Chapter XVIII: The Grand Cañon of the Colorado (1)

From Los Angeles to Peach Spring—Desert Wind—An Arizona Village—
Indians—Descensus Averno—Extraordinary Mountain
Architecture—Silence and Desolation—A Bewitched Creek—Up the
Diamond Cañon—The Grand Cañon and the River—New Mexico and
Kansas 294

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MT. HOOD _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

OSTRICH FARM—SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 12

FRUIT FARM IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 22

ORANGE GROVE—SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 42

NORTH DOME—YOSEMITE VALLEY 96

BIG TREE—YOSEMITE VALLEY 104

SEAL ROCKS—SAN FRANCISCO 110

LAKE TAHOE 132

MT. SHASTA 152

CRATER LAKE 158

CASTLE ROCK—COLUMBIA RIVER 196

GREAT DALLES—COLUMBIA RIVER 202

SITKA 244

FRAZER CAÑON 254

THE SELKIRK GLACIER 262

CANADIAN PACIFIC HOTEL AT BANFF 268

DEVIL’S HEAD LAKE 272

MINERVA TERRACE—YELLOWSTONE PARK 282

FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE 292

THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO 296

I.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT—A STORM IN THE DESERT—A CONTEMPTUOUS
CITY—PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS—THE LAND BOOM—CLIMATE AND
CROPS—OSTRICH-FARMING—A VINEYARD TERROR—THE NATIVE
WINES—QUAIL-HUNTING.

Twenty-three years ago, when the first transcontinental railway was commenced, the possibility of not only its success, but of its very construction, was almost universally doubted, and the San Francisco bankers who advanced money for the enterprise had to do so secretly, in order not to create a panic among their depositors. To-day there are five transcontinental lines, or six, if we count the Oregon Short Line separately, and the tourist or invalid can pay his money and take his choice, according to the season,—the Canadian Pacific, Northern Pacific, or Union Pacific in summer; the Atlantic and Pacific or Southern Pacific in winter. The last-named is less interesting scenically than some of the Northern routes, but to invalids leaving the East in winter it presents the advantage of plunging at once _in medias res_, so far as semi-tropical climate is concerned.

Of the southern United States, this side of the Mississippi, one gets a rather unfavorable impression from the railway window, as the greater part of the distance from Washington to New Orleans, and some hundred miles beyond, seems little else than one boundless swamp, with moss-covered trees, an occasional low mountain range, corn and cotton fields, and beggarly huts, as the only scenic features. Montgomery seems a sleepy country village; and although New Orleans has sights worth seeing, it requires courage and a taste for roughing it in order to get at them; for the streets (naturally inclined to be muddy, because the city lies below the level of the Mississippi) are so horribly paved that even a New Yorker must lift up his hands and thank Heaven that he does not live in such a city. Without any exaggeration, a Swiss stage-road in the midst of the mountains is not so rough and jolting an affair as the street-car tracks in New Orleans; and what the roads are beyond the paved streets may be inferred from the fact that in January I found it absolutely impossible to reach the City Park (where the Exposition was held some years ago) on foot, from the terminus of the street-cars. Some of the gardens on the way were ornamented with orange-trees laden with ripe fruit, but both trees and fruit presented a sad contrast to the luxuriance I beheld in Los Angeles three days later; and equally great was the contrast between the moist, warm, enervating atmosphere of the Louisiana marshes, and the dry, cool, mountain and ocean breezes of Southern California.

If you leave New Orleans, say, on Wednesday noon, you will be at Los Angeles on Saturday evening before ten. A good supply of reading-matter is desirable, as there is little to see for a day or two, except cactus bushes, a few painted Indians, and bleak mountains, some of them across the Mexican border. At El Paso, which calls itself “the Paris of the Southwest,” and claims twelve thousand inhabitants, the train stops long enough to afford a chance to drive across the river into Mexican soil. The El Paso papers try hard to induce the passengers in quest of health to stay there, and have a very poor opinion of California. The _Herald_ which I bought, editorially described the “recent terrific rainstorms” in that State, and found it difficult to decide which was a worse place for invalids, “Holland with her damp marshes, or the Golden State.” The editor probably mixed up that State with Arizona; for on arriving in California we discovered there had not been a drop of rain for several weeks, while in Arizona we found the deserts, as far as the eye could reach, one vast plain of shining, semi-liquid mud, interspersed with large temporary lakes. The rain poured down in blinding torrents and with true tropical violence, forming channels several feet deep across the desert, and whirling aside thirty-feet iron rails like straws.

The spectacle of this rain-storm in the desert was so weird and sublime that we gladly in return accepted the fate of reaching Los Angeles twelve hours behind time; for the train, owing to the numerous washouts and soft places, could only creep along, and beyond Tucson we had to wait five hours for daylight, as the engineer did not dare to proceed farther in the dark. Such storms and washouts are obviously frequent in this region, for ties and rails are scattered all along the road for emergencies. Nature, provoked by the “soft thing” which the Southern Pacific had in building this level road, seems to have taken this means of getting square with it. At Colton, California, the scenery becomes snow-mountainous and interesting, and remains so as far as Los Angeles.

