California: for health, pleasure, and residence, etc

Front matter

MAP OF THE PAOIFIO OOA8T SHOWING POINTS OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO TOCHI8T8. CALIFORNIA: FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE. A BOOK FOR TRA VELLERS AND SETTLERS. By CHARLES NORDHOFF, AUTHOR OF "CAPE COD AND ALL ALONG SHORE," &c, &c. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, LOW, AND SEARLE, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET. I873- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO .GENERAL E. F. BEALE, IN MEMORY OF PLEASANT DAYS AT THE TEJON.

Preface

HPHERE have been Americans who saw Eome before they saw Niag- -*- ara; and for one who has visited the Yosemite, a hundred will tell you about the Alps, and a thousand about Paris. Now, I have no objec tion to Europe; but I would like to induce Americans, when they con template a journey for health, pleasure, or instruction, or all three, to think also of their own country, and particularly of California, which has so many delights in store for the tourist, and so many attractions for the farmer or settler looking for a mild and healthful climate and a productive country. When a northern American visits a tropical country, be it Cuba, Mex ico, Brazil, or Central America, he is delighted with the bright skies, the mild climate, the wonderful productiveness of the soil, and the novel cus toms of the inhabitants ; but he is repelled by an enervating atmosphere, by the dread of malarious diseases, by the semi-barbarous habits of the people, and often by a lawless state of society.

Moreover, he must leave his own country, and is without the comfort and security he enjoys at home. Cali fornia is our own ; and it is the first tropical land which our race has thoroughly mastered and made itself at home in. There, and there only, on this planet, the traveler and resident may enjoy the delights of the tropics, without their penalties ; a mild climate, not enervating, but health ful and health-restoring; a wonderfully and variously productive soil, without tropical malaria; the grandest scenery, with perfect security and comfort in traveling arrangements; strange customs, but neither lawless ness nor semi-barbarism. The first part of this book will interest mainly travelers and tourists, and in jt I have aimed to give a plain and detailed statement of the routes across the continent, and of what the traveler should see by the way ; of the notable sights of California, and how they may best be visited ; and a table of expenses, and of the time needed for different excursions. There

PREFACE.

. is also a chapter on health resorts for invalids, and there are some hints to sportsmen. Consumptives will find in Southern California a climate re markably mild and healing. The remainder of the book is devoted to accounts of the agriculture and fruit culture of Southern California, a region almost unknown, and just now opened to settlement by the completion of several lines of rail road ; and which, by reason of its fine healthful climate, its rich soil, and its remarkably varied products, deserves the attention of farmers looking for pleasant homes and cheap and fertile lands, combined with a climate the best, probably, in the United States. Parts of the book have appeared in Harper's Magazine, the Tribune, and the Evening Post, but the whole has been revised and much new matter added. CONTENTS.

A California Cattle Rancho. — A Rodeo. — Peculiar Customs of the Spanish Californians 238

Appendix

. Southern California for Consumptives 247 Tables of Temperature in Clarens (Switzerland), Aiken (Georgia), and San Bernardino and Anaheim (California) 250 Latest Improvements in the Yosemite Route ILLUSTRATIONS. Paoe Map of the Pacific Coast, showing Points of Interest to Tourists Frontispiece. View from the Cliff House, San Francisco 17 Interior of a Pullman Palace-car, Pacific Railroad 24 George M. Pullman 27 Pullman Dining-car 30 Cooking-range, Pullman Palace-car, Union Pacific Railroad 33 Interior of Pullman Sleeping-car, Pacific Railroad 36 Observation-car 38 Green Bluffs, 1500 Feet above the American River, 71 Miles from Sacramento 42 C. P. Huntington 45 Flume and Railroad at Gold Run, Sixty-four Miles from Sacramento 47 Eagle Gap, on the Truckee River 49 First Office of the Central Pacific Railroad 51 Snow-sheds on the Central Pacific Railroad 54 Snow-plough on the Central Pacific Railroad 56 Central Pacific Railroad Hospital 57 A Bird's-eye View of the Trans-continental Route 60 Rounding Cape Horn 61 Interior of Snow-shed, Central Pacific Railroad 64 Summit of the Sierras, from Central Pacific Railroad 67 Alkali Desert, Central Pacific Railroad 70 Bloomer Cut, Central Pacific Railroad 72 Plan of the Yosemite Valley 74 The Yosemite Valley 76 El Capitan 79 The Big Trees 80 View of Yosemite from the Mariposa Trail 82 View near the State Line, Truckee River 84 Lake Tahoe 89 ''Prospecting" 93 'Panning Out" 95 Cradle-rocking 99 The Mexican Arastra 103 Map of the San Joaquin Valley 106 Map of the Sacramento Valley 107 Boating on Donner Lake 109 Donner Lake, Crested Peak, and Mount Lincoln 114 View from the Coulterville Trail 118 California Live-oak ILLUSTRATIONS.

