Chapter XV: Part II: The Lost Provinces (4)

The Mexican element must be something like one-third of the entire population of the place. In the Spanish town, “Sonora,” the recollection of Mexico is revived, but a very shabby, provincial Mexico. You find _mescal_ and _tequila_, the two varieties of intoxicating liquor distilled from the _maguey_, or aloe. The dingy little adobe shops contain samples of dingy little stocks of goods in their shuttered loop-holes of windows. A few swarthy, lantern-jawed old-timers hang about the corners, and gossip in _patois_, and women with black shawls over their heads pass by. Much of the quarter is in a ruinous condition. There remain vestiges of the arcade system of the kind known in some form to all tropical or semi-tropical climates. The arcades of Sonora are not of massive brick and stone, but are wooden roofs, such as are put out by our corner grocers, on light wooden posts. Here and there only the battered skeletons remain, attached to ruinous houses. Most California municipalities have borrowed something of this Spanish idea. At Sacramento the thriving but flat and not attractive capital of the State, you can walk nearly all over the business part of town under cover.

There is a very respectable-looking restaurant—a vine-embowered cottage—opposite the Pico House, where the familiar _tortillas_, or pancakes, and _frijoles_, or stewed beans, may be had. Along-side is an adobe church, quaint in pattern, but modern and devoid of farther interest. From its belfry the chimes jangle loudly several times a day in familiar Mexican fashion. Out of Sonora emerges, on the 16th of September, the Juarez Guard, which escorts a triumphal car bearing the national colors of red, white, and green, and, aided by a _cortége_ of dark little maidens, in white muslin and slippers, proceeds to celebrate with appropriate ardor the anniversary of Mexican independence.

This people, who have gone so much to the wall, wear no very pathetic aspect in their adversity. They are for the most part engaged in coarse labor, are improvident, and apparently contented. It is only rarely that a Spanish name—a Pacheco, a Sepulveda, or Estudillo—rises into prominence in the public affairs of the State of which they were once owners. Old Don Pio Pico, the last of the Spanish Governors, resides here, impoverished, in a little cottage, in sight of property of great value which was formerly his, and of the plaza once the centre of his authority.

Don Pio is one of the picturesque features of Los Angeles, and with his history would be esteemed interesting anywhere. Above eighty years of age, with stocky figure, square head, and bright eyes, contrasting with his bronzed skin and close-cropped white hair and beard, he has a certain resemblance to Victor Hugo. He has a rather florid taste for jewelry. He carries himself about town, in his short overcoat with velvet collar and cuffs, with a bearing still erect and stately. It is strange to tell, but true, and it is evidence of the conservatism and lack of adaptability of his race, that the old gentleman, though once Governor of the State, and a continuous resident of it, as an American citizen, since he surrendered it to Fremont and Stockton in 1847, does not yet speak a word of any other language than Spanish. The talk of this historic personage gave but a rude picture of the state of society in his youth. Was there anything in the world so remote as the California of the years 1810 to 1848?

“I am but a plain and unassuming person,” he said to me. “My father did not leave me a mule nor a vara of ground. I worked for the padres at the San Gabriel Mission when I was a boy, and I had little opportunity to learn book knowledge.”

He disclaimed being an authority even on the events of his own fall and the encroachments of the Americans. “There are many,” he said, “who have a better head for those things than I, and who will tell you better than I.”... “I was a just man, however. I treated the rich no better than the poor. Hence when they asked who was _lo mas justo y honrado_—the most just and honest man—for Governor, it was answered with one accord, ‘Don Pio Pico.’”

There are differences of opinion about those ancient officials. Some of them have been charged with a wholesale issue of land-patents after the American occupation, which patents ostensibly belonged to their respective administrations. Edwin M. Stanton, sent out to look into these matters by the Attorney-general of the United States, reported at the time that “the making of false grants, with the subornation of false witnesses to prove them, has become a trade and a business.”

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1847, by which the war with Mexico was concluded, made valid and of full force whatever had been done before the American occupation. Spanish governors were numerous in those last days, and went in and out of office with extraordinary frequency, by reason of plots, counterplots, and the inability of the home government to enforce its own will. Alvarado, Carillo, Micheltorena, and Pio Pico reigned separately, or together, or by turns, in a revolutionary, confused, and overlapping way, which furnished excellent opportunity for fraud. One prefers, however, not to linger upon unpleasant suspicions, but rather to esteem these fallen dignitaries, few of whom now survive after their misfortunes and romantic histories.

Even the Chinese, singularly enough, show greater enterprise than the Spanish. Perhaps they may have a somewhat better warrant for coming in here than elsewhere, since a Chinaman is found in the list of the twelve original settlers of the town, in 1781. They have pushed into the best of the old Spanish adobe houses, once the best of their kind in the State. They occupy all those which flank the little plaza with an entire street, others debouching from it.

The populace, however, have not always been the better reconciled to the hapless Mongolians. In an outburst of deadly prejudice, in the year 1871, they were dragged out of their Spanish houses and hung to lamp-posts, wagon-tongues, and their own door-ways, to the number of eighteen, of all ages and sizes. The riot was occasioned by their resistance to some process of a deputy-sheriff. My informant described them to me as hanging like bunches of carrots.

