Our Italy

CHAPTER VII

THE WINTER ON THE COAST

But the distinction of this coast, and that which will forever make it attractive at the season when the North Atlantic is forbidding, is that the ocean-side is as equable, as delightful, in winter as in summer. Its sea-side places are truly all-the-year-round resorts. In subsequent chapters I shall speak in detail of different places as to climate and development and peculiarities of production. I will now only give a general idea of Southern California as a wintering place. Even as far north as Monterey, in the central part of the State, the famous Hotel del Monte, with its magnificent park of pines and live-oaks, and exquisite flower-gardens underneath the trees, is remarkable for its steadiness of temperature. I could see little difference between the temperature of June and of February. The difference is of course greatest at night. The maximum the year through ranges from about 65° to about 80°, and the minimum from about 35° to about 58°, though there are days when the thermometer goes above 90°, and nights when it falls below 30°.

To those who prefer the immediate ocean air to that air as modified by such valleys as the San Gabriel and the Santa Ana, the coast offers a variety of choice in different combinations of sea and mountain climate all along the southern sunny exposure from Santa Barbara to San Diego. In Santa Barbara County the Santa Inez range of mountains runs westward to meet the Pacific at Point Conception. South of this noble range are a number of little valleys opening to the sea, and in one of these, with a harbor and sloping upland and cañon of its own, lies Santa Barbara, looking southward towards the sunny islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz. Above it is the Mission Cañon, at the entrance of which is the best-preserved of the old Franciscan missions. There is a superb drive eastward along the long and curving sea-beach of four miles to the cañon of Monticito, which is rather a series of nooks and terraces, of lovely places and gardens, of plantations of oranges and figs, rising up to the base of the gray mountains. The long line of the Santa Inez suggests the promontory of Sorrento, and a view from the opposite rocky point, which encloses the harbor on the west, by the help of cypresses which look like stone-pines, recalls many an Italian coast scene, and in situation the Bay of Naples. The whole aspect is foreign, enchanting, and the semi-tropical fruits and vines and flowers, with a golden atmosphere poured over all, irresistibly take the mind to scenes of Italian romance. There is still a little Spanish flavor left in the town, in a few old houses, in names and families historic, and in the life without hurry or apprehension. There is a delightful commingling here of sea and mountain air, and in a hundred fertile nooks in the hills one in the most delicate health may be sheltered from every harsh wind. I think no one ever leaves Santa Barbara without a desire to return to it.

Farther down the coast, only eighteen miles from Los Angeles, and a sort of Coney Island resort of that thriving city, is Santa Monica. Its hotel stands on a high bluff in a lovely bend of the coast. It is popular in summer as well as winter, as the number of cottages attest, and it was chosen by the directors of the National Soldiers' Home as the site of the Home on the Pacific coast. There the veterans, in a commodious building, dream away their lives most contentedly, and can fancy that they hear the distant thunder of guns in the pounding of the surf.

At about the same distance from Los Angeles, southward, above Point Vincent, is Redondo Beach, a new resort, which, from its natural beauty and extensive improvements, promises to be a delightful place of sojourn at any time of the year. The mountainous, embracing arms of the bay are exquisite in contour and color, and the beach is very fine. The hotel is perfectly comfortable—indeed, uncommonly attractive—and the extensive planting of trees, palms, and shrubs, and the cultivation of flowers, will change the place in a year or two into a scene of green and floral loveliness; in this region two years, such is the rapid growth, suffices to transform a desert into a park or garden. On the hills, at a little distance from the beach and pier, are the buildings of the Chautauqua, which holds a local summer session here. The Chautauqua people, the country over, seem to have, in selecting sightly and agreeable sites for their temples of education and amusement, as good judgment as the old monks had in planting their monasteries and missions.

If one desires a thoroughly insular climate, he may cross to the picturesque island of Santa Catalina. All along the coast flowers bloom in the winter months, and the ornamental semi-tropical plants thrive; and there are many striking headlands and pretty bays and gentle seaward slopes which are already occupied by villages, and attract visitors who would practise economy. The hills frequently come close to the shore, forming those valleys in which the Californians of the pastoral period placed their ranch houses. At San Juan Capristrano the fathers had one of their most flourishing missions, the ruins of which are the most picturesque the traveller will find. It is altogether a genial, attractive coast, and if the tourist does not prefer an inland situation, like the Hotel Raymond (which scarcely has a rival anywhere in its lovely surroundings), he will keep on down the coast to San Diego.

