If you are a Southwesterner, born or naturalized, returning from a visit “back East,” your spirits rise with a jump when the trainmen call out “San Antone!” For this is the frontier of your own dear country, and you feel the thrill that goes with getting home again and being among your own people. Dusty and a bit down at the heel in spots is San Antonio, you think? Yes, son, but it is picturesque; and there are adobes and Mexicans, Stetson hats and cart-wheel dollars once more, and it is where the Southwest begins, if you are westbound on the S. P.
San Antonio more than anywhere else in Texas has an Old World atmosphere. The former Spanish capital of the province, there are parts of it that impart to the visitormuch the same feeling that Monterey, that other Spanish capital, gives him in California—the feeling thatmay bethis is the United States, but it needs to be demonstrated. Of course, being a city of 100,000 people and commercially important, it has its well-groomed, American side, but unless you are in San Antonio merely in quest of health and comfort,[86]it is not that spick-and-span side that appeals to your traveler’s taste. You will prefer those streets, irregular and even unpaved (often their Spanish names still clinging to them), of the older quarters, where cracked one-storied adobes in open sunshine, elbow stately old tree-embowered mansions, whose tangled gardens seem to hide in their unkempt corners untold romances. You will like the Mexican quarter with its queer little shops, and the market square with its picturesque crowds of swarthypeones, donkeys and country teams of odd sorts, its squatting street venders oftortillas, cakes,dulces, songbooks,religious pictures and shoe-strings. You will like, too, the bridges over the little river that winds cosily about through the midst of the town, and the waterside lawns where trees cast a comfortable shade and summer houses invite to teaal fresco. There are literally dozens of those bridges, with railings at a convenient height to lean your elbows on and dream away an idle half-hour. Moreover, you will like the many charming parks and plazas, where you may sit under a palm tree and enjoy the passing tide of open-air life and make more acquaintances in half an hour than you would in New York in a year.
The Main Plaza is dominated by the cathedral of San Fernando, which dates from 1738, though little of the original structure remains—most of the present building having been constructed about half a century ago. What is left of the original church is in the rear, backing on another and larger square, the oldPlaza de Armas, or Military Plaza as it is now called.
Modern San Antonio has risen out of the consolidation of the presidio of San Antoniode Béjar, the Mission of Antonio de Valero (both mission and presidio founded in 1718) and thevilla—a form of Spanish municipality—of San Fernando, founded in 1730. The Mission, after abandonment as a religious institution, was turned into a fortress and barracks, and acquired the name of Alamo.[87]The Church of the Mission and what is left of the main building of the Fort are the most famous historical buildings in the city. They face on the Alamo Plaza, and are of such unique interest as to draw, in themselves, many visitors to San Antonio; for they are in a sense to Texas what Faneuil Hall is to New England, the cradle of its liberty. Late in 1835, when Texas was still a part of Mexico, San Antonio was stormed and captured by a band of insurgent American-Texans under the leadership of “Old Ben” Milam, who was killed in the fight. (You will see his statue in Milam Square, if you are interested enough to look it up). The Alamo, whichwas well outside the San Antonio of those days, was surrendered with the city. Here the Texans later entrenched themselves, and in February and March of the following year were besieged for 12 days by 4000 Mexicans under General Santa Ana. Of the Texans, there were less than 200, including some women and children. Refusing to surrender, every man of them was killed in the final assault upon the place, the only survivors (according to H. H. Bancroft) being 3 women, 2 children and one negro boy servant. “Remember the Alamo” became the war-cry of the Texans in the subsequent struggle that ended in the independence of the province.
The little Alamo Church and part of the main building that we see to-day, form only a small portion of the establishment that existed in 1836 and was occupied by the Texan defenders. Besides this church part (now maintained as a public monument) there was the large two-storyconvento-fortress divided into rooms and used as armory and barracks, part of which now exists and is cared for by the State of Texas;also a prison building and courtyard; the whole covering between 2 and 3 acres. Prominent among the Alamo defenders was that picturesque character and popular Southwestern hero, Davy Crockett. Another was James Bowie, to whom many authorities attribute the invention of the famous knife that bears the Bowie name, but Bancroft says it was Rezin Bowie, a brother of James, who originated it. These and others of the participants in the Texan war of independence are commemorated in the names of streets, parks and public houses throughout the city. As for the Alamo, it is bait in all sorts of business ventures—giving name to saloons, suspenders, grocery stores, restaurants, lodging houses and what not.
