A Flight in Spring Part 4

We spent a delightful afternoon on our journey southward from Los Angeles to San Diego and Coronado Beach. We pa.s.sed through the distinctive orange belt of Southern California, and the golden fruit was in evidence on every hand. Oranges lay on the ground. The groves were like gardens of the Hesperides with glittering yellow fruit for all mankind. They were ready in trains side-tracked for trans.h.i.+pment across the continent; they were in warehouses, where we could see through the great open doors the busy packers at their work; they were everywhere, until the eye almost tired of them, and the formal rows of the orange groves, and the bare earth underneath always kept ploughed up for advantage to the coveted crop. In other places we pa.s.sed enormous herds of cattle, fat and well liking, giving one an idea of the huge proportions of ranch life on this great Pacific Coast.

Our route brought us for the first time really close to the great ocean which we had never seen. When one comes on the first view of any great object there is always a thrill of expectancy. We had left the great Atlantic behind us, and we were speeding on rapidly to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific. We knew that in a few moments it would burst upon our sight, but just then a dense, soft, and chilling fog surrounded us. It seemed a great disappointment to have such a hindrance to our sight just at that time; but, it was all for the best, as we soon discovered; for when we did see the mighty deep, nothing could be more sublime than its veiled magnificence. There was a fog, it was true, but it was a vast veil of pearl-tinted tissue, and out of it rolled the huge breakers, like giants at play, whose locks were white as wool, and their great pale arms entwined in majestic sport.

We were pa.s.sing on high bluffs close to the sh.o.r.e. The curious and precipitous clay banks were worn into fantastic shapes. Here and there we could see, far down, fishermen's huts and settlements, and occasional villages. Oil wells, also, with their hideous cranes and well machinery closely jostled together in eager greed, offended our sense of the picturesque, with their uncompromising utility; but on and beyond all was the mighty deep, m.u.f.fled by the mist, and looking more mysterious and magnificent with its great das.h.i.+ng breakers than if we were viewing it under the light of the brightest day.

With the attendant symphony of this deep shrouded sea, we reached San Diego.

X

San Diego.--The Bathing-House.--Alarming Disappearance.--The Mystery Solved.--Carriage Drive to Mission Cliffs.--Coronado Beach.--The Museum.--The Hotel.--High Fog.

Our ride of four hours from Los Angeles to San Diego was rather warm, and after our arrival we cared to do little more than lounge about the station in the evening. Near by was a most inviting bathing-house, beautifully fitted up with all sorts of appliances for comfort, not the least of these being a superb swimming-pool, whose tempered waters were sending to us insinuating invitations to take a good plunge and enjoy the charms of their dark, silent depths. It was too soon after eating, and we put it all off until next day.

When we men folk returned to our car from the adjacent bath-house, a feeling of gloom and melancholy settled down upon us. The "Lucania" was silent and lonely, save for the servants. Not another soul was visible.

The ladies had all disappeared!

Here was an alarming state of affairs. Those who had wives, were as though they had them not, and those who had not wives, were as though they had. We were all alike disturbed and miserable at the unaccountable absence of our better halves. What had become of them? We seemed to be quite on the outskirts of San Diego. The wide streets, stretching away in darkness, looked terrible and forbidding. Who could tell what desperado might not have made away with them? It would be a mere matter of a sudden stoop down from a horse, perhaps, a seizure by a pair of strong arms, a wild ride over the boundless plain, and misery would settle down upon us as another mysterious disappearance had to be recorded, and remain possibly forever unexplained. We called a council of war, so to speak. We determined to investigate, and boldly plunged into the unknown town in search of our lost ones. Every man we met had the possibilities in him, to our excited imaginations, of a double-dyed cut-throat; every saloon was a gate of Hades; but we bravely pushed on.