At present they were putting up, near the site of these sanguinary scenes, an ornate open-air theatre or temple, for a triennial religious festival, to last a week or more.

IV.

One of my pleasantest days at Los Angeles was that which I spent in a drive with the Zanjero.

The Zanjero, indeed! who or what is a Zanjero?

His title is derived from the Spanish _zanja_—ditch—continued down from the times of the original settlement, and he is the official overseer of water and irrigation. He took me about with him to observe this important and entertaining part of the economy of civilization in these thirsty regions. Not that Los Angeles is so dry in comparison, for it has thirteen inches of rain against two at Bakersfield, but it is in abundant need of irrigation.

The Zanjero is elected by the City Council annually. Six deputies aid him in the summer, reduced to three in the winter, when the rains render irrigation hardly necessary. All are invested with the authority and badges of policemen.

The city, the Zanjero tells us, as we ride along, controls in its corporate capacity all the waters of the Los Angeles River. The Los Angeles River is a Southern California stream of the typical sort. It has a wide, shallow bed, almost dry at the moment, but in spring and winter it brawls in dangerous fashion, and often carries away its bridges. We ride up to the point near a certain railroad bridge where the water is first diverted. It is taken out by two small canals, one for the city proper, one for the thriving suburb of East Los Angeles. We find that the dam by which the river is checked for this purpose is constructed of earth, with a facing of stout posts and planking. At the beginning of winter the planking is removed, and the stream allowed to sweep away the rampart of earth, which is replaced by a new one, the succeeding spring. Chain-gangs of convicts from the prison are set upon this labor.

A canal is taken out of the same river twelve miles above, which supplies water for drinking and irrigating the higher levels. There are two very different levels in the configuration of the city, one rising from the other with great abruptness, as at Santa Cruz.

Upon the height are remains of the fort built by Fremont when he entered the city. Directly at its foot is the cottage of Pio Pico; the big hotel, still bearing his name, in which he sunk a handsome share of his fortune; the little cypress-studded plaza; and the shabby white quarter of Sonora. The mass of the city lies to the right, without striking features. Beyond it, toward the river, stretch breadths of a russet bloom which we know to be vineyards, together with lines and parallelograms of orange and eucalyptus, as formal as the conventional trees in boxes of German toys. Across the river, “Brooklyn Heights” and “Boyle Heights” rise to a wide, rolling table-land (_mesa_), which extends back to the blue Sierra Madre Mountains. Toward most of the horizon stretch expanses of a garden-like vegetation of a mysterious quality—the dreamed-of orange-groves in mass.

The city has created a considerable part of its debt by its water system, in which it has spent probably $200,000. The works are of an ephemeral character, which will in time be replaced by something more substantial. The simple trenches and wooden flumes permit of wasted water, and are costly to keep in repair. One of the principal ditches, however, is carried through a hill some three-quarters of a mile in a tunnel of six feet in section. There have been formed also numbers of durable reservoirs or artificial lakes for the storage of additional water in winter to supplement the river at its lowest.

We rode out among the villas and gardens and observed the practical application of the water. The main ditches are three feet by two, the lesser about two by one. The “head” is the nominal standard of measurement of the babbling fluid. The head should be a section of one hundred square inches, delivered under a certain uniform pressure, but it is in practice loosely administered.

“The irrigators want their work _done_” says the Zanjero; “that is the main point. Some lands take more, others less, according as they are sandy or hold water. A head of fifty inches on the east side will do as much as one hundred and twenty around the city.”

Fan-palms, India-rubber-trees, and tall bananas grow freely on the lawns where a little pains is taken. You stop now to exclaim at a comfortable home embowered in myrtle, orange, and vines, the dark, glossy foliage starred with golden fruit and red roses, a spot for any romance. Again, it is a long arcade or temple of arborvitæ, extending across the whole front of a garden, and framing in its arches delicious views of distant blue mountains, their tops now powdered with snow.

This land of running brooks should be a famous place for the children to sail their boats, though as a matter of fact we do not see them doing it. Perhaps there is a law against it. There are laws, at any rate, against stealing the water, wantonly raising the gates to waste it, or transferring it to irrigators outside the city limits. These latter are entitled to it only upon an extra payment and after those within the city have been supplied.

As all irrigators cannot be supplied at once, the manner of serving it out is as follows: Applications have to be made in the last week of each month. The Zanjero then apportions the supply so that it may go round among the applicants in the most convenient way. The complete circuit takes about twenty days. The applicant receives a ticket, on the payment of a fee, entitling him to receive the water on such a day at such an hour. The right for that time is exclusively his. The rates are so fixed as to reimburse the public treasury, and are not intended as a source of profit. The average charge for water is about fifty cents an hour, two dollars a day, and a dollar and twenty-five cents a night.

The subscriber has the water delivered to him by the deputy at his connecting-gate. At all other times the gate must be kept fastened with a padlock. The wooden gate, sliding smoothly in its grooves, is like a little guillotine.

Chop! goes the guillotine, when it has been raised long enough, and off goes the head, as it were, of the little stream. Thus surprised on its way among the orchards and gardens, it writhes and twists a while, rises again in its confining box, and is soon ready to begin life again on a new basis.

V.