Next to the Alamo, the sightseer (unless an enthusiasm for matters military takes him straight to San Antonio’s famous army post, Sam Houston), will find worth while a visit to the old Franciscan Missions, now in ruins, that are strung along the San Antonio River to the south of the city. There are four of these, the first about 2 miles from the Alamo, the rest at similar intervalsof a couple of miles. Americans have got in the way of calling them, in numerical fashion, First, Second, Third and Fourth Missions, respectively, to the neglect of their fine old Spanish names. The First, which is on the southern outskirts of the city, and may be reached by a moderate walk from a street car line, is the MissionNuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepcion de Acuña(Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, of Acuña). From quite a distance one catches sight of its twin square towers with pyramidal tops and its high dome peeping above a tangle of mesquite, chinnaberry and pecan trees, and sprawling juisache bushes. A Mexican family lives in an end of the ruinedconventopart, and a small fee is charged for showing the inside of the church and permitting you to climb the belfry for a fine view over the country. The façade is interesting with much curious sculpturing. The knotted cord of St. Francis winds above the austere polygonal “arch” of the doorway, upon which is this Spanish inscription:A su patrono y princessa con estas armas atiende esta mission y defiende elpunto de su pureza. (With these arms this Mission attends her Patroness and Princess and defends the state of her immaculateness.) This is an obvious allusion to the controversy long maintained among old-time theologians concerning the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception—a doctrine defended and preached by the Franciscans from the first. In the corners immediately above the arch are two medallions, the one bearing an unusual form of the Franciscan Order’s coat-of-arms—the Saviour’s naked arm and the sleeved arm of St. Francis nailed together to the Cross; the other carved in the semblance of five blood-drops, to symbolize perhaps the stigmata of St. Francis. Upon the keystone is another elaborate embellishment now much worn by the elements. The central figure of this is plainly representative of the consecrated elements in the Lord’s Supper—a slender Spanish chalice surmounted by the Sacred Host. Worn figures at the sides of the chalice may have represented clouds or adoring angels. The whole carving of the keystone obviously typifies theChurch’s missionary purpose. The front was once gaily frescoed in red, yellow, blue and orange; but Time’s remorseless hand has fallen heavily on that. Begun in 1731, the building was not completed until 1752. After Mexican independence from Spain was accomplished, this Mission as well as the others, was abandoned and was not infrequently used by both Mexican and United States troops for barracks and stables. Some 30 years ago Bishop Neraz of San Antonio had La Purísima Concepcion cleared of rubbish and re-dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.[88]
SAN JOSÉ DE AGUAYOThe sculptured window of this old Franciscan Mission near San Antonio, Texas, is widely famed for its refined beauty.
SAN JOSÉ DE AGUAYO
The sculptured window of this old Franciscan Mission near San Antonio, Texas, is widely famed for its refined beauty.
SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, ARIZONA.Though largely restored, this survival of early 17th-century missionary effort, is one of the most interesting antiquities of its class in the United States.
SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, ARIZONA.
Though largely restored, this survival of early 17th-century missionary effort, is one of the most interesting antiquities of its class in the United States.
The Second Mission, properly called San José de Aguayo, was the first founded of the four, dating from 1720. It was 11 years a-building, and the date of its completion, March 5, 1731, seems to have determined the beginning of the remaining three Missions in the chain, all of which were founded on their present sites in that same year.[89]It was in its day the most flourishing of the Texas Missions, as, in its ruins, it is the most beautiful. The builder indulged to the uttermost his love of florid carving, and the broken façade of the roofless church is a marvel of ornate sculpturing—of saints, life size or in bust, cherubs’ heads and flaming hearts, volutes and arabesques and conchoids innumerable. But it is good sculpture and an amazing thing that it should have been wrought to the glory of God in that wilderness of what was Northern Mexico, near two centuries ago. Doubtless it was the work of some artisan (I have read that his name was Juan Huisar) brought up from Old Mexico where such ecclesiastical art was encouraged from the beginning of the Spanish occupation; and for assistants Indians were employed. Around the cornerfrom this front is a window in the baptistry that makes you exclaim for the beauty of it, so exquisite is it in its sculptured setting, so delicate and of so simple loveliness is itsreja, or grating of wrought iron. And about it in the broken chinks of crumbling masonry is a fern garden of Nature’s own sowing, of a sort that thrives in the sunshine and aridity of the Southwest and nowhere else, a species that botanists callNotholaena sinuata. The Mission is quite abandoned now save for an occasional service at a modest little altar in one room. A neighboring Mexican family has the key and supplies a guide.
