Part 4

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

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

IV.

THE HOME OF THE ORANGE.

THE GERMAN COLONY AT ANAHEIM—RABBIT-HUNTING IN THE CACTUS FIELDS—COWS AND ORANGES—THE BEST CALIFORNIA ORANGE—RIVERSIDE AND ITS MODEL ORCHARDS—ORANGE-PICKING—A WONDERFUL AVENUE—LOCAL FLAVOR IN ORANGES—AN ENGLISH COLONY—HOW PROHIBITION PROHIBITS—SCENES BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND SAN DIEGO.

After enjoying the sights of Los Angeles, including the palms and orange groves, the cable-car scenery, and Chinatown, which have been often enough described, it will repay the tourist to devote a week or two to a round trip through that part of the State which lies south of Los Angeles as far as San Diego and Tia Juana on the Mexican border. Take a ticket to Riverside, via Orange, and stop over a day at Anaheim, which commands a specially fine view of the snow-capped San Gabriel range and the giant San Bernardino. Anaheim is known as the “mother colony,” having been founded as early as 1858 by a party of fifty Germans from San Francisco, in search of a pleasant site for homes and good soil for raising Rhine wine. To-day the population is no longer exclusively German, nor is wine-making the chief industry; for Anaheim enjoys the sad distinction of being the place where the destructive vine disease originated, and now there are few good vineyards left in the vicinity, though the cellars of the hospitable families are still well stocked with a Riesling that unmistakably betrays its legitimate descent from the celebrated Johannisberger stock on the Rhine. Undaunted by their misfortune, the Anaheimers have dug out their dead vines and planted in their place oranges, walnuts, pampas plumes, and figs, which in a few years will bear as rich fruit and as big profits as the former vineyards. The fields and orchards are supplied with water through a ditch from the Santa Ana River, sixteen miles long, and lined all the way with willows. A drive along this ditch is interesting, as is a visit to the ostrich farm, two or three miles from the town. If a longer stay is contemplated, there is excellent hunting of wild goose, ducks, and other water-fowl, all the way from Anaheim to the ocean, while in the cactus fields around the town may be found quails and pigeons, and the sportive jack-rabbit abounds. In hunting him, you not only satisfy the craving for murder of some sort, which still lingers as a relic of savagery in the gentlest human breast, but you do a great service to the farmers, who are sometimes obliged in self-defence to organize rabbit drives, at which two or three thousand of the long-eared, fleet-footed robbers are killed.

Rabbit-hunting in cactus fields is a sport quite _sui generis_. The moment you catch a glimpse of Jack, he is apt to catch a glimpse of you and dodge behind a cactus bush; and if you follow him too quickly but unwisely, you will suddenly find your nether limbs pierced with a thousand fish-hook-pointed thorns, requiring an hour or two of hard and bloody work for their extraction. Unless you kill him on the spot he will crawl into a cactus bush, where neither dog nor devil can get at him. You know just where he is, but he might as well be at the bottom of the Pacific so far as you are concerned. But the loss is not great; for three out of four of these rabbits are not fit to eat, and are therefore usually chopped up for chicken food. Whether it is that in their flight they run against a thorny cactus leaf or that they carry off part of a load of shot, the fact is that the meat is generally diseased, being filled with a granular jelly-like substance like tapioca pudding. Tourists will do well to avoid hare when they find it on a Los Angeles bill of fare, as there is little reason to believe that the huge piles of jacks seen in the market there have been carefully sorted. But there is another much smaller rabbit, the cotton-tail, which affords equally good sport, and which is always good to eat; the younger ones tasting somewhat like chicken. Near the towns they are shy, active dodgers, and hard to shoot unless you sneak on them; but in less frequented hunting-grounds they graze complacently along the roadsides and look upon passing buggies as calmly as cows. Bang! goes the gun; Nero jumps out and brings the victim; and in this way dozens can be bagged in a few hours, before sunset, without once leaving the buggy; so that even invalids and cripples can go rabbit-hunting in Southern California. But there are stranger things still.

