It is of advantage to an invalid to have a resort from which the surrounding world of men is attainable. That accounts for Fortress Monroe in the winter, with probably an inferior climate, absorbing much of the best travel to Florida. It is softer than any indentation to the north of the Chesapeake, and can be reached by a husband, or brother, or wife, from any of the great centers of the North in a very little time. The same is the case with Chautauqua Lake; it is only a night from the East, and a night and a day from the far West. A large portion of the American people can visit it without taking rail at all, using the steam lines on the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. It is especially a summer climate and the foliage of western New York in the autumns is not equaled on the globe, at least not in the temperate zones. The finest autumn tints I ever recollect to have seen are in western New York, where the character of the trees assimilates to the ardor of the foliage, and the maples and poplars almost imitate the finery of the Indians who once dwelt in their region.
The Western States do not possess the variety of the East in coasts, hills, spas, and scenery; much of the Mississippi valley is limestone hill or flat plain, bare of mountains, and the first cool and lovely spot reached from the West is on the lofty headwaters of the Ohio, near Lake Erie. Following the Lake Shore to the westward I do not know of a single spot to be found like Chautauqua, though one should go as far as Duluth, where I have been also in the time of its prosperity, about 1872; the heat at Duluth, though so much farther to the north, was much greater in midsummer than it is on the Chautauqua uplands. Indeed, the heat of the American summer penetrates almost every resort, and I have known at Saratoga some of the most stagnant days of my life. A perfectly cool climate is not obtained along our coasts till one gets to New Brunswick, about St. John, and the coolness there has the drawback of heavy fogs and a moisture exceeding Ireland.
My brother, already referred to, possessed more special intelligence on this subject than myself, and at the commencement of his sickness he began a series of letters to the Medical and Surgical Reporter, where I read at the outstart this sentence: “My languor and lassitude from May until July was followed by a slight attack of laryngitis. I grew thinner daily. A week in July at the high, dry country estate of a friend did bring some increased strength and appetite, but a second week at Cape May brought on a severe attack of bronchitis. Recovering partly from this, two weeks were spent at Saratoga and Lake George with the effect of again bringing me home with a bronchial attack, and the last straw was finally attained by taking my boy to Atlantic City for his health. I had hardly come within smell of the salt marshes at this place when my bronchial trouble was brought back with redoubled intensity.”
He goes on to say that his doctor, Professor Da Costa, ordered him to find a new climate at once, as a deposit had already made its appearance in both lungs. This was just ten years ago, and in the month of October, he says: “Of the many different medical friends who came to say good-bye and add hearty wishes for my recovery, scarcely two united on the same place as the one best suited for me to go to.”
My brother’s letters, continued for several months and written just before his death, grappled with the question of a climate after severe experience. He found Mentone “the most crowded of all places with invalids, and the least deserving of patronage of any place long the Riviera.” “If you get into a carriage in front of a hotel on a beautiful sunshiny day you protest against taking an overcoat in the absolute heat, but when you turn a corner into a shady street or get on the shady side of a wall or hill and let the sun be temporarily obscured, you must quickly draw close your overcoat and pull a robe over your lap. I do not recommend Nice as a winter climate except by comparison, and I would never halt on the north shore of the Mediterranean if it were in my power to reach Egypt or Algeria.”
He kept a diary, wherever he went, of the condition of the weather, and Europe is almost invariably written “cloudy,” “chilly,” “raw,” “showery,” or “rain.” He thought much better of Algiers, where he stayed fifty-nine days, but how few persons can afford to go to Algiers—“and even there,” he says, “ten days were partially or wholly cloudy, and on eleven days we had continuous rains or showers, one of the rainy days being characterized by a smart hail storm.” This was between January and March.
Santa Barbara is probably the best indorsed wintering place on the coast of California. I went ashore there from a ship, and found a small town, partly of frame houses and partly of Mexican huts, with a dull mongrel life, hardly relieved by an old mission house a mile or so in the rear of the town; the invalids looked like banished people, and had then such infrequent access to the outer world that their eyes seemed yearning toward their homes in Chicago or elsewhere. The element of society and of change and life is more necessary than medicine to a desponding and invalid nature. That is the great trouble with the majority of American resorts, which are neither large enough to accommodate the crowd in the high season, nor near enough to the channels of travel in any season. There can not be, for example, a more wretched place than the Hot Springs of Arkansas, even in the height of the season, which is in late winter and spring; the close ragged valley with a sewer running through the middle of it, alternately a stench and deluge, and the series of raveled hotels wherein gambling is the chief occupation, where the rain is frequent and at times seems constant, and the natural life of the place is hard and outlaw like, and it takes about twenty-four hours to get anywhere in the current of mankind.
San Antonio, which has a good climate, has not a hotel fit for a person to inhabit who is acquainted with the comforts of the table. Though situated considerably inland, it is subject to what are called “northers,” or cold storms, that often bring hail, and advance upon the place with the rapidity of a spirit of ice and snow. Almost all those southern resorts are too warm for summer tourists, and this is the case at the Green Brier Sulphur Springs, notwithstanding its high altitude; the nights are cold, but mid-day is often exhausting.
About Oakland, in Maryland, is a cool climate, and the summit there has become something similar to Chautauqua Lake, having groups of hotels about six miles apart, and between them in the glades is a kind of religious camp settlement.