# Mexico, California and Arizona/Chapter 29

XXIX.
TO SAN DIEGO, AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER.
I.
THESE and kindred scenes are to be met with in fifty, I know not how many more, localities of a similar sort. San Fernando, Florence, Compton, Downey City, Westminster, Orange, Tustin City, Centralia, Pomona, and Artesia may be mentioned as leading examples. The "colony" government is of a simple sort, and consists of a justice of the peace, constable, water overseer, and school trustees. Anaheim, settled by Germans, was one of the first established colonies, and has become a town of importance. Santa Ana had a special bustle at present, as the terminus, for the time being, of the railroad in process of building from Los Angeles to San Diego.
Perhaps, however, the greatest general air of distinction is worn by Riverside. This colony seems to have been sought to an exceptional degree by persons in good circumstances. It is fifty-seven miles lower down than Los Angeles, and reached by a drive of seven miles southward from the Southern Pacific Railroad at Colton. Four miles north of Colton, on the other hand, takes you to San Bernardino, an important place of six thousand people, originally settled by Mormons. The regular Mormons withdrew to Utah by order of Brigham Young on the threat of the coercive war there in 1857, and only
A SYLVAN GLIMPSE AT RIVERSIDE.
At Riverside is found a continuous belt of settlement and cultivation twelve miles long, by two miles in average width. It will be twenty long when all complete. The population is not large, but revels in a great deal of room. The general situation is a valley of about forty miles square, at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the sea. The access to this valley is by four several passes, one each on the north, south, east, and west, as if so many doors had been providentially left open in the encompassing mountain ranges. The settlement forms an oasis in the midst of the desert, after the general plan. Its fresh greenness, and canals of clear water, along which sylvan glimpses, almost English, are met with, derive added charm and interest from the desert. The rest of the high, quadrangular valley, capable, no doubt, of as great development, if water can be brought upon it, remains in its natural condition.
A lovely drive, called Magnolia Avenue, planted with double rows of pepper and eucalyptus trees, extends through the length of the place from north to south. It is bordered with homes, making pretensions to much more than comfort. The best of these are at the division called Arlington, four miles below the post-office of Riverside proper. The native adobe, or sun-dried brick, supplemented with ornamental wood-work, has been used as material with excellent effect. In the interiors are found rugs, portières, Morris's wall-papers, and all the paraphernalia of the latest Eastern civilization; and there is an archery club and a "German."
Invalidism is heard of with considerable frequency as an excuse for the migration hither. Certainly many advantages offer to the invalid. The climate permits him
ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE.
to be almost constantly out-of-doors. The sky is blue, the sun unclouded, nearly every day in the year, and he can go into his orchard and concern himself about his Navel or Brazilian oranges, his paper-rind St. Michaels, and his Tahiti seedlings, with little let or hinderance. Orange culture affords him both a career and a revenue. If the unchanging blue of the sky grow sometimes monotonous, there are other distractions in the noble mountain ranges. Riverside has in this resource a touch of the charm of Switzerland. Your entertainer points out to you from his piazza the great peaks of Greylock, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto, from ten to twelve thousand feet in height, and crowned with snow for a considerable part of the year, just as the Jungfrau is pointed out from Interlaken and Mont Blanc from Geneva.
It is a description that applies to all of Southern California, that, however great the heat by day—in mid-summer often a hundred and live in the shade—the ​nights are always cool and refreshing. Sunstroke is not known. Nor are the violent thunder-storms with which Nature, with us, endeavors to restore equilibrium after having exhausted its most oppressive warmth. The great drawback here, as there must always be some drawback, consists in occasional heavy "northers," which gather up the dust from the dry surface and produce painful dust-storms of two or three days' duration.
ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE.
In autumn and winter the temperature is chilly enough to make fires a necessity morning and evening, and even all day long in apartments shut off from the influence of the sun. I was astonished to find the air so keen at these times, and a scum of ice forming upon water in the mornings even as far down as San Diego. The cold has a penetrating quality beyond its register by the thermometer. This, though usually overlooked, is important, since fuel is very scarce and correspondingly dear,
​Fagots of the prunings of the cottonwoods, sycamores, and mesquit-trees along the beds of the streams are the principal resource. Such coal as can be obtained is both costly and of poor quality.
The water for the irrigation of Riverside is taken from the swift little stream of the Santa Ana River, which Falls so rapidly within a short compass that it is feasible to take out two separate canals with a difference of thirty-five feet in their levels. On all sides lands are held at $200 and $300 per acre, and when the orange-trees have come into good bearing, at $1000, which but a few years ago were purchased at a dollar and a quarter an acre.
All these places have their local rivalries, though Southern California as a whole is ready to unite in vindicating its peculiar claims, against the outside world.
