ME. NORDHOFF'S BOOKS OF TRAVEL.*

• California: for Health, Pleasure, and Residence. A Book for Travellers and Bottlers. By Charles Nordhoff. New York: Harper Brothers.

(FIRST NOTICE.]

THAT the "good Americans" who "go to Paris when they die" would find quarters more paradisiacal nearer home, in any condi- fion of being, is the general impression which Mr. Nordhoff's description of the Golden State produces. A more special effect is the awakening of an ardent desire on the part of the fog-bound Londoner, whose vista of "over the way" is closed to him at this season, to behold the often-described wonders which the author has the art of rendering novel, and to revel in the enjoy- ment of a climate which makes the burden of physical life easy

and pleasant. The book reads like a fairy tale, and seizes upon the imagination with the force of one ; but it is prefaced by plain statements which, though addressed to Americans, whom the author reproaches for seeing Rome before they have seen Niagara, and for visiting the Yosemite by tens, while they throng the Swiss Alps in thousands, will be equally valuable to " Europeans " who are lucky enough to be able to profit by them.

"There are no dangers to travellers on the beaten track in California; there are no inconveniences which a tenderly reared woman would not laugh at ; they dine at San Francisco rather better, and with quite as much form, as in New York, and with a far more elegant and perfect service; the San Francisco hotels are the best and cheapest in the world ; the noble art of cooking is better understood in California than anywhere else where I have eaten ; the bread is far better, the variety of food is greater; the persona with whom a tourist comes in contact, and upon whom hie pleasures and comfort so greatly depend, are more uniformly,civil, obliging, honest, and intelligent than they are anywher in this country, or so far as I know, in Europe ; the pleasure-roads in the neighbourhood of San Francisco are unequalled anywhere ; the common country roads are kept in far better order than anywhere in the Eastern States ; and when you have spent half-a-dozen weeks in the State, you will perhaps return with a notion that New York is the true frontier-land, and that you have nowhere in the United States seen so complete a civilisation as you found in California. Moreover, California is the cheapest country in the United States to live in."

These sentences furnish a text for Mr. Nordhoff's discourse, on which he enlarges with convincing eloquence and fervour, drawing such a delightful picture of the railroad journey, of the sumptuous "palace cars," the perfection of their arrangements, the curious sights and scenes by the way, and the unalloyed and exquisite pleasure which awaits the tourist when the wonders of California burst upon him, that one does not know whether the enjoyment of reading the book, or the aggravation of being un- able to see all it describes with one's own eyes, is the stronger sentiment.

Supposing one has started with the intention of halting for two days at Chicago and one at Salt Lake (Mr. Nordhoff cuts his de- scription of the Mormon capital very short), one may see, not far from the first-named city—rebuilt and reburned to a great extent since this book was written—the great Chicago stock- yards, a city whose inhabitants are cattle, sheep, and hogs, and whose inhabitants are admirably cared for and protected against harm and cruelty. We wish we could quote the entire descrip- tion of this most creditable institution, which is a pecuniary suc- cess, as it deserves to be ; the following passages will, ho-wever, give some idea of it :— 44 The city of the beasts has streets, sewers, drains • it has water laid • On; it is lighted with gas ; it bas a bank, an exchange, a telegraph office, a post office, an admirably-kept hotel—it has even a newspaper. It has very comfortable accommodation for 118,350 residents,—i.e., 21,000 head of cattle, 75,000 hogs, 22,000 sheep, with stalls for 850 horses. It contains 345 acres of land, and when all this is -prepared for use, 210,000 head of cattle can be lodged, fed, and cared for there at once, and with a certainty that not one will suffer or go astray. It has 35 miles of sewers, 10 miles of streets paved with wood ; three ' miles of 'cater-tronghs, all so arranged that the water may be stopped off at any point ; 2,300 gates, which are the front doors, so to speak, of the place ; 1,500 open pens, heavily fenced in with double plank ; 100 acres are covered with pens for cattle, and all these are floored with 3-inch plank ; 800 covered sheds for sheep and hogs ; and 17 miles of railroad track connect this city of the beasts with every road which runs into Chicago. It has two artesian wells, ono 1,632 feet, the other 1,190 feet deep, which being spouting wells, send the water into huge tanks 45 feet high, whence it is distributed all over the place in pipes. Fourteen fire-plugs are ready in case of fire ; immense stacks of hay and large granaries of corn contain the food needed for the beasts, and a train of palace cattle-cars now bears the emigrant animals from their city comfortably to the Eastern butchers."

