LOS ANGELES, THE SPELL-BINDER
"_This is the land the sunset washes,
These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
These are the western mystery!_
"_Night after night her purple traffic
Strews the landing with opal bales;
Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
Dip, and vanish with fairy sails._"
EMILY DICKINSON
"_In what ethereal dances!
By what eternal streams!_"
Los Angeles, "the City of the Angels," is invested with the same poetic
suggestion in its name as that which surrounds Santa Fé,--"the City
of the Holy Faith." A terraced street is known as "Angel Flight." Any
retrospective contemplation of Los Angeles gives one the sensation
of having been whirled through the starry immensities of space.
During even a brief stay one afterward discovers by the unerring
logic of mathematics that within a few days he has perhaps travelled
some four hundred miles by the electric trolley cars, besides his
motor-car journeys when shot through space from old San Gabriel to the
Pacific Coast, or from Elysium Park to Hollywood, and far and away
on the opposite side of the city. Were one caught up in an aëro-car,
journeying far above the clouds for ten days, it could hardly seem more
unreal. One can only think of Los Angeles as the City of Vast Spaces.
The town has laid out all the surrounding country, one would fancy, in
beautiful tracts (there are over four thousand), each tract containing
several acres,--laid out under alluring names, with streets, sidewalks,
and lamp-posts.
The "boom" is something tremendous. Companies and corporations run
free electric cars to points forty miles out of town, as Redondo Beach
and other localities, for people to inspect the lots offered,--lots
at prices from "four dollars down, and four dollars a month," with
the entire cost from ninety dollars up to that of several hundred.
If all the world is not supplied with homes it is not the fault of
enterprising Los Angeles. The incomparable electric trolley system
renders the entire region within fifty miles around eligible for
city privileges. People think nothing of going thirty, forty, even
seventy-five miles by the "express electrics." Over an area of a
thousand miles in length and perhaps one hundred and fifty in width
there is scattered a population less than that centred within city
limits in Chicago. The world is wide--in Southern California. There
is nothing of the dreamy, languorous old Spanish atmosphere in Los
Angeles. It is the most electrically up-to-date city imaginable. The
city limits comprise over twenty-eight thousand acres. The streets are
paved and oiled; the lighting is wonderful, most of it being done from
tall towers rather than ordinary lamp-posts. Not even New York has any
street or avenue so illuminated by night as is Broadway in Los Angeles,
where, as in the boulevards in Paris, one can easily read by the
street lights. Los Angeles has twenty-one great parks and innumerable
hills and valleys in the residence regions. This diversity affords
natural facilities for landscape gardening which are utilized with fine
effect. Spacious boulevards, artificial lakes, and series of terraces
everywhere enchant the eye, seen amidst the bewildering luxuriance of
creamy magnolia blossoms and the graceful pepper tree.
The enterprise of Los Angeles is equalled by the refinement and culture
of the people, and the schools, churches, libraries--the social
life--all reveal the best spirit of American institutions.
That this is one of the spellbinding cities goes without saying.
Everything is in gleam and glitter and glow. The electric car and the
telephone system are here developed to a higher degree than perhaps
in any other Western city except Denver. The growth of Los Angeles is
something fairly incredible. A leading park commissioner, Dr. Lamb, has
described the beauty of the four thousand tracts of land (each tract
comprising many acres), all laid out, ready for buyers and builders.
Of the twenty-one parks, one comprises more than three thousand
acres, and another, Elysium Park, over eight hundred acres of hills
and valleys already decoratively laid out with terraced drives and
beautiful shrubs, flowers, and artificial lakes. The trend of the city
is rapidly toward the ocean, some fifteen to twenty miles away, and it
can hardly be five years before from Venice and Santa Monica, on the
coast, to Pasadena, ten miles to the east of Los Angeles, there will
be one solid city, one vast metropolis of the Southwest. The public
library is ably administered, and it is one of considerable breadth of
resources, with the advantage of having for its librarian Mr. Charles
F. Lummis, the well-known writer on the Southwest. Madam Severance, who
in 1878 founded the Woman's Club, a large and influential association
of which for many years she was the president, and Mrs. Rebecca
Spring, the friend of Margaret Fuller, are two Boston women who have
transferred their homes to Los Angeles and whose lives emphasize
Emerson's assertion that it is the fine souls who serve us and not what
we call fine society.