We found ourselves soon in rather an attractive street. Shops were gay with life. The ever-present electric lamps gave us their cold glitter and their fantastic shadows, until at last, joyful sight, we saw all our ladies shopping to their hearts' content in a Chinese curio shop, where a great, bland, round-faced Chinaman, like a six-foot baby, was all smiles and attention to the purchasing crowd. We joined them as if nothing had happened, and remained with them until we saw them safe back. All the preceding is summed up in one of the ladies' diaries briefly thus: "We arrived at San Diego at 6 P.M. After tea the ladies of the party started out to _see the town_, visited two curio shops, and went back to the car before nine, and received a very severe scolding for going off by ourselves." The italics in the above are mine.

I think the ladies served us right, for we should have awaited their pleasure; but who could have dreamed that they wanted to do anything more than rest after their fatiguing ride?

The comical side of the whole thing is this: that our ladies, in their little independent cruise in San Diego, were as safe as if they were in any Eastern village. San Diego is, in fact, a typical American town of the better cla.s.s, nurtured by Boston capital, so largely invested in stock of the Santa Fe Railroad, whose western terminus is at San Diego, which is also peopled by New Englanders, who have duly brought with them to the Pacific Slope, a full and perennial supply of their steady habits.

In our one full day in San Diego we saw much to interest us. A carriage drive took some of us over Mission Cliffs, others went round in the great, double-decked tram cars, and all took in the vast extent of San Diego, as it lies on a huge, sloping shelf over the Pacific, giving constant prospects of the mountains and the sea. We also visited Coronado, the city so called, the beach, and the hotel. The city, on the great peninsula between San Diego Bay, a beautiful expanse of water, and the great ocean beyond, has, of course, what every Western effort has--a future.

The beach, where the great rollers of the Pacific dash in, was magnificent; but one cannot safely bathe thereon. The water is heroically cold, and the surf too fierce and heavy for ordinary mortals. The sea water, warmed, tamed, and confined in a bath-house, is what is safest to take.

I quite sympathized with one of our ladies who declared to me that she was never more disappointed in her life than with the beach at Coronado. "Why," said she, "I thought I could gather sh.e.l.ls and sea-weed, and pick pretty pebbles; but there is nothing." Well, she was right in a sense. Perhaps it was because that particular spot was harried over and over by visitors _a la_ Coney Island, so that it was bare of all those curious things "cast up by the sea;" or perhaps it was that the huge surf constantly tumbling in raises the sand perpetually, and buries all objects, whatever they may be, rapidly out of sight.

One of our party, who wished to improve the occasion and also give me a treat, paid fifty cents a piece for himself and myself to gain admission to a museum on the beach, said to be a wonderful collection of interesting things in natural history.

I noticed rather a startled look upon the lady caretaker's face as the money was paid. I may here say we found the doors open and a sign at the entrance giving price of admission. We might have pushed in without the formality of a cash payment, but the dignity of our cloth forbade.

My friend really made an effort to summon the caretaker from some inner recess. She took our money--his money, I should say--with a startled air, and we entered.

Well, the less said the better about that museum. No wonder that our payment to get in was startling. We who had seen Kensington, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, the British Museum, the World's Fair, and about one hundred and twenty years of life between us, were greeted with shabby plaster reproductions of this, that, and the other; with jute-haired, manufactured monsters and other absurdities; the only thing that really commanded our respect being an American c.o.o.n tolerably well stuffed and set up. We left disgusted. My reflection to my friend was that in such localities the best things were always "free shows," as I pointed out to the boundless Pacific; the hard, firm sand of the beach; and

"The white arms out in the breakers, tirelessly tossing."

But the melancholy of the museum had yet an outside chapter, for there were cages of wild beasts--miserable captives--and some wretched monkeys, whose capacity for the pathetic grief which was stamped upon their poor faces, turned one's thoughts inward to the tragedy of all life.