Los Angeles is the metropolis of the orange trade, but the greater part of the culture itself is in tracts of the surrounding country, each with a thriving settlement as its nucleus. The lands are usually laid out and subdivided by capitalists, under the “colony” system, as described. Ten or even five acres in a crop of such value are a comfortable property. On Lake Guarda half an acre in lemons is sufficient for the support of a family. It is in evidence here that returns of from $500 to $1000 an acre are had from orange, lemon, and lime, after the trees have arrived at full bearing.

The piazzas of the orange-planters command attractive views; rose and heliotrope bloom round them; and specimens of all the fruits are offered for our tasting with lavish hospitality and honest pride in their perfection.

We begin with Pasadena, which is reached by a drive of ten miles from Los Angeles. Pasadena, the Indiana Colony, San Gabriel, the Lake Vineyard tract, the Alhambra, Santa Anita, and Sierra Madre tracts, and others, all of the same general character, adjoin one another. The dwellings in them are those of people of means and a certain taste. Even the least show ambition. There are pretty chapels in the Gothic style, and neat schoolhouses. Well-dressed children of a city air are met with on the roads. The roads are excellent. No violent storms or thawing snows in this climate tear them up, and they are kept in order with little trouble.

The door-yards are enclosed with hedges of lime, arborvitæ, or rose-bushes. Curious small circles from time to time attract attention, either filled with water, or dry, like the rings of a departed circus. These are reservoirs, supplementing the irrigation system. They are usually filled by artesian wells, which flow from iron pipes a few feet above the ground, the water overspreading the top in a thin film, like a globe of glass, reflecting neighboring objects. Such globe-like films, sparkling from a distance, are a frequent item in the prospect. As there has never been any forest, no unsightly stumps indicate recent clearings. The country, in consequence, does not look new. Where settled at all, it has a surprisingly old and civilized air.

The temperature, this late November day—on which there are telegrams in the papers of snow-storms at the North and East—is perfection. It is neither hot nor cold. A sybarite would not alter it. Bees hum in the profuse clusters of heliotrope about the porches. A single Jacqueminot rose on a tall stem, a beauty whose sway will not be gainsaid, makes its vivid crimson felt from the greensward a long way off. Among the older estates this is pointed out as the home of “Don Benito,” that of “Don Tomas,” so and so, the family name being usually American. Audacious in love as in other things, enterprising Americans have married into the Spanish families, both before and since the conquest, and succeeded to their acres. Very few of Spanish stock still retain any property of note.

If there be or ever existed any real earthly Paradise, I think it might bear some such complexion as that of the Sierra Madre Villa, on the first bold rise of the mountains at San Gabriel. I cannot vouch for it as a hotel, for hotel it is, but I vouch for it as a situation.

The air was heavy with the fragrance of extensive avenues of limes as I came up to it. The orange-trees were propped up, to prevent their breaking under their weight of fruit. Forty oranges on a single bough! I saw it with my own eyes. Some of the trees, by the freak of a recent gale, had been denuded of their leaves, which left only the globes of golden fruit, a lovely decorative effect, on their bare stems. A view of thirty miles is had across the garden-like San Gabriel Valley, to a strip of blue sea on the horizon. On the strip of blue sea rests a slight brown spot, the jewel of Santa Catalina Island.

Flowering vines clustered along a piazza, part enclosed in glass. In a warm nook a couple reclined in steamer-chairs, one reading aloud a novel in a gentle murmur. They were a couple of recent date, and as the place for a honey-moon it was ideal. The orange bears a close resemblance to the formal tree which the mediæval painters used to represent as the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” of Genesis. It is appropriately placed, therefore, in our earthly Paradise.

Hist! The young woman who had been reading takes her stand archly at one side of such a tree. The man who had been listening rises also, and, with a slight yawn, places himself on the other. Oh, what is this? Is she a new Eve? She plucks a fruit, and hands it to him. Oh, this is terrible! Is there to be a fall again in Eden, and all its direful consequences? There should be some Cranach or Dürer here to take down once more the particulars of the distressing scene. What does Eve wish Adam to do? Perhaps she wishes him to buy lands—above their value—and go into orange-planting himself. Alas! he will be lost forever to the higher financial life. Perhaps Satan is the invidious real-estate man.

But really there is no pressing need of such a display of fancy because a young matron offers her husband a fresh orange before dinner.

Certain drawbacks—drawbacks attending upon an injudicious entering into this apparently fascinating kind of life—should not be overlooked. The orange-tree grows all the time, and calls for incessant care, winter as in summer. Not a few invalids who had looked to its culture as a pastime have broken down through this cause, and through having taken up more land than they could manage. The lesson of such cases is, not to attempt too much, but to keep to the five, or ten, acres, as the case may be, within one’s capacity. Nor has it been politic to put everything into the single crop of oranges. The smaller fruits—peaches, plums, and especially apricots—for canning, which come into bearing quickly, are useful in tiding over the tedious period of waiting for the orange-trees to mature, and are always in profitable demand. To start existence comfortable here the new-comer should have a capital of from five to ten thousand dollars, though peculiar energy may do with less.