The rush and the brilliancy of life in all this Los Angeles region
transcend description. Broadway has more than two miles of fine
business blocks, the architecture being restricted to some eight or
nine stories. The beautiful parks, with their artificial lakes, their
date-palm trees, their profusion of brilliant flowers, attract the eye.
There are residence sections of exceeding beauty,--the lawns bordered
by hedges of rosebushes in full bloom and perhaps another rose hedge
separating the sidewalk from the street.
From the high plateaus of Northern Arizona to the blossoming plains
of California is a contrast indeed. In Arizona these thousands of
acres need only irrigation to become richly productive. The climate
is delightful, for the elevation--over seven thousand feet--insures
coolness and exhilaration almost every day through the summer. But at
present there seems no conceivable way to procure water with which to
irrigate. In California precisely the same land is irrigated and has
also the advantage of a rainy season, and the vegetation and fruits
abound luxuriously. Orange groves, with the golden fruit shimmering on
the trees; lemon groves, olive orchards, and the avenues and groves of
the eucalyptus tree make fair the landscape. An important industry here
is that of lima beans. Tracts of fifteen hundred acres sown with these
are not unusual, and the crops are contracted for by Russia and Germany
almost as soon as sown. On one of these it is said that the owner had
made a princely fortune within two years. The creation of the city in
imagination is in great favor. Vast tracts of country from one to ten
miles outside the city limits are staked out, as before noted; avenues
and streets defined and named, lamp-posts erected, an attractive name
given the locality, and lots are offered for sale from perhaps four or
five hundred dollars up, on the terms of "fifty dollars down and ten
dollars a month."
The trolley-car service in and around Los Angeles is said to be the
best in the world. To Venice and Santa Monica, on the beach,--at a
distance of some seventeen miles,--there are electric "flyers" that
make the trip within thirty minutes. Venice is a French Étretat. The
little rows of streets at right angles with the coast line, running
down to the water, are named "Rose Avenue," "Ozone Avenue," "Sunset
Street," and other alluring names. This Venice is a veritable (refined
and artistic) "Midway," with its colonnades of shops offering every
conceivable phase of trinkets and _bijouterie_; its concert halls,
casino, gay little restaurants, and every conceivable variety of
amusement. It is the most unique little toy town of a creation
conceivable, and the electrical display and decorations at night are
fascinating in their scenic effect.
Santa Monica, some two miles farther up the coast, is still, stately,
and poetic. Here the blue Pacific rolls in in the most bewildering
sea greens and deep blues, and over it bends a sky rivalling that of
Arizona in depth and richness of color. The entire Pacific Coast is an
idyl of landscape loveliness.
But of life. What are the people of this lovely young city of two
hundred thousand inhabitants doing and thinking? It is not a question
to be answered in a paragraph. Life here is intense, interesting,
full of color and movement, and its many-faceted aspects invite
consideration. As one sits, for instance, on a Pasadena piazza, with
the golden glory of the sunset seen over the Sierra Madre, and the
rose hedges, the orange groves, the great bushes of heliotrope that
are almost like young trees pouring out their mingled fragrance on
the evening air, one falls under its spell. As the twilight deepens
into darkness the great searchlight from Mount Lowe, directly in
the foreground, a picturesque panorama, may swing out with its
weird, sweeping, dazzling illumination over the scene. When this
searchlight is out, people at the far-away beaches can see to read by
it at distances of from twenty-five to fifty miles. Quite near Mount
Lowe--one of the adjacent peaks--is Mount Wilson, on which the new
Carnegie Observatory is to be located. This will be fitted with the
largest telescope in the world and will have the advantage of every
latest scientific appliance.