The hotel was one of the many "largest hotels in the world," and is really a wonderful place. The great interior court, with gla.s.s roof covering in a collection of tropical trees and plants, was all a thing of beauty. Into this magic place quite a number of rooms opened. The dining-room, the ballroom, the verandas, the sun-parlors, the public rooms--all were vast, grandiose, and what one might say "perfectly splendid." I pity the taste of any one who could stand all this splendor, with its crowds of people, for any length of time. It seemed rather deserted when we were there; too late for one season, too early for another. This, and a certain shabby want of repair here and there, made the place seem somewhat sad. It is no easy matter to keep up a show place of such huge extent, with the hungry air of the great Pacific ever whetting its teeth upon every atom of its vast and profusely ornamented surface.

While at San Diego, we noticed a weird effect common on the Pacific Coast, resulting from certain curious atmospheric conditions. The heavens at times are hung with a great veil of what is called "high fog." This bank of vapor shuts out all the upper sky. Between it and the earth is a stratum of hot, dry air, down through which the collected moisture above can never descend. It has to float off to the distant mountains. It has to be caught by their rocky arms, and turned into rain or snow, and then descend as rivers to the dry and dusty plains beneath.

When we were starting out on our carriage ride in the morning, as I noticed this lowering ma.s.s of vapor above us, I asked the driver if it was going to rain. "Lord," said he, with an amused and bored shrug, "it will not rain here until next November!" It must have a queer effect upon people to be constantly held in the vise of such inevitable and square-cut atmospheric influences as these.

XI

San Diego to Santa Barbara.--The Old Mission.--The Inner Cloister.--The Afternoon Ride.--The Lady of the Blue Jeans.--Samarcand.

Our car moved off from San Diego in the early morning, before breakfast. We enjoyed that meal _en route_ for Los Angeles, returning there by the way we came. After a delay of a few hours in the lovely city of rose-covered homes and embowering trees, we began our journey to Santa Barbara, which we reached well on into the evening. Our course brought us soon again to the ever-attractive sh.o.r.es of the great tossing ocean, ever full of mystery, and provocative of brooding thoughts.

When we arrived at Santa Barbara, it was toward evening, so tea and a stroll filled up the close of our day of travel.

The next morning found us ready for a full day of what turned out to be exquisite pleasure. A drive to the old Mission of Santa Barbara, with a prolonged stay within the charmed shade of the old cloister, filled the forenoon.

The antiquity of more than a hundred years seems an eternity in such a new land as this, and hence the old mission seemed old indeed; but it had the l.u.s.tre of the dim past also, for our guide was a monk of St.

Francis, and his religious dress carried us back for over six centuries to sunny Italy and the cradle of his order, a.s.sisi, where St. Francis dwelt.

Santa Barbara Mission is one of the best preserved of the many old Spanish religious settlements yet remaining in Southern California, and its style gives the norm of all the rest. It has a certain grandiose air suggestive of Spanish magnificence, and reminds one of those stately creatures one meets so often in Spain, who ask for alms with high-toned elegance, and return thanks with the manners of a prince.

Such was Santa Barbara. Before the chief entrance of the chapel was a grand flight of steps, with a generous platform capable of giving standing-room to any church ceremonial or gathering of wors.h.i.+ppers. It was made up, it is true, of small mason work and stucco; but the effect was there, and that effect was good. Entering the chapel, we found ourselves in a stately, flat-roofed building of considerable height and length. There were several altars at each side, and a number of religious pictures, quite of the Murillo school, and a Pieta in plaster, just as one finds Michael Angelo's great masterpiece in St.

Peter's. Beyond all, was the high altar, rather poor and shabby, but pathetic, nevertheless, in its earnest purpose, with its hanging lamp telling of the Sacramental Presence within the Tabernacle. The tomb of the first Roman Catholic bishop of California is at the Epistle side of the altar; and close by, on the outside, are other graves.

A lay brother took us all over the place. We rang for him at the entrance door in the cloisters, and found him a sweet-faced, cheerful, humble man, delighted to please us and be our guide.