These two Missions are usually all the hurrying tourist sees; but an hour more, if you are in an automobile, is enough to afford a glance at the other two, which, if less interesting, are still a pleasant adventure. The Third (6 miles from San Antonio) is MissionSan Juan Capistrano(Saint John of Capistrano, in Italy), and the Fourth isSan Francisco de la Espada(Saint Francis of the Sword). The last has undergone some restoration to fit it for the resident priest, who ministers to a Mexican flock quarteredroundabout. The entire round of the Missions can be easily done by motor car in half a day; but take a day to it, if you can spare the time, picnic somewhere by the river, and do the beautiful old places with leisure and reverence. Surely one can do worse things, to quote Sidney Lanier, “than to steal out here from town ... and dream back the century and a half of strange, lonesome, devout, hymn-haunted and Indian-haunted years that have trailed past these walls.”
Annually during the last week of April, there is held in San Antonio an open air carnival called the Fiesta San Jacinto. The name commemorates the decisive battle of San Jacinto, fought April 21, 1836, between Mexicans and Texans, and ending the War of Texan Independence. Elaborate celebrations mark the festival, which is almost as well known in the Southwest as the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
NOTE: Readers interested in particulars of the history of the San Antonio Missions will be repaid by consulting the valuable work of Miss Adina DeZavala, entitled: “History and Legends of The Alamo and Other Missions in and Around San Antonio.”
NOTE: Readers interested in particulars of the history of the San Antonio Missions will be repaid by consulting the valuable work of Miss Adina DeZavala, entitled: “History and Legends of The Alamo and Other Missions in and Around San Antonio.”
There are two Arizonas. There is that wide, breezy plateau region of the north, a mile and more above sea level, where our travels so far have been; and there is the much lower desert region of the south slanting downward from the Gila River to Sonoran Mexico, from which country there is little to distinguish it physically. This desert region, known to the Spaniards as Pimería Alta (that is, the upper country of the Pima Indians), was the only portion of what was afterwards called Arizona to possess a white population until several years after our Mexican War. The tourist to-day penetrates it in two general ways. Near the Mexican frontier the Southern Pacific transcontinental line traverses it, passing through Yuma and Tucson and reaching up to Phoenix by abranch from Maricopa. From the north a branch of the Santa Fe system runs southward from Ash Fork through Prescott directly to Phoenix.
Phoenix is the State capital, a very modern little city dating from 1817, with a population of perhaps 20,000. There is a touch of poetry in the name, which was given to symbolize the rising of a new civilization from the ashes of that prehistoric culture the evidences of whose existence cover so much of Southern Arizona. Here, where 50 years ago was pure desert lorded over by the giant Sahuaro—that huge tree-cactus which is Arizona’s State emblem—we find today surrounding Phoenix a pleasant land of ranches watered by full irrigation canals flowing in the shade of palms and cottonwoods, where besides the common staples of potatoes, corn and alfalfa, there is the exotic grace of the orange and the fig, the olive, the date and the apricot. This is the valley of the Salt River, whose waters are impounded by the huge Roosevelt Dam, some 80 miles east of Phoenix. Travelers desirous of studying desert reclamation willfind Phoenix a good center for their observations.
If you value your personal comfort, the time to visit Phoenix is between November and May. During the rest of the year the weather normally is remorselessly hot to the unacclimated. My own acquaintance with the city began in August. In a hazy way I had noticed something unaccustomed about the look of the population, the men particularly, but failed to analyze it until a sociable street car conductor remarked to me, “Stranger here?” “Yes,” said I, “my first day.” “We always know strangers right away,” he continued. “You see, they wear their coats.” Then I took a fresh look around and though it was a fairly crowded street, I failed to see a man who was not in his shirt sleeves. The winter and early spring, however, are delicious with the peculiar purity and dryness of the desert air to which a touch of frost at night may give added vitality.
That interesting 120 mile automobile highway called the Apache Trail finds at Phoenix its western terminus. Its easternend is at Globe, a mining town on modern lines in the center of a rich copper district.[90]This point is connected by rail with Bowie, 124 miles distant, on the Southern Pacific Railway. Transcontinental travelers by this route, either east- or west-bound, are now given the opportunity of varying their trip by taking this motor drive over the Apache Trail, linking up with the train again at the point of ending. The feature of the motor trip, which consumed 9 to 12 hours, is the chance it yields the traveler to get a more intimate acquaintance with the Arizona countryside than is possible from a car window. Mines and cattle ranges, stupendous cañons, strange rock-sculpturings in glowing colors, the desert with its entrancing vistas, its grotesque and often beautiful plant-life, even a glimpse of prehistoric ruins—all this the drive affords; and to it is added the impressive sight of the Roosevelt Dam with its beautiful, winding driveway upon the breast and its exhibition ofman-made waterfalls and 30-mile lake, an unoffended Nature looking indulgently down from surrounding precipices and mountain crests and seeming to say, “Son, not so bad.” There is a hotel at the Dam, on a promontory overlooking the water—and in the water bass and “salmon” are said to be. A stop-over here is necessary if you wish to visit the Cliff Dwellings, 5 miles to the eastward, officially known as the Tonto National Monument.
