A Truthful Woman in Southern California
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| Publié par | sowyur |
| Publié le | 08 décembre 2010 |
| Nombre de lectures | 19 |
| Langue | English |
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Title: A Truthful Woman in Southern California Author: Kate Sanborn Release Date: September 27, 2006 [EBook #19391] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRUTHFUL WOMAN ***
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A TRUTHFUL WOMAN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
BY KATE SANBORN
AUTHOR OF ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM, ETC. NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1906 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
I.HINTS FOR THE JOURNEY. II.AT CORONADO BEACH. III.SAN DIEGO. IV.EN ROUTE TO LOS ANGELES. V.LOS ANGELES AND ROUND ABOUT. VI.PASADENA.
VII.CAMPING ON MOUNT WILSON. VIII.CATCHING UP ON THE KITE-SHAPED TRACK. IX.RIVERSIDE. X.A LESSON ON THE TRAIN. XI.SANTA BARBARA. XII.HER CITY AND COUNTY. XIII.IN GALA DRESS. XIV.AU REVOIR.
A Truthful Woman in Southern California
CHAPTER I.
HINTS FOR THE JOURNEY. The typical Forty-niner, in alluring dreams, grips the Golden Fleece. T h efin-de-siècle in Pullman train, flees the Cold and Argonaut, Grip. En Sol y la Sombra—shade as well as sun. Yes, as California is. I resolve neither to soar into romance nor drop into poetry (as even Chicago drummers do here), nor to idealize nor quote too many prodigious stories, but to write such a book as I needed to read before leaving my "Abandoned Farm," "Gooseville," Mass. For I have discovered that many other travellers are as ignorant as myself regarding practical information about every-day life here, and many others at home may know even less. So let me say that California has not a tropical, but a semi-tropical climate, and you need the same clothing for almost every month that is found necessary and comfortable in New York or Chicago during the winter. Bring fur capes, heavy wraps, simple woolen dresses for morning and outdoor life; and unless rolling in wealth, pack as little as possible of everything else, for extra baggage is a curse and will deplete a heavy purse,—that rhymes and has reason too. I know of one man who paid $300 for extra baggage for his party of fifteen from Boston to Los Angeles. Last year I brought dresses and underwear for every season, and for a vague unknown fifth; also my lectures, causing profanity all along the line, and costing enough to provide drawing-room accommodations for the entire trip. Why did I come? Laryngitis, bronchitis, tonsilitis, had claimed me as their own. Grip (I will not honor it with a foreign spelling, now it is so thoroughly acclimated and in every home) had clutched me twice—nay, thrice; doctors shook their heads, thumped my lungs, sprayed my throat, douched my nose, dosed me with cough anodynes and nerve tonics, and pronounced another winter in the North a dangerous experiment. Some of you know about this from personal experience. Not a human being could I induce to join me. If this hits your case, do not be deterred; just come and be made over into a joyous, healthful life. I would not urge those to take the tedious journey who are hopelessly
consumptive. Home is the best place for such, and although I see many dragging wearily along with one lung, or even half of that, who settle here and get married and prolong existence for a few years, and although some marvellous cures have been effected, still I say the same. And what is to be put in the one big trunk? Plenty of flannels of medium thickness, a few pretty evening dresses, two blouses, silk and woolen or velvet for morning wear, with simple skirts, a gossamer, rubbers, thick boots for long tramps and excursions, parasol, umbrella, soft hat to shade the face, and gloves for all sorts of occasions. I do not venture to suggest anything for men, they travel so sensibly. The more experienced one is, the less he carries with him. So do not load up with portfolio and portable inkstand, your favorite stationery, the books that delighted your childhood or exerted a formative influence upon your character in youth. Deny yourself and leave at home the gold or silver toilet set, photograph album, family Bibles, heavy fancy work, gilded horseshoe for luck, etc. I know of bright people who actually carried their favorite matches from an eastern city to Tacoma, also a big box of crackers, cheese, pickles, and preserved