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<, :>-
TO THE
GOLDEN LAND.
SKETCHES
OF A TRIP TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
ILLUSTRATED.
SAMUEL STOREY, M.P.
LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1889.
PREFACE,
These sketches were hastily penned amid the hurry of
travel for publication in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle,
the Sunderland Daily Echo, and certain other English
newspapers. Complaisant friends have expressed a desire
to have them in book form ; therefore this volume
appears.
If any of the public at large choose to buy it, they
must take it for what it is worth.
I call Southern California the Golden Land, in part
because for a generation we have drawn from it the
most precious of metals, in part because when I left it
its mountain sides and spreading mesas and sheltered
valleys were covered with a golden efflorescence rich
beyond compare.
To H. P., J. W. v., and F. G. S., my pleasant com-
panions in many a glorious drive, I dedicate the volume.
If it should please no one else, it will please them. And
that will suffice
The Writer.
fc7a^73
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Historic Ground — Lovely Weather — Our Voyage
Across— New York Harbour — An Atheist and a
Fisherman — A Pleasant Interview — Something for
Smokers— Burns the Son of the Tavern— Was
Washington a Thief? — Jones to the Rescue . . 7
CHAPTER II.
New York v. London — Broadway — Does Washington
like it? — a Homicidal Hotel-Keeper — The Ele-
vated Railway — Mercury the God — The Power
of a Five-Cent Piece — New York Newspapers —
The "Tribune" — A Type-setting Machine without
Type— Electricity to the Front . . . .12
CHAPTER in.
To Washington by Train — A Visit to President
Cleveland — Republican Simplicity — An Obelisk
INDEED — Lincoln's Window— The Capitol— Ford's
Theatre— A Tragic Ending 17
iv • CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
PAGE
The Rebel South — A Real New Yorker — Black and
White — Home from Meeting — Coloured Ladies
AND Gentlemen — A New Birmingham and a New
Sheffield— New Year's Day— New Orleans in the
Rain— Mud— A Hunt for Pious Blacks— Hard on
the Washerwomen— Adieu to New Orleans . . 23
CHAPTER V.
An Earthly Paradise— The Way Thither— Desert—
The Mirage — Just in Mexico— Cities of the West—
The Indian in Pantaloons— Los Angeles— A Model
Home— Irishmen in the West— Land Speculation-
Advertising Extraordinary 30
CHAPTER VI,
A Strange Land— Dull Geography— A Great Britain
AND A HALF— Men WANTED— WHO SHALL COME— THE
South — Pasadena and the Raymond — Spanish
Saints— Drawbacks in the Land— Summer and its
Strangeness— Vineyards— Lucky Baldwin— Health
Questions — Land and its Prices — Chinee Cheap
Labour— Boycotting even in California ... 36
CHAPTER VII.
Odds and Ends— Gladstone even Here— Off to River-
side—Prohibition Cities— A Sunday Morning Scene
— Something for the Children— San Diego, the
City of the Bay— A Present Naples ; a Future
CONTENTS. V
PAGE
Liverpool— Climate Past Compare— A Low Death-
Rate — The Great Hotel— An American Dives and
HIS Car 45
CHAPTER VHL
San Diego and its Back-Country— A Useful Chamber
OF Commerce— A Trip to the Mountains— Dutch-
men TO the Front— Lovely El Cajon — Water
Schemes— A Sail between Sky and Earth— China-
men and Indians— In the Mountains at Last — The
Hidden Valley — A Californian Wedding — A Moun-
tain Settlement — Fallbrook — Not even a Cork-
screw ON Principle— An Alpine Scene in the Land
of the Sun 54
CHAPTER IX.
A Mountain Sheep-Ranch— The Happy Valley— Rain
—The Pala Mission— An Indian Chief of a New
Type— The Great Mesa— Coyotes at Last— Scot-
land AND California— A Gold Fever and its Issue
—Typical Land Sale— An Ox Roasted— Its Roasters
Roasted too 64
CHAPTER X.
The Land Boom and its Effects— London Eclipsed on
Paper — Work v. Speculation — Santa Barbara —
A Western Riviera — Interview with Friars of
Orders Brown — The Ojai Valley — A Wondrous
vi CONTENTS.
PARK
Weather Record— Storm— Back to San Diego— Mr.
Albert Grey— Final Drives— Flowers and Birds
— Road-runners and Rattlesnakes — A Homeric
Contest— A Commonplace One— Ho for England !
—Mr. Albert Grey at Sea . . . . . .71
CHAPTER XI.
Western Newspapers— The " Boom "—Papers and their
Oddities— An Unique Advertisement— The Para-
gons of Editors— Mr. Pott redivivus— O'Brien's
Head Off— Pattern Reporting — Western Humour
—Old Foes Meet— Something for the Lawyers-
Something, too, for the Teetotalers— The Ladies
not Forgotten — A Costly Coffin — A Model Wife
—Sulphur Sam's Warning 81
CHAPTER XIL
3500 Miles in the Train— Pittsburgh— Washington —
Mr. Blaine — The American Navy — President Har-
rison — Washington's Home— New York— Homeward
Bound 93
ILLUSTRATIONS.
MAP
MR. BLAINE ....
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND
JOHN brown's sons AT HOME
HOMES IN LOS ANGELES
BOUNDARY STONE BETWEEN CALIFORNIA AND
MEXICO ....
PASADENA ....
FAC-SIMILE OF ESSAY BY A CHINESE COOK
AVENUE AT RIVERSIDE
ORANGE GROVES
ORANGE PACKING
HOTEL ON CORONADA BEACH
CARTING LUMBER FOR THE FLUME
THE GREAT FLUME .
VIADUCT ON THE FLUME
TUNNEL IN THE FLUME
A JACK-RABBIT DRIVE
SANTA ROSA ....
A CALIFORNIAN ROSE-BUSH .
SANTA BARBARA MISSION
THE IRISH MONK
WINTER BATHING IN THE PACIFIC
AN ADOBE DWELLING
SAN GABRIEL MISSION
PRESIDENT HARRISON
MOUNT VERNON, WASHINGTON'S HOME
THE BED AND ROOM WHERE WASHINGTON DIED
WASHINGTON'S TOMB
7
i6
21
30
'> n
39
45
47
48
50
53
55
57
59
61
63
65
71
75
77
80
84
S7
92
94
96
98
MR. BLAINE.
TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
CHAPTER I.
Historic Ground— Lovely Weather— Our Voyage Across-
New York Harbour— An Atheist and a Fisherman—
A Pleasant Interview — Something for Smokers — Burns
the Son of the Tavern— Was Washington a Thief?—
Jones to the Rescue.
On the Railway,
December T^ist, 1888.
I AM passing over the historic ground where many of
the early battles of the Great War were fought. I left
Washington at 11.24 A.M., and have just run through
Manassas Junction and the cuttings where the first fight
of Bull Run took place. The country is rough, undu-
lating, and wooded. Looking at it, one realises how
tough, hand-to-hand, and incomplete the fighting must
necessarily have been, especially between armies not yet
highly disciplined. It is a region calculated to fill soldiers
with unknown fears, and generals with indecision. I hope
to reach New Orleans, 1147 miles, on the morning after
to-morrow, spend my New Year's Day there, and then
go on to Los Angeles, 2000 miles farther. It seems
a stiff business, but a luxurious cushioned chair in a
palace-car by day and a comfortable bed in the sleeper at
night minimise one's pains. Besides, the day is lovely.
Imagine one of the brightest Christmas Days you ever
saw, with blue sky, gentle wind, and a keen appetising
air with just a suspicion of frost in it, and you have
8 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
the weather I am revelling in, I wonder what yours is
like?
Having so introduced myself, let me turn back and
begin at the beginning. Of our voyage across I need
not say much. It began in sunshine at Queenstown,
and ended in sunshine at New York ; and if in the interim
we had stormy seas and much rolling and tossing, still I
stood to my guns — in other words, I punctually presented
myself at every meal, which was more than three-quarters
of the passengers did, the list of absentees including one
gentleman who had crossed forty-seven times. Reflecting
on the facts, I proudly feel that in my person Britannia
still rules the waves. We steamed into New York harbour
on the sunny morning of the day before Christmas. I
had, in view of my oft-intended but never-till-now-realised
visit, so steeped myself in descriptive accounts of the
scene opening before me that it seemed strangely familiar.
The New Jersey highlands ; the low-lying tongue of
Sandy-Hook ; the magnificent statue of Liberty; the
massive Brooklyn Bridge ; the historic Battery Point
where the Governors lived when we English ruled the
land, and at no great distance from which George
Washington was sworn in as First President of the United
States ; the rapid Hudson ; the wharves ; the gorgeous
river steamers, and the swift-plying ferries — all were before
me. No need to descend to detail. Many of my friends
have seen New York from the sea, but never one of them
on a lovelier day than I.
The revenue boat brought off for me a welcoming tele-
gram from my friend Andrew Carnegie. By 4 P.M. I had
landed ; and that night I slept once again in a Christian
bed instead of a bunk. My Christmas Day I spent with
Mr. Carnegie's family party ; but the interesting event of
the day to me was the visit I paid to Colonel Ingersoll.
Let me confess. There are only two New Yorkers I really
was curious to see. I am not much interested in the
merchant princes, the millionaires, or the politicians of the
Empire State. And I may probably be thought a little
odd in my tastes. But the two men I wished to see were
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. g
the above-named Apostle of Agnosticism and W. C.
Prime, author of / Go A-Fishing, the raciest fisherman's
book published since gossiping, inimitable Izaak Walton
died. The latter (Prime, not Walton) I am to meet as
I return ; one o'clock saw Mr. Carnegie and me at the
door of the other. He lives in a handsome house. No. 400
Fifth Avenue, and received us in his library. " Colonel
Bob," as he is familiarly called, had with him his wife and
daughter, and, as he rose with a cheery face, presented the
spectacle of a stout, large-framed man, with massive head
and face, a merry twinkle in the eye, and a gently satirical
mouth. Colonel Ingersoll may be described as the Brad-
laugh of America, just as honest, just as persistently wrong
theologically (so most of us believe) ; less self-assertive,
more cultured, physically and facially of the same type.
And, like Bradlaugh, he is fortunate in a daughter. A
more charming, graceful, and gracious-mannered American
girl it would be impossible to see. In any assemblage of
fair women Miss Ingersoll would be notable. Strange, is
it not, that these unbelieving heathen should be blessed
with heaven's choicest gifts ! We had a pleasant hour's
talk. Carnegie and Ingersoll — both good talkers — made
an interesting couple, the small Scotchman with his
Napoleonic head, and the massive American, whose
shoulders seemed made to push mountains from his path.
The two reminded one of Tom Hood's couplet —
" The big judge and the little judge,
The judges of a(s)size."
Religion and theology, by common consent, were eschewed.
We talked of tobacco. Ingersoll was smoking a fragrant
Havannah. He puffed and plunged into praise of the
divine weed. If he believe in nothing else he believes in
tobacco. He rolled out to us a little eulogy he had con-
tributed to a new work on Cuba, his voice modulated in
curious rhythmic cadences. It was poetic, though not in
rhyme. The thing itself I hope to get for my friends, for
I have written to its author for a copy, but the inimitable
delivery of it I cannot reproduce. We talked of Burns, of
10 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
whom the Colonel and his daughter are passionately fond.
" How odd," said he, " that such gifts of genius should have
been bestowed on a son of the tavern and not on a son of
the church ! " Then we fell on the great war. Carnegie
and Ingersoll revelled in reminiscences. The former began
the recital of a great scene of which the latter was the
hero ; but the hero himself broke in, and with humorous
energy took up the tale. It was in the early days of the
war. Emancipation and the duty of the North thereon
had become a burning question ; but men were slow to
cross the Rubicon, for they knew that a policy of emanci-
pation involved war to the knife. It was necessary for
some bold man to speak out. A great meeting was held
at Chicago, and Colonel Bob was invited to speak.
" Fellow-citizens," he began, " if a man appropriates a
saw or any other implement of labour, we call him a
thief What shall we call the man who appropriates the
labourer, the producer of the implement ? He is a thief ^
too." The bold pronouncement was reported and repeated
over all the North amidst acquiescent applause ; it was
received with anger and execration in the South.
A little while after Ingersoll had to speak just on the
borderland between the belligerent States. It was in a
place where Confederate sympathisers were almost as
numerous as Federals. There was an immense meeting,
and all the indications pointed to — in vulgar parlance — a
row. No shrinking would avail. It was necessary to take
that bull by the horns. Colonel Bob began amid mingled
cheers and groans : — " Fellow-citizens, I said in Chicago
if a man appropriates to himself another man's saw or
implement of labour we call him a thief. If a man appro-
priates the labourer, the producer of the saw, he is a thief
too. (Dead silence.) Fellow-citizens, what I said in
Chicago I say here. He is a thief ! " A mingled burst
of yells and groans and cheers, and an ugly rush. One
man roared out — " George Washington owned slaves.
Was he a thief?" "The gentleman asks me was
Washington a thief?" retorted Ingersoll, straightening
himself up, and in tones of thunder — " Yes, sir, by God
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. ii
HE WAS." Then in his drollest, driest tones, and with a
twinkling eye fixed on his angry questioner, he added —
"Does the gentleman want my opinion about any other
individual ? " There was a momentary pause, then a
burst of hilarious laughter, and Colonel Bob went on
triumphantly to the end.
But hold, my space fails, just as time failed that pleasant
afternoon. Regretfully we took our leave. Colonel Bob
begging me cordially to call and see him again when I
returned to New York. I promised ; but dare I ? For at
my hotel I happened to alight on a choice extract from
a recent sermon by the Rev. Sam Jones, revivalist and
buffoon. It presents another view of Colonel Bob, and
my readers can have it as dessert after lunch : — " That
blatant, blab-tongued fool. Why, a fly can sit on his nose
and kick him in both eyes, and he wouldn't know it.
Bob has no brains, for he can see through a gimlet hole
with both eyes to oncet. Agnostics an' fools — if they
want to be so, let 'em set an' fan themselves with their
ears."
CHAPTER II.
New York v. London— Broadway— Does Washington like
IX?— A Homicidal Hotel- Keeper— The Elevated Rail-
way—Mercury THE God— The Power of a Five-Cent
Piece— New York Newspapers— The "Tribune"— A
Type-setting Machine without Type— Electricity to
THE Front.
On the Railway, January 2nd, 1889.
I SPENT my second day in New York in making myself
amply acquainted with its topography. It is by no means
my intention to burden others with details of all I saw
and heard. I shall simply pull the plums out of the
pudding, and if they prove to be not very toothsome, the
more's the pity.
I began at the bottom, or south end of the island.
New York, as all America knows, is surrounded by water,
its island-bounds extending fourteen miles north and
south, and from one and a half miles to two and a half
miles east and west. Within this confined space more
than a million " free and independents " live and work
or idle or speculate or thieve or beg. But the population
has, so to say, spilt over into neighbouring islands and
the mainland, and altogether there are nearer three
millions than one gathered within metropolitan limits.
The rate of growth is enormous. London is much bigger
than New York to-day, but it is quite an open question
whether one hundred, or even fifty years hence, the
relative positions may not be reversed.
I began at the bottom of Broadway, which is not broad,
and is disgracefully paved, its sideways disfigured with
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 13
ugly telegraph poles, and its roadways inundated with
tramcars. It is full, however, of fine buildings and hand-
some shops. This backbone of the city should have run
due north, but it trends steadily to the nor'-nor'-west,
and may be described as a backbone gone astray among
the ribs. On either side of it are the main avenues,
really running north and south, and some of which
necessarily cross Broadway at an acute angle. The
streets run at right angles to these avenues, and by the
time you have got from No. i Street to No. 150 you
have done a pretty piece of walking. Gazed at from a
balloon above, the city must look like nothing so much
as a huge gridiron.
Down from the balloon, however, let us come. Wander
on with me among the busy, surging crowds, and meander
ever and anon into the side streets. Here is famous Wall
Street, where more speculation takes place in a day than
in any other equal space in the world. There, from the
steps of the U.S. Treasury, George Washington's statue
looks calmly down on the scheming crowds of citizens,
for the honesty of all of whom the pure-souled, unselfish
Father of the Commonwealth would scarcely care to go
bail. It is little more than a century since he stood
on this very spot in the flesh and was sworn in as First
President of a new nation of two millions of men.
Now there are seventy millions of them. A century
hence who can say how many there may be? Let
us on, pausing at Union Square and Madison Square,
where there is at any rate one statue of admirable design
— that of Admiral Farragut. We look in at the enormous
store where the famous Tiffany displays his myriad gauds
of gold and silver and jewels, and lunch at Hoffman's,
whose proprietor shot the notorious James Fisk, did his
ten years, and now lunches and dines the fashionable
crowds in palatial rooms. The only comment some
practical New Yorkers made on that catastrophe was —
What a pity Fisk also did not shoot his shooter!
Now, if your lunch has refreshed you enough, look there
to your left, where one block off an ugly, unadorned
14 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
platform crosses the street. That is the elevated railway
— a noticeable feature of the city ; ugly beyond dreams, but
oh ! so useful. How New Yorkers could get about over
the disgracefully-paved streets without it man knows not.
There are four such lines, all beginning at the bottom of
Broadway, and two of them trending to the west and two
to the east till they reach their appointed track ; and then
all four stretch out due north for miles along the avenues.
They are reared in the centre of the roadways upon square
balks of timber high enough for loaded vehicles to pass
under. The trains run over them from early morn to late
midnight. Each day they pour tens, hundreds of thou-
sands into the business limits, and each evening speed
them out again. If you are fanciful you may compare
New York to a sandglass, with a huge bulb at one end,
connected by four elongated necks with as many bulbs
at the other end, the whole concern " run," or " operated,"
so the jargon goes here, by swift-winged Mercury, who is,
I believe, the god of trading, as I am certain he is of
thieving. Every morning the waggish god turns his glass
on its single bulb, and the black-coated human atoms pour
madly down through the narrow necks of the " elevated "
into the vortex, where he stirs them about and worries
them all day long. Then at five o'clock he reverses his
glass, and away pour the atoms again — out, out to their
virtuous homes to tell of money made or lost, some by
honest work, some by legal trade, and some by well-
veneered rascality.
For a ride on the elevated, long or short, you pay five
cents. Many things in the States cost this magic trifle.
We are taught in England that a dollar equals fifty pence
of our money. According to my present experience, its
purchasing power is little more than that of a shilling
with us. Your morning paper is five cents (2^d.), a
cigarette five cents, a box of wax-lights five cents, " shine
your boots " five cents, a pair of shoe-laces five cents, an
orange five cents, a glass of beer five cents ; even the
beggars, of whom I have found not a few, both in New
York and elsewhere, ask, not for a penny, but a nickel—
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 15
i.e.^ five cents, A cup of tea costs fifteen or twenty cents,
according to the fancy of the seller; a modest lunch
seventy cents ; a cab to the station a dollar and a half; a
porter looks disgusted if he gets less than a quarter. They
have a playful little habit, too, of soaring above the giving
of change. I sent a telegram the other day. It cost 148
cents. I handed in 150. No balance was handed back,
and it is " mean " to ask for your own. Silver was little
accounted of in the days of Solomon, and cents (less than
five) don't count here. Glorious home of freedom !
Of one pleasant and enlightening visit during my
peregrinations I must not forget to tell. Naturally I am
interested in the newspapers. New York is full of them.
The Heraldy of course, enjoys world-wide fame ; and the
World, under the guidance of my friend Mr. Pulitzer, has
achieved a sudden success only equalled in recent days
by the wondrous growth of the London Star. All, how-
ever, are good, enterprising, bright — if a hypercritical Briton
may be allowed to say so — too bright. Good fortune
threw me across Mr. Hart Lyman, one of the principals
of the literary staff of the Tribune, the great Republican
organ of Democratic New York. And I availed myself of
his courteous offer to examine the inner workings of that
mighty organ. Of much — the machines, the telegraphic
and telephonic and literary arrangements, etc., etc. — I need
not speak. We can equal these at home. But imagine
my surprise when, on entering the composing-room, I
found — no type. None ; except a very limited quantity
of large, odd sizes. How, then, is the paper set ? By
electrical machines.
There they stood in a row, thirty grim, silent demons.
At the turning of a little handle they are instantaneously
full of life. Each has a key-board like a piano, and in
front of the operator a series (105 in number) of oblong
tubes, like the attenuated reeds of a miniature organ.
These hollow tubes are about two feet in length, as broad
internally as type is high, and with a frontage as large as
the type is thick. Each is fitted with brass squares,
with a section cut out so as to leave the shape thus —
t6 to the golden LAND.
r-\ r— I Each letter has its own series of nicks on
\j I the inner edges of the V ; and there is a
"C square-edged space at the side where is the
matrix, or reverse of the letter. The operator,
sitting with the copy before him, touches the keys, and
each letter falls in due order till the line is complete.