Pack The Sentinel, Yosemite Valley* "* North Dome, Yosemite Valley* !"* Mirror Lake, Yosemite Valley* "- The Three Brothers, Yosemite Valley I"*8 Piute Squaw and Papoose 155 The Bridal Veil Fall, Yosemite Valley 160 Yosemite Fall, Yosemite Valley 164 Secret Town, Trestle from the East, 110 Feet Long, 90 Feet High 166 Winnowing Gold, near Chinese Gamp , 174 v South Dome, Yosemite Valley 182 A Quartz Mill 189 Nevada Fall, Yosemite Valley 195 Flutter-wheel on the Tuolumne 202 Turning a River 205 A Flume 210 Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite Valley 215 Hydraulic Mining, at French Corral 223 The Geysers 229 Vernal Fall, Yosemite Valley VIE'.V FEOM THE OLIFF HOUSE, BAM J-RANOISUU. CALIFORNIA: FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE.

Chapter I. The Way Out

r I THOUGH California has been celebrated in books, newspapers, and maga- ■**'- zines for more than twenty years, it is really almost as little known to the tourist — a creature who ought to know it thoroughly, to his own delight — as it was to Swift when he wrote, in his description of the flying island of Laputa, o CALIFORNIA : FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE. 18 " The continent of which this kingdom is a part extends itself, as I have reason to believe, eastward to that unknown tract of America westward of California, and north to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a hundred and fifty miles from Logado," and so on. California is to most Eastern people still a land of big beets and pumpkins, of rouwh miners, of pistols, bowie-knives, abundant fruit, queer wines, high prices —full of discomforts, and abounding in dangers to the peaceful traveler.

A New Yorker, inefficient except in his own business, looking to the government, municipal, State, or Federal, for almost every thing except his daily dollars; overridden by a semi-barbarous foreign population ; troubled with incapable servants, private as well as public; subject to daily rudeness from car-drivers and others who ought to be civil; rolled helplessly and tediously down town to his business in a lumbering omnibus; exposed to inconveniences, to dirty streets, bad gas, beggars, loss of time through improper conveyances ; to high taxes, theft, and all kinds of public wrong, year in and year out — this New- Yorker fondly imagines himself to be living at the centre of civilization, and pities the unlucky friend who is " going to California." He invites him to dine before he sets out, "because you will not get a good dinner again till you return, you know ;" he sends him, with his parting blessing, a heavy navy revolver ; and shudders at the annoyances and dangers which his friend, out of a rash and venturesome disposition, is about to undergo.

Well, the New Yorker is mistaken. There are no dangers to travelers on the beaten track in California ; there are no inconveniences which a child or a tenderly reared woman would not laugh at; they dine in San Francisco rather better, and with quite as much form and a more elegant aud perfect service, than in New York ; the San Francisco hotels are the best and cheapest in the world ; the noble art of cooking is better understood in California than any where else where I have eaten ; the bread is far better, the variety of food is greater; the persons with whom a tourist comes in contact, and upon whom his comfort and pleasures so greatly depend, are more uniformly civil, obliging, honest, and intelligent than they are anywhere in this country, or, so far as I know, in Europe ; the pleasure-roads in the neighborhood of San Francisco are unequaled anywhere ; the common country roads are kept iu far better order than anywhere in the Eastern States ; and when you have spent half a dozen weeks in the State, you will perhaps return with a notion that New York is the true frontier land, and that you have nowhere in the United States seen so com plete a civilization — in all material points, at least — as you found iu California.

