A trip to California

I am here for only a couple of days. It is a long ways from Bricks, North Carolina, to Seattle, Washington. I still have two thousand miles before me before I turn my face eastward. One gets an idea of this great big country only by traveling over it, as I have done for the past three months. He can get it no other way. Such a trip ought to condition every young man graduating from an Eastern college.

Here we go from Bricks in the eastern part of North Carolina to Washington City. The Atlantic Coast Line train takes us through the most historic setting of the Coastal Plains of that eastern section into the foothills of the Old Dominion, through the Civil War battlegrounds of national fame, up the historic Potomac, passing Richmond, Fredericksburg, the rustic triangular monument to the great general who in his unfortunate retreat met death at the hands of his own men, into Alexandria, the most historic and conservative town of the pre-war days. Alexandria, the other end of the old pike leading from the “far west” through Winchester Town seventy-five or more miles away. This old pike was put in history by Sheridan’s ride, twenty miles away from Winchester Town.

Well, we cannot stop in Washington City. It needs nothing that I can say. From Washington we went up into Old Virginia. Taking the Southern train we went through the Virginia Valley and the Shenandoah Valley. The trip took us right through the heart of the battle-fought country of Manassas, Bull Run, over “Goose Creek,” “Painter Skin,” “Jeffries”—creeks that are well known to all Virginians. We went right into the heart of the Old Blue Ridge, and looking down on Harper’s Ferry, Winchester, Middleburg, Leesburg, Upperville, Berryville, the Shenandoah River, on to Washington itself, sixty miles away. Here are five counties: Fauquier, Loudon, Warren, Clark, Jefferson and others in the distance, covering an area of more than ten thousand square miles of the finest country in the world, all to be seen from one level space without moving ten feet on this historic old mountain. Corn, wheat, cattle, and sheep, fill her valleys. There is no part of these valleys and mountains that cannot, and that do not, grow the finest apples and peaches that are grown in the world. (I am saying this in Seattle, Washington.)

I went back to Washington from this fine country, and from Washington to Jersey City. From there I went over to New York and Brooklyn, and out on Long Island Sound. From New York I went to Springfield, Mass. From Springfield I went to the great meeting of the American Missionary Association, which was held at New London, Connecticut. From there I went back to New Haven for Armistice Day and to see Marshal Foch receive his degree from Yale, and the great football game where there were eighty thousand people. I went back to New York again, where I put in two very profitable weeks studying racial and living conditions.

From New York City I went to Rochester and put in several days speaking here and there to small groups of people. From there I went to Batavia for only a few hours, and then to the city of Buffalo. From Buffalo to Cleveland and Oberlin, Ohio, and in two weeks on to Detroit, Mich. A few days spent in Detroit, and I was on my way to Ann Arbor, Jackson and Kalamazoo, Mich. I reached Chicago a few days before the Christmas holidays. After the Christmas vacation I visited the high schools of Gary, Indiana, and put in another week attending the Mid-Winter Conference of Congregational Workers of the United States. Only three other colored men were in attendance at this conference. They were Dr. Alfred Lawless, of New Orleans; Dr. Kingsley, of Cleveland; Dr. C. W. Burton, of Chicago.

We learned in this great Mid-Winter Conference that there are other problems besides the Negro problem. Indeed, he was scarcely discussed at all.

Immediately after the Conference I turned my face westward. It did not seem safe that I should go alone to buy my ticket and to have my money put into travelers cheques before leaving, so our good friend, Mr. J. E. Wade, of the police force, offered his services and accompanied me to the bank and ticket office. Mr. Wade was formerly from Elerby, N. C. He and his nephew from Richmond County are giving fine services on the police force of Chicago. I was told that they have about a hundred colored men on the police force. All of these men are giving excellent service. I was surprised and glad to see in many of the largest business houses in Chicago our colored men and women doing business over the counters. I saw them in the shipping houses and in the ticket offices. In the city postoffice of Chicago I was told by one of the “checkers” that out of about eight thousand or more employees that nearly two thousand were colored. I was escorted through every department of the great postoffice and saw the men handling the nine hundred tons of mail that go through the office every day. Many of the men I knew personally, and some were relatives. Most of the men were experts at their job. A very large number of them are graduates from our best colleges. All of them were fine looking, well groomed men. They were not the least in appearance when compared with the other racial groups.

From Chicago I took the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul train to St. Paul. The glacial swept areas of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota abounds with natural resources aside from the farm products. This is a community of wheat, corn and flour mills. It is the home of the world’s best packing houses. Minnesota is the synonym for “Gold Medal”; it also says the last word on poultry feed and products. I was shown through a sanitary packing-house where nearly or quite a thousand people were given employment. Coffee, tea, spices and sugar and other commodities are shipped in daily by the train loads and made into new products, repacked and shipped out daily to all parts of the world. The amount of all sorts of candy, cakes, etc., handled was a revelation. Machinery has taken care of every operation in this great establishment, except the absolute thought of man. To the uninitiated it might seem to think also. The world’s best brand of cheese comes from these parts also. I was surprised to learn that one little community east of St. Paul, in Wisconsin, called Rio, shipped two years ago more than two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars worth of the finest grades of tobacco.

Some of the soldier boys will be interested to know that some of the buildings, probably most of them, at Camp Douglass were still intact as we sped by them through the cliffs and dells.

From St. Paul we turned our face westward for a two thousand mile jaunt on one of the best equipped and finest trains that ever rolled the iron. Not a minute late on its own account, up hill, down grade, across deep canyons, under the mountains, over the top of the mountains, spanning valleys, across the river beds and lowlands, with the same speed, whether in eight feet of snow on the Cascade Mountains or whether there is no snow, and on to the Pacific Coast. Pulled by the most powerful electric engines in the world, she leaps onward by the touch of her engineer like a thing of life and thought.

Our first stop was in Aberdeen, in South Dakota. It was night on our arrival, and I left the train to spend the night for the rest, so that I might have the day to see—yes, just to see. I had been to Aberdeen in 1909 and knew what to expect. The porter advised me not to go out without wrapping up well, as it was about twenty degrees below zero. I went to the first place where the sign read “hotel.” I was comfortably located, and after I had gotten a lunch thought I would find the school where I once spoke, but before I had gone very far I decided that my room was the best place for a stranger in that sort of weather. My face could not have been colder if it had been buried for twenty minutes between two blocks of ice. This particular community is noted for its fine quality of white potatoes. They are grown in great quantities, and they are the last word in potato growing. There are none any better anywhere else in the world for flavor and texture.

In a country so cold and bleak one would not expect to find much vegetation. Quick maturing crops of wheat and corn are grown. Hogs, cattle and sheep abound. For hundreds of miles in every direction there is absolutely nothing but a barren track of land which affords great quantities of the finest hay, which grows naturally. Every mile looks for the world just like the one from which you have just come. There is nothing to break the monotony of the landscape except the monotony of another one. The porter or conductor comes in and says, “Twin Brooks,” “Stone Falls,” “Odessa,” etc., and you look out when the snow does not blind the view and you see nothing but a few houses, a wheat elevator, or a lot of sleds drawn by two or four horses; not a tree except perhaps a few planted by the government agents. As you reach the North Dakota line not a tree to mark even the site of the little towns that may be more pretentious.