Did you ever see a cow eat oranges off a tree? That was one of the sights I witnessed in Anaheim. Not satisfied with the basketful of windfall seedlings which she received every day, our Millie, like Eve, cast longing eyes on the fruit tree near her open stable, and one day she broke loose and had a regular picnic before she was discovered. Her daughter, too, a promising young Jersey of six weeks, after one or two suspicious trials, became very fond of oranges, and having eaten three or four, would baah for more. The children of our Mexican neighbors, seeing all this fun, would come in to buy some for themselves, and received a liberal dozen for five cents.

These seedling oranges make delicious orangeade, and have a certain value because they ripen later than the finer sorts and produce larger crops; but they are rather sour and thick-skinned, and therefore fetch only a dollar or even seventy-five cents a box on the tree and two dollars at Chicago, while the best budded variety brings two dollars and a half to three dollars on the tree and four dollars to four dollars and a half in Chicago. Consequently the seedlings are no longer set out to any extent, while the demand for Washington-navel-trees was so great last winter that the nurserymen could not supply the demand, and young trees had to be imported from Florida. The Washington-navel is by far the best of all California oranges. It is a Brazilian orange, imported in 1873, and seems specially adapted to the climatic conditions of California. Riverside is its chief home, and Riverside navels are so highly valued that even in Los Angeles you get only three or four of them for a quarter of a dollar. They are very large, and, like the Spanish blood-oranges, almost always seedless, have a thin skin (with a small, navel-like formation or even a tiny orange at one end), and a sweet and most delicately flavored juice. I have squeezed as many as twenty teaspoonfuls of juice out of a single one of these oranges—a feat which I have never succeeded in accomplishing with a Florida orange. (I may add in parenthesis that to eat an orange with a teaspoon is to lose two-thirds of its flavor.)

The town of Orange, between Anaheim and Riverside, already gives warning of the neighborhood of the State’s orange centre. The station, in the springtime, is piled up to the ceiling with boxes of oranges, and near by a number of men are busily at work wiping the golden fruit with wet rags and rolling it down inclined boards to dry, preparatory to packing. The fruit is generally bought on the trees by the packing companies, who send round their men with ladders, and sacks suspended around their necks, from which the fruit is transferred to boxes, to be repacked afterwards, the bruised or imperfect ones being thrown out, so that three boxes (of the seedlings at any rate) yield only two for the market. Orange-picking is painted by the imagination as the most poetic of all agricultural employments, and nothing certainly could look more picturesque than the boxes of luscious fruit scattered through an orchard, under the dark green, fragrant trees; but the orange-tree, like the rose-bush that loves to twine around it, bristles with thorns which cry for blood, and make orange-picking about as exciting and perilous a pursuit as rabbit-hunting amid the cactus bushes.

The town of Orange belonged till lately to Los Angeles County (a separate Orange County was formed last year with Santa Ana as its capital), but before reaching Riverside we have entered San Bernardino County, the largest in the United States—“about the size of the States of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts combined.” The counties of Southern California are very much larger than those of the central and northern part of the State, and as the population increases they will doubtless be further subdivided. But it is doubtful if San Bernardino County will be divided very soon, for the greater part of it is comprised in the irredeemable Mojave Desert. The region west of the Bernardino range, however, is one of the most valuable in the State, experience having shown that it is the chosen home of the orange. Los Angeles County has many fine and luxuriant orange groves, and more of them than San Bernardino County; yet to see California orange culture in its highest perfection, one must go to Riverside. Nowhere else do the orchards seem so luxuriant and so well cultivated, or the fruit and trees so glossy and clean. Here the oranges do not need cleaning with a rag, owing to the absence of the black scale which elsewhere often gives the leaves and fruit a dirty appearance. The white scale-bug, too, which destroys the trees, has thus far spared Riverside groves, and in the business street of the town a notice is posted warning purchasers of orange-trees not to import any from infected counties. The orange is not indigenous to California, as it is to Mexico and Florida; it does not flourish here without some care, and becomes remunerative in proportion to the amount of care bestowed on it. A glance at the well-ploughed, weedless, carefully irrigated orchards of Riverside at once explains the enormous profits realized by local growers; and an incident that occurred at Anaheim throws further light on the matter. Noticing a couple of malodorous freight-cars on the side track, I asked a man what they contained. “Manure,” he replied, “from the numerous sheep corrals in the neighborhood, and bound for Riverside,” adding that this had been found the best manure for oranges, and that in a few years the Anaheimers, who now foolishly sold their treasure, would be importing it from elsewhere at an exorbitant price. Rows of cypress-trees are planted along the edge of every orchard, and sometimes even traverse the orchard in several places, to serve as windbreaks; for though there are no hurricanes to provide against, the desert wind is sometimes sufficiently boisterous to shake down bushels of unripe fruit and break the heavily laden branches unless thus protected.