Moreover, the cost of living is to-day less in California by a third than in any Eastern State; it is, at this time, the cheapest country in the United States to live in. If this seems incredible to what out there they call an Eastern person, let him reflect for a moment upon the fact that New York receives a constant supply of the rudest, least civilized European populations ; that of the immigrants landed at Castle Garden, the neediest, the least thrifty and energetic, and the most vicious remain in New York, while the ablest and most valuable fly rap idly westward; and that, besides this, New York has necessarily a large popu lation of native adventurers; while, on the other hand, California has a settled and permanent population of doubly picked men. "When the gold was discovered," said a Californian to whom I had express ed my wonder at the admirable quality of the State's population, " wherever an Eastern family had three or four boys, the ablest, the most energetic one, came hither.

Of that great multitude of picked men, again, the weakly broke down under the strain ; they died of disease or bad whisky, or they returned home. The remainder you see here, and you ought not to wonder that they are above your Eastern average in intelligence, energy, and thrift. Moreover, you are \_\ remember that, contrary to the commonly received belief, California has a more settled population than almost any State in the Union. It does not change ; our people can not 'move West,' and very few of them return to the East. What we have we keep, and almost all, except the Chinese, have a permanent interest in the State. Finally," added this old miner, who is now a banker, and whom you could not tell from a New Yorker, either in his dress or the tones of his voice, or in the manner in which he transacts business, and who yet has not been "home," as he calls it, for seventeen years — "finally, you must remember that of our immigrants who came from China, not a single one, so far as is known, but knew how to read, write, and keep at least his own accounts on his own abacus when he passed the Golden Gate.

We are not saints out here, but I believe we have much less of a frontier population than you in New York." And my experience persuades me that he was right. Certainly in no part of the continent is pleasure-traveling so exquisite and unalloyed a pleasure as in California. Not only are the sights grand, wonderful, and surprising in the highest degree, but the climate is exhilarating and favorable to an active life ; the weather is so certain that you need not lose a day, and may lay out your whole tour in the State without reference to rainy days, unless it is in the rainy season ; the roads are surprisingly good, the country inns are clean, the beds good, the food abundant and almost always well cooked, and the charges moderate ; and the journey by rail from New- York to San Francisco, which costs no more than the steamer fare to London, and is shorter than a voyage across the Atlantic, is in itself delightful as well as instructive.

Probably twenty Americans go to Europe for one who goes to California ; for one who has seen the Yo Semite, a hundred will tell you of the Alps, and a thousand about Paris ; yet no American who has not seen the Plains, the Great Salt Lake, the Sierra Nevada, and the wonders of California, can honestly say that he has seen his own country, or that he even has an intelligent idea of its greatness. It is of this journey from New York CALIFORNIA : FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE. 20 to San Francisco that I wish to give in this chapter such an accurate and detailed account as will, I hope, tempt many who contemplate a European tour to turn their faces westward rather, sure that this way lies the most real pleasure. You may purchase tickets for California in any of the larger Eastern towns and cities ; and you may go out by way of Chicago or St. Louis as you prefer.

The journey really begins at one or the other of these places. From Chicago three railroads, the Burlington and Missouri, the Chicago and North Western, and the Chicago and Rock Island, lead to Omaha. All three are well managed ; the Burlington and Missouri road, one of the best built in the whole country, has a special attraction to tourists in its Pullman dining-cars, which run with every through train, and are a great convenience, as well as an attractive novelty. A From St. Louis you may either go direct to Omaha, or, if you desire to take Colorado on your way, you may go, either from St. Louis or Chicago, over the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the only one on which still, in the season, buffalo are seen, to Denver. At Denver you have your choice of diversions in Colo rado, with Mr. Bowles's admirable book, "The Switzerland of America," to show you the way; and when you are done, you pass from Denver to Chey enne, where you join the overland train.

