orange groves, the cable-car scenery, and Chinatown, which have been
often enough described, it will repay the tourist to devote a week or
two to a round trip through that part of the State which lies south of
Los Angeles as far as San Diego and Tia Juana on the Mexican border.
Take a ticket to Riverside, via Orange, and stop over a day at Anaheim,
which commands a specially fine view of the snow-capped San Gabriel
range and the giant San Bernardino. Anaheim is known as the “mother
colony,” having been founded as early as 1858 by a party of fifty
Germans from San Francisco, in search of a pleasant site for homes and
good soil for raising Rhine wine. To-day the population is no longer
exclusively German, nor is wine-making the chief industry; for Anaheim
enjoys the sad distinction of being the place where the destructive
vine disease originated, and now there are few good vineyards left
in the vicinity, though the cellars of the hospitable families are
still well stocked with a Riesling that unmistakably betrays its
legitimate descent from the celebrated Johannisberger stock on the
Rhine. Undaunted by their misfortune, the Anaheimers have dug out their
dead vines and planted in their place oranges, walnuts, pampas plumes,
and figs, which in a few years will bear as rich fruit and as big
profits as the former vineyards. The fields and orchards are supplied
with water through a ditch from the Santa Ana River, sixteen miles
long, and lined all the way with willows. A drive along this ditch is
interesting, as is a visit to the ostrich farm, two or three miles from
the town. If a longer stay is contemplated, there is excellent hunting
of wild goose, ducks, and other water-fowl, all the way from Anaheim
to the ocean, while in the cactus fields around the town may be found
quails and pigeons, and the sportive jack-rabbit abounds. In hunting
him, you not only satisfy the craving for murder of some sort, which
still lingers as a relic of savagery in the gentlest human breast, but
you do a great service to the farmers, who are sometimes obliged in
self-defence to organize rabbit drives, at which two or three thousand
of the long-eared, fleet-footed robbers are killed.
Rabbit-hunting in cactus fields is a sport quite _sui generis_. The
moment you catch a glimpse of Jack, he is apt to catch a glimpse of
you and dodge behind a cactus bush; and if you follow him too quickly
but unwisely, you will suddenly find your nether limbs pierced with a
thousand fish-hook-pointed thorns, requiring an hour or two of hard
and bloody work for their extraction. Unless you kill him on the spot
he will crawl into a cactus bush, where neither dog nor devil can
get at him. You know just where he is, but he might as well be at the
bottom of the Pacific so far as you are concerned. But the loss is
not great; for three out of four of these rabbits are not fit to eat,
and are therefore usually chopped up for chicken food. Whether it is
that in their flight they run against a thorny cactus leaf or that
they carry off part of a load of shot, the fact is that the meat is
generally diseased, being filled with a granular jelly-like substance
like tapioca pudding. Tourists will do well to avoid hare when they
find it on a Los Angeles bill of fare, as there is little reason to
believe that the huge piles of jacks seen in the market there have
been carefully sorted. But there is another much smaller rabbit, the
cotton-tail, which affords equally good sport, and which is always good
to eat; the younger ones tasting somewhat like chicken. Near the towns
they are shy, active dodgers, and hard to shoot unless you sneak on
them; but in less frequented hunting-grounds they graze complacently
along the roadsides and look upon passing buggies as calmly as cows.
Bang! goes the gun; Nero jumps out and brings the victim; and in
this way dozens can be bagged in a few hours, before sunset, without
once leaving the buggy; so that even invalids and cripples can go
rabbit-hunting in Southern California. But there are stranger things
still.
Did you ever see a cow eat oranges off a tree? That was one of the
sights I witnessed in Anaheim. Not satisfied with the basketful of
windfall seedlings which she received every day, our Millie, like
Eve, cast longing eyes on the fruit tree near her open stable, and
one day she broke loose and had a regular picnic before she was
discovered. Her daughter, too, a promising young Jersey of six weeks,
after one or two suspicious trials, became very fond of oranges, and
having eaten three or four, would baah for more. The children of our
Mexican neighbors, seeing all this fun, would come in to buy some for
themselves, and received a liberal dozen for five cents.
