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OUR first view of
the Pacific was at the watering-place of Santa Monica, a few miles
north-west of Los Angeles. It was, as usual, a charming day, and the
deep blue of the ocean, stretching so far in every direction, was
superb. That was the first sensation. When the eye and the mind had
sufficiently drunk in the broad expanse of azure, the next feature
to claim attention was the surf beating against the shore; and that,
it seems, is a constant feature. The sea is never perfectly smooth
at the edge. The Pacific does not deal in extremes; it is neither
frightfully wild nor absolutely calm. Its genius is different from
that of the Atlantic. The Atlantic can rave like a maniac or be as
still as a sleeping babe. In the Pacific you have always the swell
and surf to restrain undue familiarity: and bathers know this well,
and have to accommodate themselves to it. And what they do is hardly
worthy of a valiant people. Bathing consists mainly in playing with
the surf, and there are few swimmers, as far as I saw, bold enough
to get beyond it and enjoy themselves in the smooth, deep water.
Perhaps this may be due to the practice of bathing in a sort of full
dress, which admits of the ladies and gentlemen being together, and
makes it hard for the gentlemen to break away to where few ladies
could follow them.
Santa Monica is very prettily laid out, and is one of the places
that have made wonderful progress in a few years. A Scotch gentleman
told me that a few years ago he had been offered a piece of landed
property for twenty-five thousand dollars. It did not suit him to
become the purchaser, and a year or two ago it was sold for four
hundred thousand. Among those who have lately come to settle at
Santa Monica is a colony of ostriches. Not that they have come of
their own free will; but an ostrich farm, that used to have its
establishment at Los Angeles, is now removed to Santa Monica. The
proprietor is an English gentleman, a member of a titled and ancient
family. The time was when the farm was open to visitors on Sundays
as well as other days; but a change came over the proprietor when
Mr. Moody was at Los Angeles, and now it is shut on Sundays. To a
man struggling for a living this is no ordinary piece of
self-denial, and it contrasts strongly with the conduct of the
aeronaut already referred to, who makes Sunday at Santa Monica his
harvest-day. Whether the rearing of ostriches can be made profitable
is a question yet to be decided. The spot selected affords a natural
protection from the sea-breeze, and the ostriches will not have to
complain of want of attention. Yet every one deems it an odd
experiment, and I do not think that the public entertain very
sanguine expectations of its success.
Our stay at Santa Monica was but for a few hours; but to Long Beach,
another seaside place farther south, we paid a visit of ten days.
Long Beach is a very recent place, begun four years before our
visit. For two years it advanced splendidly, but since the bursting
of the “boom” it has been much quieter; and last year it had a great
calamity. Its hotel, a fine, large building, built on the bluff that
runs along the seaside, took fire, and was utterly destroyed. No
attempt had been made to restore it; and having been the one hotel
of the place, it is greatly missed. But there are numerous
boarding-houses for the accommodation of the public. One of our
party being rather feeble, my son brought his horses and buggy, that
we might drive about. It may show the free-and-easy treatment to
which horses are accustomed in California, that though there was a
stable attached to the boarding-house, he thought it better to tie
the horses to posts outside and lay down their hay beside them. Hay
there is not like hay here; it is wheat cut green and allowed to
dry, and seems to serve the purpose of hay and oats combined. There
was a beautiful drive on the beach, eight miles long, with a surface
as smooth as a table, and firm enough to bear the wheels without
sinking. The fresh sea-breeze was always delightful and
exhilarating; it was hardly possible for invalids to breathe it
without becoming stronger.
