If one wishes to stop within the city of San Diego, he will find the U. S. Grant Hotel equal to the best metropolitan hostelries and when he comes to settle his bill, will also learn that the best metropolitan establishments "have nothing on" the Grant in the way of stiff charges. It is a huge, concrete structure—"absolutely fire-proof," of course—and its interior appointments and furnishings are in keeping with its imposing exterior. It is justly the pride of San Diego and, despite the marvelous growth of the town, it will be long before it outgrows this magnificent hotel.
There is much for the tourist stranger to see about San Diego—the oldest settlement of the white man in California. The motor car affords ideal means for covering the surrounding country in the shortest time and with the assistance of the excellent maps of the Auto Club of Southern California, one can easily locate the points of interest in the immediate vicinity outside the limits of the city.
The old mission will usually be the first objective, and more especially it appeals to ourselves, who have already determined to traverse the entire length of the King's Highway to visit all the decaying monuments to the work of the zealous Franciscan padres. It has a special significance as the earliest Spanish settlement in California and as the beginning of a movement that has widely influenced the history and architecture of the state. The story of its founding I have already told in brief; its history in a general way was much the same as that of San Gabriel. Our outline of the mission play in a preceding chapter gives a true conception of its earliest days; owing to the distrust of the natives it was long before converts were made in considerable numbers. The region about was well peopled, but only seventy-one converts had been secured by 1774, six years after Serra's landing. A year later the mission was attacked by a horde of savages, variously estimated at from five to eight hundred, who burned the rude brush-roofed building to the ground and murdered Father Jayme, one of the priests. When news of the disaster reached Father Serra, who had gone northward to Monterey, he rejoiced in the martyrdom of his friend. "God be praised!" he cried. "The soil is now watered," thus accepting the calamity as a presage of victory to come. The troubles with the natives continued until 1779, when they were pacified by some of their number being made officials in the society, Alcades and Regidores, as they were styled. These dignitaries administered justice to their own people under the direction of the padres and from this time the progress of the mission was rapid. In 1800 it was the most populous of the missions, its neophytes numbering fifteen hundred and twenty-three. More substantial buildings had been erected and an extensive scheme of irrigation had been begun, remains of which astonish the beholder to-day. The great dam is in a gorge about three miles above the mission. It was built of gray granite twelve feet thick and stands as firm and solid as ever, though it is now nearly filled with sand.
The mission's prosperity continued, with occasional interruptions on account of differences with the natives, until the secularization in 1833. After this the Indians were gradually scattered and were decimated in frequent clashes with the Spanish soldiers. Eleven years later an official report showed but one hundred natives connected with the mission as against more than fifteen hundred in its palmy days—a fact which needs no elucidation to show the results of Mexican confiscation. The buildings were reported by a United States officer to be "in good preservation" in 1852, and were then occupied by American troops.
To-day only the "fachada" of the old church remains. It stands on a hillside about five miles northeast of the city and overlooks the beautiful valley of the San Diego River. The avenue leading to it from the main road passes between long rows of eucalyptus trees and the ruin itself presents a picturesque effect in its setting of palms and black and silver-gray olives. A large dormitory near by houses several priests, who courteously receive the visitor and tell him the story of the mission. There is little to show, but one who is interested in the romantic history of the Golden State will find himself loath to leave the time-mellowed fragment of, perhaps, her most historic building. And his reveries will be saddened by the thought that the precious old structure is rapidly falling into decay, which will mean its ultimate extinction unless energetic measures are adopted to restore and protect it. Surely the earliest relic of the beginning of civilization on our great Pacific Coast is deserving of loving and conscientious care.
On our return to the city we left the main highway a short distance from the mission and pursued a mountain road to Lakeside Inn, then a much-advertised resort. This road—a mere shelf cut in the side of the hills—closely follows the course of the San Diego River, usually far above it, with a cliff-like declivity at the side. It is quite narrow in places and there are many sharp turns around abrupt corners—a road not altogether conducive to peace of mind in nervous people. The scenery, however, makes the trip worth while—the river boiling over its boulder-strewn bed and the wooded hills on every hand combining to make a wild but inspiring picture.
The inn was an immense wooden structure, since destroyed by fire. Handsome grounds did much to make up for the rather shabby appearance of the building. The lake was an artificial pond—about the only kind of lake to be found in the vicinity of San Diego. The excellent dinner was the strong point in the Lakeside's favor, and this was doubtless the attraction which brought several cars besides our own, as nearly all left shortly after the meal. We lounged about the grounds for awhile and then followed suit, taking a different road—by the way of El Cajon and La Mesa—an easier though less spectacular route than that by which we came.