Two steel fingers seize this, push it along, space it, and
justify it. Again two fingers seize it and push it in front
of a little cistern full of molten lead. As it reaches its
place the machine pushes out from the cistern a layer of
lead line-long and type-thick. The faces of the cooling
lead and the brass edge come into contact, the matrix
letters are impressed as positives on the lead, and there
remains a solid line of type. This goes in due course
to the galley, and the columns and pages are made up
and stereotyped in the ordinary way. Meanwhile the
machine whisks the brasses up to a series of little wag-
gons, running on an endless wire above the tubes, and
as each brass reaches its own nicks it drops into its tube,
and is ready again for use. It has only been out of its
nest one-third of a minute at the utmost. As a con-
sequence few brasses are needed. The letter oftenest
used, e, has only sixteen. I could carry the whole com-
plement for a machine in my coat pockets. " And what
will a machine perfect ? " said I. " One machine with one
man only will set five thousand ems an hour," said Mr.
Lyman, " and do its own distributing. And there is no
waste of type, no wear and tear. It is equal to six men."
" Do other papers use it ? " " None in New York ; a few
in the country, where they don't compete with us, and
are owned by our friends." " And England ? " " None in
England, as yet"
Bad news this for compositors, eh ? Not a bit of it,
my friends. I saw a copy of the Tribune the other day
of twenty-four full pages ! The introduction of electrical
setting will only end in making existing papers bigger
and fuller of interest to the public, whilst it will make
new papers possible in scores of places where now they
can't be made to pay.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND.
CHAPTER III.
To Washington by Train — A Visit to President Cleveland
— Republican Simplicity — An Obelisk indeed — Lin-
coln's Window — The Capitol — Ford's Theatre— A Tragic
Ending.
In the Train^ January yd^ 1889.
Satisfied with a brief present visit to New York, of which
I shall probably see more as I return, I was driven on
Friday to the Railway Station, was ferried across the
Hudson, and found myself on the cars in Jersey City,
bound for Washington, with letters of introduction to the
President and his secretary. Colonel Lamont. Washington
is about 240 miles from New York. You pay 27s. for the
ticket, and 14s. extra for the Pullman Palace Car on the
Limited Express. The road hugs the coast more or less,
passing through Trenton, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. I
cannot say that this is an interesting journey. You pass
mainly through a cultivated and prosperous country, but
there are stretches of low waste, and you miss the com-
fortable-looking farm steadings, the trim hedges, and the
well-kept ditches which give large areas of England the
aspect of a cultivated garden.
Trenton was interesting to me historically, for it was
there that Washington sustained his most disastrous
defeat in (from the American standpoint) the darkest days
of the Revolutionary War — a defeat nobly and speedily
redeemed by victories at Germantown and Brandywine,
just over the rolling hills to the south-west Philadelphia,
with its 800,000 Pennsylvanians, and Baltimore, the seaport
and capital of Maryland, I cannot describe, for our stay
was of the briefest. Leaving New York at 10 A.M., we
steamed into the depot at Washington a little after 4 p.m.
— good travelling, though, as will be noted, you have to pay
fifty per cent excess to secure it I first saw Washington
on a lovely December day. The westering sun was sinking
3
i8 TO THE GOLDEN LAND,
in glory among the distant hills, and its last rays lit up the
marble pillars and mighty dome of the Capitol, the Parlia-
ment House of nearly forty free united states, each of
which in far distant cities, in some cases beyond Alpine
ranges or desert wastes, has its own Parliament and its
own Executive administering its own State affairs. Note
this fact, please ; find the moral of it for yourselves.
Washington may be honestly described as a fine city.
Its main avenue, as wide as four ordinary streets, is
asphalted ; tramcar lines occupy its centre ; its sidewalks
are adorned with trees, and many of the buildings are
noble. It stretches east and west for a mile and a half
At the east end is the Capitol, seated on the swelling
crest of a low hill ; at the west end is the famous
White House, the official residence of the successive
Presidents of the United States. The surrounding avenues,
streets, and squares are planned and laid out in the
magnificent American way, to satisfy the needs of a
population of a million ; but at present the city con-
tains less than a quarter of that number. Its planners
meant that it should radiate in every direction from the
Capitol hill, the better buildings running away eastward.
But cities, like pigs, will not be driven. The citizens have
eschewed the goodly sites in the east, filled up the swamps
west and north-west, and thither Washington grows.
Advanced as the day was, I called on Colonel Lamont,
but, finding he was out driving, had to content myself with
leaving my letters. In a couple of hours, however, a
messenger arrived from him with a note, whose republican
simplicity merits its reproduction here —
'"''Executive Mansion, Washington, Dec. 28, 1888.
" Dear Sir, — If you call at ten o'clock to-morrow morning I shall
find great pleasure in introducing you to the President.
Very truly yours,
Daniel A, Lamont."
No ridiculous etiquette ! No punctilious delay ! He
never asked me whether I had a coat-of-arms, or had
secured the right sort of cocked hat, and the proper kind
of velvet breeches ! At ten next morning, accordingly,
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 19
I walked across to the White House, which Hterally
glistened in the bright sunlight It had a pleasant, kindly-
look — the look of a great English country house of the
better sort ; for the Americans do not lodge their chief in
a palace, but a home. It stands on the same foundations
as the older house which we English burnt down during
our second war with America in 18 14, and its double
front looks on one side to the north upon a broad
boulevard, and on the other over sloping gardens to
the mighty Potomac. No long array of flunkeys loafed
around ; an usher simply attired, like a man, not like a
pantaloon, received my card and passed me upstairs,
where another official, similarly attired, ushered me into
a room, and sent for Colonel Lamont. That gentleman
speedily made his appearance, informed me that the Presi-
dent would be at liberty " quite soon," and begged me to
be seated. The room, he informed me, was known as
the Cabinet Room, where the President was in the
habit of meeting his Cabinet in council, for in this country
the Chief of the State actively takes part in the Govern-
ment, and is chief in more than name.
Whilst we pleasantly talked, a door on the right opened
to emit the Attorney-General, and in a moment the
Colonel had ushered me in, and I was face to face with
the President. Thus simply and without parade is one
man (however petty) in this democratic land introduced
to another, though he be President over sixty millions of
men. It was the first time I had ever stood immediately
in presence of a live Chief Ruler. I once saw a dead one.
To meet one thus as gentleman meets gentleman was at
once a pride and a pleasure ; but knee-scraping and
hand-kissing one's soul abhors. My democratic vertebrae
are not supple enough for that nonsense.
President Cleveland sat at a writing-table drawn into
a large window, and rose as I entered, saying courteously,
" Good-morning." " This is my first visit to the States,
Mr. President," I replied, "and I felt it would be at once
a duty and a pleasure to pay my respects to the Chief of
the State." " You are heartily welcome ; pray be seated."
20 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
Mr. Cleveland is a short, stout man, with a large face,
and a large head only partially covered with hair. A
heavy moustache adorns his upper lip. He gives you an
impression of solidity, but by no means of stolidity. Do
not expect me to give the details of our half-hour's inter-
view. Be sure there were two subjects we eschewed.
He never mentioned the burning Sackville incident, and
I was too discreet to make any reference to his own
recent defeat at the polls. The only political matter we
touched was that of International Arbitration. He told
me he had received with great pleasure the recent depu-
tation of English M.P.'s, and had been much struck with
their evident earnestness in a great cause. Drawing
me then into the bow-window he pointed out to me
the Potomac, and over it the rolling plains and hills of
fair Virginia. I asked if this was Lincoln's room. No.
Mr. Lincoln liked the office. I should see it. There, in
front of us, on the other side of the river, rose Washing-
ton's monument. Talk of obelisks ! Cleopatra's Needle
is a baby to this. It is sixty-three feet square at the
base, and tapers upwards till its point challenges the
clouds at a height of 550 feet, whilst our Needle in
London is, I believe, somewhat over 100 feet. Its
hollow interior contains a lift, by which the practical
Americans whisk you comfortably to the top if you
are so inclined. " I've got that finished anyhow," said
Mr. Cleveland. "When I came here first I felt it odd
to have it frowning down on me ; but in four years I
have learned to think of it as a friend, and many a
time I turn from my papers and watch its varying hues
under the changing skies." "A friend indeed," said I,
" if Washington's spirit hovers round it."
Enough of this gossip. Our talk was interesting to me,
but might not be to others. The Senator for Arkansas
was announced (for this poor ruler is seldom allowed to
be idle), and I took my leave, the President cordially
shaking hands and wishing me " a good time " and better
health in California. Colonel Lamont awaited me, and
under his guidance I entered the "office." There was
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 21
Lincoln's favourite window, there his desk, nay, there
stood an old framed chair, just such as you see in
American kitchens, painted a bright, ugly red, the paint
chipped and worn and scraped off here and there. May
not imagination body forth the " rail-splitter " working
away in his rough west-country chair? How much was
on the hazard ! Have you read the moving history of
those eventful days of March and April 1861? Lincoln
had just been inducted into his high office, and stood in
the White House, chief of a riven State. The South was
in open rebellion; its armies were mustering. He had no
soldiers. The telegraph indeed brought news of the rising
in the North, the musterings in New York and Philadelphia,
the march of the volunteers southward. But Baltimore
stood on the railway track, and Baltimore, much inclined
to be rebel, refused to let the volunteers past. Then the
wires were cut, and Lincoln stood unguarded, isolated
from the faithful North, face to face with the rebel South ;
almost alone, but firm as adamant, true as steel. Tidings
at last came through that the troops had been sent by sea
and would sail up the Potomac.
Every morning Lincoln hurried to his favourite window ;
his yearning eyes searched the southern horizon for the
sails that did not appear. Before him rolled the famous
river ; immediately beyond it all was rebel ground. There,
on his right, but hidden by the hills, is Harper's Ferry,
where John Brown struck the first open downright blow
at slavery. At an equal distance to the left, sheltered by
those trees, lie the bones of the Father of the Republic.
In front there, just six miles off, where the tall chimneys
rise, is Alexandria, held by the advance troops of the
Confederate army. Here, close to the right, rises over the
trees the white fagade of Arlington, the ancestral home
of the Lees, whence General Robert had ridden south to
command the rebel armies, and lead them in many a
fierce and fratricidal fight. Still the ships come not. It
seems as though President, Cabinet, and Capitol are at the
mercy of any adventurous foe. At last, in his anxiety,
Lincoln was seen to lean his weary brow against the
22 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
window-frame ; and as his fingers impatiently tapped the
panes he muttered again and again, "Will they never
come?" I protest it is one of the pathetic scenes of
history; the most pathetic scene (save the last) in Lincoln's
own mournfully-victorious career !
From the White House I passed to the Capitol. What
has been so oft described need not be described by me.
The building, in a word, externally and internally, is
magnificent, and worthy of a mighty people. The
chambers in which the two Houses meet are more
spacious than ours in London, and the arrangements for
the public just as commodious as ours are the reverse.
Congress was not in session, but sundry representatives of
the people were lounging on their seats, and comfortably
enjoying their cigars within the sacred precincts. Every
nation has ways of its own.
Weary though I was, I availed myself of the last hour
of daylight to find Tenth Street and Ford's Theatre, where,
on Good Friday, 1865, Lincoln was foully slain by Booth.
The theatre is now used as a Government museum. No
place for Mimic Tragedy here henceforth for ever. I
traced the route by which the assassin, mounting his horse,
made his way over the Long Bridge and so into Virginia,
there in brief space to meet a murderer's doom. Opposite
the theatre is the house where his friends, horror-stricken,
speechless, bore the wounded President. And there he
breathed his life out, speaking never again. A plain tablet
on the wall bears the simple inscription —
In this House
Abraham Lincoln died,
April 16, 1865.
Invited, I entered the house and passed into the room
built on at the back — a low, two-windowed chamber, half-
filled by the bed when it stood there to receive its tragic
load. I stood with bowed and reverent head pondering
the dire catastrophe. To me that spot was holy ground,
for a patriot-martyr died there !
CHAPTER IV.
The Rebel South— A Real New Yorker— Black and White
— Home from Meeting— Coloured Ladies and Gentle-
men—A New Birmingham and a New Sheffield— New
Year's Day— New Orleans in the Rain— Mud— A Hunt
FOR Pious Blacks— Hard on the Washerwomen— Adieu
to New Orleans,
In the Train^ January Afth^ 1889.
There are various routes by rail from Washington to
New Orleans. I chose the shortest, the Piedmont Air
Line ; so called, first because it runs at the foot of the
Blue Mountains, and secondly because it cuts straight as
a bee-line across the country. You pass through the
States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the heart of what
was the Rebel South. I saw the land at its worst, for
the cotton and maize crops were gathered, and the fields
looked empty, burnt-up, and unkempt. The ugliness was
redeemed, however, by low rolling hills, covered with
timber, and ever and anon the passage of a river opened
up views of rich and verdant valleys. The country does
not look to be thickly inhabited, and indeed is not so.
It was my fortune to meet upon the train a New York
gentleman, who fell into easy conversation. This Mr.
Buckley is a typical Northern American, tall, sprucely-
dressed, intelligent, travelled, and well-read. He is
director of one of the New York banks, director too
of the Brooklyn dry-docks, owner of a cotton plantation
in Carolina, and of coal-mines somewhere else ; finally,
chief shareholder in one of the great railroads running
west from St. Louis to California. Under his guidance
I left the gorgeous palace-car and crossed over the gang-
24 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
way into the general car, and then into the smoking-car
beyond.
The general cars in the States are essentially democratic.
There the people sat, male and female, rich and poor,
black and white together. I was in the midst of negro-
land, and of course in the company of many good
Democrats. This "black question" is not settled yet.
There is much race jealousy and hatred, often rising
into blood-shedding on both sides, though mainly on
the side of the whites. One Democrat suggested that
things would never be right till there was a bloody
racial war. You see the blacks will persist in multiply-
ing, will insist that the American Constitution is right
in declaring that all men are free and equal. Another
Democrat thought that the blacks should be driven or
deported bodily out of the land. I suggested that the
whites brought them there, and should bear the ills their
greed created. He did not see that. Yet another was
of opinion that at any rate they should have no votes
since they did not know what they voted about. As
if all whites did — here or elsewhere ! I mildly suggested
schools, inter-marriage, and patience, and he looked at
me as though I were dangerous.
At one station a crowd of what Lord Salisbury might
fairly describe as "black people" got into the car. There
were some fifty or sixty of them, the men in black or
dark clothes, with white shirts, and the inevitable wide-
awake hat ; the women, some of them nicely and neatly
dressed, others in garments and hats of fearful colours
and wonderfully made. They laughed and chattered and
ate oranges and apples just like your even Christian.
The young folk made eyes (such eyes) at one another;
the elder men dandled the babies. They were mostly
jet black, but here and there paler faces indicated the
marriage of races. A jovial crew. They had been at a
religious meeting (would I had been there !), and were
on their way to their cabin-homes ; poor things, sir, but
their own. I did not hear one rude, foul, or offensive
word. All was mirth and kindliness ; and when they
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 25
left us the men helped the women and bairns as care-
fully out of the car as though they had been English
gentlemen, " Isn't that a better use to put them to than
making slaves of them?" I suggested to my Democratic
friends ; but I don't think they saw even that.
At one part of our journey we skirted the coal and
iron district of Northern Alabama, Georgia, and Southern
Tennessee. Enormous quantities of these precious minerals
are being opened up in this part of the South, mainly by
Northern enterprise and capital ; and the effect upon the
prosperity of the district has been marked. The popu-
lation is increasing by leaps and bounds, and a new
Birmingham and a new Sheffield have arisen which bid
fair to rival their prototypes in the old land. The coal
and iron He close together. This is seldom so in America.
For instance, I think I have heard Mr. Carnegie say that
he brings some of his iron ore 1200 miles by rail.
English manufacturers will understand what that means.
But here the ores are side by side, and furnaces and
coal-pits combine to make the landscape hideous and
the people rich. Along with manufacturing has come
the true American itch for Protection. The growth of
this desire lost Cleveland much support in these parts.
Democrats ratted to Harrison. It would be odd now
if, not education and the negro, but coal and iron broke
up the Solid South.
The second morning brought us to Atlanta, a populous
and thriving city of some 80,000 souls and the capital
of Georgia. It was here that Sherman routed utterly
the Southern forces, capturing the city and its military
stores in that famous march through Georgia which
broke the back of the Confederacy. By the way, I have
mentioned the Confederates and the War so often that
I may not inappropriately weave in a little incident here.
The Confederate States (as all know — many to their cost)
issued paper-money, each bill proudly bearing on its face,
" The Confederate States of America promise to pay
dollars." They never did pay, never will. They are not;
Grant took them. Now, a certain enterprising firm in
4
26 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
Savannah held a number of these notes after the war, and
knowing nothing better to do with them, printed the
Lament of some Southern Poet on the back, stamped
their own trade-stamp in front as an advertisement, and
retailed them at a trifling charge. One for five dollars
came to my hands. Admire the Lament of
THE CONFEDERATE BILL.
Representing nothing on God's earth now,
And naught in the waters below it,
As the pledge of a nation that passed away.
Keep it, dear friend, and show it.
Show it to those who will lend an ear
To the tale this trifle will tell :
Of liberty born of a patriot's dream.
Of a storm-cradled nation that fell.
Too poor to possess the precious ores.
And too much of a stranger to borrow ;
We issued to-day our promise to pay.
And hoped to redeem on the morrow.
The days rolled on, and the weeks became years,
But our coffers were empty still ;
Gold was so scarce that the treasury quaked
If a dollar should drop in the till.
But the faith that was in us was strong indeed.
Though our poverty will be discerned,
And this little cheque represents the pay
Our suffering veterans earned.
We knew it had scarcely a value in gold.
Yet as gold our soldiers received it ;
It gazed in our eyes with a promise to pay,
And every true soldier believed it.
But our boys thought little of price or pay,
Of the bills that were all overdue ;
We knew if it bought us our bread to-day,
'Twas the best our poor country could do.
Keep it — it tells our history o'er.
From the birth of the dream to the last;
Modest and born of the Angel Hope,
Like our hope of success — it passed.
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 27
At Atlanta I saw the first sign of the cloven foot in
respect of the treatment of the negro. There are three
waiting-rooms at the station — one for ladies, one for gents
(not gentlemen), and one for " coloured people." The"
railway companies thus bend to local prejudice when it
costs them next to nothing. When it is a question
of providing separate cars, however, which would cost
much, economy slays prejudice, and, as I have noted,
the lion and the lamb lie down together.
All day and all night we drivelled along through Alabama
and Mississippi, passing through Montgomery and Mobile ;
through the latter just after the New Year had come
into the world. The city was all alight, the citizens firing
off squibs and crackers in honour of 1889. It was odd
to lie in one's bed, comfortably propped up on the
pillows, and gaze through the windows at the shadowy
land ; sometimes dashing through dreary cane-brakes, then
into the obscurity of dense forests, and anon over wide,
misty, watery wastes of grim bayous. At length at
seven o'clock on the third morning we steamed into
New Orleans, and amidst pouring rain I made my way
to the Hotel St. Charles. When it rains in the Crescent
City it does rain. If I tell you little of New Orleans
you must blame that rain for it. I had planned but a
brief stay of twenty-four hours, and was not tempted to
extend my visit. The city, standing on the left bank of
the mighty Mississippi, so poetically known to the Indians
as Father of Waters, is built on the mud left by the river.
It is inhabited by a mixed population of Americans,
French, Spanish, negroes, and Chinese. Many of its
buildings are fine, and its streets spacious. The main
street. Canal, is long and straight, and 200 feet wide, with
a double row of trees in the centre ; then lines of tram-
ways, then a roadway on either side, and finally broad
flagged sidewalks, sheltered by arcades, which the shop-
keepers are allowed to run out. The footpaths are thus
smooth and dry even on the wettest day. But the
pavements ! oh, Heavens 1 Canal Street is paved with
stone blocks planted on the mud, and twelve inches
28 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
square. Anything smaller would, they say, sink away
through the mud. Why not, I suggested, sink the pave-
ment twelve inches for a base, put in macadam, and
asphalte the top? The answer was, the city could not
afford it. Think of it A city with 300,000 people can't
afford to make its main street decently passable. Gab-
riding is a series of dislocations, and as for crossing on
foot in wet weather — well, the only way is to double
up your trousers and plunge in ; you may come out, or
you may not. I tell you these Americans are so busy
making dollars that they have no time to make comfort.
It is so nearly everywhere. In my infinite compassion
for their state, I wished then and there that I could send
out to them my friend Alderman B . He would mend
their ways in six months, or more probably die of a
broken heart in the meantime.
New Year's Day is, or ought to be, a great day for the
ex-slaves. On that day, a quarter of a century ago,
Lincoln issued his immortal Proclamation of Emanci-
pation. I was told there would be service in their
churches. I asked one negro after another where I
should find the church in use. One guessed, another
rather thought, a third believed, etc. They sent me hither
and thither in their feckless way, but that church I never
reached. I found our dark brothers on the quays, in
the saloons, at their own doors, at the street corners,
but nowhere at church. One impudent darkie sneeringly
told me " I would make a lot of money at church." The
almighty dollar had eaten into him too. After an hour's
search in the rain I gave it up, and wandered instead to
see the river, the cotton ships, and the levee. This latter,
a huge bank of earth, is the guardian of the city. As the
river has silted up the floods have risen higher, and the
levee has had to be raised again and again, for the Missis-
sippi now runs fifteen feet above the level of many of the
streets. It would be easy to make an end of New Orleans.
In the afternoon I was lucky enough to meet young Mr.
