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\W m
OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGEI
FORNIA
ill I
CALIFORNIA- AND BACK
^
TO THE READER OF
*'To California and Back.*'
THIS little book is wholly devoted to a description of Western scenes, and nothing in the nature of a railroad advertisement has been admitted. It is a trustworthy descriptive book of travel, undefaced by statistics, itineraries, or reference to any particu- lar line of railroad beyond a brief introductory note. It is hoped, however, that a perusal of its pages will create a desire to visit the scenes described, and the reader who desires to know something spe- cifically about the cost and other details of such a journey is hereby informed that at all times of the year excursion tickets for the round trip to California and back, by way of the Santa Fii Route, are on sale at low rates, which, under ordinary circumstances, are f no from Chicago, f I02 from St. bonis, and $90 from Kansas City, and from other cities in a corresponding ratio. These rates are subject to vari- ation from time to time. The final limit of these tickets is nine months from date of sale, giving amjDle time for a prolonged stay at the many points of interest in California, and stop-over privileges are allowed west of the Missouri River. Although the journey is described as being made westward over one line and eastward over another, in order to afford the greatest variety of scene, excursion tickets are not restricted to such use, but ma}' read out and back over the same line if desired, or the trip described in "To California- AND Back " may be made in the reverse order. Pullman Palace sleeping-cars are run daily from Chicago and Kansas City. Tourist sleeping-cars are also attached to the daily California tj-ains. These differ from the Palace sleepers onljr in the particular that they are less luxuriously finished, and accommodations therein may be had, in consequence, at a lower rate. Either first or second class tickets are honored in tourist sleepers. A list of the principal ticket offices of the Santa Fk Routk is given on back of this page, and requests for further and more specific information, made either in person or by mail upf)n any of these offices, will be promptly attended to.
Note.— November, 1896.— When this book was publi.slied, the California train, via the Santa Fe Route, left Chicago at a late hour in the evening. The name, "California Limited," has since been transferred to a much faster train which, during the winter season of 1896-7, will leave Chicago at 6.00 P. M., every Wednesday' and Saturday, and is in addition to the daily through train which leaves Chicago at 10.25 P- M. The "California Limited" is now a strictly first-class limited train, carrying Pullman Palace sleepers, dining car, and buffet smoking car. The daily train carries tourist sleeping-cars in addi- tion to its other equipment, and on the latter all classes of tickets are honored. The wording of page seven makes this explanation desirable.
SANTA Fli ROUTE TICKET OFFICES.
AMirgUKUQUE. K. M H.8. VAN SLVCK. (Jon.-ial AkimI.
HAKKHSKlKl.l). Va\ R. II. HWAYNK, I'll^.Bl•ll(f<•l Ak'< iH.
IIOSTOS. Mii,K»,S:t.'\Vn»hliigrtonSt 8. W. MANNlNCi. (J.nrnil N,« Kim'land Ak'<iit.
HKUUKKT A. CI.AV.TiHV.IliiK' Atf.iic,
niKX). t"ul T.J. DI'.NN. lM!.H.'iit,'.i At'<iit.
C'HltWliO, Ill.,5!12Cliirk St J. M. «0.\NKI,1,. ('ii.v |•M^^.l■ll^,'l•l• iiml Tifk.l A(feiit.
(;. C. liAKVKV. I'as.-cnu.T Atfiiit.
Doarborn Station H. DIWIIAM. l'nss<ni,-.r .Vjjciit.
I'INCIXNATI. Ohio. 417 Walnut St HKO. T. (ilJNNU", iliiuiiil .Vmiit I'ftsi^cnt;.-!- D.'pt.
IIILOUADO SI'UINHS. Colo C. U. HOYT. Cit.v I'a.ss.iit;,.! ,\K<-iit.
DALLAS, Texas, Onind Windsor Hotel CHA8. L. HOLLAND. r.i>srii^'er AMTiiit.
Traveling ra>siii(fi'i- .-Vifcnt.
DESVKU, Colo., 1700 Lawronce 8t .1. !'. II ALL, (li'iui al Ak'riu I'assfn).'"'!' IH'l'in'l '"''"I
.IXO. .1 .'^1, WIN, rav>,.Mi;ci .\i;,nt. DKS MOINES, In. ,818 Kanitabl.' nuil(ling..K. L. I'.\LMI;k, ra>Mii>;.i .Vk'hI. |)KTK<.)IT, Mioh., 0.1 IJilswoia .St K. T. 1 1 K V I Ht V. ( unc-ia I .\ ^;.•Ml J'asscnifor U,\,t
J. N. H.VSTKIX). I'ass.iin.r Ani'iit. KL I'ASO.Tex., Wells, Fargo & Co.'.s Bldp. IC, COl'I.ANI). (i.iienl Aavur.
W. H. I'.HdWXE, Tiav.liiiK' KrciKlitand I'ims'r A^l
KKESNO.Cnl., 1828 Mariposa St T. II. WAl<KIN(iTUN. KnJk'lit ami I'ass'r Airi-m
KT. WOKTH, Te.\tts, WS Main St W . Doll Kin" V, Hassc-iPK'ei- Atfrut.
UALVESTON", Texas, 224 Tremont St MAX NAli.MANN. I'asseiik'ii- A^'ont.
lilLKOY, Cal JAS. c. ZUCK .V CO., ras..*fiijr.r Agents.
11 ANKOKI), Cal .^.E. WEISHAUM. PasseutfiT Auent .
HOCSTON. Texas. OTS Main St J, K. GKEENHILL, Passenger Agent.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.. 10.">0 Union Ave. ami N.
E. cor. 10th ami Main Sts. . . .GEO. W. H AGESBUCH. Pass'r and Ticki-t Acent. 10.')0 Union Av^ L. F. H.U'oN, I'a.ssciik'ci Aj;cnt.
W. .r. .lANNEY. I'asMimii- A^'ent. LE A VEXWOUTH, Kan. ,4-28 Delaware St.... GEO. .1. CIl.Vl'l.lN, (i. m lal Atrint.
LONDON. En^fluud, 12a I'all Mall T. V. WILSON, (ii in lal i;iir..|aan Agent.
LOS ANOKLES, Cal., 200 Spring St E. W. MifiKK, Citv I'a^siiiir. randTieket Atreiit.
l.oS OAIOS, Cal It. V. KOHKKTSON, l'a.•is^•n^rer Atfenl.
.M.\l>KKA.('al GEO. II. SMITH. r,isseii(,'er Atrent.
*lAKYsVlLLE,Cal.,a28D .St A. W. HOLHHOOK. Freight aiul Passenfrer AgeiU.
MEH« 'ED, Cal ' J. A. McKENZl E, Passenger Agent.
MINNEAPOLIS, Mliia.,.')13 Guaranty Loan
Building C. C. CARPENTER, Pa.ssenger Agent.
MOPFSTO, Cal JAMES .lOHNSON. Pa-isenger Agent.
MoNTKKAL. Quebec, 136 St. James St D. W. II ATt 11, Traveling Agent.
NEWMAN. Cal CHARLES sT CLAIK, Passenger Agent.
NI.W ORLEANS. La.. 642 Gravier St M. W. .lOYCK. Oemial Agent.
NEW Y')RK CITY, 2B1 Broadway CHAS. 1). SIMoNSON. General Eastern Agent.
E. F. HL'HNKTT. Eastern Passenger Agent.
CHAS. A. MAKSII, Pas: enger Agent.
OTTO FAAS. Passenger Agent.
OAKLAND, Cal., 1118 Broadway J. J. WARNER. Freight and Passenger Agent.
PKOKI.V. 111., 41.">Woolner Building GEO. C. CHAMl'.ERS. Passenger Agent.
PKT.M.r.MA.Cal E. C. MII-LS, Passenger Agent.
PlEISLi ). I '..lo. Triangle Block ROBT. YOUNG. City Ticket Agent.
S A( 'R A.MKNTO, Cal.. f.l:; K St G. W. RAILTON, Freight and Tassenger;Agent.
SALT LAKE CITY, I't.ih. Ill Dooly Block. .J. D. KENWORTHY, General Agent. SAN DIEGO, Cal., Hortoii House, corner
Fourth and D Sts H. B.KEELER. Agent.
SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., 644 Market St S. H. PERKINS, Ticket Agent.
J. L. DLAIR. Traveling Agent.
SAN JOSE, Cal.. 7 West Santa Clara St H. R. STERNE, Freight and Passenger Ag.-nt.
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Cal A. F. KlTZfiKK ALD. Passenger .\gent.
SANIA I'.ARHARA, Cal., 708 State St JOHN I.. TKISI.OW. (ieneral Agint.
S\NTA CRCZ, Cal., 22 Cooper St H. A. MAKINNI;Y. Passenger .\gent.
s.\ NT A ROSA, Cal FRAN K CH EUR Y, Freight and Passenger Agent.
SKLMA. I'al JNO. I '. MOoKE. P.issengei- Agent.
ST. .losEPH. Mo.. Board of Trade BIdg L. O. STILKS. Citv Passeiigi-r and Ticket Agent.
ST. Lol'IS. Mo., 420 Commercial Bldg C. A. 11 AKTWELf., Passenger Agent.
STOCKTON. Cal., 439 East Main St F. E. VALENTINE, Freight a tid Passenger Agent.
TILAKE. Cal : N. W. ll.\LL. Freight and Passengi'r Agent.
VISALI A. Cal L. LAWKENCK. Passenger Agent.
'.V ATSi IN VILLE. Cal H. S. FLE TCH ER, Passenger Agent.
WOODLAND. Cal L. W. IIILLIKER, Passenger Agent.
To California and Back
By C. A. HIGGINS
Illustrations by J. T. McCUTCHEON
PASSENGER DEPARTMEN7 SANTA FE ROUTE CHICAGO, 1893
Copyright, 1893, By Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
HAPTER PAGE
Advertisement S
I. Preliminary Stages 7
II. New Mexico 11
LAS VEGAS HOT SPRINGS I7
SANTA FE 20
PUEBLOS 25
PENITENTES oq
III. Arizona 31
CHALCBDONY PARK 34
MOQUIS 35
CANON DIABLO 38
FLAGSTAFF 39
SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN 40
GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO 44
CLIFF AND CAVE DWELLINGS 47
CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ARIZONA 48
IV. Southern California 50
of climate 53
san diego and vicinity 61
capistrano 68
story of the missions 70
los angeles 77
pasadena 81
riverside and vicinity 82
redondo and santa monica 82
santa catalina island 84
santa barbara 88
OSTRICH FARMING Qf
WINTER SPORTS f
3
9^3
CHArrmii pagb
V. NoimiKKN CALlrONKIA Q4
HAN fKANCISCO 95
tlllNATOWN q8
SANTA CLAKA VAl 1 I \ Io8
IJ\KR TAHOK . . .... 113
VI. Nkvaua and Uiaii . 113
OGUKN 115
SALT LAKK ClIV I16
r.KKAT SALT LAKK 122
VII. COLUKAIX) 124
GLBNWOOD SPKINCS 12$
SEVEN CASTLES AND RED KOCK CANON .... 129
IIAGEKMAN PASS I29
LEADVILLK 1 30
ItUENA VISTA 133
GRANITE CANON I34
CRIPPLE CREEK I34
pike's PEAK REGION I39
MANITOO 141
ASCENT OF pike's PEAK 144
COLORADO SPRINGS 147
DENVER 149
Mil. HOMHWAKD 150
J
ADVERTISEMENT.
The proprietary lines of the Santa Fe Route extend, un- broken, through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, southeastern Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Cdlifornia to the Pacific Coast, and compose the major portion of a through return route by way of Nevada, Utah and Middle Colorado, in the following o; der:
Between Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Atchison, Topeka tf Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe
System). Between St. Louis and Albuquerque,
St. Louis &= San Francisco Railway (Santa Fe Sys- tem) to Burrton, Kansas, and Atchison, Topeka b'
Santa Fe Railroad beyond. Bettveen Albuquerque and Barstow or Mojave, California,
Atlantic <V Pacific Railroad (Santa Fe System). Bet-ween Barstow and Los Angeles, San Diego and all points in California east, south and -west of Los A ngeles.
Southern California Railway (Sattta Fe System). Between Los Angeles and San Francisco, California,
Southern Pacific Railroad by way of Mojave. Between San Francisco and Ogden, Utah,
Central Pacific Railroad. Between Ogden and Grand function, Colorado,
Rio Grande Western Railway by way of Salt Lake
City. Between Grand function and Colorado Springs, Colorado,
Colorado Midland Railway (Santa Fe System). Between Colorado Springs and St. Louis,
Atchison, Topeka is' Santa Fe Railroad to Burrton,
Kansas, thence St. Louis tf San Francisco Railway
(Santa Fe System). Between Colorado Springs and Chicago,
Atchison, Topeka 67" Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe
System) ,
The circuit of these lines constitutes a comprehensive tour of the West, whose merits it is desired to bring more particu-
5
\u\y to the tttcntion of tourists, and whose attractions nre the siil>j''ct i>( ihe follxuini; pagc^ The necrssity of compressing ■ thcmr of larjje pr'i'ortiim* into n space of reasonable bounds has einbarrAMinrnts whi^ h are only in pait avoided by exclu- sion of inniiinrritble matters well worthy to be included. It would be a simpler task ti> fill twice as many panes. Adcq late ireatmrnl of a tenth of the number of admitted topics would exceed the limits set to the present volume. All omissions, therefore, nod any neglect of particular localities, must be charged to a plan which perforce is fraKmenlary in outline and restricted by the very extent of its scope to a brief setting forth of only the most contrasting of the more notable scenes.
With thlsa;ology to the Gieat West the bonk is tendered. It isii no sense n guide-book, but ex;>licitly an attempt to present the merits of a relatively few selected typical features for the consideration of those who weigh the high opportuni- ties of travel.
The illustrations are from original sketches, and from pho- tographs by Curran of Santa Ft', Osbon of Flagstaff, Sl^'cum of Sao Diego, Tabor of San Francisco Aaijac/cson of Denver.
PRELIMINARY STAGES.
JHE California Limited pulls out of Dear- born Station in Chicago at an hour of the night when many of its passengers are already tucked away behind the cur- tains of their berths. There is Httle to be seen through the darkness, even if one cared to keep awake. By day the adjacent country for a few hun- dred miles would appear a level or mildly undulat- ing region, rich in agricultural products, and relieved by bits of stream and forest and by small villages, with here and there a considerable city, such as Joliet, and Streator, and Galesburg. It is greater than the whole of England and Wales, this State of Illinois, but a very few hours' ride is sufficient to bring one to its western boundary, the Mississippi River. This is crossed at Fort Madison, and the way continues across the narrow southeastern cor- ner of Iowa into Missouri. While gliding through the State last named the traveler awakes to sight of a rolling country of distant horizons, swelling here and there to considerable hills, checkered with tilled fields and frequent farm-houses, divided by small water-courses and dense groves of deciduous trees. Not one whose scenic features you would travel far to see, but unexpectedly gratifying to the eye; full of gentle contrasts and pleasing variety. At the lofty 7
—-1^;,.
SiMcv bridv;c crossing of the Missouri River the swift s;uiil-lailcn volume of this famed stream (lows far be- low the level of the eye, and there is wide outlook upon cither hand. On the farther side the way skirts bold bluffs for a considerable distance by the side of the broad and picturesque river that is reminiscent of the days of a greater steamboat commerce. Then comes Kansas City, the great commercial gateway of the Missouri. The Kansas border lies just beyond, the entrance to that State leading by the serpentine way of the river of the same name, generously fringed with groves and affording glimpses of rugged wood- land scenery which by degrees gives place to the open prairie.
The billowy surface of Kansas was once the bed of a vast inland sea that deposited enormous quanti- ties of salt, gypsum and marbles, and its rock strata abound in most remarkable fossils of colossal ani- mal life: elephants, mastodons, camels, rhinoceroses, gigantic horses, sharks, crocodiles, and more ancient aquatic monsters of e.xtraordinary proportions, fright- ful appearance and appalling name, whose skeletons are preserved in the National Museum. Its eastern bound was long the shore of the most stubborn wil- derness of our possession. The French fur-traders were the first to establish footing of civilization in Kansas, the greater portion of which came to us as part of the Louisiana purchase. Sixty-five years ago Fort Leavenworth was created to give military protection to the hazardous trade with Santa Fe, and the great overland e.xodus of Argonauts to California at the time of the gold discovery was by way of that border station. The first general settlement of its eastern part was in the heat of the factional excite- ment that led to the Civil War. It was the scene of bloody encounters between Free-soil and Pro-slavery colonists, and of historic exploits by John Brown and
the guerrilla Quantrell. In the space of one genera- tion it has been transformed as by a miracle. The mighty plains whereon the Indian, antelope and buf- falo roamed supreme are now counted as the second most important agricultural area of the Union, and its uncultivated tracts sustain millions of cattle, mules and horses. Vigorous young cities of the plains are seen at frequent intervals. Topeka, with broad avenues and innumerable shade-trees, is one of the prettiest capitals of the West. The neighbor- hood of Newton and Burrton is the home of Men- nonites, a Russian sect that fled to America from the domain of the Czar to find relief from oppression.
Burrton is the junction-point with the converging line from St. Louis through Southern Missouri and Southeastern Kansas, whose topograpliy is of the same general description, pleasingly pictorial in fre- quent foliage and running water, with villages and cities encircled by productive fields, gardens, vine- yards and orchards.
At Hutchinson one enters Western Kansas, and from this point for a long distance the road follows the windings of the Arkansas River, with only occasional digressions. Dodge City, of cowboy fame, and Gar- den City, the scene of Government experiments in agriculture, are the chief centers of this district.
Colorado first presents itself as a plateau, ele- vated 4,000 feet above the sea. Soon the land- scape begins to give hint of the heroic. Pike's Peak is clearly distinguishable, and the two beautiful Spanish Peaks hover upon the horizon and reappear long after the first-named has faded from view. Slowly the Raton Range gathers significance direct- ly ahead, until it becomes a towering wall, at whose foot lies the city of Trinidad, beyond which begins the final ascent to the first of many lofty mountain gateways, the Raton Pass. The grade is terrific,
xft*»'
and two pt>\vcrful mountain engines are required to haul llu- tr.iin at a pace liardly faster than a walk. The viiissiludes of tiie pass arc sucli that the road wiiids liivc a corkscrew, turning by curves so sharp the wheels shriek at the strain. From the rear ves- tibule may be liad an endlessly varied and long-con- tinued series of mountain-views, for the ascent is no mere matter of a moment. There are level side caflons prettily shaded with aspen, long straight slopes covered with pine, tumbled waves of rock overgrown with chaparral, huge bare cliffs with per- jKndiiular gray or brown faces, and breaks through which one may look far out across the lower levels to other ranges. A short distance this side the sum- mit stands what is left of the old toll-house, an abandoned and dismantled adobe dwelling where for many years the veteran Dick Wooten collected toll from those who used the wagon-road through the pass. Both ruin and trail are of interest as belong- ing to the ante-railroad period of thrilling adventure, for by that road and past the site of the dilapidated dwelling passed every overland stage, every caravan, every prairie schooner, every emigrant and every soldier cavalcade bound to the southwestern country in early days. Beyond this is a wide-sweeping curve from whose farther side, looking backward down the pass, an inspiring picture is unfolded to view for a passing instant — a farewell glimpse of the poetic Spanish Teaks at the end of a long vista past a ragged foreground of gigantic measure. Then the hills crowd and shut ofT the outside world; there is a deep sandstone cut, its faces seamed with layers of
coal, a boundary-post marked upon one side Colo- rado and upon the other New Mexico, and instantly following that a plunge into a half-mile tunnel of midnight blackness, at an elevation of something more than 7,600 feet.
At such a Rubicon the preliminary stages may fairly be said to end.
n.
NEW MEXICO.
JLTHOUGH your introduction is by way of a long tunnel, followed by a winding mountain-pass down whose steep incline the train rushes as if to regain the low level from which the journey was begun, you will find New Mexico a Territory in the sky. If its mountain-ranges were leveled smoothly over its val- leys and plains the entire area of more than 120,000 square miles would stand higher above the sea than the summit of any peak of the Catskills or the Adi- rondacks. Its broad upland plains, that stretch to a horizon where wintry peaks tower high above the bold salients of gray-mottled foothills, themselves lie at an altitude that in the Eastern States must be sought among the clouds, and at no time will you fall much below an elevation of 5,000 feet in travers- ing the portion of the Territory that lies along the present route.