The Apache Trail detour cuts the traveler out of stopping off at one of the most interesting little cities of the Southwest—Tucson.[91]It may be that not all will find this oasis town, lapped in the desert and girt about with low mountains, as much to their liking as I do, but I believe it possesses features worth going back on one’s tracksto see; for it has a decided character of its own. With an out-and-out modern American side, there is the grace of an historic past, whose outward and visible sign is a picturesque Spanish quarter in adobe, pink, blue and glaring white, clustering about a sleepy old plaza and trailing off through a fringe of Indianrancheríato the blazing desert. The region roundabout is associated with pretty much all the history that Arizona had until it became part of the United States. The Santa Cruz Valley, in which Tucson lies, was a highway of travel during three centuries between Old Mexico and the Spanish settlements and Missions of Pimería Alta. Through this valley or the neighboring one of San Pedro (there is a difference of opinion on this point), Brother Marcos de Niza, the first white man to put foot in Arizona, must have passed in 1539 on his way to Zuñi’s Seven Cities; and this way, the following year, came Coronado upon the expedition that made of New Mexico a province of Spain. A century later the region was the scene of the spiritual labors of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, adevoted Jesuit missionary to the Indians—a man of mark in his time, to whom is credited the founding of the Spanish Mission San Francisco Xavier del Bac, about 9 miles south of Tucson. The present beautiful structure, however (Tucson’s crack sight for tourists), was not erected until long after Padre Kino’s day.
San Xavier is, in itself, worth a stop-over at Tucson. You may make the round trip from the railway station in a couple of hours by automobile, getting en route a taste of genuine desert scenery, with its scattered covering of creosote bush, mesquite, cat’s claw, ocotillo and sahuaro. The Mission building is one of the most beautiful examples of Spanish ecclesiastical architecture in our country; and the pure white structure, lonely in the desert, its glistening walls and stately towers and dome silhouetted against a sapphire sky, makes a striking sight, oriental in its suggestion. The church part is still used for religious services, and other portions form the residence of Sisters of a Catholic order who conduct a school for the children of thePapago Indians. The primitive habitations of the latter, scattered about within easy access of the Mission, are the Mission’s only near neighbors. A small fee admits one to the church. A feature of interest at the front is the coat-of-arms in relief of the Order of Saint Francis of Assisi.[92]This is evidence enough that the present structure, which was begun in 1783 and finished in 1797, was erected by Franciscans, although, as already stated, the Mission itself was founded about a century previously by Jesuits. In 1768 and for ten succeeding years, the resident missionary at San Xavier was Padre Francisco Garcés, one of the most remarkable characters in the Southwest’s history. An enthusiastic young priest in his early thirties when he came to San Xavier, and possessed of a powerful physique, he journeyed on foot up and down the valleys of the Gila and the Colorado (even penetrating into California and to the Hopivillage of Oraibi), tirelessly searching out Indians, and preaching to them Christ and the gospel of reconciliation. He was indeed the original Christian Pacifist of the Southwest, urging upon the Indian tribes everywhere that they should settle their differences peaceably and live together as brothers. To prove his faith he would never suffer a military escort to accompany him in his wilderness pioneering, but took only an Indian companion or two as interpreter, and a mule to carry his ecclesiastical impedimenta. Neither would he bear any weapon for defense, but went “equipped only with charity and apostolic zeal.”[93]His kindly, joyous character, so endeared him to the aborigines, that, as he himself records, a village would often refuse to supply him a guide to the next tribe, wanting to keep him for themselves. Under such circumstances, he would set out alone. He was a rare puzzle to those barbarians, both becausethey found it difficult to decide whether in his long gown and clean-shaven face he was man or woman, and because he strangely wanted nothing of them but the chance to give them a free passport to Heaven—an inexplicable sort of white man, indeed!
