Los Angeles—Mud-geysers—"Billy the Kid"—General Fremont—Manitou, the Garden of the Gods—Desperadoes—Bob Ingersoll—Denver City—Leadville—Grand Cañon.
June 12th.—The train stopped at Los Angeles at six in the morning, and, drawing up my window-blind, the first person I saw on the platform was our good friend Colonel Baker, who had come to meet us, intent on the good offices which he could render during our stay. These were exhibited in the form of a beautiful bouquet for Lady Green, baskets of limes and oranges, and great bunches of grapes. In this happy valley there are cares as in the rest of the world. The Colonel told us he was in the midst of a great litigation affecting his claim to a large tract of land in which there are said to exist the richest tin-mines in the American Continent. Yet why should he care about his tin-mine? There were rolling acres rich with corn and fruit, and there were flocks and herds and vineyards, and a charming home of his own. Nevertheless, if the want of that tin-mine made him at all unhappy, I am sure those who were indebted to him, as we were, for so many kindnesses, will wish his claim to be triumphantly asserted, and long possession of all that is to follow.
I dreaded the passage of the Desert to Yuma; and indeed the heat was intense. No wonder that with the thermometer ranging from 100° to 104°, all the blinds in the car were pulled down, and we sprawled listlessly on the cushions. Our excellent attendants put forth all the resources of art in the shape of ice and preparations of limes and cocktails; but the temperature would not be baffled. We could just read, and were aware that we were living, and some of us had strength enough now and then to execute forays against flies with napkins to drive them out of the carriages. How could people live out in the open, and work in the mines, or pursue any out-of-door employment in such torrid heat? Nevertheless, there was a marked distinction between it and the heat to be endured with the mercury at an equal height in India.
The speed of the train was very respectable—somewhat over twenty miles an hour—and at that rate we ran from San Gorgonio and Banning on to Cabazon, through a flat plain, dry and burnt up, very like the desert around Suez, and fringed, like it, with rocky and rugged hills, save that there was a great growth of Spanish bayonets and cactuses of all kinds among the stones and sand, and that snow was to be seen on all the hill-tops in the distance. For 107 miles there was no water to be met with going along this plain; but the mirage, of which I have spoken in the account of our journey to San Francisco, was frequent and beautiful; and again I was fascinated by the sight of lovely lakes embowered in trees, with stately cities on their shores, changing and shifting and melting away, only again to assume apparent substance to cheat the senses.
Once the train stopped to allow the passengers to visit the mud-geysers, which were not more than 150 yards on the left of the line, and with commendable curiosity most of us got out and walked over the baked earth to the spot. There was no mark whatever of smoke or vapour to indicate the place; and it was almost startling to come suddenly upon a kind of pond of semi-liquid mud, fifty or sixty feet in diameter, on which huge bubbles, varying in size from an orange to a hogshead, were continually forming and bursting. There was a faint sulphurous smell, and the ground around the liquefied portion of the surface, where the bubbles were breaking, was hot and cracked. The conductor said that all attempts to reach the bottom of the holes through which the bubbles arose had failed. Two of these geysers were in active operation, and the plain away to the left of the rail was said to contain a great number of them. After all it was very unsatisfactory to see this ebullition going on without being able to account for it; and, generally, I think we thought less of each other and of our information after visiting them, and finding out that not one of us had any theory on the subject which would bear either fire or water.
I do not think I ever saw a sunset more beautiful than that which marked the close of this day—certainly not in India or South Africa, nor on the prairie, for which they make claims of surpassing beauty in the matter of sunsets. As it died out, I felt that "thing of beauty" could not "be a joy for ever," for it was a combination of colour and of form, including sky and mountain, that it would be impossible to see again.
The kindness of which we have had so many proofs, has followed, accompanied, and preceded us all unremittingly and unweariedly. A rough with some Bourbon on board mounted to-day the steps of the car at a station, and insisted on seeing "this Duke." When he was told that the object of his attention was engaged, he said, "This is a land of liberty (as in his case it was), and he doesn't want a bodyguard with him!" But the conductor sent him away about his business without trouble. On the platform at Benson a few miners asked "the Duke to come out and show himself." The people at the stations were generally satisfied with a quiet peep; now and then an enthusiastic Scotchman claimed a shake hands, which was always accorded to him. A sleeper placed across the rails (accounted for by the officers on the hypothesis that some loafer without a ticket had been turned off by the conductor, and had put the sleeper in the way of the train to wreak his vengeance—a thing which has occurred nearer home) was the only substantial danger to which we were here exposed.
The heat (June 13th) was intense. The thermometer rose to 105 at one o'clock in the day, and it was little comfort to us to be told that at Deming it had been up to 110 the day before.