This passes Grosmont, a great conical hill some twelve hundred feet high, and a well-engineered roadway leads to the summit. Of course we must make the ascent, though the steep appearance of the grades caused the occupants of the rear seat some uneasiness. The ascent did not prove so difficult as we anticipated at first glance, though the pitch just before one comes to the summit is enough to worry any careful driver a little. The view from the hill is advertised as "the grandest panorama in the world; one that simply beggars description," and "Fighting Bob" Evans is quoted as having said, "Of all the beautiful views in the world, give me Grosmont; nothing that I have ever seen can beat it." It may have been that the bluff admiral climbed Grosmont after an extended voyage at sea and any land was bound to look good to him. Lillian Russell, the actress, is quoted by the guide-book in a similar strain, but while Lillian is an accepted authority on personal pulchritude, I do not know that she can claim the same distinction with reference to scenic beauty. In any event, while the view from Grosmont is truly grand and inspiring, I am very sure that we saw many nobler ones from California mountain peaks. Indeed, we saw one still more glorious the next day—of which more anon. The view, however, is well worth the climb to anyone fond of panoramas and free from nervous qualms on mountain roads.
Of course everyone who comes to San Diego must see the Coronado, whose pointed red towers have become familiar everywhere through extensive advertising and whose claim as the "largest resort hotel in the world" has not been disputed, so far as I know. It is situated on the northern point of the long strip of sand that shuts in the waters of San Diego Bay and which widens to several hundred yards, affording extensive grounds for the hotel as well as sites for numerous private residences and a small village. It may be reached by ferry from the city or one may drive around the bay—a distance of twenty-one miles, and when we undertook it a very rough road for the greater part of the way. The drive is not very interesting; the shore is flat, and there is little opportunity to get a view of the bay. It is the kind of trip that one cares to make but once, and on subsequent visits to Coronado we crossed by the ferry, which carried our car cheaply and satisfactorily.
The "season" having passed, we experienced no difficulty in getting accommodations at the Coronado, not always easy to do "off hand" in the winter months. The rates glibly quoted by the genial clerk jarred us a little but we consoled ourselves with the reflection that we wouldn't pay them for a very lengthy period. That was before the war, however, and in retrospect the figures do not loom so large by any means!
Our rooms were worth the money, however; they were large and airy; the big casement windows opened on one side upon the sunset sweep of the Pacific, and on the other we came into a corridor overlooking the tropic beauty of the great court. The Coronado is on such a vast scale that it takes one some time to get his bearings, and though the hotel can accommodate upwards of a thousand guests at a time, the public rooms and grounds never seem crowded. Its most distinctive interior feature is the great circular ball-room, perhaps two hundred feet in diameter, and covered by an open-beamed pavilion roof. But the interior is of less consequence to the average Eastern guest than the outside surroundings—the climate of eternal unchanging summer, the tropical foliage and flowers, and the never-ending roll of the blue ocean on the long sandy beach. Here is the most equable temperature in the United States, if not in the world, the winter mean being fifty-six degrees and the summer sixty-eight. Frost has never been known on the little peninsula; even the freeze of 1913 did not touch it. It is not strange, then, that it glows with the brilliant color of numberless flower-beds and that almost every variety of these is shown in the collection of many hundreds in the Coronado court. Here, too, is one of those delightful features of Southern California, an open-air aviary, where hundreds of songsters and birds of brilliant plumage are given practical freedom in a great cage. There are several miles of fine driveways about the hotel and village, and one can explore the place in a short time by motor. He will learn a fact that many people do not know—that the hotel is not all of Coronado, by any means. Here is a good-sized village with many handsome residences. There are also several cheaper lodging-houses and one can live as economically as he chooses in the "tent city" during the season.
Coronado would never appeal to such nomads as ourselves as a place to stay for any length of time—even forgetting the "freight," if we were able to be so happily oblivious to a matter of such moment to us. After a saunter about the grounds, indescribably glorious in the tempered sunlight, and a drive about the village, we were ready for the road again. Like nearly every stranger who comes to San Diego, we were hankering for an excursion into Old Mexico—just to be able to declare we had been there—and the short jaunt to Tia Juana served this very useful purpose. The trip was doubly sensational since Tia Juana had recently been the seat of genuine war, and you could see bullet holes in the wretched little hovels. It was even guarded by a "fort," which chanced to be deserted at the time of our incursion. The village lies only two or three miles across the border-line, beyond which the road was simply execrable. It meandered in an aimless fashion across the wide plain and was deep with dust and full of chuck-holes that wrenched the car unmercifully. And after we arrived we found nothing but a scattered hamlet made up of souvenir stores, saloons, and a few poor little cottages. Evidently the place depends for its existence on the troops of tourists from across the border, and Tia Juana—which, being interpreted, means "Aunt Jane"—welcomes them as cordially as her limited means permit.
