The station was bright and cheerful, and the anchorage for our car was in a delightsome spot, withdrawn in a garden from the noise and confusion so inevitable in the regions of the iron horse. Night as it was, we made a little tour of inspection ere turning in for sleep. Emerging from the depot, the first thing that confronted us was a giant palm, towering up in the darkness of the night, yet glowing with electric light, which brought out its tropical foliage splendidly. Its graceful and splendid form made a beautiful initial letter to the bewitching chapter which Los Angeles presented for our future inspection.
Sunday morning came to us in our smiling garden like a benediction. The place was small in itself, but so well laid out that it had the full effect of spaciousness. It was glowing with roses, pansies, stocks, and any number of other flowers. A gorgeous bordering of a species of ice plant with splendid magenta blooms was especially effective. All this profusion was accented by beautiful trees—the pepper-tree, the red gum, and several species of palm. There was also near by a collection of Arizona plants in all their grotesque shapes, and a most interesting group of hieroglyphic rocks brought from some mountain place, having on them prehistoric inscriptions of lines and rude figures, suggesting the Ogham records found in Ireland and other parts of Europe, usually attributed to most primitive times.
It was my privilege to assist at the service at St. Paul's Church, where the Bishop of Los Angeles preached. The unwinterish conditions of this climate were well suggested by the out-of-door passage of choir and clergy from the choir-room to the church. The service was well rendered by a choir of men and boys. In the evening it was my lot to preach. It was delightful to join in the worship of the Church, and to be as much at home among brethren on the shores of the Pacific as if we were thousands of miles away, on the other side of the continent, near another sea. We spent our next day at Los Angeles and neighborhood in democratic fashion, going by street and electric cars in various directions. We went out to Pasadena, where a Chicago friend gave us a pressing invitation to stay over and visit his villa built on the old Spanish model. His kind hospitality, so hearty and unexpected, we could not accept. We had, like most tourists, to press on. Now California, of all places, is a region to tarry in. It is too huge, too complicated, too strange to be done in a flying visit, although a flying visit is well worth having. The clear atmosphere makes you imagine you could take an easy stroll over to the mountains, but a day would not suffice to reach them. You think you have exhausted some place or other, but you find that you have only skimmed over the surface.
We left Los Angeles with regret in the afternoon of our third day there. We were sorry to leave our pretty garden anchorage, where we had for a near neighbor the distinguished Madam Melba, travelling on a concert tour in her private car. The diva had quite a suite in attendance. The only music that we heard from its sacred interior was from her colored chef, who, while his mistress was on the concert stage, made the garden, where we were wandering about in the moonlight, vocal with her piano and his by no means unmelodious voice. There was a touch of the comic in this sentimental proceeding quite irresistible.
Our memory of Los Angeles and the whole entourage of that garden spot will always be a vision of palms and flowers, of beautiful homes embowered in roses, of orange-trees in fruit and flower, and of a far-extended city whose future must be as magnificent as its present is beautiful.
We spent a delightful afternoon on our journey southward from Los Angeles to San Diego and Coronado Beach. We passed through the distinctive orange belt of Southern California, and the golden fruit was in evidence on every hand. Oranges lay on the ground. The groves were like gardens of the Hesperides with glittering yellow fruit for all mankind. They were ready in trains side-tracked for transhipment across the continent; they were in warehouses, where we could see through the great open doors the busy packers at their work; they were everywhere, until the eye almost tired of them, and the formal rows of the orange groves, and the bare earth underneath always kept ploughed up for advantage to the coveted crop. In other places we passed enormous herds of cattle, fat and well liking, giving one an idea of the huge proportions of ranch life on this great Pacific Coast.
Our route brought us for the first time really close to the great ocean which we had never seen. When one comes on the first view of any great object there is always a thrill of expectancy. We had left the great Atlantic behind us, and we were speeding on rapidly to the shores of the Pacific. We knew that in a few moments it would burst upon our sight, but just then a dense, soft, and chilling fog surrounded us. It seemed a great disappointment to have such a hindrance to our sight just at that time; but, it was all for the best, as we soon discovered; for when we did see the mighty deep, nothing could be more sublime than its veiled magnificence. There was a fog, it was true, but it was a vast veil of pearl-tinted tissue, and out of it rolled the huge breakers, like giants at play, whose locks were white as wool, and their great pale arms entwined in majestic sport.
We were passing on high bluffs close to the shore. The curious and precipitous clay banks were worn into fantastic shapes. Here and there we could see, far down, fishermen's huts and settlements, and occasional villages. Oil wells, also, with their hideous cranes and well machinery closely jostled together in eager greed, offended our sense of the picturesque, with their uncompromising utility; but on and beyond all was the mighty deep, muffled by the mist, and looking more mysterious and magnificent with its great dashing breakers than if we were viewing it under the light of the brightest day.
With the attendant symphony of this deep shrouded sea, we reached San Diego.