fruits, only to find the best of everything in that brilliant and up-with-the-times city. One old lady brought a calla-lily in a pot! When she arrived and saw hedges and fields of lilies, hers went out of the window. Another lady from Boston brought a quart bottle of the blackest ink, only to spill it all upon a new carpet at Santa Barbara, costing the boarding-house keeper thirty-five dollars. Everything that one needs can be purchased all along the way, from a quinine capsule to a complete outfit for any occasion. As to the various ways of coming here, I greatly prefer the Southern Pacific in winter, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé in spring or summer. Either will take you from New York to San Diego and return for $137, allowing six months' stay. The "Phillips Excursion" will take you from Boston to San Francisco for fifty-five dollars. But in this case the beds are hard, and you provide your own meals. Some try the long voyage, twenty-three days from New York to San Francisco. It is considered monotonous and undesirable by some; others, equally good judges, prefer it decidedly. I believe in taking along a loose wrapper to wear in the cars, especially when crossing the desert. It greatly lessens fatigue to be able to curl up cosily in a corner and go to sleep, with a silk travelling hat or a long veil on one's head, and the stiff bonnet or big hat with showy plumes nicely covered in its long purse-like bag, and hanging on a hook above. The sand and alkali ruin everything, and are apt to inflame the eyes and nose. I find a hamper with strap indispensable on the train; it will hold as much as a small trunk, yet it can be easily carried. Now imagine you have arrived, very tired, and probably with a cold in your head, for the close heated cars and the sudden changes of climate are trying. You may be at The Raymond, and "personally conducted." Nothing can be better than that. But if you are alone at Los Angeles, or San Francisco, come straight down to Coronado Beach, and begin at the beginning—or the end, as you may think it.
CHAPTER II.
AT CORONADO BEACH.
I associate Coronado Beach so closely with Warner (Charles D.), the cultured and cosmopolitan, that every wave seems to murmur his name, and the immense hotel lives and flourishes under the magic of his rhetoric and commendation. Just as Philadelphia is to me Wanamakerville and Terrapin, so Coronado Beach is permeated and lastingly magnetized by Warner's sojourn here and what he "was saying." But I must venture to find fault with his million-times-quoted adjective "unique" as it is used. It has been stamped on stationery and menu cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no one ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own. To me it deserves a stronger word, or series of words. We say a pretty girl has a "unique" way of dressing her hair, or an author a "unique" way of putting things. But as I look out of my window this glorious morning, and watch the triple line of foaming waves breaking on the long beach, a silver sickle in the sunshine; the broad expanse of the Pacific, with distant sails looking like butterflies apoise; Point Loma grandly guarding the right, and farther back the mountain view, where snowy peaks can just be discerned over the nearer ranges; the quiet beauty of the grounds below, where borders and ovals and beds of marguerites contrast prettily with long lines and curves of the brilliant marigolds; grass, trees, and hedges green as June—a view which embraces the palm and the pine, the ocean and lofty mountains, cultivated gardens and rocky wastes, as I see all this, I for one moment forget "unique" and exclaim, "How bold, magnificent, and unrivalled!" Give me a new and fitting adjective to describe what I see. Our best descriptive adjectives are so recklessly used in daily life over minute matters, that absolutely nothing is left for this rare combination. As a daughter of New Hampshire in this farthest corner of the southwest, my mind crosses the continent to the remote northeast and the great Stone Face of the Franconia Mountains. Chiselled by an Almighty hand, its rugged brow seamed by the centuries, its features scarred by the storms of ages, gazing out over the broad land, where centre the hopes of the human race, who can forget that face, sad with the mysteries of pain and sorrow, yet inspiring with its rugged determination, and at times softened with the touch of sunlit hope? Point Loma has something of the same