While on your Mission pilgrimage, it will be worth while to continue southward some 50 miles more to Mission San José de Tumacácori. The road is fairly good and about 7 hours will suffice for the round from Tucson by automobile; or the train may be taken on the Nogales branch of the Southern Pacific to Tubac station, whence a walk southward a couple of miles brings you to the Mission.[94]The buildings, mostly of adobe, are in ruins and very picturesque with a domed sanctuary and a huge square belfry, now broken and dismantled. They and a few acres surrounding them now formthe Tumacácori National Monument, under the care of the United States Government. This Mission in the wilderness was once, next to San Xavier, the most important in what is now Arizona. It was established by Jesuits in 1754, though the present church building is of Franciscan structure of much later date, having been completed in 1822, replacing one destroyed by the ceaselessly raiding Apaches.[95]Of interest, too, in this vicinity, is the ancient village of Tubac, 2 miles north of Tumacácori. Here in the 18th century was a Spanish presidio thought needful for supplementing the preaching of the friars by the argument of the sword. To Californians and those interested in the history of the Golden State, the place has an appeal because here during several years Don Juan Bautista Anza was commandant—the sturdy soldier who conceived the idea of a practicable overland route from Mexicoacross the deserts to the Spanish settlements on the California coast, and in 1775-6 convoyed over this route the colonists who founded San Francisco. Today Tubac is an unpretentious little adobe hamlet sprawling about a gravelly, sunny knoll, and looking across the Santa Cruz River with its fringe of billowy cottonwoods to the blue line of the Santa Rita and San Gaetano ranges. At Rosy’s Café I got a modest but comforting luncheon, and on your way to Tumacácori you, too, might do worse.
West of Tucson 65 miles is the little town of Casa Grande, which takes its name from one of the most famous prehistoric ruins in the United States, standing about 18 miles to the northeast, near the Gila River. If you have a taste for prehistoric architecture, you will enjoy Casa Grande, for it issui generisamong our country’s antiquities. If, on the other hand, you are just an ordinary tourist, you must decide for yourself whether a half day’s motor trip across the desert to see a ruinous, cubical mud house topped with a corrugated iron roof, in the midst of a sunburnt wilderness, will or willnot be worth your while. What touches the fancy is that here, centuries doubtless before Columbus (perhaps before the time of the Cliff Dwellers) dwelt and toiled an unknown people whose remains are of a type that possesses important points of difference from those found elsewhere within the limits of the United States, though similar ruins exist in Mexico. Casa Grande is Spanish for Great House, and is given to this ruin because its outstanding feature is a huge block of a building of three or four stories in height, and thick walls ofcaliche—a mixture of mud, lime and pebbles molded into form and dried, somewhat as modern concrete walls are built up. The unique character of the Casa Grande caused it to be set aside 25 years ago as a National Monument, and important work has since been done there by Government ethnologists, in the way of strengthening and repairing the crumbling walls and cleaning up the rooms. Extensive excavations have also been made close by, resulting in uncovering the foundations of a numerous aggregation of houses plazas, enclosing walls, etc. These revealthe fact that in some age the place was a walled city of importance, even if it was of mud—a sort of American Lutetia, to which Fate denied the glory of becoming a Paris. The huge building in the center—the Casa Grande—probably served partly as a religious temple, but principally as a citadel where in time of attack by enemies the people took refuge. Access to the upper stories was doubtless by ladders outside, as in modern pueblos. Indeed, this is but one of several walled-in compounds of buildings that formerly existed in the Gila Valley, and are now but shapeless heaps of earth. Some of these close to the main Casa Grande ruin have been excavated and their plan laid bare. The remains of an extensive irrigation system are still in evidence, water having been drawn from the Gila.
The first white man of unimpeachable record to see Casa Grande was that Padre Eusebio Kino, of whom we heard at San Xavier and who gave the ruin its Spanish name. He learned of it from his Indians, and in 1694 visited the place, saying mass in one of its rooms. There is some reasonto identify the spot with Chichiticale, or Red House, a ruin noted in the reports of Fray Marcos de Niza and of Coronado, both of whom probably passed not far from Casa Grande on their way to Zuñi, but most scholars now reject this theory of identity. After Kino the ruin was frequently examined by explorers and written about up to the American occupation. Anza and his San Francisco colonists camped a few miles distant, and the commandant with his two friars, Padres Garcés and Font, inspected the place with great interest on October 31, 1775. Font in his diary gives a circumstantial account of it, calling itLa Casa de Moctezuma(Montezuma’s House), and narrates a tradition of the neighboring Pima Indians as to its origin. It seems[96]that long ago, nobody knows how long, there came to that neighborhood an old man of so harsh and crabbed a disposition that he was called Bitter Man (el Hombre ’Amargo, in PadreFont’s version). With him were his daughter and son-in-law, and for servants he had the Storm Cloud and the Wind. Until then the land had been barren, but Bitter Man had with him seeds which he sowed, and with the help of the two servants abundant crops grew year after year, and were harvested. It was these people who built the Great House, and they dwelt there, though not without quarrels because of Bitter Man’s character, so that even Storm Cloud and Wind left him at times, but they came back. After many years, however, all went away—whither, who knows—and were heard of no more forever.
