The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1876-07-08
SAN JOSE, (O-ZA) CALIFORNIA.

pleasant and handsome town in the State.
Situated in the Santa Clara Valley and
sheltered by mountains from the cold blasts
which blow almost constantly from the
Pacific, the temperature is milder than that
of any of the coast towns. The city is
we'll improved by shade trees in the streets,
and many fine residences are situated in
the suburbs, surrounded by shrubbery and
trees of semi tropical varieties. Gardens
and orchards abound ON the outskirts of
the town, while a profusion of flowers
adorn the yards and lawns of the Weather
residents, kept green and blooming by aid
of windmill pumps which afford an abun-
dant supply of water for the purpose.
The home life and social habits of
country interest those who mediate emf
grating to it, probably more than any other
feature, and | am sorry to say, that what
Eastern people would term home and neigh
borhood life is found to be the exception,
rather than the rule, in California. The
population is restless and prone to change,
and seem to take to the eXcitements of
public recreations, balls, pic-nics, excur-
quiet and refined pleasures of home and
neighborhood life. This feature of the
country found much complained Of by
the people of steady habits whose tastes
had been formed in the old States
Every dead wall was posted with notices
of public pic-nics and similar coarse enter
tainments. Our Eastern ideas of pic-nics
associate them with warm weather, when
the shady grove and cool fountain are
sought. A picnic here seems like grim
satire, when cold wind is blowing from
the ocean resembling stiff northeast gale
such as visits the Atlantic States in the
Spring, with the pelting rain of the latter
left out; when heavy Winter clothing and
wraps are necessary to protect the SILVER
ing pleasure-seekers from the cold sea
breeze, and a seat on the sunny side of
wall is preferable to the shade of the trees.
Discussing pic-nics and sylvan pleasures
reminds the visitor here of the irreconcila-
BILE difference between an Eastern and
Western landscape. The Atlantic slope of
the United States is probably unsurpassed
for it's picturesque scenery of grove and
forest, hill and vale, when clothed in their
Summer green. After crossing the Missis-
sippi the scenery is entirely changed
Trees become scarce, the country stretches
away in vast plains which reach the hori-
ION, producing sense of loneliness and
dull monotony. When the numerous chains
which compose the Rocky Mountains are
passed, and the Pacific slope is reached,
the landscape again changes, and new
prospect in every respect meets the eye.
Here it is all mountain and valley. These
mountains, or foothills as they are termed,
are split up into thousand different forms
and fantastic shapes. Their steep sides,
divest of trees,-or at most presenting but
a scanty supply of shrubbery-slope down
to the deep winding ravines, called canons
here, Spanish word-covered with grass,
green in the rainy Winter months, but
parched and brown throughout the long
rainless Summer and Fall. These land
scape scenes are so immeasureably inferior
to what the eye of the sojourner from the
East has been accustomed to, that he never
ceases to draw an unfavorable contrast be-
tween the Occident and the Orient. The
old Californian will not hesitate to tell you
that Nardhoff, and other writers, have
greatly overdone and misreprescnted Cali
fornia. One very intelligent gentleman,
who had tramped the whole State over,
and is now located in San Francisco, re-
marked, when speaking Of this fault of
tourists, that Nardhoff was good-natured
German, who saw everything through rose
colors, and was easily imposed upon by
those whose interest it is to impose upon
the outer world.
The circulating money of California
has always been gold and silver. When
greenbacks were adopted as the currency
of the country, the business men of
California resolved to retain specie as the
money of the Pacific States, and in the
then isolated condition of that coast from
the States, its comparatively sparce popu-
lation, and the money power of the coast
being almost entirely in the hands of San
Francisco merchants, bankers and specu-
lators, they were enabled to carry out this
resolution. Although hard money advo-
cate, think, under the circumstances, the
circulating medium of the country being
paper, the result of memorable necessity,
that the prosperity of California would
have been advanced by having had a cur
rency uniform with the rest of the country.
Her specie currency served to isolate and
4, Ga II, of trade