home again, And was welcomed with cold shoulder by his friends ; And how one dug for gold, and, as usual, he was sold ; And how one peddled pins and odds and ends. " And how in coral isles one courted Fortune's smiles, And how one in a shanty kept a school ; North...
Page 167 - But as each man tells his tale, 'tis monotonous and stale, As if adventure's game was quite played out ; And every honest chum, to the same hard pan must come, And no more luck was travelling about. " 'Tis how one in far Fiji, went beach-combing by the sea ; One in Papua pioneered and died ; One took coppers on a car, or mixed nobblers at a bar, Or in country stores forgot Old Country pride. "And how one lucky swain thought he'd just go home again, And was welcomed with cold shoulder...
Page 166 - The ship was outward bound, when we drank a health around ('Twas the year fifty-three, or thereabout), We were all for Melbourne Ho ! where, like peas, the nuggets grow, And my heart, though young and green, was also stout. I was two-and-twenty then, and like many other men, Among that gallant company afloat, I had played in the eleven, and pulled five or six or seven, In the 'Varsity or else the College boat. We were rusticated, plucked...
Page 164 - It is ridiculous to try and make a fortune here without plenty of money to start •with : fruit costs so much to put in, and one man could not look after a large orchard without assistance, and labour is the most expensive item of all.
Page 73 - ... continue to supply Families with Ice during the Hot Season and Rains at the following rates : Ice for cooling wine, etc. at 8 annas per seer, creams of all kinds at 1-8-0 rupee mould (coolpee). NB — The Ice will be delivered from a Godown next to the Club House in Mission Row (a) at from 6 to 7 O'clock in the morning and at the same hour in the evening.
Page 133 - Kaffir boy with him, lie same who is with us now. He soon collected some dry sticks, and we lit a fire. It was impossible for me to walk back in the dark, and the ground was too rough for Tom to carry me, so we sat down to wait for daylight. It was not long in coming, and as soon as it was light we went back to the waggon. Tom said we had wandered quite five miles from it.