II
^*"''?W**'''^'''
The landscape is oriental in aspect ami (lushed with color. Nowhere else can you find sky of deeper blue, sunlight more dn/./ling, shadows more intense, clouds more luminously white, or stars that throb
with redder tire. Here the pure rarefied air that is associated in the mind with arduous mountain-climb- ing is the only air known; dry, cool and gently stimulating. Through it, as through a crystal, the rich red of the soil, the green of vegetation and the varied tints of the rocks gleam always freshly on the sight. You are borne over mountains above forests of pine and fir, with transient glimpses of distant prairie; through caflons where fierce rock- walls yield grudging passage and massive gray slopes bend downward from the sky; along level stretches by the side of the Great River of the North, whose turbid stream is the Nile of the New World; past pictur- esque desert-tracts spotted with sage; and past mesas, buttes, dead volcanoes and lava-beds. These last
-'J^_ V^,!^
are in a region where you will see not only mountain- craters, with long basahic slopes that were the an- cient flow of molten rock, but dikes as well: fissures in the level plain through which the black lava oozed and ran for many miles. These vast rivers of rock, cracked, piled, scattered in blocks, and in places overgrown with chaparral, are full of interest even to the accustomed eye. They wear an appearance of newness, moreover, as if the volcanic action were of recent date; but there has been found nothing in native tradition that has any direct bearing upon them. Doubtless they are many centuries old. Geologically their age is of course determinable; but geology deals in rock epochs; it talks darkly of mill- ions of years between events, and in particulars is careful to avoid use of the calendar. It is well to remember that the yesterday of creation is singularly barren of mankind. We are practically contempo- raries of Adam in the history of the cosmos, and all of ancient and modern history that lies between is a mere evanescent jumble of trivialities. Dame Nature is a crone, fecund though she be, and hugging to her breast the precious phial of rejuvenescence. Her face is wrinkled. Her back is bent. Innumerable mutations lie heavy upon her, briskly though she may plot for to-morrow. And nowhere can you find her more haggard and gray than here. You feel that this place has always worn much the same aspect that it wears to-day. Parcel of the arid region, it sleeps only for thirst. Slake that, and it becomes a garden of paradise as by a magic word. The present generation has proved it true in a hundred localities, where the proximity of rivers or mountain-streams has made irrigation practicable. The confines of the Great American Desert are narrowing rapidly. Do but reflect that a quarter-century back the journey you now make in perfect comfort was a matter of 13
wiUl adventure, at cost of months of arduous travel and at hazard of life, not only because of human Iocs, but for scarcity of food and water. One never appreciates the full stride of American progress until he has traversed such a Territory as this in a Pullman lar. whore Valley of Death and Journey of the I^ead .iti- names still borne by waterless tracts and justified bv bleached boms of cattle and of human beings. Rescued from the centuries of horror and planted in the front rank of young rising States by the genius of our generation. New Mexico is a land of broad ranges, where hundreds of thousands of sleek cattle and countless flocks of sheep browse upon the nutri- tious grasses; where fields of grain wave in the healthful breeze; where orchard-trees bend under their weight of luscious fruits, and where the rocks lay bare inexhaustible veins of precious metals. Here may be found to-day as profitable ranches as any in the country, and innumerable small aggrega- tions of cultivated acres, whose owners sit comfort- ably upon shaded verandas while their servants till the field. This is the paradox of a region whose softer scenes will often seem to be overborne by bleak mountain and desert and lava-bed; that if you own ten acres of irrigated land here you are that much-vaunted but seldom-encountered individual, an independent farmer. You may smile in a superior way when you hear talk of the profits of bank-stock. You may look without envy upon the man who is said to own a gold-mine.
Scattered by the way are sleepy Mexican villages, ancient Indian pueblos, still inhabited, and those older abandoned ruins which give to the region its peculiar atmosphere of mystery. The history of New Mexico formerly began with a pretty legend that dated back to a time in Spain when a sovereign fighting amid his native mountains found himself 14
hemmed in by the enemy, and would have perished with all his army had not one of his enterprising sol- diers discovered an unsuspected pass, the entrance to which he marked with a bleached cow's skull that lay convenient to his hand, and then returning led a re- treat through the pass to safety. By order of the grateful king the family name of the soldier was thereupon made Cabeza de Vaca — coivs head — to celebrate so opportune a service. It is to be hoped he got a doubloon or two as well, but on that particular head tradition is silent. At any rate, among the soldier's descendants a talent for discovery became a notorious family trait. It amounted to a passion with them. You could not get into any difficulty but a Cabeza de Vaca could find you a way out. Nat- urally, then, when Narvaez set sail from Spain for the Florida coast, three and a half centuries ago, he took one of that family along for a mascot. The expedition came to grief on the Florida reefs, but the mascot survived, and with him three others who had wisely clung to his legs when the ship went to pieces. Stranded upon an unknown coast, menaced by hos- tile Indians, an ocean behind and a wilderness be- fore, this Cabeza de Vaca felt his heart strangely stirred within him. He gave no thought to the dan- gers of his situation; he perceived only that he had the opportunity of a lifetime to discover something. So, remembering that in far Mexico his fellow-coun- trymen were known to dwell, he pretended to pull a long face and told his companions that to reach the Mexican settlements was the only hope of surviving. Then brandishing his sword in a becoming manner he called to them to come on, and led them across the unexplored continent of North America, in the year of grace 1536, by a route that incidentally included what is now known as New Mexico. Thus, in sub- stance, runs the legend, which adds that he had a 15
queer talc to toll, on arrival, of Seven Cities of Cibola, and outlandish people of lieallien appearance and notions, but of temperate and industrious habits withal, and presumably rich in treasures of silver and gold; which incited Coronado to send out an expe- dition under Marcos de Nizza in 1539, and a year later himself to take charge of the first real invasion, conquering native towns by force of arms on his way. But in the light of modern historical research Ca- beza de Vaca's local fame dwindles; his head dimin- ishes. It is denied that he ever saw New Mexico, and the title of discoverer is awarded to Marcos de Nizza. It does not really matter, for in either event the conquest was by Coronado, in whose footsteps Spanish colonization was first enabled to advance into the Territory, which, it should be remembered, was for a long time thereafter a vaguely defined area of much greater extent than to-day. The Franciscan friars early began their work of founding missions, and in the course of time established forty churches, attended by some 30,000 native communicants. These natives revolted in 1680, and drove the Span- iards out of the Territor}', resisting their return suc- cessfully for a period of twelve years. From the time of their ultimate subjection (1692) the country grew in population and commercial importance until, early in the present century, its trade with Missouri and the East became very valuable. The route traversed by pack-mules and prairie schooners loaded with merchandise will forever be remembered as the Santa •/;> 16
fc>'4
Fe Trail, and was almost identical with that followed by Coronado. It is at present, for the greater part of the distance, the route of the Atchison, Topekaic Santa Fe Railroad between the Missouri River and Santa F6 ; and through Western Kansas, Southeastern Colorado, over the Raton Pass, and at many points in New Mexico may easily be seen from the train. The distance was 800 miles, and a round trip then con- sumed 1 10 days. Merchandise to an enormous value was often carried by a single caravan. In spite of the protection of a strong military escort the trail was almost continuously sodden with human blood and marked by hundreds of rude graves dug for the muti- lated victims of murderous Apaches and other tribes. Every scene recounted by romances of Indian warfare had its counterpart along the Santa F^ Trail. The am- bush, the surprise, the massacre, the capture, the tort- ure, in terrifying and heart-breaking detail, have been enacted over and over. Only with the advent of the ' railroad did the era of peace and security begin. To- day the Apache is decimated and harmless, and with the Pueblo Indian and the Mexican forms a romantic background to a thriving Anglo-Saxon civilization. It is this background that gives New Mexico its peculiar charm to the thoughtful tourist; not alone its tremendous mountain-ranges, its extensive up- lands, its fruitful valleys, or its unsurpafsed equa- bility of cHmate. Its population includes 8,000 Pueblo Indians, 25,000 Navajoes, 1,300 Apaches, and 100,000 Mexicans; and among the last named are as noble types of cultured and progressive man- hood and womanhood as can be found anywhere in our civilization.
LAS VEGAS HOT Sl'RINGS.
The little Rio Gallinas issues by a tortuous path through rugged tree-fringed caflon-walls from a spur 17
of the Rockies half a dozen miles northwest from the lily i>f l.as Vej;as. Upon its banks, at a point just above where it debouches upon the vegas, or meadows, numerous springs both cold and hot rise to the surface in close juxtaposition, their waters char;;eii with a variety of chemical ingredients. The medicinal virtues of these springs, supplemented by the attractiveness of their k)cation upon a shoulder of the mountains, and the mildness and purity always characteristic of New Mexican air, led to the erection of the spacious and beautiful Hotel Montezuma, and the establishment there of a health and pleasure resort. It has, moreover, become a sort of half-way resting-place for transcontinental travelers. It is one of the few places in the Middle West where a stranger can lind contentment day after day in comparative idle- ness. The immediate scenery has not the prodigiously heroic qualities of the more famous Colorado resorts, but it is endlessly attractive to the lover of nature in her less titanic moods. If you love the pine and the (ir, here you may have your till of them. If you are fond of a bit of precipitous climbing, you can find it here on every hand. And if you are for quiet shaded nooks, or lofty pulpit-perches that overhang a pretty clattering stream in deep solitudes, here they abound. And from the adjacent hilltops are to be had wide-sweeping views eastward over the 7'egas and westward over rocky folds to where the blue masses of the mountain-chain are piled against the sky. There are wagon-roads winding over hill and through glen, past the verge of cafions and penetrating deep into the forest, and narrower branching trails for the pedestrian and the horseman. Who fails to explore these intimately will miss the full charm of Las Vegas Hot Springs. It is a place in which to be restfully happy.
The merits of this spot and of New Mexico gen- i8
'•''nil ly-iii"'^ '■■».-
erallv, for the invalid, are more specifically treated in " I'hf I.itnil of Siitis/iiiii-," to wliicli the iiilorcstcd reader is referrcii. Here it nuist sut'licc to say tluit every known form of batli is administered in the hatii-Iiouso at tlic Springs, antl tlic cqual)le air and almost unbidl<en snnliglit of the long peaceful day are tlicmselves a remedy for physical ills that are incurable in the harsh climes of the North and East. It is not, as might be inferred, a place of distressful heat, but a land of soft golden light whose parallel is the most perfect day of a New England spring. And although the environment of the Montezuma represents the climax of natural remedial conditions, joined to comfort and luxury, the wdiole Territory is a supremely iicalthful region, containing numerous special localities that differ in elevation and in con- sequent adaptation to the requirements of the com- plications of disease. Raton, Springer (where at Chico Springs a sanitarium has been established), Las Vegas proper, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, all are health-resorts of high merit along the present route through New Mexico. South of Albuquerque are several admirable resorts of lower altitude, such as Las Cruces, in the Mesilla Valley, and El Paso, in Texas.
In 1605 the Spaniards founded this city under the name La Ciudad Real de la Satita Fe de San Fran- cisco (the True City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis), which, like many another ponderous Spanish title, has been reduced to lower terms in the lapse of time. The extraordinary interest of its early days is kept alive by monuments which the kindly elements pro- tect from the accustomed ravages of the centuries. The territorial governor to-day receives his guests in the same room that served visitors in the time of 20
f-}
^ km
ii
21
the first viceroy. Seventeen American and seventy- six Mexican and Spanish rulers have successively occupied the palace. It has survived all those siranjjc modulations by which a Spanish province has L>ecomc a territory of the Union bordering on statehood. The story of the palace stretches back into real antiquity, to a time when the Inquisition had powers, when zealous friars of the Order of St. Francis exhorted throngs of dimly comprehending heathen, and when the mailed warriors of Coronado told marvelous uncontradicted tales of ogres that were believed to dwell in the surrounding wilderness. Be- neath its roof are garnered priceless treasures of that ancient time, which the curious visitor may behold. There are faded pictures of saints painted upon puma-skins; figures laboriously wrought in wood to shadow forth the Nazarene; votive offerings of silver, in the likeness of legs, arms and hands, brought to the altar of Our Lady by those who had been healed of wounds or disease; rude stone gods of the hea- then, and domestic utensils and implements of war. There, too, among innumerable relics, may be seen ancient maps of the New World, lettered in Latin and in French, on which California appears as an island of the Pacific, and the country at large is con- fidently displayed with grotesque inaccuracy.
Nearly a mile distant from the palace, on an emi- nence overlooking the town, stands the old Chapel Rosario, now neighbored by the Ramona school for Apache children. In 1692 Diego de Vargas, march- ing up from the south, stood upon that hill with his little army of 200 men and looked over into the city from which his countrymen had been driven with slaughter a dozen years before. There he knelt and vowed to build upon the spot a chapel for the glori- fication of Our Lady of the Rosary, provided she would fight upon his side that day. The town was I* 22
M-^
carried by assault after a desperate contest of eleven hours' duration, and the chapel was built. It savors quaintly to us of a less poetic age that those royal old adventurers should have thought themselves hand and glove with the celestial powers; but they certain- ly made acknowledgment of services supposed to have been rendered, upon occasion.
There areotherplacesof antiquarian interest, where are stored Spanish archives covering two and a quar- ter centuries and numerous paintings and carvings of great age; the Church of Our Lady of Light, the Cathedral of San Francisco, and finally the Church of San Miguel and the Old House, isolated from everything that is in touch with our century by their location in the heart of a decrepit old Mexican village. Mere, at last, is the real Santa Fe of the traveler's anticipation; a straggling aggregation of low adobe huts divided by narro v winding lanes, where in the sharply defined shadows leathern- faced old men and women sit in vacuous idleness and burros loaded with firewood or garden-truck pass to and fro; and in small groups of chattering women one catches an occasional glimpse of bright interrogating eyes and a saucy handsome face, in spite of the closely drawn tapelo. If now some sturdy figure in clanking armor should obligingly pass along, you would have an exact picture of the place as it appeared two centuries and 24
a half ago. Nothing but that figure has departed from the scene, and substantially nothing new has entered in. It does not change. The hurrying ac- tivities and transitions of the outer world, from which it is separated by only a narrow arroyo, count for nothing here. One questions if the outline of a shadow has altered for generations. The Old House, where Coronado is said to have lodged in 1540, and the Church of San Miguel, erected soon after, sacked in 1680, and rehabilitated in 1710, are not distin- guishable from their surroundings by any air of superior age. All is old, a petrifaction of medieval human life done in adobe.
More than a score of these many-storied, many- chambered communal homes are scattered over the Territory, three of the most important of which may be mentioned as lying adjacent to the present route: Isleta, Laguna, and Acoma. Isleta and Laguna are within a stone's-throw of the railroad, ten miles and sixty-six miles, respectively, beyond Albuquerque, and Acoma is reached from either Laguna or Cubero by a drive of a dozen miles. The aboriginal inhabit- ants of the pueblos, an intelligent, complex, indus- trious and independent race, are anomalous among North American natives. They are housed to-day in the selfsame structures in which their forebears were discovered, and in three and a half centuries of contact with Europeans their manner of life has not materially changed. The Indian tribes that roamed over mountain and plain have become wards of the Government, debased and denuded of whatever of dignity they once possessed, ascribe what cause you will for their present condition. But the Pueblo In- dian has absolutely maintained the integrity of his individuality, self-respecting and self-sufificient. He 25
J»be8Li
;uccptcd the form of religion professed by his Span- ish conquerors, but without abandoning his own; and that is practically the only concession his persistent conservatism luis ever made to external influence.
Laborious efforts have been made to penetrate the reserve with which the involved inner life of this strange child of the desert is guarded, but it lies like a vast ilark continent behind a dimly visible shore, and he dwells within the shadowy rim of a night that yields no ray to tell of his origin. He is a true pa- gan, swathed in seemingly dense clouds of supersti- tion, rich in fanciful legend, and profoundly cere- monious in religion. His gods are innumerable. Not even the ancient Greeks possessed a more popu- lous Olympus. On that austere yet familiar height gods of peace and of war, of the chase, of bountiful harvest and of famine, of sun and rain and snow, el- bow a thousand others for standing-room. The trail of the serpent has crossed his history, too, and he frets his pottery with an imitation of its scales, and gives the rattlesnake a prominent place among his deities. Unmistakably a pagan; yet the purity and well-being of his communities will bear favorable comparison with those of the enlightened world. He is brave, honest, and enterprising within the fixed limits of his little sphere; his wife is virtuous, his children are docile. And were the whole earth swept bare of every living thing, save for a few leagues surrounding his tribal home, his life would show no manner of disturbance. Probably he might never hear of so unimportant an event. He would still al- ternately labor and relax in festive games, still rever- ence his gods and rear his children to a life of indus- try and content, so anomalous is he, so firmly estab- ished in an absolute independence.
Pueblo architecture possesses nothing of the elabo- rate ornamentation found in the Aztec ruins, in Mex- 26
ico. The house is severely plain. It is sometimes seven stories in height and contains over a thousand ftH.ms In some instances it is built of adobe —
blocks of mud mixed with straw and dried in the sun — and in others of stone covered with mud ce- ment. The entrance is by means of a ladder, and when that is pulled up the latch-string is considered withdrawn.
The pueblo of pueblos is Acoma, a city without a peer. It is built upon the summit of a table-rock with overhanging eroded sides, 350 feet above the plain, which is 7,000 feet above the sea. Anciently, according to the traditions of the Queres, it stood upon the crest of the superb Haunted Mesa, three miles away, and some 300 feet higher, but its only approach was one day destroyed by the falling of a cliff, and three unhappy women who chanced to be the only occupants — the remainder of the population being at work in the fields below — died of starvation, in view of the homeless hundreds of their people who for many days surrounded the unscalable mesa with upturned agonized faces. The present Acoma is the one discovered by the Spaniards; the original pueblo on the Mesa Encantada being even then an 28
ancient tradition. It is i,ooo feet in length and 40 feet high, and there is besides a church of enormous proportions. Until lately it was reached only by a precipitous stairway in the rock, up which the inhab- itants carried upon their backs every par.icle of the materials of which the village is constructed. The graveyard consumed forty years in building, by rea- son of the necessity of bringing earth from the plain below; and the church must have cost the labor of many generations, for its walls are 60 feet high and 10 feet thick, and it has timbers 40 feet long and 14 inches square.
The Acomas welcomed the soldiers of Coronado with deference, ascribing to them celestial origin. Subsequently, upon learning the distinctly human character of the Spaniards, they professed allegiance, but afterward wantonly slew a dozen of Zaldivar's men. By way of reprisal Zaldivar headed three-score soldiers and undertook to carry the sky-citadel by as- sault. The incident has no parallel in American his- tory short of the memorable and similar exploit of Cor- t^z on the great Aztec Pyramid. After a three days' hand-to-hand struggle the Spaniards stood victors up- on that seemingly impregnable fortress and received the submission of the Queres, who for three-quarters of a century thereafter remained tractable. In that interval the priest came to Acoraa and held footing for fifty years, until the bloody uprising of 1680 oc- curred, in which priest, soldier and settler were mas- 29
♦acrcil or driven fri)m the land and every vestige of their ociupatiim wasexlirpated. After the resubjec- tion of tlic natives by Diejjo do Vargas tlic present church was constructed, and the Pueblos have not sintc rebelled ajjainst the contiguity of the white tn.in.
I'KMIKNTKS.
All the numerous Mexican communities in the Ter- ritory contain representatives of this order, which is peculiar by reason of the self-flaj;ellations inflicted by its members in their excess of pietistic zeal. Un- like their ilk of India, they do not practice self tort- ure for long periods, but only upon a certain day in each year. Then, stripped to the waist, these poor zealots go chanting a dolorous strain and beating themselves unsparingly upon the back with the sharp- spined cactus, or soap-weed, until they are a revolt- ing sight to look upon. Often they sink from the exhaustion of long-sustained sufTering and loss of blood. Among the Penitential ceremonies is the bearing a huge cross of heavy timber for long dis- tances, amid the exhorting cries of onlookers. The one who is adjudged to have punished himself most severely is chosen chief of the performance for the following year; and the honor does not want for aspirants.
Attempts have been made to abolish this annual demonstration, but without avail. 30
III.
ARIZONA.
HE portion to be traversed is a land of - prodigious mountain-terraces, extensive
plateaus, profound canons, and flat arid plains, dotted with gardens of fruits and flowers, patched with vast tracts of pine timber and veined with precious stones and metals, alternating with desolate beds of lava, bald mountainous cones of black and red volcanic cinder, grass-carpeted parks, uncouth vegetable growths of the desert, and bleak rock-spires, above all which white peaks gleam radiantly in almost perpetual sunlight. The long- time residents of this region are unable to shake off its charm, even when no longer compelled by any other consideration to remain. Its frequent wide stretches of rugged horizon exert a fascination no less powerful than that of arduous mountain-fast- nesses or the secret shadows of the dense forest. There is the same dignity of Nature, the same mys- tery, potent even upon those who can least define its thrall. Miners confess to it, and herdsmen. To the traveler it will appear a novel environment for contemporaneous American life, this land of sage and mesquite, of frowning volcanic piles, shadowed cafions, lofty mesas and painted buttes. It seems fitter for some cyclopean race, for the pterodactyl and the behemoth. Its cliffs are flung in broad sin- uous lines that approach and recede from the way, 31
their contour incessantly shifting in the similitude of f.ivcrns. corriilors, pyraniitls, nionunicnts, and a tliou- s;ind other forms so full of structural idea thrysccm to bo the unlinishcd work of some gi.uit architect who had planned more than he could execute.
The altitude is practically the same as that of the route through New Mexico, umluiating between 5,o<)0 and 7,<ioo feet above sea level, until on the western border the hi^h plateaus break rapidly down to an elevation of less than 500 feet at the valley of a broad and capricious stream that flows through al- ternate stretches of rich .dluvial meadow and barren rock-spires — obelisks rising against the sky. This stream is the Colorado River, wayward, strenuous, and possessed of creative imagination and terrific energies when the mood is on. It chiseled the (jrand Caflon, far to the north and east, and now complacently saunters oceanward. Despite its quiet air, not long ago and at no small distance toward
ihc iuuih, it cunccivcd the whim to make a Salton
Sea, and the affair was a national sensation for many
months. The great cantilever bridge that spans it
32
i
here was made necessary by the restless spirit of the intractable stream. Only a short time ago the cross- ing was by means of a huge pile bridge a few miles toward the north; but the river shifted its channel so frequently it was thought desirable to build a new bridge down here among the enduring obelisks which are known as The Needles. It is a pictur- esque spot, full of color, and the air has a pure transparency that lends depth and distance to the view, such as the bird knows in its flight. The Needles form the head of the gorgeously beautiful Mojave Cafion, hidden from view. The Colorado is an inveterate lover of a chaotic channel. It is its genius to create works of art on a scale to awe the spirit of cataclysm itself. It is a true Helles- pont, isiJuing from Cimmerian gloom to loiter among sunny fields, which it periodically waters with a fer- tilizing flood; and while you follow its gentle sweep it breaks into sudden uproar and hews a further path of desolation and sublimity. One who does not know the canons of the Colorado has never experi- enced the full exaltation of those impersonal emo- tions to which the Arts are addressed. There only are audience-halls fit for the tragedies of yEschylus, for Dante and the Sagas.
