HER CITY AND COUNTY.
"Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,
Limes and citrons and apricots,
And wines that are known to Eastern princes."
In walking through the streets of Santa Barbara you may still see the
various types, but not so clearly defined as of old. Holy Fathers still
intone the service within the massive mission walls; they still
cultivate the large garden, from which woman is sedulously excluded. But
the faces are German and Irish. At a street corner two men are talking
earnestly, and as you pass you get a glance from Mexican eyes, dark and
soft, but the hair shows Indian blood. A real old Mexican vaquero rides
by in the genuine outfit, well worn and showing long use; next a
carriage full of fashionable visitors; then a queerer combination than
the Anglomaniac with his trousers legs turned up if the cable reports a
rainy day in London. This is the American vaquero--usually a short, fat
man with dumpy legs, who dons a flapping sombrero, buys a new Mexican
saddle, wooden stirrups, and leather riata, sometimes adding a coil of
rope at left side, wears the botas with a corduroy suit at dinner at
hotel, and doesn't know at all how comical an appearance he presents.
The very next to pass is one of the pioneers, who, although worth a
million or more, puts on no style, and surveys the mongrel in front with
a twinkle in his eye. Every one should own a horse or pony or burro
here, for the various drives are the greatest charm of the place.
Through all Southern California the happy children ride to school, where
the steeds, fastened to fence in front of building, wait patiently in
line, like Mary's lamb. But in Santa Barbara you see mere tots on
horseback, who look as if it were no new accomplishment. I believe the
mothers put them on gentle ponies to be cared for, or safe, as mothers
in general use the cradle or high-chair. One of the old Mexican
residents of Santa Barbara, when over eighty years of age, had the
misfortune to break his leg. He lay in bed uneasily until a surgeon
could be summoned and the fractured bones set and duly encased in
plaster. He then insisted on being carried out and placed upon his
favorite horse, where he sat during each day with patient serenity until
the damage was repaired by nature.
The drives are all delightful. You cannot make a mistake; there are
twenty-eight drives distinct and beautiful. Those best known are, to the
Mission Canon, to the Lighthouse, to Montecito and Carpenteria, Cooper's
Ranch, through the far-famed Ojai Valley, and the stage or coaching trip
to San Luis Obispo, not forgetting La Vina Grande (the big grapevine),
the trunk eighteen inches in diameter, foliage covering 10,000 square
feet, producing in one year 12,000 pounds of grapes; and the Cathedral
Oaks. I jotted down a few facts at the Lighthouse _a la_ Jingle in
_Pickwick Papers_: gleaming white tower, black lantern, rising from neat
white cottage, green window-shutters, light 180 feet above sea-level,
fine view from balcony, fields of young barley down to water's edge,
bluest blue in sea and sky, the lamp holds only one quart of oil,
reflectors do big business, considering, throwing the light 417 miles.
The keeper, a woman, has been there over thirty years, never goes away
for a single night, trim, quaint, and decided, doesn't want to be
written up, will oblige her, don't believe a woman ever did so much good
with a quart of kerosene daily before. Been a widow a long time, heard
of one woman, wife of lighthouse-keeper, he died, she too stout to be
gotten out of the one room, next incumbent married her.
Montecito, as Roe described it, is a village of charming gardens and
green lawns, with a softer climate even than Santa Barbara--a most
desirable situation for an elegant country retreat. I had the privilege
of visiting the home of Mr. W. P. Gould, a former resident of Boston,
who has one of the most perfect places I have ever seen. He has been
experimenting this year with olive oil in one room of his large house
for curing lemons, and has perfected a machine which expresses the
"virgin oil" without cracking a single pit or stone. This is a great
improvement, as one crushed stone will give an acrid taste to a quart of
oil. There is a fashion in fruits as much as in bonnets or sleeves.
Olive culture is just now the fad. Pears, prunes, almonds, walnuts, have
each had their day, or their special boom. Pomona is headquarters for
the olive industry. Nursery men there sold over 500,000 trees last year.