Watts, of the well-known London shipping firm of Watts,
Ward & Co. Together we spent a pleasant evening, and
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 29
at a reasonable hour I went to bed. One last sensation
remained for me, however, before I turned in ; one final
proof, if such were needed, of the sensitive regard of the
chivalrous Southerner for the feelings of a race. Amongst
the printed list of warnings and instructions hung in the
bedroom, I read in italics — Beware of coloured washer-
women — theft and bugs. When I paid my excessive bill
in the morning, it was not of black men's theft I had
need to complain. I discharged the account in silence,
remembered my black brother who had assiduously
attended to my comfort, crossed the river, took my seat
on the cars, and left New Orleans without regret en route
for the desert.
CHAPTER V.
An Earthly Paradise— The Way Thither— Desert— The
Mirage— Just in Mexico— Cities of the West— The
Indian in Pantaloons— Los Angeles— A Model Home
—Irishmen in the West— Land Speculation— Adver-
tising Extraordinary.
Hotel Nadeau, Los Angeles,
January 13///, 1889.
I HAVE apparently found a Paradise on earth. The road
to it, like that to the Upper Paradise, is long and
stony and tedious, but when you arrive the pain of
striving is forgotten in the beatitude of possession. I left
myself in New Orleans. The distance thence is 2000
miles, to cover which consumed three nights and four
days in the cars. The country may be described in a
sentence: 400 miles of swamp, 800 miles of a wilder-
ness of trees and undergrowth interspersed with rude
Texan clearings, 700 miles of horrible desert, and 100
miles of verdant beauty. Of Texas I have but space to
repeat the witty description given by a bishop on the
cars : " Texas has more rivers and less water, more
cows and less butter, more creed and less religion, than
any country." At one time we were 4500 feet above the
sea, at another 200 feet below it. The desert must have
been blood-curdling in pre-railway days. No water, no
shelter, apparently no limit. Only sandy, rocky wastes
with scarce a green thing on them, and no cover from the
burning heat of the day or the tornadic winds and water-
spouts which now and anon burst over them in fury.
Now, however, thanks to George Stephenson, you career
along as gaily as ApoUyon's passengers in Hawthorne's
Celestial Railroad, and when you reach the end, the desert,
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 31
I repeat, is forgotten. Yet it was bad enough, and strange
enough. Thrice in one day I saw in the far distance shin-
ing lakes of water, their banks lined with shadowy trees.
Yet water there was not. It was but the mirage — wondrous
sham ; to us interesting merely, but to the pioneers and
gold-seekers forty years ago how fatal a will-o'-the-wisp.
I spoke just now of running along far below sea-level. It
is even so. We crossed for eighty miles where once flowed
the waters of the Californian Gulf The vfery names of the
stations tell of the terrors and escapes of a painful past :
Sweet Water, Painted Rock, Mohawk Summit, Mammoth
Tank, Flowing Well, Volcano Springs, Dry Camp, White
Water. As in Sahara, the horrid distances are measured
out by the names of the infrequent wells.
At El Paso I took advantage of a long delay to cross the
Rio Grande and plant my feet in Mexico and in a Mexican
town. The latter is commonplace and dirty. Yet it is
grandiloquently termed a city. Indeed, there are cities
everywhere en route. A few wooden dwellings are run up
on unpaved streets, a wooden or brick court-house or town
hall is reared, and forthwith you have a " city " in the Far
West. Gila City consists of two wooden and two adobe,
or dried clay, cabins ; Yuma City is a bunch of shabby
shanties plus a hotel, and so on. At Yuma I took my
first look at the North American Indian in his native
lair. Some thirty of the tribe, men and squaws, were
at the station. Their long, thick, coal-black hair is their
only head-covering. They affect the European costume,
and the spectacle of the noble Red Man in a pair of
patched shoddy pantaloons is ludicrous enough. These
Yumas live and loaf at the expense of the American
Government, and, as the guide-book hastens to assure
nervous travellers, have never gone into the scalping
business.
Yuma is on the banks of the great river Colorada, whose
waters will by-and-by irrigate thousands of now arid
square miles in Arizona and New Mexico. It is, I sup-
pose, the sunniest place in the world, for 351 days per
annum are sunny, and only fourteen cloudy. Crossing the
32 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
Colorada we are at last in California, though hours of
desert-travelling still intervene between us and lovely Los
Angeles. The first thing I did when at length we were
fairly housed in that Elysium was — let me frankly confess
it — to go to bed. In a journey of 2000 miles we were
just fifteen minutes behind time.
The next day proved a day of brilliant sunshine, so
that the capital of Southern California was presented to
me under the most favourable conditions. It was the 6th
of January, 1889; but with a blazing sun in a cloud-
less sky, the thermometer running up to 80, and a warm,
balmy breeze playing on your cheeks, you might be
pardoned for taking it to be the 6th of July. Los Angeles
is situated in part on a level plain, about sixteen miles
from the ocean and 200 feet above it, and in part on a
succession of low hills to the north and west of the
level land. A little river of the same name winds
through the plain. Meek enough it looks now as I cross
on its wooden bridge, but in the rainy season it is apt
to become a boisterous and dangerous torrent. The city
was colonised by the Spanish monks, who last century
christianised California. They saw its beauty of situation,
set themselves down there, and called it in their ornately-
pious way the Town of the Queen of the Angels.
When the country passed to the United States in
1847, Los Angeles was a pretty village ; in 1870 it had
4000 souls; in 1880, 11,000; now, in 1889, its imagina-
tive citizens claim for it a population of 85,000, whilst
even a cool on-looker cannot well place it at less than
60,000. Marvellous growth ! How it comes to pass
we may consider by-and-by. In the meantime let us
saunter together and see what the Los Angeles of to-day
is like. The two chief streets — Main and Spring Streets
— are broad, level, and well-paved, parallel with one
another for a long distance, and then merging into one
avenue, which stretches away for miles in a straight line
south. Tramcars occupy the centres. The broad side-
walks are flagged or cemented, and front rows of hand-
some shops, banks, hotels, etc., four and five storeys in
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 33
height, reared in brick, freestone, or granite, and such
architecturally as the streets of London would not be
ashamed to possess. The newness of the town is evi-
denced by the fact that these gorgeous edifices are not
continuous. Sandwiched in between them are the modest
wooden shanties, the stores which served the first race
of merchants and shopkeepers. Gradually these are
being replaced, but enough remain to mark the rawness
of the place. The other streets are yet unfinished, and
sorely need the paving which is being pushed rapidly
forward. In the prevailing dry weather they are wastes
of dry dust, on the rare wet days seas of sticky mud.
Pausing at this corner of Main Street you can grasp at a
glance a fair idea of the city. Here is a towering block
of handsome offices, there opposite a great red-brick hotel.
Next to the former is a row of one-storeyed wooden
shops, and as your eye shrinks from their rude ugliness
it lights on a lovely ornamental private villa set back
from the street. A row of feathery pepper-trees, laden
with ruddy fruit, shades the sidewalk ; a close-cut
cypress hedge guards the trim lawn from the street;
evergreens and orange-trees rich with yellow fruit attract
the eye, and flowering shrubs tempt the smell; standard
roses and tall lilies bloom in full luxuriance ; geranium,
canariensis, and white jasmine glorify the porch ; whilst
tall, stately gum-trees fill up the background of the
picture. (Remember still this is the 6th of January.) Soon
this lovely home must give place to shops ; but hundreds
such are scattered along the broad and stately avenues,
which stretch out for miles in every direction from the
Town of the Angels.
The streets are full of crowds of bustling men and
bustled women. The silk hat of civilisation is absent ;
the soft felt, black or grey or white, teaches you that you
are alike in the land of the democracy and the land of the
Sun. The people are of every race under heaven — white
and black and yellow and copper-coloured. Los Angeles
is cosmopolitan. The hotel I stay at is owned by an
Irishman ; its manager is an American, the cook is a
5
34 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
German, a black brother waits on me, and a Chinaman
washes my clothes. By the way, I am lucky in that hotel^
and its owner. So soon as my name was written on the
register the proprietor sought me out, was kind enough to
say he knew me by repute, and that he and all his staff
were at my command to make my stay comfortable. He
has more than kept his word. They are curious fellows
these Irishmen, good lovers and good haters ! I have met
them everywhere over the State, and many of them in
good positions too. Keenly interested in the old country,
all of them. And it may, of course, be an accident, but
it is the fact that I have only met one who is not a
Nationalist.
Los Angeles may fairly be described as a busy city,
the people shrewd, speculative, and, with due allowance
for the enervating weather, industrious. It is the centre
to which converge all the four great railway lines, whilst
two more important ones are being driven on through
it. Had it only possessed such a harbour as San Fran-
cisco, it might have rivalled that metropolis, for it is nearer
to New York and the East. Unfortunately its so-called
harbours, twenty or thirty miles off, are little better than
open roadsteads. Indeed, San Diego, 135 miles south,
is the only safe, commodious, and deep harbour in South
California. Still Los Angeles will wax great. It is the
centre of an immensely rich county, in which oranges,
grapes, lemons, olives, walnuts, barley, and wheat grow
luxuriantly, and who knows what the unexplored moun-
tains round contain in mineral wealth? At the present
time the city is not very prosperous. It is suffering
from a cold fit after a fever. Last year they had what
they call a landboom. Everybody speculated in land,
bought plots or farms or sites, ran up the prices to
ridiculous heights, the keen men getting out in time, the
duller remaining, in the expressive phrase of the time —
land-poor. They have plenty of land, but no dollars.
I call the city busy, but too many men are busy in the
wrong way. They have the whole country round laid out
in town sites till the population of a Liverpool or a
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 35
Glasgow might be accommodated here ; only — Liverpools
and Glasgows are not made in a year. They will have
to learn that the true wealth of the country lies not in
speculating in land but in digging the prolific soil, or in
developing the mineral wealth of the mountains. Those
things done, towns will come of themselves where they
are needed, and not where speculators "rush" them.
Meanwhile, the Los Angelians peg away, and build and
scheme. At advertising dodges they whip the world. It is
quite a diversion to wander through the streets and cull
the odd conceits of enterprising tradesmen. One shoe-
maker announces, " The people's understandings renovated ;
ay, and their frail soles made whole;" a restaurant-keeper
breaks into doggerel thus —
" Handsome Dan,
With his gang,
Has sprang
To 18 South Spring Street."
Whilst a third oddity magniloquently declares — " Pedal
teguments artistically lubricated and illuminated for the
infinitesimal compensation of ten cents per operation;"
which, being interpreted into English, means — Shine your
boots for fivepence.
In this Paradise they do not disdain the ways of earth.
CHAPTER VI.
A Strange Land— Dull Geography— A Great Britain and
A HALF— Men Wanted— Who shall come— The South-
Pasadena AND the Raymond— Spanish Saints— Draw-
backs IN the Land— Summer and its Strangeness —
Vineyards— Lucky Baldwin— Health Questions— Land
and its Prices — Chinee Cheap Labour — Boycotting
even in California.
Hotel Brewster, San Diego,
February gtk, 1889.
If you care to follow me intelligently through California,
I must perforce tell something of the country as a whole.
Yet how to make matters clear to English people I
know not, when one has to tell of a country carpeted
with richest green in winter, brown as umber in summer ;
where the fruits ripen first in the north ; where it is hot
in the morning, cool at noon; where the hill-sides are
warmer at night, cooler by day than the valleys ; where
umbrellas are useless in the rare drenching wet days, but
potential mainly against the sun ; where they go to the
mountains for water, and dig in the valleys for roots for
fuel ; where they gather the orange crop in January, and
take off seven crops of alfalfa (the Californian clover) in
the season ; where you wear thick clothing and under-
clothing in July as at Christmas ; where it is bright and
sunny 320 days in the year ; where gold and silver fill
the mountains and cattle cover the hills, and the golden
orange and paler lemon and olives and figs and grapes
the valleys ; where oats and barley are grown for hay ;
where the roads are mended, and well mended, by being
ploughed up ; and where guns are called scatter-guns,
pointers smell-dogs, and sportsmen proudly delight in
" hunting " the jack-rabbit and the quail.
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 37
Yet of the land as a whole I must tell. So bear with
me through some perchance dull description, geogra-
phical and otherwise. California, then, stretches for 600
miles along the Pacific between thirty-three and forty-two
degrees North. San Francisco, its chief city, is in the
latitude of Lisbon ; San Diego, its southernmost city, in
that of Alexandria. The country may be roughly de-
scribed as lying between the Sierra Nevada Mountains
and the ocean, though this is not strictly the fact, since
it takes in not a few fertile valleys and much desert
land on the eastern slopes of the range, beyond . which
desert the distant Rocky Mountains stretch north and
south, the backbone of a continent.
The Sierra Nevadas, rough, craggy, frowning, rise to
snow-capped peaks 11,000 feet high, and seem to bar, but
bar in vain, the passage of the all-acquiring Anglo-Saxon
to this Eden of the West. The State, one of forty in the
mighty Republic, contains 181,000 square miles. It is
therefore one and a half times the size of the whole British
Isles, and its present population is one million and a
quarter. Every temperature and every product of the
soil is here. The hardy miner can dig wealth from the
mountains ; the physically-broken gain new health in the
valleys. Of lawyers and clerks and speculators, and men
who would fain live by their wits, there are enough and to
spare ; but agriculturists and gardeners and fruit-growers
and men deft of hand can find here more than a living
without all-absorbing toil. The climate won't let you kill
yourself by drudging. Of two things let any who think of
coming take note. You must have patience, for the soil,
though prolific, will not yield its fruits in a night ; and you
must have a little money to look about you ere locating
and to get along " till the kye come hame." These cautions
given, believe me there is room here for two millions of
working families; and that incubus of Europe, the landlord,
need not rear here his ugly head, for the land can be
bought at ;^5 or .^10 an acre, and twenty or forty acres —
according as it may be good or moderate — will suffice
for a family's comfort. Do old-fashioned folk remember,
38 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
perchance, Henry Russell's once-popular song (slightly
modified) ? —
" To the West, to the West, to the land of the Free,
Where fair California runs down to the sea;
Where a man is a Man if he's willing to toil.
And the humblest may gather the rich fruits of the soil.
" Where children are blessings, and he who has most
Has aid to his fortune and riches to boast ;
Where the young may exult and the aged may rest,
Away, far away, in the land of the West."
There is the poetry of emigration ; the prose of it is that
you must rough it for a year or two, comforted by the
thought that you are working for yourself, and not for
another man.
It is, however, of Southern California that in this and
a succeeding letter I wish to tell. At two-thirds of the
distance from the northern frontier the Sierra Nevadas
throw off a huge spur known as the San Bernardino
Mountains, which stretch due west at a height of from
4000 to 11,000 feet till they reach the sea at Point
Conception. These cut the State into two unequal por-
tions. This Southern California — bounded on the north
by the desert beyond the San Bernardino Range, on the
east by the Sierra Nevadas, and on the west and south by
the sea (for the Pacific runs sharply in here to the south-
east) — contains, including Kern County, 58,000 square
miles, and is therefore as large as England and Wales.
Its present population is about equal to that of Dublin or
Edinburgh, being under 300,000. Ample room and verge
enough here for new men ! Numerous smaller ranges of
mountains intersect it in most admired disorder, leaving
room for rich and spreading valleys through which flow
the insignificant rivers, the lack of which in volume and
number constitutes one of the landscapic defects of the
country. O'er all the varied scene the sun seldom fails to
shine in splendour, whilst a blue and smiling ocean kisses
with pacific warmth the golden sands.
I have spent the last month scouring by rail, in buggy,
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 39
or on foot, the hills and vales, the rising towns and the
detached ranches of this favoured land, with Los Angeles,
its capital, as my base of operations. It is not in the
bustling capital you realise what the land is. Come with
me to Pasadena, but eight miles away. Stand upon the
rounded detached hill on which the Raymond Hotel raises
its huge bulk, and gaze with delighted eye around. At
your feet, nestling amid its orange groves, is Pasadena, a
lovely town of villas and detached residences and hotels
and shops, a residential offshoot of Los Angeles. On
every side stretches the rich expanse of the San Gabriel
Valley, the largest in Southern California. For ninety
miles from west to east, and for twenty or thirty from
north to south, it fills the eye, carpeted with green, its low
hills adorned with live evergreen oaks, which set off the
expanse of barley, wheat, and alfalfa, the orange groves,
the vineyards, the orchards of apricot and peach, lemon
and fig. Ever and anon darker patches indicate huge
areas of scrub of wild sage and grease-wood covering the
yet unbroken land. There on the left is the old San
Gabriel Mission Church built by the Spanish Jesuits, who
last century christianised the Indians, here a mild and
gentle race. The wood was carried from the mountains
on their patient backs, whilst, iron being unknown in the
land, the rafters and slates were kept in place by strips of
cow-hide.
The Jesuits are still on hand ; here and there too are the
scattered relics of their Indian converts : and if nothing
else be left of the ancient Spanish domination, the names
of the saints still survive to mark the towns and mountains
and rivers. San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara,
San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, San Diego, and
a hundred other such names recall the rise and fall of the
adventurous successors of Cortes and the band who trans-
formed Mexico and its surrounding states into a New
Spain.
But to our scene. White and dusty roads cross the
valley in every direction, leading to and through |
thriving villages, and struggling settlements, and detached
40 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
villas of delight ; and a rough and stony expanse,
sometimes a mile wide, marks where flows the San
Gabriel River, now a scarcely-noticeable stream, but
which from time to time vomits itself with desolating
vigour over the vale. As frame-work to the picture the
frowning mountains rise abruptly from the plain, crowned
by snowy crests ; best known among them is Old Baldy,
as prominent a feature here as Snowdon or Schiehallion
or the Jung-frau. The Pacific gleams in the west ; a hot
sun brightens the gay world ; the ocean breeze comes
softly up each day with noon ; it is January ; the ther-
mometer registers 52 at 5 A.M., 50 at 5 p.m., 72 in the
afternoon, 46 at night ; it is delightful even to breathe ;
the atmosphere is so clear that the San Jacinto and San
Gorgonio Mountains, ninety or a hundred miles away,
seem close at hand. Does this seem a fairy sketch?
Has poetic licence slaughtered truth? Are there no
drawbacks ? Yes ; if you are lucky you may meet a
brown bear in the mountains, or a stray rattlesnake in the
canons ; the coyotes (the Californian wolf) howl round
your home at nights, and make free with your chickens or
maybe your lambs ; the tarantula, the centipede, or the
poison oak may sting you ; or infrequent sand-storms
blind you ; whilst the roads on wet days are filled with
liquid mud, in windy weather are thick with suffocating
dust. But what of summer ? Is it not excruciatingly hot ?
No ; that is the wonder of it ; or rather there are two
wonders in summer. First of all, it is not much hotter
than winter wherever the daily ocean breeze penetrates
with its cooling and invigorating breath. Secondly, in
July, August, September, and October, though the rivers
are mostly dry, and rain never comes, and the green has
changed to brown in the valleys and on the hill-sides, yet
cattle and horses graze everywhere on the burnt-up
vegetation, and thrive -AVid. fatten. The grasses and clovers
have grown with a luxuriance unknown in England, and as
mid-summer comes, are not cut and stacked as hay, but are
allowed to dry down into hay standing on the land. The
burr clover and the alfarilla develop a " burr " or berry full
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 41
of essential oil, and with immense fattening properties.
And there, I say, on burnt-up ranges whose appearance
would fill the uninitiated with despair, the stock thrives.
Water, too, is at hand. Though the rivers have left the
surface, they run on underground five, ten, or twenty feet
down, and everywhere little windmills, worked by the
constant friendly breeze, dot the horizon, and give quaint-
ness to the farmsteads. Elsewhere, irrigating channels
convey the precious fluid from the mountains, whilst in
yet other districts there is an ample artesian supply. In
one way or another the early trouble as to water is being
overcome. There need be no permanent difficulty in a
country full of mighty ranges of snow-covered mountains.
So much for the scene from the terraced front of the
Raymond Hotel. That hotel itself merits a passing notice.
It is owned and managed by the same people who have
the famous Crawford House in the White Mountains, just
north of New York. There the season opens in June and
closes in October ; whereupon the entire hotel staff,
running, I suppose, into hundreds, male and female, is put
on board train, and transported 3000 miles across the
continent, to open and work the Raymond from November
till May. And admirably they do it. A pleasanter or
more comfortable hotel even a grumbling John Bull could
not desire. The Raymond season over, the locomotive
whirls the Easterns back to resume another year's opera-
tions in New Hampshire. And so on year by year. A
truly characteristic illustration of the magnificent American
way of running hotels, each containing accommodation for
hundreds of guests.
On one of our pleasant drives we visited two of the
great vineyards and wineries of the valley. The Sunny-
side Winery, owned by an English company, for which
I understand Sir John Puleston, M.P., negotiated the
purchase at the price of 1,000,000 dollars, had 400,000
gallons in stock, and the adjoining Baldwin Winery no
less than 500,000. We had a "tasting" afternoon at
clarets, burgundies, hocks, sherries, and ports, all of course
for our improvement in knowledge. I feel bound to say
6
42 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
that, with the single exception of some fifteen-year-old port,
there was no wine likely to attract Englishmen's palates.