At Marmarth we come into Montana at an elevation of 2700 feet, having put behind us nine hundred and ninety-five miles since leaving Chicago. We have already passed Wakpala, an Indian Reservation, and school. These are easily in sight. We have also left the Missouri River and the Little Missouri River behind. We come into Musselshell Division, and soon cross the Yellowstone River. Miles City is our station for the night. It is nearly twelve hundred miles out of Chicago with 2300 feet elevation. Several smaller tributaries to the Yellowstone River are passed. Small shrubbery and a few trees in the river courses are a great relief to the landscape. But before we reach the “City” to which we are destined for the night we come into “Bad Lands.” Here nature went into contortions and left an awful frown upon her face. I asked the white porter, a very fine fellow (a Lutheran by faith), what was the matter with the country. He said “This is Bad Lands.”

Miles City was not a bad looking city. It had all the modern improvements. For several hundred miles we followed the valleys of the Musselshell River and the Yellowstone River, crossing and recrossing the rivers and valleys, sometimes over a high mountain and then almost precipitously down and under another mountain, only to rejoin the river again through another tortuous valley. We reached the Rocky Mountains Division at Harlowton, Montana, thirteen hundred miles west of Chicago at an elevation of 4,000 feet. If you have any heart trouble you will know that something outside in the physical world has happened before you get here. On we go over the “Summitt of Big Belts” literally up, up, up, around this curve, across that ravine, up by this tall hill, finally on the top, and you look back for five, ten, fifteen or twenty miles and you see the ribbon of track you have spun out. You see the thousands of waste acres of snow and the cattle hugging the hills for protection against the winter’s cold. They are inured to it. Ours would die the first night out. The reader would get sleepy before he had spent one hour out there. That is the way you freeze to death; you just get sleepy. We pass Ringling, the Montana Canyon, and again miles further Montana Canyon, with rocks projecting hundreds of feet above you, still we speed along and cross the great Missouri River seven hundred miles above where we crossed a few days ago. Near Eustis we cross the Jefferson, Madison, Gallitin rivers forming the Missouri River. Bull Mountains have been left three hundred miles behind and still we speed along. Our horse neither tires nor pants. They feed him “white coal” generated at great substations from fifty to a hundred miles apart. Generated by mountain streams in their mad rush to the great bosom of waters.

At dark I wanted to stop at some small mining town for the night so as not to miss any scenery. The conductor advised against this because of the condition of the people and their accommodation for strangers. I listened, and stopped at his advice at Three Forks, almost fifteen hundred miles out from Chicago, and still 4,000 feet elevation. This was in a valley of farming land of more than three hundred thousand acres of the best farming land in Montana. The great valley was very beautiful, with the mountains ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and a hundred miles away in every direction, silhouetted above the clouds, and dotted with its own shadows. As the sun came up from the east and spread its majesty over the snow-clad peaks every one was made a diamond of beauty. But we were not to stay at Three Forks over Sunday. We are traveling on trains 15 and 17. If we leave 15 over night we take 17 the next morning, and so we had 15 or 17 every day. At 8:50 we departed in very cold weather—ten degrees below zero, they said. It was only three hours ride from Butte, Montana. I did not want to pass the highest point reached on the whole trip in the dark. I wanted to have my eyes open and see when I went over the real top. Well I did. It was 10:53 by my watch—1,505 miles out from Chicago, 6,322 feet elevation.

The writer of the “Ex-Colored Man” said when he was in Paris with his landlord he was very fond of music, etc., and so one night he went to one of the finest theaters in the city. Soon after he had taken his seat a very aristocratic looking gentleman came in whom he had at one time seen at his mother’s house in the state of Georgia. He was very small at the time he saw him in Georgia, and he was sure it was the same gentleman. He had with him his beautiful wife and a more beautiful daughter. To his amazement they sat almost adjoining him in the theater so close that he might have touched them. They did not know him. He knew that it was his own father, and this beautiful girl just finishing high school was his own sister, flesh and blood. He wanted to speak, but conventionality and tradition had closed his mouth, and to save tragedy he arose and left in silence.

I have looked forward all my life for just such an opportunity to see this great country, as I have now had, and as I am having, because I still have 5,000 miles ahead. Most of my younger life was spent in trying to get an education. Most of my grown life has been spent in missionary service on small salary, and with a family of children to educate and prepare for a larger life than I had the opportunity of having. This opportunity now comes to me through the officials and friends of the American Missionary Association under whose auspices I have worked for thirty-two years. It comes as an appreciation on their part for my long service. I may not have done everything they wanted me to do, but I have tried to follow the dictates of an honest conviction.

When I passed over the great Continental Divide I remembered my dream of forty years. I knew no one and had no one to talk to about it. I looked into space and thanked the Lord of all of us that I had cast my lot where the rewards had been faithful and abundant. I felt like crying out in paroxisms of joy.

We are still “a-going.” We reached Butte, Montana, at noon Sunday, January 29th. It was very cold, but I found a good hotel near the station, so that I did not have to be in the cold very long. I was advised and was quick in deciding that I would in an hour take the trip to Gerson Hot Springs, eighteen miles away. Several miles from the place I saw what seemed to be smokestacks with steam pouring out each one. I found on arrival that these were just openings in the roof, forming vents for the steam from the hot water as it comes from the mountains at a temperature of 195 degrees. The water has wonderful healing properties. I did not take the bath because of the extreme temperature outside. The hot springs are very numerous in these parts of the country. All the rivers were frozen several feet deep but here and there where the streams pass very close to the mountain gorges one can see the temperature of the water change by the warmer currents coming right out of the hills.

Butte is the largest mining center in the world. One hill is the richest hill in all the world—is worth more than all of Wall Street, New York. The bar-iron, copper, silver, gold, and other by-products probably go down to the center of the earth. I went 2,200 feet down, and I was then 800 feet from the bottom of it. I was donned in a real miner’s outfit, including a miner’s acetelyne lamp. Our descending cage was about four feet square, and held four men. It was built to bring up twenty tons of ore about every minute of the day. State laws define how fast human beings shall be brought up or taken down. The installation that operates this mine cost more than a million dollars. It is the finest electrical outfit I ever saw. The house in which the machinery is located that operates the pulleys, under air pressure, is more than a hundred feet square. When the signals are given, twenty-eight feet down, one man brings the load to the tenth of an inch exactness to any level in the pit or on top of the ground, a hundred feet high if necessary. Thousands of wheels, belts, pulleys, pistons, etc., move in every part of this building to the touch of one man. If he makes a single mistake it may cost one life or a thousand in the mine. It may cost a mint of money in destruction. Efficiency, absolute efficiency is the only thing that counts.

Five very large pumps about twelve feet square each bring up the surplus water from below. They are located many feet below the surface of the ground, and it is never cold down there. The water is charged with copper, and this disintegrates any other metals, so that the pipes must be lined with wood and brass. This water is run through long troughs over old tin cans and iron waste, where the copper is deposited and afterwards taken off. I did not have time to get all the details of the process. Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, I was told, owned most of the stock of this particular mine.

In the morning of the same day I visited one of the best schools in this country. It was a city high school. Everything taught in this school leads to mining. That is the big job there. The youths are prepared to do the things they will have to do when they leave school. Boys ten to fifteen years old are experts already in the machine shop.