While the ladies ransacked the counters of the souvenir store for bargains—principally, no doubt, for the satisfaction of carrying a little "contraband" over the border—we endeavored to interview some of the native loafers on the status of the revolution, but got only a "No sabe" for our pains. A few minutes of Tia Juana will generally satisfy the most ardent tourist and we were not long in turning the "Forty" U. S.-ward. The customs official waved us a nonchalant salute—he did not even give us the courtesy of a cursory glance into the car; evidently he knew that one would find nothing in Tia Juana worth smuggling into the country. We bade farewell to the land of the greaser with a feeling of double satisfaction; we had been in Mexico—quite as far as we cared to go under conditions then existing—and we were glad to get off the abominable road.
A vast change has come over the once stupid and harmless Tia Juana since the advent of the prohibition laws. As might be expected, it affords an easily reached and very welcome oasis for bibulously inclined tourists from the United States, hundreds of whom daily cross the border to enjoy their "personal freedom" in the now lively town. Not only does liquor flow freely there, but gambling, race-track betting and other still worse vices flourish unchecked. A vigorous agitation is being made in San Diego—which is used as a rendezvous by a host of undesirable individuals connected with the Tia Juana resorts—to restrict greatly the issuing of passports, without which one can not cross the border. The new Mexican government has also promised to make an effort to suppress the rampant vice in the town, but little in this direction has been accomplished at the present writing.
No one will wish to leave San Diego without a visit to the Old Town, for here is the identical spot where Father Serra first landed and began his work of converting and civilizing the natives. Here was really the first mission, though afterwards it was removed to the site which we had already visited. Here General Fremont hoisted the stars and stripes in 1846—less than a century after Serra's coming. Here is the old church with its mission bells brought from Spain in 1802; the earliest palm trees in the state; the old graveyard, with its pathetic wooden headboards; the first brick house in California (another may also be seen in Monterey); the foundation of the huge Catholic church, projected many years ago but never completed; and the old jail "built by the original California grafter," as the prospectus of the enterprising proprietor of "Ramona's Wedding Place" declares.
The Old Town adjoins the city just where the Los Angeles road leaves the bay for the north. Perhaps this is not strictly correct, for the limits of San Diego extend northward nearly to Del Mar, taking in a vast scope of thinly populated country which no doubt the enthusiastic San Diegans expect to be converted into solid city blocks before long. There are many ancient adobe houses in the Old Town, the most notable of which is the Estudillo Mansion, popularly known as Ramona's Wedding Place. It was doubtless the house that Mrs. Jackson had in mind when she brought her Indian hero and his bride to old San Diego after their flight from Temecula, where they had expected to be married. This is, of course, purely fictional, but the house is an excellent type of the ancient Spanish residence of the better class. It was burned in 1872, but the solid adobe walls still stood and a few years ago the house was restored. It is now a museum and curio store, and the proprietor is an enthusiastic antiquarian and an authority on mission history. The house covers nearly a city block; it is built in the shape of a hollow square, open on one side, and around the interior runs a wide veranda surrounding a court. This is beautiful with flowers and shrubbery and to one side is a cactus garden containing nearly every known species of this strange plant. The collection of paintings, antique furniture, and other relics relating to early days in California is worth seeing and one can learn something of the history and romance of the missions from the hourly lecture delivered by the proprietor. He will also take pleasure in telling you about the Old Town and his experience with the Indians, from whom he purchases a large part of his baskets, silver trinkets, and other articles in his shop. One can easily put in an hour here, and if time does not press, the garden is a pleasant lounging-place for a longer period.
A motor tour of San Diego must surely include the drive over the splendid new boulevard that follows the sinuous length of Point Loma to the old lighthouse standing on the bold headland which rises at the northern entrance of the harbor. It is a dilapidated stone structure, only twenty or thirty feet high, but from the little tower we saw one of the most glorious views of all those we witnessed during our thirty thousand miles of motoring in California. The scene from Grosmont is a magnificent one, but it lacks the variety and color of the Point Loma panorama. Here ocean, bay, green hills with lemon and olive groves, and distant snow-clad mountains combine to form a scene of beauty and grandeur that it is not easy to match elsewhere. Almost at our feet swell the inrolling waves of the violet-blue Pacific, which stretches away like a symbol of infinity to the pale sapphire sky that meets it to-day with a sharply defined line. The harbor is a strange patchwork of color; gleaming blues—from sapphire to indigo—and emerald-greens nearer the shores, flecked here and there with spots of purple, and the whole diversified with craft of every description. Across the strait is a wide, barren sand flat and a little farther the red towers of Coronado in its groves of palm trees. Beyond the harbor the city spreads out, wonderfully distinct in the clear sunlight that pours down upon it. Still farther lie the green hills and beyond these the mountains, growing dimmer and dimmer with each successive range. Here and there in the distance, perhaps a hundred miles away, a white peak gleams through the soft blue haze. Nearer at hand you see the rugged contour of Point Loma itself; the tall slender shaft that marks the graves of the victims of the explosion on the Cruiser Bennington a few years ago; the oriental towers of the Theosophical Institute, and down along the water line the guns and defenses of Fort Rosecrans. It is a scene that we contemplate long and rapturously and which on a later trip to San Diego we go to view again.
