glittering city, the tall Norwegian said to me: "I have sailed all about
this world and visited many cities, but San Francisco suits me the very
best of them all." And his black-eyed Tartar wife from Moscow exclaimed:
"Ah, I will never leave here till I die." All who visit San Francisco
feel this subtle charm. There is a certain something in the air that
soothes as well as stirs. Its lawns and flowers where water is applied;
its sunshine, never too hot, for it is tempered by the breezes from the
sea; no winter, rarely a dash of snow; no torrid sun; an atmosphere
almost gentle, yet not destroying energy.
Leaving San Francisco, we took the little narrow-gauge railway that
leads out south of the city, skirts the bay and climbs the Coast Range
through the famous grove of immense redwood trees that comes down to the
sea at Santa Cruz. A pretty village among gardens and orchards of prunes
and apricots and almonds, famous for its flowers and its fish. On the
long pier we watched the Italian fishermen mending their nets and
loading them into their lateen-sailed boats. Here the rainbow-hued
Barroda is caught in the deep sea and shipped to the city; while,
sitting all along the pier, were old folks and young catching smelts
with hook and line. An old man with long, white beard said to me, as he
took off a smelt and put it in his creel, "If a man has nothing to do
but just to live, this is the most salubrious spot along this coast.
I've tried them all."
[Illustration: ITALIAN FISHING CRAFT AT SANTA CRUZ.]
[Illustration: APPROACHING SAN FRANCISCO.]
From Santa Cruz we went over to the quaint old Spanish town of Monterey,
once California's capital, now the barrack sanitarium of Uncle Sam's
soldier boys, and upon whose quiet main street still dwells the
Mexican-Spanish beauty to whom Tecumseh Sherman once made love, and in
whose garden yet grows the pomegranate he planted in token of their
tryst. She has never wed, but treasures yet the memory of her soldier
lover.
Near Monterey is that marvelously lovely park, surrounding the great Del
Monte Hotel, built by Crocker and Stanford and Huntington in their days
of power, and where, among groves and lawns and gardens, winds the
seventeen-mile drive of which the world has heard so much. Imagine the
parks of Blenheim and Chatsworth and Windsor all combined, but filled
with palmettos and palms and semi-tropical verdure--giant live oaks and
Norfolk pines and splendid redwood, with all the flowers of the earth,
with ponds and fountains, and you will have some faint conception of the
beauty of Del Monte, an object-lesson of what the landscape gardener may
do in California. We regretted leaving this superb place, but were glad
to have had even a glimpse of it.
All the day we now hastened south on the flying "Coast Limited," bound
for Santa Barbara. First ascending the broad valley of Salinas River,
the Coast Range close on our right, a higher range of mountains on our
left, until, converging, we pierced the barrier by a long tunnel and
slid down to San Louis Obispo and then to the sea. Many monstrous fields
of sugar beet, miles of prune and almond and apricot trees, thriving
orchards all of them; then mile after mile of wheat stubble, stacks of
wheat straw, piles of sacked wheat at the by-stations; then herds of
cattle and many horses as we reached the head of the valley. A rich and
fecund land, held originally in big estates, now beginning to be cut up
into the smaller farms of the fruit growers.
Toward the end of the afternoon we were skirting along by the
breaker-lashed coast of the Pacific. A clear sky, a violent wind and
tempestuous, foam-covered sea. We sat with the windows open, not minding
the heat of the sun. The tide was at ebb, and upon the sand we saw many
sea birds, gulls in myriads, snipe, plover, yellow-legs, sand-pipers in
flocks, coots and curlew. We also passed a number of carriages driving
close to the receding waters.
[Illustration: THE FRANCISCAN GARDEN--SANTA BARBARA.]
[Illustration: OUR FRANCISCAN GUIDE.]
[Illustration: THE SEA--SANTA BARBARA.]
[Illustration: THE SEA--SANTA BARBARA.]
The country grew constantly warmer, the soil responding to cultivation
with more and more luxuriant crops; among these, fields of lima beans,
miles of them, which are threshed out and shipped in enormous quantity.