During my first visit to Southern California, in 1887, I was amused to notice the vast contempt with which the fifty thousand inhabitants of the city of Los Angeles looked down on the three hundred and fifty thousand benighted denizens of a certain northern village known as San Francisco, and on other places that have the effrontery to grow rapidly, and to claim special advantages of climate, situation, and commerce. The Los Angeles _Herald_ informed its admiring readers that—

“Pasadena and Los Angeles will be one city in a brief period, and form a continuous municipality from the Sierra Madre to the sea—an extent of thirty miles in length by at least six in width, with five hundred thousand people contained therein, and will be the capital of the richest State in the Union. The claim of New York as the Empire State is already in dispute, but the dispute will soon be settled by the pre-eminence of South California.”

It must be admitted that much had happened to justify this Los Angelic grandiloquence. Seventeen years ago the City of Angeles had only ten thousand inhabitants, no street-cars, and only one railway. To-day it has at least sixty thousand inhabitants, electric street-cars, and more than half-a-dozen railways, with about seventy-five daily trains. Orange-trees have increased in the county from twenty-five thousand to a million or more; grape-vines from three millions to twenty millions; and other agricultural products in proportion.

Its very disadvantages have proved advantages to Los Angeles. For instance, the fact that coal, like wood, is expensive, made the city the first in the country to adopt a general system of electric street-lighting. It has seventeen masts one hundred and fifty feet high, fourteen masts sixty feet high, and hundreds of private lights. The electric railroad is also being rapidly extended. The cars run at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, which can be increased to twenty outside the city limits. The road’s capacity is said to be four times that of a horse road, and its cost only one-half, while there is no torturing of poor horses in the hot noonday sun. A ride or a walk along the streets of Los Angeles conveys the impression that the city is quite as large and as “metropolitan” as it claims to be; the natural bustle and activity being increased by the winter visitors from the East.

In every country the smaller cities are apt to take after the metropolis. Thus, Rouen constantly suggests Paris; Linz, Vienna; the English cities, London, etc. Similarly, Los Angeles suggests San Francisco in many details,—the appearance of the stores, hotels, Chinese shops, and the gardens, although the gardens have a more decided semi-tropical aspect, and there is a general appearance of more open-airness, if the word be permissible. The city is surrounded on all sides by high mountains and buried among groves and gardens. Orange, lemon, “pepper,” and fig trees adorn the gardens everywhere, side by side with many luxuriant shrubs and flowers, dwarfed apologies for which are often seen in Eastern gardens. In size and brilliancy of color these California flowers are incomparable, but the same causes which tend to give quinces, for instance, a less pronounced flavor than they have in the East, appear to impair the fragrance of some flowers. This fact has often been commented on, but I believe that too much emphasis has been placed on it. Repeated experiment has convinced me that the verbena and heliotrope, and perhaps the geranium, have a less delicious fragrance in California than in New York, at least in October; but the same is not true of roses and pinks and lilies; and the countless varieties of wild flowers that adorn the hill-sides in spring have a most intoxicating fragrance, wherewith they allure so many bees that honey can be sold at four cents a pound.

The present ambition of the Los Angeles people is to surpass all the rest of the world in as many things as possible. In one thing certainly they were pre-eminent, a few years ago,—in the number of real-estate offices that decorated their town. Neither San Francisco nor any mining town ever had so many saloons to the number of inhabitants as Los Angeles had of these land offices; and the day after my arrival I heard a mother scolding her baby for putting a handful of dirt in its mouth—doubtless because she thought real estate was too valuable to be thus wasted in luxurious living. Almost every landowner, whether he had a sign over his door or not, was willing to part with some or all of his property for a consideration—not a slight one, by any means; and the whole county was affected with this epidemic, there being places of only a few thousand inhabitants where corner lots were sold almost at New York City prices.

One day, driving along a country road about twenty miles from Los Angeles, I noticed half-a-dozen well-dressed men resting under a tree. My companion informed me they were doubtless a syndicate looking about for a place to locate a new town. At Fullerton, a few miles from Anaheim, I saw one of these new towns. It consisted of the framework of a large hotel and of a few hundred yards of elegant cement sidewalk, not in front of the hotel, but in another part of the “town.” Elsewhere towns get pretty large before any one begins to think of a sidewalk, even of the most primitive kind; but the residents in Los Angeles County of course would not be satisfied with a sidewalk in any way inferior to that in front of Mr. Vanderbilt’s house in Fifth Avenue. I may add that since then Fullerton has grown up into quite a little town.

Having built his sidewalk and his large hotel (with real-estate office) in place of the saloon which usually is the pioneer building in Western towns, the Southern Californian begins to cast about for a supply of water; not so much for domestic use—since wine is almost as cheap as water—as for the irrigation of his garden and fields. If a river or brook is near by, a water company is formed, ditches are dug, and each shareholder, after paying his dues, may have his water “on tap” whenever he wants it. In the absence of a river, wells are made to supply the water. Sometimes these wells are bored horizontally into the mountain side, thus creating an artificial spring; but, as a rule, the wells are vertical, from eighty to five hundred feet deep, or even more, although at one hundred to two hundred feet the water is generally obtained in abundance. A windmill is then erected over the well, which pumps the water into a large, high tank, whence it is easily conveyed to the garden or field by hose. There is no lack of wind to drive these mills; for the charm of Southern California’s climate lies in this, that although the sky is commonly cloudless, and the sun warm, winter and summer, there is almost always a brisk breeze to temper the solar rays, and deprive them of their sting.