As we returned to the city some evil genius directed our attention to a sign-board pointing to a little byroad down the cliff but a short distance from the lighthouse and bearing the legend, "To Fort Rosecrans." We wished to see Fort Rosecrans and decided to avail ourselves of the handy short cut so opportunely discovered, and soon found ourselves descending the roughest, steepest grade we found in California. A mere shelf scarce six inches wider than our car ran along the edge of the cliff, which seemingly dropped sheer to the ocean far beneath. The grade must have been at least twenty-five per cent and the road zigzagged downward around the corners that brought our front wheels to the verge of the precipice at the turns. Both brakes and the engine were brought into service and as a matter of precaution the ladies dismounted from the car. We should have been only too glad to retreat, but could do nothing but keep on, creeping downward, hoping fervently that we might not meet a vehicle on the way. At last the road came out on the beach and we drove into the main street of the village near the fort, where people stared at us in a fashion indicating that few automobiles came by the route we had followed.
There was little to see at Fort Rosecrans and our nerves were too badly shaken to leave room for curiosity, anyway. We went on into the main highway, resolving to be more cautious about short cuts in the future. When we came again to Point Loma some months later, the sign that led us down the cliff had been replaced with a mandate of "Closed to autos," and we wondered if we were responsible for the change!
On this latter trip we paused before the Roman gateway of the Theosophical Institute and asked permission to enter, which was readily given for a small consideration. Autos are not admitted to the grounds and we left our car by the roadside, making the ascent on foot. As we came near the mysterious, glass-domed building, we met a studious young man in a light tan uniform and broad-brimmed felt hat, apparently deeply absorbed in a book as he paced to and fro. To our inquiries for a guide he responded courteously, "I will serve you with pleasure myself," and conducted us about the magnificent grounds. In the meanwhile he took occasion to enlighten us on the aims and tenets of his cult.
"Many people," he said, "think that there is something occult or mysterious about the Institute, but the fact is that it is a school open to everyone under twenty-one who will comply with our regulations. We prefer to take young children and train them from the very beginning, which our experienced teachers and nurses can do better than their mothers," but noticing the looks of indignant protest which came to the faces of the ladies of our party, he quickly qualified his statement with—"perhaps."
"The tuition," he went on, "is a thousand dollars per year, which includes everything—and the pupils never leave these grounds until they have completed our course. Thorough education is our first object; doctrine is secondary—we do not even ask them to accept our tenets unless they wish to do so. There is nothing secret or occult about our institution; we do not keep the public from our buildings because of anything mysterious there, but because sightseers would interfere with the work. We have more than three hundred children in the schools at present and in some cases their parents live in the houses on our grounds. No, it is not a 'community' in any sense of the word, and the statement often made that people who join with us must give us their property and surrender themselves to our control, is absolutely false. There is no time to tell you of our peculiar teachings, but you will receive booklets at the gate-house that will enlighten you on them. Reincarnation, as you would style it, is one of our fundamentals and Katherine Tingley, who founded the Institute, is from our point of view the spiritual successor of the famous Russian teacher, Madame Blavatsky." I was surprised to learn later that the foundress of the cult, despite her obviously Russian name, was an English woman by birth. She was a famous world traveler and on one of her journeys married a Russian nobleman. One must admit, I am bound to say, that her published works show an astounding amount of research and curious knowledge, whatever we may think of her doctrines.
Regardless of our attitude on Mrs. Tingley's teachings and beliefs, one can not question her soundness and success in a business and aesthetic way. Everything about the establishment speaks of prosperity and it would be hard to imagine more beautiful and pleasing surroundings. The buildings are mainly of oriental design, solidly built and fitting well into the general plan of the grounds. Among them is a beautiful Greek theatre where plays open to the public are sometimes given. The grounds evince the skill of the landscape-gardener and scrupulous care on part of those who have them in charge. Flowers bloom in profusion and a double row of palms runs along the seaward edge of the hill. Through these gleams the calm deep blue of the ocean, which seldom changes, for there are but few stormy or gloomy days on Point Loma. The outlook to the landward is much the same as we beheld from the old lighthouse—a panorama of green hills and mountain ranges, stretching away to the snow-capped peaks of San Bernardino, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant. It is a glorious spot, well calculated to lend glamour to the—to our notion—fantastical doctrines of the cult which makes its headquarters here. Indeed, my friend—whose religious ideas are in a somewhat fluid state—was deeply impressed and after reading the pamphlets which we received on leaving, intimated that the doctrines of Theosophy looked mighty good to him—though I believe this is as far as he ever got in the faith.