CHAPTER XI.
HARD WORK FOR THE MEN—HARDER WORK STILL FOR THE WOMEN—THE CISTERN—RATTLESNAKES—THE GARDEN—HOMESICKNESS—PIPE-LAYING.
The ordinary business man at home in England would think it rather a mad suggestion if his friend were to prophesy that some day he would have to set to and make his own roads, the drive up to his house, lay his own water-pipes from the main, build his own rain-water cistern and cesspool, dig and plant his own garden, and fence that in too.
I think he would be equally surprised if he could realise how quickly and easily he would adapt himself to such unaccustomed work, and how well he could accomplish it.
To the man who loves an outdoor life, and is clever with his hands, and has ingenuity, too, and some skill in creating something out of nothing, “making history,” there is much zest and enjoyment in all this. But, of course, it is very hard work; and when the sun is fierce (which it usually is), the glare and heat are most trying, out on the perfectly shadeless stretches of land.
The body does not accustom itself easily to these new labours, and the new burden must not be laid upon it too heavily; all the health-giving power of ranch life depends largely upon this precaution. Therefore the question of being able to pay for necessary help is a very important one. It is pitiful to see the weary, broken struggles of men untrained and unaccustomed to the heavy physical work of a ranch, and unable to pay for help. A breakdown, more or less serious, is almost certain, when the work all falls behind, and things become more and more hopeless. It is a great mistake for a delicate man, who has broken down at his office work at home in England, to come out here to ranch, thinking to recover his health in the open-air life, but not having at the same time the means to pay for help, nor the capital to be able to wait the necessary years till his ranch can yield an income.
Of course, I am not speaking of the man born and bred to such work at home; he will find a true land of promise here; the pay he can command (one dollar a day and his board), will soon enable him, if he is a thrifty fellow, to buy a bit of land and build a home of his own, such as he could not dream of in the old country; and the work is what he has always been accustomed to, and for which his body has been trained for generations.
But for the man of gentle birth and breeding it is a very different story. He would be better shut up in an office at home.
The life is splendidly healthy so long as one is not overdriven; the physical exercise of the different occupations, and all in the open air, is like the training of an athlete. Hoeing round the lemon trees is as good for the chest and arms of the labourer as for the roots of the lemon trees; but only always if the worker be not overtaxed. Indeed, from our experience it is only by carrying on sure regular active work in the open air that one gets the real benefit from this climate.
With thirty-one acres planted, we have found the help of one ranchman with Larry, our eldest son, and his father to be sufficient; so all our digging and piping and road-making went forward without too heavy a strain. The accepted theory is that one man can manage ten acres of planted land, and do justice to it; and a ranchman costs from twenty to thirty dollars a month, and his keep.
If the rough work and life are hard for men to accustom themselves to, it is much harder still for the women, especially, of course, for delicate women, who are supposed to have been brought out “for their health.” And here is the place to point out what a farce it is to suppose that any frail woman could possibly get any benefit out of the finest climate in the world if, in addition to the burden of her illness, she has to take upon herself the onerous duties of cook and housemaid and charwoman, and everything combined. Again the important question is whether the rancher has money enough to pay the very high wage demanded for even the simplest household help during at least five years, while he is waiting for his ranch to yield an income. Even then the wife must be prepared to work much harder than she was ever accustomed to at home, since one pair of hands, even if they are the most talented Chinese hands, necessarily leave a very great deal to be done. In our case, for instance, the Chinaman never touches the bedrooms or drawing-room, except to turn them out once a fortnight, when he leaves them fairly clean, but all topsy-turvy.
But this is as nothing, when one sees so many ranchers’ wives doing without any help at all. That is a cruel life for any man to bring his wife to, unless he has absolutely no other choice; it is to my mind quite unforgivable. Let such men come without womenfolk.
We had a wearisome long piece of work—building the rain-water cistern and the cesspool, for they had to be dug out of the hard granite. The cistern was finished, however, in time to catch part of the winter’s rain, and though we feared it would become stagnant, this danger was quite overcome by the simple little pump used, which is made almost exactly after the pattern of the old Egyptian pumps, and consists of a chain of small buckets, which revolves, and as one half come up and empty themselves through the pump spout, the other half go down into the water full of air; and thus the contents of the cistern are in this way constantly revitalised.
