CHAPTER I.
It has been suggested that the experiences of some English people in search of and on a ranch in California might be of interest to others, especially, perhaps, to those who are looking about more or less anxiously to find some promising opening for the future of their boys, and who, seeing the Old World so crowded, and realising the difficulty of finding a possible niche at home, may desire to try an altogether new life in the New World.
Many fathers and mothers, also like ourselves, would fain discover, if possible, some way of keeping their boys beside them; some business which they can work together, and in which they may find a satisfactory livelihood for all. Of course, I am speaking of those who have no well-established family business or firm; for them many difficulties and anxious questions are solved.
These were the reasons, together with the delicate health of our two boys, and my own long-standing lung trouble, which, after much thought and study, led us to pack up all our worldly goods, label them "Settlers' effects," and start off on the weary long journey of 6,000 miles, to the land of sunshine, on the Pacific coast. Having some acquaintances living at a little summer holiday place on the coast, and within some seventeen miles of the busy and enterprising town of Los Angeles, we decided to go there, and, if convenient, make it our headquarters while looking about and getting all possible information on the important subject of ranching.
We arrived about the end of October, when the heat of summer was over; for even on the coast, the glare of full summer is trying to people coming from northern latitudes.
But we found the climate most exquisite all the winter. The sunshine was perfectly glorious; the colours, the distances and the sunsets were like fairyland. Indeed, they were quite an excitement to us, and we would often come to a sudden standstill in our evening walks to watch the splendid transformation scene, saying how exaggerated everyone would think our descriptions, if we tried to put them all down exactly, on paper. It is true Holman Hunt had such colours in his pictures of Palestine, but it needs a genius to make such impossible colours accepted as realities.
The little town is built near the edge of the bluffs, and it was delightful to sit under the eucalyptus trees and look out at the sea, so wonderfully blue, with its broad white fringe all round the bay, where the big rollers broke on the yellow sands, and rushed away up the level shore.
The happiness too of all the living creatures seemed quite infectious. We saw flocks of dainty wee sea-ducks, tumbling and swimming about in the sea, just where the huge rollers broke, vying with each other in the show of bravery, going under with the huge crest of a wave and bobbing up again, so rapidly, and with a jaunty toss of the head. Enormous golden brown butterflies came floating down the soft air and hung over the white surf.
Schools of porpoises made the most demonstrative show of enjoyment, jumping high out of the sea and careering round, in a rushing mass, that would churn up the water as they went into a perfect whirlpool. Here and there, in the quiet evening, the head of a friendly seal would appear silently, and then go under without a ripple.
Stately, solemn-looking pelicans, too, flew past constantly, always in single file, as though they were going to some grave and important function. There were crowds of blue birds, looking like jewels in the bright sunshine; and the humming-birds made quite a noise with their wee wings round our honeysuckle-covered verandah.
Every living thing seemed to have just discovered how gay and charming a thing life was.
All this helped to give us a very favourable impression of the new land, and to heal a little the painful home-sickness and longing that beset us almost at once, when we realised more and more the strangeness of much around us.
Finding, on arriving there, that this little town would suit us for some months, we "rented" a pretty little house of seven or eight rooms, with a good verandah, shaded with honeysuckle, and a small garden, for which we paid thirty dollars a month.
Many of the ranchers from the inland valleys come there for three or four of the summer months, as the heat is then almost unendurable anywhere out of reach of the sea breeze. We had been advised to bring a servant with us from England; for help of every kind is very expensive, all over the States, and especially in California. The usual wages are twenty-five dollars a month for women servants, and thirty to forty dollars for a Chinaman.
Unfortunately we were not able to bring a well tried and trusted servant, but had to content ourselves with choosing the best we could from a large number who, tempted by the high wages, came to be interviewed, in answer to our advertisement; but only very few of the applicants were at all suitable.
The usual plan as to the fare—which is of course expensive—is to make a clear and binding arrangement with the girl engaged; that it shall come out of her first six months' wage, also that she shall give a promise to stay at least two years, and that after this period she shall receive the full California wage, having, meanwhile, been paid somewhat less. These arrangements were all made, most clearly in our case, and were at once forgotten by our carefully chosen maid. She was an absolute failure, so far as we were concerned, and as few people out here ask any character when engaging a servant, it was quite easy for her to get another place at once at the usual high wages and simply march off and leave us; which she did.
Our house agent, a kindly Englishman, who had been many years in California, told us that even if we desired to go to law about it, the case would most certainly be given against us. The jury would be composed of men, all more or less of the same class as our servant, and their sympathies would be with her, and we should not have the least chance of getting justice.
It was rather comforting, at the time, to find how many others among our acquaintances had gone through the same experience!
Before this catastrophe came about, however, we had been exceedingly busy visiting innumerable ranches and examining possible and impossible land that was waiting to be made into ranches. We saw most of the well-known "settled-up" parts, and many lovely valleys and foothills which were said to be the coming fruit districts of the near future.
