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[Illustration: SANTA BARBARA.]
OUR ITALY
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
_Author of Their Pilgrimage, Studies in the South and West, A Little
Journey in the World ... With Many Illustrations_
[Illustration]
_NEW YORK_
_HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE_
Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. HOW OUR ITALY IS MADE 1
II. OUR CLIMATIC AND COMMERCIAL MEDITERRANEAN 10
III. EARLY VICISSITUDES.--PRODUCTIONS.--SANITARY CLIMATE 24
IV. THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT 42
V. HEALTH AND LONGEVITY 52
VI. IS RESIDENCE HERE AGREEABLE? 65
VII. THE WINTER ON THE COAST 72
VIII. THE GENERAL OUTLOOK.--LAND AND PRICES 90
IX. THE ADVANTAGES OF IRRIGATION 99
X. THE CHANCE FOR LABORERS AND SMALL FARMERS 107
XI. SOME DETAILS OF THE WONDERFUL DEVELOPMENT 114
XII. HOW THE FRUIT PERILS WERE MET.--FURTHER DETAILS OF LOCALITIES 128
XIII. THE ADVANCE OF CULTIVATION SOUTHWARD 140
XIV. A LAND OF AGREEABLE HOMES 146
XV. SOME WONDERS BY THE WAY.--YOSEMITE.--MARIPOSA TREES.--MONTEREY 148
XVI. FASCINATIONS OF THE DESERT.--THE LAGUNA PUEBLO 163
XVII. THE HEART OF THE DESERT 177
XVIII. ON THE BRINK OF THE GRAND CAÑON.--THE UNIQUE MARVEL OF NATURE 189
APPENDIX 201
INDEX 219
ILLUSTRATIONS.
SANTA BARBARA _Frontispiece_
PAGE
MOJAVE DESERT 3
MOJAVE INDIAN 4
MOJAVE INDIAN 5
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF RIVERSIDE 7
SCENE IN SAN BERNARDINO 11
SCENES IN MONTECITO AND LOS ANGELES 13
FAN-PALM, LOS ANGELES 16
YUCCA-PALM, SANTA BARBARA 17
MAGNOLIA AVENUE, RIVERSIDE 21
AVENUE LOS ANGELES 27
IN THE GARDEN AT SANTA BARBARA MISSION 31
SCENE AT PASADENA 35
LIVE-OAK NEAR LOS ANGELES 39
MIDWINTER, PASADENA 53
A TYPICAL GARDEN, NEAR SANTA ANA 57
OLD ADOBE HOUSE, POMONA 61
FAN-PALM, FERNANDO ST. LOS ANGELES 63
SCARLET PASSION-VINE 68
ROSE-BUSH, SANTA BARBARA 73
AT AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND 77
HOTEL DEL CORONADO 83
OSTRICH YARD, CORONADO BEACH 86
YUCCA-PALM 92
DATE-PALM 93
RAISIN-CURING 101
IRRIGATION BY ARTESIAN-WELL SYSTEM 104
IRRIGATION BY PIPE SYSTEM 105
GARDEN SCENE, SANTA ANA 110
A GRAPE-VINE, MONTECITO VALLEY, SANTA BARBARA 116
IRRIGATING AN ORCHARD 120
ORANGE CULTURE 121
IN A FIELD OF GOLDEN PUMPKINS 126
PACKING CHERRIES, POMONA 131
OLIVE-TREES SIX YEARS OLD 136
SEXTON NURSERIES, NEAR SANTA BARBARA 141
SWEETWATER DAM 144
THE YOSEMITE DOME 151
COAST OF MONTEREY 155
CYPRESS POINT 156
NEAR SEAL ROCK 157
LAGUNA--FROM THE SOUTH-EAST 159
CHURCH AT LAGUNA 164
TERRACED HOUSES, PUEBLO OF LAGUNA 167
GRAND CAÑON ON THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM POINT SUBLIME 171
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT LAGUNA 174
GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW OPPOSITE POINT SUBLIME 179
TOURISTS IN THE COLORADO CAÑON 183
GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM THE HANSE TRAIL 191
OUR ITALY.
CHAPTER I.
HOW OUR ITALY IS MADE.