At Chicago, the strangeness of the journey begins ; from Omaha everything is new ; one is on the plains with the buffalo, the antelope, and the prairie dogs ; the mountains form the boundary, with their snow-clad summits; cafion and gorge are familiar objects; then come the alkali and sage-brush plains; and on the sevelith day the rush clown the Sierra from Summit to Colfax, winding round Cape Horn "and a hundred precipitous cliffs, down which yOU look out og the open, ebservation-car ' as you sweep from a

height of 7,000 feet to a level of 2,500 in a whirl of two hours and a half," round curves, past the edge of deep chasms, and among forests of magnificent trees. On the plains and in the mountains, the author tells us, the railroad seems to be the great fact, and man only an accessory, existing that the road may be worked ; but with the grand stormy rush down the Sierra into Cali- fornia and the lower levels he grows into importance again, for here he is extracting her wealth of every kind, by cultivation and by mining, from the gold-and-fruit-bearing earth. All the sights of California are peculiar and striking. The colour of the soil is different and richer; the farmhouses, with their broad piazzas, speak of a summer climate ; the flowers, blooming at the road- side, and covering the plains with broad masses of blue and scarlet, are new to Eastern eyes. In San Francisco, the winter is the pleasantest part of the year ; in Los Angeles, fireplaces are rarely seen in the houses.

Having dwelt on the climate with eloquence peculiarly im- pressive to his English readers, the author goes on to eulogistic mention of the roads. "Go where you will," he says, "within fifty miles of the city, and you find smooth, hard roads, broad avenues, lined with long double rows of fine shade-trees,- roads over which you may drive at the rate of ten or twelve miles per hour, and do no harm to your horses nor tire yourself." He asked, "How do you get such roads ?" and was told that their excellence is due to private enterprise, the country road- masters only stepping in when a beginning had been made and a model set them. His book is altogether so attractive, that it is difficult to select portions for such cursory and restricted notice as ours ; the claims of the scenery, the natural productions, the grand objects, the weather, and the development of the country, are so contending and so powerful. One is perhaps most tempted to linger in fancy among the groves of spreading oak which dot the park-like expanses, where roses grow in rich masses, of a size and depth of colour unknown elsewhere, where the pomegranate, the fig, and the almond abound, the camellia remains out-of-doom all the winter, the heliotrope is a stout• woody shrub, the Aus- tralian gum-tree grows fifteen feet in a single season, and the ordinary hedges glow for miles with scarlet geraniums. All the advantages of a tropical climate are enjoyed in California, only a few of its disadvantages have to be endured. "I do not know a day in the whole year," said a San Francisco lady to Mr. Nordhoff, "when I cannot gather a bouquet in my garden." The cumbrous machinery by which we guard ourselves and our animals and tender plants against cold is unknown. The oleander remains in the ground all the winter through, the fan-palm flourishes everywhere, and "for seven months in the year you may lock up your umbrella." Of the southern counties of the Golden State the author gives an enchanting description, especially of Santa Barbara, which, as a health-resort, is probably unsurpassed in the world. When one has seen all the great sights, the Yosemite Valley--according to Mr. Nordhoff, preceding writers have absurdly exaggerated the difficulty and fatigue to be incurred in visiting this wonderful spot--and the Calaveras Grove, which one reaches by passing through a country of extraordinary interest, the great, exhausted, placer mining district of California, the Geysers, Mount Shasta, the Almaden quicksilver mine, and many other wonders which the author describes, one will do well to take the steamer at San Francisco for Los Angeles, and travel thence to San Bernardino and Santa Barbara.. At these places consumptive patients live long, not under the terrible conditions of their existence in this country, but with enjoyment, and there travellers may make camping-excursions, and sleep out-of-doors for weeks together, not only with perfect safety, but with benefit to their health, "for the air is pure and kindly." Though Santa Barbara has none of the conventional features of a "watering- place," it is not dull ; there are numbers of educated people there, and the delightful climate invites to an out-door life at all seasons, on the fine beach—with the ocean and the islands on one side and the mountains on the other—where, in old times, the Spanish Californians used to race their horses. A chapter devoted to a description of the coast counties—Santa Barbara, San Luis, and Monterey—in ,February, gives one as perfect a picture of beauty and prosperity as imagination can conceive.