This is true especially of Los Angeles County, which is situated between the deep sea and an imposing circular range of mountains, that send their breezes down over the valley as soon as the ocean breezes cease; and although at some seasons both these air-currents, near their source, would be unpleasantly cold for invalids, they are almost always mellowed and warmed by the sun’s rays before they reach the centre of the valley. The morning—till about two o’clock—is the warmest part of the day; but in the autumn the morning heat is tempered by a daily fog, which remains till about ten o’clock. It is not a depressing fog, and is rather enjoyed by the natives, as a temporary change from the everlasting sunshine. In fact, sunny monotony is the gravest charge that can be brought against the climate of Southern California. In the autumn and spring a few rainy days afford refreshing variety; but summer and winter are alike in their cloudless skies, warm sunshine, and alternating mountain and ocean breezes. As a physician at Anaheim remarked to me, the seasons do not differ in character, but only in flavor, like the differences between several kinds of apples. He also informed me that, although the temperature sometimes rises above a hundred in the shade, he has never seen a case of sunstroke—thanks to the dryness of the air and the almost incessant breezes. Yet, like all southern climates, it fosters indolence, mental and physical; and he would not recommend it, therefore, to young persons, except for money-making purposes. But for invalids and for elderly persons, it is the best place in the world. The somnolence brooding in the air (except in Switzerland I have never slept so soundly in my life as here) would cure the worst case of Wall Street insomnia; and the incessant sunshine and constant life in the open air can hardly fail to add ten years or more to the life of old men or women who desert their over-heated and ill-ventilated Eastern homes for the open air and winter sunshine of Los Angeles County.

The general irrigation now resorted to, and the numerous green oases which have in consequence sprung up amid the deserts of prickly cactus, have already exerted some influence on the climate, and there is reason to believe that rain will be more abundant in the future than it has been in the past. A potent factor in producing this change will be the groves of trees that are being planted everywhere. There are some poplars and locusts and other trees that appear to flourish tolerably well, but the two species that most triumphantly defy sunshine, dust, and drought are the red-pepper-tree and the Australian eucalyptus, both of them beautiful to behold. The red-pepper-tree, with its gracefully drooping branches, resembles a weeping willow, but its growth is more luxuriant, its dimensions larger, and it is adorned with bunches of beautiful small red berries. The leaves, when bruised, have a strongly pungent cayenne odor, whence the name of the tree. The leaves and fruit of the eucalyptus have a still more objectionable odor when crushed (very much like assafœtida), but the tree has a most stately appearance, and its marvellously rapid growth—a seed becoming a large tree in a few years—causes it to be raised on a large scale for fuel and for shady avenues.

But although Los Angeles County can raise the Australian eucalyptus and the pepper-tree, there is a point at which the climate draws the line further south. Thus, the banana and the pineapple, although they can be raised here, do not usually thrive well, and the same is true of the almond. Yet the Los Angeleños do not despair on that account, as they have a superabundance of other fruits to fall back on. Of the vast and fruitful orange and lemon orchards of this region every one has read. Figs grow abundantly and are in good demand, especially those of the Smyrna variety, which are now displacing the others. The demand for California olive oil is greater than the supply, and it is equal in quality to the best Italian oil. English walnut-trees yield a profitable crop. Peaches are so abundant that they are fed to the cows, and some varieties (but not all) are equal in flavor to the New Jersey and Delaware crop. Ears of corn a foot long, with twenty rows to the ear, can be seen in the market, side by side with gigantic twenty-horse-power onions, and potatoes weighing from two to five pounds. Sugar-beets are on exhibition, weighing fifty pounds, and pumpkins of one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five pounds. Pumpkins, melons, tomatoes, and other creepers grow wild, without any care, and may even become a weedy nuisance. If a Chinaman eats a watermelon under a tree along the road, the chances are that a crop of wild melons will be found in that neighborhood the following season; and on one farm I saw a volunteer tomato plant which the owner said he had ploughed down twice, but when I saw it, it measured at least twelve feet square, and had thousands of small red fruit on it of the kind which is only used for preserves, although, like the little yellow ones, it is of a much more delicate flavor than the large tomatoes, which alone, for some inscrutable reason, are ever seen on our tables.

This list is very far from complete and is being constantly extended; for California is still largely in an experimental stage of development. The experiment with ostrich-farming near Anaheim has resulted successfully, and other farms have been started near Los Angeles. I visited the original farm near Anaheim. The keeper, an Englishman imported from Africa, showed me a fine lot of healthy birds and some beautiful specimens of feathers, naming prices which, if they were advertised by a New York house, would create a riot among “bargain”-seeking women; for it is to be hoped that women, having abandoned the vulgar fashion of wearing stuffed bird-corpses on their hats, will return to their old love, the delicate plumes of the ostrich, the wearing of which involves no cruel massacre of innocents. And California has another kind of plume to which the attention of women should be directed, the product of what might be called the vegetable ostrich,—pampas grass. Nothing more exquisite for a vase or for a (fan-shaped) wall ornament could be imagined than these bushy white (or colored) plumes, which in Los Angeles County attain the height of thirty-six inches, not including the stem. Formerly, when these plumes were imported from South America, florists charged a dollar or even a dollar and a half apiece for them; now the retail price is twenty-five cents, and the wholesale price three or four cents. Vast quantities are being exported to Europe, and Southern California is able to supply the demand of several continents, as the pampas grass, like most plants, grows there like a weed.