The traveller who descends into Italy by an Alpine pass never forgets
the surprise and delight of the transition. In an hour he is whirled
down the slopes from the region of eternal snow to the verdure of spring
or the ripeness of summer. Suddenly--it may be at a turn in the
road--winter is left behind; the plains of Lombardy are in view; the
Lake of Como or Maggiore gleams below; there is a tree; there is an
orchard; there is a garden; there is a villa overrun with vines; the
singing of birds is heard; the air is gracious; the slopes are terraced,
and covered with vineyards; great sheets of silver sheen in the
landscape mark the growth of the olive; the dark green orchards of
oranges and lemons are starred with gold; the lusty fig, always a
temptation as of old, leans invitingly over the stone wall; everywhere
are bloom and color under the blue sky; there are shrines by the
way-side, chapels on the hill; one hears the melodious bells, the call
of the vine-dressers, the laughter of girls.
The contrast is as great from the Indians of the Mojave Desert, two
types of which are here given, to the vine-dressers of the Santa Ana
Valley.
Italy is the land of the imagination, but the sensation on first
beholding it from the northern heights, aside from its associations of
romance and poetry, can be repeated in our own land by whoever will
cross the burning desert of Colorado, or the savage wastes of the Mojave
wilderness of stone and sage-brush, and come suddenly, as he must come
by train, into the bloom of Southern California. Let us study a little
the physical conditions.
The bay of San Diego is about three hundred miles east of San Francisco.
The coast line runs south-east, but at Point Conception it turns sharply
east, and then curves south-easterly about two hundred and fifty miles
to the Mexican coast boundary, the extreme south-west limits of the
United States, a few miles below San Diego. This coast, defined by these
two limits, has a southern exposure on the sunniest of oceans. Off this
coast, south of Point Conception, lies a chain of islands, curving in
position in conformity with the shore, at a distance of twenty to
seventy miles from the main-land. These islands are San Miguel, Santa
Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, Santa Barbara, San Nicolas, Santa Catalina,
San Clemente, and Los Coronados, which lie in Mexican waters. Between
this chain of islands and the main-land is Santa Barbara Channel,
flowing northward. The great ocean current from the north flows past
Point Conception like a mill-race, and makes a suction, or a sort of
eddy. It approaches nearer the coast in Lower California, where the
return current, which is much warmer, flows northward and westward
along the curving shore. The Santa Barbara Channel, which may be called
an arm of the Pacific, flows by many a bold point and lovely bay, like
those of San Pedro, Redondo, and Santa Monica; but it has no secure
harbor, except the magnificent and unique bay of San Diego.
[Illustration: MOJAVE DESERT.]
The southern and western boundary of Southern California is this mild
Pacific sea, studded with rocky and picturesque islands. The northern
boundary of this region is ranges of lofty mountains, from five thousand
to eleven thousand feet in height, some of them always snow-clad, which
run eastward from Point Conception nearly to the Colorado Desert. They
are parts of the Sierra Nevada range, but they take various names,
Santa Ynes, San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and they are spoken of all
together as the Sierra Madre. In the San Gabriel group, "Old Baldy"
lifts its snow-peak over nine thousand feet, while the San Bernardino
"Grayback" rises over eleven thousand feet above the sea. Southward of
this, running down into San Diego County, is the San Jacinto range, also
snow-clad; and eastward the land falls rapidly away into the Salt Desert
of the Colorado, in which is a depression about three hundred feet below
the Pacific.
[Illustration]
The Point Arguilles, which is above Point Conception, by the aid of the
outlying islands, deflects the cold current from the north off the coast
of Southern California, and the mountain ranges from Point Conception
east divide the State of California into two climatic regions, the
southern having more warmth, less rain and fog, milder winds, and less
variation of daily temperature than the climate of Central California to
the north.[A] Other striking climatic conditions are produced by the
daily interaction of the Pacific Ocean and the Colorado Desert,
infinitely diversified in minor particulars by the exceedingly broken
character of the region--a jumble of bare mountains, fruitful
foot-hills, and rich valleys. It would be only from a balloon that one
could get an adequate idea of this strange land.
[Footnote A: For these and other observations upon physical and climatic
conditions I am wholly indebted to Dr. P. C. Remondino and Mr. T. S. Van
Dyke, of San Diego, both scientific and competent authorities.]
The United States has here, then, a unique corner of the earth, without
its like in its own vast territory, and unparalleled, so far as I know,
in the world. Shut off from sympathy with external conditions by the
giant mountain ranges and the desert wastes, it has its own climate
unaffected by cosmic changes. Except a tidal wave from Japan, nothing
would seem to be able to affect or disturb it. The whole of Italy feels
more or less the climatic variations of the rest of Europe. All our
Atlantic coast, all our interior basin from Texas to Manitoba, is in
climatic sympathy. Here is a region larger than New England which
manufactures its own weather and refuses to import any other.