Casa Grande may also be reached by conveyance from Florence on the Arizona Eastern Railway, from which point it is distant a dozen miles or so. Owing to the extreme summer heat of this desert country, the trip to the ruin is most comfortably made in the late autumn, winter or early spring. There is a resident care-taker who acts as guide.
“Shall they say of you, you have been to Rome and not seen the Pope?” Yet that is what will be said if you turn back at the Colorado River and leave Southern California out of your Southwestern travels. However, few people do that. The fear is that in their haste to reach that tourist playground, they may neglect too much of what the preceding chapters have dwelt upon. Intent upon seeing the Pope, they may do scant justice to Rome.
By Southern California is meant California south of the Teháchapi Mountains and their western prolongation ending in Santa Barbara County at the sea. It is not a political division, but Nature’s—in its physical aspect differing quite markedly from Central and Northern California.Long regarded with a sort of mild contempt by the Americans who settled Central California and who habitually spoke of the South as “the cow counties,” Southern California has in the last quarter century attained a reputation not short of gilt-edged. Lonely, treeless plains and valleys and brush-clad mesas that a comparatively few years ago were counted desert and good for nothing except for cattle ranges and sheep runs, have become, with the development of water, pleasant lands of fruitfulness supporting a numerous and progressive population. The extensive cultivation of the orange, the lemon, the fig, the grape, the English walnut, the apricot, the olive; the planting of the eucalyptus, the palm and a hundred kinds of exotic shade and ornamental trees; the dotting of the landscape with villas of a distinguished sort of architecture patterned on Italian and Spanish models—all this has wrought a transformation that makes even more appropriate today than 25 years ago the sobriquet of “Our Italy” given the region by Charles Dudley Warner.
Here wealthy Easterners maintain winterhomes as they keep summer estates on the Atlantic Coast, and less well-to-do folk—retired farmers, tradesmen or professional people—buy a bungalow and settle down to the enjoyment of a good climate and the luxury of having roses and green peas in their winter gardens. Not only Americans but those of other nationalities have discovered that Southern California totals a remarkable number of points in the problem of comfortable living—a healthful and delightful climate (notably in winter), a fruitful soil capable of raising everything natural to the temperate zone besides a large number of things sub-tropical, a beautiful and varied terrain embracing seaside, valley and mountain, and an admirable system of capital roads. For the tourist there is not only the attraction of this beauty and comfort, but there is the drawing of historic interest, touched with that indefinable sense of romance that attaches wherever Spain has had a foothold. In Southern California as elsewhere in the Southwest, that Spanish flavor is very evident, manifested in the presence of a considerable Spanish-speakingpopulation, in the remains of Spanish-built Missions and ranch houses, and in the persistence of Spanish geographic nomenclature.
The hub of Southern California is Los Angeles, which in a generation has expanded from a sleepy little half-Spanish pueblo of a few thousand to a metropolis of half a million, with a taste for the latest in everything and the money to indulge it. It is the natural center from which to do one’s sightseeing, though Pasadena, adjoining it on the north, is almost as convenient and, indeed, preferred by many who are not in a hurry and prefer surroundings more rural. Pasadena is a little city of 40,000, beautifully situated on a shelving mesa at the base of the Sierra Madre and overlooking the fertile San Gabriel Valley. It is nationally famous for its numerous fine estates and the winter residences of wealthy Easterners; but outside of that it possesses mile upon mile of tree-lined streets where modest homes of the bungalow type look out from a setting of vine and shrub and flower. Each New Year’s Day the city becomes the objectiveof tens of thousands of visitors to view the Tournament of Roses, an outdoor fiesta whose distinctive feature is a street floral pageant.
From Los Angeles lines of transportation radiate to all points of interest. You have your pick of steam railways, electric lines, auto-stages and ocean steamers. Hundreds of miles of first class, hard-surfaced roads make Southern California a motorist’s paradise, and automobiling is here so notable a feature of tourist life that, if possible, the traveler should make provision for it when packing his pocket book. Public automobiles are abundant and the prices reasonable enough, from $1.50 per hour upward, with special rates for trips. If you are able to club with others for a car, you may find this the cheapest form of travel. Maps and specific information as to drives may be had at offices of the Automobile Club of Southern California.[97]
For those who do not care for motoring or find it too expensive, most of the desirable points are reached by electric and steam lines, or by auto-stages. There are several daily excursions scheduled by the Pacific Electric Railway, which afford at a minimum of expense a satisfactory means of getting a comprehensive idea of Southern California. One of these, to Mount Lowe (a prominentpeak of the Sierra Madre), may be substituted for the automobile drive up Mount Wilson. The visit to San Juan Capistrano Mission may be made by train, the railway station being close by. There is a resident priest and religious services are regularly held in one of the restored rooms. TheMission was founded in 1775, and the church part—now a ruin, the result of an earthquake in 1812—marked in its prime the high-tide of Mission architecture in California.
