The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-07-24
Californian Life and Landscape.

Au through Jne Stalo, until you pene-
trate to the remote and lonely cattle
ranches and the habitations of the
Pixies, there is suggestion of city life,
of city atmosphere, about a California
ranch. which renders it thoroughly I'LL
like an eastern farm. There is little rus
ITCHY in the dress, for the rurals are so
often in the village that they keep
abreast of the fashions. L do not re-
memb ever 10 have seen patched
garment on a farmer, and the ''old clo'"
man is only found occasionally in tie
vicinity of the largest cities. Daily or
semi weekly the butcher wagon, the
fruit and wine wagon, and the vegetable
wagon make their appearance, far out
from the village and they will execute
small commissions on the grocery ten
miles distant. Daily papers from San
Francisco travel hundre 8 of miles by
rail, then are carried twelve or fifteen
farther by the rancher, arriving out
forty eight hours old. Four hundred
miles from the metropolis l have
stopped the mail-carrier, riding on q
mule in bridle-path, and bought the
daily journals. On that same bride
path you shall see scores of letter boxes
nailed to trees, though the ranchers'
houses are not in sight. TIE young
men drive spanking teams 10 spick- and
span new suikies or buggies, with
elegant cashmere or wolf.skin afghans.
Their talk is the talk of the town, it has
gold in it, and stocks, and horse-racss.
A ranch has two or three great, high
seated California wagons, with splendid
four hand to each the corral (speak,
correD is SO full of trig and painted
gimcracks that it looks like a magazine
e
few cozy, comfortable, middle class
homes The house is either msRnifi-
cent country residence, or a mean, I'M
may be occupied by man immensely
wealthy. Everything seems put there,
adventltious !; nothing grew out of the
soil. There are no ancient trees, no
Strawberries, no grass. Instead of
homely farmer messes, you eat urban
fare of beefsteak and hot biscuit made
with Boston yeast powder. You hope
for pumpkin pie, ami get a can of Balti-
more oysters. There are Oregon APP
Piles, Cincinnati hams. and stewed
prunes from Germany. A Man may be-
worth one hundred Thousand dollars
and have no milk to whiten his coffee.
The COW runs on the range and comes
home when she lists. A boy NAV be
dispatched for her on his tough little
shaggy cow horse, and a man must be
sent to bring the boy home. The yard
fences all look imported, as they are
all things have a contractor-like look,
little tawdry, little cheap. Every
thing is so naked and so new, that no
one can hang tradition on it. There
is no moss on the fences; the newly
sawed boards and posts and the houses
stand out painfully ugly and prominent
beneath the lovely sky. Yet yol never
hear the wind whistle or Indignantly
yell around them, as in the east in
winter ; it always gurgles softly around
those hideous corners. Fortunate it is
so. Nowhere else could the f1lmsiness
and cheapness of our American material
civil cation stand revealed with more
appalling ugliness. 1t would require
the finest and subtlest art to bear the
searching test of this pellucid atmos-
phere. In the east the fog and humid
Ity conceal something they lend gar
ments of moss they blind your eyes to
deformities. When one goes abroad in
California, he shudders and sbrugs his
shoulders and wishes to draw mantle
around him. Especially does he wish
to- draw a mantle around those stark
and rigid fences and naked houses
atlantic MOnthiY.