Yale University Library 39002028044213 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CALIFORNIA THE WONDERFUL BOOKS BY EDWIN MARKHAM THE MAN WITH THE HOE, AND OTHER POEMS. Frontispiece, Millet's famous Paint ing of the Hoe-man $1.00 THE MAN WITH THE HOE, AND OTHER POEMS. With Illustrations by Howard Pyle.. 2.00 THE MAN WITH THE HOE, WITH NOTES BY THE AUTHOR So LINCOLN, AND OTHER POEMS. Frontispiece, portrait of Lincoln i . oo THE SHOES OF HAPPINESS, AND OTHER POEMS. (On press for 1015) '-So CALIFORNIA THE WONDERFUL. Profusely Illustrated. (New) 2 . 50 CHILDREN IN BONDAGE: THE CHILD LABOR PROBLEM. (New) 1.50 IN PREPARATION FOR 1915 THE POETRY OF JESUS: HIS PLACE AS A LITERARY MAN. NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD RIDDLE: A LOOK INTO THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND DEATH. CRITICAL OPINIONS " Edwin Markham, the most talked of literary man in America." — The Saturday Evening Post. "A great poet: a Miltonian ring in his verses and a Swinburnian richness in his rhymes and rhythms. I place him higher than Walt Whitman." — Max Nordau. " Truly and exquisitely poetic." — Edmund Clarence Stedman. " Markham's ' Man with the Hoe ' is the whole Yosemite — the thunder, the might, the majesty."—] oaquin Miller. " Impressive in the highest degree, and reeks with human ity and morality." — Professor William James. " Markham's ' Man with the Hoe ' will be the battle-cry of the next thousand years." — Jay William Hudson. " It is long since I entertained a doubt of Mr. Mark ham's eventual primacy among contemporary American poets." — Ambrose Bierce. " Excepting _ always my dear Whitcomb Riley, Edwin Markham is the first of the Americans." — William Dean Howells. "A poem by Markham is a national event/' — Robert Underwood Johnson. " Edwin Markham is one of the greatest poets of the age, and the greatest poet of democracy." — Francis Grierson'. " Edwin Markham is the greatest poet of the Social Pas sion that has yet appeared ;n the world." — Alfred Rus- sel Wallace. I ¦ .s>-/.// tlfz. . A^-.*»...v..-^-n \o SAN SA0BAMENTC1 - -?J*tiufvrUrle Davl." ® / -to. ,J\ SiintaHpsa, Ca(otr>w. £tf.2>s<* ^«;^ "TV?, °l*W^yo«fei»/i¥X ,Mi T.m.TplHi, ' 1 TWT.ltr Siockuiiy "TK~ „ , /„_>. \ M ',. . V a ja-Jc. ..*'..<-¦'« *-aT O O x^ Aa ^ ,„»••¦ .r.fw/MVE T^.ApipJ' J' jrJ&^MjJ'lW/-. ,jt E i E R T 1 BV C. P. 6RA NEW RELIEF MAP OF CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA THE WONDERFUL Her Romantic History, Her Picturesque People, Her Wild Shores, Her Desert Mystery, Her Valley Loveliness, Her Mountain Glory, including Her Varied Resources, Her Commercial Greatness, Her Intellectual Achievements, Her Expanding Hopes, With Glimpses of OREGON and WASHINGTON, Her .Northern Neighbors. BY EDWIN MARKHAM lAl AUTHOR OF "THE MAN WITH THE HOE, AND OTHER POEMS," ETC. ILLUSTRATED "Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, And where the wind's feet shine along the sea." HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO, ; NEW YORK Copyright, 1914, by Hearst's International Library Co., Inc. All rights reserved, including the translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian THE QUINN « BOOEN CO. PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. TO ANNA CATHERINE MARKHAM A Daughter and Lover of California Whose Patient and Able Assistance Has Made This Volume Possible OPENING AVOWALS CALIFORNIA is well-nigh as familiar to me as my garden paths: I spent forty years and more within her boundaries. I was there as a barefoot boy, picking wild strawberries in the fields near Vacaville, herding sheep on the Suisun Hills, plowing the little valleys between the ridges for wheat and barley, and following the thrashing ma chine in the time of the harvesting. There also I made my way through school and college, and spent my after years in the service of education and litera ture. My traditions are all of the Far West. In April, 1847, my parents, with all their worldly goods loaded on an ox-team, crept out of Michigan, headed for Independence, Missouri, where they joined an ox-train that was going overland to Oregon. After many adventures in the wilderness, they trailed down the Columbia River in October, and found their way into the Willamette Valley. My first home was in Oregon City, in a huge brown house under the great bluff. My eye has a keen memory of the white rush of the Falls, and my ear has a clear memory of their eternal thunder. I have also an early and vivid recollection of having been lifted up in the sanctuary of a church in that city and of looking down on the dead face of the famous Dr. John McLoughlin, " the Father of Oregon." I can never forget the hush and the solemn pomp: it was my first sense of the dark mystery of death. As an eager lad I soon after journeyed with my mother down into California, where she made her home on a farm and cattle range in little Lagoon