For some days we have been supping full of horrors, indeed breakfasting and dining on them, for the papers contain accounts of the extraordinary homicides all about this region. Tucson, Benson, Wilcox—all these places were resounding with the exploits of "Billy the Kid." Now at Tucson there is, I believe, a man whose name was once amongst the very foremost in the United States. Who some twenty years and more ago had not heard of General Fremont, "the Pathfinder," the adventurous traveller, the energetic politician, the dashing soldier? He had gone at the outbreak of the war to take up the chief command in the west with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. I was somewhat astonished to find that he was at Tucson, the governor of the Territory, on a humble salary, apparently the world-forgetting and the world-forgot, while "Billy-the-Kid" was perpetrating numberless atrocities under his nose, and Mr. Pat Garrett was dressing up his loins with his revolver-belt, and about to go forth with a chosen band of citizens and seek the redoubtable William.[A]
A person who has only seen settled States in Europe, or the Eastern States of the North American Continent, cannot form any notion of a territory which has become a centre of attraction to all the wild adventurers and daring spirits which society, in the process of formation, throws out as a sort of advanced guard. In Arizona, in 1870, according to the American Almanac, out of a total population of 9658, 2729 could not write and 2690 could not read. Of the total population, 2491 were foreign born, and 2753 were natives, the rest being coloured or under ten years of age. In New Mexico, out of 91,000 people, 48,000 over ten years of age could not read, and 51,000 whites over ten years of age could not write. It may be inferred from such figures what is the general condition of the labouring classes in these States and Territories. The inhabitants of these States have doubled in the last ten years. They are filling up at a rate inconceivably great—so great, indeed, that American newspapers are fairly bewildered and American statesmen appalled by the rush across the Rocky Mountains and down the rivers, although as yet but a small proportion of the immense stream of immigrants has flooded the outlying territories. "At this rate," exclaims a Western editor, "the old monarchies of Europe will soon be depopulated." When Mr. Lincoln, in 1861, addressed his inaugural to the expectant States he expressed his confident belief that there were children then born who would live to see the flag of the Union floating over no less than 100,000,000 of human beings. The recent census of the United States gives a return of 51,000,000 of people, but the most eminent statisticians have arrived at the belief that the progress and increase of the States will not be at the same rapid rate as that which marked the history of the Republic since the cessation of the great civil war. It may be fairly inferred, however, that at the end of this century the population of the United States will greatly exceed that of Russia, or that of any empire except China and Great Britain, including Hindostan. The population, on each period of ten years, has increased at an average of more than 30 per cent.; in fact, nearer 33 per cent., and the centre of it has travelled westward at the rate of more than fifty miles every ten years, till the centre of population is now eight miles west by south from Cincinnati. In 1800 the Union extended over only 239,935 square miles. Its flag now floats over 1,272,239 square miles of States and over 1,800,000 square miles of Territory governed by the central power at Washington. "We cannot think," exclaims a Republican writer, "that the war of rebellion settled all our troubles and made us secure in our Republic. This enormous growth of the practically unknown West reveals to us the grave dangers that threaten our nation. We meet there the tremendous influences of alien races and alien religions." The Americans of New England and of the Eastern States do not feel anxious on that score, because their institutions are thoroughly founded, their character formed, and they trust to the great power of accomplished facts to assimilate the alien elements and sustain the fabric of the Republic. The bugbear of a great Chinese immigration has ceased to practically influence Californian politics, and it may be safely assumed that the bulk of the future immigrants from the Celestial Empire will only come from the same sources as those which have hitherto supplied the stream. No wonder, however, that thoughtful Americans—and there are many who think of the future of their country as something quite apart from dollars—are filled with grave anxieties when they see such floods of purely foreign material, which will in all probability exercise a preponderating influence over the politics of the Great Republic, surging into the States. Particularly have the home missionary clergy, as they are styled, been struck by the enormous influence which this foreign immigration has exercised. According to one authority, the Rev. Mr. Stimson, of Worcester, "it is not a question of spreading any particular form of Christianity or of Church government, but a momentous struggle of American institutions with alien civilisations and religions for the control of the great Western country. The problem is not a matter of cleaning door-yards, but of saving a continent for freedom." The Chinese Question and the Indian Question are, they think, as nothing compared with the Irish Question and the German Question. "The Republic," we are told, "stands on a foundation as broad as humanity itself," whatever that may mean, "but its condition of existence is a universal regard for the interests of all." Often during the course of the Duke of Sutherland's excursion it was our good fortune to fall in with men of great political and social knowledge. The future of the Republic is, in the mind of these men, clouded with uncertainty and doubt. They are apprehensive of some unknown danger. It may be corruption of political life leading to want of faith in free institutions; it may be the rival energies and the opposing interests which Washington foresaw as likely to array the East against the West—the Atlantic States against the inland States, and it is calculated by some sanguine people that before this century is over there will be eighteen, or possibly twenty, States admitted into the Union formed out of the Territories which are now under the central Government at Washington. Upon such influences as these alien immigration may be expected to act with prodigious power. At a recent meeting in Springfield a clergyman gave as an illustration of the absolute indifference of the foreign immigrants to Republican institutions a conversation he had with a Norwegian minister in Minneapolis. "There is nothing," said this gentleman, "in America which we Norwegians regard as of value except your land and your money. We do not want to learn English: we do not want to know the Americans around us; we have certainly no notion of becoming Americans, but we intend to remain as we are—Norwegians." The Mormons control Utah. They boast that they will soon govern five of the most important territorial regions beyond the Rockies. But if Utah becomes a State, as she hopes to do, she will found a Mormon code of laws and institutions beyond the power of the United States to control. New Mexico may be considered as a Roman Catholic State under the control of an excellent archbishop. Of course all prophecies may be falsified by events, but judging by the eighty years which have elapsed of the present century, and from the ratio of increase in that time in the United States, the most liberal construction may be placed even upon the bounding estimates of American politicians and statists. When we look to the Far West and see, for instance, how Winnipeg has become the centre of a great network of river navigation, 300 miles in one direction, 600 miles in another, and that the Mackenzie River passes for 1200 miles through what is declared to be the future wheat region of the world, we may easily comprehend the anxiety with which the patriotic American is filled lest the future of such a State should fall into hands antagonistic to the principles in which his beau idéal of government has been founded and has prospered.