All have their pamphlets to distribute, containing their tables of mean temperatures, altitudes, analyses of soils, and claims to regard, as based upon nearness to, or absence from, some particular natural feature. Thus the coast counties take leave to pride themselves upon a genial average of temperature, owing to their proximity to the sea. They are free, they say, from the extremes of heat and cold afflicting those which are shut in behind the mountain barriers. The inland counties, on the other hand, congratulate themselves that their lot is cast where the mountains form an efficient defence against the raw fogs and gusts which must necessarily afflict those directly exposed to the chilly ocean.
These petty rivalries are a part of the history of all new countries, and pass away with the development of population and trade. There seems no need of jealousies, since there is encouragement enough for all in their several ways. The Territories of Arizona and New Mexico have just been opened to transportation by rail ​from this quarter. The lands suitable for the cultivation of the "citrus fruits" are limited in extent. The market is much more likely to improve than decline, even when production shall have largely increased beyond its present rate. High railroad freights were at one time a cause of alarm. The making of an "orange wine" was proposed as a resource for using up the surplus crop of this kind. The experiment was not a success, but it is not likely to be needed. Freights have declined, and will decline more with the building of projected new roads. Shipments of oranges have been successfully made from this section as far away as Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis.
II.
Great things are predicted for Wilmington, a little port twenty-two miles to the south-west of Los Angeles. The extensive works undertaken here by the railroad and the United States government are still incomplete, and it is but a dreary little place in its present condition. However, great ports have never been selected primarily for picturesqueness, but in accordance with such commercial necessities as short lines of transit, easy grades, and convenience for shipping. Wilmington had few natural conveniences to offer. There were originally but eighteen inches of water on its bar. This has been increased to ten feet. An enormous jetty, 6700 feet long, extending out to what is called Dead Man's Island, is under construction. It is to force the tide itself to do the duty of scouring out the bottom, so that a ship channel several miles long will eventually be secured.
Santa Monica is another small port at the end of a branch railroad from Los Angeles, sixteen miles directly west, and somewhat famed as a sea-side resort. It has a ​hotel of considerable size, and a bold situation on a pretty horseshoe bay. The beach is of fine, hard sand; and the temperature admits of bathing, if one be inclined for it, all the year round. The hopes which were at one time entertained by capitalists, like Senator Jones, of Nevada, of making the place a great shipping point, have been for the present abandoned. It was to have been the Pacific terminus of a new through line from the East, coming by way of the Cajon Pass. A wharf 1500 feet long was built, and a breakwater proposed.
OLD MISSION AT SANTA BARBARA.
From here, or from Wilmington, you sail up the coast to San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara favored by invalids. These places have as yet no railroad, but must before long come into the general system. Both are on that sheltered stretch of the coast which, from Point Conception, makes a sharp turn to the eastward, and has direct southern exposure and a view of the islands of
​Santa Barbara Channel. Santa Barbara, on its practical side, has devoted more attention than most places to the culture of the olive—an industry still much in its infancy. Some of the cultivators have provided themselves with a machinery, which costs about a thousand dollars, for expressing the oil. As a condiment the fruit is not pickled green here, like the Spanish olive, but ripe and black. It may be that a special education is needed for liking each variety of olives, as it is for acquiring the taste in the beginning. Those here are of a small variety, descending from the old mission times, and it is hard not to find them either insipid or bitter. The leading shipment from San Buenaventura is honey. A million pounds per annum from Ventura County, of which it is the capital, is not an unusual product.
III.
I sailed from Wilmington to San Diego. I embarked in the evening in a small tug, which steamed down the tortuous windings of the channel, past black lighters that Whistler would have liked to etch, and past Dead Man's Island, and transferred us on board a coast steamer waiting without. Next morning we were at our destination, a hundred miles below. San Diego, rising on a gentle slope, makes a pretty appearance from the water. A United States barracks (yellow), with a flag-staff rising in the centre, is the most prominent object in front. You round an immensely long, narrow sand-spit of a peninsula, which contributes to form the excellent small harbor, and make fast to an immensely long mooring wharf. It is a feature of all California ports to have immensely long wharves. To the left is "Old Town," its beach where Dana once loaded hides in his famous "Two
PLAZA OF SAN DIEGO-OLD TOWN
for the new railway. In the centre, at about four miles from either, lies "New Town," San Diego proper. All together have a population of about five thousand.
As we came up to the wharf a locomotive, starting from National City on the new track, made the circuit of the water-front, with one long, shrill scream, which was taken up by the hills and echoed back. Gods and men were no longer to remain ignorant that San Diego had at last caught up with its future and had its railroad.