The best way to see the Riverside orange groves, and marvel at their extent, is to ride or walk along Magnolia Avenue, doubtless the finest avenue in America. It is laid out a distance of twelve miles, and seven miles are now finished. Between the road and the houses on each side are four rows of tall eucalyptus and spreading pepper-trees, and two rows of fan palms, ten to twenty feet in height, and growing more beautiful every year. Nor is this fine avenue a monopoly of carriage-owners; for the poorest can enjoy its sights by paying ten cents for a ride in the street-cars, which have their track under a row of pepper-trees, without interfering with the broad carriage-drive. In this way Riverside spreads itself out, covering a territory, orchards included, of fifty-four square miles, and almost realizing the ideal of one of those California “rural cities of the future,” sketched in the last chapter. The grounds of some of the elegant villas which line this road are thrown open to the public, and one of them, which I examined, with its extensive stables, shady walks, hammocks, tennis grounds, and notices of club meetings, and _al-fresco_ teas, had an air of hospitality and sociability, recalling the life on Southern plantations before the Civil War. The large adobe house, a relic of the Spanish occupation, was deliciously cool on a warm day, and the owner said he did not find it unhealthy. He showed me through his extensive orchard, and with a large table-knife cut open specimens of more than half-a-dozen different kinds of budded oranges for me to taste. They were all sweet and juicy, but he had to admit himself that the differences in flavor were not so pronounced as the differences in the original homes of these varieties led one to expect. California fruit-growers doubtless attempt too much in seeking to raise oranges from so many different countries in the same field without losing their characteristic flavor. This difference in flavor is due to differences in soil and climate, and can only be preserved and reproduced in a similar soil and climate. As California fortunately has an infinite variety of climates and soil, it is probable that the problem of raising Italian, Spanish, Mexican, and Florida oranges all in the same State will yet be solved, but not in one and the same orchard. The Spanish blood-orange, for instance, the most delicately flavored of all oranges, is rarely seen in California; and when I asked why, I was told that it was inclined to sport and lose its characteristics. There is a fortune in store for the man who finds out under what conditions this variety flourishes in Spain, and seeks out a similar locality for it at home. Another excellent variety, the Florida russet, I never saw on the Pacific Coast. Its appearance is against it, and it is difficult to teach people to select their fruit for the palate rather than the eye.