You are to understand that all these lines make connection with the Pacific Railroads, and that all roads lead to San Francisco. Now that the bridge at Omaha is completed, you may, if you desire it enough, charter a Pullman car in New York, Chicago, or St. Louis, or, indeed, at any point you please, and go through to the Pacific without change of cars. The traveling time from. New York to San Francisco, if you go through without stopping, is seven days. In practice, the tourist bound to California will do well to stop two days in Chicago and one day in Salt Lake City, in which case he would get to San Francisco in ten days, and with surprisingly little fatigue, and he will have seen several very remarkable sights on the way. "For instance, though Chicago itself was burned and is not yet entirely re built, the ruins are worth seeing; and near at hand, accessible by frequent trains, he may find one of the most characteristic sights of our continent, the great Chicago stock-yards — a city whose inhabitants are cattle, sheep, and hogs, and where these creatures are so well cared for that many a poor human being supposed to have an immortal and amenable soul, living in a New York tene ment house, is neither so cleanly lodged nor so well protected against harm or cruelty.

This city of the beasts has streets, sewers, drains ; it has water laid on ; it is lighted with gas; it has a bank, an exchange, a telegraph-office, a post-office, an admirably kept hotel ; it has even a newspaper — else it would not be an Ameri can city. It has very comfortable accommodations for 118,350 residents namely, 21,000 head of cattle, 75,000 hogs, 22,000 sheep, with stalls for 350 horses. It contains 345 acres of land ; and when all this is prepared for use, 210,000 head of cattle can be lodged, fed, and cared for there at once, and with the certainty that not one will suffer or go astray. It has thirty-five miles of sewers ; ten miles of streets and alleys, all paved with wood ; three miles of water-troughs, all so arranged that the water may be stopped off at any point; 2300 gates, which are the front-doors, so to speak, of the place; 1500 open pens, heavily fenced iu with double plank; 100 acres are covered with pens for cattle, and all these are floored with three-inch plank; 800 covered sheds for sheep and hogs ; and seventeen miles of railroad track connect this city of the beasts with every road which runs into Chicago.

It has two Artesian wells, one 1032, the other 1190 feet deep, which, being spout ing'wells, send the water into huge tanks forty-five feet high, whence it is dis tributed all over the place in pipes. Fourteen fire-plugs are ready to furnish water in case of fire; immense stacks of hay and large granaries of corn contain the food needed for the beasts ; and, I believe, a train of palace cattle cars now bears the emigrant animals from this their city comfortably to the Eastern butchers. Of course, as the " lower animals " do not help themselves, a considerable force of men is needed to attend upon those gathered here. The company re ceives and cares for all animals sent to it. It has thus taken in, penned, fed, watered, littered, and taken account of 41,000 hogs, 3000 cattle, and 2000 sheep in a single day, and that without accident, hitch, or delay.

From 1 75 to 200 men are constantly employed in this labor ; and to accommodate these and their families numerous cottages have been built, while a town-hall for public meetings and lec tures, a church, a Sunday-school, and a well-kept day-school provide for their in struction and amusement. The hotel, which has bath-rooms, and is in other respects well fitted, is for the use of the drovers and owners of cattle, whom business brings hither. At the Exchange sales are effected, and the news of a sale may be sent to Maine or Texas by telegraph from the same room, while the money paid may be securely deposited in the bank, which is under the same roof. Thus you will see that this amazing town is completely furnished in every part ; and it will not be the least part of your surprise and pleasure to find that the whole business, which near New York often involves painful brutali ties, is here conducted as quietly as though a Quaker presided over it, and with as much care for the feelings of the dumb brutes as though good Mr. Bergh were looking on all the time.