The career of the owner of this latter property is a
typical Californian one. He is popularly known as
Lucky Baldwin, and began his career as keeper of a
saloon and restaurant in San Francisco. With his
savings he bought stock in the new Pacific Railroad,
and, taking the scrip with him, went off for a prolonged
tour in China and Japan. When he returned he found
this scrip enormously increased in value and himself rich.
Judicious investment followed. Amongst other possessions
he acquired this ranch of 55,ooo acres. The purchase
money was of trivial amount, yet if he chose to break up
the estate now he could probably sell it for a million
sterling. He spends his time in breeding and running race-
horses, and is seldom here, preferring the delights of San
Francisco to the quiet pleasures of his country home. Lucky
Baldwin ! California has done well for him. What good
things he does or means to do for California I know not.
Some of my readers, yearning to find health or fortune,
may pardon — nay, perhaps thank me — if I forestall their
inquiries at this point. First, as to health. This is a
land of promise for those threatened with, or suffering from,
consumption, asthma, throat diseases, dyspepsia, or
physical prostration. There is no enervating heat in sum-
mer, no paralysing cold in winter, no snow save on the
mountains, no frost worth mentioning, no continuous damp
and foggy weather. The air is pure and inspiring ; it is
possible to live much in the open air, to keep your win-
dows open all night and day, to sleep in tents if you
please, for months together. What this means for those
inclined to consumption, doctors know. Infectious
diseases are scarcely known, the death-rate is extremely
low, and life indeed worth living. To secure these
advantages, however, you must not choose Los Angeles
or the lands near the sea, and still less the bottom valley
lands, for there the chill and the frost gather in the nights.
Get on the hill-sides. My friend Mr. J. G. Blumer, so
well known in the North, and with whom I have been
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 43
happy to renew a pleasant acquaintance, lives, to his
manifest physical advantage, 1200 feet up on a charming
hill-side at Sierra Madre, with the mountains behind him
and the light fog of the valley below him. Another
friend who came here three years ago ill is regaining his
old form at 800 feet up. A third, with whom we start
for a tour in three days, arrived fourteen years ago to die.
California has made him ruddy and strong. Five hundred
feet up or more — that is his advice. I refrain from
saying more, lest a shipload of invalids arrive ere I depart.
Suffice it to add that when once full knowledge of this
incomparable land has reached our European physicians,
it is not to Algiers or Madeira or Canary that they will
send their patients as a last chance.
Now, to those who dream of finding fortune here what
shall I say ? Why, that Fortune is fickle. But if it is a
sufficiency you want, and fair returns for labour and
capital. Southern California will give you these, and this
under physical conditions of ease and comfort which may
fairly be counted as part of your wage. You can buy
good unimproved land with water for £\o or £\2 an
acre. If you extend the payment over a series of years
you must be prepared to pay 8 per cent., for money is
scarce and dear here. The country is rich as yet only
in natural resources. Land less good can be had as low
as at £6 or £'j per acre ; good improved land, planted out
in vines, oranges, or apricots, at from ;^40 to £'j^ per acre.
Upon twenty or thirty acres of the latter a family can
make a comfortable living, save, and have the amplest
leisure. Of unimproved land it will be well to have 60 or
i(X» acres for comfort. Drudging, continuous toil is not
needed; the necessities don't require it, the climate won't
allow it. Ladies must be prepared to do much that they
can get servants to do in England. For here help is
scarce. Your Californian loves to be his own master.
If he works for you his wages eat up much of the profit,
and the inevitable effect of this is to prevent the aggre-
gation of estates and divide the land among the many ;
which is well. I know of six young ladies who came
44 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
out from the Eastern States to be school teachers. Find-
ing no opening, they, with true American adaptability,
applied for waiters' places at one of the new big hotels.
Each has her own bedroom ; they have a sitting-room,
with piano, their food, and £6Q) a year a-piece. Only the
Chinese, who are here in thousands, stand between many
a family and discomfort, and enable the thrifty to get
their land tilled where the labour of the family itself does
not suffice.
The Chinese question is a burning one. The laws
prohibit further immigration; many favour the expulsion
of those already here ; leagues are being formed to boycott
those who employ them, and the papers daily teem with
letters of denunciation. One such merits mention for its
sublime impudence. The writer denounces the Chinese,
and declares that, willing to work, he has been forced
into idleness by cheap competition till, driven to desper-
ation, he has committed theft, and now (poor ill-used
fellow) writes from the interior of a gaol ! We attended
one meeting at Riverside (that loveliest home of the
orange) to form such a league there. Whilst the orators
were thundering in favour of substituting for " cheap
inferior Chinese labour '' " good honest reliable white
labour" — such are the cant phrases — the shock of a slight
earthquake startled the land. Evidently the gods are
against John Chinaman. But for my part I do not see
how the rough work of clearing off the scrub is to be
economically achieved without him, and I know many
a lady between whom and drudging discomfort stand as
her only defence her Chinese male cook and her Chinese
male washerwoman. But let the Mongol question rest.
The practical moral of the above is this : if you or
your family need a perfect clime to secure or regain
your health, and if you have some money, Southern
California is the ideal land for you.
" All nature seems in unison complete,
And scarce a sound or welcome wind that blows
But speaks of happiness, and life replete
With all conditions that contentment knows."
c////'^ ^.^ tj ,Z /t f-' C-^r^L
(1^ .^fUt ^C^l't: ZjuAi^*^ ^/l^v^:-<fi. <^i-('l
ESSAY BY A CHINESE COOK AT SCHOOL.
CHAPTER VII.
Odds and Ends— Gladstone even Here— Off to River-
side — Prohibition Cities— A Sunday Morning Scene —
Something for the Children— San Diego, the City
of the Bay — A Present Naples ; a Future Liverpool
—Climate Past Compare — A Low Death-Rate — The
Great Hotel— An American Dives and his Car.
Hotel Brewster, San Diego,
February 20th, 1889.
From the Los Angeles district I have passed to San
Diego and its county, accompanied by two most pleasant
Americans, one a valued friend of seven years' standing.
It was with regret I left that lovely San Gabriel Valley ;
still more do I regret (though my readers may not share
this feeling) that I have not space to enter more largely
into detailed description of the many new and interesting
things and scenes we saw there. I should have liked to
describe a visit to the nearest seaside resort of the Los
Angelians, Santa Monica, where I was most pleasantly
entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wren, the son-in-law
and daughter of Mr. Richard Sheraton ; and to the
Soldiers' Home which is being erected there by the U.S.
Government for 4000 or 5000 of the veterans of the
Great War, and is but one of several now rising in
various parts of the country. What is to be done with
these palatial homes when the veterans shortly die off I
know not, nor could the gallant colonel in charge enlighten
me. They may be transformed into workhouses or hos-
pitals ; more probably they will remain as monumental
proofs of the building folly of a too-rich Government
which does not quite know how to get rid of its tremend-
ous surpluses. I should like to have been able to tell, too.
46 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
of the Arrowhead Hot Springs and Mud Baths, a charming
resort in the mountains, destined at some not-distant day
to be as famous as Pfefifers ; a drive up one of the canons,
which wind sometimes for miles deviously into the moun-
tains ; and of a stroll into the rocky wilderness which
forms in dry times the bed of the San Gabriel river, and
where, when oppressed by the mid-day sun, I came upon a
huge solitary boulder, whereon was inscribed in fair square
letters the magic name Gladstone. Incontinently I sat
upon Gladstone and smoked a cigarette in honour of the
Grand Old Man. Just let me interpolate here a fact
vouched for by my friend Mr. Blumer. He happened
to attend one of the recent election meetings at Los
Angeles. There was much cheering of well-known men
and names, but the loudest cheers of all were elicited by a
passing reference to the veteran statesman who stands for
Californians as the typical Englishman. Salisbury and all
the other marquises and dukes piled together don't bulk
so large in their eye as the single Liberal chief who has
three times ruled the British Empire, and may probably
rule it again.
It might much amuse, too, if I made my readers
acquainted with strange, unlooked-for personages, cast
by the ocean of circumstance upon these cosmopolitan
shores; with the sons of John Brown, of Harper's Ferry
fame, settled here in their mountain-home; with the
nephew of an English bishop, who at one not-distant
period of his chequered career turned an honest penny
by taking the ten-cent pieces at the door of a dime-
show; with the nephew of Garibaldi running a saloon;
the son of a most famous Confederate General selling
land and houses on commission ; or the nephew of
Washington Irving cultivating his ranch and happy with
his Indian squaw. The motto of California is, or ought
to be — Get along anyhow and anywhere, but get along.
My motto now must be — Forbear.
The direct road to San Diego is by the coast-line
railway, the distance south from Los Angeles being 135
miles. We preferred to take the longer and more
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 47
picturesque route (180 miles long inland through the
mountains, resting for a couple of days in the Riverside
region. The history of Riverside is fairly illustrative of
the history of multitudes of Californian places. It used
to be accounted part of the arid, waterless Californian
desert. Keen-eyed men passed that way; they saw that
the so-called waste was covered with deep rich soil
whitened by the sun; they acquired the land, diverted
part of the waters of the Santa Anna river, carried two
irrigating streams through their possessions, and now you
see a pretty town full of detached dwellings, surrounded
by orange groves rich these February days with their
golden fruit, and ride along a magnificent avenue seven
miles long by 100 feet wide, and shaded by spreading
magnolia and eucalyptus trees, through which may be
seen the picturesque homes of a comfortable people.
Riverside presents one aspect doubtless of deep interest
to many English persons. It is a prohibition town ; nor
does it stand alone in its glory, for I have been also at
Duarte, Escondido, San Marcos, Elsinore, and other town-
steads, all places where no saloons are permitted, where
even the hotels have to be teetotal, and where the only
7nodiis operandi of getting liquor (if you don't carry a sly
supply) is to get a doctor's certificate of weak health, and
then supply yourself from the drug-store ! In some cases
the system flows from the initiative of the inhabitants ; in
others, from the will of the landowners, whose deeds of
transfer of plots contain a clause prohibiting all liquor-
shops. These prohibition communities all have their
public halls and numerous churches belonging to various
denominations, whilst the peace officers have about as
much to do as the extraordinary Spanish policeman
whom I found last year at Orotava, in Teneriffe, and who
used, in despair of finding other delinquents, to get
drunk himself every Sunday evening, so as to keep the
magistrates in practice once in the week, on the Monday
morning.
A propos of the churches, I recall one Sunday morning
scene in front of a hotel I was staying at. Before meeting-
48 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
time a row of omnibuses drew up on the terrace, whilst
the busthng conductors called out— " Presbyterians this
way ; Episcopalians here ; Methodists in the blue 'bus ;
Unitarians along here ; Congregationalists this way." And
the gaily-dressed crowd filed off and went smilingly each
to worship God after his own lights, no man regarding his
brother as a heretic. This in a land which, according
to the cant phrase of our British Establishment-men, dis-
honours and disowns God by noi; having a State Church !
Is there no true religion here ? Does God, one wonders,
look with less delight on such a scene than on a land
where one portion of His children looks on another as
heretics and schismatics ? There are numerous handsome
schools, too, full of healthy, bright boys and girls, one of
the latter of whom (I print this sweet folly because I
cannot forget to amuse the children) it must have been
who was responsible for the following essay : —
"THIS IS A COW.
" A cow is an animal with four legs on the under side. The tail is
longer than the legs, but is not used to stand on. The cow kills
flies with its tail. A cow has big years that wiggles on hinges ;
so does their tail. The cow is bigger than the calf, but not so big
as an elephant. She is made so small that she can go in the barn
when nobody is looking. Some cows are black, and some hook. A
dog was hooked once. She tossed the dog that worried the cat that
killed the rat. Black cows give white milk ; so do other cows.
Milkmen sell milk to buy their little girls dresses, which they put
in water and chalk. Cows chew cuds, and each finds its own chew.
That is all there is about cows."
Ignoring the earthquake, which we afterwards heard
of, but did not at the time feel, we proceeded from
Riverside south by Lake Elsinore, through the Temecula
Canon, a narrow defile as wild, if not as historically
romantic, as Glencoe, past the enormous Margharita
Ranch of 208,000 acres, on which feed 30,000 cattle,
and so to Oceanside, and along the sea coast to San Diego.
This city is destined to be one of the great ports of
the world. With an area half as large again as Great
Britain, California has only a sea coast of some 700
TO THE GOLDEN LAND, 49
miles, and on it but two really good harbours — San
Francisco to the north, and San Diego to the south,
with nearly 500 miles between them. Both are land-
locked harbours of great size. At San Diego a large
semi-circular bay, much like an inverted 3, runs in, the
rocky headlands at its extremities being perhaps twenty
miles apart. Half-way down the bay a narrow low-lying
flat tongue of land shoots out to the north like a shovel-
handle, widenin-g out at its top like the shovel, and
leaving only a passage of a few hundred yards between
it and the sheltering northern highland, Point Loma.
On the bar there is a depth of twenty-three feet at low
water, twenty-eight feet at high; ships can enter and
leave with perfect ease and safety in all weathers ;
inside there is a bay twelve miles long by from one to
two broad, perfectly sheltered, absolutely safe, containing
nearly three square miles of area twenty-four feet deep,
and nearly one and a half square miles thirty-six feet.
Here is a harbour the Lord hath made. It is the
natural door of Southern California — a country, let me
repeat, as large as England. Imagine England with one
such harbour, and one only. Think what that harbour and
its town would be ; and then do not doubt as to the mighty
future of San Diego ; which does not, however, pin all its
fortunes to California solely. Behind the mountains lie
Arizona and other regions, by-and-by to be filled with
people, and all wanting a safe outlet to the western sea.
Nor is all said yet. San Diego is 400 miles nearer to
New York than San Francisco is, and the railroads thither
pass over much lower passes and through more genial
climes than the northern snow-threatened routes. It is,
moreover, 500 miles nearer to Australia and New Zealand
than its sister port. By San Diego in consequence the
mails must soon come, for to save two days means so
much. Still more remains. When the Panama and the
Nicaraguan Canal (one or both) are finished, as they
will be, California, now 11,000 miles by sea from New
York and 14,000 from London, will be distant but 4000
and 7000 miles respectively. San Diego being to the
7
50 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
south 500 miles from San Francisco will be so much the
nearer to Europe and the Eastern States, and will
attract to itself much of the increasing traffic. It will
export the corn, the olive oil, the wine, the cattle, the
ripe and dried fruits, the silver and gold of the west, and
gather in return tributes of produce from every land
across the seas, despite a paralysing tariff. My life on't,
San Diego will be the Liverpool of the Pacific, and when
it is San Diegans will be for Free Trade. Such a port is
worthy of the notice of our enterprising British merchants
and shipowners. It imports its coals mainly from Aus-
tralia, and coal sells by retail at 50s. per ton. Its cement
— now largely used, and to be used still more largely in
the future — comes from England, for none can be made
in the States for lack of material, and cement retails at
70s. to 74s. per English ton. Here are margins. More
than one English firm has already trading connections
here, and as return cargoes become more certain and
varied the number will assuredly increase.
To justify one's forecast of the future the city must have
shown signs of rapid progress in the past. Note these
facts. The population of San Diego in 1850 was 650;
in 1875, 2500; in 1888, 32,000. It is laid out on a plan
in broad streets at right angles, covering the flat land on
the east of the bay and the rising ground beyond ; the
main streets are being rapidly paved ; the whole city is
admirably sewered with thirty-eight miles of glaced terra-
cotta pipes, the surface water flowing separately from the
sewerage ; there are excellent tramcar and telephone
services ; the streets are lighted by gas and the electric
light ; an ample supply of drinking water has been brought
from the Cuyamaca Mountains, fifty miles away, by an
aqueduct or flume, partly of red-wood open casing and
partly of iron pipe ; the city is the proud possessor of a
park of 1400 acres, from which the views of mountain and
ocean are entrancing ; and in the bay wharves enable the
largest vessels to load and unload without lighterage, the
railway cars running alongside the ships. Surely there is
enough in the above to tell of an energetic, enterprising,
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 51
and self-reliant community, governed by municipal and
health authorities with heads on their shoulders.
But Nature too has showered her blessing on the city of
the bay. The climate is superb. From an interesting
work, the able and intelligent author of which I have had
the pleasure of meeting often, I gather the following
striking and authenticated statistics: — During the ten years
1876-1885, embracing 3653 days, there were 3533 on
which the mercury never rose above 80 in the shade, and
only twenty-seven in which it went above 90. During the
same ten years there were 3560 days when the glass never
fell below 40, and only two when it fell to 32. San Diego,
therefore, like a Laodicean, is neither hot nor cold, but will
scarcely be condemned to the Laodicean's fate. It is
pleasantly warm by day, pleasantly cool by night. The
average number of clear days for fifteen years is 184; of
fair days, 1 36 ; of cloudy, forty-five ; total, 365. The
average number of days on which rain fell was thirty-four.
It is only fair to add that when it does rain here it comes
down with true American dash. Every drop is a dollar.
It is not to be wondered at that with such gracious gifts
from Nature, and with enlightened sanitary management,
infectious disease should be rare and the death-rate
remarkably small. In the month of December it was at
the rate of 4.5 per 1000 per annum ; for the six months
then ending it was at the rate of 7.5 per 1000 per annum !
And this, although weak, broken-down Eastern and British
people come here to recover or die.
It is from University Heights, rising 450 feet above the
bay, that you realise how beautiful San Diego is. Mount
the heights with me this gay, bright, smiling, hot February
morning ; or if you be indolent, the electric motor shall
take you up. Now gaze around. Has earth a scene
more fair ? At your feet are the quaintly-varied buildings
which constitute the as yet uncompleted city; beyond it
is the bay glistening in the sun and just stirred into
rustling motion by the welcome daily ocean breeze ; then
your eye takes in the low expanse of Coronada Beach,
whose newly-planted avenues and groves give promise
52 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
of early luxuriance, and on which towers the very
largest, and I think in its architecture the most quaintly
beautiful, hotel in the whole world ; the waters of the blue
Pacific wash its terraces, and stretch away far beyond
where the rocky outlines of the Coronada Islands cut the
sky. Point Loma, with its lighthouse, guards the bay ;
and False Bay, where the Jesuit fathers first landed^
fills in the picture to the north. Southward, twenty miles
away, rise, tier on tier, the mountains of Mexico, whilst
to the east ranges of rolling uplands and green swelling
hills lead the eye to rugged peaks, above which rise the
snow-capped tops of Cuyamaca and the Volcan. A
wondrous scene of tranquil beauty. Were San Diego
rich with the historic and romantic associations which
render Naples so entrancing, I know not to which bay of
beauty I should give the palm.
During my rather prolonged stay at the City of the
Bay I made my home on the mainland, spending, how-
ever, a few days at the great Coronada Beach Hotel,
with its 750 rooms, its dining-hall, where 1000 guests
can be seated, its ball-room, where 300 couples can
together adorn the fl.oor. The surf of the Pacific sings
your lullaby, and the sun over Cuyamaca is your
awakener. Every visitor should see this mighty caravan-
sary, but the inconvenience of the ferry across the bay
deters many from making it their home. It was here I
met my first specimen of Dives travelling in his own
railway-car. Your rich American who wants to cut a
figure does not build a castle or a yacht ; he gets to
himself a luxurious, shiny car, with drawing-room, dining-
room, bath-room, plush seats, silk curtains, hot water
taps, and heaven knows what. At each town where he
rests he takes good care that the local newspaper shall
describe his magnificence ; when he goes out " hunting "
quail a paragraph informs a wondering world that "the
thrice-millionaire " has bagged three brace; at each hotel
he honours every one must make way for the man with
the car. The particular individual who projected him-
self into the Coronada (a very decent fellow probably
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 53
if his countrymen did not fool him so) appropriated the
table and the waiter which had suited me for several
days. Could a true-born Briton submit to this ? Com-
plaint at the office gave no relief against the man with
the car. I examined the visitors' book and found the
following entry —
Jones Montmorency Steers and valet.
Mrs. Jones Montmorency Steers and maid.
Master Jones Montmorency Steers and governess.
Montmorency, thought I to myself, is a good name when
you own it, but in this conjunction it reminds one of
Jacob's description of his son Issachar — a strong ass
crouching between two burdens. It was too much. I
packed my bag, left the magnifico and the waiter to
their enjoyment of one another, and transferred myself
to the Brewster, where you have solid comfort, and
where they know the value of a downright grumbling
John Bull.
CHAPTER VIII.
San Diego and its Back-CountiIY— A Useful Chamber of
Commerce— A Trip to the Mountains— Dutchmen to
THE Front— Lovely El Cajon— Water Schemes— A Sail
between Sky and Earth— Chinamen and Indians— In
the Mountains at Last— The Hidden Valley— A Cali-
fornian Wedding— a Mountain Settlement— Fallbrook
—Not even a Corkscrew on Principle— An Alpine Scene
in the Land of the Sun.
San Diego, March isf, 1889.