Riverside is a little too far inland to get much benefit from the ocean breezes, but it is surrounded by mountains, snow-capped till summer, which to some extent atone for this disadvantage, and which make Riverside, from a scenic point of view, one of the most attractive places in the State. This, combined with its horticultural prosperity, causes it to grow rapidly, and among the new comers and the old there are a large number of English families, who, of course, endeavor to bring their household goods and customs with them. Foremost among these is the fox-hunt; but as there are no foxes to be hunted, the simple-minded plebeian jack-rabbit has to take the place of his astute, bushy-tailed colleague. There are no fences to jump or fields to destroy, and everything is in plain sight; but as the riding is much faster than in England, there is no lack of excitement. To come home from one of these hunts with a pair of rabbit ears in her hat is the chief pride of the English damsels at Riverside. Besides, these ornaments take the place of a parasol, much needed here sometimes. In midsummer, no doubt, Riverside is a good place to get away from, but in winter it offers special advantages to invalids, provided they are willing to submit to being treated like children, in being told what they may drink and what they may not. Riverside is a prohibition town. So I discovered at the hotel when I asked for a pint of claret. I have never been drunk in my life, and I find that a few glasses of pure claret aid my digestion, and moreover I like it, and am able to pay for it. Yet here I, who am supposed to be a free citizen in a free country, am placed in a position where I cannot indulge in a harmless and useful pleasure which concerns no one but myself, without breaking the law. Of course I broke the law, as anybody but a fool or a coward ought to do. A few words in private to the waiter, and the wine appeared on the table. Of course, when I asked him how much it was, he said he wouldn’t charge for it,—he had merely brought it “to oblige me”; and of course I asked how much he paid for it, and then left that amount, plus a suitable fee, on the table. A resident with whom I conversed subsequently on the subject gave me some instances of capital withheld and capital withdrawn from Riverside in consequence of the prohibition law, which unfits it as a residence for people who like to be free and law-respecting at the same time. A friend in Los Angeles had previously explained to me how Pasadena was damaged by the local prohibition law (which I believe has since been repealed), and gave an amusing account of the visit of the city fathers to Mr. Raymond, who continued to serve wine to his tourist and invalid guests after the law had been passed. Mr. Raymond quietly informed them that if they would not allow him to run a first-class hotel in their town, he would pull it down and rebuild it elsewhere. As the Raymond is one of the largest hotels and chief resorts on the Pacific Coast, the city fathers got alarmed, took their leave, and never molested Mr. Raymond again.

One more instance: Until within a year or two the owner of Catalina Island would not allow any beer or liquor to be sold to the thousands of campers on it; whereupon, an enterprising man hired a barge, moored it a hundred yards from the shore, put canvas over it, filled it with drinkables, and hired a boy to ferry his customers over and back. Mr. Shatto thereupon refused to allow the steamer to land anything for this man on his pier; but the latter got around this, too, by simply having his beer-barrels lowered directly from the steamer to his boat. These are illustrations of how prohibition prohibits in California.

It is not necessary to stuff your pockets and valise full of oranges on leaving Riverside for the South; for you will find just as good fruit, and plenty of it, in San Diego County. Backing up to a station called Citrus, a few miles north of Riverside, you wait for the train which leaves Barstow on the Atlantic and Pacific, or Santa Fé, Railway, for San Diego, and which, soon after you have boarded it, enters the county of that name,—a county not quite as large as San Bernardino, but still, according to the guide-book, covering as much ground as Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware combined. It forms the southwestern corner of the United States, and owes much of its local color to the proximity of Mexico, or Lower California,—a peninsula which a large number of educated people in the East are in the habit of mistaking for “Southern California.” The branch of the Santa Fé road referred to is known as the California Southern Railroad. Between the Bernardino range and the ocean it traverses a region where the spring vegetation, though almost as abundant as in Los Angeles County, is not so luxuriant, owing to the diminished rainfall. Three-fifths or more of the vegetation which carpets the fields seems to consist of Compositæ, and the predominant color is yellow—as if to hint at the fact, which has long since been demonstrated, that there is more gold to be got out of the surface of California soil than out of all its subterranean mines.

One never tires of looking at these gaudily colored fields, especially when bordered by foothills, whose green garb is ornamented with red, yellow, brown, and blue patches, like a “crazy-quilt,” varying in shade and atmospheric effect with the time of the day; or when, as on this route, there is a background of high mountains, with their snow caps drawn half-way down their treeless foreheads as late as May. The two chief mountains are too long-drawn-out to be imposing sculpturally, but the great mass of snow on them gains in charm by contrast with the surrounding blue sky and warm sunshine. The best point of view is from Perris, the junction for the short branch road to San Jacinto.