John L. Stoddard's Lectures Part 2

"You will see," he replied, "and in ten minutes we shall be there."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PART OF THE "CONVERTED MOUNTAIN," REDLANDS.]

Accordingly, up we drove over magnificent, finely graded roads, till we arrived at what appeared to be a gentleman's private park. The park, however, seemed to have no limit, and we rode on through a bewildering extent of cemented stone walls, umbrageous trees, luxuriant flowers, trailing vines, and waving palms. At last we reached the summit, and what a view unrolled itself before us!

Directly opposite, the awful wall of the Sierra swept up to meet our vision in all its majesty of granite glory, like an immense, white-crested wave, one hundred miles in length, which had by some mysterious force been instantaneously curbed and petrified, just as it was about to break and overwhelm the valley with destruction.

Beneath it, for seventy miles in exquisitely blended hues, stretched the wonderful San Gabriel intervale, ideal in its tranquil loveliness. Oh, the splendor, opulence, and sweetness of its countless flowers, whose scarlet, gold, and crimson glowed and melted into the richest sheen of velvet, and rendered miles of pure air redolent with perfume, as grapes impart their flavor to good wine!

In gazing on this valley from a distance one would fain believe it to be in reality, as in appearance, an idyllic garden of Arcadian innocence and happiness, and, forgetting the disillusions of maturer years, dream that all human hearts are as transparent as its atmosphere, and that all life is no less sweet and pure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DRIVEWAY IN REDLANDS.]

But, presently, I asked again, "What do you mean by a _converted_ mountain?"

"Eight years ago," was the reply, "this elevation on which we stand was a heap of yellow sand, like many unconverted mountains that we see about us; now it has been transformed into a dozen miles of finished roads and extensive gardens enclosing two fine residences."

"Pardon me," I exclaimed, "here are trees thirty feet high."

"All grown in eight years," he answered.

"Still," I again protested, "here are stone walls, and curbed and graded roads."

"All made in eight years," he reiterated.

"But, in addition to this mountain, how about the twenty miles of orange groves surrounding it, the thirty thousand dollar public library of Redlands, and its miles of asphalt streets?"

"All in eight years," he said again, as if, like Poe's raven, he had been taught one refrain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SIERRA MADRE AND THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FEW "UNCONVERTED MOUNTAINS," NEAR REDLANDS.]

In fact, it should be said that this entire mountain was purchased by two wealthy brothers who now come every winter from the East to this incomparable hill, the whole of which has been, as if by magic, metamorphosed into an estate, where visitors are allowed to find instruction and delight upon its lofty terraces of forest and of flowers. Is it strange, then, that such sudden transformations of sterile plains and mountains into bits of paradise make tourists in Southern California wildly enthusiastic? They actually see fulfilled before their eyes the prophecy of Isaiah, "The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." The explanation is, however, simple. The land is really rich. The ingredients are already here. Instead of being worthless, as was once supposed, this is a precious soil. The Aladdin's wand that unlocks all its treasures is the irrigating ditch; its "open sesame" is water; and the divinity who, at the call of man, bestows the priceless gift, is the Madre of the Sierras. A Roman conqueror once said that he had but to stamp upon the earth and legions would spring up to do his bidding. So Capital has stamped upon this sandy wilderness, and in a single generation a civilized community has leaped into astonished life. Yet do we realize the immense amount of labor necessitated by such irrigation? This mountain, for example, is covered with water pipes, as electric wires are carried through our houses. Every few rods a pipe with a faucet rises from the ground; and as there are miles of roads and hundreds of cultivated acres, it can with difficulty be imagined how many of these pipes have been laid, and how innumerable are the little ditches, through which the water is made to flow. Should man relax his diligence for a single year, the region would relapse into sterility; but, on the other hand, what a land is this for those who have the skill and industry to call forth all its capabilities! What powers of productiveness may still be sleeping underneath its soil, awaiting but the kiss of water and the touch of man to waken them to life! Beside its hidden rivers what future cities may spring forth to joyous being; and what new, undiscovered chemistry may not this mingling of mountain, sun, and ocean yet evolve to prove a permanent blessing to mankind!

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUNDS OF THE SMILEY BROTHERS ON THE "CONVERTED MOUNTAIN."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IRRIGATING DITCHES.]