It will cost about two millions when it is completed; is a pecuniary success, as it deserves to be ; and when you hear that so long ago as 1869 Chicago received and sent off 403,102 head of cattle, 1,661,869 hogs, and 340,072 sheep, and that it will probably remain for years one of the greatest cattle markets in the world, yxm will see the need for such elaborate arrangements as I have de- CALIFORNIA : FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE. scribed, and, if you are a humane person, will be pleased that these immense droves of animals are kindly cared for and comfortably lodged and fed on their way to a market. Most of the people employed in the yards are Americans. Among such a multitude of beasts as are here received Mr. Buckle's law of averages would tell you that there will be a certain few monstrosities ; and you will probably be shown one or two Texas steers which look much more like elephants or mammoths than horned oxen ; perhaps a two-headed sheep, or a six legged hog ; and, indeed, when I saw the stables they contained a collection which would have turned the face of a Chatham Street exhibitor green with envy.

The Union Stock-yards lie but half an hour from the centre of Chicago, and there is no reason why ladies and children should not visit them if the weather is fine. I do not know of a more instructive or remarkable sight for tourists. If you want to see how private enterprise and good taste can provide for the pleasant lodging of men and women, turn from this city of the beasts and go out to Riverside Park. It always seemed to me that it would be the summit of human felicity to have a handsome house in the New York Central Park, and thus to seem to own and control, and to really enjoy as a piece of personal property, that fine pleasure-ground. When the Tammany Ring was in the height of its power this thought was also entertained by its chiefs, who for some time nursed and fondled ct proposition that " a few eminent citizens " should be allowed, " under proper restrictions," to build themselves fine houses in the Park.

It is not difficult to guess who would have been the eminent citizens to share arnonu* themselves this happy privilege ; and New York may thank Harper's Weekly, the Times, and Thomas Nast that their ambitious scheme has come to naught. Their names would have begun with a T and au S and a C aud an H. Well, a company of capitalists in Chicago conceived the idea that it would be possible and profitable to buy a piece of ground near that city, lay it out as tastefully and improve it as thoroughly as the New York Central Park, and then sell it off in lots to people of taste and wealth. It needed some faith to begin such an undertaking; but if you go to Riverside you will see Central Park roads, drives, and paths ; you will find gas and water supplied as though it were a city; you will find tasteful public buildings; a hotel, which was a place of refuge for multitudes of Chicago people after the great fire, and which is a favorite summer resort ; and you will see a good many people living already with Central Park surroundings, and with all the comforts and social advan tages of the city and the country combined.

Perhaps you will wonder whether co-operation is not a good thing for the wealthy as well as the struggling poor, and whether the many who prefer to live in the suburbs of great cities would not do wisely and save money if they would — having found a region they like — unite to improve it upon some general and tasteful plan. v And whatever you may think of Chicago in ruins, or of the future of that stirring place, when you have seen Riverside and the Union Stock-yards you will acknowledge that Chicago capitalists have known how, in the words of the old tavern signs, to provide " first-rate accommodations for man and beast." At Chicago or St. Louis the journey to California really begins. In the East we make journeys by rail; west of Chicago men live on the cars. In the East a railroad journey is an interruption to our lives.

We submit to it, be cause no one has yet been ingenious enough to contrive a flying-machine, and the telegraph wires do not carry passengers by lightning ; but we submit to it reluctantly, we travel by night in order to escape the tedium of the journey, and no one thinks of amusing himself on the cars. When you leave Chicago you take up your residence on the train. The cars are no longer a ferry to carry you across a short distance : you are to live in them for days and nights ; and no Eastern man knows the comfort or pleasure of traveling by rail until he crosses the Plains. I suspect that part of our discomfort in making a railroad journey comes from its brevity. You are unsettled; the car, on a common journeys is but a longer ferry; and who ever thought of taking his ease on a ferry-boat?

You can not fix your mind on the present; your constant thought is of when you will get there. Now the journey to San Francisco takes not a few hours, but a number of days ; aud when you are safely embarked on the train at Chicago, you leave care behind in the depot, and make yourself comfortable, as one does on a sea-voyage. Moreover, until you have taken this journey, you will never know how great a difference it makes to your comfort whether your train goes at the rate of forty or at twenty-two miles per hour. This last is the pace of the iron horse between Omaha aud San Francisco ; and it is to the fierce and rapid rush of an Eastern lightning express what a gentle and easy amble is to a rough and jolting trot. It would not be surprising to find that the overland journey will, by-and-by, create a public opinion in favor of what New Yorkers would call slow trains.