Valley, among the picturesque mountains not far viii OPENING AVOWALS from the great sea. Why did she pitch her taber nacle among the Suisun Hills? Perhaps she was drawn thither by the rosy account of that region found on the pages of Fremont's Report, a volume which well-nigh every Oregonian kept on his Bible shelf. Here in the little valley, and on the breezy summits that surround it, I spent all the days and nights of my restless boyhood. Afterward I wandered over California, explor ing her mountain glory and her valley loveliness, re joicing in the romance of her history, tasting the friendship of her people, and feeling the pulse and passion of her great cities. Yes, I have visited all the expanses of California, the land that stretches from redwood to cactus, " Haunch in the cloud-rack, paw in the purring sea." I have mused with many of the old pioneers. I used to join in the rodeo with Seflor Pena, the cattle man, whose Spanish grant reached afar into the sur rounding hills. Later I spent many hours talking to James W. Marshall, in his cabin on the hillside above Coloma, near the mill-race where he discovered the gold that stirred the imagination of the world. I still have his gift of a strange old volume on the archeology of the Bible. I knew many of the other men who helped to build the great State. As a boy I had the happy fortune to be the pupil of Samuel D. Woods, after ward a member of Congress. He is still a dear and honored friend. Frequently, in my boyhood, I saw Joseph McKenna, then my townsman, but now a champion of the people in the Supreme Court of the United States — saw him walking with buoyant and rhythmic steps from Suisun out to the country court house. And often in those days I listened to Tom Fitch, the Cicero of the Far West. OPENING AVOWALS ix In my young manhood, I took frequent counsel of Joseph Le Conte, an inspired and inspiring thinker. I have also been honored by the friendship of many of the literary and artistic folk of the Far West. Joaquin Miller, Ambrose Bierce and William Keith were my neighbors for years, and Charles Warren Stoddard was long my correspondent. These are a few of my many memories of Cali fornia: so when all are telling her story, perhaps I also have a right to be heard. Edwin Markham. Wbst New Brighton, N. Y. November, 1914. NOTE OF THANKS I wish to express my gratitude to Miss Soule Campbell for the use of her fine portraits of Joaquin Miller and Ambrose Bierce and to Mr. Gutzon Borglum for the use of a photograph of his painting, " Staging in '49." Readers will rejoice in Miss Campbell's delicately spiritual sketches, nor will they fail to be struck by the fine action and verisimilitude in Mr. Borglum's work. I am also indebted for assistance to Mr. Porter Garnett, to Dr. Edward Robeson Taylor, to Pro fessor Henry Mead Bland, to Miss Ina Coolbrith, to Miss Juanita Miller, to John Muir, and to the Luther Burbank Society — all of California — and to Professor J. H. Horner of Oregon. Valuable help was also rendered by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston and by Doubleday, Page & Company of Garden City, New York. E. M. CONTENTS CHAPTER paoe I Two Glimpses of California .... 1 II California in the Abyss of Ancient Ages . 16 III Cortes, the Anian Strait and the Places of Mystery 24 IV The Origin and Character of the Califor- nian Tribes 35 V The Tribal and Home Life of These Indians 47 VI The Romance of the Old Missions ... 67 VII The Two Most Imposing of the Mission Re mains 81 VIII The Pastoral Era from the Padres to the Gold-Seekers 87 IX California on the Hinge of Change . . 97 X The Gold that Drew the World . .102 XI The Epic of the Overland Trail . . 110 XII The Forty- nine Kinds of Fortune in '49 . 118 XIII The Gardens, the Orchards and the Plowed Fields: Other Industries . . . .155 XIV The Great City by the Gate of the Sea . 196 XV San Diego, Los Angeles and Other Cities on Breezy Shores or in Watered Valleys . 220 XVI Picturesque California: Her Wild Shores, Her Desert Mystery, Her Mountain Glory 250 xi xii CONTENTS chapter page XVII The Women of California 320 XVIII Intellectual California: A Few of Her Story-Writers, Poets, Painters, Scien tists, Historians 328 XIX Glances at Oregon and Washington, Her Near Neighbors 378 ILLUSTRATIONS Relief Map of California Frontispiece FACING PAGE Sierra Madre from Redlands 16 Ruins of the Incas, at Pasadena .... ... 17 Ramona's home, Camulos 32 The outer corridors of the Mission San Juan Capistrano . . 33 View of an Indian rancheria, Yuba City 52 A pathfinder's pack train 53 General Sutter, and Sutter's fort at Sacramento 60 The Falls of Yosemite pour through a gap in the wall, plowed out by a glacier ages ago 61 Mission Santa Clara in the old days 68 The Mission of San Antonio 69 The cemetery at the Mission San Luis Rey 76 Glenwood Mission Inn 77 "Westward the Course of Empire takes its way" .... 