Lexington weekly intelligencer. (Lexington, Mo.) 1871-1887, 1876-02-26
CALIFORNIA LETTER.
SANTA Rosa, CAL, Feb. Is, '76.

J.. tnlS season OF the year without grea
l. tribulation.
The rain and mud of Californi,
I. winter. and not the cold, are th,
!. things that make travelling by land
i anything but delightful.
t The painless, untraveled, unblszed
way across the rugged Sierra was
: not more formidable to the gold.
seeking emigrants of 49, than are the
mud and rain of winter to the sight
i seeing stranger of these later days;
and to say that | have just returned
from all nltramontane Journey to
that wonderful place, the Geysers,
may not seem to you incredible. but
to native Californian, one familiar
with the tolls aud dangers of houn-
dering, for 80 miles, through the un-
sounded mud Of winter, with its in.
creasing rains, such statement, ith
the confession that it had been made
with no purpose but that of sight
seeing, would tax his credulity be-
yond endurance. Yet, in defiance of
both rain and mud, l have made the
Tourney without q wreck, and with
out laundering.
Excessive cold is about the only
thing more terrible to me than the
boundless, bottomless, adhesive, and
unbridged and unabridged mud of
California. Much as / delight in a
temperate climate, am not sure but
it would be cheerful at least il some
of these places were subjected to the
solidifying powers of an arctic breeze
for nothing milder, it seems to me,
would suffice to harden them. The
winters of California, which are SIM
ply the rainy season, bring the chief
discomtorts to this otherwise delight
full climate and yet if it were not for
| these winter rains California would
be sterile waste-unrroductiv aud
uninhabitable. The summer rains in
Ethiopia, and the consequent inun-
dations of the Nile, were not more
necessary to the land of the P haraoh's
than are the winter rains to the peo-
pie along the Pacific coast.
THE GEYSERs.
Ina small canon of the coast range
of mountains, 80 miles from Santa
Rosa, 20 miles from the beach, and
800 feet above the level Of the sea,
may be seen not one of the "sevcn
wonders of the world" but one of
the many wonders of California. 1
mean the wonderful. the frightful
Geysers, at the sight of which the Gu
rious stranger will not only wonder,
even as he would before the Acropo-
lis at Athens, or at the sight of any
other of the seven wonders of
the world - but if he be ner-
vous and superstitious, and lack
faith in coming confagration
of the earth-his wonder will soon
take OH feeling of terror, and bring
him into line with the most confiding !
adberents of a speedy contamination
of that dreaded event--for he will
soon realize, as did, that the very
ground upon which he stands is but a
sulphurous, combustible crust, and
hot enough to fire the pegs of his
boots; and when he comes to add to
this source of an increase of his faith
the other visible fact that before
him. and around him. are bubbling
springs of liquid fire, emitting COLI
slant stream of steaming gas, and
from which flow fused liquid, hot
enough to cook crocadile, he may
not be accounted wild if he conclude
already at one of the out
posts of the Old Felloa1s dominion,
Or that the fires for the final confla-
grafton are already lighted, and that
the year 1876,-the great centennial
year,-should usher Ill the beginning
Of the end-the contamination of all
things.
The Geysers, about which Intend
ed to write you, are simply springs-
not of water purely-but compound
Of various substances, in which sui
phur is largely prominent, and all
fused into liquid, and forced to the
surface from some heated cauldron
in the bowels of the earth, and may
be analyzed and explained only by
men of science, who, doubt not will
regard them as simple safety valves
against those terrible terra frma I
trembtements, which SO often disturb
The quiet Of people along this coast,
and which, by the way. is about the
only thing a native Californian breads.
That there is i'll the minds of this peo-
Die secret, unacknowledged dread
If earthquakes. is most plain, and
my reference you make to the fact {
brings them out, not in denial, but {
II the assertion which, upon the voire
lire, it is difficult to gainsay that
the thunder and lightning in the 9
'tate. with the storms incident there
o, are the source of more terror t.,
he people there than are the chapces
# earthquake i'll California--(neither +
hunder nor lightning are ever wit h
'essed i'll California; Sull,the dread +
xists, aud is manifest in many ways, :;
ma i'll none more than in the charac.
er OF the buildings-ninety- out
# every hundred of which are of
Vood. Even in the cities and other =,
cutters of wealth, houses cf brick and !,
tone are rare, and found only along a
he streets devoted to commerce. S
hey are, no doubt, believers in the
erlty OF Piato's legend of the lost !,
know not but that down Il
the fountain and source of these c.
Ieysers space is being widened out
y the action of internal fires, into a.
'hlch, i'll some mighty throe of ma o
Ire, these hills and plains. now i'm y
ne full bloom of verdure, may some IT II
ay be sunk to their native bed. and ~
ave The broad Pacific to fill their II;
laces, even as the Atlantic does the
lace of long lost Atlantis.
The Geysers must be seen to he hi
=