Stake and rider fences enclosed the fields and pastures and while most of the houses, barns and cribs were constructed of logs, some lumber was manufactured in crude sawmills in which was used what was known as a "slash saw".

Here, beside an idle sawmill and heaps of sawdust, I was greeted by a solitary negro, well along in years, who demanded, in a tone of almost comical astonishment, where in the world I had come from.

All that summer, every wagon and draught animal in Monterey County was engaged in hauling lumbersome of it such poor stuff as basswood sawed in little sawmills along the rivers; and it was not until in the 'eighties that the popular song, The Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim proved two thingsthat the American pioneer had learned to build with something besides timber, and that the Homestead Law had come into effect.

He proposed to Hall that if he would take the woman off his hands he, the Captain, would give him a small portable sawmill which the government had sent to the post to saw lumber with which to build quarters, etc.