A dark cloud has, however, lately risen, and is for the moment casting an ominous shadow over the cheerful prospects of California. All the products so far mentioned are, of course, subordinate in importance to the grape crop; and the California grape-vine has been for several years threatened by an enemy more dangerous, because more obscure, than the phylloxera. A few years ago some of the grape-vines in Los Angeles County suddenly began to die out. Among these were some of the oldest vineyards, eighty years old or more. Indeed, the old Mission grape was the first to be attacked. Then followed other varieties, always in the same order in each vineyard. The disease begins at the tip of the vines and slowly spreads downwards, the roots being affected last. The second season the crop is a comparative failure, and the third the vineyard is a graveyard. One lady told me she had dug up and used for fuel as many as eighty thousand of her vines within a few years. The disease is said to be not phylloxera nor mildew; nor have the chemical experts who have examined the vines been able to throw any light on the matter, except by attributing the decay to a kind of cellular degeneration. Various theories are being discussed, and the owners of the vineyards meanwhile console themselves with the statement that a similar mysterious disease affected the grapes of Sicily and Madeira at one time, and disappeared after a few years, allowing the young vines to grow as before. What causes them to look with comparative indifference on this temporary (as they hope) interruption of business is the fact that there has been an over-production of grapes, in consequence of which the price of wine has fallen to unprofitable figures. An interruption of a few years in this excessive production would raise the prices, and thus pay for the losses now sustained.

In the meantime the wine-growers would do well to ponder the fact that quality is of much more value, financially and gastronomically, than quantity. Labor is scarce in harvest-time, and, to save trouble, too many of the small growers neglect to pick out the green and sour grapes, which therefore vitiate the juice of the whole bunch; or else they intrust the cleaning of their old barrels to ignorant Chinamen (the Indians have all disappeared), with equally disastrous results. Too many Eastern people have contracted absurd prejudices against California wines, because chance threw some of this sour wine into their cellars. But it may be safely stated that the average California claret and white wine and port are superior to the wine that may be bought for the same money in France and Germany and elsewhere. The _labels_ of famous French wines and Cognacs are for sale openly in the show-cases of country stores in Los Angeles County! These honest folks are practically compelled to use this stratagem. They would much prefer to sell their best wines under California labels, in order to build up their reputation. And if California wine-growers used the same caution as those of Europe, this subterfuge would no longer be necessary. I have tasted old Zinfandel equal to the best French château wines, because made with the same care, and it fetched almost as high a price in San Francisco as foreign wines.

Whatever may be the outcome of the present vineyard epidemic, Southern California will have plenty of other things to fall back upon. A few years ago it looked as if all the crops were to be neglected, comparatively, and a specialty made of building hotels for invalids and tourists. Among the special attractions for tourists is quail-hunting in the foothills. The physician already referred to kindly took me out on an afternoon hunt. We drove in a tough two-horse buggy, up and down hill and along the dry bed of a brook, carefully dodging the bristling cactus bushes, which are apt to make a deep impression on “tenderfoot” visitors, less by the grotesque manner in which their fleshy leaves are stuck on one another at odd angles than by their fish-hook-like spines. These prickly leaves are so arranged that nothing larger than a quail or a rabbit can get under their protecting shadows. The dogs give them a wide berth, and the quail can only be shot on the wing if they are alarmed and fly from one group of cactus bushes to another. The result of an hour’s buggy-hunting was nine quails, three pigeons, and two rabbits.

II.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IN WINTER.

A COLLAPSED “BOOM”—LOS ANGELES TO-DAY—PROSPECTS FOR
IMMIGRANTS—POULTRY AND CATTLE—FIVE SOURCES OF WATER FOR
IRRIGATION—WINDMILLS, AND TUNNELS UNDER RIVER BEDS.

In 1887 all the hotels in Los Angeles were overcrowded, the post-office almost unable to get through with its business, the city growing like an asparagus stalk after an April shower, and the demand for labor so great that the workmen could practically dictate their own terms. The smaller towns and would-be towns had also caught the infection, and were building huge hotels, cement sidewalks, and street-car lines; not because it was supposed that towns of two thousand inhabitants needed such things, but in order to be able to advertise in the Eastern papers and in real-estate circulars that the place had street-car lines, cement sidewalks, and hotels “with all the modern conveniences.” Each town printed a special illustrated pamphlet in which its unique attractions, as compared with all rivals, were set forth, culminating in the claim that its township was the “Italy of America” or of the West; while San Diego brought matters to a climax by styling itself “the Italy of Southern California.”