When at Los Angeles we announced our intention of
exploring San Diego County, we were told we should
find an enterprising city, a fine bay, a charming climate,
but beyond that — nothing. That is the theory of the
Los Angelians about their southern competitor. They
tell you there is no back-country, little agricultural land,
nothing to feed the town. English-like, we resolved to
see for ourselves whether this could be true of a country of
14,000 square miles — i.e., twice the size of the Principality
of Wales. Six weeks sufficed to convince us that the
theory is absolutely belied by the facts. Our resolve was
whetted by a visit we paid, under the guidance of the
active British Vice-Consul, Colonel Allen, to the San
Diegan Chamber of Commerce. That body is happy in
the possession of Mr. Turrell, a gem of a secretary, in whose
enterprising hands no idea for making widely known the
resources and capabilities of the country is allowed to lie
fallow. In the rooms of the Chamber is a remarkable
display of mineral and vegetable products. One saw
there potatoes twenty inches round, cauliflowers eighteen
inches across, pumpkins four feet long, maize fifteen
feet high, vine shoots of forty-five feet, and a perfectly
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 55
bewildering display of oranges, lemons, apples, pears,
raisins, prunes, apricots, peaches, and all kinds of vege-
tables ; cotton, honey, wheat, and barley ; granite and
sandstone, lime as white as driven snow, magnetic iron ore,
gold and silver-bearing quartz ; sections of live oak, pine,
and sycamore. And so on. Whence came the products ?
We determined absolutely to see this wondrous "back-
country," if it existed.
Fortune made us acquainted with Mr. T. S. Vandyke,
an East-country lawyer, who came here twelve or fourteen
years ago, as the doctors thought, to die. He chose a
pleasant home at Fallbrook, spent three years in roaming
the hills and shooting deer, and stands now a living proof
of what Southern California can do for those whom con-
sumption apparently has doomed. No one knows the
back-country so well as he ; and his book, Southern
California, written out of fulness of knowledge, and in
strong, nervous English, is rightly regarded as a work of
authority. To him it was proposed that he should join
our band, and he fell in with our views. Behold us, then,
a party of five (for my son had run across from Australia
to spend his twenty-first birthday with me), two of Dutch
extraction, three of English, ready to set out ; our convey-
ance, a four-wheeled waggon without top or sides (nothing
of that sort is needed here), set on strong springs, pro-
vided with a stout pole, and drawn by a couple of tough
and wiry horses, which, let me interpolate, we returned
to their stable at the end of the tour as fresh and plump
as when they set out. So strong were they, so kind
were we.
It was a sunny morn. Our way lay due east up
towards the mountains, over rolling hills and tableland.
Here and there were signs of the plough, whilst rough
wooden dwellings proclaimed the recent advent of settlers.
But as a rule these rolling uplands, untouched by man's
toil, were only covered with scrub of grease-wood and wild
sage, whose size and luxuriance proclaimed the wasted
virtues of the virgin soil. We saw many a time thickets
of scrub nine to ten feet high. For two hours we jolted
56 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
along over a too-much-used road, rising gradually till,
just beyond Dan Manning's Half-way House (Dan is an
honest Irishman out from Youghal these forty years,
and looks much more like a country squire than an
Irish peasant, whilst his Californian home is pleasant to
see), we were 700 feet above the sea; and suddenly
the land fell away before us, and there below was the
Valley of El Cajon (Spanish for The Box), a flat and
spreading plain, lately a sheep-ranch, but now full of
pleasant homesteads, and green with barley or planted out
in vineyards and orchards. It was the first of the internal
valleys, girt on every side with hills, to meet our eyes ;
and truly the sun had never seemed to us to shine upon
a scene more fair than this unexpected oasis amongst the
hilly wastes. For here was the surprise of it. Looking east
when we started we could see fifty miles away the snow-
capped mountains, whilst between the city and them rose
tier on tier of gaunt and rocky points and swells, suggestive
it might be of grandeur, but not of quiet, fruitful beauty.
And lo ! here, nestled amongst the wilds, lay sweet El
Cajon with its forty square miles of fertile plain, not
counting its rolling hill-sides, once thought valueless, but
now by the discerning ploughed to the top for barley or
planted with orange, apricot, and vine. Nor was El Cajon
alone. It proved but the precursor to us of many broad
and rich and lovely valleys scattered among the mountains,
and gradually being brought under the fruitful yoke of
industrious man.
Dropping down into the valley just where the flume
leaves and the new Cuyamaca railroad enters it, we drove
for an hour and a half across the plain, rounded some
low hills, skirted the banks of the San Diego river, and,
as the sun sank in the west and the chill of the February
evening fell on the valley, the Lakeside Hotel appeared
in view, and opened to us its welcoming doors.
There is one remarkable feature in El Cajon, the work
not of nature but of man, and of which notice may best
be taken here. For miles along the hill-sides runs the
" flume " to which I referred above. Britons, accustomed
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 57
to a copious rainfall, may well ask — what is a flume, and
what its use ? Well, it is an aqueduct constructed of red
pine, a wood proved to be admirably adapted for this
purpose, since in the north of California there exist such
water-ways sound and good after the wear and tear of
forty years. San Diego City has but an average rainfall
of nine inches ; the rolling country above it to the height
of 500 or 600 feet has only eighteen inches ; the higher
lands, up to 2000 feet, double this rainfall again ; whilst
amidst the highest mountains even sixty inches fall. Now,
for the rising cities on the coast, and for the contiguous
mesas or tablelands, some hundreds of feet high and
probably half a million acres in extent, water is the prime
necessity. Without it these mesas are of little value ; with
it they are to be preferred to the valleys. For to these
latter, when the sun sets, the cold air falls, and the frost
comes in winter ; whereas the mesas are warm and frost-
less by night, whilst the cool daily ocean breeze tempers
the heat of the mid-day sun. Had I to choose, I would
sooner, both for health and wealth's sake, have forty acres
of watered mesa or hill-side than eighty acres in the love-
liest of valleys.
Water is king in Southern California. They who bring
it to the aid of the settler, while doubling the extent of
arable land, will make every existing acre more productive,
and, if no public statue be raised in honour of them, they
will earn what most Americans prize more highly — plenty
of dollars.
It may be thought that the numerous Vivers can be
readily utilised. But the rivers of Southern California are
a most unsatisfactory race ; as one paradoxical fellow put
it, their bottoms are on top. They rise amidst the high
mountains, and for the first half of their course force their
turbulent way down rocky ravines and dreary chasms, till
at thirty miles or so inland they reach one of the deep
valleys which stretch in from the sea, and which at this
distance are perchance only 200 or 300 feet above it.
Along those valleys, over deep and shifting sands, they
drivel along till the sands lick them up ; they disappear ;
58 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
miles from the ocean only dry and sandy wastes remain to
mark their beds. Once in a way, when the infrequent rain-
storms come, they pour down resistless floods to the sea, but
soon shrink away underground again as though ashamed
of such sportive energy in a land sacred to indolence.
If the rivers are to be subdued, you must assail them in
the mountains. The bold projectors of the Great Flume
have diverted the course of the San Diego river high up in
the Cuyamaca Mountains, created there a huge reservoir or
lake, and then carried their pine aqueduct for thirty-five
miles along the sides of mountains, through tunnels, across
valleys on giddy bridges. The water-way is four feet in
breadth and (is to be) four feet high. At the foot of
El Cajon the woodwork ends, the water being thence
conveyed in iron pipes to reservoirs above the city, and so
into it. San Diego has therefore an ample supply of
excellent mountain water. But this is not all. All the
way along the route the water is being, or will be, used for
cultivation ; which means in good years increased fertility,
and might in dry years involve salvation of the crops.
This great and beneficent work is said to have cost under
one million dollars.
One of the pleasantest and oddest trips I ever made
was over the surface of this flume. I expressed a wish to
make this trip, and the obliging manager at Lakeside had
a boat taken up the mountain on a waggon. It was a long
narrow craft, drawing six or eight inches only, and provided
with comfortable chairs, on which a party of six (two of
them ladies) took their places, and away we went. The
flume, as I said, is only four feet wide. It is meant also to
be four feet deep, but at present only one board of fifteen
inches forms its side, and we had but nine or ten inches of
water to float us on. It was marvellous to glide in silence
along the green mountain sides, a cloudless sky above us,
the beauteous valleys below, and the soft, cool ocean breeze
fanning our cheeks. Anon we disappeared into a tunnel.
It took us twenty-three minutes to pass through the
longest of these, and to add to our pleasure we stuck
in the middle, and one of the party (not I) had to jump in
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 59
and pull us oyer the slight obstruction. Then out into
the sunlight again, and away over the wooden aqueduct
at a dizzy height across a valley. A hundred and fifty
feet below us the cattle were grazing, whilst the startled
quail scurried among the scrub, ground squirrels and
gophers peeped out at the strange disturbers of their safe
retreats, and the larks sang melodious in the morning air.
This gopher, half a squirrel, half a mole, is a nuisance
in the land. He burrows into the rich deep soil, his
nimble paws fill a pouch with which he is provided round
his neck, and then he comes above and deposits his load.
Cultivation will slay him, but meanwhile horsemen, even
on the roads and still more on the greensward, have to
be wary, or they may meet the fate of the late Bishop
Wilberforce — a broken neck.
At one o'clock we tied up our boat and lunched on
the mountain. Remember still, remember ever, it was
February. We basked in the sun, gathered the yellow
violet, the yellower Californian poppy, shooting-stars and
white forget-me-nots, and thought of the dear ones at
home. Ah, lovely land ! Ah, hours of peace and bliss !
All the afternoon we glided down, and then the waggon
met us and whisked us off to the hotel. En route, in a
charming glen, we came upon a Chinese encampment.
The Celestials had been busy clearing out the scrub, and
now, their daily labour done, were resting under the
shadow of the oaks. One was cooking, another washing
clothes, three were playing at cards. I doubt not it was
euchre, and Bill Nye wasn't there !
Nearer the hotel we passed a couple of Indians'mounted
on their unkempt mustangs. A wild pair, dressed in
shabby civilised attire, their heads crowned with the ever-
lasting wide-awake. They carried no fire-arms, only bows
and arrows of the most primitive type. We examined
the latter with much curiosity. They are made of a light
wood ; into the end a hole is drilled or burnt, and points
of harder wood are inserted. With such insufficient arms
of offence, the meek Christianised redman follows the
chase, not unsuccessfully either. If his arrows fail, he will
6o TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
follow the great jack-rabbits, as big as and swifter than
our hares, at breakneck speed along steep hill-sides, and
bring them down with short, stout clubs, which he throws
with unerring skill. It was odd to watch these Indians
enter the store and buy their supplies like your even
Christian. Their arithmetic not being equal to casting up
a total, they priced, bought, and paid for each article in
turn, got the change, and then proceeded to the next. We
watched them ride tranquilly away, and then turned our
faces to the hotel. As we reached it the evening sun was
sinking behind the western hills. His last rays fell on the
peaceful lake, where the wild ducks and water-hens were
gathering, and lit up with pink radiance the mighty form
of El Cajon Peak. How that peak reminds one of
Honister Crag ! A brief space, and the sun was gone,
and darkness fell upon the scene.
We lingered several days in this lovely retreat, exploring
the valleys and canons, amongst which the palm must be
given to the glen El Monte, down which the San Diego
glides, and whose rich greensward, shaded by umbrageous
live-oaks, would make the sweetest picnic ground in the
world. Lakeside and El Monte will be the choice country
resort of the San Diegans, for on the 20th of this month
the railroad will be opened, and the iron horse will convey
the wise to the peaceful hill-sides. At last we tore our-
selves away, forded the river, and headed for the further
mountains. A day's journey up the passes brought us in
view of Santa Maria, another great valley, 1 500 feet above
the sea, as large as El Cajon, not so rich and beautiful, but
consisting of excellent wheat and barley land, and present-
ing a delightful view of the snow-tipped Volcan and the
mightier Cuyamaca Peak. We spent the night in a quaint,
comfortable hotel at Ramona, our bedrooms opening direct
into an outside, sunny verandah. The February night was
warm and pleasant ; we needed no more covering than in
England in June. Next morning we utilised in a trip to
the Pamo Valley, a depression perhaps three miles long,
shut in at every point, save one narrow gorge, by noble
hills, and through which the Santa Ysabel or Barnardo
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 6i
river makes its way. Some day soon, depend upon it,
this Pamo Valley will be the bed of a huge and easily-
constructed artificial lake, whence streams of fertility will
be poured on the yearning land. On this trip the sports-
man of our party (who shall be nameless) had the first
shot with his Winchester rifle at Californian game in the
person of a great jack-rabbit, and brought him down in
style. Do not laugh at the jack-rabbit as game ; or ere
you .do, turn your best English greyhounds on him, and
he will laugh at them and you. Hereabouts they are not
numerous, but further north are most destructive to the
growing grain. If the rabbit has proved too much for the
Australians, the Californians are too much for his bigger
brother. Ever and again a whole country side gathers on
horseback, scours the district, and drives thousands of jack-
rabbits before it into a huge staked corral, ready prepared,
wide at the neck and narrowing inwards, where the terrified
animals are knocked on the head. At one of these battues
7000 bit the dust. See the sketch of one where 2500
lie in grim, picturesque silence. Is it cruel ? No ; it is
expedient that they die so that man may live.
Returning from lunch to Ramona, we headed north-west,
and made our way through rich tablelands and lonely
gorges and noble passes. At 4 P.M. we rested on some
rocks, where 1000 feet below lay, sun-steeped, the rich and
verdant vale of San Pasqual. A breakneck run down the
mountain brought us thither. We crossed the Barnardo
river, mounted the opposing hills, passed a gold mine,
and as night fell reached Escondido. Escondido ! The
Hidden ! It should have been the name for the whole
country. Here we found a prosperous and growing settle-
ment with a handsome college of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, a charming hotel, a jovial host, and a Chinese cook
who ought to be made a mandarin, Escondido is a
Prohibition district, as are San Marcos and Fallbrook.
No liquor there — except on the sly.
Next morning we diversified our proceedings by assist-
ing at a Californian wedding, where the loveliest girl I
have seen these twenty years was married by the Catholic
62 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
priest. After the breakfast the father of the bride
accompanied us on a run to Bear Valley, We climbed a
heavy mountain grade for miles, apparently into rocky
wastes, and there burst upon our astonished gaze mountain-
valley after mountain-valley green u^ith grain. It was
marvellous. Still more so was it to learn that looo feet
above us still, on the top of the great mountain Palomares,
was another prosperous settlement boasting a school-house
and an election precinct. Palomares cast forty votes at
the recent election. Its climate up there in the sky is
better than that of England ; its soil more rich, its products
more profuse and varied. We returned by another route,
down which all but the driver had to walk. On the hill-
sides it was warm ; on the low bottom land cold — note
that the sun had set ; when we mounted the little hill on
which the hotel stands it was warm again. You can judge
by this where wise men should locate themselves in
California.
We left Escondido and its pleasant society with regret,
and headed north over another pass, the roughest we had
yet experienced, for on the further side we had to lock the
hind wheels, and slide now as best we could into a long
valley covered with mountain oak, carpeted with flowers,
and on the low tracts of which the bamboo would grow
luxuriantly. We forded the San Luis Rey river at noon,
and lunched on a hill-side with an ostrich farm below us.
It made me laugh to see the huge birds strutting in the
sun, for I knew a Sunderland gentleman who walked
exactly like them. Then over rolling uplands, up hill and
down dale, we made our way to Fallbrook, reaching it in
the only shower which has caught me so far in California.
Fallbrook has, in my judgment, incomparably the best
climate we have met with on our journey. Situate 400 or
500 feet above the sea, it escapes frosts and dew. The air
is dry and invigorating. The ocean breeze gives life.
Grain and all manner of fruits grow luxuriantly. You
may see there fields of maize on which no rain has
ever fallen ; Egyptian wheat which is cut down and
comes again next season unsown, volunteer barley and
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 63
oats growing up for hay, and on the lower hill-sides and
in the vales oranges, lemons, and all manner of fruit. It
was at Prohibition Fallbrook that the greatest rebuff of
our lives met us. We could not, in the hotel, borrow
even a corkscrew, though only to open a modest bottle
of Apollinaris Water ! So sternly teetotal were they
that one of us had to go out and buy the convenient
article in a store.
After staying there a day for exploration we headed
still for the north, climbed another mountain pass into a
range of mountain-valleys, known as the Vallecitos (the
Little Valleys) of Temecula, and descended their northern
slope into the Temecula Valley. Here we drew rein.
What a scene was there ! Far in front spread the valley
with its rolling foot-hills, and beyond reared itself the
giant range of the Bernardino Mountains shrouded in
snow glistening in the glorious sun. There, on the left,
was Old Baldy eighty miles away, above Los Angeles,
For a hundred miles the snow-capped peaks repeated
themselves till the eyes rested on Mount Bernardino itself,
rising two miles sheer from its surrounding plain, and
further east on noble San Jacinto and San Felipe, twin
guardians of the Arizona desert. Not even in the Alps
have my eyes rested on a mountain landscape more
wide-extending or more majestically grand.
CHAPTER IX.
A Mountain Sheep-Ranch — 1 he Happy Valley — Rain
—The Pala Mission— An Indian Chief of a New
Type— The Great Mesa— Coyotes at Last— Scotland
and California— a Gold Fever and its Issue— Typical
Land Sale— An Ox Roasted— Its Roasters Roasted too.
Brewster Hotel, San Diego,
March loth, 1889.
We took advantage of our presence in the Temecula
Valley to pay a promised visit to Mr. Parker Dear at his
mountain ranch, Santa Rosa. Years ago Mr. Dear's
father bought the estate for a small sum, and here the
son lives with his charming Spanish wife, literally monarch
of all he surveys. He met us with his team at Wildoman
a small roadside station, and with hearty welcome con-
voyed us to his mountain home. Our route rose through
a wooded glen till, at 1700 feet above the sea, Santa
Rosa Ranch lay before us ; verdant valleys, edged by
rolling hills crowned with evergreen oaks, and amongst
which scattered boulders of enormous size lent added
picturesqueness to the scene. Santa Rosa is one of the
few remaining upland cattle-ranches of the county. It
covers 47,000 acres, 15,000 of which have been recently
sold to a land company. The remaining 32,000 acres Mr.
Dear amuses himself with farming, running between
2000 and 3000 head of cattle, and growing a certain
quantity of grain. His pretty ranch-house, set by some
springs on the edge of a charming ravine, opened its
welcoming doors to us just as evening drew nigh. Stand-
ing upon the portico, amidst roses and flowering shrubs,
the cultivated fields in front of us, the hills, covered with
a rich greensward rising beyond, and groves of noble
w
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 65
evergreen oaks filling in the picture, we might easily have
dreamed ourselves into the belief that we were gazing on
a Devonshire scene in midsummer. A glance at the
shadowy palms, however, and at the orange-trees laden
with their golden fruit, recalled to us the fact that we were
in California, 1700 feet above the sea, in February,
innocent of great-coats, and armed with hats only
against the sun. The voices of the children of the house,
mingling English and Spanish phrases, broke in upon the
silence with odd effect, fitting in with the cooing of doves
and croaking of noisy frogs ; but all forgotten when a
barbaric gong called us to dinner and to the presence of
a Chinese cook and serving-man, whose clear-cut ascetic
face (different, indeed, from the ordinary coarse Mongol
type) reminded one of a Roman cardinal. We spent
the two next days in driving round our host's domain,
thoro'-bush, thoro'-brier, over many a swelling hill, through
many a smiling valley, by devious tracks and rocky passes.
The deer, ancient denizens of these cool retreats, had
vanished, but in their stead cattle crowned the hills, or
lolled by the side of crystal streamlets in the vales. No
need for fence to hedge them in ; the towering hills
around were their sure guardians ; apart from these one
solitary gate across the road we entered by sufficed.
What scenes of quiet pastoral beauty ! Surely the grim
old doctor was mistaken ; the Happy Valley of Rasselas
was not in Abyssinia.
On the evening of the second day, from a mountain top,
we had a view of the distant ocean and the whole coast-line
stretching down to San Diego and the Mexican hills. A
little cloud, bigger than a man's hand, was just discernible
off the far southern horizon. " It will be rain to-morrow,"
said our host, "perhaps to-night." We listened with
incredulous ears, for not another cloud dimmed the wide
expanse. But the prophet was right. As the sun set the
light cavalry of the storm came hurrying up, and soon the
main battalia, dark and dense, blotted out the stars and
banked themselves against the northern mountains. At
nine the rain came down in more than downright English
9
66 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
fashion ; the wind and it made merry all the night ; and
when morning came the clouds hid the hills and the mists
swirled fantastically amongst the weeping oaks. We
realised at last that even in the Land of the Sun they
sometimes have bad weather. We drove through it,
however, without distress, and in the outer valley found
again the sun.
Mounted on our waggon, our road lay eastward along
the foot-hills till we struck the Pala Pass, up and down
which we drove for the San Luis River. This pass is, I
think, the grandest of those we traversed. In it we saw
for the first time what a Californian mountain side is like
when thick-carpeted with the Californian poppy. It is one
sloping mass of golden glory. On the banks of the San
Luis we found the Pala Mission built by the Spanish
Jesuits. It is one of the antiquities of California, yet is
but a century old ; so very new is the land. The dried-
clay walls are crumbling ; the Fathers are gone ; the
broken cloisters, which once echoed now to the sound of
sacred song and again to the fierce cries of wild onlookers
at bull-fights and bear-baits, contained nought but some
shy-faced Indian children and a few straggling hens.