112 The discovery of gold in California 113 "Staging in 1849" 128 Shasta City, 1855, and the harbor of San Francisco in November, 1849 129 Mirror Lake, Yosemite Valley 164 Middle Fork of Kings River Canyon 165 A sheep ranch in Tehama County, and cattle and cowboys . . .172 A prune orchard in blossom, and orange groves at Riverside . 173 Raisin-drying racks in a vineyard near Fresno, and orange trees at Riverside 180 An oil field, Bakersfield 181 A Gold of Ophir rose bush, and a field of California poppies . . 188 A thresher at work on a 17,000 acre wheat ranch .... 189 The Golden Gate at sunset 212 San Francisco on the first day of the fire 213 Market St., San Francisco 220 Chinatown, San Francisco 221 xiii xiv ILLUSTRATIONS FACING «¦ \ i ; I : A palm drive in the Santa Clara Valley .... 224 " Classical, scholar-built Berkeley *' 225 The curious cliffs and caves of La Jolla at San Diego . . . 228 The court at the Coronado Hotel, San Diego 229 Figueroa St. North, Los Angeles 236 West Lake Park, Los Angeles 237 The State Capitol at Sacramento, domed in beaten gold . 240 Leland Stanford Jr. University, Palo Alto . ... 241 The Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, and its immense and unique lens . . . 244 The County Court House at Riverside 245 Morengo Ave., Pasadena ... 252 Mossbrae Falls, Shasta Springs 253 Mt. Shasta, the wonder of the Sacramento Valley .... 260 Coast Scene in Marin County 261 The Cliff House at San Francisco 268 Castle Rock at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island 269 Midway Point, Monterey 276 Mastodon Rock, Shell Beach 277 The Bad Lands of California 284 Salton Sea 285 The Bridal Veil, one of the Yosemite's sky-pouring waterfalls . . 308 El Capitan soars upward in one sheer flight of 3,300 feet . . . 309 The Three Brothers, Yosemite Valley 316 Overhanging Rock, Yosemite Valley 317 Lake Tahoe and Cave Rock 320 Big Trees, Mariposa Grove 321 Joaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras 336 Ambrose Bierce 337 John Muir 353 Luther Burbank and his work with the cactus 353 Bret Harte and Thomas Lake Harris 368 Gertrude Atherton and Mary Austin 369 The Columbia River near Bonneville 388 Portland and Mt Hood, Oregon 389 Mt. Rainier, Washington 39g The water front, Seattle , 397 CALIFORNIA Sea-born and goddess, blossom of the foam, Pale Aphrodite, shadowy as a mist Not any sun has kissed, Tawny of limb I roam, The dusks of forests dark within my hair; The far Yosemite, For garment and for covering of me, Wove the white foam and mist, The amber and the rose and amethyst Of her wild fountains, shaken loose in air. And I am of the hills, and of the sea: Strong with the strength of my great hills, and calm With calm of the fair sea, whose billowy gold Girdles the land whose queen and love I am! Upon my fresh green sods No king has walked to curse and desolate: But in the valleys Freedom sits and sings, And on the hights above; Upon her brows the leaves of olive boughs, And in her arms a dove; And the great hills are pure, undesecrate, White with their snows untrod, And mighty with the presence of their God! — Ina Coolbrith. CHAPTER I TWO GLIMPSES OF CALIFORNIA* ONE should keep in mind the unique situation of California, as she lies half-way between the equator and the Arctic circle — her thousand- mile sweep of seacoast on the west warmed by the tincture of Cathay touching her shores in the vast arc of the Japan stream; her eastern boundary sheltered by the desert in the south and by the Sierras in the north. The double valley in the center of the State is colossally fenced in by the Coast Range toward the Pacific and by the Sierras toward the east. It is drained by the San Joaquin coming from the south like the Nile, and by the Sacramento coming from the north like the Indus. These two rivers, swelled by myriad springs and snowfields, meet in the delta lands of the tule-tufted San Pablo Bay, which con voys them on to San Francisco Bay, where through the Golden Gate that breaks the mountain wall they reach the Sea of Peace. * California — there are many guesses as to the origin of this beau tiful name. It seems almost certain that it was taken from the pages of that old Spanish romance, " The Deeds of the Most Valiant Knight, Esplanadian, the Son of Amadis of Gaul." This story by Garcia de Montaivo was published in 1510 as a sort of a sequel to " Amadis of Gaul," the famous medieval romance of chivalry, the center of a cycle of romances. The name California appears in this rosy romance as the name of "a wonderful island on the right-hand of the Indies, an island rich in pearls and gold, and very near the terrestrial paradise." 