In 1889, when I made my second visit to Los Angeles County, I found everywhere evidences that the boom had collapsed. The street-car lines in the small towns barely paid expenses, though it was regarded as an act of local patriotism to ride on them; and the cement sidewalks, which had been prolonged far into the fields, had failed to charm into existence the rows of houses that had been looked for. In the metropolis itself, workmen were grumbling at insufficient employment, merchants clamored that their rents were fifty per cent too high, many store windows were pasted with closing-out notices, real-estate offices were no longer as abundant as saloons, and the bookstores, more wretchedly supplied than those of any town of ten thousand inhabitants in the United States, were even selling the twenty-cent paper novels at “cut rates.” The newspapers of Northern California, of Oregon, Washington, and other Western States as far east as Kansas, which had long been jealous of the prosperity of Southern California, and desired a boom of their own, crowed loudly over the “busted boom” of Los Angeles, while the papers of that city, no longer compelled by the pressure of real-estate advertisements to add two or four extra pages to their issues, had daily elaborate editorials to disprove the allegations of their envious rivals.

An unprejudiced observer, interested only in the climate and the scenery, and not in the real estate, of Southern California, could not but admit, from the signs just noted, that these “envious rivals” were right in insisting that the boom had collapsed; but the inferences drawn from this fact, that Southern California had been overpraised, and that its road was to be down hill in the future, were absurd. Southern California cannot be overpraised, and, in my humble opinion, its prospects are brighter than those of any other portion of the United States. To a large extent the late boom was nothing but a huge gambling scheme, an epidemic of wild land-speculation, which carried along in its rush thousands of thoughtless victims, like the mad stampede for Oklahoma. Southern Californians knew better than others that the sudden rise in their land prices were artificially stimulated and would be followed by a reaction; but they were bound to make hay while the sun shone, and found to their delight that the sun shone longer in California than elsewhere, in the metaphorical sense as well as in reality. At last the storm came, and swept away many of the “tenderfeet,” or late comers, and their new buildings, whose débris is now lying about, so to speak, and is pointed at as a terrible warning and lesson; but the only lesson it does teach is that people should avoid real-estate gambling. The fragments of the ruins will soon be cleared away, and then it will be found that, although many individuals have suffered during the storm, the State as a whole has been benefited by it.

In many cases the large, useless hotels built in the small towns have already been secured at a bargain for school buildings, and in the larger cities many public works have been provided which, without the artificial stimulus of the boom, would have been postponed to the indefinite future; as, for instance, the long flume, costing almost a million of dollars, which now provides San Diego and vicinity with abundant pure water, and will do more to develop the resources of the county than the discovery of several gold mines. Los Angeles made the great mistake of not building a sewer to the sea during flush times, and now suffers under the disadvantage of vitiated air, which, if not remedied, will destroy its reputation as a health resort.

In other respects, Los Angeles is already recovering from the effects of the collapse. Fine new buildings are again going up, the streets are always animated, and the cable-car tracks have been lately prolonged into the picturesque hilly region behind the city, which affords the finest imaginable sites for suburban cottages, with superb views of the mountains, and a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, fourteen miles away. Though founded in 1781, Los Angeles had less than five thousand inhabitants in 1860, and only thirteen thousand in 1880, while to-day it has sixty thousand or more. Thirteen years ago no railroad connected it with other parts of the world, while to-day it is one of the greatest railroad centres in the West. And as it still remains, what it always was, unsurpassed by any city in the world for climatic and scenic advantages, it has every reason to look forward to a prosperous and brilliant future.

Southern California includes five counties,—Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Bernardino, and San Diego,—embracing, as General N. A. Miles points out, “a territory nearly the size of the State of New York, and with natural resources of ten times its value.” This seems a big statement, but its truth can be realized, without the use of figures, by considering that these five counties are capable of supplying the United States with all the figs, raisins, prunes, wine, olives and olive oil, oranges, lemons, nuts, and canned fruits that are now imported from France, Italy, and Spain; most of them, with proper care, equal in quality if not superior to the imported articles. Although large quantities of all these fruits are already raised, they are a mere trifle compared with what the soil is capable of yielding to a larger population. It has been proved over and over again that ten to twenty acres of good irrigable land are all that is needed to support a family, and there is therefore room for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. However, it is candidly admitted that Southern California is a land of more promise to the farmer who has at his disposal a capital of a few thousand dollars than to the emigrant who brings with him little but a team and a pair of muscular arms; for improved land, with bearing vines and fruit trees, costs from one hundred to five hundred dollars an acre, while unimproved land, though it may be had for one-fifth those prices (twenty to one hundred dollars), yields no return for several years, unless grain is raised; for all of the semi-tropical fruits above named require from three or four to ten years before a profitable crop is yielded.

And yet personal observation has led me to believe that there are special opportunities in this region precisely for the farmer with limited means, if he is willing to curb his ambition and content himself with dairy farming and the raising of poultry on a large scale for the market. The farmers now settled in Southern California are so ambitious to become orange, olive, or vineyard kings that they entirely neglect the farmyard, and have hardly enough milk and butter and vegetables for home consumption. It is almost impossible in any part of Southern California to get a good piece of beef or mutton, and chickens are imported by the carload from Kansas and other “Eastern” States, and sold at absurdly high prices at Los Angeles, although in this mild climate it is easy to raise chickens all the year round, and I have myself seen splendid broods of young ones grow up in about half the time they need in the East to reach a marketable size, the simple precaution being taken of providing them with dry housing during rainy nights. If this is not done, their growth is remarkably retarded, and many of them become diseased, and, if not killed or isolated, will infect a whole yardful of poultry.