One hundred and twenty-six miles southwest of Los Angeles, one could imagine that he had reached the limit of the civilized world: eastward, the desert stretches far away to the bases of the San Jacinto Mountains; westward, thousands of miles of ocean billows shoulder one another toward the setting sun; southward, extends that barren, almost unknown strip of earth, the peninsula of Lower California; yet in this _cul-de-sac_, this corner between mountain, desert, and sea, rises a charming and inspiring picture,--San Diego.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAN DIEGO.]

The beautiful harbor of this city is almost closed, on one side, by a bold majestic promontory called Point Loma; and on the other, by a natural breakwater, in the form of a crescent, twelve miles long, upon the outer rim of which the ocean beats a ceaseless monody. At one extremity of this silver strand, directly opposite Point Loma and close to the rhythmic surf, stands the Hotel Coronado; its west front facing the Pacific, its east side looking on the azure of the peaceful bay, beyond which rises San Diego with a population of twenty thousand souls. To reach this hotel, the tourist crosses the harbor from the city by a ferry, and then in an electric car is whirled for a mile along an avenue which he might well suppose was leading him to some magnificent family estate. The pavement is delightfully smooth and hard; on either side are waving palms and beds of radiant flowers; two charming parks, with rare botanical shrubs and trees, are, also, visible and hold invitingly before him the prospect of delightful hours in their fragrant labyrinths; and, finally, out of a semi-tropical garden, the vast extent of which he does not comprehend at first, rises the far-famed hostelry which, itself, covers about four and a half acres of ground, at the extreme southwestern corner of the Union, and on a spot which yesterday was a mere tongue of sand. In the tourist season this palatial place of entertainment presents a brilliant throng of joyous guests who have, apparently, subscribed to the motto: "All care abandon ye, who enter here." It is one of the few spots on this continent where the great faults of our American civilization--worry and incessant work--are not conspicuous. Men of the North too frequently forget that the object of life is not work, but that the object of work is life. In lands like Southern California, however, where flowers fill the air with fragrance, where fruits are so abundant that starvation is impossible, and where the nerves are not continually whipped by atmospheric changes into restless energy, men live more calmly, probably more rationally. Suns.h.i.+ne, roses, and the throbbing tones of the guitar would seem to be the most appropriate sources of amus.e.m.e.nt here. Meanwhile the northern millionaire breaks down from overwork and leaves his money to be squandered by his relatives. Yet he also, till the last gasp, claims that he is happy. What is happiness?

_Quien sabe_?

[Ill.u.s.tration: POINT LOMA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOTEL CORONADO.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COURTYARD OF THE HOTEL.]

The country about San Diego is a miniature reproduction of the plains of Arizona and New Mexico, and just above the city rises a genuine _mesa_, which, though comparatively small, resembles the large table-lands of the interior, and was formed in the same way. Cutting it, here and there, are little canons, like that through which the Colorado rolls, not a mile deep, but still ill.u.s.trative of the erosion made here by the rivers of a distant age; for these gashes are the result of rus.h.i.+ng water, and every stone upon this small plateau has been worn round and smooth by friction with its fellows, tossed, whirled, and beaten by the waves of centuries. Strange, is it not, that though, like many other areas of our continent, this region was once fas.h.i.+oned and completely ruled by water, at present it has practically none; and men must often bring the precious liquid fifty miles to crown the soil with beauty and fertility.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW FROM THE TABLE-LAND.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PACHANGO INDIANS AT HOME.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CHRISTIANIZED INDIAN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MISSION BELLS.]

The old town of San Diego, four miles north of the present city, is now almost abandoned. Only a dozen adobe buildings kept in fair repair, and as many more in ruins, mark the site. The little chapel is still used for wors.h.i.+p, and from an uncouth wooden frame outside its walls hang two of the old Mission bells which formerly rang out the Angelus over the sunset waves. My guide carelessly struck them with the b.u.t.t of his whip, and called forth from their consecrated lips of bronze a sound which, in that scene of loneliness, at first seemed like a wail of protest at the sacrilege, and finally died away into a m.u.f.fled intonation resembling a stifled sob. Roused by the unexpected call, there presently appeared an Indian who looked as if he might have been contemporary with Methuselah. No wrinkled leaf that had been blown about the earth for centuries could have appeared more dry and withered than this centenarian, whose hair drooped from his skull like Spanish moss, and whose brown hands resembled lumps of adobe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN AGED SQUAW.]