These seedling oranges make delicious orangeade, and have a certain
value because they ripen later than the finer sorts and produce larger
crops; but they are rather sour and thick-skinned, and therefore fetch
only a dollar or even seventy-five cents a box on the tree and two
dollars at Chicago, while the best budded variety brings two dollars
and a half to three dollars on the tree and four dollars to four
dollars and a half in Chicago. Consequently the seedlings are no longer
set out to any extent, while the demand for Washington-navel-trees was
so great last winter that the nurserymen could not supply the demand,
and young trees had to be imported from Florida. The Washington-navel
is by far the best of all California oranges. It is a Brazilian
orange, imported in 1873, and seems specially adapted to the climatic
conditions of California. Riverside is its chief home, and Riverside
navels are so highly valued that even in Los Angeles you get only three
or four of them for a quarter of a dollar. They are very large, and,
like the Spanish blood-oranges, almost always seedless, have a thin
skin (with a small, navel-like formation or even a tiny orange at one
end), and a sweet and most delicately flavored juice. I have squeezed
as many as twenty teaspoonfuls of juice out of a single one of these
oranges—a feat which I have never succeeded in accomplishing with a
Florida orange. (I may add in parenthesis that to eat an orange with a
teaspoon is to lose two-thirds of its flavor.)
The town of Orange, between Anaheim and Riverside, already gives
warning of the neighborhood of the State’s orange centre. The station,
in the springtime, is piled up to the ceiling with boxes of oranges,
and near by a number of men are busily at work wiping the golden fruit
with wet rags and rolling it down inclined boards to dry, preparatory
to packing. The fruit is generally bought on the trees by the packing
companies, who send round their men with ladders, and sacks suspended
around their necks, from which the fruit is transferred to boxes, to be
repacked afterwards, the bruised or imperfect ones being thrown out, so
that three boxes (of the seedlings at any rate) yield only two for the
market. Orange-picking is painted by the imagination as the most poetic
of all agricultural employments, and nothing certainly could look more
picturesque than the boxes of luscious fruit scattered through an
orchard, under the dark green, fragrant trees; but the orange-tree,
like the rose-bush that loves to twine around it, bristles with thorns
which cry for blood, and make orange-picking about as exciting and
perilous a pursuit as rabbit-hunting amid the cactus bushes.
The town of Orange belonged till lately to Los Angeles County (a
separate Orange County was formed last year with Santa Ana as its
capital), but before reaching Riverside we have entered San Bernardino
County, the largest in the United States—“about the size of the States
of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts combined.” The
counties of Southern California are very much larger than those of the
central and northern part of the State, and as the population increases
they will doubtless be further subdivided. But it is doubtful if San
Bernardino County will be divided very soon, for the greater part of it
is comprised in the irredeemable Mojave Desert. The region west of the
Bernardino range, however, is one of the most valuable in the State,
experience having shown that it is the chosen home of the orange. Los
Angeles County has many fine and luxuriant orange groves, and more of
them than San Bernardino County; yet to see California orange culture
in its highest perfection, one must go to Riverside. Nowhere else do
the orchards seem so luxuriant and so well cultivated, or the fruit and
trees so glossy and clean. Here the oranges do not need cleaning with
a rag, owing to the absence of the black scale which elsewhere often
gives the leaves and fruit a dirty appearance. The white scale-bug,
too, which destroys the trees, has thus far spared Riverside groves,
and in the business street of the town a notice is posted warning
purchasers of orange-trees not to import any from infected counties.
The orange is not indigenous to California, as it is to Mexico and
Florida; it does not flourish here without some care, and becomes
remunerative in proportion to the amount of care bestowed on it. A
glance at the well-ploughed, weedless, carefully irrigated orchards
of Riverside at once explains the enormous profits realized by local
growers; and an incident that occurred at Anaheim throws further light
on the matter. Noticing a couple of malodorous freight-cars on the
side track, I asked a man what they contained. “Manure,” he replied,
“from the numerous sheep corrals in the neighborhood, and bound for
Riverside,” adding that this had been found the best manure for
oranges, and that in a few years the Anaheimers, who now foolishly sold
their treasure, would be importing it from elsewhere at an exorbitant
price. Rows of cypress-trees are planted along the edge of every
orchard, and sometimes even traverse the orchard in several places,
to serve as windbreaks; for though there are no hurricanes to provide
against, the desert wind is sometimes sufficiently boisterous to shake
down bushels of unripe fruit and break the heavily laden branches
unless thus protected.