It requires about nine years to bring an orange-tree from the seed into full bearing. On the other hand, it is found that by deftly inserting an orange-bud into the bark of a lemon-shoot slitted in an X, and setting this in the ground, a tree can be obtained which bears marketable fruit after the second year. The controversy rages as to whether it is worth while to do this, since the product is dwarf, like the dwarf pear-tree. Though it yield early it will never yield much, and its fruit does not stand shipment as well as that of the seedling. Against this it is maintained that it lives longer than the seedling, and yields choicer varieties of fruit, and that the fruit is more uniform in size and quality, and not subject to a singular form of destruction which sometimes overtakes that of the seedling—being dashed upon its own thorns.

In the same way conflicting theories of irrigation prevail. A person who bought grapes in large quantities for the purpose of making them into wine told me that over-irrigation was rendering them watery and insipid. He proposed to meet this by establishing a standard. He would pay twenty dollars a ton for grapes containing twenty-three per cent. of sugar, and for those below standard less. Plentiful irrigation, however, is relied upon to counteract that fatal pest of the vine, the phylloxera. Some advocate the theory of irrigation in the winter or rainy season only. All the water possible is to be conducted upon the land at the time it naturally falls, leaving the soil to act as its own reservoir, and store up a portion for the dry season ahead. Others even deny the need of irrigation altogether. They write to the papers that it is only necessary to keep the surface well scratched with a cultivator, and a supply of moisture will always be found a few inches below it. It is certain that crops both of grapes and the cereals have been produced from unirrigated ground, even for a series of years. But then comes a dry year, in which everything, animals as well as plants, is scorched from off the face of the earth.

“Certainty is what is wanted,” says a lively informant. “You may not need water, as you may not a revolver, all the time; but when you do, you need it awful bad.”

VI.

In the plain, just under the mountains, lies the old village and mission church of San Gabriel. The mission dates from 1761. It was founded, like the other missions of California, by friars sent out from the college of San Fernando, in the city of Mexico. I recollect well the original San Fernando. It stands on the street which was the scene of Cortez’s disastrous retreat from the city, and is marked with an inscription commemorating the famous Leap of Alvarado.

The Mission of San Gabriel is worthy of its picturesque origin. It has the same massiveness, color, and quaint rococo details, including the peculiar battlement, or Spanish horn of dominion. Six old green bronze bells hang in as many niches together. The fern-like shadows of a line of pepper-trees print themselves in the sunshine against the time-stained wall. No more than the church edifice now remains. Great agricultural establishments connected with all these missions were swept away, years before the American occupation, by edict of the Mexican government. Some bits of broken aqueduct, and a few orange-trees, above a hundred years old, in what was once the mission garden, are the only vestiges of former prosperity. The interior of the church contains a few battered old religious paintings, the worst of their kind. It is doubtful if the luxury of really good pictures was ever superadded to the excellent architecture, for which there was a natural instinct. It is a commentary on the popular estimate in which the poor old masters are held, I fear, that I was told by the neighborhood:

“You _must_ see them. They are all Raphaels and Michael Angelos.”

The village is piquantly foreign. Its single street is composed entirely of white adobe houses. One of them, with a tumbling, red-tiled roof, is so full of holes that it looks as if it had been shelled. All the signs are in Spanish. Here is the _zapatero_, or shoemaker, and here the _panaderia_, or bakery. The south walls are hung with a drapery of red peppers drying in the sun to prepare the favorite condiment. The population are a humble class, who gain their livelihood for the most part by day-labor on the surrounding estates. They are not too poor, however, to retain their taste for festivity still. On the occasion of some notable wedding among them they will manage to mount on horseback, and, surrounding a bridal carriage, driven postilion-fashion, return from the ceremony, at the old mission, whooping and firing pistols in the air, in the most gallant and hilarious fashion.

Near by is the large estate of Sunny Slope, known as one of the most successful instances of the putting in practice of the sanguine theories about the country. It has been acquired, and developed, from very small beginnings. It consists of some nineteen hundred acres of land, most of it in vines and oranges. There is a large wine and brandy making establishment. Eight thousand boxes of oranges and lemons, four hundred thousand gallons of wine and one hundred thousand of brandy, have been produced in a year.

The dwelling-house was approached by a stately avenue of orange-trees, in double lines, three-quarters of a mile in length. The road to the large, substantial buildings of the winery was bordered by an orchard of orange on one side and olive on the other. The vineyards stretched out in distant effect like vast reddish-tawny meadows. At the winery, blacksmithing and cooperage were going on on a large scale, and a deft Chinaman was constructing the orange-boxes. The rich juice of the grape poured in floods, and its more concentrated form as brandy came from its still as clear as water. All distilled spirit is naturally colorless, and the hues it obtains for market are given by burned sugar, to gratify an artificial taste.

The hands are Chinamen and Mexicans. The superintendent tells us that the former do the most work and get less pay, but that there are certain things which they cannot do. They cannot plough, nor prune the vines, and they are awkward in the management of animals. Indeed, a Chinaman on horseback, or even in a wagon, seems almost as incongruous as Jack Tar.

We visited, one evening, the Chinese quarters, and it would have been hard to find a more clean, domestic-looking interior among men of any other nationality in the same circumstances of life. They seemed much more orderly in their arrangements than the Mexicans, either those from the village or those who had a settlement on a bold slope of the estate above.

There is much native Indian blood among these latter, and their dwellings were half wigwams, patched up of rubbish. Mongrel dogs, a donkey, and a foundered horse wandered at ease among them. A reddish-brown urchin, with large, liquid eyes, coming out, paused to gaze at us.