2 CALIFORNIA The Sacramento and the San Joaquin The Sacramento River, the great artery of the northern valley, springs from the wooded base of Mount Shasta, that vast Fujiyama of the western world. It traverses an empire rich in soil and yield. In the beginning, this valley was only a scented, irised, lark-loud garden of trees and flowers for the Indian and the bear and the bee. In the first years of the Caucasian occupancy, it was turned into a colossal sheep-run; next into enormous grainfields, some rancheros owning principalities larger than Rhode Island. Now it is changed into the pleasant places of orchard and vineyard and home. Flaming Tokays and purple Malagas have pushed away the wild fox- grapes, and walnuts and almonds have displaced the acorn crop of the live-oaks. Indeed, here glows and ripens every luscious fruit the earth distils into skin and gourd. You may calendar the year by the pro cessional of the orchards — cherry, peach, plum, apri cot, nectarine, prune, pear, fig, grape, orange, olive, lemon, grapefruit. Berries may be picked nearly all the year; melons thrive as under Syrian skies. Thus the old enormous ranchos are broken up. Men are learning irrigation and intensive cultivation ; families and colonies are filling the land once given to vast lonely holdings, once seeded and harvested by mules, machinery, and a homeless horde of tramps. Let us journey from San Francisco down the San Joaquin Valley, which plows the lower center of the State. This is the bounteous Nile valley of California. The sky-hung Sierran wall on the east feeds it from its everlasting snows. Here as the seasons run from green to gold, from blade to ear, the puny power of the human hand is augmented by huge machinery TWO GLIMPSES 8 hauled by trains of mules. Here vast grainfields are headed and thrashed and sacked in a day. Irrigation canals from the river or artesian wells from the veins of the earth convoy the waters for the use of the farmer and make utilitarian the vast plains once given over to the tribes of wild flowers and grasses. Even now when not crowded out by the vine and the tree, the flowers glow in huge deep- colored patches like faded palace hangings flung along the valley floor. And always the lithe, fleet poppies " run like torchmen with the wheat." Stockton, Bakersfield, Fresno, with grain rancho or raisin vineyard or fruited orchard or motley vege table garden — each offers at harvest-time a colossal horn for the hungry world. Northern California is not distinguished in cli mate from Southern California, in the same way that the Northern States are distinguished from the Southern States. For there is in California a mys terious thermal belt now distinctly marked out by the weather bureau, a belt reaching in an " equal temperature loop " from Riverside County to Shasta County, one hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco. This is the orange zone, only lately out lined after fifty years of experience and observation. Through all this northern loop, orange and fig and lemon and palm spring up as lustily and yield as richly as they do in the glowing south. The tule lands, where meet the two rivers of the double valley, are a picturesque feature of the Far West. Here in reedy sloughs and bayous are piled the meltings of mountain and valley, which are build ing up a Holland of the future. Sixteen hundred square miles, once only a range for duck-hunters and fishermen, are beginning to be drained, and are already checkered by dairies and by gardens of beans and bulbs, gardens prophetic of fat years to come. 4 CALIFORNIA Mt. Shasta is the wonder of the Sacramento Val ley. Not so high as Mt. Whitney, it has a yet rarer individuality. It dominates the eye for hundreds of miles. Leaving San Francisco in the evening, you may in the morning awake among verdurous foot hills beside the waters of the upper Sacramento. In the east Mt. Shasta will be seen standing in perfect profile under a sky " That stirs with such a grace As flushed uncertainly the pallid face Of Jairus' daughter rising from the dead." In the west will be Castle Crags, with jagged skyline suggesting Manhattan's man-made horizon wall. Its battlements lift themselves, terrace by ter race, like prodigious but shattered altar steps. In these retreats you may fish and hunt or explore glaciers and extinct volcanoes or bask on the granite ledges with friendly lizard and inquisitive squirrel. Sacramento City, the metropolis of the valley, has a gold-domed capitol, which is perhaps the most beautiful public building in the Union, a stone struc ture rising out of a park where trees of every clime of the world grow in green accord. Sutter's Fort at Sacramento is a landmark next in historic value to the Mission ruins. It was the first settlement east of the Coast Range; and, lying in the path of overland travel, it became the rendez vous of every immigrant and every pilgrim. It was the restless General Sutter, who, reaching out into the mountains for timber, brought about the dis covery of gold in the Coloma canyon up in the Sierra foothills. In honor of this discovery the Native Sons of California have