III. THE GREAT AMERICAN PARADISE.

VALUE OF RESERVOIRS—WINTER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA—FLOWERS AND SUNSHINE—WHERE RAIN MEANS “BETTER WEATHER”—DRY AIR AND SEA-BREEZES—FOGS AND FROST—CALIFORNIA FOR INVALIDS AS COMPARED WITH ITALY, SPAIN, AND AFRICA—RURAL CITIES OF THE FUTURE—THE PACIFIC ANDALUSIA—SOME DISADVANTAGES—GOPHERS, DUST-STORMS, DROUGHT—ENEMIES OF THE ORANGE AND VINE.

That there could be no better way of investing capital than by building reservoirs is shown by the fact, recently pointed out by the California State Board of Trade, that ten years ago the lands of Fresno sold at from three dollars to twenty dollars per acre, while now, with water on it, the same land sells at from seventy-five to seven hundred and fifty dollars per acre. Equally great is the gain from an æsthetic point of view. Without water, four-fifths of Southern California is a dreary cactus desert during the greater part of the year; with water, it is a veritable garden grove. Nothing could be more delightful than to watch the effect of water in this magic climate, when the first rains fall in October or November. Up to that period everything except the irrigated garden and orchard oases wears a parched yellow and brown aspect; but hardly has the rain penetrated a few inches into the soil, when the grass turns green, and before the eye has become accustomed to the change, gaudy flowers, gradually increasing in variety and abundance, spring up on all sides, even on land which appeared to be pure sand, but which on closer examination proves to be rich in decomposed vegetable matter. The irrigated gardens have an abundance of choice flowers all the year round, and the garden of the house where I lived, though without the slightest pretensions, had in full bloom, in January, petunias, calla lilies, violets, honeysuckles, geraniums (six feet in height), stock, California poppy, hyacinths, smilax, heliotropes, nasturtiums, red, white, yellow, and green roses, etc. In February a frost nipped the leaves of the bananas, heliotropes, and nasturtiums, but in a few days they were out again; and of the three or four subsequent frosts none was heavy enough to injure them, while the other flowers mentioned grew uninjured all the “winter.” This was at Anaheim, twelve miles from the sea and twenty-eight miles south of Los Angeles, and gives a better idea of the climate than columns of statistics. Nor was it an exceptional year; for there are orange-trees in the State over eighty years old, and at the San Fernando Rey Mission olive-trees over a hundred years old, proving that in all this period there has been no frost sufficiently severe or prolonged to injure these sensitive trees. In 1880 a little snow fell in Los Angeles County—just enough to astonish the young folks, who had never before seen any; nor have they seen any since. The only time when ice ever forms (never more than a quarter of an inch in thickness) is immediately before sunrise, and hardly has the sun risen above the horizon when it disappears again.

To this short duration of the occasional frosts is attributed the fact that they do not kill the semi-tropical vegetation, as happens occasionally in Southern Europe; and at nine or ten o’clock the California farmers may be seen ploughing for their winter wheat, in shirt-sleeves. Hence sufferers from pulmonary complaints who cannot endure cold will not know that the thermometer ever reaches freezing-point if they remain in bed till the sun has been out for half an hour. Immediately after sunset they will again need the protection of the house, or of a spring overcoat, as the temperature at that time suddenly drops ten to thirty degrees. But while the sun shines, they cannot afford or desire to lose its rays for a single minute. It is the very luxury of existence to walk, ride, or hunt in the Southern California February sunshine. The oldest inhabitants, used to it as they are, cannot help muttering every morning, “What a fine day!” January, February, March, and April, the very four months which are the most disagreeable of the twelve in the East, are here the most perfect: the sky of the deepest blue, the air neither cold nor warm, exhilarating and laden with the perfumes of orange blossoms and wild flowers. There are, of course, some disagreeable days, but they are few and far between, there being but twelve to twenty rainy days in Los Angeles County during the whole “rainy season” from November to May, so that invalids hardly ever miss their sun-bath. Dr. C. B. Bates mentions, in the Southern California Practitioner, the case of a consumptive who kept a record of the weather at Santa Barbara, and found that in a year there were but fifteen days upon which he was confined to the house, ten of them being rainy and five windy; and another case of a lady who, without any other than a brush shelter, spent all of eighteen months, except nine nights, in the open air.

