"SEEING LOS ANGELES."
is the name of the observation car which will give you a two or three hours ride through the city for a small sum. I can't begin to tell of all we saw. There are hundreds of palatial homes here in the midst of grounds surrounded by the rarest of plants. I can't understand why they do not have the orange as an ornamental tree, for it grows beautifully all around. It is a lovely tree and when loaded with fruit, it surpasses anything I have seen. I was never tired of eating oranges until now. I shall never forget the acres on acres I saw, covered with trees laden with the luscious fruit. The growth of the population in this Southern California city is something marvelous.
In 1860 there were 4,500; in 1870, 11,000; in 1880, 50,000; in 1897, more than 100,000, and at this time, probably 150,000. What is the attraction? the reader asks. The climate is the first thing, of course. It is only 293 feet above the level of the sea, the air is dry and entirely free from malarial influences. There is not much need of fire in the homes, so spring-like is the weather most of the time. The ocean is only a short distance away on one side, and the mountains, on the other side, are only a few minutes ride. Besides all this, the rich lands abound. Oil wells are abundant in the southern part of the city. Many persons mortgaged delightful homes to develop wells in their front and back yards and afterwards lost all. Some of the wisest feel that the discovery of oil was a calamity to the city. The conductor on our observation car, in his excellent description of things, as we went along, would occasionally venture to perpetrate a piece of wit at which there was the faintest sort of a smile on the faces of some of his passengers, on others, it was entirely lost, but he made one happy hit, which brought down the house. "On the left you see many hundreds of derricks, showing that Los Angeles has among her many other resources, oil to burn. You will observe that the oil wells come to an abrupt termination at the fence of the old cemetery. Many people insisted that so much valuable territory should not be given up to the dead since the occupants had either gone to where they did not need oil, or to where fuel was furnished them free."