sphinx-like grandeur, with its long bold promontory stretching out into the western waters. These two seem to be keeping watch and ward over mountain and sea: each appropriate in its place and equally impressive. There the stern prophet surveying the home of great beginnings, the cradle of creative energy; and here, its counterpart, a mighty recumbent lion, its dreamy, peaceful gaze turned with confidence out over the wide Pacific to the setting sun, with assurance of ultimate success, a pledge of aspirations satisfied, of achievements assured, of——Whoa there! Hello! This to my runaway steeds, Imagination and Sentiment. Brought back by a passing bell-boy, I shall now keep a tighter rein. But when one first breathes the air of California, there is a curious exaltation and excitement, which leads on irresistibly. This is often followed by a natural depression, sleepiness, and reaction. But that view never changes, and I know
you will say the same. A florid, effervescent, rhapsodical style seems irresistible. One man of uncommon business ability and particularly level head caught the spirit of the place, and wrote that "the most practical and unpoetical minds, too, come here and go away, as they afterward gingerly admit, carrying with them the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and crimson upon cloud, sea, and mountain; of violet promontories, sails, and lighthouses etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering in sun-lit haze; of sunrises with crowns of glory chasing the vapory, fleece-like shadows from the wet, irridescent beach, and silhouetting the fishermen's sails in the opalescent tints of a glassy sea." Some temperaments may not be affected at all. But the first morning I felt like leaping a five-barred fence, and the next like lying down anywhere and sleeping indefinitely. I met a distinguished Boston artist recently, who had just arrived. The day was superb. He seemed in a semi-delirium of ecstasy over everything. His face glowed, his eyes shone, his hands were full of flowers. He said, "My heart jumps so I'm really afraid it will jump out of my body." The next morning he was wholly subdued. It had poured all night, and the contrast was depressing. A six-footer from Albany was in the sleepy state. "If I don't pull out soon," he said, "I shall be bedridden. I want to sleep after breakfast, or bowling, or bath, or my ride or dinner, and really long to go to bed by nine." There has probably been more fine writing and florid rhetoric about California than any other State in the Union. The Hotel del Coronado is a mammoth hostelry, yet homelike in every part, built in a rectangle with inner court, adorned with trees, flowers, vines, and a fountain encircled by callas; color, pure white, roofs and chimneys red; prevailing woods, oak, ash, pine, and redwood. All around the inner court a series of suites of rooms, each with its own bath and corner sitting-room—literally "a linkèd suiteness long drawn out." It is one eighth of a mile from my bedroom to my seat in the dining-room, so that lazy people are obliged to take daily constitutionals whether they want to or not, sighing midway for trolley accommodations. The dining-room may safely be called roomy, as it seats a thousand guests, and your dearest friends could not be recognized at the extreme end. Yet there is no dreary stretch or caravansary effect, and to-day every seat is filled, and a dozen tourists waiting at the door. Every recreation of city or country is found in this little world: thirty billiard-tables, pool, bowling, tennis, polo, bathing (where bucking barrel-horses and toboggan slides, fat men who produce tidal waves, and tiny boys who do the heroic as sliders and divers, make fun for the spectators), hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing, riding to hounds, rabbit hunts, pigeon shoot, shooting-galleries, driving, coaching, cards, theatre, ballroom, lectures, minstrels, exhibitions of the Mammoth and Minute from Yosemite with the stereopticon, to Pacific sea-mosses, the ostrich farm, the museum or maze for a morning hour, dressing or undressing for evening display, watching the collection of human beings who throng everywhere with a critical or humorous eye, finding as much variety as on Broadway or Tremont Street; dancing-classes for children; a chaperon and a master of ceremonies for grown folks; a walk or drive twelve miles long on a smooth beach at low tide, not forgetting the "dark room" for kodak and camera f—amateurs.