The whole of Long Beach is on the property of one gentleman who owns
an immense tract in the neighbourhood. Many years ago two brothers
purchased two great Mexican ranches of many thousand acres, for
which the price was only seventy-five cents an acre. I have no doubt
that in the neighbourhood of Long Beach the land would now fetch
hundreds of dollars per acre. The owners of these ranches, which
still bear the Spanish names of Alamitos and Seritos, were kind
enough to invite us to see their places. We went with the more
pleasure that they were good specimens of the old Mexican ranch, and
that the old adobe houses were still standing. The houses are more
quaint than comfortable. The walls are of immense thickness, and the
rooms of considerable size; but the Mexicans seem to have had
peculiar ideas on the subject of windows. In their time the windows
seem to have been mere holes near the top of the wall; these had to
be lengthened towards the ground by the present owners. One of the
ranches has a famous dairy, with a prodigious stock of cheese; and,
oddly enough, the men in charge of it are Italians. The other is
celebrated for its sheep. In “Ramona” there is a graphic description
of what the sheep-shearing used to be in the old Mexican times, and
of the marvellous expedition with which some of the Indians could
perform the operation. They told me that the sheep-shearing was
carried on in much the same manner still. I was reminded of what a
beloved son, now no more, who had been at Buenos Ayres for health,
used to tell us of the incredible celerity with which oxen were
killed, flayed, and otherwise disposed of by the natives in the
Liebig yards of that city. Nothing astonishes you more than to see
great flocks of sheep grazing in apparent content on plains where
all vegetation seems as much dried up as if it had been baked in an
oven. But the sheep discover a little berry like a burr, the fruit
of a very abundant plant, on which they can not only live, but
thrive and fatten.
At Seritos there is
a fine garden—at least, it used to be fine—and I could hardly
forgive the proprietor for suffering it to fall into decay. The
house, however, was old, and he wished to rear a better one in a
different situation. In a country which has no real antiquities,
these old ranch houses and gardens are the only places that go back
beyond the existing generation. I should have thought the
proprietors, who have profited so greatly by the rise of prices,
would have been eager to keep them up precisely as they were in the
olden time, with their spacious verandas, their vine-covered arcades
and trellises, their magnificent trees, and all else that told of
the earlier history. But antiquarianism does not pay.
While we were at Long Beach, the “Alliance Assembly” was holding its
annual gathering there. The meetings last in all about a month. The
prototype of this congress is the famous Chatauqua Assembly in the
state of New York. The idea is to utilize the holiday season, in
accordance with American habits, for promoting the spiritual,
intellectual, and social welfare and enjoyment of the people
gathered at the seaside. The Long Beach Alliance Assembly is under
the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church; but a catholic
character is sought to be imparted to it by the invitation of
ministers and members of other Churches to take part in it. There is
a large tabernacle for the meetings; they begin at eight in the
morning, and they go on till about ten at night. It may seem to our
sober Scottish view rather a strange thing to combine
prayer-meetings and class-meetings and revival-meetings with
lectures on popular or scientific subjects, and with concerts, where
Jubilee Singers do not exclude even their comic songs. Yet in the
Life of the late Dr. Begg it will be seen that he highly approved of
Saturday evening concerts, and we know that he was not the man to
think badly of the play of humour. The idea is that man has a
complex nature, and that if you honestly try to exercise and develop
every part of it, even if you do so simultaneously, the effect is
good. And my judgment is, that for people in holiday humour,
sauntering by the seaside in the usual somewhat careless spirit of
holiday-makers, the social effect is good; but that not much, if
anything, is done for the positive advancement of religion. At the
request of the superintendent, I gave my lecture one evening on the
Life of Livingstone; and one forenoon I conducted a service for
young men and women, speaking to them of the character of Christ. It
is remarkable how large and steady the various attendances were.
There was a meeting for children every morning at nine o’clock in
the Presbyterian church, and the little building was always full.
The Methodists always strive to kindle emotion, and herein are a
great contrast to us. Methodist religion is pre-eminently a religion
of feeling, with very little of doctrinal teaching. And I
noticed—what pains one so often in America—a want of reverence. I
heard painful instances at the Assembly of the evil habit of using
Scripture language to point a jest.
One of the funny features of the gathering was the “camping out.”
