BY MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD, President of W. C. T. U.
The famous San Joaquin Valley is as large as the State of Ohio. It opens
into the Sacramento Valley, and the two are about six hundred miles long.
A plow could go the length of both and never touch a stone. In the San
Joaquin they have a ranche where the gang plow starts in the morning,
goes on a straight line all day, turns back and plows its twin furrow the
next, having thus retraversed the length of one California farm.
It was through seven hours by rail of this valley that we went, in a
southeasterly direction, from San Francisco to Madera, where two coaches
were waiting to carry us over the one hundred miles in a northeasterly
direction that still separated us from the wonderland ruled by “El
Capitan.” There were twenty-three of us, and “none smoked or chewed, or
drank or swore,” as I was credibly informed by our “El Capitan,” the Rev.
Dr. Briggs. By the way, if Chautauqua wants a first class attraction let
this name go on the list. We traveled rapidly. I counted thirty different
horses on our coach in one day. We killed rattlesnakes, that is, the Dr.
did, marching squarely forward and whacking them unmercifully with his
stout cane, while we women, securely perched on our high seats in the
coach, really enjoyed the sight. We saw horse-shoes enough for wholesale
good luck, scattered along the road. We believe, and always shall, that
we perceived a bear track, and wondered if it was made by famous “Club
Foot Joe”—whose annals are they not in all the Tourist’s Chronicles?
We told stories all strictly true. There was no Baron Münchausen
amongst us, though had prosaic Easterners been within earshot of our
driver they might perhaps have promulgated a different declaration.
We did not fear robbers, for “a count” developed the fact that in our
coach—chiefly inhabited by ministers, their wives, and sundry visiting
philanthropists—gold watches were the only “plunder,” and these were
all inscribed “Presented by” to that degree that no well regulated “road
agent” would have wished such a “free advertisement” of his base conduct,
as these trophies must have furnished. We sang old songs of the fireside
and sanctuary, talked of the Chautauquas east and west, “marked” our
favorite trees in “the ample forest of Bishop timber” (to be revealed
after next General Conference), and regulated the affairs of the nation
generally. We fitted ourselves out with a “local government” administered
on the everlasting principles of justice and equality, _i. e._, we
counted the women _in_, not _out_. I copy our rules from the log book of
the expedition: