I will not attempt to describe the mountains with their many charms. I listened to a lecture lately where a man was struggling to do this, and it was positively painful. The flowery verbiage, the accumulated adjectives, the poetical quotations were overpowering. I seemed actually sinking into luscious mellifluousness. I shook it off my fingers, as if it were maple syrup. Then, as he climbed higher and higher, on and up, never getting away from the richest verdure and the sweetest flowers, scenes for an artist to paint with rapture, and a poet to sing in ecstasy, I found myself pushing up my forehead to improvise a mansard roof for my brain to swell in sympathy. And when he reached the summit and the panorama burst upon his enraptured vision, it was too much for my strained emotions, and I quietly slipped out.
And the strangest part is that every word is true, and, say what one will, one never gets near the reality. In this respect, you see, it differs from a floral catalogue sent out in early spring, or a hotel pamphlet with illustrations.
The cable road is 3000 feet long, with a direct ascent of 1400 feet, and the Echo Mountain House will be 1500 feet higher than the Catskill hotels overlooking the Hudson, and it is estimated that not less than 60,000 fares will be collected upon this mountain railroad the first year.
All this was designed and executed by Professor Lowe, of aeronaut fame, a scientist and banker, the inventor of water-gas and artificial ice, and a man of great business ability.
One of the best proofs of the health-giving power of this air is the fact that the physicians practising here, with one exception, came seriously ill and have not only recovered, but are strong enough to keep very busy helping others.
Pasadena has no ragged shabby outskirts; the poorer classes seem to be able to own or rent pretty little homes, some like large birdcages, all well kept and attractive. Some gentlemen from Indianapolis came here in 1873 and started the town, planting their orange orchards under the shadows of the mountains.
Each portion has its own attractions. Orange Grove Avenue, a street over a mile long, is described by its name. Great trees stand in the centre of the street, a fine road on either side, and the homes are embowered in flowers and palms, while hedges are made of the pomegranate, the honeysuckle, and even the heliotrope. Marengo Avenue is lined on either side by splendid specimens of the pepper, the prettiest and most graceful of all trees here. Colorado Street, with its homes and shops and churches, leads out to the foot-hills and "Altadena," which is often spoken of as recalling the handsome residences along the Riviera.
The street cars which go from the station toward the mountains bear on each the words, "This Car for the Poppy Fields," and they are a sight worth seeing. Mrs. Kellog describes this flower more perfectly than any artist could paint it: "Think of finest gold, of clearest lemon, of deepest orange on silkiest texture, just bedewed with a frost-like sheen, a silvery film, and you have a faint impression of what an eschscholtzia is. Multiply this impression by acres of waving color." And in February this may sometimes be seen. It has been well chosen for the State flower.
If consumptives must go away from the comforts of home, this is a haven of rest for them. In a late Medical Record I see that a physician deprecates the custom of sending hopeless cases to the high altitudes of Colorado, where the poor victim gasps out a few weeks or months of existence. "If such cases as the above must be sent from home, as we sometimes think here, to rid their home physicians of the annoyance of their presence, they should be sent to Florida or Southern California, where at least they may be chloroformed off into eternity by a soothing climate, and not suffer an actual shortening of their days from a climate acting on a radically different principle and entirely unsuited to them."
This is a bit of the shady side after all the sunlight. It is a place for the invalid to rejoice in, and those in robust health can find enough to do to employ all their energies.