Daily Los Angeles herald., 1879-02-18
Sos Sugelrs Atralsl.
on Southern Calf
f0rnia.

fornia.
[Argonaut.l
We have just returned from q
trip over all the railroads OF Soutn-
ern California. We Travelled In
royal style-as travel monarchs,
rich men, and railroad kings-in a
special car, Better than this, we
took q special train, engine No. SO,
engineer Henry Small, familiarly
known as "Hanku-he who
brought across the continent by
rail at lightning speed the theat-
Tical managers, Messrs. Jarrett Il
Palmer; he wears golden badge
Of the achievement. We took as
officer Of first Importance and chief
minister to our creature comforts,
William, the cook. We took a
kitchen, dining-rooni, parlor, bed
cham ber, a larder we'll supplied.
We took comfortable beds. We
took our shot gun and tooth brush.
We took along some pleasant COM
panions. We took $4l0,000 in
money to pay expenses; in fact we
took the pay-car, with Messrs.
Redington, Bowen and Watt of the
railroad company to disburse our
money, and both ends of the firm
of Sisson, Wallace d Co. for COM
panions to our trip. From San
francisco to Los Angeles-stopping
at night-stopping to pay train
hands, road builders, track keepers,
men at depots, all the way down
the valley of the San Joaquin, over
the Tehachepi Pass, across the
desert. like following the great bent
arm of a giant from his shoulder to
of his four fingers, to Arizona, to
Wilmington, to Santa Ana, and to
Santa Monica; back to his palm,
the great, beautiful, fruitful, orange
bearing, grain-growing valley of
Los Angeles-all by daylight. And
such country! Such a God
'forsaken, dreary waste of barren,
brown, and dreadful desolation as
is the greater portion of the un-
fenced wilderness through which
we pass. To the uneducated eye,
the grim, hard, verdureless valleys,
the barren mountain ranges, the
broad, dry plains, destitute of
water and of trees, are truly land
of little promise. Whence come
our wine and wool, our gold and
grain? Certainly not from this
region through which even the iron
horse seems impatient to pass; a
country without farms, without
villages, without enterprise, with
out energy, without taste. Viii
lagos? yes; here and there beside
the rail uninteresting, untidy,
unthrlfty rows of cheap nous
es, every other one OF which is a
gin hell. Farms? yes; if unfenced
fields with board huts, shabby cor.
raj, discopsolate barn, dIeary,
draggle.tailed, pale-faced, weary
wife, with ragged, tow-headed
urchins-if such may be styled
farm and family, then once in sew
eral miles may it be said that this
part OF California has farms ano
families. If an unintelligent and
unenterprising man who plows ar
inch deep, and never plants tree,
Is farmer, then Southern Califor.
mia has farmers-but not such vii.
lagos, farms, homes, and toiling
thrifty, enterprising, industriou
workingmen as have built up New
England, subdued Western forests
and made prairies to bloom will
beauty.
The valley OF the upper San Joa
quin, the dreary stretch through
Tehachepi Pass, Soledad Canon
across the desert of the Mojave
with its weird skeleton cactu
shrabs, the desert of the Colorado
the desert of the trans Colorado, IL
far as we went into Arizona, seen
to US to be cursed with two curse
lone of God and one of man. N
water we charge as an act of I'm
skillful creation, or water runnin
useless to the sea, while the parcll
ed earth is praying for it. Thi
blunder may be corrected by irri
cation, for there is a wealth {
water that may be stored in hill
and natural reservoirs, be directe
from lakes and river beds, and dis
tributed over valleys, plains an
deserts that, under its influence
would respond with golden han
vests. And the other curse
mans cupidity-the men wh
steal land and hoard it away 70
sheep and cattle; land bandi to, VIII
have stolen this heritage of acres
felons, who have forged grants
jumped springs, bribed courts, lob
bied legislatures, and by all tn
arts and articles of the criminal
flched Gods acres, and now hol
them in an iron grasp from cult
walton and settlement. We do no
mean Haggin and Carr, who, b,
the expenditure of capital an,
brains, are making q great gardel
In the desert county of Kern; no
General Williams and Naglee, VIII,
are building great dykes for re
clamation; not Governor Downey
who has subdivided and sold hi
lands to small farmers; not the col
onies of Lompoc, and Riverside
and Central, where it is demon
strated that twenty acres of thi
seemingly desert land can furnish
maintenance for family; but tn,
speculative fiends who are pape
squatters, and who, by lies, PERU
ry, and subornation of perjury, ac
quired properties they have no,
the brains nor the capital to utilize
These men are curse to California
they are hindrance to its pros
perity; they retard its growth and
stay immigration; and they ought
to be taxed to death, to conflsca.
ton, TO ruin. It is right to rob
them; it is q duty to despoil them.
The valley OF the San Joaquin
ought to be irrigated at the ex.
pense of this land and for the bene
tit of it; and if the cormorants who