The scurvy, too, was prevalent, from the use of salt provisions, for none could find time to procure fresh ones, to hunt or tend cattle; and if they did leave their eternal digging for such pursuits, the prices they expected were preposterous. Wild cattle and game are plenty in the valley of the Sacramento and adjacent mountains, but in California the hours are truly golden, and not to be wasted on kitchen considerations; to say nothing of the hardship of driving wild oxen or carrying a gun across a rugged country with the thermometer at 109° to 112° in the shade--the usual temperature in June and July, and one fully justifying the derivation of the name California from two Spanish words signifying a hot oven, _caliente horno_. "The thermometer stood at 90° Fahrenheit, at noon, in the shade of Culloma valley, on the 16th of April; and at night we slept cold in our tent with our clothing on, and provided with abundant blankets." With such a climate, and with no grass in the mountains fit to sustain them, it is no wonder that the best pack-horses can carry but one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds weight across the mountains, and frequently fall down and die if overladen. At the time referred to--that is to say, in the month of April last--Mr Johnson "continually saw old miners departing for the cañons[6] of the middle and north Forks, with one month's supply of provisions, consisting of seventy-five lb. of pork and seventy-five lb. of pilot bread, for which they paid respectively at the rates of one hundred and fifty and one hundred and twenty dollars per hundred pounds! Now, although the prices of these articles were rapidly declining on the sea-board, by reason of the immense importation, yet the price of fresh beef was twenty-five dollars per hundred pounds in San Francisco, and must farther enhance there, the supply then being quite insufficient. Fresh provisions will therefore be consumed at the seaport and trading towns, and not in the mining region. The humbug of preserved meats was already exploded, great quantities having been spoiled." All this was very different from the promised vineyards and corn-fields; and Mr Johnson, who had not come to California to feed on salt junk at six shillings a pound, and to drink mercurial water, began to wish himself back again almost as soon as arrived. [6] "A cañon is the narrow opening between two mountains, several hundred and sometimes a thousand feet in depth; rising, some of them, like perpendicular cliffs on either hand, as if torn asunder by a violent convulsion of nature. Through these pour the rushing mountain torrents of the _wet diggins_ of the gold regions of California."--_Sights in the Gold Regions_, p. 180.