THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT.
California is the land of the Pine and the Palm. The tree of the
Sierras, native, vigorous, gigantic, and the tree of the Desert, exotic,
supple, poetic, both flourish within the nine degrees of latitude. These
two, the widely separated lovers of Heine's song, symbolize the
capacities of the State, and although the sugar-pine is indigenous, and
the date-palm, which will never be more than an ornament in this
hospitable soil, was planted by the Franciscan Fathers, who established
a chain of missions from San Diego to Monterey over a century ago, they
should both be the distinction of one commonwealth, which, in its seven
hundred miles of indented sea-coast, can boast the climates of all
countries and the products of all zones.
If this State of mountains and valleys were divided by an east and west
line, following the general course of the Sierra Madre range, and
cutting off the eight lower counties, I suppose there would be conceit
enough in either section to maintain that it only is the Paradise of the
earth, but both are necessary to make the unique and contradictory
California which fascinates and bewilders the traveller. He is told that
the inhabitants of San Francisco go away from the draught of the Golden
Gate in the summer to get warm, and yet the earliest luscious cherries
and apricots which he finds in the far south market of San Diego come
from the Northern Santa Clara Valley. The truth would seem to be that in
an hour's ride in any part of the State one can change his climate
totally at any time of the year, and this not merely by changing his
elevation, but by getting in or out of the range of the sea or the
desert currents of air which follow the valleys.
To recommend to any one a winter climate is far from the writer's
thought. No two persons agree on what is desirable for a winter
residence, and the inclination of the same person varies with his state
of health. I can only attempt to give some idea of what is called the
winter months in Southern California, to which my observations mainly
apply. The individual who comes here under the mistaken notion that
climate ever does anything more than give nature a better chance, may
speedily or more tardily need the service of an undertaker; and the
invalid whose powers are responsive to kindly influences may live so
long, being unable to get away, that life will be a burden to him. The
person in ordinary health will find very little that is hostile to the
orderly organic processes. In order to appreciate the winter climate of
Southern California one should stay here the year through, and select
the days that suit his idea of winter from any of the months. From the
fact that the greatest humidity is in the summer and the least in the
winter months, he may wear an overcoat in July in a temperature,
according to the thermometer, which in January would render the overcoat
unnecessary. It is dampness that causes both cold and heat to be most
felt. The lowest temperatures, in Southern California generally, are
caused only by the extreme dryness of the air; in the long nights of
December and January there is a more rapid and longer continued
radiation of heat. It must be a dry and clear night that will send the
temperature down to thirty-four degrees. But the effect of the sun upon
this air is instantaneous, and the cold morning is followed at once by a
warm forenoon; the difference between the average heat of July and the
average cold of January, measured by the thermometer, is not great in
the valleys, foot-hills, and on the coast. Five points give this result
of average for January and July respectively: Santa Barbara, 52°, 66°;
San Bernardino, 51°, 70°; Pomona, 52°, 68°; Los Angeles, 52°, 67°; San
Diego, 53°, 66°. The day in the winter months is warmer in the interior
and the nights are cooler than on the coast, as shown by the following
figures for January: 7 A.M., Los Angeles, 46.5°; San Diego, 47.5°; 3
P.M., Los Angeles, 65.2°; San Diego, 60.9°. In the summer the difference
is greater. In June I saw the thermometer reach 103° in Los Angeles when
it was only 79° in San Diego. But I have seen the weather unendurable in
New York with a temperature of 85°, while this dry heat of 103° was not
oppressive. The extraordinary equanimity of the coast climate (certainly
the driest marine climate in my experience) will be evident from the
average mean for each month, from records of sixteen years, ending in
1877, taken at San Diego, giving each month in order, beginning with
January: 53.5°, 54.7°, 56.0°, 58.2°, 60.2°, 64.6°, 67.1°, 69.0°, 66.7°,
62.9°, 58.1°, 56.0°. In the year 1877 the mean temperature at 3 P.M. at
San Diego was as follows, beginning with January: 60.9°, 57.7°, 62.4°,
63.3°, 66.3°, 68.5°, 69.6°, 69.6°, 69.5°, 69.6°, 64.4°, 60.5°. For the
four months of July, August, September, and October there was hardly a
shade of difference at 3 P.M. The striking fact in all the records I
have seen is that the difference of temperature in the daytime between
summer and winter is very small, the great difference being from
midnight to just before sunrise, and this latter difference is greater
inland than on the coast. There are, of course, frost and ice in the
mountains, but the frost that comes occasionally in the low inland
valleys is of very brief duration in the morning hour, and rarely
continues long enough to have a serious effect upon vegetation.