Cattle-raising, too, must prove profitable in a region where the animals can feed on the green foothills and valleys all the “winter,” and in summer eat the sun-dried grass or clover which covers the whole country. The wild, clover-like alfileria, which furnishes most of this natural hay, grows in profusion along the roadsides and in the meadows, and even fills up the empty patches in the cactus fields. After the spring rains it attains a height of ten to fifteen inches, with a dozen plants to the square inch, and is so juicy and tender that one can mow it down with a cane or with the hands; and a week later it is as high as if it had never been cut. It looks so luscious and sweet as to almost make one long to be a cow or a sheep, in order to be really “in clover” for once. Again, the cultivated clover, or Chilian alfalfa, if sufficiently irrigated, yields half-a-dozen or more crops of hay a year, which makes the sweetest butter and meat in the world. Yet the Southern Californians, as I have just said, import most of their butter and meat; consequently, if some farmers should undertake to supply the local market with homemade products, fresher and cheaper, because with no freight charges on them, they would have a sure source of prosperity before them. It is probable that the drought of 1863–64 discouraged the cattle business; but there has been none since that time, and with the present railway facilities and a reasonable foresight in storing hay, no disaster need be feared in the future. Moreover, one of the best and cheapest kinds of cattle food, pumpkins, as large as beer-barrels, can be raised here by the thousand with hardly any trouble or expense. Sometimes they lie in a field so densely that one might walk over it without touching the ground; and I saw several fields in which hundreds of fine pumpkins, for which the farmers had no use, owing to the scarcity of cattle, were left to rot on the ground.

Before purchasing land in California of the South, it is well that the investor should have made up his mind in regard to what branch of agriculture he wishes to devote himself. For although it is one of the chief advantages of this soil that it can be made to produce most of the fruits of the temperate and semi-tropical, and some of the tropical zones, yet each township or locality has its special adaptedness for this or that product, and to ignore this is to labor under disadvantages. Thus, Riverside and vicinity have been found most favorable to the culture of the orange, because the destructive scale-bug does not flourish here as it does nearer to the coast. Of lemons, the finest specimens are grown near the Mexican border, in San Diego County, which also furnishes some of the best raisins and olives. Santa Barbara County yields the finest pampas plumes and the best walnuts, and Los Angeles County is still the wine centre of the South, notwithstanding the ravages of the mysterious vine disease. The conclusion, too, is being gradually reached that for vineyards the foothills are the best localities, since in Europe all the best vines are raised on the hill-sides. Plants of a distinctly tropical type, also, like tea, bananas, etc., might perhaps be successfully raised on the lower foothills, which have an immunity from the light frost that occasionally, in winter and spring, visits the lowlands near the ocean. And besides these facts, it is well to know that in the same locality the soil often presents great differences, so that in a twenty-acre field one-half may be well adapted for the orange or olive, while the other half needs a different crop. Above all things, “tenderfeet” should beware of buying land immediately after the spring rains; for then the whole face of the country is covered with a rich carpet of grass and flowers, so that it is difficult to distinguish the good land from the sand-bottomed site of a former river bed, useless for anything but cactus.

Finally comes the most important of all questions,—the facilities for irrigation. Grain, if sown in winter or early spring, ordinarily needs only the regular rains of the season to reach maturity, and there are localities where many other crops can be raised without irrigation; but these are the exception, and as a general thing the semi-tropical fruits which constitute the specialty of Southern California, need water for profitable culture. So well is this now understood that it is a favorite joke of the natives to say that if you pay for the air and water, they will throw in the land gratis.

Fortunately there are no fewer than six sources from which crops are supplied with water, if we include rain. For small vegetable or flower gardens sufficient water can be raised by means of windmills, which are kept in brisk motion every afternoon by the sea-breeze in the whole region within twenty or thirty miles of the ocean, except during two or three of the “rainy months,” when they are not needed. These mills also supply the kitchen, and it is curious to note how cold the water remains in the large tanks exposed all day long to a semi-tropical sun. Much of the water used in town and orchard is supplied by artesian wells, which, however, occur only in certain belts, especially in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, although none of these, I believe, equal one dug in Sonoma County last winter, which is one hundred and fifteen feet deep, cost only two hundred dollars, and yields almost half a million gallons every day.

Rivers of the size of the Sacramento, or those of Oregon, Southern California has none, but there are some smaller rivers and a large number of creeks, fed by the mountain snows, which are tapped in two ways for irrigating purposes,—on the surface and below the bed. The surface water is often carried many miles in ditches; and wise is the community which lines its ditch at once with cement, else in summer it loses almost two-thirds of its water supply by absorption on the way. The Santa Ana River, which is quite a respectable stream in winter, and after rains becomes a formidable torrent, liable to overflow its banks and change its channel (thereby causing boundary disputes), is in summer tapped so freely that its bed becomes dry, and not a drop reaches the ocean.

