Mower County transcript., 1890-12-10
THE AMERICAN ITALY.

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Southern California.
Southern California has rapidly
passed through varied experiences, and
has not yet had fair chance to show
the world what it is. Ithad its period
of romance, Of pastoral life, of lawless
adventure, OF crazy speculation. all
within hundred years, and it is just
now entering upon its period of solid,
civilized development A certain light
OF roma nee is cast upon this coast by
the Spanish voyagers of the sixteenth
century, but its history begins with the
establishment OF the chain OF Francis
can missions, the first of which was
founded by the great Father Jnnipero
Sierra at San Diego in 1869. The fathers
brought with them the vine and the
olive, reduced tho savage Indians to
industrial pursuits, and opened the way
for that ranchero and adobe civilization
which, down to the coming of the
American, in about 1910. made in this
region the most picturesque life that
our continent has ever seen. Follow
ing this is period of desperate ad-
venture and revolution, of pioneer State
building; and then the advent Of the
restless, the cranky, the invalid, the
fanatic, from every other State in the
Union. The first experimenters in
making homes seem to have fancied
that they had come to a ready-made
elysium-the IDLE mans heaven. They
seem to have brought with them little
knowledge of agriculture or horticulture
were ignorantof the conditions of su ccess
in this soil and climate. and left behind
the good industrial maxims of the East.
The result was period OF chance ex-
pertinent, one in which extravagant ex-
pectation and boasting to some extent
took the place of industry. The imagi-
nation was heated by the novelty of
such varied and rapid productiveness.
Mems minds we're inflamed by the ap-
parently limitless possibilities. The
invalid and the speculator thronged the
.trans-continental roads leading hither.
In this condition the frenzy of 1867
was inevitable. Isaw something of it
in the winter of 1887. The scenes then
daily and commonplace now read like
the widest freaks Of the Imagination.
The bubble collasped:as suddenly as it
expanded. Many were ruined, and left
the country. More were merely ruined
in their great expectations The spec
ulation was in town lots. When it SUBJ
sided it left the climate as it was, the
fertility as it was, and the value Of ara
BILE land not reduced. Marvellous as the
boom was, think the present recupera-
ton is still moro wonderful. In 1890, to
be sure, miss the hustle OF the cities,
AMI the creating of towns in week un-
der the hammer of the auctioneer. But
in all the cities, and most Of the vii
lagos, there has been growth in SUBJ
stantial buildings, and in the neces-
stiles of civic life-good sewer
age, water, supply and general
organization; while the country, as the
acreage Of vines and oranges, wheat and
barley, grain and corn, and tho ship
ments by rail testify, has improved more
than at any other period, and commerce
is beginning to feel the impulse OF .
genuine prosperity, based upon the in.
telligent cultivation of the ground.
School-houses have multiplied; libraries
have been founded; many ''boom"
hotels, built in order to sell city lots in
the sage-brush, have been turned into
schools and colleges CHARLES Dudley
Warner, in Harper's Magazine.