bought the fort and restored it as a museum of olden days. Here it stands as when Fremont rode gallantly in from his pathfinding, as when the Donner survivors came dazedly from their TWO GLIMPSES 5 tryst with death, as when Marshall rushed excitedly to test the first fateful sands of El Dorado. Glimpses of Smaller Valleys We have the great double intramontane valley plowing its prodigious and verdurous crevasse from north to south, and also many smaller valleys nesting among the mountain chains and sloping into the central valley. To get the eagle's vision of these slopes and vales, climb Mt. Diabolo or Mt. Tamal- pais, near the center of the State. Tamalpais, stained with " the dusty purple of the grape," bounds up from the ocean level, and looks down on San Francisco. On its slopes are the Muir National Park of virgin redwood; and landward in every direction radiate canyons and valleys and ridges and uplands, all sprinkled with fruit and vegetable and dairy ranchos. I will speak later of the fine valleys south of San Francisco : there are equally bountiful and beau tiful valleys in the foothills of the Coast Range to the north. Sonoma, Napa, Ukiah — these and many another lovely name fall on the ear like the plash of water in the silver stream. Here among the wild oaks rise the orchards and the vineyards, the hop-fields and the grain-lands that make the sunny slopes an other Rhine country. Each valley has its individu ality and its story of the past. Here is the Russian River Valley, the historic spot where the Russians (who once might have owned the coast) occupied their fort for thirty years. Here in Sonoma, the curved " valley of the moon," was begun the last of the Spanish Missions. Here occurred the fantastic, historic episode of the Bear Flag. It is in a Sonoma grove of redwoods that the Bohemian Club of San Francisco gives annually 6 CALIFORNIA its renowned "Midsummer Jinks," a celebration which, despite its Pucksy name, is a sort of woodland rite, with a spirit that recalls the severe beauty of the early Greek drama. In Napa rises the noble St. Helena, made dear by its inviolable loveHness, and by the memory of Stevenson's starlit night. Here, too, we find the Petrified Forest; also the fuming Geysers forever at work in nature's secret catacombs. Northward to the borders of Oregon run many repetends of these mountain valleys. Up in the furthermost corner of the State is Eureka, our Land's End; and lying just between Oregon and California are the marble caves that are said to rank next to the sculptured Mammoth Cave and the pillared Fingal. " The Saw of Light " The western slope of the Sierras, in its highlands and its lowlands, offers also a diversified use and beauty. From any part of the great double valley may be seen the eastern mountain wall of California — four hundred miles long and over two miles high — the Sierra Nevadas — a range so ethereally folded in the luminous air of California that John Muir de clares that it should be called " The Saw of Light " instead of " The Saw of Snow." From a distance the Sierras are merged into bands and scarfs of radiant color. Warm rose and lilac, glow the foothills, once the mining belt of the State. These are a series of ridges and ravines, cliffs and canyons, once scarred and seamed by the ruth less miners, but now covered again by the mercy of the wild gardens of buckeye and chaparral, or by the tame gardens of apple and peach and orange. Darker purple and azure mark the mountain wall as its ascends. This is the belt of firs and pines and TWO GLIMPSES 7 redwoods. Here the valleys deepen into canyons and the hills rise into mountains. Still higher up, neigh boring with the sky, runs the belt of crystal and pearl — the summits and precipices of the Sierras, broken into domes and peaks and pinnacles — the couch of snows, the cradle of glaciers. Up near the dividing line of California and Ne vada nestles Lake Tahoe, the Lake Geneva of the West. It lies a few miles back from the old Over land Road — not far from Truckee. Tahoe is over a mile above the sea-level, with encircling peaks shouldering up five or ten thousand feet higher. It never freezes, although the snows may in winter rim its shores. Strangely and mystically blue its waters are; and every shade of azure, from nemophila to gentian, deepens and lightens in this stupendous aerial sapphire cavern, which has the lake for floor, the mountains for walls, the sky for dome. The Yosemite and the Sequoias Yosemite Valley is, of course, the most renowned region in the Sierra Nevadas. But the King's River Valley is well-nigh as wonderful, its walls being even more Titanic, although it lacks the charm of the Yosemite cataracts. Mt. Whitney, the highest moun tain of the range, is near to this valley, as is also the General Grant National Park. Yosemite, about one hundred and fifty miles east of San Francisco, ranks in