It was dark when we drew in at Santa Barbara, and we did not know what
hotel to go to, but, tossing up, chose the Potter. Many runners were
calling their hostelries; the Potter porter alone was silent. As we
drove in his 'bus through the palm-bordered streets, a cozy home showing
here and there in the glare of an electric street light, we
wondered what our luck would be. Imagine our delight when we drew up at
the stately portal of a modern palace, built in the Spanish style and
right on the borders of the sea. The moon was almost full, the tide near
flood, the sunset breeze had died, the sea air soft and sweet, and the
palace ours! A new hotel, two millions its cost, no finer on the Pacific
Coast. And in this off season the prices were most moderate. Nowhere yet
have we been so sumptuously housed. In the lovely dining-room we sat at
supper by a big window looking out over the moonlit sea.
In the morning we wandered far down upon the beach, watching the
breakers beyond the point, and later went up to the famous old
Franciscan Monastery, a mile beyond the town. A shrewd yet simple father
in brown monk's robe who asked many questions of the outside world,
showed us all about, and in the garden stood for his photograph, quite
pleased at the attention. No more charming wintering spot have we yet
come to than Santa Barbara.
In the late evening we entrained again and took the local for Los
Angeles. For quite an hour and a half we ran close to the ocean, the
perpetual breaking of the crested waves upon the shore sounding above
the roar of the moving train. A yet greener land we now passed through,
everywhere watered by irrigation, everywhere responding with seemingly
greater luxuriance. It was just dusk as we turned inland, and quite dark
when we came through the big tunnel into the head waters of the Los
Angeles Valley. Just then a bright young fellow sat down beside me, and,
talking with him, I was pleased to find him from West Virginia. A. Judy,
from Pendleton County. A few years ago the family had come to this
southern land and all have prospered. He was full of the zest of the
life that wins.
Presently we came to many lights among shade trees, mostly palms, then
houses and more lights, wide streets showing themselves. We were in Los
Angeles, the metropolis of Southern California, the furthest south that
on this journey we shall go.
FIFTEENTH LETTER.
LOS ANGELES.
LOS ANGELES, October 13, 1903.
We slept in Los Angeles with our windows wide open and felt no chill in
the dry, balmy air, although a gentle breeze from seaward sifted through
the lace curtains all night long. The sun was streaming in when at last
we awoke to the sound of New England church bells. We breakfasted on
plates piled high with big, red, sweet strawberries, dead ripe, evenly
ripe, but not one whit over ripe. A ripeness and sweetness we have never
before tasted, even in Oxford. In Seattle and Tacoma we met the royal
crab of the Puget Sound, and found him big and bigger than the crabs of
England and of France--big as dinner plates, all of them, and now we
find in the great, luscious strawberry of Los Angeles another American
product as big as those that grow in the gardens of merrie England.
Los Angeles! How can I tell you of it and of the lovely region of the
American Riviera all round about it? My ideas of Los Angeles had been
indefinite. I had only heard of it. I only knew that up in Dawson and in
Alaska the frost-stung digger for gold dreams of Southern California and
the country of Los Angeles, and when, during his seven long months of
winter and darkness, he assures himself of his stake and his fortune,
he talks of the far south and prepares to go there and to end his days
among these orange groves and olive orchards and teeming gardens. And
when he dies--so it is said--every good Yukoner and Alaskan has no other
prayer than to be translated to Southern California! So I had imagined
much for this perhaps most charming of all regions of the semi-tropics,
within the immediate borders of the United States. But I had not yet
conceived the fine, modern city among all of this delight of climate and
of verdure. A city with broad, asphalted business streets, built up on
either side with new, modern sky-scrapers far exceeding in bigness those
of San Francisco. The edifices bordering Market Street in San Francisco
are fine, but old in type--most or all erected thirty or forty years
ago--while the many huge blocks of Los Angeles are as up to date as
those of New York. It possesses two hundred miles of modern electric
tramways, and H. E. Huntington has sold out his holdings in the Southern
Pacific left him by his uncle, C. P. Huntington, and has put and is now
putting his millions into the electric tramway system of Los Angeles.
[Illustration: MARENGO AVENUE--PASADENA.]