Pasadena, like all the California towns and cities, covers very large
tracts of country. There is a thriving business centre, not very far
from which are the great Raymond Hotel and other winter resorts for
the throngs of tourists who are almost as important to the revenues
of California as they are to Italy. There are both North and South
Pasadena,--each almost a separate city in itself,--and the most
beautiful street is Orange Grove Avenue, with large estates on either
side and spacious lawns. On Fair Oaks Avenue, in a pretty cottage,
lives Prof. George Wharton James, the famous explorer, scientist,
and notable writer on the Grand Cañon in Arizona,--and the greatest
interpreter, indeed, of the entire Southwest. The books of Professor
James, "In and Out of the Old Missions of California," "The Indians
of the Painted Desert," and "Indian Basketry" (besides his book on
the "Grand Canyon," which is the accepted authority), interpret the
many phases of life in the Southwest in a vivid and accurate manner,
rendering them invaluable to contemporary literature. Professor James
makes his original explorations, taking with him an assistant and his
own camera, and going through varied hardships, almost greater than
could be realized. In the vast desert spaces, remote from any human
habitation, he has had to swim large, muddy, inland lakes, where vermin
were swarming; to go without food and water, and to endure the intense
fatigue of long tramps. In perusing his books the reader little dreams
at what fearful cost of energy all this original material was obtained.
In his home Professor James has a most interesting collection of the
_objets d'art_ of the Southwest. One must travel over this part of
the country in order to appreciate them. They are as distinctive of
New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California as the old masters and
other phases of Italian art are of Italy. There are brilliant Navajo
blankets and rugs--soft, rich, and vivid in color, with curiously
decorated designs; the most interesting array of Indian pottery--the
many specimens from the old tombs being far finer than any pottery done
by the modern Indians; and at the entrance to his lawn Professor James
has a huge meteorite from Meteorite Mountain in Arizona, which weighs
over a ton. He has a large section of a tree of the Petrified Forest,
and the finer specimens that show the bark and the fibre, and also the
crystallization. His library is large and fine, and comprises many
autograph gift copies from other authors.
One feature of the life of Professor James is especially helpful. In
his spacious library upstairs, on every Thursday evening, he gives
an informal talk on his travels and explorations to his friends and
neighbors. His personal experiences in studying the phenomenon of the
Salton Sea and the vagaries of the Colorado River, which is a law unto
itself, are most interesting.
The call of the wild is not more irresistible than the call of the
desert to Professor James. He has lived on it and with it, and learned
to read its hieroglyphics. The desert spirits have companioned him.
He has explored vast spaces of the Grand Cañon; he has encamped,
day after day, even week after week, on the Painted Desert; he has
wandered in the grim strange Tonto Basin, and sailed (of late) the
Salton Sea,--this sheet of four hundred square miles of water, this
impromptu lake where but a little while before was a deserted hollow
of a long extinct volcanic sea. Nature leads man a pretty dance out in
this Land of Enchantment. No one would venture to prophesy at night
just what stage transformation might take place before morning. This
very uncertainty of any particular tenure of mountain, sea, or desert
perhaps tends, unconsciously, to so react upon the population that
their more real life is thrown forward into the future. For instance,
Los Angeles lays no particular stress upon her present population,
but announces that by 1910 the figures will undoubtedly reach the
half-million mark. Nor, indeed, can the observer doubt this in any
contemplation of the present incredible rapidity of progress in every
direction. The city seems half made up of millionnaires, and the latest
municipal bank clearings amounted to almost four hundred millions of
dollars. Los Angeles is really an exotic, for the latest census reveals
the astonishing fact that ninety per cent of its inhabitants are from
the East, leaving only ten per cent as native Californians. Never was
the advertising of a city carried out to the degree of being fairly a
fine art so wonderfully as in Los Angeles. In the Chamber of Commerce
there is a perpetual exhibition of fruits and flowers in season, and of
the products and manufactures of the country.