[Illustration: ORANGE GROVE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.]
The best way to see the Riverside orange groves, and marvel at their
extent, is to ride or walk along Magnolia Avenue, doubtless the finest
avenue in America. It is laid out a distance of twelve miles, and
seven miles are now finished. Between the road and the houses on each
side are four rows of tall eucalyptus and spreading pepper-trees,
and two rows of fan palms, ten to twenty feet in height, and growing
more beautiful every year. Nor is this fine avenue a monopoly of
carriage-owners; for the poorest can enjoy its sights by paying ten
cents for a ride in the street-cars, which have their track under a row
of pepper-trees, without interfering with the broad carriage-drive. In
this way Riverside spreads itself out, covering a territory, orchards
included, of fifty-four square miles, and almost realizing the ideal
of one of those California “rural cities of the future,” sketched in
the last chapter. The grounds of some of the elegant villas which
line this road are thrown open to the public, and one of them, which
I examined, with its extensive stables, shady walks, hammocks, tennis
grounds, and notices of club meetings, and _al-fresco_ teas, had an
air of hospitality and sociability, recalling the life on Southern
plantations before the Civil War. The large adobe house, a relic of
the Spanish occupation, was deliciously cool on a warm day, and the
owner said he did not find it unhealthy. He showed me through his
extensive orchard, and with a large table-knife cut open specimens of
more than half-a-dozen different kinds of budded oranges for me to
taste. They were all sweet and juicy, but he had to admit himself that
the differences in flavor were not so pronounced as the differences in
the original homes of these varieties led one to expect. California
fruit-growers doubtless attempt too much in seeking to raise oranges
from so many different countries in the same field without losing their
characteristic flavor. This difference in flavor is due to differences
in soil and climate, and can only be preserved and reproduced in a
similar soil and climate. As California fortunately has an infinite
variety of climates and soil, it is probable that the problem of
raising Italian, Spanish, Mexican, and Florida oranges all in the same
State will yet be solved, but not in one and the same orchard. The
Spanish blood-orange, for instance, the most delicately flavored of all
oranges, is rarely seen in California; and when I asked why, I was told
that it was inclined to sport and lose its characteristics. There is a
fortune in store for the man who finds out under what conditions this
variety flourishes in Spain, and seeks out a similar locality for it
at home. Another excellent variety, the Florida russet, I never saw on
the Pacific Coast. Its appearance is against it, and it is difficult to
teach people to select their fruit for the palate rather than the eye.
Riverside is a little too far inland to get much benefit from the
ocean breezes, but it is surrounded by mountains, snow-capped
till summer, which to some extent atone for this disadvantage, and
which make Riverside, from a scenic point of view, one of the most
attractive places in the State. This, combined with its horticultural
prosperity, causes it to grow rapidly, and among the new comers and
the old there are a large number of English families, who, of course,
endeavor to bring their household goods and customs with them. Foremost
among these is the fox-hunt; but as there are no foxes to be hunted,
the simple-minded plebeian jack-rabbit has to take the place of his
astute, bushy-tailed colleague. There are no fences to jump or fields
to destroy, and everything is in plain sight; but as the riding is
much faster than in England, there is no lack of excitement. To come
home from one of these hunts with a pair of rabbit ears in her hat is
the chief pride of the English damsels at Riverside. Besides, these
ornaments take the place of a parasol, much needed here sometimes. In
midsummer, no doubt, Riverside is a good place to get away from, but
in winter it offers special advantages to invalids, provided they are
willing to submit to being treated like children, in being told what
they may drink and what they may not. Riverside is a prohibition town.
So I discovered at the hotel when I asked for a pint of claret. I have
never been drunk in my life, and I find that a few glasses of pure
claret aid my digestion, and moreover I like it, and am able to pay for
it. Yet here I, who am supposed to be a free citizen in a free country,
am placed in a position where I cannot indulge in a harmless and useful
pleasure which concerns no one but myself, without breaking the law.