The transition from the well-planted counties of Los Angeles and Orange is not altogether agreeable to the eye. One misses the trees. The general aspect of the coast about San Diego is bare in comparison. This simply means that the southern county is behind the others in development. Nestled among the hills there are live-oaks and sycamores; and of course at National City and below, in El Cajon and the valley of the Sweetwater, there are extensive plantations of oranges, lemons, olives, and vines, but the San Diego region generally lies in the sun shadeless. I have a personal theory that much vegetation is inconsistent with the best atmosphere for the human being. The air is nowhere else so agreeable to me as it is in a barren New Mexican or Arizona desert at the proper elevation. I do not know whether the San Diego climate would be injured if the hills were covered with forest and the valleys were all in the highest and most luxuriant vegetation. The theory is that the interaction of the desert and ocean winds will always keep it as it is, whatever man may do. I can only say that, as it is, I doubt if it has its equal the year round for agreeableness and healthfulness in our Union; and it is the testimony of those whose experience of the best Mediterranean climate is more extended and much longer continued than mine, that it is superior to any on that enclosed sea. About this great harbor, whose outer beach has an extent of twenty-five miles, whose inland circuit of mountains must be over fifty miles, there are great varieties of temperature, of shelter and exposure, minute subdivisions of climate, whose personal fitness can only be attested by experience. There is a great difference, for instance, between the quality of the climate at the elevation of the Florence Hotel, San Diego, and the University Heights on the mesa above the town, and that on the long Coronado Beach which protects the inner harbor from the ocean surf. The latter, practically surrounded by water, has a true marine climate, but a peculiar and dry marine climate, as tonic in its effect as that of Capri, and, I believe, with fewer harsh days in the winter season. I wish to speak with entire frankness about this situation, for I am sure that what so much pleases me will suit a great number of people, who will thank me for not being reserved. Doubtless it will not suit hundreds of people as well as some other localities in Southern California, but I found no other place where I had the feeling of absolute content and willingness to stay on indefinitely. There is a geniality about it for which the thermometer does not account, a charm which it is difficult to explain. Much of the agreeability is due to artificial conditions, but the climate man has not made nor marred.

The Coronado Beach is about twelve miles long. A narrow sand promontory, running northward from the main-land, rises to the Heights, then broadens into a table-land, which seems to be an island, and measures about a mile and a half each way; this is called South Beach, and is connected by another spit of sand with a like area called North Beach, which forms, with Point Loma, the entrance to the harbor. The North Beach, covered partly with chaparral and broad fields of barley, is alive with quail, and is a favorite coursing-ground for rabbits. The soil, which appears uninviting, is with water uncommonly fertile, being a mixture of loam, disintegrated granite, and decomposed shells, and especially adapted to flowers, rare tropical trees, fruits, and flowering shrubs of all countries.

The development is on the South Beach, which was in January, 1887, nothing but a waste of sand and chaparral. I doubt if the world can show a like transformation in so short a time. I saw it in February of that year, when all the beauty, except that of ocean, sky, and atmosphere, was still to be imagined. It is now as if the wand of the magician had touched it. In the first place, abundance of water was brought over by a submarine conduit, and later from the extraordinary Coronado Springs (excellent soft water for drinking and bathing, and with a recognized medicinal value), and with these streams the beach began to bloom like a tropical garden. Tens of thousands of trees have attained a remarkable growth in three years. The nursery is one of the most interesting botanical and flower gardens in the country; palms and hedges of Monterey cypress and marguerites line the avenues. There are parks and gardens of rarest flowers and shrubs, whose brilliant color produces the same excitement in the mind as strains of martial music. A railway traverses the beach for a mile from the ferry to the hotel. There are hundreds of cottages with their gardens scattered over the surface; there is a race-track, a museum, an ostrich farm, a labyrinth, good roads for driving, and a dozen other attractions for the idle or the inquisitive.