We left at noon Tuesday, and my destination was Spokane, Washington. We crossed the Missouri River, the valley of the same name, and saw scores of apple orchards. Near East Portal we crossed Bitter Root Summit and Bitter Root Valley, also made famous by its fine apples and vegetables. We passed again under the mountains two miles. Here we were eighteen hundred miles from Chicago in an elevation more than 4,000 feet. At Superior we were delayed several hours in the night on account of a freight wreck. We arrived in Spokane about noon Thursday. We crossed the Cascade Mountains in eight feet of snow. This was after leaving Spokane. We visited the Spokane Valley, another valley made famous by its apples. I talked with a banker about the products of the community. They are trying to get emigrants from the East to come into the community. It is a farming and lumber community. I visited the exhibits of farm products kept by the chamber of commerce of the city. They are wide awake. I saw all sorts of vegetables grown on irrigated land and by dry farming methods that would make our farmers take notice. I never saw finer vegetables anywhere. They are grown under great pressure.

From Spokane 1,900 miles west of Chicago, in an elevation of 1,882 feet, we dropped down here (Seattle) in a few hours to 2,200 miles west of Chicago and to sea level. From eight feet of snow crossing into a temperature of 36 degrees above zero. No snow and no ice.

February 2nd we arrived at Seattle. Twelve days and about twenty-two hundred miles from Chicago. This is considered the chief city of all this part of the country. It has a population of about 350,000 people. Its scenic environment, with its background of mountains and its valley intersected by sounds, bays and rivers, make it the most beautiful city in the world. It is called the “Floral Paradise.” I saw many flowers blooming in the open. It is said to be the cleanest and best lighted city in the world.

I wanted to see Puget Sound, so the next morning bright and early I found my way over the network of railroads on a high elevation above the streets to the fine pier several hundred feet above the water. Here I had a fine view of the Sound and the great expanse of water and mountains yonder a few miles, and literally thousands of boats of every kind and from everywhere in the world. The place from which I made the observation was a fine room with large glass windows, leather seats, heat, restaurant, etc., to make the weary traveler rested and welcome. This was Puget Sound. This is where literacy has the highest rating of any American city. If any city is cleaner or better lighted I have yet to see it.

In these parts there are billions of feet of lumber untouched by the despoiler. I saw fir trees measuring four and six feet in diameter. I was told they were three and four hundred feet tall. I saw two men sawing with a cross-cut saw, one on one side and one on the other side, and the diameter was so great that only one man could be seen below his head.

The Sound itself is said to be large enough to contain all the navies of the world and still have more room. The diversity of scenery, its climate, air, beautiful sunshine, mountains, sounds, and inland waterways, woods, flowers, parks, fine hotel, theaters, public markets, and city railway system, postoffice, and the State University, give that place a setting hard to describe in this limited space. The three or four public markets are works of art. One on Second Street was terraced, and is the cleanest market I ever saw, and I have seen a great many. The markets will generally indicate what the farmers are doing. They show the best products raised in the community. The arrangement of these country products will give you an idea of their artistic values. The Japanese were in evidence everywhere. They were universally polite and clean. They may be ubiquitous, but they are certainly utilitarian. They know how to get the best results from the soil as farmers. They had the best things I ever saw from the farms. They are credited with having a lot of sense and of being very industrious. These are very important assets in the development of any community, whether in California or in North Carolina. Having sense means having efficiency, knowing how to do. Industry means power and wealth.

As much as I would have loved to linger here longer, I had to divide my time with other points of interest. I left there early Sunday morning, the fifth of February, for Tacoma, about forty miles away. Through miles and miles of orchards of raspberries, loganberries and blackberries, apples and pears and walnuts, passing great canning and packing houses, irrigation projects, mining sections, etc., and at 10 o’clock the Olympian rolled into Tacoma. Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helena, Mount Hood, and Mount Adams, off in the distance had already come into view. You are overwhelmed by their vastness and grandeur. Their snow-capped peaks, timbered inclines and fertile valleys cannot be equaled anywhere else in the world.

We are still on the Puget Sound. The city has a population of more than a hundred thousand souls. They represent every nationality under the sun. It has the finest harbor and the most equitable climate in the world. The rainfall is around thirty-five inches a year, which insures better farming conditions. The Chamber of Commerce of Seattle and Tacoma are vieing with each other as to which will show the best exhibits of the state. Their great varieties of wheat, corn, flax, rye, oats, grasses, barley, buckwheat, apples, pears, small fruits and nuts, and their by-products: honey, preserved fruits, tomatoes, and manufactured products, views and paintings of cattle and sheep raising, lumbering, etc., simply baffle the imagination. You want to sit and look for hours and write impressions in your notebook, and then go out and come back again and do the same thing as long as you have a minute to spare.

Tacoma has a stadium that seats forty thousand people. Nothing else like it in the United States except the college stadia at Cambridge and New Haven. Schools and churches are the finest in the whole country. It was my pleasure to speak twice the Sunday I was there in one of the largest and finest churches in the city (white), and in the evening to one of our colored churches. The museum contains pictures of the early pioneers and Indian history curios. It was in this community where the earliest white settlements were made. The stadium and Stadium High School are located on one of the highest points in the city overlooking Puget Sound, which is precipitously, several hundred feet at the base of the hill. Trains may be seen for miles and miles coming from the East and North, and boats from Alaska, Seattle and Vancouver as they turn the western promontory. I traveled with an elderly gentleman who built almost the first house in that part of the city for the father of the present occupant, and I also had dinner in that house overlooking the stadium and the Sound. The minister living in the house is an eastern man, and his wife is the daughter of a missionary to Honolulu. She went over in the Morning Star soon after its construction forty years ago, in company with President Fairchild of Oberlin College. At that time she was a small child.

The state of Washington produced in 1921 28,000,000 bushels of apples alone that were worth more than $30,000,000. At the same time New York is said to have produced 14,000,000, California 6,000,000, and Michigan 6,000,000 bushels of apples. At the time Spokane County, in which Spokane is located, is said to have produced 80,000,000 bushels of wheat. I went through this valley, a part of Yakima and a part of Wenatchee valleys. One wonders at the great productivity of this country when he thinks of the great mountains almost everywhere—mountains where absolutely nothing can grow. The valleys are protected by these mountains. They are for the most part virgin soil. Irrigation projects have brought the melting snow to the ripening fruit and grain. The sun, penetrating into these mountain recesses have brought color and flavor equaled by no other community.

Pity it is that we cannot stay here to see more of this environment. We must go to Portland, Oregon. “We pass Rainier National Park on the left closed to winter tourists, and the towering sentinels already mentioned. We are in sight of them until we get to Portland, nearly two hundred miles away. Portland is a fine city of unusual wealth, fine houses, parks, hotels, banks, more than two hundred miles of street car lines, beautiful stores and public buildings, and flowers, flowers, everywhere flowers. The mountains back of the city are circled by beautiful drives and street car lines, and every sort of house that can be built on the face of the earth, terraced from top to bottom, trees, ferns, flowers, vines, form the most perfect menagerie of vegetation and of art that one can conceive. It looked like the composition of one mind. It was the coöperation of many minds for civic beauty. The view from Council Crest—see it once and you will never forget it if you have any imagination. The Columbia River cutting in half and stretching away for miles in the distance, the towering snow-capped mountains already named above, the beautiful Willamette River whose course for several hundred miles we shall soon follow, the Cascade Range, thousands of acres of fine farms and beautiful farm homes spreading out in every direction as far as the eye can see, a flock of sheep, a few thousand cattle, a herd of ponies and horses, the weird whistle of steamers coming up the river, and trains passing up the several valleys, all seen from Council Crest give you a feeling of scenic beauty that you cannot overcome. What a paradise for botanists. How I would like to have lingered in that environment until the foliage came into their glory! The markets are again gems of beauty. One has to buy whether he needs anything or not. The sellers are so courteous and polite. The arrangement of the products are so unique and artistic; they have so much and so great a variety; the people handling the goods were so clean in their pure white garbs; the tables and stands were immaculately clean; everything put on the market was absolutely clean and pretty. You just had to stop and taste here and there and buy. I bought here several kinds of honey for samples, which I brought six thousand miles home. I carried it all the way. Sage honey, clover honey, alfalfa honey, apple honey, orange honey, olive honey, raspberry honey, etc.

