..1. M«>'^-^<-(!r;', ;•. i' Wv'^: ', ^OFCAIIFO/?^ ^^.OFCAIIFO/?^ ^^\^EyNIVER% v>:lOSANCElfj-, ^ A\^E UNIVERS-//, .vWSANCElfj> ^ t_3 5 ^^m\m-^^ ^^WEUNIVER% .vWSANCElfj> o ^OFCALIFOff^ ^OFCAIIFOI! o '^/5a3AiNn]UV ^\\EUMVER^//, ^vWSANCElfX;^ o ^^sM•llBRARY•Q^ A,NNl-llBRARYQr^ %a3AiNa]\\v^ ^&Aiivaan# "^^ '-'•^'^^ "^OAavaaiH^"^ ^^^^£•LIBRARYa<^ ^nSHIBRARYQ^ %ojiw>jo^ '^' .^WEUNIVER^/A o %a3AiNn3WV ^^,.0FCA1IF0% ^A-OFCAllFOfi'^ .^WEUNIVERS"//) o %a3AiNniwv .^WEUNIVERS-//, ^lOSANCElfx^ -.^HIBRARYQc. -<^IIIBRARY<9^ >i V I ._ / 3^ "^/o.i uvyuan.:i'^ "^mnvwan-^k^ mi ! y <, :>- 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^:-