[Illustration]
With considerable varieties of temperature according to elevation or
protection from the ocean breeze, its climate is nearly, on the whole,
as agreeable as that of the Hawaiian Islands, though pitched in a lower
key, and with greater variations between day and night. The key to its
peculiarity, aside from its southern exposure, is the Colorado Desert.
That desert, waterless and treeless, is cool at night and intolerably
hot in the daytime, sending up a vast column of hot air, which cannot
escape eastward, for Arizona manufactures a like column. It flows high
above the mountains westward till it strikes the Pacific and parts with
its heat, creating an immense vacuum which is filled by the air from
the coast flowing up the slope and over the range, and plunging down
6000 feet into the desert. "It is easy to understand," says Mr. Van
Dyke, making his observations from the summit of the Cuyamaca, in San
Diego County, 6500 feet above the sea-level, "how land thus rising a
mile or more in fifty or sixty miles, rising away from the coast, and
falling off abruptly a mile deep into the driest and hottest of American
deserts, could have a great variety of climates.... Only ten miles away
on the east the summers are the hottest, and only sixty miles on the
west the coolest known in the United States (except on this coast), and
between them is every combination that mountains and valleys can
produce. And it is easy to see whence comes the sea-breeze, the glory of
the California summer. It is passing us here, a gentle breeze of six or
eight miles an hour. It is flowing over this great ridge directly into
the basin of the Colorado Desert, 6000 feet deep, where the temperature
is probably 120°, and perhaps higher. For many leagues each side of us
this current is thus flowing at the same speed, and is probably half a
mile or more in depth. About sundown, when the air on the desert cools
and descends, the current will change and come the other way, and flood
these western slopes with an air as pure as that of the Sahara and
nearly as dry.
[Illustration: BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF RIVERSIDE.]
"The air, heated on the western slopes by the sea, would by rising
produce considerable suction, which could be filled only from the sea,
but that alone would not make the sea-breeze as dry as it is. The
principal suction is caused by the rising of heated air from the great
desert.... On the top of old Grayback (in San Bernardino) one can feel
it [this breeze] setting westward, while in the cañons, 6000 feet below,
it is blowing eastward.... All over Southern California the conditions
of this breeze are about the same, the great Mojave Desert and the
valley of the San Joaquin above operating in the same way, assisted by
interior plains and slopes. Hence these deserts, that at first seem to
be a disadvantage to the land, are the great conditions of its climate,
and are of far more value than if they were like the prairies of
Illinois. Fortunately they will remain deserts forever. Some parts will
in time be reclaimed by the waters of the Colorado River, but wet spots
of a few hundred thousand acres would be too trifling to affect general
results, for millions of acres of burning desert would forever defy all
attempts at irrigation or settlement."
This desert-born breeze explains a seeming anomaly in regard to the
humidity of this coast. I have noticed on the sea-shore that salt does
not become damp on the table, that the Portuguese fishermen on Point
Loma are drying their fish on the shore, and that while the hydrometer
gives a humidity as high as seventy-four, and higher at times, and fog
may prevail for three or four days continuously, the fog is rather
"dry," and the general impression is that of a dry instead of the damp
and chilling atmosphere such as exists in foggy times on the Atlantic
coast.
"From the study of the origin of this breeze we see," says Mr. Van Dyke,
"why it is that a wind coming from the broad Pacific should be drier
than the dry land-breezes of the Atlantic States, causing no damp walls,
swelling doors, or rusting guns, and even on the coast drying up,
without salt or soda, meat cut in strips an inch thick and fish much
thicker."
At times on the coast the air contains plenty of moisture, but with the
rising of this breeze the moisture decreases instead of increases. It
should be said also that this constantly returning current of air is
always pure, coming in contact nowhere with marshy or malarious
influences nor any agency injurious to health. Its character causes the
whole coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego to be an agreeable place of
residence or resort summer and winter, while its daily inflowing tempers
the heat of the far inland valleys to a delightful atmosphere in the
shade even in midsummer, while cool nights are everywhere the rule. The
greatest surprise of the traveller is that a region which is in
perpetual bloom and fruitage, where semi-tropical fruits mature in
perfection, and the most delicate flowers dazzle the eye with color the
winter through, should have on the whole a low temperature, a climate
never enervating, and one requiring a dress of woollen in every month.