At night I saw a big roller machine actually scrubbing the streets. Beat that if you can. I saw it. The Chamber of Commerce gives out every year free literature telling about the products of the state, and they have a show of the farm and mineral products that simply cannot be equaled anywhere. The market stands I was told were owned by the city and are rented to the farmers and others on condition that only farm-grown products produced by themselves were to be on sale in them. The rent was just a nominal rent to encourage the farmer to bring his wares and sell it.

The Southern Pacific train took us south from Portland. The road leads for many miles up the Willamette River through the most beautiful valley, then up the Umpqua River, and the Umpqua River Valley, and into the Rogue River Valley. The climatic conditions are well adapted for grains, grasses, fruits and walnuts. The growing seasons are especially long, and there is not much danger from frost. The fruit orchards yield from five hundred dollars to a thousand dollars an acre. Some of course with less care, yield much less. The higher figures show the possibilities under the best care. On my way south I saw a great many apples thrown out in the fields. I was advised that the fruit association were not getting their prices, and they were thrown away to save cheap sales. They picked last year 2,650,000 boxes of apples valued at $2,600,000. These apples were the Spitzenbur, Yellow Newton Pippins, Jonathan, Rome Beauty. These are the varieties prized for their color, keeping quality, flavor and conformity to the best types. The trees come into bearing the fourth and fifth years, and increase their yield from one bushel to seven a year, and as they get older the increase may reach twenty boxes a year. Their apple pests are the same as ours. They must spray to get the best results. The trees are not large. The average yield to the acre is from three hundred to four hundred bushels, at a total cost of about forty and sixty cents a bushel.

Large acreages of pear trees of the standard varieties are grown, and they are more prolific bearers. The yield is said to be higher per acre than that of apples. I saw scores and scores of very large pear orchards. The trees are less trouble to care for than apple trees.

I saw thousands and thousands of trees in the Willamette, Umpqua and Rogue River valleys that baffled me to know what they were. They did not look like any sort of trees I had even seen, and yet I did not want to appear too ignorant to my fellow travelers. I had only one way to find out, and that was to ask somebody who knew. They were prune trees. The cost of caring for a prune orchard is said to be from five to seven dollars an acre. The average crop an acre is about five tons. The average value per acre is from $75 to $250. About thirty million tons are produced, and the demand is growing. They have not begun to fill the demand. People are learning more than ever the food and medicinal value of this fruit.

Nearly fifty million pounds of cherries are produced annually at a value of more than two hundred thousand dollars. They yield about six thousand pounds to the acre at a profit of from one hundred to eight hundred dollars an acre. In Western Oregon, the Upper Columbian Valley, and the southwestern part of the state peaches are grown on a large scale and at great profit. Grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, loganberries and currants are grown in great quantities. At La Grande, Oregon, there is a sugar beet factory whose capacity is three hundred and fifty tons daily. Beets are grown largely in that section. French walnuts are grown in large quantities. Seedlings are grafted with improved varieties. The largest I ever saw were in the markets. I stopped one night at Grant’s pass and saw some of the largest and finest pumpkins that can be grown in the world.

Stock raising probably stands at the head of the productive resources of the state. Great quantities of cattle, sheep, horses, mules, hogs, and even goats are raised. The income from this industry would be many millions of dollars. Poultry is grown all the year, and millions of dollars are realized yearly from dairying. The annual output of honey is around two million pounds, averaging more than three hundred thousand dollars.

I have said nothing about the fisheries, the fertility of the rivers, lakes and bays, and the lumber conditions. There are about twenty million acres of land in Oregon unappropriated, waiting for brain and brawn. It belongs to the government. You may have it if you will qualify and meet the conditions.

On my way to San Francisco I had planned to stop at Eugene and see the State University, but I found that I could not do so without very much delay, and also because the weather conditions were bad. It is a railway center of considerable importance. Passing Cottage Grove we crossed the Umpqua River and went up the valley some distance, and up the Rogue Valley close by the river of the same name into Grant’s Pass. Here I preferred to stay all night so as not to miss any view or things of interest. We were never out of sight of picturesque scenery and mountains of great height and beauty. Orchards and fine gardens of vegetables were ever in sight. Our train has taken us into Cow Creek Canyon, beautiful and picturesque. Grant’s Pass is the fruit shipping center for this part of the state, and I saw many packing houses. On to Ashland at the foothills of the Siskiyou, where the lythia water and mineral springs attract your attention as you pull into the station, and all get out to try the water as it comes fresh up into the glass receptacles for you to drink. Ahead and around you on every side nothing but mountains towering a mile high. You wonder how you are to scale that tower in your front. Your train takes on another engine, possibly two, and off you go up the Rogue Valley till the Rogue River is lost in the mountain stream. When you can go no further your train cuts across the head of the valley on a high bridge and climbs the opposite mountain parallel to the track you have just come on the other side, going directly north, exactly reversing your course. We zig-zag up that mountain for an hour till we reach an elevation of nearly ten thousand feet. All this time we are in sight of Ashland, fourteen miles below, lying placid, warm and quiet. The snow plows are busy keeping away the snow and the men are clad in the warmest sheep skins from head to foot. A mile off to the left, a thousand feet higher, is “Pilot Rock,” lying as if it had been hurled by some powerful giant. This is the landmark that guided the early pioneers and Indians in their early explorations through that unknown country. Freeing our train from her extra engines, we sped off at a tangent through a fine growth of timber and cut over land. This is the Shasta route, and we have just scaled the Siskiyou Mountains. Now we start down the slope, entering the Cantara Loop and crossing at the very head of the Sacramento River.

Now we have crossed the line into California. Mount Shasta, the most majestic peak of the western continent, fourteen thousand feet and more, towers above us, and off at some distance. We enter Sacramento River Canyon and stop at Shasta Springs, which is a source of this river. There we got off the train and drank the finest water that ever came from the earth. This is probably the greatest summer resort on the Pacific Coast. I saw one rabbit sitting in his burrow on the side of the hill. The snow was falling terrifically.