In considering the matter of temperature, the rule for vegetation and
for invalids will not be the same. A spot in which delicate flowers in
Southern California bloom the year round may be too cool for many
invalids. It must not be forgotten that the general temperature here is
lower than that to which most Eastern people are accustomed. They are
used to living all winter in overheated houses, and to protracted heated
terms rendered worse by humidity in the summer. The dry, low temperature
of the California winter, notwithstanding its perpetual sunshine, may
seem, therefore, wanting to them in direct warmth. It may take a year or
two to acclimate them to this more equable and more refreshing
temperature.
Neither on the coast nor in the foot-hills will the invalid find the
climate of the Riviera or of Tangier--not the tramontane wind of the
former, nor the absolutely genial but somewhat enervating climate of
the latter. But it must be borne in mind that in this, our
Mediterranean, the seeker for health or pleasure can find almost any
climate (except the very cold or the very hot), down to the minutest
subdivision. He may try the dry marine climate of the coast, or the
temperature of the fruit lands and gardens from San Bernardino to Los
Angeles, or he may climb to any altitude that suits him in the Sierra
Madre or the San Jacinto ranges. The difference may be all-important to
him between a valley and a mesa which is not a hundred feet higher; nay,
between a valley and the slope of a foot-hill, with a shifting of not
more than fifty feet elevation, the change may be as marked for him as
it is for the most sensitive young fruit-tree. It is undeniable,
notwithstanding these encouraging "averages," that cold snaps, though
rare, do come occasionally, just as in summer there will occur one or
two or three continued days of intense heat. And in the summer in some
localities--it happened in June, 1890, in the Santiago hills in Orange
County--the desert sirocco, blowing over the Colorado furnace, makes
life just about unendurable for days at a time. Yet with this dry heat
sunstroke is never experienced, and the diseases of the bowels usually
accompanying hot weather elsewhere are unknown. The experienced
traveller who encounters unpleasant weather, heat that he does not
expect, cold that he did not provide for, or dust that deprives him of
his last atom of good-humor, and is told that it is "exceptional," knows
exactly what that word means. He is familiar with the "exceptional" the
world over, and he feels a sort of compassion for the inhabitants who
have not yet learned the adage, "Good wine needs no bush." Even those
who have bought more land than they can pay for can afford to tell the
truth.
The rainy season in Southern California, which may open with a shower or
two in October, but does not set in till late in November, or till
December, and is over in April, is not at all a period of cloudy weather
or continuous rainfall. On the contrary, bright warm days and brilliant
sunshine are the rule. The rain is most likely to fall in the night.
There may be a day of rain, or several days that are overcast with
distributed rain, but the showers are soon over, and the sky clears. Yet
winters vary greatly in this respect, the rainfall being much greater in
some than in others. In 1890 there was rain beyond the average, and even
on the equable beach of Coronada there were some weeks of weather that
from the California point of view were very unpleasant. It was
unpleasant by local comparison, but it was not damp and chilly, like a
protracted period of falling weather on the Atlantic. The rain comes
with a southerly wind, caused by a disturbance far north, and with the
resumption of the prevailing westerly winds it suddenly ceases, the air
clears, and neither before nor after it is the atmosphere "steamy" or
enervating. The average annual rainfall of the Pacific coast diminishes
by regular gradation from point to point all the way from Puget Sound to
the Mexican boundary. At Neah Bay it is 111 inches, and it steadily
lessens down to Santa Cruz, 25.24; Monterey, 11.42; Point Conception,
12.21; San Diego, 11.01. There is fog on the coast in every month, but
this diminishes, like the rainfall, from north to south. I have
encountered it in both February and June. In the south it is apt to be
most persistent in April and May, when for three or four days together
there will be a fine mist, which any one but a Scotchman would call
rain. Usually, however, the fog-bank will roll in during the night, and
disappear by ten o'clock in the morning. There is no wet season properly
so called, and consequently few days in the winter months when it is not
agreeable to be out-of-doors, perhaps no day when one may not walk or
drive during some part of it. Yet as to precipitation or temperature it
is impossible to strike any general average for Southern California. In
1883-84 San Diego had 25.77 inches of rain, and Los Angeles (fifteen
miles inland) had 38.22. The annual average at Los Angeles is 17.64; but
in 1876-77 the total at San Diego was only 3.75, and at Los Angeles only
5.28. Yet elevation and distance from the coast do not always determine
the rainfall. The yearly mean rainfall at Julian, in the San Jacinto
range, at an elevation of 4500 feet, is 37.74; observations at
Riverside, 1050 feet above the sea, give an average of 9.37.
