A few miles from Los Angeles the country became bare again. No trees, no vegetation, sand everywhere, with low hills, but they were sand too. "Is all California like this?" I asked in despair of an intelligent American near me. "Yes," he answered, "pretty nearly so, south of San Francisco. North of that city there is rain and any amount of vegetation." My after experience showed me he was right, but he qualified his statement. The mountain range, which runs down the middle of this great country, is, he told me, richly clad, and any amount of vegetation exists on either side some miles from its base. This, he explained to me, is partly due to the greater rainfall there (the hills and the vegetation on them being the cause), partly to the rivers and streams issuing from this mountainous region, and fed by the melting snows. Along their course for miles into the plains, the country is thus watered, in a measure naturally, partly by artificial means. He also told me that the waste and desolate country we were then traversing only wanted water to make it fertile.
We were very near the Antelope Valley by this time, and I asked him if he knew it. "Of course I do," he replied, "you are not going there are you?" I told him all I have told the reader. "Well, it might be worse," he added, "there are quite a few there now, sent out by the same man (I know him well) from the mother country, who would go away to-morrow if they could, but they have spent their all to come, and are now in a tarnation fix. You take my advice, don't you stop there. Take your sons with you, and be off while you can." I asked him if doing anything there was hopeless? "Not at all," he replied "if you've got lots of money, and can import labour, which does not exist there, if you sink a lot of artesian wells (they run expensive), and if when sunk they prove a success (the last two have been failures), if you care to live in such a barren spot, and like a hot climate and the fiery glare from the sand. I might add a few more 'ifs,' but I've said enough. Given water (the rain I guess would not wet your pocket-handkerchief through six times in a twelvemonth), the soil will grow most things, but then you see there is no water, and as for the artesian wells, when successful, they can each only irrigate a small area; but here we are in the valley."
We had been passing through some deep cuttings lately, and had now entered a vast plain bounded by distant hills. No trees of any kind were in sight, the soil sand, but browner than most I had seen. Every few feet was a little shrub, some two feet high, what I know not, but a miserable specimen of vegetation, and besides this not a stalk or leaf anywhere. A more miserable site I have never set eyes on. We passed miles and miles, all the same, till we came to where I had been told to have my letters sent, "Lancaster City"! The last two miles before arrival, an attempt had certainly been made at cultivation. A few acres of alfalfa (a productive American grassy crop), some rye, Indian corn, vegetables, and what not. But the whole area was not fifty acres, the cultivators inhabiting plank huts alongside. The train stopped at the station, and lo! Lancaster City lay around. It consisted of one decent-sized, two-storied building, viz. the hotel, two stores, a saloon, and half a dozen huts. Not another edifice, and the dreary plain described for miles and miles around. This was the haven, the Eden, I had come some six thousand miles to attain!
The hotel, quite close to the line, had an open verandah to the upper story, and the rail in front had some thirty or more pairs of boots and shoes apparently attached to the top bar. Still it could scarcely be so, for only the soles were visible. Presently, as the train drew up, some of the boots disappeared, and men took their place. Gradually it became evident that each pair of soles represented an individual, who lay luxuriously poised on the back legs of a chair, with his feet up in the true American posture, which, however, mind you, I in no way decry, being much given to it myself. I had telegraphed to my sons to meet the train, and there they were as I got out. But they were both so sunburnt I scarcely knew them. Luckily the train stayed half-an-hour, so there was time to arrange matters. I plied them with questions. The answers were all to the same effect, viz. that the Antelope Valley (they had seen it from end to end) was in every part as what lay before us. That there existed no hope of doing anything in it, and that the only wise thing was to get away as quick as possible. They told me that the same agent who had sent me out, had also induced all the boot-owners in the verandah to come, and that far the greater number would go away at once, had they the means to do so. Also as to the last artesian wells being failures, and this being so that all hope was gone. Every day or two a fresh lot of victims arrived, and that none with means stayed above a few hours. I mentioned the fruit specimens I had seen in London, they and the bystanders laughed, and averred there was not any fruit in the valley. They told me much more, which was all corroborated by several who had come out of the hotel, and it was really only necessary to look round to be convinced the Antelope Valley was in every sense a miserable tract.
I determined to take my sons on with me by the train. They had supposed I would do this, and were all ready. But there was a difficulty. They had no money, and I had not enough, so I was obliged to leave them there until I could send back funds from San Francisco. I thus went on alone, bidding good-bye to the dreary Antelope Valley for ever.
Night fell soon after, and next morning there was cultivation around, together with enormous orchards of fruit. Soon we reached the terminus on the splendid bay of San Francisco, and steamed across in a ferry larger and even more luxurious than those at New York, which I described.
So my journey was done, and I stood in the great western capital of America, which so many have heard of, and so few, comparatively, seen. "What have I come for?" I asked myself as I landed, and echo answered "What?"
But San Francisco, if any city on earth does, deserves a chapter to itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] These letters, I was told by my sons and others, were in no way genuine.