Miles and miles down this canyon we go, passing ferns and moss hanging from a thousand crags. We pass Castle Crags away to the west like sentinels guarding our entrance. More than four hundred miles we go, following this tortuous river valley until it spreads out into San Francisco Bay. We pass Chico, a community of fruit interest and great vineyards. If one will look at the map of the state of California he will see that almost all the state is included in two great valleys, especially in the northern part of the state called Northern California. These valleys lie north of the Sierra Madre Mountains, which form the natural divide between Northern and Southern California. These are the valleys of Sacramento adjacent to the Sacramento River, which runs the entire length of the valley and into the Straits of Carquinez and into the San Francisco Bay. The other valley is San Joaquin. In the first of these is located Sacramento, the capital of the state, and in the second valley is Fresno, near the southern part of the valley, and also Bakersfield.

We are told that about half of the cultivated land in California, or that which may be cultivated, is in the valleys. They form more than fourteen million acres. They are about four hundred and fifty miles long and more than forty miles wide. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers are the drainage for this great basin. These two great rivers come together near Walnut Grove, one from the south and one from the north. I traveled the entire valleys of both these rivers. There are almost three millions of acres in the Sacramento Valley alone, and from my observation not more than half of it seems to be in cultivation. Thousands of acres of it are in citrous fruits and other fruits and walnuts. At the same time of my visit large areas of the two valleys were under water. The lands are rich and yield readily to various kinds of cultivation.

When the overflow from the rivers during the rainy season is controlled, there is no reason why these lands should not be more valuable to the state. Large areas are still in the formation, and look as if they might make great rice plantations. I heard while out there that something was being done to get Japanese farmers to work these low areas into rice farms.

I stopped one night at Redding. This is only a few miles inside of the state line. It was here that the “Gold Rush” was made in 1849. Some of the old settlers are still here and remember the “rush.” I was told that two per cent of our gold still comes from this community. It was here that I really saw the first sign of California. The next morning after my arrival, while waiting for my train, I saw oranges in the parks and about the homes near the central part of the town. Magnolia trees and palm trees showed that we were in a new and strange country. Tropical plants of one sort or another can be grown from one end of the state to the other. One man said that he could pick oranges at the same time watch the melting snow on the nearby mountains.

The rainfall varies from fifteen to thirty inches, whether in the lower or upper part of the state. Irrigation projects are on foot, and furnish all the water needed for the crops. As the acreage increases these projects will grow. Sacramento River and Feather River are the main sources of water for this upper country. I traveled through both of these valleys and to the very mouth of the rivers.

We arrived at Benecia late in the afternoon, and the entire train is put aboard the largest ferry boat in the world, and carried across four miles to Port Costa, across the Strait of Carquinez. We pass Richmond, Berkley, Oakland. At Oakland we pull into the Oakland ferry and disembark again to a large ferry boat, and in twenty minutes we are in the city of San Francisco. We are here for only a few days, then we leave for the southern part of the state. We reserve our impressions of the city till our return.

The other valley further south is supposed to be eleven thousand square miles, and has about seven million acres of arable land. It is a boundless area and productive of the greatest quantity of oranges, olives, grapes, etc. We spent a part of two days at Fresno, and addressed the colored Baptist Church at night. There are some colored farmers in that section who are doing well on their farms. We regretted very much that we could not count them by the thousand. They are altogether too few.

Bakersfield, which is in the southern part of this valley, is a great oil section of the state. There are four such centers in this state. Their combined output a few years ago was ninety-two million barrels. Oil has taken the place of coal in almost all the industries of the state. The refineries are seen almost everywhere. Stock raising, grapes, orange orchards, peach orchards, olive orchards, fig orchards border every road. I saw at least one flock of sheep numbering more than three thousand.

We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachapi loop at an elevation of more than seven thousand feet. Going down the mountain we passed into the great Mojave Desert. Death Valley, 290 feet below sea level, forms a part of this desert. There must be several thousand square miles of country in this area, and I would not give fifty cents for the whole of it. The discovery of oil may give value or the irrigation projects may save it for farm developments. Yucca, sage and sand seemed to be its chief products at present. Mojave, Lancaster and San Fernando are our next stop. A few hours later we are in Los Angeles.

The object of my trip West was to study farming conditions with reference to the colored people and to acquaint myself with living conditions in that part of the country.

There is little that I can say about Southern California, and Los Angeles especially, that the world does not know. It is separated from the northern part of the state by the range of mountains already referred to, known as the Tehachapi Mountains, which are a part of the Sierra Madre. There are seven counties south of this mountain divide. It has a reputed population of more than six hundred thousand people. They represent every nationality. There are forty-five thousand colored people in the city. The state as a whole is the most cosmopolitan I ever saw.

I wanted to take some data from the printed matter sent out from the Chamber of Commerce. The products of the county must measure in a very large way the industry and happiness of the citizens.

It is the leading county in the United States in the value of all crops. It ranks first in the value of farm property, in the value of all farm crops, in the value of fruits and nuts, hay and forage, dairy products, bearing lemon trees, beet sugar production, and in bearing olive trees. It ranks second in poultry, bearing orange trees, irrigation enterprise, and walnuts products.

The conduit which brings the city water for more than two hundred miles was built at a cost of twenty-five million dollars. There are four trans-continental railways that enter the city of Los Angeles, and probably a dozen other smaller lines. They have more than twelve hundred miles of improved streets and more than nine miles of sewer. There are twenty-five public parks. I visited a number of them. They have more than five hundred miles of electrical car lines and more than a thousand miles of electrical lines running to all parts of the county. Their schools are the best in the whole country. They have hundreds of churches that are well attended.

I took daily tours to many of the suburban towns in twenty and thirty miles radius. Culver City, Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly, Hollywood, Long Beach, Redondo, Pasadena, Pomona, Claremont, Ontario, San Gabriel, Burbank, etc. These are all beautiful spots. Some of them are real little cities with every modern facility. I thought at the time of my visit that if people who live under such an environment as I saw were not happy, they have no need to go to heaven when they die. They told me that I ought to have made my trip in the summer when I could see the country in its glory. I went in an auto bus to San Bernardino seventy miles through the country to the orange show. It is called the Gate City to Southern California. The county itself is a wonder in its output of fruits and walnuts, oranges especially. I saw millions of bushels of the yellow fruit everywhere for miles and miles till the eye tired of seeing what I called an awful waste of nature’s products. The city is called the commercial center of the orange belt. It is a beautifully laid out city with semi-tropical plants growing everywhere, luxuriantly beautiful. The show takes up more than an acre of ground, and oranges were blended in the most gorgeous display in every conceivable figure. Oranges, lemons, grape fruit and their by-products by the millions.

The trip through the valley took me over the finest roads in the world. They could not be finer. I was more than interested to pass “Garrett and Company’s” vineyards, one of the homes of the Virginia Dare products. Mr. Garrett himself is an Enfield, N. C., man. The extracts are bound to be right if it is “Virginia Dare.”

What is said of any one of the southern counties may be well said of any other, except perhaps the “Imperial Valley County.” I did not go to that county, but from what I heard about the county it looks as if a special edict was issued from the maker of all the counties to do some special work on that county alone. It was the last county formed in the state, and its area is more than four thousand square miles. It is in the extreme southwest part of the state. The lay of the land, the soil itself, the climate, location, altitude make it the best place in the world for stock raising and fruit production. There are more turkeys grown in this one county than in other similar sections in the world.