Of course I broke the law, as anybody but a fool or a coward ought to
do. A few words in private to the waiter, and the wine appeared on
the table. Of course, when I asked him how much it was, he said he
wouldn’t charge for it,—he had merely brought it “to oblige me”; and
of course I asked how much he paid for it, and then left that amount,
plus a suitable fee, on the table. A resident with whom I conversed
subsequently on the subject gave me some instances of capital withheld
and capital withdrawn from Riverside in consequence of the prohibition
law, which unfits it as a residence for people who like to be free and
law-respecting at the same time. A friend in Los Angeles had previously
explained to me how Pasadena was damaged by the local prohibition law
(which I believe has since been repealed), and gave an amusing account
of the visit of the city fathers to Mr. Raymond, who continued to serve
wine to his tourist and invalid guests after the law had been passed.
Mr. Raymond quietly informed them that if they would not allow him
to run a first-class hotel in their town, he would pull it down and
rebuild it elsewhere. As the Raymond is one of the largest hotels and
chief resorts on the Pacific Coast, the city fathers got alarmed, took
their leave, and never molested Mr. Raymond again.
One more instance: Until within a year or two the owner of Catalina
Island would not allow any beer or liquor to be sold to the thousands
of campers on it; whereupon, an enterprising man hired a barge, moored
it a hundred yards from the shore, put canvas over it, filled it with
drinkables, and hired a boy to ferry his customers over and back. Mr.
Shatto thereupon refused to allow the steamer to land anything for this
man on his pier; but the latter got around this, too, by simply having
his beer-barrels lowered directly from the steamer to his boat. These
are illustrations of how prohibition prohibits in California.
It is not necessary to stuff your pockets and valise full of oranges on
leaving Riverside for the South; for you will find just as good fruit,
and plenty of it, in San Diego County. Backing up to a station called
Citrus, a few miles north of Riverside, you wait for the train which
leaves Barstow on the Atlantic and Pacific, or Santa Fé, Railway, for
San Diego, and which, soon after you have boarded it, enters the county
of that name,—a county not quite as large as San Bernardino, but still,
according to the guide-book, covering as much ground as Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware combined. It forms the
southwestern corner of the United States, and owes much of its local
color to the proximity of Mexico, or Lower California,—a peninsula
which a large number of educated people in the East are in the habit of
mistaking for “Southern California.” The branch of the Santa Fé road
referred to is known as the California Southern Railroad. Between the
Bernardino range and the ocean it traverses a region where the spring
vegetation, though almost as abundant as in Los Angeles County, is not
so luxuriant, owing to the diminished rainfall. Three-fifths or more of
the vegetation which carpets the fields seems to consist of Compositæ,
and the predominant color is yellow—as if to hint at the fact, which
has long since been demonstrated, that there is more gold to be got
out of the surface of California soil than out of all its subterranean
mines.
One never tires of looking at these gaudily colored fields, especially
when bordered by foothills, whose green garb is ornamented with red,
yellow, brown, and blue patches, like a “crazy-quilt,” varying in
shade and atmospheric effect with the time of the day; or when, as on
this route, there is a background of high mountains, with their snow
caps drawn half-way down their treeless foreheads as late as May. The
two chief mountains are too long-drawn-out to be imposing sculpturally,
but the great mass of snow on them gains in charm by contrast with the
surrounding blue sky and warm sunshine. The best point of view is from
Perris, the junction for the short branch road to San Jacinto.
Soon thereafter the Laguna is reached, also known as Lake Elsinore; but
if the tourist expects to see one of those picturesque mountain lakes
for which the State is famous, he will be grievously disappointed.
The Laguna is a commonplace, dreary old pond, with steep hills on
one side and flat on the other. There are ducks on it, but no cover
to approach them. In May, 1889, it was sixteen feet higher than two
years previously, and it has a habit of getting very low till the real
estate on its banks has been claimed, whereupon it roguishly rises and
submerges it for a few years. But the soil in the vicinity is credited
with marvellous properties.
