At National City the refluent wave of the boom had left many of the houses and business blocks dilapidated and unoccupied save by bats, spiders and flies. You could occupy free of rent many buildings with none to molest or make you afraid.
Thence on dashes the train to the celebrated Hotel Delmonte, at Monterey, the show place of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which, by its extortionate transportation charges, has ruined many struggling fruit raisers in this state where monopoly holds such mighty sway.
There are many hotels in Florida which far surpass this as far as the buildings are concerned; but the grounds are extensive and very beautiful, and the wide piazzas are embowered in a profusion of all kinds of climbing vines covered with the loveliest blossoms. Stretching away until earth and sky meet, is an imperial domain, covered with noble trees which were giants when Adam was a baby, many festooned with English ivy and flowering trumpet creepers almost to the stars. Then we walked under long Gothic arches, cool and fragrant.
Here is every arrangement conceivable for entertainment; on one side the Pacific ocean; on the other the Coast Range Mountains, a very pleasant resort for the very rich; but we found there at this time more servants than guests.
The town of Monterey is interesting only for its ruins of ancient monasteries and convents, where a few lazy half-breeds alone remain to tell the tale of multitudes over whom the Catholic priests reigned supreme, reducing their dupes to beggary by their extortions. Once these mountains were covered with vast flocks of sheep, but the foolish reduction of the tariff on wool by the Wilson bill, destroyed all profits, and the flocks disappeared into the hungry mouths of the people.
Thence the iron horse took us back to 'Frisco, and we sailed all day and all night to Sacramento. The scenery was grand, but the cold weather chilled us to the very bones. Islands of old red sandstone loom like sentinels along the coast, covered with lighthouses to warn the mariners. The twin peaks of Montepueblo covered with perpetual snow, seemed to support the heavens as do the pillars the dome of the capitol.
Swarms of screaming sea gulls fill the air, some of which, benumbed by cold alighted on the steamer's deck. Lonely ranches are seen, hemmed in by the everlasting hills.
Our great, lazy boat, propelled by a stern wheel as big as a barn, paddled slowly over the muddy waters of the great Sacramento River, made yellow by the turbid waters sent to it from scores of hydraulic mines on the mountains. On one island is an immense smelting furnace, the tall chimneys of which send forth volumes of poisonous smoke, dangerous to breathe, and covering everything with a coating black as soot. Inhaling this, some of the operators die of lead poisoning. Many islands are here scarcely above the water's edge, having little houses built on stilts occupied by the salmon fishers who are seen pulling their nets, and around whose heads whirl and scream flocks of fish hawks, ravenous for their prey.
After a successful book fight at the capital city, I went to Red Bluff where I was broiled and roasted in a day and night temperature of a hundred and twelve degrees in the shade. I survived only by keeping my head wrapped in ice water; I could neither eat nor sleep, and like Dickens, I longed to "take off my flesh, and sit in my bones." It was a veritable hell on earth.
The county superintendent of schools here, told me he sold his prune crop that year for five thousand dollars, and went away leaving the purchaser to pick the fruit. On his return, he found that the red spiders had anticipated the pickers, and destroyed the entire crop, so that his work of years came to naught, as the buyers of course refused to pay to feed the spiders.