I was very much impressed with the fine school houses and churches. No money or care seemed to be lacking in the construction of these important centers. Every one I saw in the country or city was decked with profusive growths of shrubbery and flowers. While I was in Spokane, the city claimed the lowest death rate per thousand of its populations. When I was in Seattle that city claimed the same thing. When I was in Tacoma they claimed they had the lowest death rate; when in Sacramento they claimed to have the lowest death rate. In San Francisco they claimed the lowest death rate; Oakland claimed the same; Los Angeles claimed the lowest also. When we were crossing the Tehachapi Mountains ten thousand feet elevation I saw a fine graveyard up further on the side of the hill, and I was surprised. They might have been soldiers killed in the war. One almost wonders why folks should ever die in such a beautiful country. Conditions are so good for living right along. Good churches, excellent schools, clean cities, perfect climate, all must contribute greatly to long life. They ought to be happy, but happiness cannot be bought with luxuries; it contributes more than anything else to long life when other conditions are good.

The city of Los Angeles is twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean, and I venture to predict that in less than twenty years the city will extend and include Venice, Santa Monica, Long Beach and all the little coast towns along the water front, and the largest ocean vessels will be doing business in the heart of the business section as they are in Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland. Their population will soon be in the millions. It is growing by leaps and bounds every day, every week and every month. Fourteen thousand people come there every year. The people are busy everywhere. They have the secret of getting a larger population. Create industrial interests and the folks follow. Good schools and good churches; a community in which there is compatibility between all classes and not hatred. These are the best drawing cards.

One does not travel many miles in California without asking questions. Many of the questions will have to be answered by history. Cortez, Juan Rodriguez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de Portola, Fray Junipero Serre are familiar names in its early history. The country was known as Alta and Baja, which was upper and lower California. It began in the extreme southern part of the state and went as far north as the foot of man could tread. The old maps show the southern part of the state as being a part of Mexico. It was sometimes called the land of the Heart’s Desire. To use the words of another it was in 1769, “That destiny marked Southern California for its own, ordering the fig and the vine to make soft the dessert wastes, lemon and orange bloom for the upland slopes, herds for a thousand hills, living water to make green the sun-browned land; and, last, not the dream of seven mythical cities of gold, but the bright reality of thrice seven times seven golden cities that now throb with the tides of commerce and the tread of countless feet.”

At the beginning of its history the King of Spain ordered that in order to make the country safe for Spain and its religion, that missions should be established. Under the orders of the great Catholic church fifteen or more missions were established—fifteen of them along the coast. My trip back to San Francisco, five hundred miles north, took me along the Pacific Coast in sight of many of these missions. We follow what was called the “Highway of the King.” Those we passed were San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, San Miguel, and Santa Clara. The southern part of the state especially owes a lot to these early missionaries. They gave harbor to the traveler, irrigated the land and started the early settlers and Indians to farming.

From San Francisco to Los Angeles along the coast is a country backed by mountains of great height and beauty with slopes and valleys surpassing any description. For hundreds of miles our train slipped right along the edge of the Pacific waters, sometimes forty or a hundred feet above these waters, sometimes nearer, then off on a hill top, then across an arm of the sea, then headlong toward the water as if to go right into it, only to swerve around some high hill and then out into some beautiful valley. You have to see it to appreciate it.

Passing San Fernando, Oxnard, Ventura, we come to Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara County. The county is mountainous and has four large valleys. The valleys are the Santa Ynez, Los Alamos, Lompoc, and Santa Maria. The last named valley is said to have four hundred square miles, and can support ten times its population. Mustard seed is the leading agricultural product in the county. The whole county is well adapted to all vegetables and fruits that are common to that part of the state. I saw many orchards of great size. It is said that three-fifths of the prunes and three-fourths of the apples grown in the state grow in these valleys adjacent to the coast. This is due to the fact that perhaps the rainfalls is greater than further inland. Printed matter on this section tell us that the products of this coast range are the following: beet sugar, wheat, barley, hay, garden seed, oil, coal, asphaltum, cement, lime, live stock, butter and cheese, fruits, berries, vegetables, olive oil, walnuts.

I saw great flocks of sheep, cattle and horses. Millions of wild ducks, and we were never out of sight of sea gulls. They are the scavengers on land and water. I was fortunate in meeting people here and there who could give me lots of the sort of information I wanted.

As our train rounded the coast of Santa Barbara we caught sight of the Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel. They may have been thirty miles to our left.

Passing Point Conception, a lighthouse here and there, a large open field in the actual making, or a sandhill thrown up in the past few months, crossing Santa Maria River, leaving Lompoc and Ynez Valleys behind, we came to San Louis Obispo. Great quantities of oil are delivered to this port for shipment. It is also the seat of the state polytechnic school. The rainfall here is very light, so that farming is not profitable. The western slopes of the mountains for nearly a hundred miles afford good grazing for cattle and sheep. The water is largely mist from the Pacific Ocean with a very low rainfall. At this point our train leaves the sight of the coast and we climb the Coastal Range, being pulled by three powerful steam engines up an elevation of great height, more than seven thousand feet, and head into the Salinas and Santa Clara Valley. Salinas Valley has an area of 500,000 acres and the two valleys are almost 150 miles in length and fifty miles wide. We head toward “Bishop Peak” no less than four times climbing this mountain. We go down into Monterey County and follow the Salina River till we get to Monterey Bay near Del Monte. Santa Cruz is our next stop. We pass the Lick Observatory. We enter Santa Clara Valley crossing the mountains by the same name. We also pass Stanford University. We leave San Mateo County on the left and we speed along. We pass San Jose. Dark covers us, but at Redwood City we come into sight of San Francisco Bay and thirty miles further we are in San Francisco again.

Five hundred miles are covered in about fourteen hours. The mountain ranges on both sides for several hundred miles, and the mountain on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other for several more hundred miles with an ever changing view of mountain inclines, rivers, valleys, irrigation projects here and there, the excitement of high elevation, crossing some divide, farming operations throughout the entire course, fruit orchards, vineyards, gardens, great flocks of sheep, cattle, etc., chateaux, villages, mining operations and oil wells. This is the panorama that simply bewitches the brain. It was such as this that the old colored preacher saw when he could no longer contain his emotions when he said, “My God, look at that Glory.” It is glory, and the man whose soul does not feel it is dead. Add to this the ocean scene with every angle the train makes, the steamers away out, the sunset behind these beautiful waters, and do you wonder that I have been dreaming this thing every night since I had the experience of it. It gets into your soul in some way. Some one has said, “Its all California from east to west, from north to south.” I traveled two thousand miles in the state alone in every direction. The inspiration is the same.

I spoke in one of the largest churches out there, heard some of the finest speakers in the world, saw some of the best shows, tramped over some of the orange, apple, fig, prune and berry orchards, bee and poultry yards. I visited soldiers’ homes, city parks, city museums and farms in the country. I visited some of the best schools in the West and Northwest, including the state universities where they are really doing things.

Our eyes are now set toward the east and home. We are at San Francisco. Before we leave here we must revert to the lower part of the state again. The city of Los Angeles gets its water from a distance of more than two hundred miles from the snow-capped slope of Mount Whitney. They are the highest mountains in the United States, except in Alaska. The aqueduct is the largest in the world. The reservoirs are located in the San Fernando Valley. The pipes taking this water from its source to its outlet are eight to ten feet in diameter. Forty miles of this water is run in open lined canals. The line was pointed out to me many miles out of Los Angeles by a fellow traveler who knew the history of its construction.