We have never done congratulating ourselves on possessing this cistern, for the water is always cool and sweet, and as our roof is very large, it soon fills the cistern, which holds three hundred barrels, and lasts all the year. The flume water, which we use in irrigation, and which is also laid on in the house for the boiler, etc., comes from the mountains in an open aqueduct or flume. It is at times full of moss and impurities, and is besides quite tepid in the summer.
We had many discussions, standing on our front verandah, and looking down the rough hill slope, as to how the drive should be laid out. We meant to have an avenue of pepper trees on each side, and once these were planted, the road could not well be altered. Meanwhile, sixteen more acres had been cleared of roots and brush, ploughed and harrowed for more lemon trees. In the spring we planted seven hundred young trees, which made in all one thousand five hundred.
The kitchen garden was set in order, and fenced in to keep out the squirrels and rabbits. They were a great nuisance that first year, but have now retired to their own wild part of the land, which certainly is roomy enough. The rattlesnakes, too, though we were constantly coming across them in the beginning, have now quietly withdrawn to the stony mountain tops.
That first year I was haunted with the fear of those hideous creatures, and the dread of an accident to one of my dear ranchers.
But all the same, it was a thrilling excitement when each one was caught and brought down to the barn to be gloated over; and though it was dead, it would still wriggle its ugly body, and snap its terrible jaws at anything that might touch it, and with the power still of deadly effect.
One of the boys brought down from the hill a particularly large fellow, hanging on a forked stick, its frightful mouth gaping so wide open that the whole head seemed split in two, and big amber-coloured drops of the terrible poison hanging to its fangs.
One certainly gets accustomed to anything; and here even the little children think nothing of killing a rattlesnake on their way to school. It is true they are easily killed, and are always in a hurry to get away. The danger is, of course, that one may tread on them unawares, for their skin is so like the colour of the ground. But on the road they are easily seen, and in walking through the brush one keeps a sharp look-out.
The house looked terribly bare, perched on the hill-top, without a touch of green about it and no single patch of shade far or near, so we were in a great hurry to make the garden, which was to surround the house, but was only to be a small one, as when once we had made it, we should, of course, have to keep it in order ourselves. When it was finished, we could not but laugh at our cypress hedge of baby trees about ten inches high, standing round so valiantly, and through which the smallest chicken walked with easy dignity. However, now it is a thick green wall, six or eight feet high, and there is a fence as well to keep out barn-yard intruders.
Shade trees were planted, perhaps too profusely, in our eagerness for the shade and the dear green for which our eyes so hungered.
Among the many different pangs of homesickness, a longing for the trees, and the beautiful green of England, is almost as painful as the sehnsucht that pinches one so surely at times, for the sight of an old friend’s face.
We are unusually fortunate in having within reach exceptionally charming cultivated people; and their kindliness to the newcomers, has made all the difference to us in the happiness of our social life.
But old friends grow ever dearer to the exiled ones, and I often think that if those at home who have friends in “foreign parts” knew with what joy and gratitude each simple sign is received, which proves that still they are remembered, then, indeed, many an odd paper, or little book, would be dropped into the post, when time or inclination for letter-writing failed. The paper has tenfold its value, because of the unwritten message it conveys from friend to friend.
After the garden was finished, we cleared a piece of land on the hilltop, at the back of the ranch, about one acre in size, and made a small plantation there of eucalyptus, for firewood; it grows very fast and needs little attention. Also six acres on the hill-slopes, that lay too high for irrigation, and therefore would not do for lemons, we cleared, and planted with peaches.
In April we worked hard, laying more piping. Pipe-laying is the pain and crucifixion of a rancher’s life. No part of the work is so detested; it is very back-breaking work to begin with, and there are frantic half hours spent over screws that will not screw, where the thread of the pipe has been broken or injured in the transit, or faultily made; and there are the bends in the land, which the pipe has to be coaxed round, and there are “elbows,” and “tees,” and “unions,” and “crosses,” and “hydrants,” each of which has its own separate way of being exasperating.
(To be continued.)