Only the bronze bells survived intact to tell of a livelier
past. Yet more remains. All down the valley we came
upon Indian families living in their wooden cabins and
tilling the fruitful earth. One of the chiefs had quite a
pleasant home, surrounded by an orange grove and a well-
kept orchard and fields green with barley and oats. Gone
his predatory habits, if not his predatory instincts, for
evermore 1 Uncle Sam's marshal is master here. Thank
the Fathers, then, for something attempted, something
done.
We crossed the river (now in flood) by a wooden
bridge some miles further down, traversed the Montserrat
Ranch, owned by the Alvarados, who are descended,
it is said, from one of the famous companions of Cortes,
then struck up one of the passes to the south, and came
by Buena Vista and San Marcos back by another route
to sweet Escondido. Another cloudless day saw us
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 67
careering through the Barnardo Valley, skirting the fine
Vale of Poway, and climbing the n:iesa beyond. There
what was to me the greatest surprise of the journey
struck our eyes. Stretched out before us, 400 or 500
feet above the sea, was a huge, unexpected expanse
of country, covering from 60,000 to 90,000 acres, with
grand views of mountain and of sea; flat apparently as
a pancake; thickly covered with scrub of sage and
grease- wood; rich and fertile of soil; running to within
a mile or two of the great city of San Diego; and yet
useless — useless for lack of water! Let but enterprise
bring the water from the mountains, and this wide-
spreading waste will be as the Garden of the Lord.
Sufficiently above the sea to escape the frosts, sufficiently
near it to catch in their freshness the daily ocean -
breezes, there is no product of the temperate or sub-tropical
zones which you cannot raise here, and raise with such
profusion as amply to repay the labour of man. Upon
this mesa our sportsman had his first and only shot at
the Californian wolf. All the way we had kept our eyes
open for these slinking thieves. Here, at least, three of
them emerged from a small canon, and showed them-
selves for a moment amongst the bush 400 yards off.
The distance proved, alas, too much for the Winchester
or its wielder, and the coyotes were too politic to give
him a second chance. Evening saw us safe in the com-
fortable Brewster, and our horses at rest in their stable.
We had been pleasant companions for between 300 and
400 miles.
Do you ask me why I have described this tour at such
length, particularising all these unknown places, setting
down these strange unpronounceable names? I will tell
you. You get off (at least the lucky ones among you) to
the Cumbrian Hills or Wales or fair Scotland or (the
luckiest of you) to Switzerland, and you revel there in the
summer weather and return for the fogs and slush. Now,
I want you to realise that here, in Southern California,
there are valleys as fair, passes as grand, mountains as
noble, peaks of Alpine sublimity and grandeur ; and you
68 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
may wander among them without discomfort, nay, with
real pleasure, in November, December, January, escape
for good the nipping north-easters and the choking fogs,
and enjoy your own homes in the gay summer-time. I
speak, as I said, to the lucky ones. But even as I write
the vision rises before me of crowds ill-fed, badly clothed,
badly housed, in our great northern cities. Ah, my
brothers ! Would that the yellow lamp before me were
Aladdin's lamp ! One touch upon its magic surface, and
you too should taste the comforts of a land where
bounteous Nature does so much to abate the ills of life.
You too should learn that
" There are hills beyond Pentland,
And lands beyond Forth."
When we returned to San Diego we found the city
labouring under two excitements — one small, the other
severe. Gold had been found at Ensenada, fifty miles over
the Mexican border, in Lower California. Gold ! Nuggets,
dust, nuggets, dust ! That produced the severe excite-
ment. All the town was agog. Men talked of nothing
else. You had but to get a shovel and a pan, and be off
to the mines, and you were rich for life. It is true you
would do well to take a horse, for eighty miles over the
pathless mountains is no joke ; and a revolver, for law
is not omnipotent amongst the lawless ; and blankets or a
tent, for of shelter there is none ; and food for man and
beast, since it can't be bought save at famine prices, even
if at all. Still — gold, magic gold, for the digging of it !
Hundreds went, nay, hundreds more came from far-off
places and went. Even the waiters in some of the hotels
rushed off to seek fortune. All the have-nots struck south.
We debated whether we too should go and see this great
sight. But as the discomforts were apparent, and, like the
steward in the parable, we could not dig, we decided on
the whole that we would stay at home and read about it.
We did well. For the whole thing was a fraud, a sham.
Of gold there proved to be little, and the only persons
who made much were not the gallant diggers, but the
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 69
astute traders who took down the necessaries of life, and
sold them for what they chose to ask. The sham is now
exploded. One more gold-craze has vanished into curses
both loud and deep.
The mild excitement was over a land-sale. Of land-
sales at large and town-sites, and Californian folly therein,
I may write more by-and-by. Here it may be sufficient
to prove that land-jobbers have wily ways in other lands
than ours if I reproduce the advertisement, which I trust
the good foreman-printer will set out, if not in letters
quite as large as the original, still so that it may catch
men's eyes —
ROASTED OX!
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD,
THERE WILL BE
BARBECUED
A fine Young Steer on the Campus of
SAN DIEGO COLLEGE OF LETTERS
AT PACIFIC BEACH.
He will be carved and served to the Hungry Throng at 12
o'clock. Ladies will be served in the College Dining Hall, and
the gentlemen under the shining canopy of heaven.
Upon this occasion there will be a continuation of the
IMMOLATION SALE
Of Real Estate by the San Diego College of Letters Company.
CHOICE RESIDENCE AND VILLA SITES
Will be sold to the highest bidder. The sale does not affect the
schedule price of this property, but is made at this time to meet the
pressing need of San Diego's Institution of Learning.
Terms of Sale. — 10 per cent, cash ; balance in 30 days. Title
clear of mortgages and taxes.
SPECIAL EXCURSIONS!
Trains will leave D Street Motor Depot at 9 and 10 A.M., 1.30 P.M.
Fare for round trip, 25c.
The sale will be announced at 11 a.m. by the sweet notes of the
Bugle Call. »
Come and spend a day in San Diego's most lovely and classical
suburb.
Ye gods ! If a College of Letters must rear its front
sacred to Truth and Learning by miserable lying trade-
puffing like this, shall not Wisdom hide her head ! I am
70 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
thankful to say little land was sold, despite the Roasted
Ox ; perhaps because of him, for doubtless he was tough
and burnt or underdone. I said — lying. Why, I visited
(not on sale day) this " most lovely and classical suburb of
San Diego." A bare, treeless slope of clay and sand, a
wooden hotel untenanted, a i&^ commonplace wooden
dwellings scattered here and there ; no avenues, no gardens,
no cliff, no point or place of interest made by man or left
by God save the yellow sea-sands and the rolling sea.
Hear you, how it roars at your lies ! Oh, Fathers of the
College of Letters, Heaven forgive you ! no one else can.
A fine, truth-loving, truth-telling set of pupils you'll rear in
your college if ever you get it. Hear a plain man : San
Diego may get along without learning ; it can't get along
at all without men who speak the modest truth. Barbecue
no more oxen, my friends ; tell no more — tarradiddles.
CHAPTER X.
The Land Boom and its Effects— London Eclipsed on
Paper— Work versus Speculation — Santa Barbara — A
Western Riviera — Interview with Friars of Orders
Brown— The Ojai Valley — A Wondrous Weather
Record— Storm at Last— Back to San Diego— Mr.
Albert Grey — Final Drives — Flowers and Birds —
Road-runners and Rattlesnakes— A Homeric Contest
—A Commonplace One— Ho for England !— Mr. Albert
Grey at Sea.
Brewster Hotels San Diego,
March 2e^th, 1889.
Anxious to see somewhat of the country north of Los
Angeles, we left here by train for Santa Barbara, 100 miles
north-west of that city, and 230 miles north-north-west
from San Diego. Even so small a space could not con-
veniently be covered in one day, for the trains do not
run at more than twenty to twenty-five miles an hour,
and do not fit in. Indeed, it took us four days to reach
our objective, for we halted in Los Angeles and Pasadena.
The land there looked richer and greener than ever, as
the crops showed more above ground, and the orchards
now in bloom were lovely to behold. Upon this journey
we realised more fully the inordinate folly of the people
in the matter of town-sites. When the " boom " was on
two years and a half ago, nearly every one who had or
could acquire an estate of any size was convinced that
a town could be galvanised into existence on it. Town-
sites were laid out; white stakes marked out thousands,
nay, tens of thousands of house-plots; avenues and streets
were designed, and rows of trees planted; public auction
sales were held with bands and banners and free lunches
and roasted oxen; men would stand in a qtceue through
72 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
the livelong night to get the first turn in the morning, or,
better still, hire the impecunious for ten or twenty dollars
to keep their turns for them; nor was it uncommon for
these lucky ones to get their plots and sell them forthwith
to the eager, crack-brained enthusiasts at the tail of the
queue for a substantial profit. California was mad.
To add to, if not to create the madness, the professional
land-boomers from the East trooped in with their carpet-
bags. These gentry exploit the " booms" just as regularly
and religiously as our English betting-men frequent suc-
cessive race-courses. They are now whilst I write off to
Washington territory, where there is another boom. They
bought and sold, ran up prices, fanned the fire, puffed
and boasted, and finally moved off with full pockets, taking
good care that whoever was left they were not. A modest
computation has been made that in San Gabriel and
its adjoining valleys alone sufficient town-sites were laid
out to accommodate a population equal to the aggregate
of the trifling little cities of London, Paris, Berlin, St.
Petersburg, Vienna, and New York ! The whole thing was
a manifest, a gigantic folly. You may call cities from the
vasty deep, but they won't come. Most of the projects
fell still-born. I visited, for instance, the great paper-city
of Huntingdon. There were the white stakes and the
house-plots, and the avenues and the budding rows of
trees, and — one wooden shanty to grace the whole. I
saw in a veracious newspaper that Arcadia had had quite
an access of prosperity, and would soon have to apply for
incorporation as a city of the second class. I drove over
to Arcadia. Ten buildings of wood or brick ! Ten, on
my honour, and no more ! You can yet see vineyards
running wild (cut up into lots), orchards unpruned (cut
up into lots), orange groves dying (cut up into lots).
Gentlemen have been pointed out to me who gave at the
rate of 2500 dollars and more per acre for their lands,
and would gladly get rid of them at almost any price.
The "boom," like all fevers, did more harm than good.
The few astute ones might make money, the gullible
many are left with properties held at unreal prices, and
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 73
generally mortgaged at 10 per cent, or upwards. I never
saw so many "land-poor" men in my life. You might
imagine they were all Irish landlords.
Men are of course wiser now, taught by bitter experi-
ence. They realise that the wealth of California is in the
land ; that this wealth can be easily got out of it by work,
and not otherwise ; that therefore they must plant and not
gamble in corner lots, dig and not fool away time and
money and peace of mind at barbecues. Stakes are being
shamefacedly pulled out and burnt, hedges trimmed, trees
and vines tended. Land, too, is slowly but surely falling
to its true value, and will again tempt many a frugal hard-
working settler whom inordinate prices forced elsewhere.
Despite the " boom," not because of it. Southern California
will flourish.
Somewhat too much of these matters into which the
dollar ceaselessly enters. But, indeed, it is a favourite
taunt against these climate-blessed, easy-going Californians
that their whole talk is of dollars, and their sole amusement
gambling in corner lots. I can say better things of them
than that. If they talk dollars, they build churches and
schools. Every little village, as every large town, must
have these and a sufficiency of them. There is a story
told of one ambitious little settlement, the inhabitants
whereof, having obtained church and school, sat in solemn
conclave to consider what other adjunct of civilisation they
might next secure. They resolved on having a hearse — a
real hearse with orthodox ornaments and waving plumes.
It was ordered, and in due course its approach notified.
As the Israelites turned out to meet the ark, so the settlers
went forth to meet their hearse, headed by their brass band.
The band (so the story goes) could play but one tune, and
to the cheerful lilt of " Wait for the waggon, and we'll all
take a ride," the hearse v/as safely housed, the villagers
proudly feeling that for them, at any rate for the present,
the resources of civilisation were exhausted.
Amusements, too, they have. For the second time in
thirty years I visited a race-course, tempted by the announce-
ment of a race between a young man and a young woman.
10
74 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
I found a considerable crowd, adorned by fewer black-
guards than I anticipated. The course was a smooth oval
of a mile. Each competitor had four horses ready saddled
on it. The man had to mount one of his, ride once round,
jump off, ride the second round, and so on, horse by horse
and mile by mile, till the full distance of ten miles had
been covered. The young woman had to do likewise, save
that she was lifted from horse to horse in a man's arms.
It was really an exciting business, and no horse was
punished. It may interest the ladies to learn that their
champion won by a quarter of a mile, doing the ten miles
in twenty-one minutes twenty-six seconds. Another
Californian amusement which I did not honour with my
presence is set out in an advertisement which announces —
«A SLAUGHTERING EXHIBITION.
" Whereat ten butchers are pitted against each other to demonstrate
who can slay oxen and sheep most painlessly and with greatest
expedition.
^ ADMISSION, lO CENTS."
I do not know how many attended this brutalising
exhibition. But sure I am that to estimate the people
at large by such a sample would be unfair ; just as unfair
as it is for the Rev. Sam. Jones to go from city to city
and declare each in turn the wickedest city in the whole
world. I daresay there are enough, and more than
enough, of brutal and base folk here as elsewhere, and one
is not allowed to forget it is a new land where all sorts
come. But, these Southern Californians seem to me to
smack of the genial climate ; if a trifle keen in business,
they are decent and sensible in their amusements ; they
delight in little social gatherings, musical entertainments
and lectures, and love the open hill-sides and the ocean
sands.
One common charge against them I must refute, if only
in gratitude for many kindnesses. I was told they were a
drinking if not a drunken people. The wits delight to
retail to " tender-feet " (that's the cant name for outlanders
like myself) the standing joke of a gentleman entering one
of the huge railway cars and crying out " Is there a
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 75
Californian here ? " whereupon every Californian sprang to
his feet and produced his pocket corkscrew. He knew
what he was wanted for. The wits may have reason ; all- 1
can say is that, after three months' experience amongst all
classes, I think them, with exceptions, a temperate race.
In that space of time I have only seen three drunken men :
one was a Californian, another an Englishman, and the
third an Irishman who would persist in declaring himself
Scotch — only when he was drunk his brogue betrayed him.
Now for Santa Barbara. Our course from Los Angeles
lay first to the north, through the Fernando Valley to Saugus,
and thence west down Santa Clara Valley and by the
sea-shore. Here the great San Bernardino Range, which
I spoke of as running west from the Sierra Nevadas to the
sea, approaches close to the coast, which itself bends in
from Point Conception and runs east. Between the
mountains and the sea is a narrow strip only a few miles
wide. Santa Barbara County consists of this coast-strip
and the mountains and the valleys therein. The town
itself is prettily situate on the coast, and has a more com-
pleted aspect than most of the other towns. Its district is
proudly called the Riviera of California. Sheltered by
the mountains from the north, and sloping south to the
peaceful sea, it invites the comparison conveyed in
the name, but one misses alike the historical associa-
tions and the glorious sea cliffs of its European
prototype, though, to be fair, one must admit that the
islands in the offing, rising grandly to 2500 feet,
present counterbalancing attractions not to be despised.
Santa Barbara is held in much repute by American
physicians as a refuge for persons afflicted with lung
troubles, being free from those enormous variations of
temperature which afflict our Riviera. Its air struck me,
however, as more humid and relaxing than any I had
yet encountered in this land, corresponding in this respect
with that of Funchal in Madeira, where the contiguity
of mountain and sea develops every evening a humidity
dangerous to the weak. I may be wrong as to this. I
was there in the brief wet season ; it may probably be
76 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
different all the rest of the year. In that case let the
Barbarians forgive me.
The most interesting and noticeable feature of the place
is the Mission, one of the few remaining in good repair.
It stands upon the mesa, with a magnificent view of sea,
islands, and mountains, and with its white walls and dark
red roofs is quaintly attractive. We drew up in a passing
shower, and entered the plain and rather commonplace
church, over the east door of which is a death's-head with
cross-bones, not of stone however. Some grimly realistic
friar had picked up in the churchyard a grinning skull
and a couple of bones, which once were helpful to
some son of Adam, and had fixed them in the plaster
to appal one's skipping spirits. From the church we
passed to the monastery and rang the bell. An aged
friar in brown appeared. Could we see the place ? No ;
it was not permitted. Something in the cut of his face
and turn of his tongue caught my attention. "Why,"
said I, "you are an Irishman." "Shure, and I am."
"From what place?" "Why, from Derry." "Did he
know Strabane ? " " Shure, and I do." And then he and
I fell into reminiscences, and in five minutes he thought
we could see the house; he would seek the superior. That
reverend father soon appeared. Irish too ! From Youghal
he. Did I know Youghal and Cappoquin, and the lovely
Blackwater and Lismore ? Of course I did; and his
rotund form loomed larger, and his round jolly face,
crowned with jet black hair, was wreathed in smiles. Friar
Tuck we christened him on the spot, and when we entered
the old refectory, with its white-washed walls and uneven
earthen floor and smoke-blackened roof, it need not have
much astonished us if the Holy Clerk had introduced
us to the Black Sluggard himself So old-world-like, so
romantic was the darkened room ! The garden behind
was ill-kept, but contained some noticeable trees. The
cloister wall to the rear had fallen, not to be reared again.
We talked with our jolly friar of things at large, of the
Spanish Founders, of the lovely land and weather, of
Ireland and of Parnell. « Far from the madding crowd,"
THF IRISH MONK.
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 77
he knew of and was deeply interested in the Irish struggle
and the Irish leader. What Irishman worthy of the name
would not be ? We bade him adieu with hearty hand-
shakes, and since I left I have sent him the Times with
the full account of Pigott's cross-examination, flight, and
fate. May the Saints forgive him if he enjoyed it just for
one night better than his prayers !
Our intention was to have driven from Santa Barbara
across the mountains to Monterey. But the weather was
changeable, and all things pointed to a rain-storm. We
therefore returned by train thirty miles east to San Buena
Ventura, and drove up the lovely Ventura to the still
lovelier Ojai (Oh-hi) Valley. A place of peace and beauty,
a vale shut in by mountains, and filled with thousands,
tens of thousands, of spreading ever-green oaks, amidst
which the white dwellings of the settlers are scattered
about. The weather record for this district shows that
they had thirty bright, rainless days in October, twenty-five
in November, twenty-four in December, twenty-nine in
January, and twenty-four in February ! Ah ! your eyes
shine with envy, you English folk, growling amidst your
sleet and slush. Pray be comforted to know that even
amidst such perfect surroundings I caught a nose-rending
influenza, ending in low fever, which drove me to bed,
and was only exorcised by copious doses of the favourite
Californian remedy, quinine. We loved Ojai, but, storm-
warned, hurried back to Ventura, and so to Los Angeles.
There the storm burst. Before I came to California I was
told there was no fog here, no thunder, no lightning, no
hydrophobia. Fogs we have had, though no wet ones.
Now for four days and nights it rained almost without
intermission, with thunder, lightning, and hail. Roads
were washed out, railway bridges carried away, all traffic
was suspended, whilst we moped in our hotel, feeling that
if only a Californian dog would go mad all our fond
illusions would have vanished together.
As soon as the weather permitted we returned to San
Diego. There a pleasant surprise was in store for us in
the form of a visit from Mr. Quilter, M.P., and Mr. Albert
y^ TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
Grey, who was accompanied by his cousin, Sir Edward's
younger brother. All seemed vigorous and strong, Mr.
Albert Grey especially looking brown and ruddy, and
plumper than I have ever seen him. " He and I had not
met since the declaration of the poll in the Tyneside
Division in 1886. Then we were unfortunately political
opponents. Now we met with friendly greeting and good-
humouredly chatted over old-time strife. He thought the
defeat at Kennington, of which news had just reached us, a
serious blow, but had no thought of surrender ; the Tories
would not grant Home Rule, and if they wanted to, they
should not. I laughed at the idea of Whigs preventing
Tories from making progress. And he laughed too, but
he won't budge. Like Macbeth he cries —
" Ring the alarum bell, blow wind, come wrack,
At least we'll die with harness on our back."
We have spent the last week of our sojourn in further
drives, visiting Spring Valley and the Jamul Ranch, and
sweet Poway, Barnardo, and the lower Dieguito Valley.
Details of these excursions I spare you. The country is
now one wide expanse of richest verdure, adorned with
a wealth of wild flowers which I am powerless to describe.
Many a time I have wished that my botanising friend,
John Cameron, had been with me, only he would have
been continually losing himself in his hunt after flowers,
and there are no bellmen here. Of some of the beasts
and birds I have spoken. Amongst the latter, the golden
lark, with his rich melodious notes, the capricious mocking-
bird, the impudent blue-jay, and the butcher-bird, which
hunts mice and sticks them up on thorns till he is ready
to devour them, are constant sources of interest and
amusement. But the most curious of all is the road-
runner, a bird about the size of a pheasant, long-legged
and long of bill, with a brown breast and crested head.
He is the sworn foe of snakes, and they tell me a fight
between him and a rattlesnake is a sight to see. Espying
his formidable enemy, he gathers the sharp spikes of the
prickly cactus, and plants them barrier-like around him;
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 79
nor can the snake escape or rear himself to strike without
sharp and painful wounds. Seeing him thus entangled,
the road-runner goes in like a game-cock, pecks at him,
leaps warily back from the poisoned fangs, and literally
worries the brute to death.