As one travels from north to south in this state and from east to west he is very much impressed with the great network of wires stretched everywhere, apparently reaching every farmhouse and factory. These are high-powered electric wires carrying power to the industrial centers and to the farms for light and power—for power more than light. Water has to be supplied to all the farms by irrigation. Where gravity does not do the work they must depend on pumps. The electric power is used to run the pumps. This power is generated by the mountain streams hundreds of miles away. The great power plants are largely owned by companies in the East. The irrigation projects, I presume, are the most wonderful in the world. I was advised that it cost about eight dollars an acre to get the canals into operation.

Another interest of great importance in the growth of a country is the public roads. The roads were universally good. I traveled several hundred miles over the public roads in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, and for the long stretches I never saw better roads.

Hollywood, which is really a part of the larger city, is a very pretty place. The streets are paved and there was not a shoddy nor a cheaply constructed house to be seen. I counted seven moving picture studios. I had no idea that these studios were built on so vast a scale. It seems that all the stars in the moving picture world have their studios here, and their fine homes—Charlie Chaplin, Douglass Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and others. Many of the great meat packers of Chicago, Omaha and Denver have million-dollar homes in or near this little suburb. The south side of Beverly Hills is covered with these expensive homes.

There are a number of these studios in Culver City. This is a small place about fifteen miles toward the Pacific from Los Angeles. The dominating genius of it is Mr. Harry Culver. Ten years ago it was not born, and today it has a population of about two thousand people. The little railroad station, the little homes, the well paved streets and business houses, all show signs of taste and industry. Here is where “Fatty Arbuckle” got his start, and his studio is still there as a reminder. Several boulevards and electric lines pass through the town from Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean, which is only five miles away. Venice, with a dozen other settlements along the coast for ten or more miles, is the Coney Island of Southern California. Street cars and boulevards give one ready access to every part of the beach. They have all the eating houses, cheap shows, swindling games and junk shops for the attractions.

The building lots in some of these little villages are sold under restrictions. I was curious to know the restrictions. Houses that are put on them must not cost less than twenty-five hundred dollars, and no lot shall be sold to any one except purely Anglo-Saxon—a fine opportunity for unanimity of spirit and exclusiveness if not tested under the state law by some ubiquitous spirit.

The problem of racial identity is a complex one in that country. I saw Mexicans who looked all the world like Negroes, and Negroes who looked all the world like Mexicans. Their language was the only distinguishing features, and in many cases the Negroes were better clad and better groomed. Negroes spoke the unadulterated English language. Their Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana or Texas previous environment may have given them more of the Southern brogue. The Mexicans have clung to their Spanish tongue or some broken dialect. Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Porto Ricans and others form another group. Then there is another group from northern Europe and southern Europe belonging to the white races, and all these units speak a language of their own and follow largely the customs of their country. I wondered who was fit and who could qualify under “The Restrictions.”

I will say nothing about Chicago, but let me start at Butte, Montana. From Butte, Montana, to Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, Los Angeles to the least city in the West there are all sorts of secret organizations and labor unions, selfish and otherwise, cliques and clans, to whom you must pay obeisance. Add to this the rankest Bolsheviki spirit, from the four ends of the earth, and you have a problem worth the attention of our best statesmen.

I have been trying to get away from San Francisco, but it is hard to leave a community of so inviting environment. I can only name a few places now that are strikingly full of interest. Here is the Golden Gate Park, over yonder a short distance the Presidio, a little further around on the bay the Art Palace. Here is where the exposition was held. Down on the beach are the Sutro baths and cliff houses. From this fine eminence I saw seven seals, some sleeping, some bathing, some growling. They were on the rock a few hundred feet off the beach. Rural paintings in the museums, depicting wild animal life in their natural setting with the mountain background, etc., were very real.

The Southern Pacific station, located between Third and Fourth streets, and the ferry at the foot of Market Street, or at the head possibly, are works of art. They are the last word on station building. Market Street has four electric lines, and it is the leading thoroughfare of the city. Practically all the other streets of the city run into it at some angle. Sixteen blocks from the ferry is the civic center. Here are located the city auditorium, which seats ten or twelve thousand people, the courthouse, one of the finest buildings in the state next to the capitol itself, the city library, and one of the high schools. These are circled about a square which has a large fountain of flowing water. A very large area of the city was burned when the earthquake was some years ago, but this has been rebuilt so well and completely that one would never know it. I went over most of this area.

I visited the University of California, which is located in Berkley, and had only time to go through the library and agricultural building. They have a campus of 264 acres and an enrollment of ten thousand students. They have a theater that seats ten thousand people. They have a tower 302 feet high built of white granite. In this tower is located the clock and chimes. They have in mind a large project for an athletic field and stadium. This will be located back of the college in the hills, which is the property of the college. Oakland is the San Francisco terminal of three trans-continental railroads. They are the Southern Pacific, the Western Pacific, and the Santa Fe.

We take the Western Pacific for Sacramento at 9 o’clock in the morning. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon we have made the trip of more than a hundred miles through the San Joaquin Valley and again into Sacramento Valley. We spend a part of two days here. The state capitol is a very fine building. The ground adjoining the building forms the finest park in the world. They have searched all the world to find trees and rare plants for this wonderful park. They have them from every known country and from every accessible community. Many of these trees were in full bloom the 28th of February when I was there. An officer of the grounds told me to find the keeper and he would give me all the cuttings I wanted, but unfortunately I could not find him.

The city is located in rather a flat country. It has not been a great many years, geologically, since this was all under water and a part of San Francisco Bay. The two large rivers intersecting this valley have done their work in transporting silt, sand and debris from the mountains so well that most of the community is inhabited. The periodical overflow of these rivers still gives the traveler an idea that it is a part of the bay. I saw nearly a hundred miles of it under water, when I wondered how the farmers got from the house to the barn.

We leave Sacramento at midnight on the Western Pacific Railroad for Salt Lake City, Utah. We pass Marysville, which we have already seen on our southern journey, Oroville a little further north, and we follow the Feather River and the Feather River Canyon. At daylight we find ourselves climbing the mountains again in snow several feet deep. The canyons are narrow and deep. The mountains above are beautiful, rugged. Vegetation and all sorts of timber come into sight again. The mountain streams are beautiful and clear. We arrive at Reno Junction about 10 o’clock in the morning. At Paxton we pass the little narrow gauge road leading into Indian Valley. The canyons look too narrow for another railroad, but just below us clinging to the rocks and the mountains the little road leads off into another mining section and through gorges that look impassable.

Of the more than two hundred stations along the way a great many of them are scarcely stopping places. A few are only places for the train crew to examine the cars. At Reno Junction, Nevada, we come into a country that is more open, and where the population is larger.

We cross Honey Valley, Winnemucca Valley, scale the Virginia Range, and come into Smoke Creek Desert, pass to the right of Granite Peak, and we come into Black Rock Desert. We pass what is called the Alkali Flats. This is a vast area of country with no vegetable growth of any sort. Nothing can grow on it. This reminds one of a very large bowl. We are moving along with great speed through the valley with the side of the bowl towering up at a tremendous height. We cross the Antelope Range in the northern part of Granite Spring Valley. A few miles further we come into the little town of Winnemucca. This is a railroad center and a cattle country.