The known history of Arizona begins with the same Mark of Nice whom we have already accred- ited as the discoverer of New Mexico, of which this Territory was long a part; and here, as well, he was followed by Coronado and the missionaries. This is the true home of the Apache, whose unsparing warfare repeatedly destroyed the work of early Spanish civilization and won the land back for a time to heathenesse. Its complete acquisition by the United States dates from 1853, and in the early days of the Civil War it was again devastated. After its reoccupation by California troops in 1862, set
lirrs |io};.in ii> in-iu-tiaii' lis iinitiKTii portion. Nearly ^ ^ry twenty yrars later the tirst railroad sixmncd its bound- /jv' arics, and then linally it became a tenable home ^/ / f>ir the Saxon, nlthouph the well-remenibered out- ^'vy break of Cicroninio occurred only six years apo. To- day the war-thirsty Apaches arc widely scattered amon^ distant reservations, and with them has de- parted the last cxistinjj element of ilistuibance. But Arizona will never lose its peculiar atmosphere of extreme anti<iuity, for in addition to those over- whelming chasms that have lain unchanged since the infancy of the world, it contains within its bor- ders the ruins of once populous cities, maintained by an enormous irrigation system which our modern science has not yet attempted to rival; whose history was not written upon any lasting scroll; whose peo- ples are classed among the undecipherable antiqui- ties of our continent, their deeds unsung, their he- roes unchronicled and unknown.
Yet, if you have a chord for the heroic, hardly -hall you find another land so invigorating as this of .Vrizona. It stiffens the mental fiber like a whifif of the north wind. It stirs in the blood dim echoes of days when achievement lay in the might of the indi- vidual arm; when sword met targe in exhilarating struggles for supremacy. The super-refinement of cities dissipates here. There is a tonic breeze that blows toward simple relations and a lusty selfhood.
CHALCEDONY PARK.
The town of Holbrook stands upon a gray tree- dotted plain by the side of the Little Colorado River, which at this point is a shallow, sluggish flow, lost to sight here and there in the depths of thirsty sands. This is the most convenient point from which to visit the Chalcedony Park (which lies at a distance of about twenty miles toward the 34
south), by reason of hotel accommodations and facil- ities for local transportation. One-half the distance can be saved by quitting the train between Billings and Carrizo, at mile-post 233, and walking a mile to Hanna's Ranch, where a team can be procured; but this way of access is hardly practicable for the transcontinental traveler incumbered with baggage. The park, so called, is a tract of 2,000 acres thickly strewn with chips, fragments, and even whole trunks, of trees; the detritus of some prehistoric flood, transformed by the sybaritic chemistry of nature into chalcedony, topaz, onyx, carnelian, agate and amethyst. It is a storehouse of precious gems, measurable by no smaller phrase than millions of tons; a confusion of splinters, twigs, limbs, seg- ments and logs, every fragment of which would adorn the collector's cabinet, and, polished by the lapidary, would embellish a crown. Some of these prostrate trees of stone are 150 feet in length and 10 feet in diameter, although generally broken into sections by a clean transverse cleavage. One of these huge trunks, its integrity still spared by time and the hammer of the scientist, spans a canon sixty feet wide; a bridge of jasper and agate, over- hanging a tree-fringed pool; the realization of a seer's rhapsody, squandered upon a desert far from the habitations of man.
MOQUIS.
The reservation containing the Moqui villages — fair white castles cresting the cliffs of a desert waste — lies to the north of Winslow, farther away than the average tourist will attempt to journey; but the Moquis themselves may be seen about the sta- tion named. Not uncomely, clad in picturesque costume, and representative of the ever-interesting Pueblo life, they merit more than passing mention. 35
^
^T; Willi tlicin a
lone survives the revolting but fascinat- injj s|H-it;ulc of the snake-ihincc, that once was common to ail the I'ucblo peoples. Upon the ques- tion of l!ic viiulency of the rattlesnake's bite opin- ions arc diverse. There are those who claim that there is positively no antidote for the venom of a licilthv full-jjrown reptile of that species, yet old ranchmen will tell you stories of many a prompt recovery from snake-bite by the virtue of a mysteri- ous weed plucked by Indian or Mexican; and plain whisky has its stanch advocates in this as in other vicissitudes of human life. It is, however, certain that the bite oicrotalits is often fatal, and is universally dreaded except by the Moquis in the season of their dance, at which time they handle their reptile deity with the most audacious familiarity and without dan- ger. The secret of the mysterious antidote used by them is supposed to be known to only three of the tribe, namely, the high priest, the neophyte who is in training to inherit that office, and the eldest woman. In the event of the death of any one of these three it is imparted to a successor, and under any other circumstances its betrayal is punishable by death. Every year, three days before the great day of the ceremony, the intending participants enter upon a strict fast, which is not broken until the dance has been conclude'd. In the intervening period the secret decoction is freely administered by the venera- ble medicine-man, and the dancers employ their leis- ure in capturing rattlesnakes in the desert. Several hundred of the hideous reptiles are thus collected and imprisoned in a little corial. Upon the morning of the fourth day, at the appointed hour, the dancers boldly e'ter the corral, and seizing a snake in each hand rush out to join in the mystic savage rite. Unimpeachable authority vouches for the fact that the rattlesnakes are not unfanged or in anywise N 36
MOQUI HAIRDRESSER,
37
:5r>i92(>
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ilcprivt'd of the exercise of their deatlly function. On the contrary, the dancers arc repeatedly bitten as tiiey twine the reptiles around tlieir necks and arms, ami hold them in their mouths by the middle and swing them to and fro. But the potency of the antidote is such that only a slight irritation or small local inflammation ensues, and the Moquis give no more serious thought to the venomous caresses of their squirming captives than they would give to the sting of a gnat. At the conclusion of the dance the snakes are reverently restored to freedom, having
been prevailed upon to use their influence with the beneficent powers for the space of a whole year in behalf of their dusky worshipers.
CASoN DIABLO.
This, the Devil Canon, is a profound gash in the plateau, some 225 feet deep, 550 feet wide, and many miles long. It has the appearance of a vol- canic rent in the earth's crust, wedge-shaped, and terraced in bare dun rock down to the thread of a stream that trickles through the notch. It is one of those inconsequent things which Arizona is fond of displaying. For many miles you are bowled over a perfectly level plain, and without any preparation whatever, save only to slacken its pace, the train 38
crosses the chasm by a spider-web bridge and then speeds again over the selfsame placid expanse. In the darkness of night one might unsuspectingly step off into its void, it is so entirely unlooked-for. Yet, remarkable as is the Cafion Diablo, in comparison with those grand gorges hereafter to be mentioned it is worth little better than an idle glance through the car-window in passing.
FLAGSTAFF.
Gateway to most remarkable ancient ruins, to one of the most practicable and delightful of our great mountains, and to the famous Grand Cafion of the Colorado River, Flagstaff is itself pictorial in char- acter and rich in interest. It stands upon a clearing in an extensive pine forest that here covers the pla- teau and clothes the mountains nearly to their peaks; although the word park better describes this sunlit, grass carpeted expanse of widely set towering pines, where cattle graze and the horseman may gallop at will. Couched at the foot of a noble mountain that doffs its cap of snow for only a few weeks of the year, and environed by vast resources of material wealth in addition to its aggregation of spectacular 39
y J'
.m>l arili.Tolojjical features, its fame has already spread widely over tlic world, and will increase with time. Space can here be given to only its three most celebrated possessions, but the visitor cannot hope to exhaust the number and variety of its attractions. There are woodlanil retreats where sculptured rocks tower many hundred feet above the still surface of pools; boxcafions where myriads of trout leap from the waters of the stream that flows through depths of shadow; thickets where the deer browses; plains where the antelope still courses, and rocky slopes where the bighorn still clambers and the mountain- lion dozes in the sun.
SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN.
Here, as in many other parts of the West, the act- ual height of a mountain is greater than is apparent to the eye. The ascent begins at a point consider- ably above where the Eastern mountain-climber leaves off, for the reason that the whole region is itself a prodigious mountain, hundreds of thousands of square miles in area, of which the projecting peaks are but exalted lookouts. The four summits of San Francisco Mountain are elevated nearly 13,000 feet above the sea, and only 6,000 feet above the town of Flagstaff. It follows that more than half the actual ascent has been made without any effort by the trav- eler, and the same result is attained as if he had climbed a sheer height of 13,000 feet upon the rim of the sea. There is the same rarefaction of air, the same wide range over an empire that lies flat beneath the eye, limited only by the interposition of other mountains, the spherical contour of the earth, atmospheric haze, or the power of vision itself.
The apex of Humphrey's Peak, the only summit of this mountain which is practicable for the tourist, is little more than ten miles from Flagstaff, and an 40
excellent carriage -road covers fully seven miles of that distance. From the end of that road a com- fortable bridle-path leads to within a few feet of the topmost crag. The entire trip may be made on horseback if desired, and one who is accustomed to the saddle will find it a preferable experience, for then short cuts are taken through the timber, and there is so much the more of freedom and the charm of an untrammeled forest. The road crosses a short stretch of clearing and then enters the magnificent pine park, rising at an easy grade and offering fre- quent backward glimpses. The strained, conscious severity of the Rocky Mountain giants is wanting here. It is a mountain without egotism, breathing gentlest dignity and frankly fond of its robe of verd- ure. Birds flit and carol in its treetops, and squir- rels play. Grass and fern do not fear to make soft- cushioned banks to allure the visitor, flowers riot in their season, and the aspens have whole hillsides to themselves; soft, twinkling bowers of delicate green, dells where one could wish to lie and dream through long summer hours. The bridle-path begins, with the conventional zigzag of mountain-trails, at the foot of a steep grass-grown terrace that lies in full view of the spreading panorama below. Above that sunny girdle the trail winds through a more typical mountain-forest, where dead stalks of pine and fir are plentifully sprinkled among the living, and ugly swaths show where the avalanche has passed. Above this, for the remaining few hundred feet, the peaks stand bare — stern, swart crags that brook no mantle except the snows, encompassed by a quiet which only the wind redeems from everlasting silence.
The outlook from Humphrey's Peak is one of the noblest of mountain-views. It commands a recog- nizable territory of not less than seventy-five thou- sand square miles, with vague shadowy contours be- 41
!» Y yt>nd the circle of definite vision. Categorically, as Kk pointeil out by the guide, the main features of the landscape are as follows: Directly north, the far- I ther wall of the Grand Cailon, at the Bright Angel Amphitheater, fifty miles away; and topping that, the lUickskin Mountains of the Kaibab Plateau, thirty or forty miles farther distant. To the right, the Na- v.ijo Mountains, near the Colorado State line, 200 miles. In the northeast, the wonderful Painted Des- ert, tinted with rainbow-hues, and the Navajo Res- ervation. Below that, the Moqui buttes and villages. Toward the east, the broad plateau and desert as far as the divide near Navajo Springs, 130 miles east from Flagstaff by the railroad. In the southeast, the White Mountains, more than 200 miles. In the south, successively, the Mogollon Plateau, a group of a dozen lakes — unlooked-for sight in the arid lands — Baker's Butte, the Four Peaks, and the Supersti- tion Mountains near Phoenix, the last named 160 miles distant. In the southwest, the Bradshaw Mountains, 140 miles; Granite Mountain, at Pres- cott, 100 miles, and the Juniper Range, 150 miles. The horizon directly west is vague and doubtful, but is believed to lie near the California line. In the northwest a distant ran^je is seen, north of the Colo- rado River and east of the Nevada line, perhaps the Sheavwits or the Hurricane Mountains. Among the less remote objects are the Coconino forest and basin on the north; on the east the Little Colorado, traceable by its fringe of cottonwoods, beds of lava flung like the shadow of a cloud or the trail of a conflagration, and Sunset and Peachblow craters, black cones of cinder capped with red scoria; on the south and southwest Oak Creek Canon, the Jerome smelters, and the rugged pictorial breakdown of the Verde, and, under foot. Flagstaff; and on the west 42
the peaks of Bill Williams, Sitgreaves, and Ken-
dricks, neighborly near.
Yet, in spite of the grandeur of such a scene, San Francisco Mountain itself soon gains and monopo- lizes the attention. It has slopes that bend in a single sweeping curve to depths which the brain reels to contemplate, down which a loosened stone will spin until the eye can no longer distinguish its course; and there are huge folds and precipices and abysses of which no hint was given in the ascent. There is, too, a small glacier. Perhaps its most at- tractive single feature is a profound bowl-shaped cavity between Humphrey and Agassiz peaks, over- hung by strangely sculptured cliffs that have the ap- pearance of ruined castle-walls perforated with rude doorways, windows, and loopholes. It is called The Crater, and is almost completely boxed in by steep but uniform slopes of volcanic sand, in descending which a horse sinks to his fetlocks. On the side toward the north it breaks down into a canon lead- ing off to the plain and set with tree, grass, fern and flower. Its axis is marked by two parallel lines of bare bowlders of great size, that seem to have been thrown up from the underlying rock by some prodig- ious ebullition of internal forces.
This mountain has always been regarded as a mass of lava heaped upon the plain around volcanic vents. Recent prospectors now claim it to be com- posed of gray and red granite and pure white lime- stone, diked with porphyry, and capped with meta- morphosed rocks and lava. Many mining-claims have within a short time been located upon it, and the outcroppings are reported to contain free milling- gold ore of low grade.
The round trip to the peak is customarily made in a day, but arrangements may be made to remain upon the mountain over night if determined upon in 43
,r*#
advance, and such a plan is recommended to those who have never seen the glories of sunset and sunrise from a mountain-hcijjht. Among the mountains of America there is hardly another that at the cost of so little hardship yields so rich a reward.
GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO.
The series of tremendous chasms which form the channel of the Colorado River in its course through Northern Arizona reach their culmination in a cha- otic gorge 217 miles long, from 9 to 13 miles wide, and, midway, more than 6,600 feet below the level of the plateau. Standing upon the brink of that plateau, at the point of the canon's greatest width and depth, the beholder is confronted by a scene whose majesty and beautv are well-nigh unbearable. Snatc' in a single glance from every accustomed anchorage of human experience, the stoutest heart here quavers, the senses cower. It is the only known spot which one need not fear approaching with an- ticipations too exalted. It is a new world, compel- 44
ling the tribute of sensations whose intensity exceeds tiu- familiar sijjnilication of words. If you say of Niagara's gorjjc that it is profound, what shall you say of the Colorado's chasm that yawns beneath your feet to a depth nearly hfty times greater? If you iiave looked down from the heigiitof the Eiffel tower and called it vertiginous, what shall you say when you are brought to the verge of a gulf at points of which you may drop a plummet five times as far? And when you face, not a mere narrow frowning gash of extraordinary depth, but a broad underworld that reaches to the uttermost horizon and seems as vast as the earth itself; studded with innumerable pyramidal mountains of massive bulk hewn from gaudiest rock-strata, that barely lift the cones and turrets of their crests to the level of the eye; divided by purple voids; banded in vivid colors of transpar- ent brilliancy that are harmonized by atmosphere and refraction to a marvelous delicacy ; controlled by a unity of idea that redeems the whole from the menace of overwhelming chaos — then the pen halts in undertaking its description.
Some attempt, however, has been made in ''The Grand Canon of the Colorado " to which the reader who can not avail of the magnificent volumes of Powell and Button, and desires a more intimate knowledge than can be derived from the graceful and eloquent pages devoted to the subject in Warn- er's " Our Italy," is referred.
The Grand Caiion is sixty-five miles distant from Flagstaff, by a nearly level road, through a region that presents in turn nearly all the characteristic features of Arizona. Except in the winter months, at which time the journey can be undertaken only when weather and roads are favorable, a tri-weekly stage makes the trip to the cafion in about twelve stop for dinner midway. Passengers 46
quit the stage upon the very rim of the canon, at the most impressive point, and so long as they may choose to remain are provided with comfortable lodgings and excellent meals.
CLIFF AND CAVE DWELLINGS.
This region abounds in scattered ruins of the dwellings of a prehistoric people. The most impor- tant yet discovered lie within a radius of eight miles from Flagstaff, and are easily accessible.
On the southeast, Walnut Cafion breaks the pla- teau for a distance of several miles, its walls deeply eroded in horizontal parallel lines. In these nat- ural recesses, floored and roofed by the more endur- ing strata, the cliff-dwellings are found in great number, walled up on the front and sides with rock fragments and cement, and partitioned into com- partments. Some have fallen into decay, only por- tions of their walls remaining, and but a narrow shelf of the once broad floor of solid rock left to evi- dence their extreme antiquity. Others are almost wholly intact, having stubbornly resisted the weath- ering of time. Nothing but fragments of pottery now remain of the many quaint implements and trinkets that characterized these dwellings at the time of their discovery and have since been exhumed by scientist and collector. At least, nothing of value is supposed to remain about those that are commonly visited. Many others, more difficult toe.xplore, may yet yield a store of archaeological treasure.
Fixed like swallows' nests upon the face of a preci- pice, approachable from above or below only by de- liberate and cautious climbing, these dwellings have the appearance of fortified retreats lather than habit- ual abodes. That there was a time, in the remote past, when warlike peoples of mysterious origin passed southward over this plateau is generally cred- 47
itfd. Ami tlic existence of the cliff-dwellings is ascribed to the exigencies of that dark period, when the inhabitants of the plateau, unable to cope with the superior energy, intelligence and numbers of the descending hordes, devised these unassailable re- treats. All their quaintness and antiquity cannot conceal the deep pathos of their being, for tragedy is written all over these poor hovels hung between earth and sky. Their builders hold no smallest niche in recorded history. Their aspirations, their strug- gles and their fate are all unwritten, save on these crumbling stones, which are their sole monument and meager epitaph. Here once they dwelt. They left no other print on Time.
At an equal distance to the north of Flagstaff, among the cinder-buried cones, is one whose sum- mit commands a wide-sweeping view of the plain. Upon its ape.x, in the innumerable spout-holes that were the outlet of ancient eruptions, are the cave- dwellings, around many of which rude stone-walls still stand. The story of these habitations is like- wise wholly conjectural. They may have been con- temporary with the clifl-dwellings. That they were long inhabited is clearly apparent. Fragments of shattered pottery lie on every hand.
CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ARIZONA.
From Ash Fork, west of Flagstaff, the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoeni.x Railroad extends southward over an elevated region commanding wide views, through canons and valleys of great beauty, and past some of the largest copper-mines in the United States, for sixty miles, to Prescott. This city is to the northern half of Arizona what Denver is to the State of Colo- rado: a distributing and shipping point for a large surrounding country in which mining is the greatest activity, with horticultural interests rapidly develop- ing in pace with facilities for irrigation. 48
In the winter of 1893 this railroad will have reached Phoenix, the capital, which is located in the Salt River Valley, 140 miles beyond Prescott — a mag- nificent level floor, walled in by mountains, and con- taining a million acres of irrigable lands. Here, in a climate where snow is unknown, nearly every va- riety of fruit and nut, except those that are absolutely restricted to the tropics, is grown in extraordinary profusion, in addition to the ordinary cereals and vegetables of the North Temperate Zone. The list is long, and includes grapes, quinces, apricots, peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, prunes, pomegranates, loquats, guavas, Japanese persimmons, figs, oranges, lemons, olives, dates, peanuts, almonds and pecans. The neighborhood of Prescott yields vast quantities of copper, and not a little gold. There are, among other famous deposits, the United Verde copper-mines and the Congress and Rich Hill gold-mines; the last- named situated upon an isolated peak, where in the early days free gold was literally whittled from the rock with knives and chisels. Nowhere has nature been more lavish of her treasures, and while yet the store of precious metal has barely been explored, the smaller alluvial valleys, and that vast one around Phoenix, have become widely known for the produc- tion of multifarious fruits which ripen several weeks in advance of those of California.
Hitherto the only facile communication between the Salt River Valley and the outside world has been by a roundabout way through the South. Here- after there will be a direct thoroughfare by way of Ash Fork, both for tourists and for exportation of the phenomenal products of the region. 49
yc.T. Co,-..
IV.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
r^^^^J^ I'KW miles beyond the Colorado River Zw^^C ♦crossing at The Needles is the railroad fk (^.^ station of that name, where the remnant of the once powerful and warlike Mojave tribe, now become beggarly hangers-on to civiliza- tion, love to congregate and offer inferior wares in the shape of bows and arrows and pottery trinkets to travelers in exchange for coin. Their hovels are scattered along the wayside, and the eager congre- gation of women peddlers, some with naked babies sitting stoically astride their hips, and all dubiously picturesque in paint and rags, is sufficiently divert- ing. The men attain gigantic stature, and are famed for their speed and bottom as runners; but their abil- ity might be fairly taxed by the tourist of average ca- pacity who for any cause felt himself in danger of being compelled to share their abode or mingle inti- mately with them. A sound-heeled Achilles would fall behind in pursuit of the fleer from such a sorry fate.
