USA > California > California of the South: Being a Complete Guide Book to Southern California > Part 6
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And so it has been that the emigration to Southern California has been culled out from the choicest of the population of the East. The intelligence, the culture, the
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refinement, the energy, the wealth of all the East, have con- tributed to make up the current which, with each year, is swelling, and will not cease until the land is filled.
The result is already showing in a population which, in all that goes to make up the highest and best type of civiliza- tion, can probably not be paralleled elsewhere in America.
If there is any truth in the law of the improvement of race by selection and elimination, and in that other law of the power of climatic surroundings to influence race-devel- opment, history shows what the fruitage must be. It was in the analogue of this climate, as found about the east shores of the Mediterranean, that, two thousand years ago, grew up the Græco-Latin civilization which for centuries swayed the destinies of the world, and to-day, after all the ages, still stamps itself upon the mental life of the races. The working of these laws was traced by the writer in an address upon "The Climatic Belts of Civilization."
Education.
The colony system of settlement, which has been so common in Southern California, has borne good fruit in educational work. Wherever one goes, over the country or in villages or towns, the public-school buildings attract the eye at once by their neatness and the creditable style of architecture. The school and the church have gone hand in hand in the work of building up a new civilization.
Good primary and grammar schools are found in the country districts, and high-schools in all the smaller towns and the cities. In efficiency the schools of no State rank higher. A State Normal School, with an attendance of sev- eral hundreds, exists in the city of Los Angeles. A large number of seminaries and colleges, under control of vari- ous churches, supplements this educational work. Most of these cluster in and about the city of Los Angeles, as the
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center of population. The St. Vincent's College, under Catholic control, has been in active operation for many years. The Presbyterian and Baptist Churches have opened out similar institutions. The most extensive and complete, however, of these is the University of Southern California, under the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This institution represents in its various college endow- ment-funds and lands and buildings a moneyed valuation of about two million dollars. It has now in operation the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Music, and the Col- lege of Medicine, in the city of Los Angeles, the Chaffey College of Agriculture at Ontario, and the Maclay College of Theology at San Fernando, built and endowed by the Hon. Charles Maclay. It is intended to center at this col- lege especially the work of training workers for the Asi- atic, South American, and Mexican church missions. Sev- eral more of the colleges will be organized and opened soon. It has also organized, and has partly in active op- eration, a circle of seminaries and academies scattered through Southern California as adjuncts and feeders to the central university system.
The educational work of Southern California has been planned upon a broad and liberal basis, as it is felt that this is to become one of some half-dozen great educational cen- ters for the United States.
The cool, healthful climate of Southern California and its social advantages will draw to its schools students from the interior Territories and from Mexico, while its advantages as a health-resort are already bringing many students from the Atlantic and Mississippi States.
Political Future.
That California can much longer remain one State is not probable. The project of a division of the State has been
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widely discussed, and it is now conceded that the work of separation can not be delayed beyond a very few years. The reasons which are leading to this are based upon causes so deep-seated, and dependent upon geographical and topographical as well as climatic differences so radical, that the union already works serious detriment to the southern portion of the State, and retards its progress.
As a matter of fitness, Northern and Southern Califor- nia should never have been organized as one State. Only the exigencies of the time so linked them together. Massa- chusetts and Florida are scarcely more unlike in their needs and political requirements.
The essential differences in topography and climate which divide them have already, but with a different ob- ject in view, been discussed in this part.
One other fact has not been especially dwelt upon : Be- tween the two lies a great transverse range of mountains, the lowest passes of which vary from four to five thou- sand feet above the sea. It is this range, with the absolute division which it makes in the lines of trade and travel, which, more than any other one cause, is forcing them apart.
No two peoples can long be thus separated without be- coming, in a measure, strangers to each other. That this is the case in this instance is shown by the ignorance which exists among the people of Northern California with regard to the southern portion of the State. The people of the Atlantic slope know far more of Southern California, and visit it far more, than do the people who, living under the same State government, yet dwell north of the mount- ains ; and the great influx of population which is now pouring into Southern California knows but little about California of the north. Year by year the two peoples are drifting farther apart, and the separation which is already one of sentiment and of trade-lines and busi- ness interests, must soon become one of law as well. The
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inconvenience of a State so large as the present is also a strong argument in favor of the division. From north to south the State of California, as it now exists, measures over eight hundred miles, a distance as great as from New York to Florida, while its area is 189,000 square miles, or more than that of the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland combined.
That a State of this size, and of local interests far more diversified than those of the States just mentioned, can long remain one, is a political impossibility. The only question among the people of the southern portion of the State has been, for some years past, as to the best time to apply for admission into the Union for the new State of Southern California.