You see a space allotted for “camping,” and you find all manner of
people dwelling happily in tents, with their horse and buggy at
hand, the horse “hitched” to a tree, and never dreaming of the
luxury of a stable. And then when it suits them the friends can have
a nice drive along the beach, or wherever else they choose. If you
like, we shall make a call at that tent in the corner, where an
excellent Methodist minister, a friend of ours, resides. The
minister’s wife receives us, and conducts us over her “house.” The
floor is covered with a carpet, brought from the manse. In one
corner is a sofa; that is the drawing room. In another, a
cooking-stove; that is the kitchen, in another, a table; that is the
dining-room. In another, a shake-down; that is the bedroom. But the
ground is so dry, and the air so fresh, and the warmth so genial,
that it is nice and pleasant. The cooking-stove is seldom needed;
and the fuel being wood, the fire is easily kindled and easily
extinguished, without turning the tent into an oven.
And I must add this about Long Beach, that no liquor is sold in it.
By appointment of its promoters, it is a teetotal town. I need not
say that it is the most tranquil and orderly place you can conceive.
Even with all the excursionists that the trains bring to it, such a
thing as drunkenness is unknown. I never saw a policeman in it, nor
found a police-office. People smile when you ask if there be such.
What use would there be for them?
At Long Beach I was presented by an accomplished lady with a copy of
a book which every one was reading—“Looking Backward.” It was in its
130th thousand. A book with a very absurd plot, and, I am afraid I
must add, an absurd drift. Its author is an able gentleman of
Boston, a socialist; and its purpose is to picture a state of
society in which which socialism has triumphed, and is difussing
unnumbered blessings on every side. I read the book because I am
very desirous to obtain light from any quarter on social problems,
but I must add with great disappointment.
The plot turns on a supposed case of mesmeric sleep, passed through
by a young gentleman of Boston, who fell asleep in 1887 and awoke
all right in 2000! He looks round him on his native city, and finds
it entirely transformed. An entirely new state of society has come
to pass. There are no rich and poor, no drones that toil not neither
do they spin, no private property, no grinding competition in
business, no strikes or lock-outs, no greed, no selfishness, no
money!
Everything is the property of the State, and all labour, all
business, all everything is managed by the State. And every one is
easy, contented, blessed. Labour ends at the age of forty-five;
after that you simply enjoy yourself. In place of money, you get a
ticket which enables you to get all you want at the public stores,
the store-keeper making a punch-mark in your ticket for what you
get. And society has not reached this condition by a violent
revolution; it has just peaceably slid into it, in accordance with
the policy which is every day absorbing private and smaller
enterprises and converting them into a few great concerns. It is
almost incredible that a man in his senses should imagine that some
of the strongest impulses of human nature would be quietly
annihilated before a pleasing picture; that men would all of a
sudden cease to struggle every one for himself, and devote himself
heart and soul to the public good. Environments will do much, but
will they ever eradicate the greed, the selfishness, the ambition of
our nature? I grant that in “Looking Backward” there is much true
benevolence and a fine sympathy with the children of labour; and the
author does not plead for confiscation, nor write as one who would
resort to violence. But the marvel is, to fancy that without
violence this age of gold will come of itself! to ignore the great
problem of human corruption, and take no account of the only means
ever devised for solving that!
“To think—I have a
pattern on my nail,
And I will carve the world new after it,
And solve so these hard social questions—nay,
Impossible social questions, since, their roots
Strike deep in Evil's own existence here,
Which God permits.”—Aurora Leigh.
As to socialism, I
do not think many Americans proper have much tendency towards it; it
is the foreigners that uphold it. And I agree with those who think
that for a hundred years there will not be much serious trouble with
socialism in the country, because there are so many outlets for the
growing population. But when America is as densely peopled as
Europe, with many more overcrowded cities and complaining,
half-starved citizens, then will come the tug-of-war. |