Much more curious than this surface tapping, however, is the tunnelling, by means of which the water which has buried itself beneath the sandy river bed, as if to escape the merciless pillaging of the hot sun and the greedy farmers, is brought to the surface again and utilized. It is in this way that the Santa Ana River is despoiled of its last drop, and the value of this procedure may be estimated from the statement made by the San Bernardino _Times_, that “the Ontario Land Company has driven a tunnel in under San Antonio Creek, a distance of nearly eighteen hundred feet, at a cost of about fifty-two thousand dollars, and they have about two hundred and fifty inches of water, worth a quarter of a million of dollars.” As it hardly ever rains during the summer, all the water thus drawn off the rivers in the irrigating season comes from the springs and the melting snows in the mountains. This is just about sufficient for the present needs of the population; but no fears need be entertained for the future, since, as the rural population increases, it will become profitable to expend large sums in building reservoirs in the cañons to store the abundant winter water which now runs to waste in the ocean. In this way the mountains can be made to yield an absolutely unlimited amount of water, sufficient to support tens of millions; and the lesson taught by the Johnstown disaster will prevent the dams from being carelessly constructed.

III.

THE GREAT AMERICAN PARADISE.

VALUE OF RESERVOIRS—WINTER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA—FLOWERS
AND SUNSHINE—WHERE RAIN MEANS “BETTER WEATHER”—DRY AIR AND
SEA-BREEZES—FOGS AND FROST—CALIFORNIA FOR INVALIDS AS COMPARED
WITH ITALY, SPAIN, AND AFRICA—RURAL CITIES OF THE FUTURE—THE
PACIFIC ANDALUSIA—SOME DISADVANTAGES—GOPHERS, DUST-STORMS,
DROUGHT—ENEMIES OF THE ORANGE AND VINE.

That there could be no better way of investing capital than by building reservoirs is shown by the fact, recently pointed out by the California State Board of Trade, that ten years ago the lands of Fresno sold at from three dollars to twenty dollars per acre, while now, with water on it, the same land sells at from seventy-five to seven hundred and fifty dollars per acre. Equally great is the gain from an æsthetic point of view. Without water, four-fifths of Southern California is a dreary cactus desert during the greater part of the year; with water, it is a veritable garden grove. Nothing could be more delightful than to watch the effect of water in this magic climate, when the first rains fall in October or November. Up to that period everything except the irrigated garden and orchard oases wears a parched yellow and brown aspect; but hardly has the rain penetrated a few inches into the soil, when the grass turns green, and before the eye has become accustomed to the change, gaudy flowers, gradually increasing in variety and abundance, spring up on all sides, even on land which appeared to be pure sand, but which on closer examination proves to be rich in decomposed vegetable matter. The irrigated gardens have an abundance of choice flowers all the year round, and the garden of the house where I lived, though without the slightest pretensions, had in full bloom, in January, petunias, calla lilies, violets, honeysuckles, geraniums (six feet in height), stock, California poppy, hyacinths, smilax, heliotropes, nasturtiums, red, white, yellow, and _green_ roses, etc. In February a frost nipped the leaves of the bananas, heliotropes, and nasturtiums, but in a few days they were out again; and of the three or four subsequent frosts none was heavy enough to injure them, while the other flowers mentioned grew uninjured all the “winter.” This was at Anaheim, twelve miles from the sea and twenty-eight miles south of Los Angeles, and gives a better idea of the climate than columns of statistics. Nor was it an exceptional year; for there are orange-trees in the State over eighty years old, and at the San Fernando Rey Mission olive-trees over a hundred years old, proving that in all this period there has been no frost sufficiently severe or prolonged to injure these sensitive trees. In 1880 a little snow fell in Los Angeles County—just enough to astonish the young folks, who had never before seen any; nor have they seen any since. The only time when ice ever forms (never more than a quarter of an inch in thickness) is immediately before sunrise, and hardly has the sun risen above the horizon when it disappears again.

To this short duration of the occasional frosts is attributed the fact that they do not kill the semi-tropical vegetation, as happens occasionally in Southern Europe; and at nine or ten o’clock the California farmers may be seen ploughing for their winter wheat, in shirt-sleeves. Hence sufferers from pulmonary complaints who cannot endure cold will not know that the thermometer ever reaches freezing-point if they remain in bed till the sun has been out for half an hour. Immediately after sunset they will again need the protection of the house, or of a spring overcoat, as the temperature at that time suddenly drops ten to thirty degrees. But while the sun shines, they cannot afford or desire to lose its rays for a single minute. It is the very luxury of existence to walk, ride, or hunt in the Southern California February sunshine. The oldest inhabitants, used to it as they are, cannot help muttering every morning, “What a fine day!” January, February, March, and April, the very four months which are the most disagreeable of the twelve in the East, are here the most perfect: the sky of the deepest blue, the air neither cold nor warm, exhilarating and laden with the perfumes of orange blossoms and wild flowers. There are, of course, some disagreeable days, but they are few and far between, there being but twelve to twenty rainy days in Los Angeles County during the whole “rainy season” from November to May, so that invalids hardly ever miss their sun-bath. Dr. C. B. Bates mentions, in the _Southern California Practitioner_, the case of a consumptive who kept a record of the weather at Santa Barbara, and found that in a year there were but fifteen days upon which he was confined to the house, ten of them being rainy and five windy; and another case of a lady who, without any other than a brush shelter, spent all of eighteen months, except nine nights, in the open air.