It was cruelly disappointed when it was to be the terminus of the Texas Pacific, transcontinental, road. The panic of '73 prevented the capitalist "Tom Scott" from negotiating the foreign loan which was needed for its completion. That enterprise was abandoned, and a half-mile of graded road-bed alone remains as a sort of tumulus to the blighted hopes and bitter memories of the time. The name of the unfortunate "Tom Scott"—since defunct—remains also a byword and a reproach. Now, however, the "California Southern" is actually at work, and under contract to complete the one hundred and sixteen miles necessary to meet the Southern Pacific, at a point near San Bernardino, within a short time. It is to be a link in the new "Atlantic and Pacific," which is to follow the thirty-fifth parallel, and become a trans-continental road by means of connection with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé.
The capital and management of the California Southern are largely supplied by the same Boston company directing the Mexican Central, the line to Guaymas from the Arizona frontier, and others. A farther road is projected ​by them eastward from San Diego to Calabasas, passing through Port Ysabel, at the head of the Gulf of California. This can be more cheaply built below the Mexican frontier than on this side, owing to special exemptions there to be had from taxation, and the lower rates of labor. It is thought that the Southern Pacific will also be compelled by competition to build across from Yuma. Hopes are still entertained also of the derelict Texas Pacific. With all this in prospect, it will be seen that San Diego has justification for making a good deal of stir. It claims to be hundreds of miles nearer, than San Francisco, to New Orleans and New York, on the one hand, and the Orient on the other, and is correspondingly cheerful.
A hand-car on the long wharf conveyed our baggage into the town while we walked beside it. The town, being reached, is found a place of loose texture. It has a disproportionately large hotel, the Horton House, built in anticipation of the rapid arrival of its future greatness, and a loss to its original proprietor. The blue shades were down and the plate-glass windows dusty also, with an expectant look, in much of the "Horton Block," opposite. After '73 half the shutters in San Diego were put up. They have come down now, however, and probably to stay.
There is a charming view of the harbor and blue ocean from the upper slopes of the town. Part of the view is a group of bold Mexican islands, the boldest of these, Coronado, a solid mass of red sandstone, which Americans have tried to get for a quarry, without success. Yes, here is Old Mexico once more; we have come back to it. The high, flat-topped peak of Table Mountain marks it unmistakably. It is customary to drive down to "the Monument," set up on the dividing line of Baja (Lower) California, but the excursion is without special interest. ​The chronic condition of shutters in San Diego "Old Town" is to be "up," that is, so far as it can be said to have any shutters yet remaining. It dates from 1769. Disadvantageously situated in regard to the bay, it began to be deserted in favor of the newer site about ten years ago. Nothing could seem more desolate than it is now. The usual old mission, with a few palms and olives about it, stands in a valley, up the pretty San Diego River, and the earthworks of Commodore Stockton, who threw them up one night before the enemy knew he was ashore, are seen on a hill. Rents should be cheap in Old Town, but, according to the gossips who still sit around the decayed old plaza, they are not. The owners hold them stiffly yet, on what theory Heaven only knows.
OLD MISSION AT SAN DIEGO.
The plaza has a toppling flag-staff, a decayed music-stand, and vestiges of a number of burned edifices, which have never been worth anybody's while to build up again. The "Merchants' Exchange" will never supply cocktails to thirsty soul again; the Cosmopolitan Hotel is without a guest; whole rows of weather-beaten adobes—whole quarters—stand vacant. It should be a great place for ghosts. But perhaps they do not care for one another's society. The children, coming from school —for there is, ​it seems, a school—amuse themselves with knocking at and rattling the vacant doors; then they peer in at the broken window-panes and shout, and run laughing away.
IV.
In leaving San Diego I traversed the surveyed line of the new railroad almost due northward. A thirty-mile section of the railroad was already built. The rest of the journey was made by wagon, with an occasional half-day's pedestrianism, for which the dry, smooth surface of the
DON JUAN FORSTER.
ground is well adapted. It afforded opportunity of making the acquaintance in a leisurely way of some of the ranchmen, small and great, of the old school. The principal one of these was Don Juan Forster (deceased since ​this visit), well known in his section. He was English by birth, but sailed with his father in a trading vessel, and became a Mexican subject and resident of California long
SEÑORA FORSTER.
before the American conquest. It was so long before that he had well-nigh forgotten his English, and had to learn it over again when the Americans arrived. The Señora, a sister of Governor Pio Pico, never learned it at all, any more than her conservative brother.