"I am glad to have you see this man," said the guide, "for he has rung these bells for seventy years, and is said to be more than a hundred years old."

I could not obtain a portrait of this decrepit bell-ringer, for many Indians are superst.i.tiously opposed to being photographed; but I procured the picture of an equally shriveled female aged one hundred and thirty who might have been his sister.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RELICS OF AN ANCIENT RACE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ECSTATIC BATHERS."]

"This," remarked my guide with a smile, "is what the climate of San Diego does for the natives."

"The glorious climate of California" has been for years a theme of song and story, and a discussion of its merits forms one of the princ.i.p.al occupations of the dwellers on the Pacific coast. It is indeed difficult to see how tourists could pa.s.s their time here without this topic of conversation, so infinite is its variety and so debatable are many of the conclusions drawn from it. It is the Sphinx of California; differing, however, from the Sphinx of Egypt in that it offers a new problem every day. The literature that treats of the Pacific coast fairly bristles with statistics on this subject, and many writers have found it impossible to resist the temptation of adorning their pages with tables of humidity, temperature, and rainfall. Some hotels even print in red letters at the top of the stationery furnished to their guests:

"The temperature to-day is ----."

Among the photographs of San Diego are several which represent groups of ecstatic bathers, ranging from small boys to elderly bald-headed gentlemen, apparently ready to take a plunge into the Pacific; while beneath them is displayed the legend, "January 1, 18--." Candor compels me, however, to state that, as far as I was able to ascertain, these pictured bathers rarely pay a New Year's call to Neptune in his mighty palace, but content themselves in winter with going no further than his ante-chambers,--the sheltered, sun-warmed areas of public bath-houses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MIDWINTER AT LOS ANGELES.]

"I believe this to be the best climate in the world," said a gentleman to me in San Diego, "but I confess that, when strangers are visiting me, it occasionally does something it ought not to do."

The truth is, there are several climates in Southern California, some of which are forced upon the resident, while others can be secured by going in search of them in a trolley car or a railway carriage. The three determining factors in the problem of temperature are the desert, the ocean, and the mountains. Thus, in midsummer, although it may be fiercely hot in the inland valleys, it is invariably cool in the mountains on account of their alt.i.tude, and near the sh.o.r.e because the hot air rising from the desert invites a daily ocean breeze. Even at a distance from the comfortable coast, humanity never pa.s.ses into that abject, panting, and perspiring condition in which the inhabitants of the Eastern States are usually seen when the mercury goes to ninety. The nights are always cool; although not quite as much so in July as the enthusiasts tell us who have never seen the country later in the season than the month of May, and who weary us with the threadbare tale of never sleeping without a blanket.

"Is it true, madam," I said to a lady of San Diego, "that here one must always take a blanket to bed with him?"

"Hush," she replied, "never ask that question unless you are sure that there are no tourists within hearing."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIER AT SANTA MONICA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.]

Three statements are, I think, unquestionably accurate: first, that for many months of the year the residents need not take into consideration for a moment the possibility of rain; second, that on account of this drought there must inevitably be during that period a superfluity of dust; and, third, that every day there will be felt "a cool refres.h.i.+ng breeze," which frequently increases to a strong wind.

My memory of California will always retain a vivid impression of this wind, and the effect of it upon the trees is evident from the fact that it has compelled most of them to lean toward the east, while one of the last sights I beheld in San Diego was a man chasing his hat.

Nevertheless, acclimated Californians would no more complain of their daily breeze, however vigorous, than a man would speak disrespectfully of his mother.

As in most semi-tropical countries, there is a noticeable difference in temperature between sun and shade. In the sun one feels a genial glow, or even a decided heat; but let him step into the shade, or stand on a street-corner waiting for a car, and the cool wind from the mountains or the ocean will be felt immediately. People accustomed to these changes pay little heed to them; but to new-comers the temperature of the shade, and even that of the interiors of the hotels and houses, appears decidedly cool.