The Franciscan Mission establishments in California are among the most interesting historical monuments of our country; and those of the southern end of the State remain to-day especially noteworthy. Ten miles from Los Angeles is Mission San Gabriel (founded in 1771 on the bank of the Rio Hondo a few miles east of the present site, to which it was removed in 1775). It was for many years a principal center of civilization in the province, the settlement antedating the founding of Los Angeles by several years. Of the original establishment little remains but the church part, which is in a state of good preservation and serves as a place of worship for a considerable congregation, largely of Spanish descent. Mission San Fernando (about 25 miles west of the heart of Los Angeles) is deserted, save by a caretaker. The fine corridoredconvento, flush with the highway, is its most conspicuousfeature today, but the Mission was once of notable extent. A cloistered walk formerly connected theconventowith the ruined church in the rear. If you stroll on past the church to the ancient olive orchard beyond and look back, having the two date palms there in your foreground, you will get a charming picture of the noble old temple where Padre “Napoleon” strove, during a third of the Mission’s existence, to steer his dusky children heavenward. Apropos of these California Missions (whose plan was quite different from those of New Mexico and Arizona) it should be borne in mind that originally each consisted of a huge hollow square of buildings, facing within on an open courtyard. The church occupied part or all of one side, the other sides consisting of living rooms for the one or two padres (theconventopart), kitchens, store rooms, shops where the neophytes were taught and labored, and themonjerioor sleeping apartment of the Indian widows and unmarried girls of the Mission. Outside this compound were the huts of the Indian converts, arranged in streets and forming anorderly village of sometimes a couple of thousand souls.[98]
South of Los Angeles, 125 miles, is San Diego, reached either by rail, steamer, or automobile. If the last way is chosen, going and returning may be done over different highways, one following the coast, the other running further inland via Riverside. Both roads are excellent. Forty miles before reaching San Diego, you pass within calling distance of Mission San Luis Rey (St. Louis, the King)—4 miles east of Oceanside, a railroad stop where conveyance may be had for the Mission. San Luis Rey was founded in 1798 and in its proportions rivaled San Juan Capistrano. It is still an imposing establishment, though restored with rather too heavy a hand to suit the artistic sense. The situation is charming, on a knoll in the midst of a noble valley, emerald green in winter and spring, the San Luis Rey River flowing close by the Mission. A community of hospitable Franciscan brothers occupies the premises, and religious servicesare regularly held in the church. Twenty miles further up the river (eastward), a pleasant drive, is San Luis Rey’s sub-mission orasistencia, San Antonio de Pala, which no lover of the picturesque should miss visiting. White-walled and red-tiled, the quaint little church with a remarkable, white bell-tower set not on it but beside it, is one’s beau ideal of an old mission. The setting, too, is satisfying. On every hand are the mountains; a stone’s throw away ripples the little river; and clustered close by is a picturesque village of about 300 Indians, to whom a resident priest, with rooms in the Mission, iscura. Both Mission San Luis Rey and this outpost of Pala were constructed by Indians under the supervision of the famous Padre Peyri, one of the most forceful and devoted of the early Franciscans in California. He gave the best of his life to his wilderness flock, and years after his departure, the Indians, in reverence of his memory, would still offer up their prayers before his picture as before a saint’s.