You see many athletic, fine-looking men, who ride daringly and ride to kill. Once a week the centre of the office is filled with game: rabbits, quail, snipe, ducks, etc., everything here—but an undertaker. And old Ocean eternally booming (the only permanent boom I know of in Southern California). And that is what you see and hear at the Hotel del Coronado. The summer climate is better than the winter—never too warm for comfort, the mercury never moving for weeks. I expected constant sunshine, a succession of June's fairest days, which would have been monotonous, to say nothing of the effect upon crops and orchards. The rainy season is necessary and a blessing to the land-owners, hard as it is for "lungers" and the nervous invalids who only feel well on fine days and complain unreasonably. Ten inches is the average needed just here. Rain is rainy and wet weather is wet, but the ground dries as soon as the pelting shower is over. I do not find the raw, searching dampness of our Eastern seashore resorts. Here we are said to have "dry fogs" and an ideal marine atmosphere, but it was too cold for comfort during the March rains for those not in robust health. As I sit in the upper gallery and watch the throng issuing from the dining-room, I make a nice and unerring social distinction between the Toothpick Brigade who leave the table with the final mouthful semi-masticated, and those who have an air of finished contentment. The orchestra is unusually good, giving choice selections admirably executed. I have not decided whether music at meals is a blessing or otherwise. If sad, it seems a mockery; if gay, an interruption. For one extremely sensitive to time and tune it is difficult to eat to slow measures. And when the steak is tough and a galop is going on above, it is hard to keep up. Among the many fleeting impressions of faces and friends here, one or two stand out clearly and indelibly—stars of the first magnitude in the nebulæ—as dear Grandma Wade from Chicago, the most attractive old lady I ever met: eighty-three years old, with a firm step, rotund figure, and sweet, unruffled face, crowned with the softest snow-white curls, on which rests an artistic cap trimmed with ribbons of blue or delicate heliotrope, and small artificial flowers to match. I have known several interesting octogenarians, but never one that surpassed her in loveliness, wit, and positive jollity. Her spontaneous fun is better than the labored efforts of many a famous humorist. She still has her ardent admirers among men as well as women, and now and then receives an earnest proposal from some lonely old fellow. The last of these aged lovers, when refused and relegated to the position of a brother, urged her to reconsider this important matter, making it a subject of prayer. But she quietly said, "I'm not going to bother the Lord with questions I can answer myself." When choked by a bread-crumb at table, she said to the frightened waiter, as soon as she had regained her breath, "Never mind, if that did go down the wrong way, a great many good things have gone down the right way this winter." She is invariably cheerful, and when parting with her son for the winter she said, "Well, John, I want to know before I go just what you have left me in your will!" which little joke changed a tear into a smile. Even when ill she is still bright and hopeful, so that a friend exclaimed,
"Grandma, I do believe you would laugh if you were dying;" and she replied, "Well, so many folks go to the Lord with a long face, I guess He will be glad to see one come in smiling " . Oh, how repulsive the artificial bloom, the cosmetics and hair-dyes which make old age a horror, compared with her natural beauty! God bless and keep dear Grandma Wade! Little "Ted" is another character and favorite, and his letter to his nurse in New York gives a good idea of how the place affects a bright, impressionable child. "MY DEARJULIA:is a dummy near the hotel and it takes five days toIt come here and there is an island right beyond the boat house and they have a pigeon shoot every week. And there is six hundred people here Julia, one hundred and fifty came yesterday. "a house very far away byThere is a mountin across the river and itself, Julia. I play in the sand every day of my life, and I take swimming lessons and I have two oranges. California is the biggest world in the country and there is a tree very, very far away. Julia it is a puzzle walk near the hotel, Rose and me went all through it and Julia, we got our way out easy." He has it all. All the trees are cultivated here, so I looked round for the one Ted spoke of, and find it lights up at night and revolves for the aid of the mariners. I think that all Californians echo his sentiment that "California is the biggest world in the country"; and compared with the hard work of the New England farmers, what is the cultivation of orchards but playing in the sand with golden oranges? Some one says that Californians "irrigate, cultivate, and exaggerate." Charles Nordhoff, the veteran journalist and author, lives within sight of the hotel (which he pronounces the most perfect and charming hotel he knows of in Europe or America), in a rambling bungalow consisting of three small cottages moved from different points and made into one. He believes in California for "health, pleasure, and residence." It is a rare privilege to listen to his conversation, sitting by his open fire or at his library table, or when he is entertaining friends at dinner. So ends my sketch of Coronado. Coronado! What a perfect word! Musical, euphonious, regal, "the crowned"! The name of the governor of New Galicia, and captain-general of the Spanish army, sent forth in 1540 in search of the seven cities of Cibola. General J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., has written a valuable monograph on "Coronado's March," which can be found in the Smithsonian Report for 1869. I intend to avoid statistics and history on the one side, and extravagant eulogy on the other. Now we will say good-by to our new friends, take one more look at Point Loma, and cross the ferry to San Diego.