This will appear the more remarkable in view of a certain peculiarity of Southern California rains. Elsewhere people often exclaim, “If we only had fine weather in the daytime, I shouldn’t care how much it rained at night!” Here this wish is fulfilled, for most of the rain falls at night. Some will be ready to cry out against the “eternal monotony” of this sunshine; but on arriving on the ground they will find this objection purely theoretical, and will be only too glad to know that they can make projects for work or pleasure, for picnics or excursions, weeks ahead, with an almost absolute certainty of having fine weather. Still, there are a few day-showers to break the “monotony,” and they make up in profusion what they lack in frequency—a fascinating spectacle to the senses, and still more to the imagination, which evokes pictures of prosperous grain-fields and lovely flower-meadows. Surely that must be pronounced an ideal climate for an invalid and valetudinarian where every rainy day, even during the so-called rainy season, is regarded as a special dispensation of a kind Providence, is commented upon in jubilant editorials by the journalists (who had for some time predicted “better weather,” i. e. rain), and is recorded in telegraphic tables noting the daily rainfall in every town, to the hundredth of an inch! And be it admitted that there is ground for this jubilation; for in three years out of ten the rainfall is insufficient, and then the crops suffer, except where irrigation is practised.

In this immunity from rain-storms, Southern California possesses a great advantage over other winter resorts for invalids, but it is only one out of half-a-dozen advantages which may here be briefly touched upon. The first and most important is the dryness of the atmosphere, which favors the rapid radiation of the earth’s heat, so that the nights are always cool enough for refreshing sleep, even in midsummer; and sleep is the best of all medicines. So dry is this air that strips of beef can be jerked in it by simply letting them hang outdoors till desiccated. And the strangest part of it is that the sea-breeze, which always blows during the hottest hours of the day, is a dry wind, too—a circumstance which some have tried to account for by considering it a sort of undertow, or a wave of air which came from the dry desert lands to the eastward, and returns thither, absorbing but little moisture during its brief contact with the ocean. But whatever the cause of this dryness, it is a great hygienic factor, which this region can play out as one of its highest trumps against Florida and Italy. No enervating, malarial swamp winds, no sultriness, such as often makes suicide a welcome thought in the East, will ever oppress any one in this Western sanitarium, not even during the rainy spells. Nor has California ever suffered from yellow fever, like Florida, or from the cholera, which is a frequent menace in Spain, Italy, and Sicily. Again, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Europe as well as in Africa, the invalid will find it almost impossible to obtain comfortable lodgings and proper food, except in the large cities, while in California he can find home comforts in any village and many farmhouses in the midst of the wildest scenery and purest air. Never will his nostrils be offended here by the pestilential odors which poison the air within a radius of several miles of Italian and Spanish cities; nor will he ever be compelled by the muddy condition of the streets to take his walks all winter long on the roof of the hotel, as the proprietor of the Continental at Tangier told me some of his invalid winter-guests did. What a life compared with the floral walks, the hunting, fishing, and picnicking on the dry ground and under the blue, rainless sky of Los Angeles or San Diego County! Surely, Southern California is destined to become the sanitarium, not only of America, but of Europe as well.

What makes the fulfilment of this prophecy the more probable is the circumstance that California is an all-the-year-round sanitarium, and not one of the mere winter resorts which compel the unwilling invalids to pack up and seek a new clime, when May is gone. No one would dream of spending the summer at Malaga, Cannes, Naples, Palermo, Algiers, or Jacksonville, exposed to a sultry, malarial atmosphere, and the danger of deadly epidemics; whereas California has countless places where summer and winter are alike, or rather alike unknown, the only season known being an eternal spring. Many residents in our Eastern and Middle States have often wondered what has become of the spring, which used to form one of our seasons. It has followed the general tide of immigration, has gone West, and may now be found in riotous exuberance along the coast and the foothills of California. Not that all parts of Southern California are as exempt from a summer season as they are of winter. On the contrary, there are many most desirable winter resorts which invalids and tourists will be only too glad to abandon in June, such as Riverside, and other places too far in the interior to get the benefit of the afternoon sea-breezes. Even so near the sea as Los Angeles, it is by no means pleasant to be exposed directly to the rays of the July sun; yet, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere,—which, moreover, increases as the heat increases,—100° is not so oppressive here as 90° in New York. Besides, in the East there is no refuge from the all-pervading heat, except in a cellar; whereas here one needs only to step in the shade to find relief, the difference between the sunny and the shady side of a house running as high as 30°. Finally, as Southern California has an average width of only forty miles, it takes only an hour or two to reach the sea-coast, where it is always pleasant; and cool mountain resorts are equally accessible everywhere, as can be seen by a glance at the map, which is blackened by groups and chains of mountains, attaining in the San Bernardino range a height of over eleven thousand feet. No wonder that camping is the favorite pastime of the Californian in summer, and not only of the wealthy; for as the farmer does all his work in winter, he can lie fallow in summer, like his somnolent fields, and pitch his tent along any beach or cañon he chooses; and camp-life is so inexpensive, especially when rod and rifle are available, that the poorest can indulge in this luxury during the warmest months.