Diseases.
Under this heading may be given the diseases which are peculiar to or endemic in the country, and also those which may hope for benefit by removal to it. Southern Califor- nia is practically free from any diseases which belong espe- cially to it, or have their habitat, as the naturalists say of a plant, in it. Malaria is but little known. Here and there a spot may be found in mountain-cañons, or in river-bot- toms not reached by the ocean wind, where malarial dis- eases exist during a portion of the year, but for practical purposes the country may be said to be exempt from them.
It is the benefit which comes of the free sweep of the ocean-wind to the whole of the land. The breaking down of the Coast Range of mountains, and the consequent open- ness of the entire system of interior valleys and plains to the sea, have thus had an important bearing upon the healthful- ness of the whole of Southern California. Yellow fever is un- known. Typhoid, which has its habitat wherever men con-
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gregate in cities, is found to a limited extent ; but the purity of the air and the abundance and excellent quality of the water make it a disease not common, nor ordinarily of a vio- lent type. The cool sea-breeze, which gives exemption from: fevers, brings with it, however, a certain amount of neu- ralgias and subacute rheumatisms. Persons with a tend- ency to these troubles escape by living farther back from the sea. Acute inflammatory rheumatism is seldom seen.
The contagious epidemics of children are found here as elsewhere in the world, but with this difference : that the possibility of more thorough ventilation and of a constant supply of pure, mild air in the sick-room renders them much less violent than in the colder climates and the close houses of the East. The proportion of deaths to the number of cases is much less. Pneumonia and bronchitis are occasion- ally but rarely found.
Phthisis, the scourge of civilization, will require more time for a complete answer. Yet this much seems to be already clear : that it does not often originate here among families free from a strong inherited taint, while the tend- ency of physical growth among the young, born and reared in this climate, is to an increased lung capacity in proportion to height and weight, as contrasted with the children of the East ; and the clear, ruddy complexion and marked vigor of body point to an increased vitality.
Catarrhal troubles are not common. Apart from the ordinary average of cases induced by excesses, diseases of the liver and kidneys are comparatively rare.
The cases which may hope for benefit by coming to Southern California are, first and foremost, the feeble and invalid from whatever cause ; those who find the drain upon vitality in a harsh climate too great for them ; who have need to spend a considerable portion of each day in the open air, yet who in their own climate are prevented from so doing by the inclemency of the weather ; those
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who need clear skies and sunshine ; to whom the refreshing sleep of a cool, bracing night is a necessity after the warmth of the summer day ; those to whose enfeebled digestion or . to whose capricious appetites a market stocked with fresh vegetables, fruits, and berries, every month of the year, is of importance. For such, and for all who are suffering from the nervous prostration of overwork, there is proba- bly no better climate to be found. It is a climate in which the drain upon vitality is, with any proper manner of living, less than the gain.
A mistake is sometimes made in the selection of a cli- mate for cases of nervous exhaustion, by sending them to the stimulation of a dry, elevated, interior region. To such cases the first effect of such a climate is like that of a dose of alcohol, the temporary exhilaration of the stimulant, but with the inevitable reaction. For such cases the best cli- mate is one of less elevation and more atmospheric humid- ity, the climate of a mild sea-coast region. It is not the spurring up of stimulation which they need, but the recu- peration which comes of restful climatic surroundings.
While the immediate coast-line with its fogs develops a certain amount of subacute rheumatism and neuralgia, yet such cases coming from the East often improve in a marked degree with the improvement which comes in the general health ; and if they avoid the sea-coast, and live back in the interior valleys, they generally escape such troubles entirely.
Persons suffering from malarial poisoning and its vari- ous sequels find in the sea-side life, and the surf-bathing, an almost certain relief. The number of such persons com- ing from the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries is increasing rapidly with each year.
The free action of the skin, which comes of the milder climate, makes Southern California the most favorable por- tion of the Pacific coast for kidney troubles. With such cases in any chronic form the question is rather one of pro-
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longing life, and of living in comparative comfort, than of cure. To this end a fair but not excessive_ action of the skin, freedom from sudden changes of weather and the risk of chill, and the choice of a wide range of diet, are necessary.
In consumption a great mistake is often made. Cases by the hundreds arrive in Southern California which would be much better off at home. No climate can claim to be a cure-all. It should be considered, before starting an invalid upon so long a trip, whether there is strength to endure the fatigue of the journey. Many, too, come without friends or acquaintances, and literally die of homesickness. Many also come who, through lack of means, or through a mis- taken economy, rent cold, shady rooms, and live at restau- rants, and so missing the comforts of their home-life are worse off than if they had never started. There is also a great difference in localities and local climates, and invalids differ in constitution, and many instead of at once seeking the advice of some competent physician as to the point to be selected for residence, drift around thinking that the country is all alike, and one spot as favorable as another, until much valuable time has been lost and possibly irrepa- rable harm done.