[Illustration: STREET VIEW--LOS ANGELES.]
During the morning we rode some thirty miles upon the tourist's car,
seeing the city, its many fine parks, its public buildings, its business
blocks, its extraordinary extent of imposing residences. And when we
might ride no longer, we strolled on through Adams Street and Chester
Place and St. James Place, and among those sections of the residence
quarter where no tramways are allowed to profane the public way. And
here among these modern palaces, perhaps, we learned to comprehend the
real inwardness of Los Angeles' astonishing growth, for many of these
superb homes are not built and owned by the business men making fortunes
out of the commerce of the city, but are built and owned by those who
have already acquired fortunes in other parts of the United States and
of the world, and who by reason of the genial climate of Southern
California, have come here to live out the balance of their days. Their
incomes are derived from sources elsewhere than in California, and they
spend freely of those incomes in the region of their new homes. The
exquisite lawns, the flowering shrubs, the tropical and semi-tropical
palms and palmettos, all kept and cared for by means of the constant use
of water and expert gardeners' skill, give to the city a residence
section of marvelous charm. Water does it all, and man helps the water.
Los Angeles possesses many fine churches and schools and two flourishing
colleges. One run by the Methodist Church; the other under the control
of the State. From a city of twenty-five thousand in 1890, Los Angeles
is now grown to one hundred and twenty-five thousand, and is still
expanding by leaps and bounds. It is the center of the gardens and
orchards and citrus fruit trade of Southern California, and is the Mecca
toward whose environs comes in perpetual procession the unending army
of the world's "One Lungers," and their friends.
Of an afternoon we rode out to Pasadena in the swift, through electric
train. Once a separate community, now already become a suburb of the
greater growing city. "The finest climate on the earth," they say, and
mankind from all parts of the earth are there to prove it. A large town
of residences, each standing apart in its own garden; many surrounded by
oranges and pomegranates and figs. Lovely homes and occupied by a
cultivated society.
We did not tarry to see the celebrated ostrich farm, which is one of the
famous sights of Pasadena, but went on toward the mountain chain beyond
and north of Pasadena to the base of towering Mount Low, and climbed
right up its face a thousand feet on an inclined plane steeper than any
of Kanawha's, and then another thousand feet by five miles of winding
electric railway. A wonderful ride into the blue sky, with a yet more
wonderful panorama stretching for many miles beneath our feet. All the
valley of the Los Angeles, the innumerable towns and villages and farms
and groves and orchards and vineyards stretching far as the eye could
see until bounded by the mountains of Mexico to the south, and the
shimmering waters of the Pacific to the west, and to the north and east
a limitless expanse of scarred and serrated volcanic mountain ranges,
like the gigantic petrified waves of a mighty sea. Below us the perfect
verdure of irrigated land, the patches and masses of greenness
everywhere threaded and interspersed by the irrigating ditches and pools
and ponds whereby the precious water is impounded and distributed when
used.
Los Angeles lies very near the center of an immense cove, whose sea line
marks the great indenture on the southwest of the United States, where
the coast bends in from Cape Conception and curves southeastward to the
borders of Mexico, a total coastal frontage on the Pacific Ocean of near
three hundred miles.
On the north, the mountains of the Coast Range, and the westward jutting
spurs of the Sierra Nevada come together and form a barrier against the
cold northern airs. Eastward their extension forms a high barrier
against the colder airs of the Rocky Mountain region. Los Angeles lies
at about the point where these protecting mountain ranges recede to near
sixty miles from the sea, itself some twenty and thirty miles from the
twin ports of Santa Monica and San Pedro, and is the commercial center
of this rich alluvial and sheltered region, of which Santa Barbara, on a
lovely bay, is the chief northern center, and San Diego, one hundred and
fifty miles to the south, upon the second finest harbor in California,
is the most southern port and trade outlet. A vast "ventura," as the
Spaniards called it, upon this fertile plain and rolling upland anything
will grow if only it has water. For three or four months in the year,
from early November to March, the skies pour down an ample rainfall, and
the world is a garden. During the other eight months, man--the active
American--now irrigates the land with water stored during the rainy
season, and thus a perpetual and prolific yield is won from the fecund
soil. Here the famous seedless orange was discovered, perpetuated, and
has become the most coveted citrous fruit. Fortunes have been made from
the raising of these oranges alone. The immense and fragrant
strawberries ripen every month the year round. Figs and pomegranates
abound. Apples, pears, olives and grapes yield enormous and profitable
crops. No frosts, no drouths. Last year Los Angeles and its contributing
orchards shipped twenty-five thousand carloads of citrous fruit. This
year they reckon to do yet more. Their capacity is only limited by the
markets' demand, and both seem boundless.