nature as the Parthenon ranks in art. An easy journey by rail from north or south brings one to the stage road that completes the ride to the valley. Let us make the first trip by way of the Calaveras Big Trees. We approach the valley of wonders. Through the dark forest into the open glade we go ; then through a violet haze we see the mile-high granite walls sculptured into battle- 8 CALIFORNIA ments and minarets, with Cloud's Rest and El Capitan holding up the sky. Below lies the Elysian field of the valley, silver-seamed by the Merced, the river of Mercy; while distant cascades are springing over the craggy walls and forever raveling and knit ting the waters into webs of mist and light. Joaquin Miller has looked on it all and felt the passion of it. Here is a fragment of his song: " Sound ! sound ! sound ! O colossal walls and crowned In one eternal thunder ! Sound ! sound ! sound ! O ye oceans overhead, While we walk subdued in wonder, In the ferns and grasses, under And around the old Merced ! " The valley is hewn out of pure granite. Some cosmic tragedy may have drawn down out of the ancient rock the unreckonable tons to make the hollow that is Yosemite, leaving the ages to fill the void with trees and troops of flowers. Certain it is that every aspect of wild beauty is here in crag and dome and cliff, in meadow and gorge, in cascade and cataract. The " big trees " abound in Yosemite Park. The sequoia is the tree wonder of the planet. It was in its early prime when the tree that furnished the Cross of Calvary first lifted its head from the earth. It is now found only in the groves of California. It sometimes rises three hundred feet, with a diameter of thirty feet. Majestical, symmetrical, unshaken by wind and storm, each tree approaches almost per fectly the archetypal : there is no other tree so iEschy- lean in dignity. Unsubdued by Time, the sequoias stand in their places as the oldest watchers of our world. TWO GLIMPSES 9 Gray San Francisco San Francisco (with one exception) was the north-most of the old Spanish foundations. In 1776, while the Liberty Bell was sounding in the East, the first mission bells pealed out by the Golden Gate. The old chapel of Dolores still stands, and the Pre sidio is a remembrance of the ancient Spanish barracks. Few cities have been more definitely impressed upon the imagination of the world than San Fran cisco, this gray-hilled city on the peninsula by the hospitable bay, where Saint Francis protects the ships as he protected the birds of Assisi. For nearly a century this Spanish settlement droned on its uneventful way. Then in a canyon of the Sierras men found the fateful gold that dazzled the eyes of the nations. In a year the village by the Golden Gate was a city of tents and shacks, skew ered with signs in all languages, its harbor crowded with strange craft flying the flags of all lands, its streets crammed with workers and adventurers speak ing all the tongues of Babel. When the gold-craze waned and the harvest of field and orchard sent out their saner call to settlers, San Francisco still remained the shipping port. Homes began to spread over her hills and dunes, every mansion or shanty with its garden, its hedge of geraniums or calla lilies, its trellis of heliotrope or fuchsia. Nob Hill flaunted the bizarre palaces of the rich; Italians made a little Naples in the fishing quarter; and Canton was born again in the narrow, noisome, yet picturesque alleys of Chinatown. Peo pled by a picked race of races, a race unrivaled to dream and dare and do, San Francisco lived her own free, careless life for half a century. Her existence was ever a high-hearted adventure in blending vari- 10 CALIFORNIA ous peoples who prayed to Christ or Allah or Buddha ; in making or spending fortunes that came and went like the wind; in drinking the cup of delight or of despair. Other Cities: Universities Across the bay eastward from San Francisco lie Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley, cities of homes and schools and gardens. On the Hights behind Oak land lived the great poet, Joaquin Miller, like a gray eagle on his cliff; and there I also lived for happy years on another cliff a half mile below him. Berkeley (perhaps the most glorious school site in the world) is the seat of the State University. It overlooks the spacious bay with its Golden Gate. Its out-of-door Greek theater, built of marble, finds audiences all the year round. It was in midwinter, re member, that Tetrazzini sang out of doors at Lotta's Fountain in San Francisco to celebrate her return to the city that had first acclaimed the lark in her throat. Southeast from San Francisco, you come upon the Santa Clara Valley, beautiful for situation, shel tered by the Santa Cruz Mountains from the sharp sea-wind, and shut by the Coast Range from the ardent breath of the Mohave Desert. Garden, orchard and wild-wood fill this