We were shown the little museum with some splendid old service books, those huge folios which, before the present cheap reproduction of modern small volumes, stood in grand state in the centre of the choir, and all placed themselves around and sang from the n.o.ble and precious pages. There were relics, too, of the times when the Indians were in their primitive condition, the child-like pupils of the patient Franciscans. It was not much of a display, but its very meagreness made it pathetic.

Our lay brother took us into the second enclosure; that is, within the convent proper, where no women are admitted, except in most special cases, and as a mark of honor to n.o.ble ladies. Some of us felt quite elated at the distinction thus given to us as men, but the ladies pooh-poohed at our airs, for from the neighboring tower they could look down and see into the whole place, and declared there was nothing specially in it. Well, there was not, but there would be if they were there.

We went also into the well-kept cemetery, where a great crucifix kept solemn watch over the sleeping dust of the departed. It was all beautiful with flowers, a lovely place of peace and rest. One cannot help respecting those missions which are so frequently met in California. They represent an immense amount of patient, humble, and persistent labor.

We all took a great, four-horse vehicle in the afternoon for an excursion to Sycamore Canon, to which spot, however, we never got, and did not regret it a particle. We stopped at an orange ranch half-way, and there we stayed. We wanted to have an "orange wallow," as I called it, and that we got under the trees of a superb orange orchard, where the ground was lush with gra.s.s and a general air of luxurious opulence was on every hand. This verdure results, I understand, from the higher elevation of the place, which catches the "high fog" from the Pacific.

The moisture of this vapor condenses on the trees and plants, taking the place of rain, and, to a great extent, of irrigation.

As we were winding our way up the steep ascent, with its ever-increasing view down the valley and over the Pacific, we could not but be elated and inspirited with our surroundings. We were, it may be said, a rather noisy crowd.

In this happy state on we went. As we journeyed, we noticed a woman dressed in blue jeans busy at work in her garden. She seemed too busy to notice us. The ordinary rustic curiosity to see the noisy newcomers was entirely absent. She never once looked our way.

In ten minutes or so we were, in various groups, returning from the farmhouse where we had gotten permission to have all the orange wallow we wanted. Then we again met the lady of the blue jeans; but this time she was looking at us with an amused expression on her face, and when one of our company, yielding to an impulse of gallantry, lifted his hat to her, she pleasantly returned the salute, and called out to us, from the height on which she stood, in a clear, ringing voice, "Won't you come up and see my roses? Come, and you will find more surprises." Of course, we climbed the hill, and soon found ourselves in a veritable fairyland. We were on a spur of the mountain which spread out in a plateau covered with beautiful turf. Rich trees surrounded it on three sides, while on the other it was open to the sea view, revealing to us the curving beach of Santa Barbara, miles away, with the white breakers das.h.i.+ng upon the sh.o.r.e. The great deep beyond was dim and empurpled with the haze, while all around us was a garden glowing with fruits and flowers of kinds that were rare and beautiful, and for the most part strange to us.

After enjoying all this under the guidance of our hostess, who bestowed La France roses and American Beauties among us with liberal hands, we were invited into her house. This was a rambling, one-story structure, beautifully planned, and filled with treasures of art from many climes.

The lady of the place gradually let us know in the most simple way that she had travelled far and wide. She was at home in India, and had pa.s.sed through the princ.i.p.al countries of the world. We spent a good long time in this charmed spot. We were offered refreshment, and left with a sense of gracious hospitality offered in a most graceful way.

Her blue jean working dress, for she lived almost at work in her garden, became her well. The only consciousness she showed that she might have wished it otherwise was as she prepared to escort us to our brake; she discarded her sunbonnet and donned coquettishly a little white one of muslin, which, there was no denial, became her better than that she wore at her lovely work.

We waved her farewell as we descended from "Samarcand," the name of her beautiful place, the site of which she herself had selected, planning also her home and all its beauties of tree and flower and fruit.

The poet of the party put his impressions of the whole affair in verse, and here it is:

SAMARCAND