Los Angeles, like most of the other more important Western cities, is
deeply concerned with irrigation schemes. This region of California
supplements its rainfall with irrigation, and between the two the
whole country is in bloom and blossom. Los Angeles is now arranging a
gigantic scheme to bring water from the Owen's River, two hundred miles
away, by means of tunnels through mountains and a huge canal. This
fall of water will not only entirely supply the city with water power
of immense force and volume, but it is estimated that it will also
irrigate a hundred thousand acres. The scheme will employ five thousand
men for some four years, and it is estimated that the cost will be
twenty-five millions. No undertaking daunts the Western city. If an
enterprise is desirable, it is to be achieved. That is the law and the
prophets in the Land of Enchantment.
Los Angeles, like Colorado Springs, is the paradise of excursions. The
trip up Mount Lowe to the observatory offers a magnificent panorama of
landscape, including Pasadena Valley and Catalina and Santa Barbara
islands. Old San Gabriel Mission and the San Gabriel Valley are
infinitely interesting, and the famous bells of San Gabriel still ring
in their quaint, rude stone framework even though they are jangled and
out of tune with the lapse of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains rise
from the San Gabriel Valley.
One of the excursions has a feature that is new to every visitor,--that
of glass-bottom power boats which give a view of the marvels of the
ocean. These boats run from Avalon on the coast--an hour's express
trolley ride from Los Angeles--to the submarine gardens adjoining
Catalina Island, and they have a capacity to seat over a hundred
passengers around the glass. In sailing over these submarine gardens
the boats move very slowly, that the passengers may enjoy the view of
the strange seaweed, the marine flowers, the varied aquatic vegetation.
Catalina Island is a favorite sea resort, lying in such convenient
proximity to the city.
Los Angeles seems to be the paradise of every one who has a new
idea--or ideal--for the betterment of humanity. There is an atmosphere
of idealism. Among the recent institutions is the Pacific School of
Osteopathy, with a faculty of thirty physicians, men and women, who
base their therapeutics on the scientific fact that the body is subject
to chemical, electrical, thermal, mental, and mechanical treatment. In
the line of ethics Rev. B. Fay Mills has established a comprehensive
movement of "Fellowship," including religious services and social
intercourse, with a large and enthusiastic membership drawn by this
eloquent orator and preacher who for many years before in his pastorate
in Boston preached to large congregations who gave him profound
appreciation.
A most important centre that radiates sweetness and light in infinite
measure is that of Christ Church (Episcopal), whose rector, Rev.
Baker P. Lee, is not only eminent as a preacher, but as a leader and
inspirer of a network of organizations connected with the church for
the betterment of human life. Christ Church parish is a large one,
numbering over two thousand in direct connection with the church, with
a list of communicants of over twelve hundred. Within the past three
years the parish has built a magnificent new church and a rectory, and
the holy earnestness of the young and gifted rector makes the work one
of vital spirituality.
No city can offer more beautiful homes than those of Los Angeles;
more attractive parks, more enchanting scenery, or more delightful
excursions over a network of electric lines which aggregate above five
hundred miles of single track and reach one hundred towns and villages
from Monrovia of the foothills to Redondo by the sea. The world has
but one Southern California, with its cool, soft, gray sea-fogs in
the early mornings, followed by its cloudless days of blue sky over
golden sunshine; where the sea-breeze gladly brings its health-giving
ozone in exchange for the odors of orange blossoms and roses; where
the mountains stand glorying in the ruggedness of their rocky cliffs
until, touched by sunset's wand, they glow with pink lights and
purple shadows; and over all comes a golden radiance that changes the
forbidding outlines of their jagged peaks into radiant beauty,--fitting
features of the vast panorama of nature to hold their eternal place in
the Land of Enchantment.