In to the Yukon

by William Seymour Edwards

We did not tarry to see the celebrated ostrich farm, which is one of the famous sights of Pasadena, but went on toward the mountain chain beyond and north of Pasadena to the base of towering Mount Low, and climbed right up its face a thousand feet on an inclined plane steeper than any of Kanawha’s, and then another thousand feet by five miles of winding electric railway. A wonderful ride into the blue sky, with a yet more wonderful panorama stretching for many miles beneath our feet. All the valley of the Los Angeles, the innumerable towns and villages and farms and groves and orchards and vineyards stretching far as the eye could see until bounded by the mountains of Mexico to the south, and the shimmering waters of the Pacific to the west, and to the north and east a limitless expanse of scarred and serrated volcanic mountain ranges, like the gigantic petrified waves of a mighty sea. Below us the perfect verdure of irrigated land, the patches and masses of greenness everywhere threaded and interspersed by the irrigating ditches and pools and ponds whereby the precious water is impounded and distributed when used.

Los Angeles lies very near the center of an immense cove, whose sea line marks the great indenture on the southwest of the United States, where the coast bends in from Cape Conception and curves southeastward to the borders of Mexico, a total coastal frontage on the Pacific Ocean of near three hundred miles.

On the north, the mountains of the Coast Range, and the westward jutting spurs of the Sierra Nevada come together and form a barrier against the cold northern airs. Eastward their extension forms a high barrier against the colder airs of the Rocky Mountain region. Los Angeles lies at about the point where these protecting mountain ranges recede to near sixty miles from the sea, itself some twenty and thirty miles from the twin ports of Santa Monica and San Pedro, and is the commercial center of this rich alluvial and sheltered region, of which Santa Barbara, on a lovely bay, is the chief northern center, and San Diego, one hundred and fifty miles to the south, upon the second finest harbor in California, is the most southern port and trade outlet. A vast “ventura,” as the Spaniards called it, upon this fertile plain and rolling upland anything will grow if only it has water. For three or four months in the year, from early November to March, the skies pour down an ample rainfall, and the world is a garden. During the other eight months, man—the active American—now irrigates the land with water stored during the rainy season, and thus a perpetual and prolific yield is won from the fecund soil. Here the famous seedless orange was discovered, perpetuated, and has become the most coveted citrous fruit. Fortunes have been made from the raising of these oranges alone. The immense and fragrant strawberries ripen every month the year round. Figs and pomegranates abound. Apples, pears, olives and grapes yield enormous and profitable crops. No frosts, no drouths. Last year Los Angeles and its contributing orchards shipped twenty-five thousand carloads of citrous fruit. This year they reckon to do yet more. Their capacity is only limited by the markets’ demand, and both seem boundless.

The air is dry like that of the Yukon Valley, and similarly, extremes of temperature are easily borne. It is never unpleasantly hot in Southern California, they say, just as the Yukoner vows he never suffers from the cold. “Only give us water to wash our gold;” “water to irrigate our crops,” cries each, “and we will become richer than the mind of man can think.” But the types of men and women are somewhat different in the two extremes. A sturdier race wins fortune from the soil in the Klondike land; there the children have rosier faces and are more alert. On the crowded streets of the southern city the pale presence of the “one lungers” is at once remarked. But for this, the people might be the same.

We left this gracious garden land, with its gentle climate, by the midday train, this time leaving the coast and following the interior San Joaquin Valley route. Just at the outskirts of the city our train halted a moment, and, looking from the window, I saw a most astonishing spectacle—an extensive enclosure with a large, wide-roofed building in its midst, and enclosure, roof and air all thick with myriads of pigeons. Here is the greatest pigeon roost of the world, where an enterprising bird lover raises squabs by the thousands, cans them in his own factory, and sends them all over the earth to the delight of the epicure. Just why such myriads of birds should not fly away, I do not know, but there they were covering the ground, the roof, and filling the air in circular flights, and seemed rarely or never to leave the borders of the enclosure.

For a few hours we retraced our way and then turned eastward across the edge of the great Mojave Desert. Crossing the barrier of the San Fernando Mountains on the north, through a mile-and-a-half-long tunnel, we left the greenness of olive grove and orange orchard behind, and came out into a continually more and more arid country. Cactus and yucca began to appear and to multiply, the dwarf shrunken palmetto of the Mexican plains grew more and more plentiful, and then we came through dry, parched gulches and cañons, out onto a dead flat plain stretching away toward the eastern horizon as far as the eye could see—sand and sage brush and stunted cactus; a hundred miles or more away a faint blue mountain range showing in the slanting sunlight against the eastern sky. Dry and arid and hopeless to man and beast. A terrible waste to cross, or even to enter, and lifeless and desolate beyond concept.

During the night we crossed over the high, arid Tehachapi Mountains and descended into the San Joaquin Valley, traversing that wonderfully fertile garden land until in the morning we were at Oakland. We then crossed the five miles of wide harbor and took our last breakfast in the city of the Golden Gate.

After night had fallen and I sat with my cigar, I chanced to fall in with an interesting young Jap, “R. Onishi,” on his first visit to America, correspondent of the “Jije Shimpo,” Tokio’s greatest daily newspaper. He had come over to investigate the growing rice plantations of Texas, with a view to Japanese capital becoming interested in development there. He had been much impressed with the opportunity there offered, and should report favorably on the proposed enterprise. Not to use Japanese labor, but for Japanese capital under Japanese management to use American labor. So does the opportunity and natural wealth of our country begin to attract the investment of the stored wealth of Asia as well as of Europe. Like the rice dealer I met on the “Kaiser Frederich,” crossing the Atlantic two years ago, Mr. Onishi said that American rice brings the highest price of any in the markets of the world, and he looks for a large export trade to Asia of American rice, as well as wheat. And America, how vast and rich and hopeful a land it seemed to him!

I have now seen almost the entire Pacific Coast of our Northern American Continent. From Skagway, from Dawson to the sight of Mexico. Its old and its new towns and cities, its ports and trade centers have I visited, and greatly has the journey pleased and profited me. The dim perception of our future Pacific power that first dawned upon me at Vancouver has now become a settled conviction. We are just beginning to comprehend the future dominance and potency of our nation in Oriental trade, in commerce, in wealth, in enlightened supremacy. And it fills the imagination with boundless sweep to contemplate what are the possibilities of these great Pacific States.