It takes some years for English eyes to get accustomed to the bareness of the hills of California, or to find out the true beauty of these dried-up looking slopes. Once the love for them begins, however, it grows at a great pace, and one discovers constantly fresh wonder and charm in them. Surely no other hills have the gift of holding the splendid sunset colours with such transfiguring power. Even the Alps cannot outrival them in this. But at first it is their uncompromising bareness, dryness and barrenness which hurts one's sensitiveness. We were also disagreeably impressed by the tracts of waste ground, lying promiscuously among the more finished streets, and all scattered over with empty tins and other rubbish, giving a decided effect of disorder and unkemptness, even though the neighbouring houses might be pretty and have dainty gardens. Some of the older established fruit districts were very prosperous looking, and had quite a busy social life. But our minds were quite made up, that of what the land had to offer, we would, without hesitation, choose a real country life, free and untrammelled, in one of the less settled neighbourhoods.
However we conscientiously went to see all the most promising parts, and in this way we learnt a great deal. We found that in this part of Southern California the heat during the summer months was so very great, that all who had the means to do so, left these inland valleys and came every summer to the coast for three or four months, leaving a reliable man in charge, and also going back and forward several times to see that everything was being well cared for. To many people this would be no drawback, but only a pleasant change. We did not wish, however, to settle in any place where we should be absolutely compelled to leave home for so long every year.
Another disadvantage of buying a ranch in one of these established parts is the very high price demanded for all such land. However, it is an open question whether it really costs more in the end to buy a ready-planted and bearing ranch at the very high figure generally quoted.
If you buy in a less settled neighbourhood the rough untouched land at a tenth of the price—which would be about the cost of good land with water—there is the hard work of clearing and grading, laying out, planting and piping it. Then the long waiting before the trees can bring in any income, and when household and ranch expenses have to be met, must be counted as so much more money invested. It is just here that so many sad failures occur.
There has been so much exaggeration about the wonders of California, that those who have caught from such one-sided accounts the fever of longing for the sunshine and free life, do not make allowance for this necessarily long pause before any income is possible from a ranch. Thus it comes to pass that so many ranches are mortgaged; and when a ranch is mortgaged, it is a hopeless business for the poor rancher who has worked so hard at his unaccustomed labour.
It has been said that small fruit—berries of different kinds—may be grown meanwhile, and that the profits from these will help out the expenses until the ranch trees bear. If you are made of cast iron, you may possibly be able to give the necessary work to your ranch, and at the same time cultivate small fruit; but if you come from the ordinary comfortable middle-class at home, you cannot have the strength or resistance to stand this additional toil.
I believe there is a vague but sanguine idea among those at home, bitten by the Californian fever, that you have only to plant trees or vegetables and then sit down comfortably in the sunshine and wait for them to grow, condescending eventually to put aside your book and your pipe for a little while, and gather in all the rich harvest which this wonderful climate has produced for you. This is not so. Ranching is really hard work, and moreover the greatest strain of the life to men coming from a different climate, is that all this unaccustomed labour has to be done in the hot glare of unbroken sunshine.
(To be continued.)
[VARIETIES.]
It Strikes one as Remarkable.
A train starts daily, let us say, from San Francisco to New York, and one daily from New York to San Francisco, the journey lasting seven days. How many trains will a traveller meet in journeying from San Francisco to New York?
It appears obvious at the first glance that the traveller must meet seven trains—and that is the answer which will be given by nine girls out of ten to whom the question is new.
The fact is overlooked that every day during the journey a fresh train is starting from the other end, whilst there are seven on the way to begin with. The traveller will, therefore, meet not seven trains but fourteen.
The Two Sacks.
"At our birth, the satirical elves
Two sacks from our shoulders suspend:
The one holds the faults of ourselves;
The other, the faults of our friend.
The first we wear under our clothes
Out of sight, out of mind, at the back;
The last is so under our nose,
We know every scrap in the sack."
Imitated from Phædrus.
In Debt for Ever.
A man who owes a shilling, proceeds to pay it at the rate of sixpence the first day, threepence the second day, three half-pence the next, three farthings the next, and so on—paying each day half the amount he paid the day before.
Supposing him to be furnished with counters of small value, so as to be able readily to pay fractions of a penny, how long would it take him to pay the shilling?
The answer is that he would never pay it. It is true that he would pay elevenpence-farthing in four days, but after that his progress would be slow and he could never get out of debt.
Good Verses by a Bad Poet.
Few things in Dryden or Pope, it has been remarked, are finer than the following lines by a man whom they both continually laughed at—Sir Richard Blackmore—
"Exhausted travellers, that have undergone
The scorching heats of Life's intemperate zone,
Haste for refreshment to their beds beneath
And stretch themselves in the cool shades of Death."
Love of Country.
"The love we bear our country is a root,
Which never fails to bring forth golden fruit;
'Tis in the mind an everlasting spring,
Of glorious actions which become a king—
Not less become a subject. 'Tis a debt
Which bad men, though they pay not, can't forget;
A duty which the good delight to pay,
And every man can practise every day."
Churchill.
The Passing Cloud.
Cloud and storm only intimate the passing commotion needful to purify the air and the water; and compared with the azure depths above and below, they are superficial and transitory. They retire, and the beautiful blue of heaven reappears, and the ocean again becomes a sapphire foundation on which the sun scatters his jewels of light with regal lavishness.
And so no dark trial, no grievous judgment, can cross our sky without revealing some spot of heavenly blue in the midst of it, or if concealed for a moment, breaking forth again with greater brightness and beauty.
Rev. Dr. Hugh Macmillan.
[CHINA MARKS.]
ENGLISH PORCELAIN.