The hotel stands upon the south front of the beach and near the sea, above which it is sufficiently elevated to give a fine prospect. The sound of the beating surf is perpetual there. At low tide there is a splendid driving beach miles in extent, and though the slope is abrupt, the opportunity for bathing is good, with a little care in regard to the undertow. But there is a safe natatorium on the harbor side close to the hotel. The stranger, when he first comes upon this novel hotel and this marvellous scene of natural and created beauty, is apt to exhaust his superlatives. I hesitate to attempt to describe this hotel—this airy and picturesque and half-bizarre wooden creation of the architect. Taking it and its situation together, I know nothing else in the world with which to compare it, and I have never seen any other which so surprised at first, that so improved on a two weeks' acquaintance, and that has left in the mind an impression so entirely agreeable. It covers about four and a half acres of ground, including an inner court of about an acre, the rich made soil of which is raised to the level of the main floor. The house surrounds this, in the Spanish mode of building, with a series of galleries, so that most of the suites of rooms have a double outlook—one upon this lovely garden, the other upon the ocean or the harbor. The effect of this interior court or patio is to give gayety and an air of friendliness to the place, brilliant as it is with flowers and climbing vines; and when the royal and date palms that are vigorously thriving in it attain their growth it will be magnificent. Big hotels and caravansaries are usually tiresome, unfriendly places; and if I should lay too much stress upon the vast dining-room (which has a floor area of ten thousand feet without post or pillar), or the beautiful breakfast-room, or the circular ballroom (which has an area of eleven thousand feet, with its timber roof open to the lofty observatory), or the music-room, billiard-rooms for ladies, the reading-rooms and parlors, the pretty gallery overlooking the spacious office rotunda, and then say that the whole is illuminated with electric lights, and capable of being heated to any temperature desired—I might convey a false impression as to the actual comfort and home-likeness of this charming place. On the sea side the broad galleries of each story are shut in by glass, which can be opened to admit or shut to exclude the fresh ocean breeze. Whatever the temperature outside, those great galleries are always agreeable for lounging or promenading. For me, I never tire of the sea and its changing color and movement. If this great house were filled with guests, so spacious are its lounging places I should think it would never appear to be crowded; and if it were nearly empty, so admirably are the rooms contrived for family life it will not seem lonesome. I shall add that the management is of the sort that makes the guest feel at home and at ease. Flowers, brought in from the gardens and nurseries, are every where in profusion—on the dining-tables, in the rooms, all about the house. So abundantly are they produced that no amount of culling seems to make an impression upon their mass.

But any description would fail to give the secret of the charm of existence here. Restlessness disappears, for one thing, but there is no languor or depression. I cannot tell why, when the thermometer is at 60° or 63°, the air seems genial and has no sense of chilliness, or why it is not oppressive at 80° or 85°. I am sure the place will not suit those whose highest idea of winter enjoyment is tobogganing and an ice palace, nor those who revel in the steam and languor of a tropical island; but for a person whose desires are moderate, whose tastes are temperate, who is willing for once to be good-humored and content in equable conditions, I should commend Coronado Beach and the Hotel del Coronado, if I had not long ago learned that it is unsafe to commend to any human being a climate or a doctor.

But you can take your choice. It lies there, our Mediterranean region, on a blue ocean, protected by barriers of granite from the Northern influences, an infinite variety of plain, cañon, hills, valleys, sea-coast; our New Italy without malaria, and with every sort of fruit which we desire (except the tropical), which will be grown in perfection when our knowledge equals our ambition; and if you cannot find a winter home there or pass some contented weeks in the months of Northern inclemency, you are weighing social advantages against those of the least objectionable climate within the Union. It is not yet proved that this equability and the daily out-door life possible there will change character, but they are likely to improve the disposition and soften the asperities of common life. At any rate, there is a land where from November to April one has not to make a continual fight with the elements to keep alive.

It has been said that this land of the sun and of the equable climate will have the effect that other lands of a southern aspect have upon temperament and habits. It is feared that Northern-bred people, who are guided by the necessity of making hay while the sun shines, will not make hay at all in a land where the sun always shines. It is thought that unless people are spurred on incessantly by the exigencies of the changing seasons they will lose energy, and fall into an idle floating along with gracious nature. Will not one sink into a comfortable and easy procrastination if he has a whole year in which to perform the labor of three months? Will Southern California be an exception to those lands of equable climate and extraordinary fertility where every effort is postponed till "to-morrow?"

I wish there might be something solid in this expectation; that this may be a region where the restless American will lose something of his hurry and petty, feverish ambition. Partially it may be so. He will take, he is already taking, something of the tone of the climate and of the old Spanish occupation. But the race instinct of thrift and of "getting on" will not wear out in many generations. Besides, the condition of living at all in Southern California in comfort, and with the social life indispensable to our people, demands labor, not exhausting and killing, but still incessant—demands industry. A land that will not yield satisfactorily without irrigation, and whose best paying produce requires intelligent as well as careful husbandry, will never be an idle land. Egypt, with all its dolce far niente, was never an idle land for the laborer.