The tree does not require the richest soil. Hon. Elwood Cooper's olive
oil is justly famous, but the machinery designed by Mr. Gould makes a
much purer oil, pronounced by connoisseurs to be the finest in the
world. The olives are sun-dried; the ponderous rollers and keen knives
of the masher mash the fruit, and every after-process is the perfection
of cleanliness and skill. There is a nutty sweetness about this oil, and
a clear amber color, which makes it most desirable for the fastidious
invalid.
This new process has been purchased by a company who are going to try to
give the country what it has never known before--pure olive oil, free
from a bit of the stone. No pure oil is brought to our country. The
public think the price too high; they prefer to buy cotton-seed oil at
thirty-five cents a gallon, and this is adulterated with peanuts,
sunflowers, and so on. This will do for the masses, but the best is none
too good if it can be found.
Few appreciate the medicinal value of olive oil. Nations making use
regularly of this and the fruit are freed from dyspepsia. A free use in
the United States would round out Brother Jonathan's angular spareness
of form, and make him less nervous and less like the typical Yankee of
whom the witty Grace Greenwood said: "He looks as if the Lord had made
him and then pinched him." One does not see the orange groves here, but
the lemon trees and walnuts and olives are an agreeable change--just for
a change.
"Who ever thinks of connecting such a commonplace article of diet as the
lemon with the romantic history of ill-fated Anne Boleyn? Yet,
indirectly, she was the cause of its first introduction into England,
and so into popular notice. Henry VIII., who, if he rid himself of his
wives like a brute, certainly won them like a prince, gave such splendid
feasts and pageants in honor of the coronation of Anne and of their
previous nuptials as had seldom been accorded to queens of the royal
blood. These kingly entertainments were in turn followed by the great
civic feast of London, for which the whole world was searched for
delicacies to add to the splendor. At one such banquet, graced by the
presence of the royal pair, a lemon was introduced as an elegant
novelty. To an epicure such as Henry, the acquisition of a castle in
France would have proved less acceptable, and such was the importance
attached to the discovery--so says an old biographer--that a special
record was made of the fact that the cost of this precious lemon was six
silver pennies."
We hear nothing of irrigation, but almost everything will thrive without
it. The soil grows well all varieties of fruits found in the Eastern and
New England States, besides all the semi-tropical fruits, as guavas,
loquats, persimmons, dates, etc. As the Rev. Mr. Jackson says: "Could
it be shown that the primitive Eden bore as many fruits pleasant to the
taste, it would add a new pang to the thought of original sin."
The number of native trees seems small, but trees have been naturalized
here from every part of the world. The pepper tree is from Peru, also
the quinine tree: from Chili, the monkey tree and the Norfolk Island
pine.
Mr. Cooper imported the eucalyptus from Australia. It grows rapidly, and
is planted for windbreaks. It is used for firewood, and when cut down
nearly to the ground will start up with the same old courage and
ambition. Its roots are so eager for water that they make long detours,
sometimes even climbing up and down a stone wall, if it is in their
route, or into a well. From the same country comes the acacia, the
rubber tree, and a large number of shrubs. New Zealand contributes her
share, and to China and Japan they are indebted for the camphor tree,
the gingko, the loquat, and the chestnuts. To South Africa they are
indebted for the silver tree, and from the northern part of that
country the date-palm and the tamarind.
One sees side by side here, and in Pasadena, trees from almost opposite
climes: the New England elm and a cork tree, a cedar of Lebanon and a
maple or an English oak. Then the glorious palm--twenty-two varieties in
Montecito Valley alone.
Sydney Smith said of the fertility of Australia, "Tickle her with a hoe
and she laughs with a harvest." But in California even the hoe is not
needed, for "volunteer crops" come up all by themselves, and look better
than ours so carefully cultivated. They say that if a Chinaman eats a
watermelon under a tree the result is a fine crop of melons next year.
And I read of a volunteer tomato plant ploughed down twice that measured
twelve feet square, and bore thousands of small red tomatoes.
Alfalfa is an ever-growing crop--can be garnered five times each year.
And as for flowers, I really cannot attempt to enumerate or describe in
detail. There are hundreds of varieties of roses. They were found
growing wild by myriads, and have been most carefully cultivated and
improved. One rose tree in the grounds of the Arlington Hotel has spread
over sixty feet of the veranda, and three lady guests have climbed into
its branches at once. As one man said: "The roses here would climb to
the moon if a trellis could be provided."