valley's lovely ways. Here flourish fruits whose names are music, whose scent is delight, whose color is charm. Apricot, almond, pomegranate, nectarine, cherry and olive, and all their Edenic kindred, are in the bowery orchards; and the Santa Clara Blossom Festival is as lovely as Japan's. On the wild ground grows the gnarled live-oak so dear to California ; also the swift- growing eucalyptus, an Australian tree now happily at home in California, its winter blossoms among its TWO GLIMPSES 11 blue-green leaves keeping tryst with the summer at the antipodes. Not far from San Jose, the heart of the valley, is Leland Stanford University, exquisitely modeled after the Mission architecture; and a little distance onward are the ruins of the old Santa Clara Mis sion. High upon the near hills, which rise like shoul ders and flanks of ancient mastodons, stands the Lick Observatory with its immense and unique lens spying out the secrets of the firmament. A Flight Down the Shore Following down the coast, you come upon the seaside towns — Santa Cruz, Monterey and Pacific Grove. Monterey was of old the capital of the State, a center of Spanish charm and courtesy. Bret Harte and Stevenson have celebrated it. Monterey lies there with foam bells at her feet and the pine-scented mountains at her back. Part of her domain is like drowsy old Mexico ; part of it is quick with the eager life of to-day. San Antonio Mission stands nearby at Carmel- by-the-Sea. It seems as native as if it had sprung up from the hill-slope without aid of hands. A nest of writers have homes at Carmel — a Hampstead Heath or a Concord village in days to come. Here is the home of the poet of the sea, George Sterling. The seventeen-mile drive along the shore shows the wind- bent cypresses said to be brothers of those at Leb anon — strange, tormented, fleeing trees that Dante would have loved. Going from San Francisco to Los Angeles you may follow the curving coast of the Pacific. By this trail you come upon a land of beauty and bounty, a land with its wonders of nature, marvels of agricul ture. You come also upon piles of storied ruins, 12 CALIFORNIA the reminders of a past touched with poesy and romance. Eighteen years before the Mayflower anchored at Plymouth Rock, Vizcaino sailed around the piny promontory that guards the Bay of Monterey and carried back a report of an Edenic haven that cap tured the heart of Spain. For over a century, mari ners did not again find and identify the lovely harbor. While the Atlantic colonies were making way in the East for our great experiment in self-government, Spain, out on the borders of the Pacific, was ven turing her experiment of making savages into gentes de raison. Then it was that the old missions — court and arcade and tower and garden — were planted on shores or valleys, each a day's journey from another. And these mission ruins mark no doubt the most dis tinctive and harmonious architecture of the nation. Wrought of the clay of the earth, they repeat in wall and tile the lines and tints of hill and mesa from which they sprang. Many of the present cities in California arose about these early missions; and Spain's chime of seraphic and apostolic names still sounds on moun tain and mesa, on coast and canyon. II Glimpse of Southern California California has had three great growing spells, with some attendant growing pains. The lure of gold brought from the ends of the earth the first vast inrush of population. That Sierran gold has now its rival in the gold of the fields and gardens. For it was also gold that brought the later men and women, the gold of the grain harvests of the central valleys and the foothills; and after- TWO GLIMPSES 13 ward the gold of the citrus crops of the seven great counties of the extreme south — a pleiad of counties we call Southern California. This south-land is a region walled by mountains from the great double valley of the Sacramento and San Joaquin. It lies below Tehachapi Pass: begin ning at Point Conception, the shore-line swerves sharply two hundred miles to the southeast. About fifty thousand square miles are here shut in by a happy conjunction of land and sea — a region balmy and bountiful. Warmed by the desert, cooled by the sea, watered by wells and mountain streams, here are garden lands and home lands, where the Spanish first settled and where of late years a verdurous empire has arisen. Los Angeles and Sister Cities Los Angeles is the pulse of the south. The seven southern counties of this palmed and vined domain form a semi-tropic principality, walled and gated and moated from the outside world. An air-ship hover ing far above Mount Wilson would, eastward of the plain, see the Mohave and Colorado deserts, glowing with gold or rose or purple, and caterpillared by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Toward the south, far away to Mexico, runs a rabble of mountains and hills ; while northward loom the Sierras ascending increas ingly as they recede. On the west, gleaming from silver to amber, shines the majestic Pacific. Nothing Olympian is lacking in desert or mountain or sea to wall in Southern California, a Titanic garden inclosed. In olden days, when the Spanish friars found the Indian and the antelope in possession, this south-land was all one scented, tinted, bee-invaded garden, ever in song, ever in bloom, save when the dry season 14 CALIFORNIA seared hill and mesa to the soft yellow of old parch ment. Los Angeles had its genesis in the pueblo estab lished by the Mission San Gabriel, whose ruin rises a half hour away. Sonora Town and the Plaza are its older fragments; but a new city has risen about these, a city that has amazed the world as it has dou bled and tripled, leaping from a drowsy pueblo to a big, busy city. A brief ride eastward from Los Angeles brings you to forested Mount Wilson. Another swift pas sage westward brings you to the shore towns, where play or study or devotion, each in turn, brings its troops of followers. Three hours across the waters is Santa Catalina, a hilly park, a sporting ground where one may fish or hunt or laze on the lotos shore. The surf bathing may be enjoyed in winter as well as in summer. High-born Pasadena, " crown of the valley," a little distance from Los Angeles, sprang in thirty years from a dusty sheep-pasture to a city with shaded avenues and vine-crowned homes. Pasadena's twenty-year-old Rose Festival at New Year is, by the way, a joyous event in the southern calendar. Riverside, of orange fame, has a history of similar marvel. Irrigation, removing all fear of perishing crops, was for both cities the secret of their achieve ments. Riding along these tree-hung, southern slopes is a delight at any season. " Just to breathe deep and see These southern steeps by summer overrun, Is to inherit kingdoms, is to be Caesar to joy, Pizarro of the sun." To the north of Los Angeles lies Santa Barbara, whose Mission has never lapsed into disuse. The sharp inward curve of the coast here sweeps the main- TWO GLIMPSES 15 land into a Mediterranean warmth and shelter. Doves and olives are in Scriptural companionship in the fountained garden of the Mission. The old Span ish life here (as at Monterey) keeps its slow way, while the new order, pulsing with the moment, surges around it. To the south, between San Diego and Los Angeles, lie the remains of the two stateliest of the Spanish Missions — San Juan Capistrano by the sea and San Luis Rey, inland. Each is a delight in its way. Each has its suave lines of hill or shore; each has its harmonious coloring, its majestic pro portions. The Landmarks Club has happily rescued these adobe Missions from melting back to earth like swallow nests. Modern San Diego, a queenly city of magic growth, can look from its hights upon the far moun tains of Mexico. The old town has reverted to a sheep pasture ; but its palms and olive trees linger in the padres' old garden. Coronado Hotel and beach give the sharp accent of to-day; while the old Span ish ruins speak lovingly of the years that are no more. John Vance Cheney catches the spirit of the old beach in this snatch from his song of Coronado : " On Coronado sands The gray Fates fold their hands ; Naught are the days behind, the days to be; Only the present hour And the dream-field in flower, And breathings of the lote leaves and the sea." CHAPTER II CALIFORNIA IN THE ABYSS OF ANCIENT AGES AFTER these swift glances over the vast regions and eras of California, let us now review at ""some leisure the historic and the prehistoric evolution of this imperial commonwealth of the Far West. What of California before the advent of man upon her shores? The thoughtful visitor to these shores of Balboa's Sea observes on every hand the hints of a stupen dous planetary drama extending back to the most ancient epoch of the world. The travail and the triumph of this region of earth are proclaimed in volcano-molded mountain peaks; in colossal glacier- chiseled canyons; in vast sun-scorched stretches of desert; in ridges sheared and plowed by the ava lanches ; in " dead " rivers darkly buried and bear ing sands of gold ; in huge torn hills revealing strata strange to common soil ; in wizard springs and geysers of boiling minerals ; in unique groves of immemorial, sky-aspiring trees; in unseen valleys lying sub merged along the ocean shores; in thousands of mountain meres and meadows; in long stretches of petrified forests; in beds of fossils, subterranean lakes, echoing caverns. All these hieroglyphs from the remote past send us wandering into " the backward and abysm of time," start us pondering on the dramatic chances and changes that have shaped the friendly hills and shores that are now California . . . golden land . . . home. 10 Sierra Madre from Redlands far. 5/m 0Eft«ftiicii»i> in i3