“_Cor-r-re, demonio de muchacho!_” (R-r-run, demon of a boy!) cried a slatternly mother, who appeared behind, endeavoring to urge him upon some errand of peculiar expedition.

But the demon of a boy, exemplifying the traits of his race, had no idea whatever of being in a hurry. On the contrary, having removed to a safe distance, he dawdled in the most exasperating way, and continued to stare round-eyed during all of our critical tour of inspection.

The work of the year was now the pruning of the vines. Stripped of every superfluity, the rugged little stocks, regimented veterans, were to stand bare till the exuberance of a new spring should again break forth in leaves. Faustino, Gaetano, Incarnacion, and the rest, for so they are called, appear to picturesque advantage in this work. Their swarthy faces are framed in slouch sombreros. They wear red-and-blue shirts, and bright handkerchiefs about their necks. They move forward in a line, pruning-knife in hand, and a small saw at the belt for the tougher knots. The spots of color twinkle upon the russet of the vineyard; the pruning-knives flash as they turn to the sun; the ground has a gentle, agreeable fall; and splintered granite mountains, with deep cañons among them for exploration, softened by a veil of atmosphere, back up the whole.

The orange-tree, even at a great age, is not as large as one may have expected. Even those of a hundred years in the mission garden are not above two feet in diameter. It is gratifying to be at full liberty to examine this attractive vegetation, known heretofore only in its tub in the conservatory, or on the staircase at a ball. There seems but one drawback to an orange-grove, and that is that it cannot have greensward below to lie upon. It is very exacting—requires all the nourishment the soil can give, and the soil must be kept loose and open around the roots. It is irrigated about once a month, and the surface gone over with a cultivator afterward, to prevent baking up in the sun.

The orange-grove is lovely at all times, mysterious when the long alleys are dark against the red sunset, the fruit glimmering like a feast of lanterns at twilight; and in the pleasant mornings sparkling among the glossy leaves like little suns newly risen; while we catch the perfume of blossoms heralding in a new crop, though the last still hangs upon the bough. Here and there is an example of the enormous shaddock, which resembles the orange in appearance but the lemon in character. The lemon is less hardy to rear than the orange, and is not cultivated on as large a scale. Chinamen, with ladders and baskets, gather the fruit, and chatter to one another from the trees like magpies. It is irrigation-day, and all at once the water is let on. Twisting and turning this way and that, it runs out upon the thirsty soil, as if with an eager curiosity in the embrace. Chinamen with hoes follow it, here throwing up little dams, which it tries to evade; there, when it runs sluggishly, opening little channels, and leading it where it should go. The whole orchard is soon babbling musically with running water, and in process of being thoroughly soaked.

XXIX.

_TO SAN DIEGO, AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER._

I.

These and kindred scenes are to be met with in fifty, I know not how many more, localities of a similar sort. San Fernando, Florence, Compton, Downey City, Westminster, Orange, Tustin City, Centralia, Pomona, and Artesia may be mentioned as leading examples. The “colony” government is of a simple sort, and consists of a justice of the peace, constable, water overseer, and school trustees. Anaheim, settled by Germans, was one of the first established colonies, and has become a town of importance. Santa Ana had a special bustle at present, as the terminus, for the time being, of the railroad in process of building from Los Angeles to San Diego.

Perhaps, however, the greatest general air of distinction is worn by Riverside. This colony seems to have been sought to an exceptional degree by persons in good circumstances. It is fifty-seven miles lower down than Los Angeles, and reached by a drive of seven miles southward from the Southern Pacific Railroad at Colton. Four miles north of Colton, on the other hand, takes you to San Bernardino, an important place of six thousand people, originally settled by Mormons. The regular Mormons withdrew to Utah by order of Brigham Young on the threat of the coercive war there in 1857, and only a few “Josephites” now remain, whose practices do not differ greatly from those of other people.

At Riverside is found a continuous belt of settlement and cultivation twelve miles long, by two miles in average width. It will be twenty long when all complete. The population is not large, but revels in a great deal of room. The general situation is a valley of about forty miles square, at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the sea. The access to this valley is by four several passes, one each on the north, south, east, and west, as if so many doors had been providentially left open in the encompassing mountain ranges. The settlement forms an oasis in the midst of the desert, after the general plan. Its fresh greenness, and canals of clear water, along which sylvan glimpses, almost English, are met with, derive added charm and interest from the desert. The rest of the high, quadrangular valley, capable, no doubt, of as great development, if water can be brought upon it, remains in its natural condition.

A lovely drive, called Magnolia Avenue, planted with double rows of pepper and eucalyptus trees, extends through the length of the place from north to south. It is bordered with homes, making pretensions to much more than comfort. The best of these are at the division called Arlington, four miles below the post-office of Riverside proper. The native adobe, or sun-dried brick, supplemented with ornamental wood-work, has been used as material with excellent effect. In the interiors are found rugs, _portières_, Morris’s wall-papers, and all the paraphernalia of the latest Eastern civilization; and there is an archery club and a “German.”