A friend sent me twenty-five large bunches of the choicest roses from
her garden one morning in April, each bunch a different variety. Their
roses are shipped in large quantities to San Francisco, and Chicago has
her churches decorated at Easter from the rose gardens of Santa Barbara.
Honey naturally is thought of. Apiculture here is a great business. The
bee has to be busy all day long and all through the year--no rest. One
ingenious fellow proposed crossing the working bee with the firefly, so
it could work all night long by its own lantern. But this is better. I
hear wondrous stories of bees getting into cracks of church towers or
upper stories, and bulging out the buildings with their accumulated
stores--positively cartloads of sweetness. Think of honey made from
orange flowers selling at five cents a pound!
A clergyman writing of Santa Barbara County says that twenty-five years
ago all their vegetables were imported. Now beans yield a ton to the
acre, potatoes two hundred and fifty bushels per acre, and he has seen
potatoes that weighed six, seven, and eight and a half pounds--as much
as an ordinary baby; beets, seventy-five tons to the acre; carrots,
thirty. Mr. Webster once declared in Congress that this State could
never raise a bushel of grain. Corn yields fifty bushels to the acre;
barley, sixty; wheat, thirty. Others give much higher records: corn, one
hundred and thirty bushels; barley, eighty; potatoes, four hundred;
forty tons of squashes, four tons of hay, sixty tons of beets.
I have spoken of stock-raising. Dairying is a profitable industry.
Poultry farming a little uncertain. If interested in mining there is
much to explore. Just in this county are found gold, silver, copper,
asphaltum, bituminous rock, gypsum, quicksilver, natural gas, and
petroleum.
And what sort of a climate does one find? Santa Barbara is an
all-year-round resort. It has all that one could ask.
"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea."
It is a perpetual summer--sometimes a cold and rainy June, sometimes a
little too warm, sometimes a three days' sand-storm, disagreeable and
trying; but it is always June, as we in New England know June. At least
it is Juney from 9 A.M. until 4 P.M. Just before sunset the temperature
falls. Then when the sun goes rapidly in or down it is like being out at
sea. And to a sensitive patient, with nerves all on outside, chilled by
the least coolness, it is unpleasantly piercing.
When any one describes Santa Barbara to you as a town
"Where winds are hushed nor dare to breathe aloud,
Where skies seem never to have borne a cloud,"
remember that this applies truthfully to "a Santa Barbara day," but
_not_ to all days. Surf bathers go in every month of the year. But this
does not alter the fact that a person would be disappointed and consider
himself deceived if he accepted the general idea of absolute heaven on
earth. The inhabitants do not wish such exaggerations and
misrepresentations to go forth. California can bear to have the whole
truth told, and still be far ahead. Who wants eternal sunshine, eternal
monotony?
The temperature during the day varies little. I see that one resident
compares it with May in other parts of the country. I think he has never
tried to find a picnic day in early May in New England. He says: "Our
coldest month is warmer than April at Philadelphia, and our warmest one
much cooler than June at same place." They did have one simoon in 1859,
when the mercury rose to 133 deg., and stayed there for eight hours. Animals
and birds died, trees were blasted and burned, and gardens ruined. But
that was most "unusual."
Flannels are worn the year round. Average of rain, seventeen inches.
There are sixty-one mineral and medicinal springs in California that
are already famous. Here we can take hot sulphur baths, and drink the
nauseous water that is said to cure almost all diseases.
Farming is comparatively easy. But grapevines are smitten by a
mysterious disease called "cellular degeneration," and phylloxera; a
black scale that injures orange and olive, and a white scale that is
worse. Apples are not free from worms; the gopher is sure to go for
every root it can find. There was a serpent even in the original Eden.
The historian remarks: "The cloddish, shiftless farmer is perhaps safer
in Massachusetts." I think of experiences at "Gooseville," and decide
not to buy, nor even rent a ranch, nor accept one if offered. "Fly to
ills I know not of?" No, thank you!
I'm tired now of agriculture and climate, and will turn to less
practical themes. You sympathize. We will stop and begin a new chapter,
with a hope of being more interesting.