Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1901-03-21

was in returning from this old Mexi-
can town, where buildings are mostly
adobe, that my sympathies were arous-
ed for the Rio Grande river, or rather
what remains of it. From my boyhood
had been led to regard this river as
one of the crowning glories of this
great country of ours-no one ever told
me this that remember of-but some
how this idea grew up with me, and
had longed to see the mighty, the noble,
Rio Grande. Had l given it any
thought, I would have known that
could not pass from the United States
into Mexico, at this point, without
crossing the Rio Grande, unless wad-
ed, which / could easily have accom-
plished by taking off my shoes and
stockings, but this manner of going in
to strange country would have lacked
dignity, besides being a direct evasion
of the revenue laws, for which offense,
| believe, the penalty is confiscation,
and in addition / should have been
obliged to go somewhere and wash my
feet before daring to replace my shoes.
There is ample provision for river
here, but the water is lacking, except
ing q little muddy stuff running down
along one edge Of the channel, which in
places a spry lad could jump across.
The poor river is not to blame for this
state of affairs, however, it is doing the
best it can with the material it has at
hand, and by following on up through
New Mexico, towards it's source, the
observer will find that the noble river,
once, no doubt, the pride of this great
Southwest, has been sacrificed, stolen
in fact, to irrigate these vast arial
planes, that knew not fertility until
their fevered brow had been kissed by
the waters of the noble river that gave
up its very life that they might become
productive.
Well, it is very evident that | will
never reach California by following the
Rio Grande, 80 will say good bye to its
muddy waters, and strike out over a
barren waste of country that is largely
desert, that requires nearly q days
journey to traverse Ga Sabbath day at
that until we strike Yuma on the
banks of the Colorado, an oasis, you
might say, for it is planted down there
almost on the edge of the desert, and
arriving there as we did at six in the
morning, with appetites keenly sharp
ened in passing over the sandy waste
of desert, you can imagine that we did
not do thing but make the quail and
fried chicken fly with all the other good
things served US that morning for
breakfast. We took on new life here
upon seeing the green grassy lawns
with their luxuriant palms, and orange
trees laden with their golden fruit, and
the rich fragrance of their pure white
blossoms; but it is their time, and we
must speed on to the sunny land, and
on this last stretch we pass through
valley of salt that is depressed 800 feet
below sea level, while at the same time
we look out of the car windows upon
mountains, whose snow. covered, Jagged
peaks peer out above the clouds, some
at height of over II 900 feet. Cali
fornia can, at once, boast of the lowest
as well as the highest points of land in
the U. S. Shasta in the north being
over Is, 600 feet high, and this salt bas-
in in the south being 300 feet below, it
| is State of vast dimensions as well as
vast resources. 1t boasts of one county
| that is more than one and one. third
times the size of the old keystone State
and in this same county is the great
| Mojave desert equal in extent to one
half the size of Pennsylvania. Well, l
| guess it is about time to arrive; it is
about the middle of the afternoon, and
| the day is a magnificent specimen of
the California breed, of which they
have 316 in each year (the other 49 or
so in the event of leap year being given
| over to rain and cloud.)
l had not been in the city perhaps
more than an hour, when l walked in
to newspaper office-to tell them
had come-when who should / run up
against but an old friend whom had
known in the east, for years; he used
to be our Olean poet, Arthur J. Burdick,
and he was 80 overcome he couldn't
work any more that day. He is on the
editorial staff of the Los Angeles Her
aid, having come here from Buffalo the
first of the year. / also find our old
townsman FL. @. Rich and his wife, who
together with Mrs. Rich's father and
mother, are spending the winter here,
so am not altogether stranger in
strange land. have been around over
the country, in the vicinity of Los An
geles, to some extent in the four weeks
since / arrived, and find that no story
or picture that had heard or seen, in
the east, concerning Southern Califor-
MIA, it's climate, and resources, had
been in the least overdrawn. came
here for climate, and find it in abund-
ance, with oranges and lot of other
things thrown in. They use it largely
for fuel at this time Of year, it being
much less expensive than hard coal at
$50 ton, and much less annoying even
than soft coal at S12 With the ther-
mometer in the sixties (maximum) tits
q little chilly for tourists in their rooms