We now enter the region of Indian missions and reservations, and expect
to see some of the redskins loitering about the stations, as they do
at Yuma and elsewhere; but not a single one is to be seen at any of
the towns. Those who make pilgrimages in the tracks of novel heroines
may find something to interest them hereabouts with their “Ramona” as
a guide; but otherwise the region is dreary and desolate, its only
apparent attraction being the snow-mountains just described. A pleasant
change is afforded by the passage through the Temecula Cañon, in which
it is refreshing to follow along a creek, though it be but a few
inches deep and two or three feet wide. It cools the air and lines the
bank with pretty bushes.
Presently smoke-like mists begin to rise from the water, as if it were
on fire; scattered pools with bulrushes and flocks of birds, and the
russet color and rank monotony of the vegetation, indicate the approach
to the ocean. A cool saline breeze strikes the cars; the windows of
the more sensitive passengers are lowered, and at the same moment the
Pacific comes into sight—to many of the tourists their first view of
the king of waters. But the outlook is limited, for a few miles at
sea hovers a fog-bank which looks as opaque and solid as if a Krupp
gun could make no impression on it. For the rest of the way to San
Diego the ocean is almost constantly in sight, and new varieties of
plants and flowers occupy the attention. Conspicuous among the flowers
are a white morning-glory, larkspurs, and lupines in several colors,
the ice-plant with red flowers and leaves that seem to be covered
with icicles, and a flowering bush which at a distance resembles the
alpenrose.
V.
OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER.
SAN DIEGO AND CORONADO BEACH—AN IDEAL CLIMATE—AN ARTIFICIAL
LAKE—HOW TOWNS ARE RAISED—THE NATIONAL BOUNDARY—DONKEYS VERSUS
RAILROADS—MORE SALOONS THAN HOUSES—LIMES VERSUS LEMONS.
Although San Diego has no lack of hotels, most of the tourists cross
the bay which separates the city from the thirteen-mile-long peninsula
known as Coronado Beach, and take up their abode in the Coronado hotel,
covering more than seven acres,—the largest in Southern California,
and second in size and elegance only to the Del Monte at Monterey.
Porpoises sport about the ferry-boat, almost within arm’s reach, and
excite the appetite for sea-fishing. On the peninsula, a steam-dummy
connects with the ferry and conveys those passengers for whom the
coaches are too slow to the hotel. Coronado affords an excellent
instance of what can be done in this region with irrigation. A few
years ago this whole peninsula was a desert, while now there are
numerous villas and stores, and good roads, and avenues of young trees,
which in a few years will afford welcome shade. The hotel is surrounded
by flower-beds as monstrous in proportion as itself, crowded with
enormous double stocks, petunias, large pansies, marguerites, etc.,
etc.: and another superb flower-garden takes up the interior court.
Dining-room, parlors, and dance-hall are sufficiently spacious for
all emergencies, and simply though tastefully decorated. It may seem
a disadvantage that, owing to the position of the dance-hall, there
are few rooms facing the ocean; but as it is always cool here, day
and night, summer and winter, the site of rooms is not so important a
matter as on the Atlantic Coast.
No other part of California has so perfect a climate as Coronado and
San Diego, the mean difference in temperature between summer and winter
being only 12.3°, with an average of only five days a year when the
thermometer rises above 85°; and, what is still more remarkable, only
twelve days a year when it rises above 80°. As only ten inches of rain
fall in a year,—just one hundred inches less than at Sitka, the other
extremity of our Pacific Coast,—and clouds or fogs of more than a few
hours’ duration are rare, it may be inferred that the sun shines almost
perpetually, even in winter. When an invalid who proposes to make the
Coronado his home for awhile reads in the rules and regulations pasted
upon his door that a single fire costs a dollar, he is relieved to be
told that cold weather is as scarce as fuel, and that, according to
official government records, during the ten years from 1876 to 1885,
there were only six days on which the temperature fell below 35°, two
on which it fell to 32°, and none below that point! I had also read
somewhere that mud is practically unknown, since the little rain that
falls sinks into the soil immediately, so that it is safe to lie on
the ground a few hours after a shower. I was therefore surprised,
on picking up a local newspaper, to see an editorial headed “Too
Much Mud.” But on examination it proved to be a political, not a
meteorological article. On politics climate has no effect.