I have, alas ! not witnessed such a Homeric combat. A
rattlesnake, however, I have met; one, and I don't wish
to meet another. We were driving down from Jamul last
Friday evening, when we espied him in the track. Whilst
one held the horses, the four others of us jumped down.
Sticks we had none, and not a stone was to be had. The
young sportsman of the party possessed himself of the
whip, and the rest of us gathered pieces of hard clay.
Thus armed, we advanced to the attack. The clay broke
innocuously on him, and two ineffectual blows of the whip
only turned him on us in fury, his eye glittering wickedly,
and his fierce rattle sounding the assault. Just as he
reared for a spring, a fortunate third blow from the whip
broke his back six inches above the rattle, and he turned
tail and wriggled into the brush, his rattle marking the line
of retreat. We followed cautiously, and a few more well-
delivered blows crushed his ugly head and terminated the
maleficent career of at any rate one enemy of progress. We
tied a shoestring round his neck, rolled him into the horse-
pail, forded the Sweetwater River with the water running
through our waggon, took advantage of the time to fill the
pail with water so that the wriggling wretch might drown
if he would not die like a gentleman, and carried him as a
trophy into San Diego. He measures four feet five and
a half inches, is now being fitted with a new inside, and
will doubtless appear by-and-by as a specimen in some
English museum.
On Monday I leave for home.
P.S. — Just as I am gathering my possessions together
for a start I learn from the newspapers that Mr. Albert
Grey has gone down to Lower or Mexican California,
and had an exhilarating adventure. It would appear that
in landing at Ensenada he, and Uncle Sam's mail-bags
8o TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
along with him, fell into the sea. They were, happily,
fished out, and, says the veracious reporter, "after being
put through the drying machine were none the worse for
their wetting." I presume he meant the bags, but Western
reporters sacrifice all things to spiciness. Mr. Grey, I have
learned since, is all right and jolly, whereat political friends
and foes will alike rejoice.
CHAPTER XL
Western Newspapers — The " Boom " — Papers and their
Oddities — An Unique Advertisement — The Paragons
OF Editors — Mr. Pott redivivus — O'Brien's Head off —
Pattern Reporting — Western Humour — Old Foes
Meet — Something for the Lawyers — Something, too,
FOR THE Teetotalers — The Ladies not forgotten — A
Costly Coffin— Wives to the Front— Sulphur Sam's
Warning.
Del Mar, March 28//?, 1889.
These discursive sketches would seem, to me at any rate,
lacking in any completeness they may be presumed to
attain, if they take no note of the newspapers of the Far
West. In California alone there are no less than 411
among a population of a million and a half; whilst
the contiguous States and Territories probably muster as
many more. The papers of San Francisco are admirable
productions, sufficing both as to quantity and quality, and
some of those of the other large towns are not much
behind. But every place of any importance or ambition
must have a paper of its own. Especially must the towns
which are being "boomed" into existence have their weekly
organs, in which every trivial fact down to the exact weight
of the new-born babies, as well as every incident which
may seem to excite interest in the place, is duly and
diffusely chronicled. Some of the editors are easy-going
enough, as, for instance, the gentleman who the other week
apologised for the late and incomplete issue of his paper,
because " We have been engaged in planting out and
improving our ten-acre tract," but others have the keenest
eye for the main chance. Last week's Bethlehem Pealler
(Phcebus, what a name !) contains the following advertise-
ment —
II
82 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
" MOTHERS, FATHERS,
"husbands who intend to become fathers, look at this
OFFER and weep FOR JOV.
"The owners and projectors of the town of Bethlehem will give to
the first child born in Bethlehem the garden spot of Santa Clara
county, one lot on the principal street of said town, just as soon as we
can ascertain the name of said child, and we don't care whether it is
born in a manger or in the open air. We do know the offer is free
for all, and open to all competitors. Those of you who are thinking
seriously of having one will do well to grasp at this offer, for every
child is not born with a silver spoon in its mouth."
Another " boomer " puffs thus —
"CHANEY COAL.
"a home product that is winning its way.
"The Chaney mine at Elsinore has now fairly established its claim
as a permanent industry of this section of the State. Ten tons per
day are used in this city, the same amount shipped to other points,
and about the same amount used in the manufacture of sewer pipe,
and in other ways in and about Elsinore."
Imagine the twinkling eyes and merry smile with which
Lord Durham or Mr. Baker Forster would greet the
announcement of a new " permanent industry " in the
shape of a colliery which actually draws thirty tons a-day.
Of Murrieta I must tell a story. Two years or more ago,
when it was " booming," a good friend of mine visited it,
on the very day of all days when the hotel cat kittened.
He took a fancy to the lively twins, and had them sent off
in a basket to his home in San Diego. Next issue of the
local "boomer" announced —
" Murrieta flourishes. Quite a new industry has sprung up in our
midst. Yesterday, Mr. Winchester, of San Diego, made his first
consignment of cats to that city. We are going ahead."
I have seen, I suppose, fifty or a hundred of these little
prints during the past three months. Each of them
assures me that its particular locality is the richest, the
most beautiful, the most salubrious, the most desirable,
the most perfect place for settlement in all the wide world.
How easy it is for truth to be transmuted into lies by
the vulgar process of exaggeration ! By piecing together
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 83
morsels culled at intervals from their veracious pages, I
think I can photograph the peculiarities and oddities of
Western American life better perhaps than by pages of
detailed description. I warn my readers, then, that the
present chapter will be mainly the product of scissors and
paste, and that I shall figure, like Autolycus, as " a mere
picker-up of unconsidered trifles."
What of the editors to begin with ? Well, I am in no
doubt about the Southern Californian ones at any rate.
Quite recently they held a great gathering in Los Angeles,
and here is the modest editorial description of them in the
Los Angeles Times —
" The handsome, witty, able, learned, and wealthy gentlemen that
assembled in this city yesterday under the name of 'The Editorial
Association of Southern California' comprise, it is unnecessary to
say, nearly all the brains in the Sixth Congressional district of this
State. They were seventy-eight, and they represented about half a
hundred newspapers; but these ideas of number are utterly inadequate
to any representation of the power they wield and the influence they
possess. To them, in great part, is confided the destiny oi Southern
California; for it is not too much to say that the newspapers have
more to do with the prosperity of the country than any other
agency."
The editors are doubtless smart fellows, but I am bound
to say they sometimes lose their temper like common folk;
as witness the following editorial for which this same
Times was responsible just about the same date, and
which recalls the palmiest days of Eatanswillian literary
Billingsgate —
"WITH OUR COMPLIMENTS.
" Some vicious, virulent, and villainous street tattler — employed,
evidently, to do the dirty work of a notorious fakir and proved
scoundrel whom the Thnes has justly held up to public execration and
contempt, and whose trail the sheriff has been following like a sleuth-
hound, and who is even now in a state of collapse — is pacing around,
we are informed, shooting off his mud-filled, hired mouth against t!'e
Times, ostensibly because it called attention — without money, wiihout
price, and without solicitation — to the solid ard thriving cond!tion of
one of our leading financial institutions, ascribing to us improper
motives in so doing. That is a very foolish and impotent, as well
as a very vicious, charge to make, you tool of a scoundrel ! The
84 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
Times is in the habit of drawing public attention, without money
and without price, to those financial and commercial features of Los
Angeles which are peculiarly sound, strong, and meritorious, for the
sake of the truth and its effect upon people at home and abroad ; for
the sake of the best interests of the city, whose prosperity we, in
common with other good citizens, are labouring to promote. And we
have no apology to make to anybody — much less to cowards, scoun-
drels, embezzlers, pretenders, fakirs, and their ready tools—for our
course in that regard. No successful attack can be made upon our
motives ; it is too late in the day for those base tactics ; they are the
resort of desperate men, in a desperate plight, struggling in a des-
perate and hopeless cause. They cannot win. What would these
low-bred cattle — these political mustangs and social scrubs— have us
do ? Would they have us proclaim to the world that our banks, or
any of them, are wildcat concerns, on the eve of collapse, like the
fakirs themselves ? Go to, cattle ! We shall pursue the even tenor of
our way, and continue to ' do the State (and city) some service.' "
And the Colusa Herald gives prominence to the follow-
ing, which may be a joke, but is much more Hkely to be
gospel truth —
" There is an editor north of here who will not lie even about a
loathsome contemporary if he knows it. ' We wish,' he says in his
last issue, * to retract our statement of last week to the effect that the
editor of our contemporary had been drunk twice recently. In
reality he had been drunk but once. Five days intervened between
the dates referred to, but it was only one drunk.' ''
Our literary guides make odd mistakes, too, or their
compositors do. In another Los Angeles paper (I forget
which) appeared the following note —
" The Soldiers' Home at Santa Monica is going on apace in the
work of getting up the buildings. In a very short time they will be
thrown open to the veterans, who will be glad to rest their battle-
scared \\mbs by the side of the sunset sea, and to pass their declining
years under the genial influences of our matchless climate."
" Battle-scared " is good ; but it pales its ineffectual
fires before the effulgence of this other Los Angelian
brightness —
"The harsh and brutal treatment of William O'Brien, who is con-
fined in Ballingham Gaol for what is termed a political offence, is on
a par with the past shameful attempts to govern Ireland by the
'mother country.' Here we have a physically delicate man, an
VC^'/
Msmm
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 85
educated gentleman, and ex-member of the British Parliament, seized
by the constables, taken to gaol, stripped of his clothing, forcibly held
while his head is shaved q^—and then he is left with scant covering
for twenty-four hours, upon the cold floor of his dismal prison cell.
His sole offence is his patriotic defence of his oppressed countrymen.
Perfidious England has many dark pages in the history of her inter-
course with the world, but none that are more disgraceful as the story
of her treachery, deceit, and cruelty in connection with the Irish
race."
Poor William O'Brien must be badly fixed indeed with
his head shaved off; though to judge from what I have
lately read it is not, as a matter of fact, he, but some other
people who have lost their heads.
The reporting staffs seem to be as jolly as the editors
are wise.
" The staff of The Post was regaled last night with a recherche
lunch, thoughtfully presented by Mr. Charles A. Dumbler. It
consisted not only of a delicious collation of rare delicacies, but also
included wine and cigars. The boys doff their hats, Charley."
It must have been under the baneful influence of this
evening lunch that one of the reporters perpetrated the
following enormity —
" A coloured damsel in a horrible state of intoxication split the
atmosphere wide open early last night, at the corner of San Jacinto
and Capitol Street, by the free use of her vigorous lungs. She was
gathered in by the police, and during the journey to the calaboose she
left a blue streak of imprecations in her wake."
For broad Western humour, however, you must consult
that ubiquitous contributor to many journals,
THE ARIZONA KICKER.
" Nearing the Limit. — We have been repeatedly asked why we
did not open on the G. and S. railroad for its slow time, miserable
cars, rough road, high rates, and generally incompetent service. It is
because we have been expecting an annual pass from the road. We
applied for it three months ago, but have heard nothing as yet. We
are nearing the limit. If that pass is not here inside of a fortnight we
shall sound our bugle in a way to make the ofificials of the road wish
they had never been born."
" Only Our Way. — We understand that Colonel Colfax feels
aggrieved because we referred to him last week as a dead-beat bum,
who ought to be given a doze of White Cap medicine. The Colonel
86 TO THE GOLDEN LAND,
should not be so thin skinned. It's only our way of keeping track of
the leaders of society."
"A False Alarm, — A Chicago correspondent dropped in on us
the other day for a brief visit, and after showing him our Washington
hand-press, six varieties of job type, and two bundles of print paper,
we took him out for a survey of the town. The news had gone
abroad that he was a Chicago detective, and it was laughable to note
the effect upon our leading citizens. A dozen or more broke for the
sage brush, without stopping for clean shirts, and so many others cut
off their whiskers or donned false oi:es that we walked the whole
length of Apache Avenue without meeting a man we could recognise
at first glance,
"While there is nothing mean about us, this is a feature we are
going to work about twice a month on this town. It will keep the boys
unsettled and anxious, and may be the means of converting some of
them from the error of their ways. It's an awful good feeling to feel
that you are the only man in a town of 3000 people whose liver don't
kick the breath out of him every time a stranger comes along and
takes a second look at the bridge of your nose."
"We Come Down,— We stated our belief last week that our
contemporary, which is eternally bragging about its increase of
circulation, did not print 150 copies weekly. We were honest in what
we said. The old bristle-backed hyena who claims to be editor and
publisher sent for us yesterday to examine his books and figure up
circulation. We made the astounding discovery that he has a bond-
fide circulation of 163 copies. When we are right we stick to the
point, but we apologise for the thirteen copies,"
Or what ails this veracious history of
THE WAYBACK TRAIN.
" I'll tell you a story, which, although not new, is tip-top : — On
some roads in Wayback they attract a passenger to a freight train
and call it ' mixed.' It is not in the order of things that such trains
should travel very rapidly, and sometimes there is considerable
growling among the passengers. On one of these trains a nervous
man asked for the hundredth time, 'Are we most there, conductor?
Remember my wife's sick, and I'm anxious.' 'We'll get there on
time,' replied the conductor, stolidly, Half-an-hour later the nervous
man approached the conductor again, saying, mournfully, ' I guess
she's dead now. I'd give you a little something extra if you could
manage to catch up with the funeral. Maybe she won't be so
decomposed but what I would recognise her,' The conductor glared
at him, and the man subsided. On the next round of the conductor,
the man approached him in a determined way, ' Conductor, if the
wind isn't dead ahead I Wish you would put on some steam, I'd like
to see where my wife is buried before the tombstone is crumbled to
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. By
pieces. Put yourself in my place for a moment.' The conductor
shook him off, and the man relapsed into profound melancholy. ' I
say, conductor,' said he, after a long pause, ' I've got a note coming
due in three months. Can't you fix it so as to rattle along a little ? '
* If you come near me again I'll knock you down,' snorted the con-
ductor, feeling that he was being guyed. The nervous man regarded
him sadly, and went to his seat. Two hours later, the conductor, on
his tour for tickets, found his man engaged in a game of cards,
laughing and chatting pleasantly. ' Halloa, there,' said the conductor,
'you don't seem to feel so badly about your wife's death now.' 'No,'
sighed the nervous man, as he put the winnings of a jackpot in his
pocket, 'time heals all wounds — assuages all grief.' 'And you're not
so particular about your note now, either?' sneered the conductor.
* No, not now,' answered the nervous man ; ' I'm all right about the
note. I've been figuring up, and find that the note is outlawed by the
statute of limitation since I spoke to you last.' "
Now let us be serious again. Here is a Western
picture of another sort. The Rev. Sam. Jones has been
here evangelising. He held amongst other meetings one
specially for the surviving veterans of both sides in the
Great War. The newspapers thus describe the scene —
" Mr. Jones began by saying : ' Before I read the text will
every veteran of the blue, every member of the Grand Army
of the Republic present, stand a moment.' (About 500 men
arose, amid great applause.) ' Now, will the former wearers
of the grey stand.' (About 300 arose in response to this sug-
gestion, and were greeted with prolonged applause.) 'I trust
whatever may be the memories from Fort Sumter to Appomatox,
whatever may be the memories of those fearful days, I thank God to-
day, when the din and smoke of battle has blown away, that we may
be brethren and friends. I hail with delight the day when we shall
clasp hands from the lakes to the gulf, and from Boston to San
Francisco, all over this country ; when, people with the common
interest and the common purpose to spread kindness and humanity
over the world, we will grow better and wiser."
I tell you I should have liked to witness that curious
demonstration that here at any rate —
"The war*drum has been muffled, the battle-flag been furled,
In the parliament of men, the federation of i/tt's world."
Here are two or three items for the lawyers. It may
interest them to learn by perusal of the following ordin-
ance that an extinct English custom still survives in
California : —
88 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
ORDINANCE NO. 41.
" The Board of Supervisors of the County of San Diego do ordain
as follows : —
"Section I. There is hereby levied upon each male person over
twenty-one years and under fifty-five years of age, found in any of the
Road Districts of said County of San Diego, a road poll tax of three
dollars for the year 1889,
"Section II. Any person liable as aforesaid for a road polljax
may at his option, before the first day of June 1889, work out his road
poll tax in conformity to the followin^^ regulations, but not otherwise—
" I. Each Road Overseer must ascertain the names of all persons
in his district liable for a road poll tax as aforesaid, and require of
each person so liable the performance of the labour, or the payment
of the tax.
"2. Any person may, instead of paying such tax, perform two
days' labour upon the highways and bridges of his district.
" 3. Each person appearing must actually work eight hours each
day, to be credited to him by the overseer or commissioner. For
every hour unnecessarily lost, or idled away, he must be charged two
hours, to be worked out on some other day to be designated by the
overseer or commissioner. Any person may work by an able-bodied
substitute."
Or this may take their fancy, the description of a scene
only possible in a land where judges are elected by the
popular vote, and bench and bar change places with
kaleidoscopic rapidity —
"'Judge Rix,' said Judge Hornblower solemnly, yesterday morn-
ing, as the retiring justice and his successor stood together under
the dais of Police Court No. i, ' I need not introduce you to the
practitioners of this Court. Your previous service as Judge of this
court — a position you filled with intelligence and honour — has been
rewarded by the citizens of this city by your re-election.'
" Judge Hornblower then thanked the officers of the Court for the
assistance they rendered him during the term.
" He then turned again to Judge Rix.
" 'And now, sir,' he resumed, ' I resign my seat to you, and assure
you and the public that I do so with pleasure. It is a hard position to
fill — it has been laborious, but I may say that I tried to discharge the
duties honestly and faithfully.'
"Judge Hornblower paused, grasped Judge Rix's hand, pointed to
heaven, and impressively said : ' I now induct you to your seat, and as
the Superior Judge of this universe will extend mercy to you and me,
may He give you wisdom and kindness of spirit to be merciful to the
young men of our city. Save them, if possible, from becoming
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 89
criminals. Again thanking you all, gentlemen, I retire to assume my
place in the ranks of the attorneys.'
" His ex-Honour grasped his present Honour's hand, and then left
the bench.
"When he reached the level he turned and, with stately humility
as a deposed monarch might announce himself the humble subject of
his successor — said :
" ' And now, your Honour, I would ask you to fix the bail of D, C.
Barker, charged with battery, for whom I appear.'
"Judge Rix fixed the bail at 100 dollars, and the attorneys of the
Court ground their teeth as they realised that a new and formidable
contestant had entered the lists to fight for the cream of the Police
Court practice."
Lawyers and teetotalers will unite to admire the ease
with which a verdict, even of murder, can be set aside in
this very, very free land.
"THE LEE CHUCK CASE.
"a new trial granted because the jurors took wine at
DINNER.
"Justice Works, of the Supreme Court, rendered a decision yester-
day in the case of Lee Chuck, convicted for murder in the first degree
for having shot and killed Len Yuen. Among the grounds for a new
trial set forth by the defendant in his appeal is the charge that the
jurors drank intoxicating liquors while deliberating on their verdict.
The affidavits in the case state that about two hours before bringing
in their verdict the jurors took claret at their dinner, and used a little
burnt cognac in their coffee. The Court decided that as the charge
is not denied no stronger case for the appellant could be presented,
and on that ground the case was sent back for a new trial."
It is tolerably hard to get a man hanged here unless
you lynch him.
I cannot think of closing my lucky-bag without drawing
a trifling prize or two for my lady friends. Then ladies
all, both great and small, contemplate the pomp any of
you may attain to if only you happen to die as the wife
of an American quack doctor.
"A COSTLY COFFIN.
"The body of Mrs. Catherine Teagle, wife of West Chester's
famous coloured doctor, will be interred at that place to-morrow
morning with more pomp than has attended any recent funeral in
this locality. Mrs. Teagle died of a complication of disorders at
midnight last Wednesday. By an arrangement made before her
13
90 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
death she was to-day laid out in a coffin which she had ordered
and inspected herself, and which will cost her wealthy husband the
sum of looo dollars. In appearance it is an exact reproduction of
the casket in which the body of the late Samuel J. Tilden was
incased, and it comes from the same manufactory. The wood from
which it is made is the very finest cedar that could be procured,
heavily lined with highly-tested copper. The trimmings are of the
finest satin, and the pillow on which the dead woman's head rests
is hand-embroidered. Besides all this, an exquisite satin shroud has
been ordered for the occasion, bits of colouring being introduced to
relieve the whole of any ghastly effect.
" ' I want it to be better than the one in which Henry Ward
Beecher was buried,' said Dr. Teagle this morning. ' She was an
excellent woman, and deserves an unexcelled home in the grave.'
"All the other arrangements for the funeral are upon a similar scale.
The funeral director was given explicit instructions to spare no
expense, and he has obeyed instructions. Fifty of the finest carriages
have been engaged, and a sumptuous dinner provided for those who
come from a distance.
" Mrs. Teagle was born a slave, but became free by the operations
of the emancipation proclamation, and came North shortly there-
after. She was a woman of more than ordinary capacity, and,
borrowing money, went into the millinery business. With her savings
she bought up real estate, which increased in value and finally made
her rich. In her own right she was worth about 100,000 dollars when
she died. Dr. Teagle, whom she married twenty years ago, obtained
a large practice as a root and herb doctor, and also amassed consider-
able money. To-day he has an extensive hst of white and coloured
patients, who will accept medical service from no other physician."