We are in Humboldt County and follow Humbolt River. We have passed Winnemucca Peak, Black Butte, the Eugene Mountains, and other points of interest and beauty. It would tire the reader to follow us for the next several hundred miles through this tortuous river course, through large and small valleys, through mountain gorges, up the side of mountain ranges, over some of the highest peaks, under the tunnels and through great banks of snow. At Sulphur we passed several men and their horses with a big mountain lion they had just killed. The government pays twenty-five dollars for each lion killed. They are destructive to sheep. The Denver Sunday papers had the incident written up in the papers Sunday following the killing.

We cross the Desert Range at Wendover, Utah, and strike out for forty-eight miles through the Great Salt Lake Desert, leaving Grass Mountain Summit to our left, we enter another range of mountains to emerge near the south end of Salt Lake. I do not know the area of the Great Salt Lake Desert, but it is a very large area numbering perhaps several thousand square miles of country. Water and irrigation would do it no good. It looks like desolation carried to the nth degree. It must have been at some time a part of the Salt Lake. It supports absolutely no vegetation of any sort. It is a barren waste.

There is no other place in the world exactly like Salt Lake and Salt Lake City. The city is eighteen miles from the Lake. One cannot drown in the water of this lake because of the density of the water.

The city is one of the best laid out in the world. The mentioning of Salt Lake City suggests to you at once the Mormon Church. This church was organized in 1830 in the state of New York. The Mormons located later in Kirkland, Ohio, and there erected a temple which is said to be standing today. The church was persecuted, and Joseph Smith was martyred. It was moved from place to place, and finally Brigham Young, its President, had a vision. He saw a land in the far west, and was directed to go to this remote country, far away from persecutions, where the colony might worship in their own way. They started out for this far country, and were many months making the trip. The party was composed of 143 men, three women and two children, and three colored servants. The names of all are on the fine monument at the head of the principal street of the city.

When they had reached the place the President said, “This is the place I saw in the vision.” The men were advised to go to work at once on small farms. The first year they grew a good crop by irrigation, but about the time the crops matured the cricket’s came and almost ate the crops. The sea gulls from the lake eighteen miles away came and ate up the crickets. This saved the pioneers. They have in the sacred square a monument to the sea gulls. It is known as the Temple Square. The temple is the most unique building in the world. It was forty years in construction, and it cost a million dollars. It is built of native gray granite which was hauled by teams for more than twenty miles away.

The Tabernacle standing in the same square is also a unique construction. It will seat ten thousand people and has in it one of the best organs made. The building is a “long, oval shape, dome top. The hearing qualities are perfect. One may drop a pin in a hat or on the floor, and two hundred feet away, at the other end of the auditorium, hear it fall.” No nails are used in its construction. Pillows support the arches, while wooden pegs tied with raw hide support the individual pieces.

The gray stone Assembly Hall, where relics and art collections are kept, is also in the same square.

One should visit the state capital. It is located on one of the nearby mountains. This mountain is at the head of several streets and had an electric line running around it and to the top. The building itself is one of the finest in the country. It has large granite supports measuring three or four feet in diameter, twenty or more feet in length, of Georgia marble, polished to a finish, each weighing twenty-five thousand pounds. These great pillows were brought from Georgia on forty-six cars.

One could spend weeks in this fine building studying the art of it and the great display of relics of the early pioneer life. Several Mormon sisters have charge of the collections, and they are very interesting as well as very entertaining.

We leave Salt Lake City, and forty miles east we come to Provo. We are more than four thousand feet in elevation. It is called the “Garden City.” It is near the Wasatch Mountains. We pass through the Provo Canyons. This is unlike anything else we have seen. We climb the mountains overlooking a most beautiful valley off to the left with a very fine stream said to contain trout. There are fine homes and orchards and many flocks of sheep and cattle. There is some mining a few miles across the valley on the opposite mountain side.

A railroad stretches across the valley to connect with this mine from the main line. A few apple orchards. Some fine red barns. The meadows evidently afford a great deal of hay. Hundreds of stacks of hay, as green as if just cut, dotted the valley. We are in several feet of snow and being drawn by several massive steam engines. Up, up, up we go till we reach Soldiers’ Summit, seven thousand and four hundred feet high. Your heart begins to beat a little faster, some one has the headache, another has bleeding of the nose. If you have slept all the way through the valley and up the mountains you will begin to wake up when you reach this high elevation. Unless your heart is seriously affected you do not need to worry, for you are in this elevation only a few minutes, when you begin to drop to normal altitude for these parts. The snow is about six feet deep and sparkling. The air is fine and pure, and your mouth grows dry for some of the crystal liquid you have just passed. It comes from crags and crevices for more than a half mile above you, scarcely missing the sides of your train as it passes its narrow channel.

A crowd of a dozen or more school girls get on the train. They are all the world like our own girls, only they were white, every one of them. They sang songs, made speeches, moved from place to place on the train, recited their lessons, talked kindly of their teachers and their fellows, of the loved ones they have left behind for a few months—they were just school girls, that was all. The tourists, including my lonely self, were glad to have this merry bunch—this innovation to break the monotony. They leave us at Green River, and we settle down again to our usual repose when we are soon disturbed by the news butcher saying, “The mountain ahead is one-half mile high, the canyon ten feet wide, just wide enough for the train to pass.” “It is Castle Gate.” The walls of the red stone stand up like the walls of a sixty-story sky-scraper. On both sides these walls tower up till your neck tires looking up at them.

Here the engineers have defied nature. You follow the river and the canyon, sometimes on this side, sometimes on that side, rising and falling in elevation till you reach Mack, near the state line of Colorado at an elevation of four thousand and five feet. You pass through a valley widening out from a ten-foot gorge to forty or fifty miles, and absolutely fenced all around by these massive walls for fifty or more miles as effectively as if done by the master hand of some giant. We follow Hog Back Canyon and a tributary of the Colorado River. We arrive at Glenwood Hot Springs at 10:30 at night, four hundred miles from Salt Lake City in an elevation of five thousand and seven hundred feet. We stop here for the night and take the 6 a. m. train the next morning for Denver.

We are on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. We pass up the Colorado River Canyon. The road is tortuous, the stream abounds like the waters of “Galore,” the mountain crags are high and precipitous, every foot has tested the skill of the engineer. It is wonderful. We go through Tennessee Pass, sight Mount Jackson toward the west. Mount Elbert to the left more than fourteen thousand feet high is seen. We leave Readville to the left and pass through the richest mining region in the world. Georgetown, Red Cliff, Fair Play, Platt Ranch, Buena Vista, Cripple Creek, Anaconda Goldfield. All these are centers of mining interests. They abound in gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, etc. We come south from Glenwood Springs to Salida nearly a hundred miles and into the Arkansas River Valley and follow this river to Florence and Pueblo.

It will be remembered that in the summer of 1921 there was a cloudburst in that section of the country, and Pueblo was in the midst of the washout. Hundreds of lives and millions of dollars worth of property were lost. The valley still shows great evidence of that destruction everywhere you look. This was particularly true of the city itself. I stood under the pier of their fine station, and the high water mark was two feet above my head. We are seven hundred miles from Salt Lake City and still seventy-five miles from Denver. We are at Colorado Springs. Denver is our destination for the night. As we leave Cannon City and Florence we sight to our north perhaps a hundred miles Pike’s Peak. This is early in the afternoon, and we do not lose sight of that majestic wonder of the world until we have passed Denver for almost another hundred miles.