But this is California, the much-lauded land of fruit and flower and sunny clime, of mountain and shore and sea-girt isle; land of paradoxes, where winter is the season of bloom and fruitage and summer is nature's time of slumber. The traveler enters it for the first time with a vivid preconception of its splendors. 50
By way of introduction you are borne across the most sterile portion of tiie most liopeless waste in America, wliose monotony intercepts every approach to California except that roundabout one by way of the sea. But here you are screened by night, and will know nothing of its terrors except as they are told you. On every hand lies a drear stretch of sand and alkali, a Nubian desert unmarked by a single hu- man habitation outside the lonely path of the loco- motive; where not even the cry of a wolf breaks the grim silence of desolation. Through this the train hastens to a more elevated country, arid still, but re- lieved by rugged rocks, the esthetic gnarled trunks and bolls of the yucca and occasional growths of de- ciduous trees. You enter the Cajon Pass.
Did not the journey include a return through Col- orado, where much must be said of the grandeur of distinctive mountain scenery, Cajon Pass would bear extended mention. It is the loveliest imaginable scene, a gently billowing mountain-flank densely set with thickets of manzanita, through whose glossy green foliage and red stems the pale earth gleams, rising here and there in graceful dunes of white un- flecked by grass or shrub, and overhung by parallel terraced ridges of the San Bernardino Mountains, that pale in turn to a topmost height far in the blue Italian sky. Entirely wanting in the austerity that characterizes the grander mountains of loftier alti- tudes, it takes you from the keeping of plateau and desert and by seductive windings leads you down to the garden of California. Typical scenes at once ap- pear. On either hand are seen orchards, of the peach, apricot, prune, olive, fig, almond, walnut, and that always eagerly anticipated one of the orange.
You will not, however, find this whole land a jungle of orange and palm trees, parted only by thick banks of flowers. The world is wide, even in California, or 51
one might better say parficulany Jn California, where over an arta averaging 150 miles wide and 1,000 miles long is scattered a I'-opulation no greater than that of the city of Chicago. It is true that at River side orange-trees do grow tiirough the station plat- form, and at many places along your route you may almo! t pluck the golden fruit from the car-window in passing; but the celebrated products of California lie in restricted areas of cultivation, which you are ex- I>ectcd to visit; and herein lies much of the Califor- nian's pride, that there still remains so much of op- portunity for all. There is everything in California that has been credited to it, but what proves not un- commonly a surprise is the relatively small area of improved land and the consequent frequency of un- fructed intervals. Only a moment's reflection is need- ed to perceive that the case could not be otherwise. As for flowers, even here they are not eternal, except in the thousands of watered gardens. In the dry summer season the hills turn brown and sleep. Only when the winter rains have slaked the parched earth do the grass and flowers awake, and then for a few months there is a enough of bloom and fragrance to satisfy the most exuberant fancy.
Now past pretty horticultural communities, flanked by the Sierra Madre, the way leads quickly from San Bernardino to Pasadena and Los Angelts.
From the last-named city you pass through a fruit- ful region, and within a stone's-throw of the impres- sive mission-ruins of Capistrano, to a shore where the long waves of the Pacific break upon gleaming white sands and the air is of the sea. Blue as the sky is the Pacific, paling in the shallows toward land, and flecked with bright or somber cloud-reflections and smurring ripples of the breeze. It is not only the westerly bound of the North American Continent, it is the South Seas of old adventure, where many a 52
hulk of once treasure-laden galleons lies fathoms deep among the queer denizens of the sea who repeat wild legends of naughty buccaneers. There is challenge to the imagination in the very tracklessness of the sea. On the wrinkled face of earth you may read earth's story. She has laid things to heart. She broods on memories. But the sea denies the past; it is as heedless of events that were as the air is of the path where yesterday a butterfly was winging. Its incontinent expanse is alluring to the fancy, and this sunset sea even more than the tempestuous ocean that beats upon our eastern shores, for it is so lately become our possession it seems still a foreign thing, strewn with almost as many wrecks of Spanish hopes as of galleons; and into its broad bosom the sun sinks to rise upon quaint antipodean peoples, beyond a thousand mysterious inhabited islands in the swirls of the equatorial currents.
Next, swinging inland to find the pass of the last intervening hills, you make a final descent to the water's edge, and come to San Diego, that dreamy city of Mediterranean atmosphere and color, terraced along the rim of a sheltered bay of surpassing beau- ty. Guarding the mouth of the harbor lies the long crescent peninsular of Coronado, the pale facades of whose mammoth hotel flash through tropical vege- tation across the blue intervening waters.
^~:3ss
OF CLIMATE.
Here the sun habitually shines. Near the coast flows the broad equable Japanese ocean-current, from R^hich a tempered breeze sweeps overland every morn- ing, every night to return from the cool mountain- tops. Between the first of May and the last of Octo- ber rain almost never falls. By the end of June the earth has evaporated most of its surface-moisture, and vegetation unsustained by artificial watering begins 53
to tanjuish. The midday temperature now rises, but the same breeze swings like a pendulum between ocean and mountain, and night and early morning arc no less invigorating. This is summer, a joyous and active season generally misconceived by the tour- ist, who not unreasonably visits California in the win- ter-time to cstxipe Northern cold and snow, and in- fers an unendurable torrid summer from a winter of mildness and luxuriance.
With November the first showers generally begin, followed by an occasional heavy downpour, and North- ern pastures now whiten under falling snow hardly faster than do these sere hills turn beryl-green. The rainy season is so called not because it is characterized by continuous rainfall, but to distinguish it from that portion of the year in which rain cannot be looked for. Bright days are still the rule, and showery days are marked by transcendent beauties of earth and sky, fleeting wonders of form and color. Let the morning open with a murky zenith, dark tumbled cloud -masses dropping shower. As the invisible sun mounts, he peeps unexpectedly through a rift to see that his world is safe, then vanishes. The sky has an unrelenting look. The mountains are obscured. Suddenly, far to the left, a rift breaks dazzling white, just short of where the rain is falling on the hills in a long bending column, and at one side a broad patch pales into mottled gray ; and below the rift a light mist is seen floating on the flank of a mountain that shoots into sharp relief against a vapor-wall of slate. At the mountain's foot a whole hillside shows in warm brown tint, its right edge merged in a low flat cloud of silver, born, you could aver, on the instant, from which the truncated base of a second mountain de- pends, blue as indigo. The face of earth, washed newly, is a patchwork of somber and gaudy trans- parent colors: yellows, greens, sepias, grays. One's 54
range and clearness of vision are quickly expanded, as wlieu a Iclcscopc is titled to the eye. Now begins a wiMidcrf id shilling of light and shadow ; pcejis through a curtain that veils unbearable splendors of upper sky; grailual dissolutions of cloud into curls and twists and splashes, with filling of blue between. Again the sun appears, at first with a pale burnished light, Hashing and fading irresolutely until at length it flames out with summer ardor. The clouds break into still more curious forms, into pictures and images of quaint device, and outside the wide circle of brilliant sunlight all the hills are in purple shadow, fading into steel-blue, and about their crests cling wisps of many-colored fleece. Here and there a dis- tant peak is blackly hooded, or gleams subtly behind an intervening shower — a thin transparent wash of smoky hue. The veil quickly dissipates, and at the same instant the peak is robbed of its sunlight by billows of vapor that marshal in appalling magnifi- cence. Then the rain-mist advances and hides the whole from view. A strip of green ne.xt flashes on the sight, a distant field lighted by the sun, but lying unaccountably beneath a cloud of black. Beyond, the broad foot of a rainbow winks and disappears. Among all the hilltops rain next begins to fall like amber smoke, so thin is the veil that shields them from the sun. Then the sun abruptly ceases to shine, the whole heavens are overcast, and between the fine fast-falling drops the ground gleams wet in cool gray light. By noon the sun again is shining clear, although in occasional caflons there is night and deluge, and at the close of a bright afternoon the farthest, loftiest peak has a white cloud wreath around it, as symmetrical as a smoke-ring breathed from the lips of a sefiorita ; and out of the middle of it rises the fragment of a rainbow — a cockade on a 56
mist- laureled Matterhorn. Then the sun drops, and the day is done.
That is the way it rains in California, and between such days are unclouded intervals of considerable duration. They call this season winter. The tem- perature is so finely balanced one does not easily decide whether to walk upon the sunny or the shady side of the street. It is cool; not cold, not bracing in the ordinary sense, but just the proper tempera- ture for continuous out-of-door life. June does not define it, nor September. It has no synonym. But if you cared to add one more to the many unsuccess- ful attempts to define it in a phrase, you might term it constant delicious weather; to-day, to-morrow, and indefinitely in the future, morally certain to be very much as you would have it if you were to create an air and a sky exactly to suit his or her majesty yourself. But even here man is a clothes-wearing anim.al. There is a coolness pervading the most brilliant sunshine. Remembering this, the most ap- prehensive person will soon discover that there is no menace in the dry, pure and gently invigorating air of the Southern California winter. It wins the inva- lid to health by enticing him to remain out-of-doors.
Ranging from warm sea-level to peaks of frigid in- clemency, this varied state offers many climatic grada- tions, whose contrasts are nearly always in view. In winter you may sit upon almost any veranda in South- ern California and lift your eyes from the brilliant green of ornamental trees and shrubs, from orchards where fruits ripen in heavy clusters, and from the variegated bloom of gardens, to ragged horizon-lines buried deep in snow. There above is a frozen waste, an Alpine terror. Here below is summer, shorn of summer languor. And between may be found any modification that could reasonably be sought, each steadfast in its own characteristics. 57
The smallest of these communities is great in con- tent. Literally couched beneath his own vine and tiij-tree, plucking from friendly boughs deUcious fruits, finding in the multifarious products of the soil nearly everything needful in domestic economy, and free from most of the ills that flesh was thought to be heir to, what wonder that the Californian envies no man, nor ever looks wistfully over the sierra's crest toward the crowded cities and precarious farm-
ing regions of the East? An uplifting environment for a home, truly, fit to breed a race worthy of the noblest empire among the States. There is work to be done, in the house and the field, but in such an air and scene it is as near a transfiguration of labor as can well be imagined. Here it is indeed a poor boy or girl who has not a pony on which to scamper 58
about, or lacks liberty for such enjoyment. And every year there comes a period of holiday, an inter- val when there is no planting or harvesting to be done, no picking or drying or packing of fruit, a recuperating spell of nature, when the weather is just as glorious as ever, and the mountains and ocean beckon seductively to the poet that is in the heart of every unharassed man and woman and child. Then for weeks the canons are dotted with tents, where the mountain-torrent foams and spreading sycamores are festooned with mistletoe; and the trout of the stream and the game of the forest have their solstice of woe. Or, on the rim of the sea, thousands of merry hearts, both young and old, congregate and hold high carnival. When the campers return to shop and field it is not by reason of any inclemency of weather, but because their term of holiday has ex- pired. Then come the tourists, and pale fugitives from the buffets of Boreas, to wander happily over hillside and shore in a land unvexed by the tyranny of the seasons.
The most seductive of lands, and the most tena- cious in its hold upon you. You have done but little, and a day has fled; have idled, walked, ridden, sailed a little, have seen two or three of the thousand things to be seen, and a week, a month, is gone. You could grieve that such golden burdenless hours should ever go into the past, did they not flow from an in- exhaustible fount. For to be out all day in the care- less freedom of perfect weather; to ramble over ruins of a former occupation; to wander through gardens and orchards; to fish, to shoot, to gather flowers from the blossoming hillslopes; to explore a hundred fascinating retreats of mountain and shore; to lounge on the sands by the surf until the sun drops into the sea; all this is permitted by the Southern California winter.
59
SAN DIEGO AND VICINITY.
Fringing a bay that for a dozen miles glows like a golden mirror below its purple rim, San Diego stands upon a slope that rises from the water to the summit of a broad mesa. In front the bold promontory of Point Loma juts into the sea, overlapping the low slender peninsular of Coronado, and between them lies the narrow entrance to this most beautiful of harbors. One may be happy in San Diego and do nothing. Its soft sensuous beauty and caressing air create in the breast a new sense of the joy of mere existence. But there is, besides, abundant material for the sight-seer. Here, with many, begins the first leisurely and intimate acquaintance with those objects of unfailing interest, the growing orange and lemon. Orchards are on every hand; not in the profusion that characterizes some of the more extensively developed localities, but still abundant, and inferior to none in fruitage. Paradise Valley, the Valley of the Sweet- water, where may be seen the great inigaling-fount of so many farms, and Mission Valley, where the San Diego River flows and the dismantled ruin of the oldest California mission, elbowed by a modern In- dian school, watches over its ancient but still vigorous trees, afford the most impressive examples of these growing fruits in the immediate neighborhood. El Cajon Valley is celebrated for its vineyards. At Na- tional City, four miles away, are extensive olive- orchards. Fifteen miles to the south the Mexican village of Tia Juana attracts many visitors, whose average experience consists of a pleasant railroad-ride to the border and a half-hour's residence in a foreign country; but the noble coast scenery of Point of Rocks, the boundary monument, and remarkable hot sulphur springs are reached by a short and attractive drive from that little Lower California town. 6i
The diverse allurements of mountain and valley, anil northward-stretching shore of alternating bt-ach ami hijjii ronunanding blulT, are innumerable, but the calalojjue of tiicir names does not fall within the province of these pages. One marvelous bit of coast, thirteen miles away and easily reached by railway or carriage-drive, must however have specific mention. It is l.a JoUa I'ark. Here a plateau overlooks the open sea from a bluff that tumbles precipitously to a nar- row strip of sand. The face of the cliff for a dis- tance of several miles has been sculptured by the waves into most curious forms. It projects in rect- angular blocks, in stumps, stools, benches, and bas- reliefs that strikingly resemble natural objects, their surfaces chiseled intaglio with almost intelligible de- vices. Loosened fragments have worn deep sym- metrical wells, or pot-holes, to which the somewhat inadequate Spanish-Indian name of the place is due; and what seem at first glance to be enormous bowlders loosely piled, with spacious interstices through which the foam spurts and crashes, are the selfsame solid clifT, carved and polished, but not wholly separated by the sea. Some of the cavities are mere pockets lined with mussels and minute weeds with calcareous leaves. Others are commodious secluded apart- ments, quite commonly used as dressing-rooms by bathers. The real caverns can be entered dry-shod only at lowest tide. The cliff where they lie is gnawed into columns, arches and aisles, through which one cave after another may be seen, dimly lighted, dry and practicable. Seventy five feet is probably their utmost depth. They are the culmi- nation of this extraordinary work of an insensate sculptor. There are alcove-niches, friezes of small gray and black mosaic, horizontal bands of red, and high-vaulted roofs. If the native California Indians had possessed a poetic temperament they must cer- 62
tainly have performed religious rites in such a temple. It would have been a godsend to the Druids. The water is as pellucid as a mountain-spring. The flush of the waves foams dazzling white and pours through the intricacies of countless channels, tunnels and fissures in overwhelming torrents, and in the brief intervals between ebb and rise the bottom of rock and clean sand gleams invitingly through a depth of many feet. Sea-anemones are thickly clustered upon the lower levels, their tinted petal-filaments scintil- lating in the shallow element, or closed bud-like while waiting for the flood. Little crabs scamper in disorderly procession through the crevices at your approach, and that univalve with the ornamental shell, known everywhere as the abalone, is also abundant. Seaweeds, trailing in and out with the movement of the tide, flame through the transparent water in twenty shades of green, and schools of gold- fish flash in the swirling current, distorted by the varying density of the eddies into great blotches of brilliant color, unquenchable firebrands darting hither and yon in their play. They are not the true gold- fish whose habitat is a globular glass half-filled with tepid water, but their hue is every whit as vivid. In the time of flowers this whole plateau is covered with odorous bloom.
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Then there is Coronado. Connected by ferry and by railroad with the mainland, Coronado bears the same relation to San Diego that fashionable suburbs bear to many Kastern cities, and at the same time affords recreative pleasures which the inhabitants of those suburbs must go far to seek. Here the business-man dwells in Elysian bowers by the sea, screened from every reminder of business cares, yet barely a mile distant from office or shop. Locking up in his desk at evening all the prosaic details of bank or factoiy, of railroad-rates, of the price of stocks and real es- tate and wares, in ten minutes he is at home on what is in effect a South Sea island, where brant and curlew and pelican fly, and not all the myriad dwell- ings and the pomp of their one architectural splen- dor can disturb the air of perfect restfulness and sweet rusticity. From the low ridge of the narrow peninsular may be seen, upon the one liand, a wide- sweeping mountainous arc, dipping to the pretty city that borders the bay. Upon the other, the unob- structed ocean rolls. Upon the ocean side, just be- yond reach of the waves, stands the hotel whose magnificence has given it leading rank among the famous hostelries of the world. It is built around a quadrangular court, ox patio — a dense garden of rare shrubs and flowering plants more than an acre in ex- tent. Upon this/a^/i? many sleeping rooms open by way of the circumjacent balcony, besides fronting upon ocean and bay, and a glass-covered veranda, extending nearly the entire length of the western frontage, looks over the sea toward the peaks of the distant Coronado Islands. On the north lies Point Loma and the harbor-entrance, on the east San Diego Bay and city, and on the south Glorietta Bay and the mountains of Mexico, beyond a broad half-circle of lawn dotted with semi-tropical trees and bright beds of flowers, and bordered by hedges of cypress. 64
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Here the fisherman has choice of surf or billow or the still surface of sheltered waters ; of sailboat, skiff or iron pier. The gunner finds no lack of sea-fowl, quail or rabbits. The bather may choose between surf and huge tanks of salt-water, roofed with glass, fringed with flowers, and fitted with de- vices to enhance his sport. The sight-seer is pro- vided with a score of special local attractions, and all the resources of the mainland are at elbow. These diversions are the advantage of geographical location, independent of the social recreations one naturally finds in fashionable resorts, at hotels liber- ally managed and frequented by representatives of the leisure class.
The climate of the coast is necessarily distin- guished from that of the interior by greater humid- ity, and the percentage of invisible mois.ure i i the air, however small, must infallibly be greater at Cor- onado than upon the Heights of San Diego, and greater in San Diego than at points farther removed Irom the sea. This is the clue to the only flaw in the otherwise perfect coast climate, and it is a flaw only to supersensitive persons, invalids of a certain class. The consumptive too often delays taking advantage of the benefits of climatic change until he has reached a point when nicest discrimination has become necessary. The purest, driest and most rarefied air compatible with the complications of disease is his remedy, if remedy e.xist for him. And the driest and most rarefied air is not to be looked for by the sea. Yet tlie difference is not great enough to be brusquely prohibitory. No one need fear to go to the coast, and a shoit stay will determine whether or no the relief that is sought can there be found; while for many derangements it is preferable to the interior. I'"or him who is not in precarious condition the foregoing observations have 67
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no sipnificnnce. He will find the climate of all SoiUlKin California u mere gradation of glory. Hut jK-rhaps around San Diego, and at one or two other coast points, there will seem to be a spirit even s:en- tler than that which rules the hills.
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CAPISTRANO.
A tiny quaint village in a fertile valley that slopes from a mountain-wall to the sea, unkempt and mon- grel, a jumble of adobe-ruins, whitewashed hovels and low semi-modern structures, straggling like a moraine from the massive ruin of the Mission San Juan Capistrano. The mission dominates the val- ley. Go where you will, the eye turns to this co- lossal fragment, a forlorn but vital thing; broken, crushed, and yet undying. Swarthy faces are min- gled with the pale Saxon type, the music of the Spanish tongue is heard wherever you hear human speech, and from behind the lattices of the adobes come the tinkle of guitars and the cadence of soft voices in plaintive rhythm. The sun makes black shadows by every house and tree, and sweeps in broad unbroken light over the undulating hills to hazy mountain-tops; ground-squirrels scamper across the way, wild doves start up with whistling wings, and there is song of birds and cry of barnyard fowls. 68
The essence of the scene is passing quiet and peace. The petty noises of the village are powerless to break the silence that enwraps the noble ruin; its dignity is as imperturbable as that of mountain and sea. Never was style of architecture more spontaneously in touch with its environment than that followed by the mission-builders. It is rhythm and cadence and rhyme. It is perfect art. Earthquake has rent, man has despoiled, time has renounced the Mission San Juan Capistrano, yet its pure nobility survives, in- destructible. The tower is fallen, the sanctuary is bare and weather-beaten, the cloisters of the quad- rangle are roofless, and the bones of forgotten pa- dres lie beneath the roots of tangled shrubbery; but the bells still hang in their rawhide lashings, and the cross rises white against the sky. A contemptu- ous century has rolled past, and the whole ambitious and once promising dream of monkish rule has long since ended, but this slow-crumbling structure will not have it so. Like some dethroned and superan- nuated king, whose insistent claim to royal function cloaks him with a certain grandeur, it sits in silent state, too venerable for disrespect and too august for pity.
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STORY OF THK MISSIONS.
In the miildle of the eighteenth century the Span- ish throne, desiring to encourage colonization of its territory of Upper California, then unpeopled save by native Indian tribes, entered into an arrangement with the Order of St. Francis, by virtue of which that order undertook to establish missions in the new country which were to be the nuclei of future villages and cities, to which Spani h subjects were encouraged to emigrate. By the terms of that ar- rangement the Franciscans were to possess the mis- sion properties and their revenues for ten years, which was deemed a sufficient period in which to fairly establish the colonies, when the entire prop erty was to revert to the Spanish government. In point of fact the Franciscans were left in undisputed possession for more than half a century.