It may be expected, however, that no more energy will be developed or encouraged than is needed for the daily tasks, and these tasks being lighter than elsewhere, and capable of being postponed, that there will be less stress and strain in the daily life. Although the climate of Southern California is not enervating, in fact is stimulating to the new-comer, it is doubtless true that the monotony of good weather, of the sight of perpetual bloom and color in orchards and gardens, will take away nervousness and produce a certain placidity, which might be taken for laziness by a Northern observer. It may be that engagements will not be kept with desired punctuality, under the impression that the enjoyment of life does not depend upon exact response to the second-hand of a watch; and it is not unpleasant to think that there is a corner of the Union where there will be a little more leisure, a little more of serene waiting on Providence, an abatement of the restless rush and haste of our usual life. The waves of population have been rolling westward for a long time, and now, breaking over the mountains, they flow over Pacific slopes and along the warm and inviting seas. Is it altogether an unpleasing thought that the conditions of life will be somewhat easier there, that there will be some physical repose, the race having reached the sunset of the continent, comparable to the desirable placidity of life called the sunset of old age? This may be altogether fanciful, but I have sometimes felt, in the sunny moderation of nature there, that this land might offer for thousands at least a winter of content.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GENERAL OUTLOOK.—LAND AND PRICES

From the northern limit of California to the southern is about the same distance as from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Charleston, South Carolina. Of these two coast lines, covering nearly ten degrees of latitude, or over seven hundred miles, the Atlantic has greater extremes of climate and greater monthly variations, and the Pacific greater variety of productions. The State of California is, however, so mountainous, cut by longitudinal and transverse ranges, that any reasonable person can find in it a temperature to suit him the year through. But it does not need to be explained that it would be difficult to hit upon any general characteristic that would apply to the stretch of the Atlantic coast named, as a guide to a settler looking for a home; the description of Massachusetts would be wholly misleading for South Carolina. It is almost as difficult to make any comprehensive statement about the long line of the California coast.

It is possible, however, limiting the inquiry to the southern third of the State—an area of about fifty-eight thousand square miles, as large as Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—to answer fairly some of the questions oftenest asked about it. These relate to the price of land, its productiveness, the kind of products most profitable, the sort of labor required, and its desirability as a place of residence for the laborer, for the farmer or horticulturist of small means, and for the man with considerable capital. Questions on these subjects cannot be answered categorically, but I hope to be able, by setting down my own observations and using trustworthy reports, to give others the material on which to exercise their judgment. In the first place, I think it demonstrable that a person would profitably exchange 160 acres of farming land east of the one hundredth parallel for ten acres, with a water right, in Southern California.

In making this estimate I do not consider the question of health or merely the agreeability of the climate, but the conditions of labor, the ease with which one could support a family, and the profits over and above a fair living. It has been customary in reckoning the value of land there to look merely to the profit of it beyond its support of a family, forgetting that agriculture and horticulture the world over, like almost all other kinds of business, usually do little more than procure a good comfortable living, with incidental education, to those who engage in them. That the majority of the inhabitants of Southern California will become rich by the culture of the orange and the vine is an illusion; but it is not an illusion that twenty times its present population can live there in comfort, in what might be called luxury elsewhere, by the cultivation of the soil, all far removed from poverty and much above the condition of the majority of the inhabitants of the foreign wine and fruit-producing countries. This result is assured by the extraordinary productiveness of the land, uninterrupted the year through, and by the amazing extension of the market in the United States for products that can be nowhere else produced with such certainty and profusion as in California. That State is only just learning how to supply a demand which is daily increasing, but it already begins to command the market in certain fruits. This command of the market in the future will depend upon itself, that is, whether it will send East and North only sound wine, instead of crude, ill-cured juice of the grape, only the best and most carefully canned apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums, only the raisins and prunes perfectly prepared, only such oranges, lemons, and grapes and pears as the Californians are willing to eat themselves. California has yet much to learn about fruit-raising and fruit-curing, but it already knows that to compete with the rest of the world in our markets it must beat the rest of the world in quality. It will take some time yet to remove the unfavorable opinion of California wines produced in the East by the first products of the vineyards sent here.