Certainly a lightning express rushing through from Chicago to San Francisco would not carry any one, except an express-man, a second time. At forty or forty -five miles per hour the country you pass through is a blur ; one hardly sees between the telegraph poles ; pleasure and ease are alike out of question ; reading tires your eyes, writing is impossible, conversation impracticable except at the auctioneer pitch, and the motion is wearing and tiresome. But at twenty-two miles per hour travel by rail is a different affair; and having unpacked your books and unstrapped your wraps in your Pullman or Central Pacific palace-car, you may pursue all the seden tary avocations and amusements of a parlor at home ; and as your housekeep ing is done — and admirably done — for you by alert and experienced servants ; as you may lie down at full length or sit up, sleep or wake, at your choice ; as CALIFORNIA : FOR HEALTH, PLEASURE, AND RESIDENCE. 24 INTEEIOll OF A PULLMAN TALAOE-OAE, PACIFIC BAILEOA1). your dinner is sure to be abundant, very tolerably cooked, and not hurried ; as you are pretty certain to make acquaintances on the car; and as the country through which you pass is strange, and abounds in curious and interesting sights, and the air is fresh and exhilarating — you soon fall into the ways of the voyage ; and if you are a tired business man, or a wearied housekeeper, your careless ease will be such a rest as certainly most busy and overworked Ameri cans know how to enjoy.

I tell you all this in some detail, because it was new to me, and it is worth while to be spared the unpleasant forebodings of w-eariness and lack of occupation which troubled me when I was packing my trunk for 'Frisco. You write very comfortably at a table in a little room called a drawing room, entirely closed off, if you wish it, from the remainder of the car, which room contains two large and comfortable arm-chairs and a sofa; two broad, clean, plate-glass windows on each side, which may be doubled if the weather is cold; hooks in abundance for shawls, hats, etc., and mirrors at every corner. Books and photographs lie on the table ; your wife sits at the window, sewing and looking out on long ranges of snow-clad mountains, or on boundless, ocean like plains ; children play on the floor, or wratch at the windows for the comical prairie-dogs sitting near their holes, and turning laughable somersaults as the car sweeps by.

You converse as you would in your parlor at home ; the noise of the train is as much lost to your consciousness as the steamship's rush through the waters ; the air is pure, for these cars are thoroughly ventilated ; the heat ing apparatus used seems to me quite perfect, for it keeps the feet warm, and diffuses an agreeable and equal heat through all parts of the car. This is ac complished by means of hot-water pipes fastened near the floor. As at sea, so here, the most important events of the day are your meals. The porter calls you at any hour you appoint in the morning ; he gives you half an hour's notice of breakfast, dinner, or supper; and the conductor tells you not to hurry, but to eat at your ease, for he will not leave any one be hind. Your beds are made up and your room or section swept and aired while you are at breakfast, or before, if you are early risers ; you find both water and fresh towels abundant ; ice is put into the tank which supplies drinking-water, at the most improbable places in the great wilderness ; and an attentive serv ant is always within call, and comes to you at intervals during the day to ask if yrou need any thing to make you more contented.

About eight o'clock — for, as at sea, you keep good hours — the porter, in a clean gray uniform, like that of a Central Park policeman, comes in to make up the beds. The two easy-chairs are turned into a berth ; the sofa undergoes a similar transformation ; the table, having its legs pulled together, disappears in a corner, and two shelves being let down furnish two other berths. The freshest and whitest of linen and brightly colored blankets complete the outfit ; and you undress and go to bed as you would at home, and, unless you have eat en too heartily of antelope or elk, will sleep as soundly. Thus you ride onward, day after day, toward the setting sun, and unless you are an extremely unhappy traveler, your days will be filled with pleasure from the novel sights by the way. At Burlington you cross the Mississippi over a noble bridge, and will be surprised to see what a grand river the Father of Waters is nearly sixteen hundred miles above its mouth.