Surely, when the human race cuts its wisdom teeth, it will no longer crowd into dirty, noisy, malodorous cities, but will seek health and fresh air all the year round. Southern California will loom up more and more as an ideal place for building up a vast city in the country, so to speak,—a city in which each house will be surrounded by ten or twenty acres of irrigated land, capable of producing all the fruits and vegetables, eggs and poultry, needed by the family, and shaded by one of the fifty varieties of eucalyptus-trees already imported from Australia, or by the spacious pepper-tree, and a small orange, peach, and fig orchard. Such a city could be built up in a few years, with shade and all. Elsewhere when people plant trees, they do so for the benefit of posterity; here a row of the eucalyptus will grow in a few years large enough to afford abundance of shade. Noiseless electric railways will traverse this country town in every direction, bringing the scattered population to the business places and centres of amusement. But they will not crave the artificial excitements of city life as they do now; for when there are no excursions to the sea or the mountains, the fascinating care of the orange groves and flower gardens will absorb all the leisure moments. What novel, what theatrical play, could afford so much amusement as the daily irrigation of a flower-bed, and noticing how the plants grow visibly and in a few weeks develop into exotic wildernesses of tropical and semi-tropical flowers of the most gorgeous colors and unheard-of size? Or watching a rose-bush as it gradually intertwines itself among the branches of an orange-tree, which some morning will present the bewitching spectacle of a tree bearing red roses, white orange blossoms, and golden oranges all at the same time? Or sitting under this orange-tree in February, listening to a mocking-bird perched on its branches, and reading in your paper about the blizzards and storms of the East, and the tornadoes and cyclones which you know will never visit your home? Why should our novelists lay the scenes of their tales in Andalusia when we have an Andalusia of our own here on the Pacific Coast? At one time it formed part of the so-called Great American Desert, but in the next century it will be known as the Great American Paradise.

Yet let not the coming population of the Pacific Andalusia fancy that they will be spared all the trials and annoyances of life. Even Southern California has its disadvantages,—quite enough to prevent it from degenerating into a Utopia. Thus you will some morning be standing in your garden admiring your favorite banana bush. Suddenly it will tremble and sink into the ground a foot or two. Earthquakes are not unknown in this region, but they don’t “strike in one place” like that. No, it was one of those irrepressible gophers, the terror of the rural Californian. They will eat the roots of your fruit trees and choicest flowers, regardless of expense; and though cats and traps will catch them, and irrigation drowns them, the neighboring fields always furnish a fresh supply; and what is worse, their subterranean passages from these fields serve as tunnels which carry off your water, and make you pay twice as much for irrigation as you would have needed but for those holes. Then there are scale-bugs of all colors, which attack your orange-trees and have to be sprayed off; and a mysterious disease which kills your vines; and small green insects which eat up your flowers and buds so that you need a whole drug store to combat them. Rabbits will eat your vegetables and grape-vines, and the quails will feed on your grapes; and, to add insult to injury, the Los Angeles sporting clubs have succeeded in passing a law which prevents you from shooting these birds at a time when it would do most to protect your crops. However, if you are a sportsman, you will forgive and observe this law, which enables you at other times to shoot at a flock of quail in your own vegetable garden, though you live in a town of two or three thousand inhabitants.

The desolate appearance which all the unirrigated parts of the country present after May must also be reckoned among the disadvantages of this climate; for a sensitive soul can hardly help feeling pity for the drooping, parched vegetation, especially after having noticed how eagerly it drinks in the first rain of the autumn, with as much evident enjoyment as a Bavarian emptying his mug of beer at a draught. Nor can one help admitting that the orange groves and eucalyptus avenues, delightful as they are, cannot entirely atone for the absence of green forests; for Southern California, except in the foothills, is as treeless as Spain—which it resembles in so many other respects,—and a single oak-tree has more than once furnished the nucleus of a town. The higher mountains are as bare of trees as the valleys, but this is compensated for by the consequent greater clearness and variety of the sculptured outlines, and by the snows which fall during every rainstorm, sometimes extending almost down to the foothills. In the clear southern atmosphere these mountains, though they be fifty or sixty miles away, seem to be almost within a stone’s throw; and as they are visible everywhere, they constitute one of the greatest charms of Southern California. Once in a while, however, this view is spoiled for a day or two by one of those desert winds and sand-storms which are the most annoying feature of this climate, and are known as the Norther, or the “Santa Ana” wind, as the Anaheimers call it, in order to give a hated rival town a bad name. Without being a hurricane, or even a gale, this wind reaches a considerable velocity, is as dry and warm as if it came from an oven, and raises clouds of dust which obscure the sun and mountains as effectually as the smoke of the forest fires does in Oregon, and a film of which even lines the waters of the Pacific to a considerable distance from the shore. If I finally mention that this dust, even when it lies quietly on the ground two or three inches thick during seven or eight months of the year, is by no means a desirable thing to have about, I shall have mentioned all the serious blemishes that I could discover on the face of this fair country; and they are so insignificant compared with its attractions that I have given them the advantage of having the last word in this chapter, confident that they cannot essentially modify the opinion therein expressed as to the future of Southern California.