The air is dry like that of the Yukon Valley, and similarly, extremes of
temperature are easily borne. It is never unpleasantly hot in Southern
California, they say, just as the Yukoner vows he never suffers from the
cold. "Only give us water to wash our gold;" "water to irrigate our
crops," cries each, "and we will become richer than the mind of man can
think." But the types of men and women are somewhat different in the two
extremes. A sturdier race wins fortune from the soil in the Klondike
land; there the children have rosier faces and are more alert. On the
crowded streets of the southern city the pale presence of the "one
lungers" is at once remarked. But for this, the people might be the
same.
We left this gracious garden land, with its gentle climate, by the
midday train, this time leaving the coast and following the interior San
Joaquin Valley route. Just at the outskirts of the city our train halted
a moment, and, looking from the window, I saw a most astonishing
spectacle--an extensive enclosure with a large, wide-roofed building in
its midst, and enclosure, roof and air all thick with myriads of
pigeons. Here is the greatest pigeon roost of the world, where an
enterprising bird lover raises squabs by the thousands, cans them in his
own factory, and sends them all over the earth to the delight of the
epicure. Just why such myriads of birds should not fly away, I do not
know, but there they were covering the ground, the roof, and filling the
air in circular flights, and seemed rarely or never to leave the borders
of the enclosure.
For a few hours we retraced our way and then turned eastward across the
edge of the great Mojave Desert. Crossing the barrier of the San
Fernando Mountains on the north, through a mile-and-a-half-long tunnel,
we left the greenness of olive grove and orange orchard behind, and came
out into a continually more and more arid country. Cactus and yucca
began to appear and to multiply, the dwarf shrunken palmetto of the
Mexican plains grew more and more plentiful, and then we came through
dry, parched gulches and cañons, out onto a dead flat plain stretching
away toward the eastern horizon as far as the eye could see--sand and
sage brush and stunted cactus; a hundred miles or more away a faint
blue mountain range showing in the slanting sunlight against the eastern
sky. Dry and arid and hopeless to man and beast. A terrible waste to
cross, or even to enter, and lifeless and desolate beyond concept.
During the night we crossed over the high, arid Tehachapi Mountains and
descended into the San Joaquin Valley, traversing that wonderfully
fertile garden land until in the morning we were at Oakland. We then
crossed the five miles of wide harbor and took our last breakfast in the
city of the Golden Gate.
After night had fallen and I sat with my cigar, I chanced to fall in
with an interesting young Jap, "R. Onishi," on his first visit to
America, correspondent of the "Jije Shimpo," Tokio's greatest daily
newspaper. He had come over to investigate the growing rice plantations
of Texas, with a view to Japanese capital becoming interested in
development there. He had been much impressed with the opportunity there
offered, and should report favorably on the proposed enterprise. Not to
use Japanese labor, but for Japanese capital under Japanese management
to use American labor. So does the opportunity and natural wealth of our
country begin to attract the investment of the stored wealth of Asia as
well as of Europe. Like the rice dealer I met on the "Kaiser Frederich,"
crossing the Atlantic two years ago, Mr. Onishi said that American rice
brings the highest price of any in the markets of the world, and he
looks for a large export trade to Asia of American rice, as well as
wheat. And America, how vast and rich and hopeful a land it seemed to
him!