To the consumptive coming before the disease is too far advanced, having the means to secure reasonable comforts, taking steps to select from the first the locality best suited to the peculiarities of his especial case, and then avoiding the common mistake of trying to make a sight-seeing tour of what should be a quiet rest, the climate of Southern Cali- fornia in some one of its varied phases offers a fair hope of check and amelioration to the disease, and of possibly years of comfortable life, and to some even more, an apparent or possibly real recovery. But this will not be by a winter's trip, or spending a few months here, and then returning again to the climate in which the disease originated. It
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will be by coming and making a new home. It must not be a trip, but a migration.
The best of all prospects is for the person or the family inheriting the tendency, but in whom it is yet dormant. To them there is a well-founded hope that the disease may remain dormant, and to their children, born and reared in the new home, a prospect of its entire eradication from the blood.
Sufferers from that erratic and torturing disease, asthma, generally secure in some one of the various shades of cli- mate, or in the different elevations which are to be found within a limited area, immunity from the attacks of their remorseless foe.
It is impossible in so limited space to go over the whole 'list of diseases, but the climatic laws and facts given in this part will enable a competent physician to form an opinion for any especial case.
A pleasant feature of life in Southern California, and one which has much to do with the development of vigor- ous health, is the custom, which yearly grows in favor, of summering by the sea-side. The long ocean-face of the country is each year, for several months, dotted with canvas villages, where thousands of people live over again for a season, the old tent-life of the race, and, while enjoying the surf-bathing, drink in with every breath of the salt air, the ruddy and rugged health which is born of the sea. Be- sides these tent-villages there are numerous well-built towns with all the comforts and conveniences of settled society, and with numerous and costly hotels. The railroads from the interior reach the coast at many points to accommodate this summer exodus to the sea side.
In concluding this part upon the climatology, and some of the allied features of the Pacific coast, the writer would say that the task has been to him a labor of love.
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It is a slight tribute which he pays back for the health and the sunshine which, during all these years, it has thrown into his life.
Coming to the coast in boyhood, he has lived its varied life-in the mountains- on its broad plains-by the sea-and upon the deserts of the great inland plateau-until they have interwoven themselves into the very fiber of his being. Why should he not love his land ? It has been to him in all these years a thing of infinite worth. He can well un- derstand the love of the old Greek for his sea-girt home.
And he has faith in its future. For a quarter of a cent- ury he has taken active part in its growth ; has seen it broaden and strengthen, and has seen behind the feverish quest for gold a higher, nobler life growing up, a life that no longer has eyes bent downward to the yellow-speckled slime of the river, but has lifted them up to the eternal mountains, and the deep skies that lie beyond ; a life which no longer hears only the jingle of the nugget upon the gaming-table, but has ears growing attuned to the voice of the wind in the upland pines ; a life which is learning that there are other and better questions to man's existence than what he shall eat, and what he shall drink, and where- withal he shall be clothed.
And in this newer and nobler life which is growing up here upon the shores of the Pacific, and upon the highlands of that great inner plateau which reaches on southward to the city of Mexico, it seems to him he can discern the fair promise of a civilization which had its only analogue in that Græco-Latin race-flowering which came to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean centuries ago.
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PART II. LOS ANGELES, SAN DIEGO, SAN BERNARDINO, VENTURA, AND SANTA BARBARA COUNTIES.
BY WALTER LINDLEY, M. D.
The Overland Trip-How to enjoy it.
THE health-seeker who, after years of suffering in both mind and body, after vainly trying the cold climate of Minnesota and the warm climate of Florida, after visiting Mentone, Cannes, and Nice, after traveling to Cuba and to Algiers, and noticing that he is losing ounce upon ounce of flesh, that his cheeks grow more sunken, his appetite more capricious, his breath more hurried, that his temperature is no longer normal, that his pulse beats 100 instead of 72, that his finger-nails curve ominously, turns with a new gleam of hope toward the Occident.
Another health-seeker who, after years of exciting, ex- acting work, is unable to concentrate his mind, worn out by sleepless nights, weak from loss of appetite, and dis- tracted by melancholy, also looks toward the equable cli- mate and mild breezes of the Pacific slope for the sedative and restorative effects that medicine fails to supply.
Still another health-seeker, whose joints no longer re-
4
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spond to the mandates of the will, who is harassed and tor- tured with pains at every change in the weather, looks to the genial climate and the healing waters of the springs of Southern California for relief.