Invalidism is heard of with considerable frequency as an excuse for the migration hither. Certainly many advantages offer to the invalid. The climate permits him to be almost constantly out-of-doors. The sky is blue, the sun unclouded, nearly every day in the year, and he can go into his orchard and concern himself about his Navel or Brazilian oranges, his paper-rind St. Michaels, and his Tahiti seedlings, with little let or hinderance. Orange culture affords him both a career and a revenue. If the unchanging blue of the sky grow sometimes monotonous, there are other distractions in the noble mountain ranges. Riverside has in this resource a touch of the charm of Switzerland. Your entertainer points out to you from his piazza the great peaks of Greylock, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto, from ten to twelve thousand feet in height, and crowned with snow for a considerable part of the year, just as the Jungfrau is pointed out from Interlaken and Mont Blanc from Geneva.

It is a description that applies to all of Southern California, that, however great the heat by day—in midsummer often a hundred and five in the shade—the nights are always cool and refreshing. Sunstroke is not known. Nor are the violent thunder-storms with which Nature, with us, endeavors to restore equilibrium after having exhausted its most oppressive warmth. The great drawback here, as there must always be some drawback, consists in occasional heavy “northers,” which gather up the dust from the dry surface and produce painful dust-storms of two or three days’ duration.

In autumn and winter the temperature is chilly enough to make fires a necessity morning and evening, and even all day long in apartments shut off from the influence of the sun. I was astonished to find the air so keen at these times, and a scum of ice forming upon water in the mornings even as far down as San Diego. The cold has a penetrating quality beyond its register by the thermometer. This, though usually overlooked, is important, since fuel is very scarce and correspondingly dear. Fagots of the prunings of the cottonwoods, sycamores, and mesquit-trees along the beds of the streams are the principal resource. Such coal as can be obtained is both costly and of poor quality.

The water for the irrigation of Riverside is taken from the swift little stream of the Santa Ana River, which falls so rapidly within a short compass that it is feasible to take out two separate canals with a difference of thirty-five feet in their levels. On all sides lands are held at $200 and $300 per acre, and when the orange-trees have come into good bearing, at $1000, which but a few years ago were purchased at a dollar and a quarter an acre.

All these places have their local rivalries, though Southern California as a whole is ready to unite in vindicating its peculiar claims, against the outside world. All have their pamphlets to distribute, containing their tables of mean temperatures, altitudes, analyses of soils, and claims to regard, as based upon nearness to, or absence from, some particular natural feature. Thus the coast counties take leave to pride themselves upon a genial average of temperature, owing to their proximity to the sea. They are free, they say, from the extremes of heat and cold afflicting those which are shut in behind the mountain barriers. The inland counties, on the other hand, congratulate themselves that their lot is cast where the mountains form an efficient defence against the raw fogs and gusts which must necessarily afflict those directly exposed to the chilly ocean.

These petty rivalries are a part of the history of all new countries, and pass away with the development of population and trade. There seems no need of jealousies, since there is encouragement enough for all in their several ways. The Territories of Arizona and New Mexico have just been opened to transportation by rail from this quarter. The lands suitable for the cultivation of the “citrus fruits” are limited in extent. The market is much more likely to improve than decline, even when production shall have largely increased beyond its present rate. High railroad freights were at one time a cause of alarm. The making of an “orange wine” was proposed as a resource for using up the surplus crop of this kind. The experiment was not a success, but it is not likely to be needed. Freights have declined, and will decline more with the building of projected new roads. Shipments of oranges have been successfully made from this section as far away as Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis.

II.

Great things are predicted for Wilmington, a little port twenty-two miles to the south-west of Los Angeles. The extensive works undertaken here by the railroad and the United States government are still incomplete, and it is but a dreary little place in its present condition. However, great ports have never been selected primarily for picturesqueness, but in accordance with such commercial necessities as short lines of transit, easy grades, and convenience for shipping. Wilmington had few natural conveniences to offer. There were originally but eighteen inches of water on its bar. This has been increased to ten feet. An enormous jetty, 6700 feet long, extending out to what is called Dead Man’s Island, is under construction. It is to force the tide itself to do the duty of scouring out the bottom, so that a ship channel several miles long will eventually be secured.

Santa Monica is another small port at the end of a branch railroad from Los Angeles, sixteen miles directly west, and somewhat famed as a sea-side resort. It has a hotel of considerable size, and a bold situation on a pretty horseshoe bay. The beach is of fine, hard sand; and the temperature admits of bathing, if one be inclined for it, all the year round. The hopes which were at one time entertained by capitalists, like Senator Jones, of Nevada, of making the place a great shipping point, have been for the present abandoned. It was to have been the Pacific terminus of a new through line from the East, coming by way of the Cajon Pass. A wharf 1500 feet long was built, and a breakwater proposed.

From here, or from Wilmington, you sail up the coast to San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara—favored by invalids. These places have as yet no railroad, but must before long come into the general system. Both are on that sheltered stretch of the coast which, from Point Conception, makes a sharp turn to the eastward, and has direct southern exposure and a view of the islands of Santa Barbara Channel. Santa Barbara, on its practical side, has devoted more attention than most places to the culture of the olive—an industry still much in its infancy. Some of the cultivators have provided themselves with a machinery, which costs about a thousand dollars, for expressing the oil. As a condiment the fruit is not pickled green here, like the Spanish olive, but ripe and black. It may be that a special education is needed for liking each variety of olives, as it is for acquiring the taste in the beginning. Those here are of a small variety, descending from the old mission times, and it is hard not to find them either insipid or bitter. The leading shipment from San Buenaventura is honey. A million pounds per annum from Ventura County, of which it is the capital, is not an unusual product.