Don Juan's estate, the Santa Margarita Ranch, comprised an area of twenty-seven miles by fourteen, or one hundred and forty-five thousand acres of land. There was one fence seventeen miles in length, and another ten. The owner had made two distinct efforts to colonize a portion of his land, without great success. He had offered in London to give forty acres and the use of three cows and two horses to whoever would put upon
FORESTER'S RANCH
The Santa Margarita ranch-house is of adobe, very thick-walled, with a terrace in front, and an interior court. The waiting at table was by a broad-faced Indian woman in calico. All the domestic service was performed by mission Indians, except the cooking, for which a Chinaman had lately been secured, with the view of having meals on time. The manner of living on these great places was found comfortable, but without the "princely" features attributed to it in some of the highly colored narratives of former travellers.
The greater part of the available land in the section was devoted to pasture. The cereals were cultivated, but not much fruit. Barley is the favorite cereal, as less liable to "rust" and spoil than wheat. Hay is made, not of grass, but of wheat and barley straw, cut green, with the milk still in it. Bee-culture is an important industry. A number of varieties of wild sage, wild buckwheat and sumac, furnish the bees exceptionally good provender. Rows of the square hives, painted in colors, were often seen districted into little streets on the hill-side, or at the mouth of some small canon, like a miniature city.
Before reaching Don Juan Forster's the old mission of San Luis Rey is encountered, in the hamlet of the same name. It is almost Venetian in aspect. The whole exterior was at one time faced with a diagonal pattern recalling that of the Ducal Palace. The pile was ruined by a Mormon contingent of the American forces engaged in the conquest of the State. Parts of the heavy adobe walls and buttresses have fallen in, and resolved themselves back into their original element as mere earth-heaps. The images have been shot and hacked down, and a yawning cavern was excavated behind the main ​altar in search of fancied treasure. Upon a floor strewn with such débris and with fragments of red tiles the daylight falls curiously, through holes in the broken roof and dome.
SAN LUIS REY.
The railroad traverses some striking natural scenery. Most notable is the Temecula Cañon, a gorge of a wild and grand description, ten miles in length, through the Coast Range. A brawling stream runs down its centre. The gorge was filled with a busy force, as we passed, terracing up the track along its sides, sometimes on the natural rock, sometimes on a cyclopean retaining-wall of immense bowlders. Toward evening every day the firing of heavy blasts reverberated up the defile like a cannonade. The main part of the laboring force consisted of Chinamen. They had utilized the shelving ledges and random nooks by the stream for their tents and cooking-ovens with great ingenuity. The Mexicans and Indians, who formed the contingent next in importance, were in every way less provident. The surveyors were found pleasant and hospitable fellows, as surveyors at the scene of their labors are apt to be. Compactness and conveni- ​ence had been reduced to the lowest terms, but a pleasant existence seemed possible in their small tents. A Chinese cook was attached to each camp, and the provisions and fare were excellent.
While coming up in the construction-train over the section of already completed road we had the distinction of being waited on by a servant of rather uncommon pretensions. This was a certain "Charley," a shock-
A TICHBORNE CLAIMANT.
headed boy of fourteen, son of a later Tichborne claimant, who had strangely arisen at San Diego just then, and announced his purpose of again contesting the title. ​Though serving in a menial capacity—while his father, who claimed to have good and sufficient reason for having kept quiet till now, was taking the necessary steps to secure the long-lost title and fortune—"Charley" was deaf to all banter on the subject. He was supercilious and from in the faith that he too was a Tichborne.
"And don't you forget it," he threw out to us by way of a parting injunction.
Out of the cañon, at the van of the construction work, we were on the Temecula Plains, a part of the Upper Santa Ana Valley. The course of the road was marked henceforth only by an occasional surveyor's stake. We rode over fifty miles of absolutely treeless, verdureless desert. It was desert, however, with a certain fascination in its sterility. It had a distinct beauty of coloring. The brown, drab, and blackish waste, catching sparkles of light on its flinty surface, shimmered in the sunshine. The heat was tempered by a gentle breeze. Crags of black, water-worn rock, which had once been reefs in an inland sea, rose in bold, fantastic shapes, and noble mountain ranges stood up along the distant horizons, their rugged harshness softened into blues and purples by a delicious veiling atmosphere.
Half-way across we fell in with a single sign of human life, in the shape of an abandoned pine shanty. On going around to the rear the boards were found to have been knocked off, probably to be used for fuel. Some former travellers, halting here like ourselves, had occupied a part of their leisure with writing inscriptions in lead-pencil. One had written a direction about drinkable water in the neighborhood. Another, apparently finding this erroneous, had inscribed below it, with much more vigor than regard for adopted usages in spelling, "Lyor!!" ​The sole piece of furniture remaining was a rusted cooking-stove, standing on three legs. It had a certain almost diabolic, knowing air. You suspected it of having lost its other leg in waltzing about and holding high carnival, as no doubt it did, with the coyotes, gophers, tarantulas, and lizards who dropped in to pay it visits.