The monk chosen to tak; charge of the undertak- ing was Junipero Serra, a man of saintly piety and energetic character, who in childhood desired only 70
that he might be a priest, and in maturity earnestly wishcil to l)c a martyr. Seven years before the De- claration of the Independence of the American Colo- nies, in the early summer of 17^)9, he entered the bay of San Diejjo, 227 years after Cabrillo had dis- covered it for Spain, antl 167 years after it had been surveyed and named by Viscaino, during all which preceding time the countrj' had lain fallow. Within two months Serra had founded a mission near the mouth of the San Diego River, which five years after was removed some six miles up the valley to a point about three miles distant from the present city of San Diego. From that time one mission after an- other was founded, twenty-one in all, from San Diego along the coast as far north as San Francisco. The more important of these were built of stone and a hard-burnt brick that even now will turn the edge of the finest trowel. The labor of their construction was appalling. Brick had to be burnt, stone quar- ried and dressed, and huge timbers for rafters brought on men's shoulders from the mountain for- ests, sometimes thirty miles distant, through rocky canons and over trackless hills. The Indians per- formed most of this labor, under direction of the fathers. These Indians were tractable, as a rule. Once, or twice at most, they rose against their masters, but the policy of the padres was kind- ness and forgiveness, although it must be inferred that the condition of the Indians over whom they claimed spiritual and temporal authority was a form of slaver)', without all the cruelties that usually pertain to enforced servitude. They were the bondsmen of the padres, whose aim was to convert them to Chris- tianity and civilization, and many thousands of them were persuaded to cluster around the missions, their daughters becoming neophytes in the convents, and 72
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the others contributing their labor to the erection of the enormous structures that occupied many acres of ground, and to the industries of agricuhure, cattle- raising, and a variety of manufactures. There were, after the primitive fashion of the time, woolen mills, wood working and blacksmith shops, and such other manufactories as were practicable in the existing state of the arts, which could be made profitable. The mission properties soon became enormously valuable, their yearly revenues sometimes amounting to $2,000,000. The exportation of hides was one of the most important items, and merchant-vessels from our own Atlantic seaboard, from England and from Spain, sailed to the California coast for car- goes of that commodity. Dana's romantic and universally read "Two Years Before the Mast" is the record of such a voyage. He visited California more than half a century ago, and found its quaint Spanish-Indian life full of the picturesque and ro- mantic.
The padres invariably selected a site favorable for defense, commanding views of entrancing scenery, on the slopes of the most fertile valleys and conven- ient to the running water which was the safeguard of agriculture in a country of sparse and uncertain rainfall. The Indians, less warlike in nature than the roving tribes east of the Rockies, were almost universally submissive. If there was ever an Arca- dia it was surely there and then. Against the blue of the sky, unspotted by a single cloud through many months of the year, snow-crowned mountains rose in dazzling relief, while oranges, olives, figs, dates, bananas, and every other variety of temperate and sub-tropical fruits which had been introduced by the Spaniards, ripened in a sun whose ardency was tem- pered by the dryness of the air into an equability like that of June, while the regularly alternating breeze 73
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tliai daily swept to and from ocean and mountain made summer and winter almost indistinguishable seasons, tlien as nt>w, save for the welcome rains that characterize the latter. At the foot of the valley, hetween the mountain-slopes, and never more than a few miles away, the waters of the Pacific rocked placidly in the brilliant sunlight or broke in foam upon a broad beach of sand. In such a scene Spaniard and Indian plied their peaceful vocations, the one in picturesque national garb, the other almost innocent of clothing, while over and around them lay an atmosphere of sacredness which even to this day clings to the broken arches and crumbling walls. Over the peaceful valleys a veritable angelus rang. The mellow bells of the mission churches summoned dusky hordes to ceremonial devotion. Want and strife were imknown. Prosperity and brotherly love ruled as never before.
It is true they had their trials. Earthquakes, which have been almost unknown in California for a quarter of a century, were then not uncommon, and were at times disastrous, /iio de los Temblores was the name of a stream derived from the frequency of earth rockings in the region through which it flowed; and in the second decade of our century the dreaded temblor upset the 120-foot tower of the Mission San Juan Capistrano and sent it crashing down through the roof upon a congregation, of whom nearly forty perished. Those, too, were lawless times upon the main. Pirates, cruising the South Seas in quest of booty, hovered about the California coast, and then the mission men stood to their arms, while the women and children fled to the interior cafions with their portable treasures. One buccaneer, Bouchard, re- pulsed in his attempt upon Dolores and Santa Bar- bara, descended successfully upon another mission and dwelt there riotously for a time, carousing, and 74
destroying such valuables as he could not carry away, while the entire population quaked in the % forest along the Rio Trabuco. This was the same luckless San Juan Capistrano, six years after the earthquake visitation. Then, too, there were bicker- -* ings of a political nature, and struggles for place, after the rule of Mexico had succeeded to that of Spain, but the common people troubled themselves little with such matters.
The end of the Franciscan dynasty came suddenly with the secularization of the mission property by the Mexican government to replete the exhausted treas- uries of Santa Ana. .Sadly the fathers forsook the scene of their long labors, and silently the Indians melted away into the wilderness, and the darkness of their natural ways, save such as had intermarried with the families of -Spanish soldiers and colonists. The churches are now, for the most part, only de- cayed legacies and fragmentary reminders of a time whose like the world will never know again. Save only three or four, preserved by reverent hands, where modern worshipers, denationalized and clad in American dress, still kneel and recite their orisons, the venerable ruins are forsaken by all except the tourist and the antiquarian, and their bells are silent forever. One can not but feel the pity of it, for in the history of zealous servants of the cross there is hardly a more noteworthy name than that of Junipero Serra, and in the annals of their heroic endeavor there is no more signal instance of absolute fail- ure than his who founded the California missions, aside from the perpetuation of his saintly name. They accomplished nothing, so far as can now be seen. The descendar.ts of their converts, what few have survived contact with the Anglo-Saxon, have no discoverable worth, and, together with the greater 75
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part of the orijjinal Spanish population, have faded away, as if a bliy;ht had fallen upon them.
But so long as one stone remains upon another, and a single arch of the missions still stands, an atmosphere will abide there, something that does not come from mountain, or vale, or sea, or sky; the spirit of consecration, it may be; but if it is only the aroma of ancient and romantic associations, the sug- gestion of a peculiar phase of earnest and simple human life and quaint environment that is forever past, the mission-ruins must remain among the most interesting monuments in all our varied land, and will amply repay the inconsiderable effort and outlay required to enable the tourist to view them. San Diego, the oldest, San Luis Rey, the most poetically environed, San Juan Capistrano, of most tragic memor)', San Gabriel, the most imposing, and Santa Barbara, the most perfectly preserved, will suffice the casual sight-seer. These also lie comparatively near together, and are all easily accessible; the first three being located on or adjacent to the railway-line between Los Angeles and San Diego, the fourth standing but a few miles from the first-named city, and the fifth being almost in the heart of the famous resort that bears its name.
Reluctantly will the visitor tear himself from the encompassing charm of their roofless arches and rem- 76
iniscent shadows. They are a dream of the Old World, indifferent to the sordidness and turbulency of the New; one of the few things that have been spared by a relentless past, whose habit is to sweep the things of yesterday into oblivion. Almost can one hear 4 the echoes of their sweet bells ringing out to heathen thousands the sunset and the dawn.
LOS ANGELES.
One can hardly cross this continent of ours with- out gaining a new idea of the immense historical sig- nificance of the westward yearning of the Saxon, who in two and a half centuries has marched from Plymouth Rock to the Sunset Sea, and has subordinated every other people in his path from shore to shore. The Spaniard was a world-conqueror in his day, and mas- ter of California before the stars and stripes had been devised. The story of his subjugation of the south- western portion of the New World is the most brill- iant in modern history. It is a story of unexampled deeds of arms. Sword and cross, and love of fame and gold, are inextricably interwoven with it. The Saxon epic is a more complex tale of obscure hero- ism, of emigrant cavalcades, of pioneer homes, of business enterprise. The world may never know sublimer indifference to fatigue, suffering, and death than characterized the Spanish invaders of America for more than two centuries. Whatever the personal considerations that allured them, the extension of Spanish empire and the advancement of the cross amid barbarians was their effectual purpose. The conquistador was a crusader, and with all his cruelty and rapacity he is a splendid figure of incarnate force. But the westward-flowing wave of Saxon conquest has set him, too, aside. In this fair land of Califor- nia, won at smallest cost, and seemingly created for him, his descendants to-day are little more than a 77
viitterctl fringe upon the edges of the displacing civ- ilization. He has lift his niaik iii)<)n every mount- ain and valley, in nanus that will long endure, but himself has been sup,. lanted. He has not lied. He has di iiinished, faded away.
In 1 78 1 he named {U\}i c'\iy J' uf/'/o </i' /a A\/)i(r t/<- li>s Angi-/t-s ('I'own of the (,)ueen of the Angels). The ."sa.von, the Man of lUisincss no v supreme, has re- tained oidy the last two words of that high-sounding appellation; and hardly a greater proportion remains of the original atmosphere of this old Spanish town. Vou will find a Sp.inish (Me.\ican) quarter, unkempt and adobe, containing elements of the picturesque; and in the modern portion of the city a restaurant or two where English is spoken in halting fashion by very pretty dark skinned girls, and you may satisfy, if not your appetite, perhaps a long-slanding curiosity regarding tortillas, and frijolcs, and c/iili con came. As for ta males, they are, as with us, a matter of curb stone speculation. Senores, senoras and senori/as are plentifully encountered upon the streets, but are not, in general, distinguished by any peculiarity of attire. Upon the borders of the city one finds more vivid types, and there the jucal, a poor mud-hovel thatched with straw, is not quite extinct. The words Spanish and Mexican are commonly us:d in California to dis- tinguish a racial difference. Not a few of the ^ pan- ish soldiery and colonists originally took wives from among the native Indians. Their offspring has had its charms for later comers of still other races, and a complexity of mixture has resulted. The term Mex- ican is generally understood to apply to this amalga- mation, those of pure Castilian descent preferring to be known as Spanish. The latter, numerically a small class, represent high types, and the persistency of the old strain is such that the poorest Mexican is to 78
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a ciTtaiii manner horn. I le wears a contented mien, as if his I )iojjencs-tub anil his imperceptible larder were reyal possessions, and he does not easily part with dijjnity and self-respect.
The existence of these descendants of the Con- querors side by side with the exponents of the new rtginif is one of the charms of Los Angeles. It has others in historic vein. After its first overland con- nection with the East, by way of the Santa Fe Trail, it rapidly took on the character of a wild border- town; the influx of adventurers and the stimulation of an unwonted commerce transforming the Spanish idyl into a motley scene of remunerative trade, aban- doned carousal and desperate personal conflict. Its romantic career of progress and amelioration to its present enviable estate is marked by monuments that still endure. Fremont the Pathfinder here first raised the stars and stripes in 1846, and his after- residence as governor of the State is well preserved. And Winfield Scott Hancock, as a young captain of the army, had quarters in this historic town.
In modern interest it stands for a type of the ma- terial development that belongs to our day. In i860 it numbered 4,500 inhabitants; in 1880, 11,000; in 1891, more than 50,000. Surrounded by hundreds of cultivated farms, whose varied products form the basis of its phenomenal activity and prosperity, it is a really great city. It is well paved, well lighted, and abundantly served by intramural railways. It has parks of extraordinary beauty, and avenues shaded by the eucalyptus and the pepper, that most esthetic of trees. Outside the immediate thorough- fares of trade the streets are bordered by attractive homes, fronted by grounds set with palm and orange and cypress, and blooming with flowers throughout the year. It is backed by the mountains that are always present in a California landscape, and fifteen 80
miles away lies a vista of the sea, dotted with island- peaks.
PASADENA.
Just outside the limits of Los Angeles, intimately connected by railway and street-car lines, is Pasa- dena. For the origin of the name you may choose between the imputed Indian signilication, Crown of the Valley, and a corruption of the Spanish Paso de Eden (Threshold of Eden). It is in any event the crown of that Eden, the San Gabriel Valley, which nestles warmly in its groves and rose-bowers below lofty bulwarks tipped with snow. Here an Eastern multitude makes regular winter home in modest cottage or imposing mansion, and nearly in the cen- ter of the valley, commanding a full circular sweep of its extent, stands an eminence crowned by the Raymond Hotel, of tourist fame. Every fruit and flower and every ornameni.al tree and shrub known to Southern California is represented in the elaborate grounds of this little realm. It is a playg ound of wealth, a Nob Hill of Paradise, blessed home of happy men and women and children who prefer this to vaunted foreign lands, aside from the discom- forts of crossing the Styx of a stormy Atlantic.
The extensive ranch owned by Lucky Baldwin lies near at hand, with its great vineyards, orchards, wineries and horse-training grounds. And it is from Pasadena one makes the ascent of Mount Wilson, and Mount Lowe.
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RIVKKSIDE AND VICINITY.
A locality renowned for oranges, and oranges, and still more oranges, white and odorous with the bloom of them, yellow with the sheen of them, and rich with the gains of them; culminating in a busy little city overhung by the accustomed mountain-battle- ments and pendant to a glorious avenue many miles in length, lineil with tall eucalyptus, drooping pep- per, and sprightly magnolia-trees in straight lines far as eye can see, and broken only by short lat- eral driveways through palm, orange and cypress to mansion homes. The almost continuous citrus- groves and vineyards of Riverside are the result of fifteen or twenty years of co-operative effort, sup- plemented by some preponderating advantages of location.
It is the clima.x of the fair region that lies between Los Angeles and Redlands, through which, for the convenience of tourists, the trains of the Southern California Railway twice make daily circuit. The diagram of this circuit is a cross-belt or rough fig- ure 8, whose shape, associated with the idea of a comprehensive and speedy journey, is responsible for a name greatly relished in a "horsey" State: the Kite-shaped Track. Starting from Los Angeles, nearly thirty communities of this famous region are thus traversed, the most celebrated of which are, in order, Rivera, Santa F6 Springs, FuIIerton, Ana- heim, Orange, Santa Ana, South Riverside, River- side, Colton, San Bernardino, Arrowhead, East Highland, Mentone, Redlands, North Ontario, Po- mona, Monrovia, Santa Anita and Pasadena.
REDONDO AND SANTA MONICA.
These are two popular beaches near Los Angeles, to both which frequent trains are run daily. Equipped with superb hotels and furnished with the many minor 82
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attractions that congregate at Iioliday-resorts, they arc tlie HriglUon ami Manhattan beaches of tliis coast, enlianced by venlure and a softer clime, and a picturesquely varied shine. Holh are locally cele- brated among lovers of bathing, boating and fish- ing. Santa Monica is the California home of polo. Redondo is the point of departure for Santa Cata- lina Island.
S.WrA CATALl.N'A ISLAND.
'rwenty miles off the coast it rises, like Capri, from the sea, a many-peaked mountain-cap, varying in witlth from half a mile to nine miles, and more than twenty long. Its bold cliff-shores are broken by occasional pockets rimmed by a semicircular beach of sand. The most famous of these is Avalon, quite the most frequented camping-ground of Southern California. In midsummer its two hotels are filled to overflowing, and in the hundreds of tents clus- tered by the water's edge as many as 3,000 pleasure- seekers are gathered in the height of the season. Summer is the period of Santa Catalina's greatest animation, for then, as in other lands, comes vaca- tion-time. But there is even less variation of season than on the mainland, and the nights are soft and alluring, because the seaward-blowing mountain-air is robbed of all its chill in passing over the equable waters. Here after nightfall verandas and the beach are still thronged. The tiny harbor is filled with pleasure-craft of every description, from rowboats to commodious yachts, and hundreds of bathers disport in the placid element. Wonderful are the waters of Avalon, blue as a Mediterranean sky and astonish- ingly clear. Over the side of your skiff you may gaze down through a hundred feet of transparency to where emerald weeds wave and myriad fishes, blue and brown and flaming red, swim over pebble
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and shell. Or, climbing the overhanging cliffs, you gain the fish eagle's view of the life that teems in \vater-ile|iths, anil looking down half a thousand feet upon the fisherman in his boat see the bright hued fishes flashing far beneath him. He seems to hang suspended in the sky.
Notable fishing is to be had. The barracuda is plentiful; likewise the yellow-tail, or sea-salmon, also generally taken by trolling, and frequently tip- ping a truthful scale at fifty pounds. Jewfishing is the most famous sport here, and probably the most e-xciting known anywhere to the hand-fisherman. It is commonly taken, and in weight ranges from 2oo to 400 pounds. The fisherman who hooks one is frequently dragged in his skiff for several miles, and finds himself nearly as much e.\hausted as the fish when it finally comes to gaff.
Perhaps the greatest novelty of a trip to Santa Catalina, for most travelers, is the great number of flying-fish that inhabit its waters. At only a few miles' distance from the mainland they begin to leap from beneath the bows of the steamer, singly, by twos and by half-dozens, until one wearies of count- ing, and skim over the waves like so many swallows. The length of flight of which this poetic fish is capable proves usually a surprise, for in spite of its abundance off the Southern California coast its pre- cise character is none too generally known. In size, form, and color it may be roughly compared to the mackerel. Its "wings" are muscular fins whose spines are connected by a light but strong mem- brane, and are four in number. The hindermost pair are quite small, mere butterfly-wings of stouter fiber; the foremost pair attain a length of seven or eight inches, and when extended are two inches or more in breadth. Breaking from the water at a high rate of speed, but at a very low angle, the flying- 86
fish extends these wing-Hke fins and holds them rigid, like the set wings of a soaring hawk. With the lower flange of its deeply forked tail, which at first drags lightly, it sculls with a convulsive wriggle of the whole body that gives it the casual appear- ance of actually winging its way. The additional impulse thus acquired lifts it entirely from the water, over whose surface it then scales without further efTort for a long distance, until, losing in momentum and in the sustaining pressure of the air beneath its outstretched fins, it again touches the water, either to abruptly disappear or by renewed sculling to pro- long its flight. Often it remains above the waves until the eye can no longer distinguish its course in the distance.
In the less-frequented portions of the island the wild goat is still common. But not long ago a party of hunters, better armed than educated, wrought havoc with the domestic sheep that are pastured there; and now if you wish to hunt the goat you must first procure a permit, and to obtain that you must adduce evidence of your ability to tell the one from the other upon sight. This precautionary measure tends to the preservation of both sheep and goat, and the real sportsman as well as the herdsman is benefited thereby.
Three times a week steamers for Santa Catalina leave the pier at Redondo Beach, connecting with trains that are run from Los Angeles. The exhila- rating ocean-ride and the unique pleasures of the isl- and can not be too strongly commended. 87
SANTA HARUaRA.
Saint Harbaia is, in Spain, vcncrateil astlu- [lation- ess of gunpowder and coast-defenses, and the invo- cation of her name seems to have occurred in the lijjht of a desirable precaution to its founder, who was so fond of building missions by the sea; although, like one of our own heroes, who supplemented his trust in Providence by protecting his ammunition from the rain, he kept here, as at a number of other points, a garrison of soldiers and a few small cannon.
It was long known the world over as " The Amer- ican Mentone," because in seeking a term to con- vey its characteristics some comparison with cele- brated resorts of Europe was thought necessary, and this particular comparison most fitting. Such defi- nition is no longer required. Santa Barbara is a name that everywhere evokes the soft picture of a rose- buried spot, more than a village, less than a city, ris- ing gently from the sea-rim by way of shaded avenue and plaza to the foot of the gray Santa Ynez Mount- ains, above whose peaks the condor loves to soar; where, when with us the winter winds are most bitter and ice and snow work a wicked will, every year they hold a riotous carnival of flowers, a unique Arcadian holiday of triumph. And behind all that lies an end less variety of winsomeness. Not idly does the brigh stingless air lure one to seek a new pleasure for each succeeding day. The flat beach is broken by rocky points where the surf spouts in white columns with deafening roar, and above it lies a long mesa dotted with live-oaks that looks down upon the little dream- ing mission city and far oceanward; and on the other hand the mountain-slopes beckon to innumerable glens, and, when the rains have come, to broad hill- sides of green and banks of blossom. There are long level drives by the shore, and up the prolific 88
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valley In famcnis orchard- ranches; and Montecito, a fairylanil of lionics, is close at liand.
Koiir of the Channel Islands lie opposite Santa Barbara: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel. The last three are only less attractive by nature than Santa Catalina, of which mention was made in its place, and although equal facilities do not exist for the tourist, many persons find their way there by means of a fishing-boat which, two or three times a week, leaves Santa Barbara for the island tishing-grounds. These islands, now permanently inhabited only by sheep-herders who tend flocks of many thousands, were once populated by a primitive people whose burial-mounds, as yet only partly ex- humed by casual visitors, are rich in archxological treasures.
Santa Barbara lies northwest from Los Angeles, on a branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It is the only one of the great resorts of Southern Califor- nia that is not located upon a proprietary line of the Santa Fe Rottte.
OSTRICH-FARMING.