III.

I sailed from Wilmington to San Diego. I embarked in the evening in a small tug, which steamed down the tortuous windings of the channel, past black lighters that Whistler would have liked to etch, and past Dead Man’s Island, and transferred us on board a coast steamer waiting without. Next morning we were at our destination, a hundred miles below. San Diego, rising on a gentle slope, makes a pretty appearance from the water. A United States barracks (yellow), with a flag-staff rising in the centre, is the most prominent object in front. You round an immensely long, narrow sand-spit of a peninsula, which contributes to form the excellent small harbor, and make fast to an immensely long mooring wharf. It is a feature of all California ports to have immensely long wharves. To the left is “Old Town,” its beach where Dana once loaded hides in his famous “Two Years Before the Mast,” now the site of a Chinese fishing village. To the right is brand-new “National City,” the location of the shops and extensive depot grounds for the new railway. In the centre, at about four miles from either, lies “New Town,” San Diego proper. All together have a population of about five thousand.

As we came up to the wharf a locomotive, starting from National City on the new track, made the circuit of the water-front, with one long, shrill scream, which was taken up by the hills and echoed back. Gods and men were no longer to remain ignorant that San Diego had at last caught up with its future and had its railroad.

It was cruelly disappointed when it was to be the terminus of the Texas Pacific, transcontinental, road. The panic of ’73 prevented the capitalist “Tom Scott” from negotiating the foreign loan which was needed for its completion. That enterprise was abandoned, and a half-mile of graded road-bed alone remains as a sort of tumulus to the blighted hopes and bitter memories of the time. The name of the unfortunate “Tom Scott”—since defunct—remains also a byword and a reproach. Now, however, the “California Southern” is actually at work, and under contract to complete the one hundred and sixteen miles necessary to meet the Southern Pacific, at a point near San Bernardino, within a short time. It is to be a link in the new “Atlantic and Pacific,” which is to follow the thirty-fifth parallel, and become a transcontinental road by means of connection with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé.

The capital and management of the California Southern are largely supplied by the same Boston company directing the Mexican Central, the line to Guaymas from the Arizona frontier, and others. A farther road is projected by them eastward from San Diego to Calabasas, passing through Port Ysabel, at the head of the Gulf of California. This can be more cheaply built below the Mexican frontier than on this side, owing to special exemptions there to be had from taxation, and the lower rates of labor. It is thought that the Southern Pacific will also be compelled by competition to build across from Yuma. Hopes are still entertained also of the derelict Texas Pacific. With all this in prospect, it will be seen that San Diego has justification for making a good deal of stir. It claims to be hundreds of miles nearer, than San Francisco, to New Orleans and New York, on the one hand, and the Orient on the other, and is correspondingly cheerful.

A hand-car on the long wharf conveyed our baggage into the town while we walked beside it. The town, being reached, is found a place of loose texture. It has a disproportionately large hotel, the Horton House, built in anticipation of the rapid arrival of its future greatness, and a loss to its original proprietor. The blue shades were down and the plate-glass windows dusty also, with an expectant look, in much of the “Horton Block,” opposite. After ’73 half the shutters in San Diego were put up. They have come down now, however, and probably to stay.

There is a charming view of the harbor and blue ocean from the upper slopes of the town. Part of the view is a group of bold Mexican islands, the boldest of these, Coronado, a solid mass of red sandstone, which Americans have tried to get for a quarry, without success. Yes, here is Old Mexico once more; we have come back to it. The high, flat-topped peak of Table Mountain marks it unmistakably. It is customary to drive down to “the Monument,” set up on the dividing line of Baja (Lower) California, but the excursion is without special interest.

The chronic condition of shutters in San Diego “Old Town” is to be “up,” that is, so far as it can be said to have any shutters yet remaining. It dates from 1769. Disadvantageously situated in regard to the bay, it began to be deserted in favor of the newer site about ten years ago. Nothing could seem more desolate than it is now. The usual old mission, with a few palms and olives about it, stands in a valley, up the pretty San Diego River, and the earth-works of Commodore Stockton, who threw them up one night before the enemy knew he was ashore, are seen on a hill. Rents should be cheap in Old Town, but, according to the gossips who still sit around the decayed old plaza, they are not. The owners hold them stiffly yet, on what theory Heaven only knows. The plaza has a toppling flag-staff, a decayed music-stand, and vestiges of a number of burned edifices, which have never been worth anybody’s while to build up again. The “Merchants’ Exchange” will never supply cocktails to thirsty soul again; the Cosmopolitan Hotel is without a guest; whole rows of weather-beaten adobes—whole quarters—stand vacant. It should be a great place for ghosts. But perhaps they do not care for one another’s society. The children, coming from school—for there is, it seems, a school—amuse themselves with knocking at and rattling the vacant doors; then they peer in at the broken window-panes and shout, and run laughing away.

IV.