This will appear the more remarkable in view of a certain peculiarity of Southern California rains. Elsewhere people often exclaim, “If we only had fine weather in the daytime, I shouldn’t care how much it rained at night!” Here this wish is fulfilled, for most of the rain falls at night. Some will be ready to cry out against the “eternal monotony” of this sunshine; but on arriving on the ground they will find this objection purely theoretical, and will be only too glad to know that they can make projects for work or pleasure, for picnics or excursions, weeks ahead, with an almost absolute certainty of having fine weather. Still, there are a few day-showers to break the “monotony,” and they make up in profusion what they lack in frequency—a fascinating spectacle to the senses, and still more to the imagination, which evokes pictures of prosperous grain-fields and lovely flower-meadows. Surely that must be pronounced an ideal climate for an invalid and valetudinarian where every rainy day, even during the so-called rainy season, is regarded as a special dispensation of a kind Providence, is commented upon in jubilant editorials by the journalists (who had for some time predicted “better weather,” _i. e._ rain), and is recorded in telegraphic tables noting the daily rainfall in every town, to the hundredth of an inch! And be it admitted that there is ground for this jubilation; for in three years out of ten the rainfall is insufficient, and then the crops suffer, except where irrigation is practised.

In this immunity from rain-storms, Southern California possesses a great advantage over other winter resorts for invalids, but it is only one out of half-a-dozen advantages which may here be briefly touched upon. The first and most important is the dryness of the atmosphere, which favors the rapid radiation of the earth’s heat, so that the nights are always cool enough for refreshing sleep, even in midsummer; and sleep is the best of all medicines. So dry is this air that strips of beef can be jerked in it by simply letting them hang outdoors till desiccated. And the strangest part of it is that the sea-breeze, which always blows during the hottest hours of the day, is a dry wind, too—a circumstance which some have tried to account for by considering it a sort of undertow, or a wave of air which came from the dry desert lands to the eastward, and returns thither, absorbing but little moisture during its brief contact with the ocean. But whatever the cause of this dryness, it is a great hygienic factor, which this region can play out as one of its highest trumps against Florida and Italy. No enervating, malarial swamp winds, no sultriness, such as often makes suicide a welcome thought in the East, will ever oppress any one in this Western sanitarium, not even during the rainy spells. Nor has California ever suffered from yellow fever, like Florida, or from the cholera, which is a frequent menace in Spain, Italy, and Sicily. Again, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Europe as well as in Africa, the invalid will find it almost impossible to obtain comfortable lodgings and proper food, except in the large cities, while in California he can find home comforts in any village and many farmhouses in the midst of the wildest scenery and purest air. Never will his nostrils be offended here by the pestilential odors which poison the air within a radius of several miles of Italian and Spanish cities; nor will he ever be compelled by the muddy condition of the streets to take his walks all winter long on the roof of the hotel, as the proprietor of the Continental at Tangier told me some of his invalid winter-guests did. What a life compared with the floral walks, the hunting, fishing, and picnicking on the dry ground and under the blue, rainless sky of Los Angeles or San Diego County! Surely, Southern California is destined to become the sanitarium, not only of America, but of Europe as well.

What makes the fulfilment of this prophecy the more probable is the circumstance that California is an all-the-year-round sanitarium, and not one of the mere winter resorts which compel the unwilling invalids to pack up and seek a new clime, when May is gone. No one would dream of spending the summer at Malaga, Cannes, Naples, Palermo, Algiers, or Jacksonville, exposed to a sultry, malarial atmosphere, and the danger of deadly epidemics; whereas California has countless places where summer and winter are alike, or rather alike unknown, the only season known being an eternal spring. Many residents in our Eastern and Middle States have often wondered what has become of the spring, which used to form one of our seasons. It has followed the general tide of immigration, has gone West, and may now be found in riotous exuberance along the coast and the foothills of California. Not that all parts of Southern California are as exempt from a summer season as they are of winter. On the contrary, there are many most desirable winter resorts which invalids and tourists will be only too glad to abandon in June, such as Riverside, and other places too far in the interior to get the benefit of the afternoon sea-breezes. Even so near the sea as Los Angeles, it is by no means pleasant to be exposed directly to the rays of the July sun; yet, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere,—which, moreover, increases as the heat increases,—100° is not so oppressive here as 90° in New York. Besides, in the East there is no refuge from the all-pervading heat, except in a cellar; whereas here one needs only to step in the shade to find relief, the difference between the sunny and the shady side of a house running as high as 30°. Finally, as Southern California has an average width of only forty miles, it takes only an hour or two to reach the sea-coast, where it is always pleasant; and cool mountain resorts are equally accessible everywhere, as can be seen by a glance at the map, which is blackened by groups and chains of mountains, attaining in the San Bernardino range a height of over eleven thousand feet. No wonder that camping is the favorite pastime of the Californian in summer, and not only of the wealthy; for as the farmer does all his work in winter, he can lie fallow in summer, like his somnolent fields, and pitch his tent along any beach or cañon he chooses; and camp-life is so inexpensive, especially when rod and rifle are available, that the poorest can indulge in this luxury during the warmest months.