At Coronado, Santa Monica and two or three other points are exhibited troops of ostriches confined in paddocks. They are generally regarded as a mere curiosity by the visitor, but really represent an estab- lished California industry. The original farm lies on the border of the town of Fallbrook, a dozen miles northeast from Oceanside, beyond the poetic Mission San Luis Key, through whose incomparable valley the stage-road leads. Here, where he roams with scores of his fellows over a quarter-section of hill and dale, the ostrich ceases to be exotic. He is at home, and his habits and personality become an easy and entertaining study. This Fallbrook ostrich-farm has been in operation since 1883, the locality having 90
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been found to oflfer conditions closely resembling that portion of South Africa in which ostrich farming has so long been a source of wealth. Breeding has been carried on until it has been definitely established that a California-bred ostrich is in every respect the equal of the imported African. There are about one hun- dred ostriches on this ranch, many having been sold, and others being absent on exhibition. Every phase of this remarkable bird, which in maturity yields ev- ery eight months 2Co of those costly plumes that are coveted by maids and dames, and all the novelties of its manipulation, are exhibited upon a large scale.
WINTER SPORTS.
Where out-of-door life is the rule, there being nei- ther frost nor chill throughout the day, recreation be- comes a matter of pure selection, unhampered by any climatic prohibition outside the relatively infrequent rainstorm. A few enthusiasts make a point of tak- ing a daily dip in the surf, but the practice does not reach the proportions of a popular pastime in mid- winter. Cross-country riding finds then its perfect season, the whole land being transformed into a gar- den, over enough of which the horseman is free to wander. Happy must he be who knows a purer sport than to gallop, either singly or with comrades, in fra- grant morning air over a fresh sod spangled with poppy, violet, forget-me-not, larkspur, and alfileria; bursting through dense thickets of lilac and mustard to cross an intervening highway; dipping to verdant meadow-vales; skirting orchards heavy with fruit, and mounting tree-capped knolls that look off to glimmers of sea between the slopes of the hills. Coaching has its season then, as well, and the horn of the tallyho is frequently heard. For such as like to trifle with the snows from which they have fled, the foothills are at hand, serried with tall firs in 91
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scattering nmwths or dense shadowy jungles, top- pinjj lafions where the wagon-trail crosses and re- cros^es a stream by pleasant fords and the ciested monntain-tiuail skulks over the ridge above one's head. There may be had climbing to suit every taste, touching extremes of chaotic tangle of chap- arral and crag. There are cliffs over which the clear mountain-water tumbles sheer to great depths; notches through which the distant virginal cones of the highest peaks of the mother range may be seen in whitest eimine, huge pines dotting their drifts like petty clumps of weed. Underfoot, too, on the northerly slopes, is snow, just over the ridge from where the sun is as warm and the air as gentle as in the valley, save only the faintest sense of added vigor and rarefaction. So near do these extremes lie, and yet so effectually separated, you may thrust into the mouth of a snow-man a rose broken from the bush an hour or two before, and pelt him with or- anges plucked at the very mouth of the canon. And one who is not too susceptible may comfortably lin- ger until the sun has set and above the lower dusky peaks the loftier ones glow rose-pink in the light of its aftershine; until the moon lights the fissures of the canon with a ghostly radiance against which the black shadows of the cliffs fall like ink-blots.
If barracuda, Spanish mackerel, yellow-tail or jewfish should not be hungry, trout are plentiful in the mountain-streams. Mountain and valley quail, and snipe, furnish the most reliable sport for the average gunner. Good shots do not consider it a great feat to bring a hundred to bag in a day's out- ing. Ducks and geese are innumerable. Whole vast meadows are sometimes whitened with snow-geese, like a field with daisies, and the air above is filled with flying thousands. Deer are easily found by those who know how to hunt them, and mountain- 92
lions and cinnamon bear are not infrequently shot in the hills.
The grizzly was once exceedingly common. One of the great sports of the old niissiou days was to hunt the grizzly on horseback with the riala for sole weapon, and it is of record that in u single neighbor- hood thirty or forty of these formidable brutes were sometimes captured in a night by roping, precisely as the modern cowboy ropes a steer; the secret of the sportsmen's immunity lying in the fact that the bear was almost simultaneously lassoed from different sides and in tliat manner rigidly pinioned. But Ursus horribilis has long since retreated to deep solitudes, where his occasional pursuers, far from approaching him with a rawhide noose, go armed with heavy re- peating-rifles, and even thus equipped are not eager to encounter him at very close range.
Cricket is naturally a favorite diversion among the many young Englishmen who have located upon ranches; and yachting and polo do not want for devotees.
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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.
IV' Northern California is commonly meant all that portion north of the six lower- most counties. The distinction has yet no political significance, but is generally recognized. To be geographically exact, the present stage is mainly confined to the middle of the State. Upon quitting Los Angeles a gradual relapse into aridity soon becomes apparent, until again you are fairly on a desert over whose flat dry sands the water mirage loves to hover, although it no longer mocks parched perishing caravans as in former days. Rail- roads have robbed these wastes of their terror, and oases here and there mark the homes of irrepressible settlers. This barren quickly gives place to the Tehachapi Pass, a scenic maze of detours and invo- lutions leading down into vast irrigated lands in the fertile valley of the San Joaquin. At Berenda a short branch diverges eastward to Raymond, from which point stages ply to the renowned valley of the Sierra Nevada Range, whose majestic beauty is second only to that of the Grand Canon of the Colorado.
All the world has heard of the Yosemite, of its cataract that plunges 1,500 feet sheer in one of its three downward leaps, of its thread-like cascade that bends to the wind through goo feet of descent, of its colossal domes, spires and arches of bare 94
granite contrasted with soft tones of green forest and silver lake; and of the Big Trees of the Mariposa Grove, where more than three hundred specimens of the Sequoia giganteiz are scattered over an area of several thousand acres. This is the regular ap roach to those scenes, of which the barest mention should surely suffice, their description having passed into the literature of every language.
Beyond Berenda widening meadows slope to a placid inlet of the sea, whose winding shore leads to Oakland Pier. Here a ferry crosses the bay to the city of San Francisco.
Numberless matters of interest in this region, more or less widely known and certain to be brought to the attention of the traveler en route, must be omit- ted from the present account. The wise traveler, blessed with leisure, will stop by the way and look about him. Here is a State whose seaboard is as long as that which stretches from Massachusetts to Georgia, whose mountains are overtopped in North America only by those of Alaska, whose mines have astonished the world, whose wealth of cattle and sheep and horses is nearly half as great as that of its mines, whose vales have wrought revelation in gardening and fruit-culture, and whose natural prod- igies and landscape marvels are innumerable. But San Francisco, the region of the Santa Clara Valley, and Lake Tahoe, which overlaps the borderline of Nevada, will be permitted to monopolize the remain- der of the space allotted to California.
SAN FRANCISCO.
The bay cf San Francisco is almost completely encircled by land. The Golden Gate is the tideway, a narrow passage between the extremities of two peninsulars, upon the point of the southernmost of which the city stands.
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Here too the Franciscan mission-builders were first iipt>ii the field, and the present name is a curtailment of Mission df los Dolores t/t- .Xut-slro Padre San Fraii- lisio de Aisis, an ;ippellation commemorative of the sorrows of tlie originator of the ortier. The Mis- sion Dolores, founded in 1776, is still preserved with its little campo saiilo of the dead, a poor unsightly strangled thing, structurally unimposing and wholly wanliTig in the poetic atmosphere of semi-solitude that envelops the missions of Southern California. A modern cathedral overshadows it, and shops and dwellings jostle it. So nearly, in forty years, has all trace of the preceding three-quarters of a century been obliterated. Changed from a Spanish to a Mexican province early in the century, then promptly stripped of the treasures that had been accumulated by monk- ish administration, and subsequently ceded to the United States, California had on the whole a dreamy, quiet life until that famous nugget was found in 1S48. Then followed the era of the Argonauts, seekers of the golden fleece, who flocked by the hundred thou- sand from Eastern towns and cities by way of the plains, the Isthmus and the Cape to dig in the gravel- beds; lawless adventurers in their train. San Fran- cisco practically dates from that period. Its story is a wild one, a working-out of order and stable com- mercial prosperity through chapters that treat of feverish gold-crazy m ^bs, of rapine grappled by the vigilance committee, of insurrection crushed by mil- itary force. And in this prosperity, oddly enough, the production of gold has been superseded in im- portance by other resources; for although California annually yields more precious metal than any other State, the yearly value of its marketed cattle, wool, cereals, roots, fruits, sugar and wines is twice as great, and forms the real commercial basis of the great city of the Pacific Coast, where the railroads of a con- 96
tinent ami the fleets of two oceans clasp hands and complete the circuit of the globe.
As if it were fearful of being hid, it is set upon not one but a score of hills, overlooking land and sea. As you near it, by way of Oakland Ferry, it appears to be built in terraceil rows rising steeply from the water-front; but that is a bit of foreshortening. It is St 11 rather motley in architeciure. Low frame buildings were at first the rule, partly because they were suflicient to the climate and partly in deference to traditions of earthquake; but at length builders ventured taller structures, of brick and stone, and now every year many lofty elegant buildings are added. Certainly no one of them has been shaken down as yet, and possibly the architects have authority for believing that even Vulcan is superannuated and in his second childhood is appeased with a rattle.
It is a city of fair aspect, undulating from the water's edge, where children play upon the broad sands and sea-lions clamber over jutting rocks, to heights of nearly a thousand feet. Overlooking the sands ar.d the seal rocks from a considerable bluff is the Cliff House resort, and towering above that is the magnificent sky-battlement known as Sutro Heights — a private property open to the public and embel- lished by landscape gardens and statuary. Other sights and scenes are the Golden Gate, the park of the same name — a thousand acres of familiar and rare trees, shrubs and flowers — the largest mint in the world, not a few magnificent public buildings, innu- merable phases of active commerce, and the con- trasting life of races representing nearly every nation of the world.
CHINATOWN.
A few steps from your hotel, at the turn of a cor- ner, you come at once upon the city of the Chinese. It is night, and under the soft glow of paper lanterns
A STREET IN CHIN4[0WN.
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and through the gloom of unlighted alleys weaves an oriental throng. Folicemen doubtless stand upon a corner here and there, and small parties of tourists pick their way under lead of professional guides; the remaining thousands are Celestials ail. The scene is of the Chinaman at home, very John, restored to authenticity of type by the countenance of numbers, and so in the twinkling of an eye you become a for- eigner in your own land, a tolerated guest in a fan- tastic realm whose chief apparent hold upon reality is its substratum of genuine wickedness. It is a gro- tesque jumble, a panopticon of peepshows: women shoemakers huddled in diminutive rooms; barbers with marvelous tackle shaving heads and chins, and cleaning ears and eyeballs, while their patrons sit in the constrained attitude of a victim, meekly holding the tray; clerks, armed with a long pointed stick dipped in ink, soberly making pictures of variant spiders in perpendicular rows; apothecaries expound- ing the medicinal virtues of desiccated toad and snake; gold-workers making bracelets of the precious metal to be welded about the arm of him who dares not trust his hoard to another's keep; restaurateurs serving really palatable conserves, with pots of de- lectable tea; shopkeepers vending strange foreign fruits and dubious edibles plucked from the depths of nightmare; merchants displaying infinitude of cu- rious trinkets and elaborate costly wares; worshipers and readers of the book of fate in rich temples niched with uncouth deities ; conventional actors playing interminable histrionics to respectful and appreciative auditors ; gamblers stoically venturing desperate games of chance with cards and dominoes; opium- smokers stretched upon their bunks in a hot atmos- phere heavy with sickening fumes; lepers dependent upon occasional alms flung by a hand that avoids the contamination of contact; female chattels, still fair loo
and innocent of face despite unutterable wrongs, yet no whit above the level of their deep damnation — such is the Chinatown one brings away in lasting memory after three hours of peering, entering, as- cending, descending, crossing, and delving. A very orderly and quiet community, withal, for the Mon- golian is not commonly an obstreperous individual, and his vices are not of the kind that inflame to deeds of violence. He knows no more convivial bowl than a cup of tea. If he quits the gaming-ta- ble penniless, it is with a smile of patient melancholy. And his dens of deepest horror are silent as en- chanted halls.
All except its innermost domestic life may be in- spected by the curious. The guides are discreet, and do not include the lowest spectacles except upon re- quest, although it is equally true that very many vis- itors, regarding the entire experience as one of the conventional sights of travel, go fortified with espe- cial hardihood and release their conductor from con- siderations of delicacy.
The joss-houses, or temples, are hung with pon- derous gilded carvings, with costly draperies and rich machinery of worship. The deities are fearful con- ceptions, ferocious of countenance, bristling with hair and decked with tinseled robes. A tiny vestal- flame burns dimly in a corner, and near it stands a huge gong. An attendant strikes this gong vocifer- ously to arouse the god, and then prostrates himself before the altar, making three salaams. A couple of short billets, half-round, are then tossed into the air to bode good or ill luck to you according as they fall upon the one or the other side. A good augury hav- ing been secured by dint of persistent tossing, a quiverful of joss-sticks is next taken in hand and dextrously shaken until three have fallen to the floor. The sticks are numbered, and correspond to para*
praphs in a fatc-book that is next resorted to, and you an- ultimately informed that you will live for forty years to come; that you will marry within two years, and, if your sex and air seem to countenance such a venture, that you will shortly make enormous win- ninj^s at poker Whatever of genuine solemnity may cloak the Heathen Chinee in his own relations to his bewhiskered deities, he undoubtedly tips the wink to them when the temple is invaded by itinerant sight- seers. The smooth, spectacled interpreter of desti- nies pays $5,000 3 year for the privilege of purveying such mummeries, and hardly can the Heathen Chi- nee himself repress a twinkle of humor at the termi- nation of a scene in which he so easily comes off best, having fairly outdone his Caucasian critic in cynicism, and for a price.
In the theater he will be found, perhaps contrary to expectation, to take a serious view of art. You are conducted by a tortuous underground passage of successive step-ladders and narrow ways, past innu- merable bunk-rooms of opium-smokers, to th^ stage itself, where your entrance creates no disturbance. The Chinese stage is peculiar in that while the act- ors are outnumbered ten to one by supernumeraries, musicians and Caucasian visitors, they monopolize the intellectual recognition of the audience. The men who, hat on head, pack the pit, and the women who throng the two galleries, divided into respect- able and unrespectable by a rigid meridian, have been educated to a view of the drama which is hardly to be ridiculed by nations that admit the concert and the oratorio. The Chinese simply need less ocular illusion than we in the theater, and perhaps those of us who are familiar with the grotesque devices by which our own stage-veneer is wrought perform no less an intellectual feat than they. Their actors are indeed richly costumed, and, women not being per-
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mittcd upon the stage, the youths who play female roles arc carefully made up for their parts; and one and all tiioy endeavor to impersonate. Almost no other illusion is considered necessary. The stage- manager and his assistants now and then erect a small background suggestive of environment, and the province of the orchestra is to accentuate emotion— in which heaven knows they attain no small degree of success. It is highly conventionalized drama, in which any kind of incongruity may elbow the play- ers provided it does not confuse the mind by actu- ally intervening between them and the audience. The plays are largely historical, or at least legend- ary, and vary in length from six or eight hours to a serial of many consecutive nights' duration. There are stars whose celebrity packs the house to the limit of standing-room, and there are the same strained silent attention and quick rippling response to witty passages that mark our own playhouses; but such demonstrative applause as the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet is unknown. The Chinese theater-goer would as soon think of so testifying en- joyment of a good book in the quiet of his home. But as for the orchestra, let them write its justification! Such a banging of cymbals, and hammering of gongs, and monotonous squealing of stringed in- struments in unrememberable minor intervals almost transcends belief. Without visible leader, and un- marked by any discoverable rhythm, it is nevertheless characterized by unanimity of attack and termina- tion, as well as enthusiasm of execution, and histo- rians of music are authority for the statement that it is based upon an established scale and a scientific theory. Be that as it may, it is a thing of terror first to greet the ear on approach, last to quit it in de- parture, and may be counted upon for visitation in dreams that follow indigestion. 104
CHINESE RESTAURANT,
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j'rin- si'crct society known as the Highbinders was created two antl a half centuries ago in C'iiina by a banil of devoted patriots, anil had dcijenerated into an organization employed lo further the ends of av- arice and revenge long before it was transplanted to this country. Relieved of the espionage ihat had in sonic measure controlled it at home, and easily able to evade a police unfamiliar with the Chinese tongue, it grew in numbers and power with great rapidity. 'I'hc greater portion of the people of Chinatown has always been honestly industrious and law abiding, but the society rewarded hostility by persecution, ruin and often death. Merchants were laid under tribute, and every form of industry in the commu- nity that was not directly protected by membership in the society was compelled to yield its quota of reve- nue. Vice was fostered, and courts of law were so corrupted by intimidation or bribery of witnesses that it was ne.xt to impossible to convict a High- binder of any criminal offense. A climax of terror was reached that at last convulsed the environing city, and by the pure effrontery of autocratic power the society itself precipitated its downfall. A per- emptory word was given to the police, and there en- sued a scene which the astonished Celestials were forced to accept as a practical termination of their bloody drama; a small epic of civilization intent on the elevation of heathendom, no inconsiderable portion of which in a short space was blown sky- high. The Highbinders were scattered, many im- prisoned or executed, innumerable dives emptied, temples and secret council-rooms stripped bare, and the society in effect undone. Yet still, for one who has viewed the lowest depths of the Chinatown of to-day, the name will long revive an uncherished memory of two typical faces, outlined upon a back- ground of nether flame. One is the face of a young 1 06
BALCONY OF JOSS-HOUbE. 107
wom.in who in a cell far underground leans against a iiigh couch in a manner half-wanton, half-indiffer- ent, and chants an unintelligible barbaric strain. The other is that of her owner, needing only a hang- man's knot beneath the ear to complete a wholly satisfactory presentment of irredeemable depravity. And that is why one quits the endless novelties of the peepshow without regret, and draws a breath of relief upon regaining the familiar streets of civili- zation.
SANTA CLARA VALLEY.
Below the junction of San Francisco's peninsular with the mainland the Santa Clara Valley stretches southward between the Coast and Santa Cruz ranges. Along this valley lies the way to San Jose and the coast-resorts of Santa Cruz and Monterey, past inter- mediate points of celebrity.
Palo Alto is the site of the Stanford University, where in a campus of 8,000 acres, an arboretum to which every clime has liberally contributed, stands this magnificent memorial of a cherished son. The buildings are conceived in the style of mission archi- tecture— low structures connected by an arcade sur- rounding an immense inner court, with plain thick walls, arches and columns, built of buff sandstone, and roofed with red tiles. Richly endowed, this uni- versity is broadly and ambitiously planned, and is open to both sexes in all departments.
Hard by, at Menlo Park, is Mr. Stanford's horse breeding and training establishment, where hundreds of thoroughbreds are carefully tended in paddock and stable, and daily trained. Even one who is not a lover of horses, if such person exists, can not fail to find entertainment here, where daily every phase of equine training is exhibited from the kindergarten where toddling colts are taught the habit of the track to the open course where famous racers are speeded. 108
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Perhaps there is not, in the whole of Northern California, a town more attractively environed than San Jose. It lies in the heart of the valley, pro- tected by mountain-walls from every wandering asperity of land or sea, a clean, regularly platted city, reaching off through avenues of pine and of euca- lyptus, and through orchards and vineyards, to pretty forest-slopes where roads climb past rock, glen and rivulet to fair commanding heights. The immediate neighborhood is the center of prune production, and every year exports great quantities of berries, fruits and wines. The largest seed-farms and the largest herd of short-horn cattle in the world are here.
Twenty-six miles east from San Jose is Mount Hamilton, upon whose summit the white wall of the Lick Observatory is plainly visible at that distance. This observatory has already become celebrated for the discovery of Jupiter's fifth satellite, and gives promise of affording many another astronomical sen- sation in time to come. Visitors are permitted to look through the great telescope one night in the week, and in the intervals a smaller glass, sufficiently pow- erful to yield a good view of the planets in the broad sunlight of midday, is devoted to their entertainment. It is reached by stage from San Jose, the round trip being made daily. Aside from the attraction of the famous sky-glass, supplemented by the multitudin- ous and elaborate mechanisms of the observatory, the ride through the mountains to Mount Hamilton more than compensates the small fatigue of the jour- ney. There are backward glimpses of the beautiful valley, and a changing panorama of the Sierra, the road making loops and turns in the shadow of live- oaks on the brink of profound craler-Iike depres- sions.
Santa Cruz is a popular resort by the sea, pos- 109
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sessing picturesque rocks and a fine background of the mountains that bear its name. Near at liand is a much-visited grove of Big Trees, the approach to which leatls througli oak and fir, ])ast caflons fringed with madrona and nianzanita, antl fern and flower.
Monterey was the old capital of California in the earliest period of Spanish rule. Here the forest crowds upon the sea and mingles its odor of balm with that of the brine. The beach that divides them is broken by cliffs where the cypress finds footing to flaunt its ruggeil boughs above the spray of the waves, and in the gentle air of a perfect climate the wild flowers hold almost perpetual carnival. Upon such a foundation the Hotel del Monte, with its vast parks of lawn and garden and driveway, covering many hundred acres, is set, all its magnificence lending really less than it owes to the infinite charm of Mon- terey. Its fame has spread through every civilized land, and European as well as American visitors make up its throng. Here, as elsewhere upon the coast, foreign travelers are seen most in that season when the extraordinary equability of winter allures them by contrast with their native environment, but the Californian knows its summer aspect to be no less winsome; and so, from the year's beginning to its end, there is one long gala-day at Monterey, its parks and beaches and forests animated by wealthy and fashionable pleasure -seekers. The Del Monte is located in a scattering grove of 200 acres, a little east from the town, and for lavishness of luxury and splendor in construction and accessory has per- haps no superior Bathing, boating, camping and driving are the current out-of-door activities, and specific points of interest are the Carmel Mission. Pacific Grove, Moss Beach, Seal Rocks, Cypress Point and Point Pinos Lighthouse. The amount of yearly rainfall at Monterey is more than at San no
Diego and less than at Santa Harbara. 'Ihe mean initisuninuT tcntpcraturc is the same, namely, 65*^, but in winter the thermometer averajjes lower, the mean temperature of January bein^so'^at Monterey, 56*^ at Santa Harbara anil 57" at San Diego. These figures compare most favorably with the records of European resorts, and the absence of humidity works a further amelioration, both in summer and winter, firmly establishing the resorts of California as char- acterized by the most equable climate known.