Still, again, we have the wretched sufferer, whose sleep- less nights are one long struggle for breath because of an inherited or an acquired asthma, and who also hopes in the varied climates of Southern California to find one that will dethrone the demon which clouds his life.
The questions naturally arise : Where shall I go ? What route shall I take ? How long shall I be on the way ? What will be the expense ? What are the accommodations after reaching there ? What is best to carry with me on such a journey ? What clothing shall I need ? Shall I take my family ? Are there good schools for my children ? What are the means of whiling away the time ?
The man with sporting proclivities wants to know of trout-fishing, of the facilities for boating, and of the vari- ous kinds of game. The artistically inclined wishes to know of the scenery ; the student of Nature is interested in the mosses, flowers, and ferns ; the horticulturist desires knowledge of the fruit ; the farmer of grain ; the dairy- man of the creameries and cheese-factories ; the physician of the prevalent diseases, the wind, altitude, temperature, rainfall, and humidity. It is to answer these questions that this book is written.
The west-bound tourist should supply himself with lunch enough to last four days. He should have an abundance of canned fruit, jellies, boneless chicken, meat, butter, and con- densed milk. He should have a spirit-lamp and be prepared to make his own tea or coffee ; he should carry eggs, salt, and pepper. Take all of these things, and try to get along without eating any of them. There are excellent eating- stations along all the various routes, but trains are apt to be behind time, and frequently the traveler who has not pro-
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vided for himself must wait until eleven or twelve o'clock for breakfast or till midnight for his dinner. The sugges- tion of Rev. E. P. Roe,* author of "Barriers Burned Away," that the overland roads furnish tea, coffee, and sandwiches when trains are delayed is a good one, but nev- ertheless a lunch-basket is a great desideratum. It is, on the whole, much better for health and comfort to eat at the stations and get freshly-cooked food whenever the rail- way eating stations are reached at reasonable hours.
The traveler should always carry something with him to guard against constipation. A sedlitz-powder, a tea- spoonful of Rochelle salt, or a tablespoonful of Hunyadi Janos taken before breakfast, is a simple and efficient pre- ventive. A bottle of paregoric, a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia, and a flask of good whisky, are all excellent things to carry in the satchel. If you do not need them, some fellow-traveler will. The sensible transcontinental traveler throws aside unnecessary conventionalities, and in twenty-four hours becomes well acquainted with every oc- cupant of his Pullman. Elderly ladies and children general- ly are the earliest passengers to start the social ball rolling.
On one transcontinental trip, in the writer's experience, all were having a jolly good time except one man, whom the others called the mute ; but on the third day a cup of good tea from a kind-hearted old lady caused his stolidity to vanish like a heavy mist before the noonday sun, and he then became one of the family.
In another car there was a solemn-looking man from San Francisco and a mischievous little three-year-old girl from Los Angeles. This little girl's mamma was in a constant tremor, thinking of the terrible consequences should her lit- tle girl annoy the sedate gentleman. One day she relaxed her vigilance, and, on looking up, was terror-stricken to see
* Letter from Los Angeles to Chicago " Inter-Ocean."
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her child standing on a seat back of this man and with a string around his neck was crying in childish glee, " Get up, horsey !" The mother ran to the man with apologies ; but he soon quieted her fears by telling her that the man who didn't like children ought to be shot, and from that time on he joined in the social diversions of the trip.
A few months since on the same train were the Rev. Samuel Scoville, son-in-law of Henry Ward Beecher, and Rev. Charles B. Sumner, also a New England clergyman, and these preachers and their families entered heartily into the pleasures of the trip. When Sunday came, the train was passing through the grand pine-forests of Arizona, and there in one of the Pullman's, passing under the branches of "God's first temples," services were held. The clergy- men conducted the exercises. Familiar hymns were sung, and brief remarks were made by several. Among others a spiritualist spoke, and said that he had abused the Church frequently in the past, but, after listening to these services, he felt like taking it all back. Thus, incongruous people become pleasant and mollified.
During such a trip cards, books, newspapers, and illus- trated papers are always in demand. A young man with a violin, or a young lady with a guitar and a sweet voice, is a great acquisition to any party.
The four days' ride from Kansas City, New Orleans, or Omaha, is either dull, monotonous, and desolate, or cheer- ful, exciting, and instructive, just as each passenger elects.
The social man will gain much knowledge of the coun- try he will traverse by conversing with his fellow-passen- gers.
The Arrival in Southern California.
But we will now suppose the journey across the great republic is completed, and the traveler is in Los Angeles, the central city of Southern California.
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