In leaving San Diego I traversed the surveyed line of the new railroad almost due northward. A thirty-mile section of the railroad was already built. The rest of the journey was made by wagon, with an occasional half-day’s pedestrianism, for which the dry, smooth surface of the ground is well adapted. It afforded opportunity of making the acquaintance in a leisurely way of some of the ranchmen, small and great, of the old school. The principal one of these was Don Juan Forster (deceased since this visit), well known in his section. He was English by birth, but sailed with his father in a trading vessel, and became a Mexican subject and resident of California long before the American conquest. It was so long before that he had well-nigh forgotten his English, and had to learn it over again when the Americans arrived. The Señora, a sister of Governor Pio Pico, never learned it at all, any more than her conservative brother.

Don Juan’s estate, the Santa Margarita Ranch, comprised an area of twenty-seven miles by fourteen, or one hundred and forty-five thousand acres of land. There was one fence seventeen miles in length, and another ten. The owner had made two distinct efforts to colonize a portion of his land, without great success. He had offered in London to give forty acres and the use of three cows and two horses to whoever would put upon the land improvements, in the shape of houses, vineyards, etc., to the amount of $1000.

The Santa Margarita ranch-house is of adobe, very thick-walled, with a terrace in front, and an interior court. The waiting at table was by a broad-faced Indian woman in calico. All the domestic service was performed by mission Indians, except the cooking, for which a Chinaman had lately been secured, with the view of having meals on time. The manner of living on these great places was found comfortable, but without the “princely” features attributed to it in some of the highly colored narratives of former travellers.

The greater part of the available land in the section was devoted to pasture. The cereals were cultivated, but not much fruit. Barley is the favorite cereal, as less liable to “rust” and spoil than wheat. Hay is made, not of grass, but of wheat and barley straw, cut green, with the milk still in it. Bee-culture is an important industry. A number of varieties of wild sage, wild buckwheat and sumac, furnish the bees exceptionally good provender. Rows of the square hives, painted in colors, were often seen districted into little streets on the hill-side, or at the mouth of some small cañon, like a miniature city.

Before reaching Don Juan Forster’s the old mission of San Luis Rey is encountered, in the hamlet of the same name. It is almost Venetian in aspect. The whole exterior was at one time faced with a diagonal pattern recalling that of the Ducal Palace. The pile was ruined by a Mormon contingent of the American forces engaged in the conquest of the State. Parts of the heavy adobe walls and buttresses have fallen in, and resolved themselves back into their original element as mere earth-heaps. The images have been shot and hacked down, and a yawning cavern was excavated behind the main altar in search of fancied treasure. Upon a floor strewn with such _débris_ and with fragments of red tiles the daylight falls curiously, through holes in the broken roof and dome.

The railroad traverses some striking natural scenery. Most notable is the Temecula Cañon, a gorge of a wild and grand description, ten miles in length, through the Coast Range. A brawling stream runs down its centre. The gorge was filled with a busy force, as we passed, terracing up the track along its sides, sometimes on the natural rock, sometimes on a cyclopean retaining-wall of immense bowlders. Toward evening every day the firing of heavy blasts reverberated up the defile like a cannonade. The main part of the laboring force consisted of Chinamen. They had utilized the shelving ledges and random nooks by the stream for their tents and cooking-ovens with great ingenuity. The Mexicans and Indians, who formed the contingent next in importance, were in every way less provident. The surveyors were found pleasant and hospitable fellows, as surveyors at the scene of their labors are apt to be. Compactness and convenience had been reduced to the lowest terms, but a pleasant existence seemed possible in their small tents. A Chinese cook was attached to each camp, and the provisions and fare were excellent.

While coming up in the construction-train over the section of already completed road we had the distinction of being waited on by a servant of rather uncommon pretensions. This was a certain “Charley,” a shock-headed boy of fourteen, son of a later Tichborne claimant, who had strangely arisen at San Diego just then, and announced his purpose of again contesting the title. Though serving in a menial capacity—while his father, who claimed to have good and sufficient reason for having kept quiet till now, was taking the necessary steps to secure the long-lost title and fortune—“Charley” was deaf to all banter on the subject. He was supercilious and firm in the faith that he too was a Tichborne.

“And don’t you forget it,” he threw out to us by way of a parting injunction.

Out of the cañon, at the van of the construction work, we were on the Temecula Plains, a part of the Upper Santa Ana Valley. The course of the road was marked henceforth only by an occasional surveyor’s stake. We rode over fifty miles of absolutely treeless, verdureless desert. It was desert, however, with a certain fascination in its sterility. It had a distinct beauty of coloring. The brown, drab, and blackish waste, catching sparkles of light on its flinty surface, shimmered in the sunshine. The heat was tempered by a gentle breeze. Crags of black, water-worn rock, which had once been reefs in an inland sea, rose in bold, fantastic shapes, and noble mountain ranges stood up along the distant horizons, their rugged harshness softened into blues and purples by a delicious veiling atmosphere.

Half-way across we fell in with a single sign of human life, in the shape of an abandoned pine shanty. On going around to the rear the boards were found to have been knocked off, probably to be used for fuel. Some former travellers, halting here like ourselves, had occupied a part of their leisure with writing inscriptions in lead-pencil. One had written a direction about drinkable water in the neighborhood. Another, apparently finding this erroneous, had inscribed below it, with much more vigor than regard for adopted usages in spelling, “Lyor!!”