LAKE TAJIOE.
More than 6,000 feet above the sea, among mount- ains that rise from its edge to a further altitude of from 2,000 to 5,000 feet, and surrounded by the deep forest, this lake unites the highest poetic beauty with definite attractions for the artist and the sportsman. It is twenty-five miles long and half as wide, and reaches a depth of 1,700 feet. Hotels and cottages sprinkle its shores, little steamers ply upon its silvery surface, and there are tents and boats of camping fishermen and hunters. Here to the aromatic odor of the forest come lovers of pure joys for compara- tive solitude in the heart of nature. In the adjacent wilderness there is game to tax the address of the bravest gunner, and mountain-streams shout in tor- rent through a thousand fierce tangles of woodland dear to artists and unprofessional lovers of untram- meled beauty; and from the mountain-tops one may look far out over the barriers that strive to secrete this exquisite spot from the outer world. Fragments of its loveliness have been copied by many a brush and many a camera, poets have sung of it, travelers have told of it in labored prose; but Lake Tahoe eludes translation. Have you ever chanced upon a spot where Nature, turning from gorgeous pigments 112
and heroic canvases in a swift softening mood had spent the white hr^at of inspiration upon a picture in which was permitted neither asperity nor want of perfect grace, a thing finely poised between grandeur and gentleness, wood and water and mountain and sky rhymed in every line and tone to a fine exalta- tion such as the Greek knew when he dreamed a statue out of the marble? Tahoe is of that category. It is reached by stage from Truckee, on the line of the Central Pacific, our returning eastward route from San Francisco.
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NEVADA AND UTAH.
(EVADA formerly existed as part of the Ter- ritory of Utah, and having leaped into ^i^ sudden significance with the discovery of silver sulphurets in 1858 was separately organized an 1 admitted into the Union during the Civil War. Trappers were its pioneers in 1825, over- land emigrants crossed it as early as 1834, and the 113
explorations of Fremont bcpan nine years later. It is a land of silver antl sage-brush, anil steaming min- eral springs; of salt and borax and sulphur; of par- allel mountain-ranges, rolling plains aiul Hat alkaline sands, of limpid lish thronged lakes and brackish sinkholes that suck the flow of its rivers. Its com- position is endlessly diverse, and there is abundance of noble scenery, but this does not generally lie ad- jacent to the railway-route. In its transit the tour- ist will not unlikely be aware of a few hours of mo- notony— the first and the last to be encountered in the entire course of the journey. Reno, Winnemuc- ca, and Elko are the chief cities that will be seen, and Humboldt River is followed closely for the great- er part of the distance across the State. Nevada, as everybody knows, means suo'V)'. The name was de- rived from the range upon its western border, and was not suggested by any characteristic of the cli- mate, which is dry and healthful, and, save in ex- treme altitudes, notably temperate.
Crossing the Utah line, and keeping well above the edge of the desolate barren noted on the maps as the Great Salt Lake Desert, you come quickly into view of the Great Salt Lake itself, whose shore is approximately followed for half its circumference upon the north and east. Between the eastern shore and the Wasatch Range the southward-trend- ing valley stretches for many miles. Ogden, Salt Lake City, Provo, Springville, and numerous pretty Mormon villages are scattered along the line, and there is a large body of fresh water known as Utah Lake, linked to the great salt inland sea by the Jor- dan River. America boasts no fairer or more fruit- ful valley than this. Beyond, the circular eastward sweep of the route passes Red Narrows, Soldier Sum- mit, Castle Gate, Green River, and the Book Cliffs, 114
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and leads through the noble valley of the Grand River to the Colorado boundary at Utaline.
Desert, broken by innumerable lovely oases; salt sea and fresh-water lake; monuments of an institu- tion of world-wide notoriety and its communities alternating or mingled with " Gentile " population; mountain-passes, canons, noble gateways, and mem- orable rock-formations and river-valleys — these are the distinguishing features of Utah.
Focal point of converging railroads from the east and west, and nourished by many thousand acres of irrigated land immediately surrounding, Ogden is the second city of Utah in importance. The Wasatch Mountains protect it upon the east and north, and form a background of exceeding beauty here as else- where. The attractions of its environs include lakes, springs, rivers and parks, and Ogden Cafion, a nine- US
mile stretch of ruggcil rock-fissures and roaring waters.
SALT l.AKK CITY.
Here in 1S47 came Brighani ^'oung and liis band of Latter Day Saints, driven from the States by the unpopularity of their tenets and practice. The story of the Mormons is a tragic one, difficult reading for a dispassionate reader, like that of the Puritanic persecution of (Quakers and reputed practitioners of witchcraft two centuries ago. It is true the Mormon offered an affront to the public sense of morality, but a later generation, that counts so many avowed ad- herents to the notion that even monogamous mar- riage is a failure, should have only commiseration for a sect committed to utter bankruptcy in that par- ticular. In any event, abhorrence of polygamy can not serve as excuse for the cruelties visited upon the early Mormons by the mobs that despoiled, mal- treated and murdered them. In this lies our dis- grace, part sectional, part national, that their one offensive characteristic was counted a forfeiture of their every human right, and their defiance of a sin- gle law made pretext for the violation of twenty in their persecution. They are familiar to the public mind almost solely in their character as polygamists claiming sanction of divine authority; yet, although polygamy no longer exists in Utah, the Church of Latter Day Saints having formally renounced it, the name of Mormon still has power to awaken prejudice among those who know the sect only by repute. The abandonment of this prejudice is demanded not by charity but by common-sense. The patriarchal households of the pious old Jewish kings are not more utterly a thing of the past than are those of the Mormons, and stripped of them Mormonism is not opposed to tenets that are current in other reou- table churches.
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The putative author of the Book of Mormon was a prophet of that name. It purports to be an abridg- ment of the book of the prophet Ether, which nar- rated that the Jaredites came to America in the great dispersion that followed the confusion of tongues at Babel, and were destroyed for their degeneracy in the year 600 B. C. In the same year Lehi led a second exodus, from Jerusalem, which landed at Chili, from which point the populating of North America was again begun. Ether's book was dis- covered by this colony, which in course of time was divided into two factions, the Nephites and the Lamanites. The former were eventually extermi- nated by the latter, who relapsed into barbarism and became the ancestral stock of our native Indians. Mormon was a prophet of the Nephites, and to the abridgment of Ether's story added an account of the history of the second colony, and hid his own tablets where they were found by Joseph Smith and by him miraculously translated. The basis of the religious teaching is Biblical; the exposition constitutes Lat- ter Day sanctity.
The followers of Young found the Salt Eake Val- ley a desert of unproductiveness, despite the beauty of its contour. They made it an unprecedented oasis, a broad garden of lovely fertility. A band of pauper zealots, they camped upon a barren and com- pelled it to sustain them. They found inspiration in the striking topographical resemblance between their Deseret and Palestine, and gave the name Jordan to the little river that joined their two contrasting waters as old Jordan joins the Sea of Tiberias with the Dead Sea. They chose a site for Zion, and in its center, in 1S53, they laid the foundations of the Temple, which the predetermined forty years of building will hardly bring to completion. And as the government was of the Church, so the Temple was regarded as 117
the pivot of 7-ion. The onlinal numbers, combined with the four cardinal points, still serve to distin- guish the different streets of the city, as clearly in- dicating the exact relation of each to the location of the great edilice. Second West Street, Kast Fifth South Street, and the like, are finger-posts that guide the stranger infallibly to the Mormon niecca.
It was a curious reversion to the old patriarchal idea of life, foreign to the spirit of our time, and so foredoomed to failure; but the dreamers had hard muscles and determined souls. They grubbed bush- es, they dug ditches, they irrigated, they fought the grasshopper, they subsisted on the substance of things hoped for, enduring extremes of hunger and priva- tion in the first years of their grapple with the des- ert. And by the time the reluctance of earth had been overcome and material prosperity had been won, the westward flow of emigration had brought about the human conflict once more. The records of that conflict have been written by the accustomed parti- san hands, but the plain truth is that whether we are Mormon, or Catholic, or Protestant, or Mohamme- dan, or Gentile pure and unalloyed, we are intolerant all; and when we lay hold upon an issue it is more than a meeting of Greeks, it is savage to savage, old Adam himself warring against himself in the persons of his common children. Mormonism was a dream of religious enthusiasm mi.xed with earthly dross, overthrown by dross of earth that invoked the name of religion. Yet the overthrow was plainly plotted by the higher powers, and the conquerors were in their employ.
The distinguishing features of the sect, as now re- stricted, are not apparent to the casual traveler, to whom Zion is only a romantic and imposing relic of a day that has been outlived. But the organization still endures, and there is no reason to doubt that its IiS
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distinction is vital enough in the sight of Mormons themselves, as it is to any clan or denomination. In- dividually they are esteemed and respected among the "Gentiles" that have invaded Salt Lake City, and Brigham Young himself, in the fullness of his almost autocratic power, manifested many of the qual- ities that make great names in history. That he made scandalous misuse of that power is generally believed, and, however great he may have deemed the danger of his people, it is certain he rebelled against the Government of these United States; but he was essentially a great leader and a man of many broad and beneficent conceptions. As contractor he built hundreds of miles of the first transcontinental railroad, and built a connecting road nearly forty miles in length to place Salt Lake Ciiy in commercial intimacy with the outside world. The first telegraph- line to span the Rockies was principally constructed by him as contractor. And it is remembered of him that he furnished a Mormon battalion to the Me.xican War, and protected from Indian depredations the transportation of the United States mails through Utah at a time when Government troops could not be spared for the service. The establishment of the Territory of Utah was the death-knell of the State of Deseret which he had founded, yet the President had enough confidence in his loyalty to appoint him its first governor. That he should in the unavoida- ble ultimate issue take positive ground on the side of his people was to have been expected of the Mormon leader.
Young is the personification of the sect to the world at large, and his memory overhangs Salt Lake City, perpetuated in the broad private grounds with their high walls and imposing gateway, where so long he dwelt, and where in death he lies buried. And near at hand are the erstwhile palaces of his favorite 121
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wives, and miscellaneous structures that liad relig- ious ami governmental uses in the singular day of his prime.
i;reat salt lake.
Great Salt Lake has lost nirieteentvventieths of its original dimensions, which still are traceable. Its area was once equal to one-half that of the present Territory. It now covers an extent of about 2,000 square miles, in which are included a dozen or more mountain-islands. Its waters are temperately warm and live times as salt as the ocean. The human body floats upon their surface with cork-like buoy- ancy, without the slightest sustaining effort. You may double your knees under you and recline upon it, like a cherub on a cloud, with head and shoulders protruding. With sun-umbrella and book you may idly float and read at pleasure, or safely take a nap upon the bosom of Salt Lake if you can contrive to maintain a suitable balance meanwhile; for you will find a marked disposition on the part of this brine to turn you face down, which position is anything but a pleasant pickle when unexpectedly assumed, for the membrane of eyes and nose and mouth is not on friendly terms with such saline bitterness. The shore of the lake is a few iniles distant from the city, and Garfield Beach, some eighteen miles away, is the most popular bathing-resort. Here a pavilion and whole streets and avenues of dressing rooms have been provided for the hundreds of bathers who every day in season flock to the lake. Every- body bathes, and the scene, novel and amusing by reason of the remarkable specific gravity of the water, is unlike that of any other watering-place. The nat- 122
ural aspect is full of soft beauty, not unlike that of the South California shore, looking off to the coast islands of the Pacific, save that the semi-tropical vegetation is wanting.
Salt Lake is a Dead Sea, bare of fish or fowl ex- cept for a minute and not numerous species of the former. There is said to be a Mormon tradition that in the time of their grasshopper plague an enor- mous flight of gulls issued from its horizon and cleared the fields of their pest. The spectacle of those sea-scavengers waddling through the brown stubble in pursuit of the grasshopper must have been diverting, at least, and the occurrence was doubtless miraculous if true.
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VII.
COLORADO.
HIS State is the apex of North America, c>yate^-^ the crown of the slopes that rise from l-^^^g Pacific and Atlantic shores. It is the heart of the Rocky Mountain chain, num- bering luindreils of individual summits that rise to a height of more than 13,000 feet, and many whose altitude exceeds 14,000. Between the ranges lie numerous parks, broad basins of great fertility and surpassing loveliness, diversified by forest, lake and stream, and themselves e.xalted to an altitude of from eight to ten thousand feet. The precipitous water- sheds of this titanic land give birth to many impor- tant rivers, such as the Platte, Arkansas, Rio Grande del Norte, and Grand, whose channels, save where they occasionally loiter through the alluvial parks, are marked by fierce cataracts and gloomy gorges.
This Alpine land of prodigious scenery and inspir- iting air, and of phenomenal mineral and agiicultur- al wealth, we now enter upon the west. Every suc- cessive scene is an event, every turn of the way a
The canons of the Grand River have not infrequently been confounded with the Grand Canon of the Colorado River, by tourists who have not visited the latter, in consequen< e of an unfortunate coincidence of names, ;.r,d further confusion has resulted from the use of the title "Grand Canon" inconnection with the gorges of the Gunnison and the Arkansas. The Grand Cafion of the Colorado River is entitled by divine right to a monopoly of the name. It is situated in Arizona, and was described in its place.
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revelation, advancing in ascending climaxes. The first stage, 120 miles along the valley of the Grand River, past Grand Junction, at the confluence of the Gunnison, to Glenwood Springs, serves for introduc- tion. From that point on, specific mention becomes necessary.
GLENWOOD SPRINGS.
Where the Grand River issues from somber cafion- walls into a mountain-hemmed valley, just above the confluence of the foaming torrent of Roaring Fork, numerous thermal springs of saline and chalybeate waters boil from its bed and from its grass covered banks, and natural caves are filled with their vapor. Here is Glenwood Springs, lately the resort of Utes, and the home of deer, elk, and bear, which latter have retreated only to the bordering forest. Young- est of the great watering-places of Colorado, its dis- tinction lies in the extraordinary character and volu- minous flow of the springs, the unique manner in which they have been brought into service, and the superb hotel, bath-house and park with which the natural attractiveness of the spot has been perfected. In the middle of the exquisite park the largest spring feeds an enormous pool, covering more than an acre, from three to five feet deep, paved with smooth brick and walled with sandstone. A fountain of cold mountain-water in the center tempers the pool to gradations that radiate to its rims. Here bathing is in season throughout the year. In winter or sum- mer the temperature of the water and of the imme- diate atmosphere has the same delicious warmth, and all the snow and ice that Colorado can boast in Jan- uary at an altitude of over five thousand feet does not interfere with out-of-door bathing at Glenwood Springs. The bath is neither enervating nor stimu- lating in any violent degree. An hour in the pool 125
is not followed by exhaustion; it is a thoroughly en- joyalijc pleasure, bencruia! in effect. Catarrh, rheu- matism, diseases of the blood, and many ailments that do not yield to medicine are either wholly cured or relieved by these waters. The bath-house by the side of the pool is no less than a palace in architect- ure aiul sumptuous equipment. Here are private bath-rooms, with attendants and ail manner of ap- pliances, for those who prefer them, or to whom the public pool is unsuited. Radical treatment is given in the vapor-caves, which have been divided into compartments and fitted for the purpose.
The park-grounds rise in successive terraces to the Hotel Colorado, which was conceived in the same spirit of originality which created the improvements mentioned. This hotel is constructed upon three sides of a large court, containing a miniature lake, fed by cold mountain-springs and stocked with trout in- tended for the table. In summer the glass partitions which in cold weather separate the main dining-room from the broad veranda are taken down, and tables are set in the open air; and the guest who may fancy a broiled trout for breakfast is privileged to capture it himself, in this particular following the practice of the patron of restaurants in Mexico, who selects the materials of his meal before they have been sent to the kitchen.
The State of Colorado is the best hunting-ground left to the American sportsman. The immediate vicin- ity of Glenwood Springs contains great numbers of deer and an abundance of elk and bear. The Roar- ing Fork, a succession of noisy rapids and cataracts coursing down the timber-clad mountain-side, affords excellent trout-fishing, and Trappers Lake is known to thousands of gunners and fishermen, either by ex- perience or by repute.
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SEVEN CASTLES AND RED ROCK CANON.
Leaving Glenwood Springs, the road runs by the side of the Roaring Fork for twenty-five miles, to Aspen Junction, at the confluence of the Frying Pan, where a branch line diverges to the mining-camp which is second in importance only to Leadville. The Elk Mountains and colossal separate peaks make a near horizon upon that side. Here the Roar- ing Fork is abandoned in favor of its confluent, and almost immediately the splendid cliffs called the Seven Castles are seen. These are semi-detached masses of red sandstone, varying in tint from a deli- cate peachblow to dark red, and towering ponder- ously above the little verdured valley of the Frying Fan. They are the portals of Red Rock Caiion, whose commonplace title covers a long stretch of the most exquisite scenery ever encountered in a narrow mountain-notch. The white flash of the stream, interrupted here and there by still pools that reflect the blue of the sky, marks an intricately wind- ing upward path, disclosing at every turn new love- liness of woodland bowers, above which glimmer through evergreen-trees, or flush broadly with un- obscured faces, the brilliant masses of the rock for- mation.
HAGERMAN PASS.
Red granite clifrs follow, and scenes of widening grandeur. Although for many miles the grade has been steadily upward, the real ascent of the Hager- man Pass now begins. This crossing of the Con- tinental Divide is the loftiest railroad-pass in Amer- ica. The Frying Pan shows the way nearly to the summit, until its headwaters are reached at Loch Ivanhoe, 11,000 feet above the sea. There is a far- ther climb of 500 feet, then the train enters a long, tunnel, and the Pacific Slope is past. When the 129 y>^
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travcliT next sees tlic li;;lit of day a lonjj ilcscent of the backhinic of the 1 )iviilc lies before him, to be acconiplislieil liy means of loojis, trestles and other scientific solutions of prndijrjoiisdiflieulties. Numer- ous snow-sheds of heavy limbers cover points ex- poscil to the avalanche or the drift of snows, and in the winter season rotary snow-plows and a large force of laborers are kept constantly on hand to pre- vent any delay to travel.
In this unique descent of a seemingly impassable barrier the grandest of mountain-views are inevitably afforded. The wide detours necessitated by grade and topography face in turn every point of the com- pass, overhung by receding summits and looking off through profound notches or along the vertiginous downward-sweeping slopes to a world below. Alpine travelers pay the price of extreme fatigue and imperil their lives for the sensations of such an experience, which for the American tourist is only an incident, comfortably enjoyed without exertion or danger.
LEADVILLE.
Just beyond the foot of Hagerman Pass, upon the swell of the mountain-flank, stands the great min- ing-city, at an elevation of 10,000 feet. In April, i860, the first gold-claims were staked out in Cali- fornia Gulch, and within three months thereafter 10,- 000 miners had located there. Two claims are said to have yielded $75,000 in the space of sixty days, and single individuals are known to have been rewarded by $100,000 for the work of one summer. In a lit- tle more than a year the field was exhausted, nearly $10,000,000 of the yellow metal having been carried away. In the digging of ditches to facilitate the washing of the auriferous gravel, masses of a heavy black rock were so commonly encountered as to prove a considerable annoyance, but they were 130
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thrown asiilc and forjjoitcn. These were the famous silver carbonates, wliosc value was later revealed by a merely curious assjiy; and the lirst body of carbon- ate ore to be worked formed the entire mass of a cliff in California Clulch which had been execrated by in- numerable gold-diygers. The richest ores were not amonjj the lirst to be developed, and prospecting and small workings were increasingly carried on for a series of years until, in 1878, two prospectors who were " grub-staked " by Mr. Tabor (since Senator) chanced to be crossing Fryer Hill and sat down to imbibe casual refreshment from a jug of whisky. By the time they had become satisfactorily refreshed all kinds of ground looked alike to them, and in pure imbecility, without the slightest justification, they be- gan to dig where they had been sitting. They un- covered the ore-body of the famous Little Pittsburg mine, which, so exuberantly whimsical is occasional chance, has since proved to be the only point on the entire hill where the ledge approaches so near the sur- face. Then ensued a second scramble of the multi- tude for place in this marvelous treasure-region, and the wildest excitement reigned. In the fourteen years that have passed the carbonate ores have not been exhausted; on the contrary, new finds are still of fre- quent occurrence, and the city of Leadville is now known to be underlaid with bodies of that ore. But the carbonate era has probably passed its climax, and is giving place to the sulphide era, millions of tons of sulphide ores having already been blocked out in Iron, Breece and Carbonate hills. The geological position of the new ores promises even greater extent and value than the carbonates have realized, although they are less cheaply worked. And should the sul- phides at length be exhausted no one can safely prophesy that this extraordinarily versatile locality will not present the world with some new compound 132
which on analysis shall prove unexpectedly rich in precious metals.