The eraiw.tiiiii emi-tropietil fruits in the Southern counties is already producing results so brilliant that Mr. Nordhoff thinks it necessary to assure his readers that the details which he presents are in every case rather under than over-stated. They arc con- iained in a specially interesting chapter, which predicts a great future for this industry, as yet in its infancy. The absence of

disease among the fruit-trees aids their extraordinary productive- ness, and with reference to the quality of the fruit, we find the olives, chiefly cultivated at Santa Barbara, described as "far superior to those of France or Spain." The picture presented by these immense plains, covered with citron, lemon, almond, fig, walnut, orange, and olive trees, is a beautiful one, and there is nothing in the people to mar it, nothing of the rowdyism of the cities or the ruffianism of the gold-fields ; it is Arcadian, without the sheep. That this commerce will assume immense dimensions is confidently to be anticipated, for not only small farmers, but capitalists, are turning their attention to it. The farmers say, "We will work and wait for eight or ten years, in order that at the end we may have a small fortune, to make our later years easy ;" and if a man may, in ten years, from 20 acres, secure himself a regular income of ten or even five thousand dollars per annum, with but trifling labour and care, these persons would seem to be wise.

The wine and wheat-growing counties are described as equally productive, and the only drawbacks to the peace and pleasantness

of the picture are to be found in the author's account of the mines and the great cattle-farms ; in the former life seems to be too hard, in the latter morals are certainly too easy. Mr. Nordhoff has investigated every branch of every industry in the country with patient care, and his résumé is of the deepest interest, sup- plying a practical side to his eloquent descriptions of the sublimity and beauty of nature in California. We do not think anything more than he tells us can remain to be told about the Golden State ; and he has invested all the sides of his subject with equal interest and liveliness. His sketches of character and his anecdotes are very amusing, especially those which relate to the old Californians and the famous days of the gold-fever. Among the most remarkable chapters is one which describes the successful German colony of Anaheim, a fruit-growing country, a long account of which, eminently calculated to encourage other colonists, concludes with these words :—" Perseverance is the only requirement for success, but perseverance, patient work at one thing, is needed. Oppor- tunities are still so abundant in California, that excitable men fly off from one pursuit to another in hopes of a speedy fortune, and for the most part fail, because they do nothing thoroughly. I have yet to see here the first farmer who sat down on a piece of land five years, and gave it patient and thorough tillage, who was not an independent man at the end." The touch of romance which always attends "Tom Tiddler's ground," in whatever quarter of the world it may lie, is not absent from Mr. Nordhoff's stories of Californian life. Here is one which he judiciously saves

up for the last page of his book :—

"While we were in San Diego, a party was preparing to go out into the mountains in search of a famous vein of silver, called the 'Lost Lead,' from the fact that it was known only by a tradition, which reports that, many years ago, one Williams, who had befriended the Indians, was shown by them a deposit of silver of extraordinary rich- ness in the mountains back of San Diego, and allowed to take from it. as much as he wanted. The tradition adds that Williams wont home with his silver, and lived in the East in comfort and independence until his death."

Williams would not tell where he got the silver, And several parties have searched through the mountains since, without success. They have found indications of silver, but no "Lost Lead." But when the young men have nothing better to do, the more adventurous of them get up a new expedition to search for this rich mine. It may have been while a solitary adventurer was looking for this "Lost Lead" that he discovered an opal mine, from which he has for nearly a year been taking stones, some, it is said, of fine colour and considerable value. He has been followed by curious or greedy persons frequently, but without success, for he has managed to baffle all watchers, and to keep his secret,—more difficult to

keep than the mystery of the "Lost Lead."