I have now seen almost the entire Pacific Coast of our Northern American
Continent. From Skagway, from Dawson to the sight of Mexico. Its old and
its new towns and cities, its ports and trade centers have I visited,
and greatly has the journey pleased and profited me. The dim perception
of our future Pacific power that first dawned upon me at Vancouver has
now become a settled conviction. We are just beginning to comprehend the
future dominance and potency of our nation in Oriental trade, in
commerce, in wealth, in enlightened supremacy. And it fills the
imagination with boundless sweep to contemplate what are the
possibilities of these great Pacific States.
Among the cities of the future upon the Pacific Coast, Seattle and Los
Angeles are the two that impress me as affording the wider opportunity
and certainty of growth, wealth and controlling influence in trade, in
commerce, in politics. If I were a young man just starting out, I should
choose one of them, and in and through Seattle I believe there is the
larger chance. Or if I were on life's threshold and, say, twenty-five
and vigorous, I would pitch my tent within the confines of the continent
of Alaska, and by energy, thrift and foresight, become one of its
innumerable future millionaires.
SIXTEENTH LETTER.
SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, October 14, 1903.
We left San Francisco on the "Overland Limited" train, taking the ten
o'clock boat across the bay to Oakland and there entering our car. It
was a lovely morning; the sky, blue, without a cloud; the sun,
brilliant, and not so hot as at Los Angeles. The city, as we receded
from it, lay spread before us, stretching several miles along the water
and quite covering the range of hills upon which it is built. Many great
ships were at the quays, many were anchored out in the blue waters
awaiting their turn to take on cargo, and among these several
battleships and cruisers of our navy and one big monitor. Above the city
hung a huge black pall of smoke, for soft coal--very soft--and thick
asphaltic oil are the only fuels on this coast. We had come to San
Francisco by night, and marveled at the myriad of electric lights that
illumined it; we now left it by day, and yet more fully realized its
metropolitan and commercial greatness.
The ride, this time, was not along the northern breadth of the
Sacramento Valley, but by the older route through the longer settled
country to the south of it. Still many immense wheatfields, hundreds of
sheep browsing among the stubble, and yet more of the orchards of
almonds, prunes, apricots, figs and peaches. A monstrous fruit garden,
for more than one hundred miles; and everywhere fruit was drying in the
sun, spread out in acres of small trays.
At Sacramento, we crossed the river on a long iron bridge, and noted the
many steamboats along the wharves--the river is navigable thus far for
steamboats--boats about the size of our Kanawha packets, and flows with
a swift current.
After leaving San Francisco, we began that long ascent, which at last
should carry us over the passes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains some
6,000 feet above the sea. The grades are easy, though persistent, the
track sweeping around mountain bases and along deep valleys in wide
ascending curves. All the day, till evening, we were creeping up, up,
up, following one long ridge and then another, the distant snow summits
always before us and seemingly never much nearer than at first. The
lower slopes were, like the Sacramento Valley, everywhere covered with
well-kept orchards, and everywhere we noted the universal irrigation
ditches of running water, constantly present beside us or traversing our
way.
As we climbed higher we began to see evidences of present and past
placer mining, many of the mountain-sides being scarred and riven by the
monitor-thrown jets of water.
Just as the shadows began to fall aslant the higher valleys, we
commenced that long and irksome journeying through the snowsheds that,
for so many miles, are necessary on this road. Coming over the Canadian
Pacific, we met few snowsheds through the Rockies, and not more than two
or three of them in the Selkirks, but here they buried us early and held
on until long after the fall of night.
This road, you know, was originally the Central Pacific, remaining so
until swallowed by its stronger rival of the south, the Southern
Pacific, which now owns and operates it.
As we rode along, I could not help recalling its early history, the
daring of its projectors, Huntington, Crocker, Stanford and Hopkins, and
how it never could or would have been built at all but for the aid of
the thousands of Chinese who, under their Irish bosses, finally
constructed it.
This morning, when we awoke, we had long passed Reno in Nevada, and were
flying down the Sierras' eastern slopes through the alkali deserts of
the interior basin, and all day long we have been crossing these plains
of sand and sage brush and eternal alkali. We read of things, and think
we are informed, but only when we see the world face to face do we begin
to comprehend it. Only to-day have I learned to comprehend that Desert
and Death are one.
[Illustration: THE SAGEBRUSH AND ALKALI DESERT.]