The carbonate discovery revived the almost-de- populated camp, and for the space of a few years thereafter Leadville was nearly as notorious for law- lessness and personal insecurity as for the richness and number of its mines. That phase has been out- lived; order, quiet and the refinements that belong to a wealthy city in our day having long been per- manently established. The tourist will, however, find it distinctly individual and full of present inter- est, and the wonderful romance of its past, which reads like a tale of unbridled imagination, invests it "with an imperishable glamour.
BUENA VISTA.
Stretching southward for thirty miles between the Park and Saguache ranges, at an equal distance cast from Leadville, lies an idyllic valley of the Arkan- sas River. At the head of this valley stands Buena Vista, like a Swiss village. Harvard, Yale and Princeton mountains, each loftier than Pike's Peak, rise close behind it upon the west, and upon the south the white summits of the Sangre de Cristo Range are discernible. The train follows the sweep of a savage rocky salient half a thousand feet above the valley, and the view is downward upon the white town and over the far stretch of sunlit meadow, whose penetrating beauty and perfect peace is enhanced by the grandeur of the College Peaks, which from the grass-grown and timbered slopes of their feet rise to heights and forms of awful sublimity. Buena Vista means in the Spanish a comprehensive outlook, rather than a beautiful scene. It is a euphonious name, and serves well enough in Colorado, where among so much that is superlative one learns to be temperate in the use of adjectives; but anywhere 133
else in the world this should have been Vista Gloriosn. It is a peep of paradise, a lireani of a happy vale where the blessed might dwell in joy forever.
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GRANITF. CA^ON.
After leaving Buena Vista a ridge of 9,500 feet elevation is crossed to the broad level meadows of South Park, a fertile tract of not less than 1,500 square miles watered by the forks of the South Platte River. One of these forks is followed to and through an impressive gorge, eleven miles long, a narrow, ruggedly picturesque channel sparsely timbered with evergreen and walled by huge granite-cliffs. A tow- ering rock-cone stands midway, and at the eastern end lies the beautiful sheet of water known as Lake George.
CRIPPLE CREEK.
The famous gold-camp lies eighteen miles south from Divide, a station thirteen miles east of Granite Canon, but tourists commonly find it convenient to make the trip as one of the numerous excursions from Manitou, twenty-two miles farther on. Between Divide and Cripple Creek stages run daily, but a 134
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raUroad-branch will shortly cover the distance. It is an cxhiiaratinij niountain-ridc throujjh forests and poryes, over hillsides ami alon^ pleasant intervales, ♦o an elevation of 10,000 feet, above which the closely neij;hborinji Tike's Peak seems to shrink to the small dijjnity of a wind-swept hill. It is such a ride as the Western traveler commonly knew before railroads relegated the stage to a very subordinate function. The ponderous creaking Concord coach, lumbering at the heels of half a dozen spirited horses and driven by a veteran who reeks of border expe- rience and reminiscence, is none too familiar to the modern tourist. One finds it here, and it unmistak- ably adds zest to the magnificent changing scenery. There is no lack of passengers, and although the talk is mainly of mines, and claims and prospects, just as in other parts it is of the price of stocks or lands, the high romance of a stage-ride in the Rock- ies, which custom can not wither, soon sets this aside for reminiscence and tales of adventure. Your bronzed unpretentious companions have seen vicissi- tude and know how to tell a story of dramatic or humorous interest.
Fremont is believed to be the corporate name of the Cripple Creek district, which includes three or four aggregations of houses; but the spirit of a min- ing-camp is against any but names of distinct flavor, and Cripple Creek is sanctioned by common usage, although Squaw Gulch, Poverty Gulch, Mound City and Barry are distinguishing titles of immediate lo- calities. The first glimpse of the scene is from the summit of a last high hill. The topography is peace- ful and somewhat English in type. Cattle and burros graze on smooth-turfed slopes, and there is no sign of rock save what has been excavated from beneath the grass. It is the last place a tyro would look for gold-lodes, and experienced prospectors 136
were long enough in finding it. The leads are all blind, concealed like subterranean springs. Men dig through the thin layer of soil, and drill and blast the exposed ledge. Whether they shall stumble upon an Anaconda mine, or after long and costly labors possess only a sink-hole to catch the fall of rain, is wholly a matter of speculation. The explo- ration has been pursued with feverish energy, and the green slopes are heaped with the debris of numer- ous excavations until they resemble a scattered vil- lage of gigantic prairie-dog homes. There are placer- claims as well. Everybody in Cripple Creek owns a claim, of the one sort or the other. Even the hotel porter is no exception, and when he charges you "two bits" for blacking your boots you perceive with admiration that you are contributing to the cost of his assessment-work, besides ameliorating the nature of his employment by that scale of remunera- tion.
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The shops and houses of the main street have the motley aspect that belongs to younj^ mining-towns, as if they had been fragments cyclonically torn from stime distant original anchorage, plumped down here among tlie mountains, and preempted without any effort at rearrangement or resuscitation. A coherent structure here and there breaks tiie wild jumble of discordant forms, ami a neatly painted sign or two contrasts with the multitude of advertising-legends that have been grotesquely lettereil by unskilled hands. Yet the whole has pictorial charm, and it is the inevitable phase of a purely speculative commu- nity, every member of which hopes at no distant time in the future to turn back upon this primitive life, more or less a Croesus. They are but pilgrims here, heaven is their home. And they have no time to squander, no means or energy to waste, upon refinements in such an hour.
Naturally there is no restriction upon saloons or gambling-houses; and in the dance-halls, that open directly from the street, gallants waltz with cigar in mouth, and between the numbers their partners do not disdain the refreshment of whisky straight. Yet the town is singularly free from boisterousness and violence, even after dark, when the stranger must fairly grope his way, and the neighborhood of the really first-class hotel around the corner is silent and peaceful. The wildest period in the history of a mining-camp is the first few months of its notoriety. Desperadoes and adventurers of every sort are at- tracted by the high fever that marks the earliest stage, only to depart when the recklessness of the scramble for place has given way to legitimate devel- opment of the relatively few valuable finds. The actual prosperity is not measured by excitement, or inflated population.
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Of the twelve or fifteen thousand who in the space of a few months thronged to the two lonely ranches on Cripple Creek, perhaps one-third have remained; but of these,' the number who w'ill win their wager must prove pathetically small, although not a few mines of enormous determined value and many claims of great promise have been discovered.
There is no hazard so seductive and inspiriting as that of seeking a mine, but there is a bleak and piti- ful side to it all, as may occur to you in the occasional anguished intervals of the night when you hear a Cripple Creek jackass pour out the impassioned mel- ody of his soul. " Haw . . . / E-haw . . ! E-haw! E-haw . . . /"he cries; poor devil of a poet blurting a strident night-piece through hiy Punchinello visage; or Mephistophelian commenta» tor on the vanity of vanities; or what you will.
PIKE S PEAK REGION.
After Divide comes in rapid succession that extraor- dinary series of resorts which every year, between June and September, attracts unnumbered thousands of visitors. The list is included in a distance of twenty five miles along an eastward slope from 8,500 down to 6,000 feet elevation, and while each differs in individual allurements, all alike are characterized by transparent exhilarating air, vivid tones of verdure and myriad flowers, streams, waterfalls, small lakes, fountains, forests, red rock-sculptures, gorges and mountains, always mountains, leading the eye pro- gressively to their kingly peak; by white tents in the shade of pines and aspens, neat hamlets and esthetic caravansaries hugging Cyclopean walls; by fashion- able equipages, equestrians and an animated holiday throng on foot; and by a buoyant breadth which all the multitude cannot crowd or oppress. Our route leads consecutively through Woodland Park, Mani-
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toil Park, Green Mountain Falls, Ute Park, Cascade Caftiiii, Manitou ami Coloiailo Sprinjjs, by way of lie I'ass, tl>e olil stajje-routc and thoroughfare of westward-faciny fortune-liunters through the heart of tlio Rockies. Woodiaiul I'ark stands at the iiead of tlie pass, and offers the noblest view of Tike's Peak obtainable f.om the ///(•.>./. Manitou Park (not to be confounded with Manitou proper) is reached by way of Woodland Park, the nearest railway station, a four-in-hand Concord stage-coach conveying the vis- itor over the interval of six miles. Here accommo- dations are provided on the cottage system, with a centrally located casino in which are the public din- ing-rooms, parlors, and the like. Green Mountain Falls is one of the loveliest of the group. In the heart of the beautiful valley is a lake surrounded by hotels and an annual encampment of tourists in tents and cottages. Mountain-terraces, with brill- iant outlooks, cascades tumbling over the cliffs, and a thousand retreats in gorge and grove, make up its special charms. Ute Park is another mountain-mead- ow, fringed by the forest and tucked snugly up against precipitous slopes, along whose base, through the shadow of spruce and pine, a boulevard extends. It is called the Eden of the Pass. At Cascade Caiion the mountain-stream descends 2,000 feet in a dis- tance of three-quarters of a mile, by a series of falls through a gorge that is filled with the odor of wild flowers. At this point begins the carriage-road to the summit of the peak.
With such categorical mention must these five idyllic resorts be dismissed, each of which is worthy of lengthy description, to find space for the two more celebrated which remain.
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Descending the Ute Pass by waj' of winking rock- tunnels, by trestles and canon brinks and bottoms, past the successive bits of wonderland already speci- fied and innumerable ravishing glimpses of forest- girt mountain and stream, you come to Manitou, a spot of such supernal beauty that even the Utes rose to the height of poetic appreciation and named it after the Great Spirit. Placed at the very foot of the terrible Peak, in the opening of the mountain-notch upon the broad plateau, every essence of interior land- scape loveliness is showered upon it. It is without a flaw, a superlative thing unpicturable to those who know only the plains or the shores of the sea; a Titania's bower of melting sweetness amid Nature's savagest throes. Marvels are thickly clustered. There are grottoes hung with stalactites and banked with moss-like beds of gleaming crystal-filaments, springs tinctured with iron, springs effervescent with soda, plains serried with huge isolated rock-sculpt- ures, narrow gorges where at the bottom of hun- dreds of feet of shadow is scant passage-way, long perpendicular lines of white foaming torrent, and soft blending flames of color from rosy rock and herbage and flower.
The waters of the Soda Springs are walled in the middle of a dainty park in the heart of the village, at night an incandescent lamp gleaming upward through their bubbling depths. Millions of gallons are exported, but something of the living sparkle on the tongue is lost in separation from the surcharged fount. Here it is more exuberantly crisp and re- freshing than that of the artificial compound which, in Eastern cities, presides over the counter most dear to the feminine heart. The flow is unstinted, and is free to all. The Iron Springs are upon the hill- 141
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side, within easy strolling-distance. Both are dis- tinctly bcnclicial to healtli, and are frequented l)y a merry multitude throuj^hout the day and early nijjht. t'lrand Caverns and the Caveof the Windsare near nciglibors, diviiled by a single ridge and doubtless intercommunicating by undiscovered passages. Both are elevateil far above the town, the approach to the one climbing past the Rainbow Falls along a steep slope that looks off across the entrancing landscape of the valley to the mountain background, the other opening in the side of Williams Caiion, through the notch of whose magnificent upreaching walls there is at one point a sharp turn where an unskillful driver could hardly hope to pass without grazing a wheel. It must have been a critical place in the old days when stages were "held up," for the miscalculation of an inch would have meant catastrophe, in the wake of plunging horses. The two caves are very similar, narrow underground corridors opening into a series of high-vaulted chambers hung with stalactites and glittering in magnesium ligiit like the jewel-caves of the Arabian Nights. The floors are dry, but through the limestone walls fine moisture oozes, depositing the stalagmite in strange and often esthetic forms, in addition to the pendent icicles of rock. There are striking suggestions of intelligible statuary, and innumerable imitations of natural objects, animal and vegetable. There is the Grand Organ, really a natural xylophone, a cluster of stalactites of varying proportions upon which entire tunes are played with appro.ximate accuracy, with occasional tones that are as mournfully impressive as a midnight-bell. Jewel Casket, Concert Hall, Bridal Chamber and the like are names bestowed upon different compartments, and numberless particular formations have individual titles. Grand Caverns and the Cave of the Winds each requires at least an hour for the most casual 142
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exploration. Thousands of visitinp-cards have been left u[y.m the walls.
.\ park of 500 acres covered with protnulinjj rock- fiyiircs of striking form anil beauty constitutes the Cianien of the Gods. The names applied to these suj;^estive forms of sandstone and gypsum describe their eccentric appearance. Toadstools, Mushroom Park, Hedgehog, Ant Kater, Lizard, Turtle, Ele- phant, Lion, Camels, American Eagle, Seal and Bear, Sphinx, Siamese Twins, Flying Dutchman, Irish Washerwoman, Punch, Judy and Baby, Lady of the Clarden, Three Graces, Stage Coach, and Graveyard are a few. There are others which rise to the dig- nity of pure grandeur. Pictures of the Gateway, a magnificent portal 330 feet high, and of Cathedral Spires and Balanced Rock have been admired all over the world. Here, as elsewhere in the West, beyond the eastern bounds of Colorado and New Mexico, color is an element of charm in landscape even greater than contour. These rocks are white and yellow and red, and in the crystalline air, that scorns a particle of haze, the scene is indescribably clear and sharp to the eye, and as vivid as an enthu- siastic water-color. Drawings in black-and-white inadequately communicate them to a reader.
Contiguous to the Garden of the Gods lies Glen Eyrie, the private estate of General Palmer, covering 1,300 acres. This is open to the public except on Sunday. Queen Canon, fourteen miles long, the Major Domo, cliffs of blazing color, and tree-em- bowered drives and green-houses are attractive feat- ures of Glen Eyrie.
ASCENT OF pike's PEAK.
The majesty of the Rocky Mountains can not be beckoned wholly into intimacy. There is a quality that holds unbendingly aloof from fellowship, if not 144
from perfect comprehension. The sea is sympathet- ic in moods. Soul-quaking in tumult, it softens to moments of superficial loveliness that would have you forget the murderous hunger that lies the length of your stature under wave. Not so the mountain- peaks. They are the sublimest personalities known to earth ; the hugeous, towering imperturbable. They joy not, lament not, rage not. The chill seclian of upper air and the roar of distant avalanche do not stir the profundity of their rapt contemplation. Pale, austere, passionless, and effable in grandeur, they rise like an apotheosis of pure intellect over the spheres of confused emotion; or, if you like it better, they stand for lofty spiritual reach. It augurs well of man that he can endure their proximity. A nation of mountaineers should be unequaled in the qualities of virtue, intrepidity and clarity of brain. Tlie legend of William Tell, though but a legend, is a true ex- pression of the spirit of the people of Switzerland, that brooks no fetter of tyranny. And you will fear, not love, the mountains if you have not heights within 145
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to match them. So every genuine lover of a topmost pinnacle lias somethinji sterling in him. From the knot of excursionists you will see him steal away to he albnc in the solemn exaltation of the iiour.
'I'iiere are many summits in Colorado more ele- v.iteil than Pike's Peak, hut they are difiicult. and the difTerence in height is not appreciable in effect. Here you are lifted above the clouds so far that the world lies remote beneath the eye, the neighboring towns and cities shrunk to insignificance. \'ast is the panorama outspread to view. The plain is grown indefinite and unsubstantial, like a subilued picture floating in the sky; but beyond the ranges are piled, tier on tier, peak after peak, white-draped or dun in a haze of blue. The storm sweeps below, its forked lightnings under foot, its rumble of thunder echoing faintly up through the thin cold air; and while bois- terous deluge rolls over valley and plain you stand like Phcebus in hischariot of morn, bathed in radiance. And there is an hour of incommunicable splendor, when the sun rises gleaming like a burnished yellow moon through dark cloud-wrappings on the rim of fading night, and again when it sinks behind tlie fierce tumbled mountain-chain, gilding the peaks with ruddy fire the while dusk spreads beneath like a silent submerging sea.
The ascent, for very many years, wasoftener talked of than attempted. Zebulon Pike himself failed, in 1806, and half a century passed after that before the first trail was cut, from old Summit Park, a dozen miles west of Manitou. That trail was little used, because of its difficulties and dangers. In the sev- enties three additional trails were constructed, and in iSSg the carriage-road from Cascade was completed. In i8qi the Cog-\Vheel Railway began operation, running directly from ^lanitou to the summit, and accomplishing that feat in a distance of nine miles. 146
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The steepest grade on the road is one foot in four. It starts near the Iron Springs, at the mouth of En- gleman's Canon, and makes the round trip in four and a half hours, allowing a stop of forty minutes on the peak. Several trains are run daily, in the open season, and, moreover, accommodations for the night can be had in the old Signal Station, which has been made over into a tavern. To those who desire to obtain the crowning experience in the easiest manner and in the shortest possible time, the ascent by rail is recommended. Many, however, prefer the greater personal freedom and the fuller enjoyment of scenes by the way offered by the carriage-road from Cascade. Although that is sixteen miles long, it has ample re- wards for all its fatigues.
The altitude of Pike's Peak is 14,147 feet above sea-level, and its height above the starting-point of the Cog-Wheel Railway in Manitou is 7,518 feet. The altitude of Mount Washington, in New Hamp- shire, is 6,293 feet, that of the Rigi, in Switzerland, 5,832 feet, and of the Jungfrau, 13,667 feet, above the sea.
COLORADO SPRINGS.
Closely backed by the Rockies, whose eastern contour is a protecting semicircle that opens to the Great Plains, this pretty city stands upon a level floor, divided by broad tree-shaded avenues into squares as regular as those of a chess-board, which it strongly resembles when viewed from the slopes and pinnacle of Pike's Peak. There are attractive drives in every direction, out upon the plains, through the canons and up the mountain-sides. Only six miles distant from Manitou, with which it is connected by an elec- tric street-railway in additio" to the steam-railroad, and similarly joined to Broadmoor Casino and Chey- enne Canon upon the other hand, Colorado Springs 147
IN pt'i haps the most fashionable and most populous < i| the s|H"cial resorts of Colorailo. 1 1 is a city of homes 1)1 the wealthy, witii some l2,oi>o inhabitants.
1 he Casino at Hroadmoor is an attractive rendez- vous near the mouth of Cheyenne Canon, by the side of a pretty lake, where almost nijtjhtiy a brilliant illu- mination may be seen anil the sounds of music and gaiety heard.
A little beyond Piroadmocr the car-line ends at the foot of the canon, whose approach lies between a swelling grass-covered rise upon tiie one hand and a shrubby hillside upon the other. Mere begins a comfortable carriage-road, and conveyances and bur- ros are procurable. The road gradually ascends through groves of evergreen and deciduous trees, crossing and recrossing a clear mountain-stream by rustic bridges, on through the gateway of the Pillars of Hercules into a defile where rock-walls rise many hundred feet overhead, and needles, spires, cones, and irregular crags lift head above and behind one another, some bleakly bare, some fringed with shrubs and trees, prodigious rocks serrying the mountain- side to heights where details of form are lost to the eye and only broad effects of color and ebb and swell are intelligible. The carriage-road leads direct- ly to the foot of Seven Falls, to whose head the vis- itor may climb by a long stairway. A short distance below the falls a circuitous narrow trail diverges toward the left from the carriage-road, up which burros are ridden to the upper level, where one can look down upon this entire series of brilliant cas- cades. Arrived here many diverging paths invite the visitor. The log-cabin where Helen Hunt Jack- son loved to spend much of her time in summer is at hand, and the former site of her grave, marked by a huge heap of stones, may be reached by a steep path to the left. Glens and rocky eminences, bushy 148
retreats by the side of the streams, and fern and flower decked banks entice to farther exploration. Day after day many return to the fresh beauties of the spot, each time discovering some new delight among the thousand charms of the mountain-wilds.
DENVER.
To visit Denver involves a side excursion from Colorado Springs, the distance being seventy-hve miles. It is a queen among fair cities, standing upon a broad elevated plain with mountain horizons. These mountains are sometimes white ramparts of unearthly beauty, and there is an ever-shifting play of h'ght and shadow upon them. Its enormous smelters, with towering smoke-vomiting stacks, can not seri- ously deface its beauty, and themselves are an in- teresting and instructive sight, for $25,000,000 of gold and silver are there extracted from Rocky Mountain ores every year.
The Queen City of the Plains has periods of win- ter cold and snow, but commonly the air is delight- fully temperate when Eas.ern cities are ice-bound and shivering. Almost every part of Denver can be quickly visited by electric or cable street-cars.
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HOMEWARD.
[[ORTY miles below Colorado Springs, in the Arkansas Valley, thirty miles east from the mountains, stands Pueblo, an- other city of smelters, and of immense steel, iron, and copper works. Here is the Colorado Mineral Palace, a iarj^e and costly auditorium of modernized Egyptian architecture, whose domes are supported by gilded columns, around whose bases are arranged plate-glass cases filled with choice specimens of Colorado minerals, which constitute the most valuable collection of minerals in the world. It is open every day to vistors.
Si.xty miles east from Pueblo one comes again to La Junta, the junction-point in Southeastern Col- orado which was passed on the outward journey. From this point to Chicago and St. Louis the scenes would be familiar except for the fact that many lo- calities which were formerly passed in the night are now seen by day.
The marvels of the West, however, have now been left behind, and the tourist may be expected to be absorbed in pleasurable anticipation of his home-coming. He returns not as he departed, for such a journey as that which now draws near its close possesses an emphatic educating value. He 150
knows definitely now about those features of our Western empire whicli before were to him a vague imagining, inadequately, and perhaps wrongly, con- ceived.
And, not the least valuable of human acquisitions, henceforward he will have a story.
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