To hard-working matrons I commend the example of
a Californian heroine —
" MRS. MEADE'S GREAT FEAT.
"she sows AND PLANTS lOO ACRES OF WHEAT AT SAN
JACINTO.
" S. N. Meade and his estimable wife, who own a fine farm on
the mesa, have put in about 240 acres of wheat this season, and
are still ploughing. Mrs. Meade, not caring to do the housework
for a hired man, concluded it was cheaper to hire a girl and do the
ploughing herself. Knowing his wife enjoyed all outdoor exercise,
Mr. Meade accepted the proposition, at the same time thinking that
a few days of ploughing would satisfy his wife — that it would be too
much for her to undertake ; but there he was mistaken. They
commenced about Thanksgiving, both having a four-horse team
and a gang plough. Mrs. Meade, who tends to her own team, has,
is:jt^imSi!fl^^^^^illSi^^ilS^^^\'
PRESIDENT HARRISON.
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 91
up to date, ploughed and sown as much as her husband. Up to
two years ago Mrs. Meade had never been on a farm, having been
born and raised in a city. She is a refined and an intelhgent lady,
capable of conversing upon any subject from butter-making to high
art, or the political issues of the day."
Whilst my young lady friends (Heaven bless them, and
send them good husbands !) I must, ere the Pacific lulls
me to rest on my virtuous couch, regale with the terrible
deeds of
"SULPHUR SAM.
"WILLIAM EVANS SCOFIELD MUST GO TO CHURCH WITH THE
SAME GIRL.
"He has Monopohsed the Attentions of the Fairest Daughters of
Summit, N.J., and the Young Men of that Town will not
Stand it any Longer — He takes Girls to Church on a Non-
Sectarian Plan.
"The local beaux of Summit, N.J., headed by one Sulphur Sam,
are preparing a horrible but rather indefinite vengeance for William
E. Scofield, of this city, who persists in making himself agreeable
to all the girls at once.
"William Evans Scofield, of One Hundred and Twenty-third Street,
is thinking of applying for a permit to carry a gun. He is a slender,
dapper young man, who wears his full name and good clothes on
dress occasions ; and up in Summit, N.J., where he has been a visitor
and a favourite with the girls ever since he was a boy, 3500 people
are excited over the tragic possibilities of his reappearance, for
recently his uncle, James H. Green, the upholsterer, received a
letter as follows :
'Office of Sulphur Sam, the Road Agent, -i
Dec. 21, 1888. /
^Mr. Green :
'You had better warn W. E. Scofield to let Summit boys take Summit
girls to church. If he does not keep out of town he will die the death of
a dog. This is the first warning ; one more will come before the fatal end
appears. Yours in blood, gall, and gore, Sulphur Sam.'
" Mr. Scofield, on Thursday, received this in blood-reel ink :
'IV. E. Scofield:
'This is the last warning to keep out of Summit. I say no more, but
take warning I say. No Name.'
"At five o'clock last evening a lot of young men and young women
of Summit met at the Post Office to talk over these mysterious letters,
which had just been published. When the crowd grew so large that
the postmistress had to drive them off, an overflow meeting was held
in Alec Taylor's drug store next door, over which ' Irv,' the clerk,
92 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
presided. Scouts were thrown out to watch for the arrival of the
evening train, but up to 8 o'clock Scofield had not appeared.
" It was the opinion of James H. Green, jun., Scofield's cousin, that
a practical joke had been played. He darkly hinted that Scofield
might have put up the job himself to seem like a hero in the eyes of
the Summit girls. The ladies think it is a base conspiracy to restrict
them to the attentions of local admirers, and they did not approve of
a prohibitory duty of this kind. It seems that Scofield has at some
time or other taken most of them home from church, as well as to
the sacred edifices which adorn Summit. His religious tastes were
Catholic, but he listened with equal cheerfulness and appreciation to
the Methodist preacher, the Rev. Mr. Johns ; the Baptist clergyman,
the Rev. Dr. Horr ; and the rector of the Episcopal Church, the Rev.
Dr. Butterworth. He always had a girl with him, and his Sunday
demeanour was meek and smooth and silky, and generally edifying.
"The girl he took most often to church, however, was Miss Hetty
Tyler, the blonde divinity of the local feed store. Little Minnie
Green, Scofield's cousin, artlessly indicated the existing condition of
affairs by telling The World reporter that 'Willie had been keeping
company with Hetty for two or three years, but they had a fight lately
and Willie had been taking up with Lidy Swayne.'
"When the coolness sprang up between Scofield and Miss Tyler,
it was Miss Swayne who got the oysters over in Adams's restaurant,
the ice cream in the bakery, and the delicious soda water from Alec
Taylor's handsome fountain. The reporter called upon Miss Tyler to
find out what she thought of the letters Scofield and his Uncle James
had received. She is a slim, icy girl, in a red waist. She said
coldly that she knew nothing about them or about Scofield.
" ' Have not your erstwhile relations with Mr. Scofield, which I
understand were of a friendly, not to say affectionate nature, recently
been rudely shattered ?' asked the reporter.
" ' I don't know what you mean,' said Miss Tyler, bridling up ; ' but
he is no relative of mine, and never will be.'
" ' What is Mr. Scofield's present occupation ? '
"'Loafing mostly, I guess,' said Miss Tyler, with asperity.
"'Aren't you worried over these threats of violence against Mr.
Scofield?'
"'Well, I guess not,' said Miss Tyler, with an audible sneer ; 'you
might see Lidy Swayne about that.'
" ' How can I identify Miss Swayne when I see her 1 '
" ' Oh, she's a stumpy girl, with black eyes, and wears her hair
hanging round her shoulders.'
" But Miss Swayne was not to be seen. If her heart is lacerated at
the threats against Scofield, she only shares in the feelings of 99 per
cent, of the Summ.it girls."
CHAPTER XII.
3500 Miles in the Train— Pittsburgh — Washington — Mr.
Blaine— The American Navy — President Harrison-
Washington's Home— New York- Homeward Bound.
Liverpool^ April 20th, 1889.
At Los Angeles I had the outlook before me of 3500
miles in the railway train. A doleful prospect ! I chose
the Santa Fe route, the least interesting of the five trans-
Continental lines, but possessing the merit of keeping one
largely out of the snow and frost, for which, after roasting
in the Californian sun so long, I had no fancy. Four days
and nij^hts across the desert, the dreary tablelands among
the Rockies, and the brown parched plains of the Prohi-
bition State of Kansas brought me to Kansas City, on the
River Missouri. Thence in a day I reached St. Louis,
on the Mississippi, where I treated myself to a day's rest
to fortify me for another night and day in the cars. My
objective was Pittsburgh, where I was to be the guest of
my genial friend Mr. Henry Phipps, who had spent ten
weeks with me in California, and preceded me home.
Pittsburgh, as all the world knows, is the great centre of
the iron and glass industries of Western Pennsylvania.
It and its companion, Alleghany City, are most charmingly
situated. Two great rivers, the Alleghany and the
Monongahela, meet at this point, forming the Ohio, and on
the peninsula between the waters, along the sloping banks
of the rivers, Pittsburgh and Alleghany City nestle them-
selves and their joint population of probably 300,000
souls.
This low-lying peninsula is a historic spot. On it, in
the pre-Pittian days, the French built Fort Duquesne
04 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
in their attempt to connect Canada and the Mississippi,
and shut in the struggling British Colonies between the
forests and the sea. Not to the public buildings or great
industrial works of the cities, but to the remains of this
fort, was my first visit made.
Fort in the real sense there is none, but amongst the
narrow and tortuous streets of what is now the poorest
part of Pittsburgh an old ramshackle red-brick house
stands as its only surviving relic. The stone which used
to adorn the wall, and records name and date, has been
removed to the City Hall. It was curious to stand in the
midst of great industrious communities and think that
little more than a century ago here, amidst boundless
forests and howling Indians, the French, in their struggle
for colonial empire, boldly planted themselves — the French
first and then the British. For of course, despite Brad-
dock's disaster, we omnivorous British captured Fort
Duquesne and re-christened it Fort Pitt, transmuted now-
adays into Pittsburgh. The scene of Braddock's defeat,
where a handful of French and Indians ambushed and
destroyed a British force, and where a raw Virginian
colonel of militia, known since to all the world as George
Washington, first proved what stuff he was made of, is
eighteen miles from the city. Then a leafy wilderness,
now the seat of the great steel-works of Mr. Carnegie and
his partners, it is known still as Braddock. What irony
of fate and fame ! Alexander's name is perpetuated in
Alexandria, and Braddock's in the scene of his shame.
Pittsburgh is the centre of the great region of natural
gas, which is tapped at multitudes of wells and conveyed in
pipes to the cities. Blast-furnaces are fired with it, and
drawing-rooms heated. The commerce and the gain are
marvellous, as is indeed the advantage to Pittsburgh in
another way. Before the discovery Sheffield was not
murkier and dirtier. Now the sun has fairplay, and the
city, delivered from soot and smoke, is fair to look
upon. The Pittsburgians may pray for gas, more gas,
always gas. But it is doubtful whether this wonderful sub-
terranean supply will be of long continuance, for already
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 95
the pressure, at least at some of the wells, is diminishing,
and Pittsburgh, Heaven help her, may have to condescend
to coal again.
After a too brief stay I took the cars again and passed
on to Washington. The roadway of this Pennsylvanlan
railway is excellent, and the running smooth and swift.
It is the only line I used of which I can speak in such
terms, for the journeying elsewhere is not by progression,
but by jerks. The day was fine, the scenery charming.
We crossed the Alleghanies, careering along the sides of
noble hills and through the recesses of wooded valleys,
rounded the wonderful Horse-shoe Bend, and then made
our way down the banks of a river, broader and more
majestic than the Thames, and quite as lovely. Yet it is
but one of the little rivers of this mighty land. They call
it the Juanita. I had never heard its name before. At
Harrisburg we met Mr. Carnegie, fresh from a great speech
he had been delivering to a special session of the Penn-
sylvania Legislature on the coal and iron industries of the
State, with particular reference to differential and prefer-
ential rates charged by the Pennsylvanlan line. Carried
away by his eloquence and the undoubted strength of his
facts, the Legislature voted at once for action by the
requisite two-thirds majority. Bravo ! But now mark the
issue. The vote needed, under the law, to be confirmed by
a similar vote, which was fixed for two days after. But the
railway and the minority organised a country excursion
for that day, carried off sufficient of the majority to make
a legal vote impossible, and the whole affair ended in
legislative smoke. They do strange things in America.
If only the standing orders in our Parliament could be
modified, what vistas of delight this little incident would
open up to British Obstructives.
Our purpose in going round by Washington was to pay
our respects to the new President. My readers may
remember that on coming out I called on President
Cleveland. Whilst I luxuriated in California a peaceful
but decisive revolution had been effected. Exit Cleve-
land ; enter Harrison. The nation spoke, and the change
96 TO THE GOLDEN LAND. ,
was made — simply, legally, most effectively. Would that
we king-ridden Europeans could get rid of useless or
harmful rulers as easily as our cousins substitute one good
man for another !
We first called on Mr. Blaine. He had not arrived at
his office, and we were received by his son, Mr. Walker
Blaine, who acts as Assistant-Secretary, and whose prompt,
suave, and decisive dealing with numerous visitors im-
pressed us favourably with his capacity for business.
Whilst we waited the Secretary of State arrived, and we
were ushered into his sanctum. I had not seen him since
Mr. Cowen and I parted from him and the coaching party
at Hexham, in July 1888, leaving them to make their way
northward amidst unrespecting Northumbrian rain. Then
he looked pale, worn-out, and unwell. Now I was glad
to see him looking fresh and hearty, the sickly whiteness
of the under-lip replaced by healthy ruddiness, and his
whole manner that of one with whom things went well.
The general aspect of his face is one of shrewd repose.
The white hair rising over a well-developed forehead lends
dignity to its appearance; and pleasing manners, a rare
but most sweet smile, and a boundless flow of interesting
talk, make him a delightful companion. We gossiped
for halt-an-hour on matters political, literary, and social.
One view of his I was sorry to learn. America, he
declared, must have a stronger navy. Every section of
public opinion demanded it. I am bound to say that so far
as my observation went, from New York to California,
among Democrats and Republicans alike, that is so.
"You English," said the Secretary, "can't wonder at it.
Here you are going to spend twenty-one millions extra
over a similar policy." Yes, that is the mischief of it.
After expending 300 millions in twenty years, our incom-
petent Naval Authorities declare we have not sufficient
navy and guns. They feel bound to spend more. Im-
mediately Russia responds by a resolve to increase her
navy, Germany will follow suit, and France, and Italy, and
now America ; and in the end the relative proportions
will remain about the same as at the begfinninir. Will
o
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a
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TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 97
there ever a statesman arise who will point out to the
Christian (?) nations a more excellent way? I mentioned
to Mr. Blaine our desire to see the President. " Well, I
have an hour's work," said he. "Run off now. Come
at one o'clock, and I will walk across with you myself."
At the appointed time we were ushered into the outer
room, and found it filled with callers, among whom Mr.
Blaine was moving, despatching one after the other with the
swift precision only to be attained by a disciplined Ameri-
can politician. My English eyes followed the kaleido-
scopic scene with lively curiosity. One incident attracted
my especial notice. Mr. Blaine was talking confidentially
with General Schenck when his eye, roaming round the
room, alighted on a coloured man dressed in broadcloth
and with a huge gold watchchain across his ample chest.
He was standing shuffling from one foot to the other
and uneasily crumpling his billycock in his hand, evidently
too embarrassed to take a seat. Mr, Blaine courteously
waved him to a chair and went on talking. Then, dis-
regarding many other anxious visitors, he crossed the
room, talked, evidently satisfactorily, to his black brother,
and dismissed him, smiling all over, with a warm shake
of the hand. When we were back in his private room
I took the liberty of asking, " Well, and who was your
coloured friend ? " " Oh," said he, " quite a remarkable
man in his way. To begin with, he is, for one of his
class, wealthy; then he has the gift of eloquence and of
native wit; he makes good speeches, and (with twinkling
eye) he can command more votes amongst his people
in East Maryland than anybody else." I admired the
trained manager of men.
We walked across to the White House, the Secretary
laughingly referring to the common charge against him
by certain organs in London that he is bellicose and
inimical to England. " Here I am in office," he said,
" and you can tell your friend the Times I am quite
prepared to go to immediate war with six or seven of
the European States, but (smilingly) not with less." We
were immediately introduced to the President, Mr. Blaine
13
98 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
preceding us for a moment into the room to smooth
our path. We found President Harrison in the same
room, at the same desk, and on the same chair occupied
four months before by President Cleveland. Thus
"Amurath to Amurath succeeds, to Harry Harry,"
though not by hereditary right. He is a man rather
under than over the middle size, well and stoutly built ;
his hair and beard are fast whitening ; his expression
indicates kindliness and goodness rather than strength.
He welcomed us in soft measured tones, full of the
rhythmic intonations and rising inflexions peculiar to the
American race. It seemed to me that he looked harassed,
careworn, and run down ; and I gathered that three
months of office-giving and office-refusing had told upon
him so that he was anxiously yearning for quiet and
rest. Our talk fell upon the past, and the President
gave us an interesting description of the manor-houses
and modes of life of the old Virginian families, from one
of which he sprang. I introduced the name of General
Harrison, the king-slayer, mentioning that I had an old
copy in black-letter, date 1660, of the Trial of the
Regicides.
The President thought that there was no direct descent
(which is, I think, correct, since General Tom, if I am not
mistaken, left no descendants), but that they were of the
same family he thought all but certain ; " though to be
sure," said he, "there is this against it, that all our
Virginian ancestors were high Tories and good Church-
men." I suggested that this general fact was of little
moment in fervid times. Cromwell, too, came of a church-
going, loyalty-loving race, yet he abased a church and
slew a king. Whatever the President's ancestors may
have been, he himself is a Puritan of the truest type. I
wonder if my readers have read the description of a final
scene when he was on the point of leaving his quiet
Indiana home to assume his high position. A club of old
soldiers, his associates in the Great War, presented him
with a costly Bible, on the blank leaves of which were
inscribed the names of 130 veterans who have gone from
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. 99
earth, and the signatures of 121 who participated in the
gift. The General was deeply affected. His closing words
were these —
" I shall lean upon you and upon that great company of God-
fearing people whom I represent. I cannot hope to escape just
criticism in the discharge of the enormous and complicated duties
which are soon to devolve upon me, but I do hope that I shall escape
any fatal error, and that it will appear, when my inadequate and brief
work is done, that I have before me, as the pole star of my public life,
a patriotic purpose to promote the true glory of our country and the
highest good of our people. God bless you every one ! May the
consolation of this holy book fill your lives with peace, and make the
last the best day of all your honourable lives."
These be noble words. Contrast this scene with the first
act, the first utterance of the young German Emperor, who,
almost ere his father's body was cold, rushes to pen a
frantic truculent address, not to the people but to the
army, exalting the war-spirit and appealing to the false
gods of glory and of fame. Then thank God that if there
be warlike autocrats in the world there are peace-loving
Presidents too.
We bade President Harrison adieu, feeling that a great
nation has for its chief a true man, and devoted the
afternoon to a visit to Mrs. Blaine and the young ladies,
the latter of whom we were delighted to find fresher
and more blooming even than when they were on the
coach last year. The family are as yet in a hotel, for
Mr. Blaine's own Washington house is let on lease, and
the one he has taken was not ready. It is a house of
mournful fame, for it is that in which Mr. Seward, Mr.
Blaine's great prototype and predecessor, was stabbed on
that fatal Good Friday of 1865 when Lincoln was slain.
Absit omen !
One interesting task remained for us to perform. What
lover of liberty visits Washington and does not make a
pilgrimage to Washington's home, Washington's grave ?
We steamed on a sunny morning down the broad
Potomac, landed at Mount Vernon, and mounted the
wooded hill on which the modest wooden mansion stands.
Everything was in trim, cleanly, habitable order, as though
100 TO THE GOLDEN LAND.
the master were about, being kept so by the patriotic
subscriptions of citizens of the various States. There
was the old-fashioned furniture, the chair he sat on, the
flute he played, the sword he wore, the old valise which
contained his scanty wardrobe through the gruesome
winter at Valley Forge, the bed he died on, the key of the
Bastille, which Lafayette sent to him who in all the world
was worthiest to possess it. And just below were the
old vault where first he lay, and the newer but modest
and unpretentious tomb before which annually tens of
thousands stand to honour him whose noble distinction
it was to be — " First in peace, first in war, and first in
the affections of his countrymen."
I forbear detailed description of what has been so often
and so well described. And my musings I wrap up in my
own soul. Much to me, they were little, I trow, to all the
world beside. Of course I found the inevitable Irish
Nationalist here, this one engaged in photographing the
crowds of visitors. When he mastered my modest identity
he was good enough to insist on photographing me in
front of the mansion, and presenting me with a much-
prized hickory cane grown above the grave. If ever I
reach the North Pole I expect to find a Parnellite there.
As we left the bank and slowly moved up the river, the
steamer, just as when we arrived, dipped her flag whilst the
minute-bell gave forth its mournful voice. Thus do all
vessels passing up and down the Potomac pay solemn and
poetic tribute to the memory of the Father of the Republic.
Say not again that Democracies are deficient jn sentiment
or forget to be grateful. Thus sang an American poetess
forty years ago : —
" Slowly sailing, slowly sailing, hushed the music, mute the mirth,
Men and maidens standing reverent as on some broad altar's
hearth.
" Silently before Mount Vernon, silently our boat glides on,
Hushed its iron heart's deep panting past the Tomb of Washington;
Truest, worthiest act of worship that degenerate earth now knows,
Inmost soul here recognising all the mighty debt she owes.
TO THE GOLDEN LAND. lOl
•* Oh, my country, art thou paling — losing all thy young day's glow ?
Can'st thou lose thy first love's glory, and thy hero's worth still
know ?
Patriot hearts, do doubts still haunt you, threatening thoughts come
crowding on ?
Sail with me down broad Potomac, past the Tomb of Washington ;
" Feel the impress of his greatness stamped upon the Nation's heart,
See each manly brow uncovered, lovely lips in awe apart ;
Fear not while this reverence lingers with its clear, warm, hallowing
light;
This must fade from brow and bosom ere can come our country's
night."
Next day saw me in New York in the midst of pleasant
associates. I spent my only available evening dining with
my good friend Mr, Buckley at the Union League, the
famous Republican Club of New York. On the Saturday
Mr. Buckley and Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie saw me aboard.
The good ship ploughed her way at the rate of twenty-two
land miles an hour, cutting a hole 3000 miles long, fifty-
six feet broad, and twenty-four feet deep, through the
patient, peaceful waters of the Atlantic, and in six days
nineteen hours the anchor of the Umbria rested in the mud
of the Mersey.
Here my gossip ends. One parting confession let me
make. I am, I suppose, the only Englishman of leisure
who has spent many months in travelling right across the
American Continent and back without seeing either
Niagara Falls, or the Yellowstone Park, or the Yosemite
Valley, or the Colorado Canon ! My unapologetic ex-
planation is' this. I went solely to seek health and
warmth and the sun. I found Paradise, and I stayed there.
If my explanation be not sufficient, then write me down —
An Ass.
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