CHAPTER III.
SAN DIEGO. "The truly magnificent, and—with reason—famous port of San Diego."—letter of Father Junipero in Alto California.From the first Fifteen cents for motor, ferry, and car will take you to Hotel Florence, on the heights overlooking the bay, where I advise you to stop. The Horton House is on an open, sunny site, and is frequented by "transients" and business men of moderate means. The Brewster is a first-class hotel, with excellent table. The Florence is not a large boarding-house or family hotel, but open for all. It has a friendly, homelike atmosphere, without the exactions of an ultra-fashionable resort. The maximum January temperature is seventy-four degrees, while that of July is seventy-nine degrees, and invalid guests at this house wear the same weight clothing in summer that they do in winter. The rooms of this house are all sunny, and each has a charming ocean or mountain view. It is easy to get there; hard to go away. Arriving from Coronado Beach, I was reminded of the Frenchman who married a quiet little home body after a desperate flirtation with a brilliant society queen full of tyrannical whims and capricious demands. When this was commented on as surprising, he explained that after playing with a squirrel one likes to take a cat in his lap. Really, it is so restful that the building suggests a big yellow tabby purring sleepily in the sunshine. I sat on the veranda, or piazza, taking a sun-bath, in a happy dream or doze, until the condition of nirvana was almost attained. What day of the week was it? And the season? Who could tell? And who cares? Certainly no one has the energy to decide it. Last year, going there to spend one day, I remained for five weeks, hypnotized by my environments—beguiled, deluded, unconscious of the flight of time, serenely happy. Many come for a season, and wake up after five or six years to find it is now their home. "There seems to exist in this country a something which cheats the senses; whether it be in the air, the sunshine, or in the ocean breeze, or in all three combined, I cannot say. Certainly the climate is not the home-made common-sense article of the anti-Rocky Mountain States; and unreality is thrown round life—all walk and work in a dream." At Coronado Beach one rushes out after breakfast for an all-day excursion or morning tramp; here one sits and sits, always intending to go somewhere or do something, until the pile of unanswered letters accumulates and the projected trips weary one in a dim perspective. It is all so beautiful, so new, so wonderful! San Diego is the Naples of America, with the San Jacinto Mountains for a background and the blue sunlit bay to gaze upon, and one of the finest harbors in the world. Yet with all this, few have the energy even to go a-fishing. Now, as a truthful "tourist," I must admit that in the winter there are many days when the sun does not shine, and the rainy season is not altogether cheerful for the invalid and the stranger. Sunshine, glorious golden sunshine, is what we want all the time; but we do not get it. I noticed that during the heavy rains the invalids retired to their rooms, overcome by the chill and dampness, and some were seriously ill. But then they would have been in their graves if they had remained in the East. There are many charming people residing in San Diego, well, happy, useful, who know they can never safely return to their old homes. There has been such a rosy glamour thrown over southern California by enthusiastic romancers that many are disappointed when they fail to find an absolute Paradise.