San Diego, a city claiming a population of 100,000, is spread over seaward-lookinghills affording a delightful view of the land-locked Bay of San Diego and the Pacific Ocean going down to China. The mountains of Old Mexico, too, only 20 miles away, make a feature in the prospect. If you are in any doubt what to do in San Diego, you need only stroll around to the neighborhood of the Plaza, and you will be shown. Street cars, automobiles, “rubberneck” busses and tourist agency windows are hung with notices of places to see and trips to take, and the streets are sprinkled with uniformed officials emblazoned with gold lace, to give you details. You may have a good time on any of these jaunts, if you are good-natured and like a bit of roughing it (for San Diego’s vicinity has not as yet reached Los Angeles County’s excellence in roads); but to give you a start I would itemize the following as not to be overlooked:
The exquisite gardens at Balboa Park (where the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-16 was held), affording in epitome a charming object lesson in what California gardens offer both in exotic and native plants; the drive to and along the headlandof Point Loma for the fine views; by ferry across the bay to Coronado’s famous hotel and beach; the ride by railway or automobile to La Jolla (pronouncedlah ho´ yah), a pleasant little seaside resort with interesting cliffs and surf-drenched rocks; by street car to Old Town (where San Diego had its beginning), to visit the Estudillo house—a former Spanish home intelligently restored and interesting as a bit of old-time architecture with its tiled inner corridors about a flowery patio. It is locally known as “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” because it was here, according to the novel, that the priest lived who married Ramona and Alessandro. On the hill back of Old Town once stood Padre Junípero Serra’s first Mission in California, founded in 1769; but it is all gone now, the site being marked by a large cross made of the original red tiles that once littered the ground. It is but a short walk worth taking both for the view and for the sentiment of standing on the spot where white civilization in California had its beginning. Five miles up the valley that stretches eastward at your feet is what isleft of the second Mission (established in 1774). This historic building has been sadly neglected and is but a ruined shell, which only reverence for its past makes interesting. Across the road from it is the old olive orchard, believed to be the original planting of the olive in the State.
San Diego’s back country offers many interesting trips by auto-stage or private car, the roads being as a rule good but with the ups and downs of a hilly region. There are several good hotels in the mountains at a distance of 60 miles or so from San Diego, so that the night may be spent here if desired. Pine Hills, Mesa Grande, and Warner’s Hot Springs may be mentioned as desirable objectives. The trip by auto-stage or your own car via Campo to El Centro or Calexico (at the Mexican border) in the Imperial Valley will prove an unforgettable experience. The Imperial Valley is a depression below sea-level in the Colorado Desert of California, which after lying desolate for ages has of late been made exceedingly productive by diverting irrigation water to it from the Colorado River. This trip hadbest be made between November and May, as the desert heat in summer and early autumn is intense. If you have your own car and desire the experience of more desert, return may be made around the Salton Sea through the Coachella Valley (where dates are now extensively grown), to Palm Springs and Riverside.
While we have rambled along the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, our eyes will often have been caught by the sight of a long, low island well out to sea. It is Santa Catalina, whose reputation as a sea-angler’s paradise is world wide. It has also a most delightful climate—its and San Diego’s being perhaps the most equable of any on the Coast. The marine gardens that line the shores are also of wide fame, and are made visible by boats with glass bottoms, through which one looks down into the transparent waters of another world where waving kelps and sea mosses are the forests and bright colored fish, sea anemones, jelly fish, sea cucumbers and other queer creatures are the inhabitants. The trip thither and return may be accomplished from LosAngeles, between breakfast and evening dinner, if you do not care to stay longer.
A hundred miles northwest of Los Angeles lies Santa Barbara (a little city of 15,000), rich in beautiful homes and flowery gardens. It is delightfully situated with the ocean at its feet and the Santa Inés Mountains at its back, and may be reached from Los Angeles either by train or by a picturesque motor drive through valleys, over mountains and beside the sea. Here is the best preserved of all the existing Franciscan Missions in California—never abandoned since its founding in 1786, though now for many a year there have been no Indians in its care. It is the residence of a Franciscan community, and the members in their long brown gowns and white cord girdles may be seen any day at their various tasks about the grounds—one of which is the piloting of visitors through the church.
Driving, horseback-riding, playing golf, or simply sitting still and enjoying being alive in the midst of fine scenery, are the principal occupations of Santa Barbara’s visitors. Among the longer drives shouldbe mentioned the 40 miles to the Ojai Valley by way of the lovely Casitas Passes, and the 45 miles across the Santa Inés Mountains to the Mission Santa Inés in the valley of the same name. The latter trip is made more enjoyable if two days are taken to it, the mountains being crossed by the San Marcos Pass[99]into the Valley of Santa Inés, famous for its majestic oaks, and the night passed at Los Olivos, 6 miles north of the Mission Mattei’s Tavern at Los Olivos, is one of the most comfortable country inns in California. The return should be made by the Gaviota Pass and the seaside road back to Santa Barbara. The Mission of Santa Inés (which is Spanish for Saint Agnes, whose eve gives title to Keat’s immortal poem), is sight enough to make the trip worth while—with white walls, red-tiled roofs and flowery, corridored front, in a valley rimmed about with mountains. The Mission was long abandoned and in ruins, but when the present hospitable rector took charge some 15 years ago, he began a careful restoration and withhis own hands did much of the necessary labor to put it as we see it today.[100]