It is probably impossible to give an Eastern man a just idea of the
winter of Southern California. Accustomed to extremes, he may expect too
much. He wants a violent change. If he quits the snow, the slush, the
leaden skies, the alternate sleet and cold rain of New England, he would
like the tropical heat, the languor, the color of Martinique. He will
not find them here. He comes instead into a strictly temperate region;
and even when he arrives, his eyes deceive him. He sees the orange
ripening in its dark foliage, the long lines of the eucalyptus, the
feathery pepper-tree, the magnolia, the English walnut, the black
live-oak, the fan-palm, in all the vigor of June; everywhere beds of
flowers of every hue and of every country blazing in the bright
sunlight--the heliotrope, the geranium, the rare hot-house roses
overrunning the hedges of cypress, and the scarlet passion-vine climbing
to the roof-tree of the cottages; in the vineyard or the orchard the
horticulturist is following the cultivator in his shirt-sleeves; he
hears running water, the song of birds, the scent of flowers is in the
air, and he cannot understand why he needs winter clothing, why he is
always seeking the sun, why he wants a fire at night. It is a fraud, he
says, all this visible display of summer, and of an almost tropical
summer at that; it is really a cold country. It is incongruous that he
should be looking at a date-palm in his overcoat, and he is puzzled that
a thermometrical heat that should enervate him elsewhere, stimulates him
here. The green, brilliant, vigorous vegetation, the perpetual sunshine,
deceive him; he is careless about the difference of shade and sun, he
gets into a draught, and takes cold. Accustomed to extremes of
temperature and artificial heat, I think for most people the first
winter here is a disappointment. I was told by a physician who had
eighteen years' experience of the climate that in his first winter he
thought he had never seen a people so insensitive to cold as the San
Diegans, who seemed not to require warmth. And all this time the trees
are growing like asparagus, the most delicate flowers are in perpetual
bloom, the annual crops are most lusty. I fancy that the soil is always
warm. The temperature is truly moderate. The records for a number of
years show that the mid-day temperature of clear days in winter is from
60° to 70° on the coast, from 65° to 80° in the interior, while that of
rainy days is about 60° by the sea and inland. Mr. Van Dyke says that
the lowest mid-day temperature recorded at the United States signal
station at San Diego during eight years is 51°. This occurred but once.
In those eight years there were but twenty-one days when the mid-day
temperature was not above 55°. In all that time there were but six days
when the mercury fell below 36° at any time in the night; and but two
when it fell to 32°, the lowest point ever reached there. On one of
these two last-named days it went to 51° at noon, and on the other to
56°. This was the great "cold snap" of December, 1879.
It goes without saying that this sort of climate would suit any one in
ordinary health, inviting and stimulating to constant out-of-door
exercise, and that it would be equally favorable to that general
breakdown of the system which has the name of nervous prostration. The
effect upon diseases of the respiratory organs can only be determined by
individual experience. The government has lately been sending soldiers
who have consumption from various stations in the United States to San
Diego for treatment. This experiment will furnish interesting data.
Within a period covering a little over two years, Dr. Huntington, the
post surgeon, has had fifteen cases sent to him. Three of these patients
had tubercular consumption; twelve had consumption induced by attacks of
pneumonia. One of the tubercular patients died within a month after his
arrival; the second lived eight months; the third was discharged cured,
left the army, and contracted malaria elsewhere, of which he died. The
remaining twelve were discharged practically cured of consumption, but
two of them subsequently died. It is exceedingly common to meet persons
of all ages and both sexes in Southern California who came invalided by
disease of the lungs or throat, who have every promise of fair health
here, but who dare not leave this climate. The testimony is convincing
of the good effect of the climate upon all children, upon women
generally, and of its rejuvenating effect upon men and women of advanced
years.