Humboldt said of California: "The sky is constantly serene and of a deep blue, and without a cloud; and should any clouds appear for a moment at the setting of the sun, they display the most beautiful shades of violet, purple, and green."1 1 Humboldt had never been in Alta California, and procured this information in Mexico or Spain. Now, after reading that, a real rainy day, when the water leaks through the roof and beats in at the doors, makes a depressed invalid feel like a drenched fowl standing forlornly on one leg in the midst of a New England storm. With snow-covered mountains on one side and the ocean with its heavy fogs on the other, and the tedious rain pouring down with gloomy persistence, and consumptives coughing violently, and physicians hurrying in to attend to a sudden hemorrhage or heart-failure, the scene is not wholly gay and inspiriting. But when the sun comes forth again and the flowers (that look to me a little tired of blooming all the time) brighten up with fresh washed faces, and all vegetation rejoices and you can almost see things grow, and the waves dance and glitter, and the mountains no longer look cold and threatening but seem like painted scenery,a laBierstadt, hung up for our admiration, and the valleys breathe the spicy fragrance of orange blossoms, we are once more happy, and ready to rave a little ourselves over the much-talked-of "bay 'n' climate." But there are dangers even on the sunniest day. I know a young physician who came this year on a semi-professional tour, to try the effects of inhalations on tuberculosis, and it was so delightfully warm that he straightway took off his flannels, was careless about night air, and was down with pneumonia. The tourist or traveller who writes of San Diego usually knows nothing of it but a week or two in winter or early spring. Southern California has fifty-two weeks in the year, and for two thirds of this time the weather is superb. I can imagine even a mission Indian grunting and complaining if taken to our part of the country in the midst of a week's storm. We flee from deadly horrors of climate to be fastidiously critical. If, in midsummer, sweltering sufferers in New York or Chicago could be transported to this land they would not hurry away. The heat is rarely above eighty-five degrees, and nearly always mitigated by a refreshing breeze from the bay. I am assured that there have not been five nights in as many years when one or more blankets have not been necessary for comfort. In summer everything is serene. No rain, no thunder-storms, no hail, or water-spouts. (The dust pest is never spoken of!) The picnic can be arranged three weeks ahead without an anxious thought about the weather. The summer sunsets are marvellously beautiful. One must summer and winter here before he can judge fairly, and the hyper-sensitive should tarry in New Mexico or in the desert until spring. I believe that rheumatic or neuralgic invalids should avoid the damp resorts to which they are constantly flocking only to be dissatisfied. Every sort of climate can be found in the State, so that no one has the right to grumble. Do not take off flannels, although the perspiration does trickle down the side of your face as you sit in the sun. A fur cape is always needed to protect one shoulder from a chilling breeze while the other side is toasted. It is not safe for new-comers to be out-of-doors after four or five o'clock in the afternoon, nor must they ride in open cars except in the middle of the day. These innocent
diversions give the doctors their support. Bill Nye, with his usual good sense, refused to drive in a pouring rain to view the scenery and orchards when visiting San Diego in March, and says: "Orange orchards are rare and beautiful sights, but when I can sit in this warm room, gathered about a big coal fire, and see miles of them from the window, why should I put on my fur overcoat and a mackintosh in order to freeze and cry out with assumed delight every half-mile while I gradually get Pomona of the lungs?" There are many places worth visiting if you can rouse yourselves for the effort. Point Loma, twelve miles distant, gives a wonderful view, one of the finest in the world. I warrant you will be so famished on arriving that you will empty every lunch-basket before attending to the outlook. National City, Sweet Water Dam, Tia Juana (Aunt Jane), La Jolla—you will hear of all these. I have tried them and will report. The Kimball brothers, Warren and Frank, who came from New Hampshire twenty-five years ago and devoted their energies to planting orchards of oranges, lemons, and olives, have made the desert bloom, and found the business most profitable. You will like to watch the processes of pickling olives and pressing out the clear amber oil, which is now used by consumptives in preference to the cod-liver oil. Many are rubbed with it daily for increasing flesh. It is delicious for the table, but the profits are small, as cotton-seed oil is much cheaper. Lemons pay better than oranges, Mr. Kimball tells me. Mrs. Flora Kimball has worked side by side with her husband, who is an enthusiast for the rights of woman. She is progressive, and ready to help in every good work, with great executive ability and a hearty appreciation of any good quality in others. It does not pay to take the trip to Mexico if time is limited, there is so little of Mexico in it. After leaving the train and getting into an omnibus, the voluble darkey in charge soon shouts out, "We are now crossing the line," but as no difference of scene is observed, it is not deeply impressive. One young fellow got out and jumped back and forth over the line, so that if asked on his return if he had been to Mexico he could conscientiously answer, "Oh yes, many times." We were then taken to the custom-house, where we mailed some hastily scribbled letters for the sake of using a Mexican stamp,—some preferred it stamped on a handkerchief. And near by is the curio store, where you find the same things which are seen everywhere, and where you will doubtless buy a lot of stuff and be sorry for it. But whatever other folly you may be led into, let me implore you to wholly abstain from that deadly concoction, the Mexicantamale. Ugh! I can taste mine now. Atamaleis a curious and dubious combination of chicken hash, meal, olives, red pepper, and I know not what, enclosed in a corn-husk, steamed until furiously hot, and then offered for sale by Mexicans in such a sweet, appealing way that few can resist the novelty. It has a more uncertain pedigree than the sausage, and its effects are serious. A friend of mine tasted a small portion of one late at night. It was later before she could sleep, and then terrible nightmares intruded upon her slumber. Next morning she looked so ill and enfeebled, so unlike her rosy self, that we begged to know the cause. The tale was thrilling. She thought a civil war had broken out and she could not telegraph to her distant spouse. The agony was intense. She must go to him with her five children, and at once. They climbed
mountains, tumbled into cañons, were arrested in their progress by cataracts and wild storms, and even the hostile Indian appeared in full war-paint at a point above. This awoke her, only to fall into another horrible situation. An old lover suddenly returned, tried to approach her; she screamed, "I am now a married woman!"—he lifted his revolver, and once again she returned to consciousness and thetamale, and brandy, and Brown's Jamaica ginger. If she had eaten half thetamalethe pistol would doubtless have completed its deadly work. A kind old gentleman of our party bought a dozen to treat us all. We were obliged to refuse, and it was amusing to watch him in his endeavor to get rid of them. At last he made several journeys to the car door, throwing out a few each trip in a solemn way. He didn't want to hurt the feelings of the natives by casting them all out at once. Sweet Water Dam is a triumph of engineering, one of the largest dams in the world, holding six million gallons of water, used for irrigating ranches in Sweet Water Valley; and at La Jolla you will find pretty shells and clamber down to the caves. There the stones are slippery, and an absorbing flirtation should be resisted, as the tide often intrudes most unexpectedly, and in dangerous haste. Besides the caves the attractions are the fishing and the kelp beds. These kelp beds form a submarine garden, and the water is so clear that one can see beautiful plants, fish, etc., at forty or fifty feet below the sea surface—not unlike the famous sea-gardens at Nassau in the Bahamas. There is a good hotel, open the year round. Lakeside is a quiet inland retreat twenty-two miles from San Diego, where many go for a little excursion and change of air. The Lakeside Hotel has seventy large rooms and complete appointments. The table is supplied with plenty of milk andrealcream from their own cows, vegetables and fruit from the neighboring ranches, game in its season, shot on the lake near by, and, in the valleys, meats from homegrown stock. The guests who are not too invalidish often go out for long drives, never forgetting the lunch-baskets. One day we try the Alpine stage. Winding across the mesa at the rear of the hotel, we have a lovely view of the little lake half hidden in the trees, reflecting in its quiet surface the mountains that rise up beyond it. Gradually climbing upward, we come to a tract of land that is watered by the Flume. To our surprise we learn that this is practically frostless, and that since this has been discovered many young orchards of oranges and lemons have been planted. The red mesa land on the side-hills will not be touched by the frosts of a cold night when the valley at its foot will have enough frost to kill all tender growth. This is a new discovery, and has placed thousands of acres on the market as suitable for the culture of citrus fruits. Do you notice how the appearance of the landscape is changing? The nearer hills are much sharper and steeper, and their sides are studded by great boulders. There are stone walls, and here and there are great flocks of sheep. The horses stop of their own accord at a lovely spot where they are used to getting a drink of cool spring water. Did any ever taste quite so good as that drunk from an old dipper after a long warm drive? The live-oaks and sycamores look too inviting to be resisted, and we get out to explore while the horses are resting. Underneath the evergreen shade we pick up some of the large pointed acorns and carry them away as souvenirs. This would be a delightful spot for a picnic, but we have many miles before us and must go on. In a few more miles we reach a little town known as "Alpine." In the distance looms the Viejas, and if any of the party wish to travel over a grade, now is the opportunity. The top of the grade brings us to a lovely view. Eastward is an unbroken chain of
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