Show it 6 F trip on the southern pacific railroad written review for the by M H mining E jones A M N 3 ik tz P q amm 04 L q n it living in this central region of the funded by sagebrush and desert jugh they en enjoy joy the beautiful athey lip wasatch mountains and the ad d unequaled sunsets over u reat great salt lake have no conception of the beauty and attractiveness of t that hat dreamy country which lies along the pacific coast and which is so different from ours that only seeing it can convince a person of its existence starting from portland oregon and going up the beautiful willamette valley one feels as dhouge he were in a strange country so different are the climate and surroundings from what li he has been accustomed to if he goes out in the garden he f finds roses larger than peonies some oi them six inches I 1 across growing on 11 little atle bushes so small and so slender that the weight of the roses almost breaks them down he finds a climate overcharged over charged with moisture and yet with ith cloud cloudless clouded ld ss skies in the summer time sad and EL a dreamy atmosphere that constantly reminds him of the ocean the country along the route is heavily timbered except where it has been cut off rd arid made into cultivated fields and dotted alth large and prosperous towns the peo ji pie pe belong to that bright and intelligent aclus clus ass with which one is so familiar in toe the central mississippi region they are aggressive gres sive wideawake wide awake and businesslike and are evidently very prosperous and contented As we reach the upper limits of the lowlands we leave the navigable water behind and come out into a country perhaps less wooded but far mare more beautiful which is devoted to grain and fruit raising there is no more beautiful region in all V 0 4 LN L N 7 orange grove southern california that beautiful country than the section around ashland at the head of the willamette valley from this point we soon pass over a low and attractive range of hills through throng h which the railroad goes in many curves and with monstrous cuts fills and trestles which are very interesting to one unfamiliar with mountain scenery we continue on for many miles through a wooded country whose chief industry is lumbering with some in mining ining and much stock raising until we see the snowy point before us this is a rising of 0 mt shasta ft 15 volcanic cone standing out all by itself in the midst of an elevated country and piercing the sky like a need needle le its summit is always white with snow and its base is shrouded with the deepest green of vast evergreen forests the ascent of this mountain is one of the most interesting things of the entire trip for it winds in and out around the volcanic hills going higher and higher until ai at length we pass avei over the divide which separates the oregon drainage from that thai of the sacramento amidst immense pine forests which have for many years been the scene of extensive lumbering operations from the crest we rapidly descend dencen over a still more beautiful country passing by the shasta springs which are comparable only in their beauty to the fern claid da hills of tropical mountains there is a series of roaring cascades coming down from the mountain side silvery and white with water rapidly passing into spray spra y and the borders closely set with multitudes of ferns bems and flowers strange as it may seem in the midst of these cold streams we find a spring of the most delicious mineral water entirely independent of the cascades but rising amongst them the natural scenery has been beautified by the railroad company to such an extent tont that there ig no more attractive place in the west than shasta springs the train keeps windi winding ng down the hills through scenery scarcely less beautiful than what we have passed the evergreen trees rapidly changing to oaks and this again to shrubbery until before we hardly know it we have left the mountains behind and shot out into the head of the sacramento valley and into a climate where live oaks and similar tropical trees tree s abound it is true this region lies far to the north of what is commonly understood as the tropics but it is nevertheless a truly tropical climate with tropical vegetation on the western side of us there is an endless series of rolling hills covered with that yellowish brown grass which is so peculiar to the pacific coast known as wild cats and with scattered trees in places that is many plows arranged together so that they turn up the ground for many feet in width at a swath making it possible to cultivate as many square miles in california as it is possible for an ordinary farmer to cultivate acres in utah again when the crops have reached their maturity which was just at the time the whole country we were passing through was golden with waving grain and the farmers had just begun to harvest the crop we saw teams rods in length consisting sometimes of twenty to thirty horses fastened together in a long string hauling an immense machine which was a combined reaper and thresher and which instead of leaving bundles ol 01 t grain as we had been accustomed to see in the east tied up and thickly scattered over the ground left nothing but straw in their track ai A 4 flower garden near san jose these hills are mostly cultivated because their slopes are so gentle that they can be readily plowed As we go f urther further along the valley of the sacramento widens out until we can scarcely see from one side to the other the limits of the plain which it forms here are farms of such vast extent that it puzzles the traveler going rapidly through them on the railroad train to determine where theone the one ends and the other begins for many of them cover miles and miles of territory one is still more astonished at the means which the farmers use for cultivating these farms the crops are chiefly cereals such as wheat oats rye and barley and instead instead of plowing the ground in the ille old fashioned way with a team of horses and a plow and a man behind they are cultivated by tract traction lon engines hauling what are called gang plows and a long row of sacks filled with threshed grain ready for the market these machines as they passed over the ground cut swaths sometimes over a rod in width and the grain fields were so long that we could not see one end from the other interesting and attractive as the cultivated land was to us and the peculiar method of harvesting the crops the blue foothills foot hills to the east of us which formed a part of the great sierra nevada range were still more interesting for here from the time we passed shasta peak we could see the evidences of very extensive mining operations from the base of the foothills foot hills almost to the crest of the range as we made excursions cur along tile the canyons one can hardly estimate the amount of mineral which has been taken out in the last fifty years from i the sierra nevada mountains there were miles and miles of the way where there W was as s atto not a single canyon that did not have 8 some om e t kind of apparatus for the purpose of placer s mining there were many places where the I 1 0 soil had been washed away to bedrock over I 1 ii acres and acres of ground there were many r any places where the miners in searching for placer gold had uncovered the source from which these minerals came and had devel aped extensive quartz mines and had equip J ped them with excellent machinery and io good mills for i reducing educing the ores for eral hundred miles along the foothills foot hills we ig were never out of sight and placer mining from mt shasta to beyond sacramento which lies considerably north of the middle I 1 of the mineralized region A person is not accustomed to thinking or orange groves vineyards vineyard sand and orchards in connection with mining operations and yet this is what we find all along the sierra devadas Ve vadas we hardly reach the limit of the orange at auburn before we see the sign signal of extensive placer operations alon rivers perhaps one of the most 1 places that we visited cited on the ent enta the land of placer mining was called dutch flat this lies far fa foothills in what was once a ge gen n country but which now has beep been very deeply by ille the americana American a aal ers at intervals in ra canyons in addition th the early fo their tremendous hydraulic plants have re moved move d an amount agouni of ground which an ordinary man would consider impossible for human beings to giove move large gulches have been produced by human agency severa hundred feet in depth for the purpose of securing placer gold here and there in many places we can still see ade great pipe lines carrying large bodies of water under heavy pressure winding in and out among the hills which are now used both for the purpose of irrigating the orchards and fields which are thickly scattered over this country and also for hydraulic purposes in the valleys below the ground is sparsely covered with beautiful pine trees and other shrubbery which makes it an interesting and attractive region to live in one is struck by the very large amount of fruit which comes from all these settlements scattered through the mountains carload after carload goes out of each town and our train was often delayed several minutes in the attempt to fill the express car with shipments of fruit tee people bear evidences of prosperity and ease which makes a person envy them in passing southward from sacramento we now follow a valley which seems to be even wider than that part of the sacramento which we have been following whose western limit is scarcely discernible in the haze that comes up from the golden gate the land is almost level and is under the highest state of cultivation in every direction as far as the eye can reach large towns follow one another in rapid succession lon and the whole country between is filled either with vineyards j yards orchards or fields of grain after traveling many miles we find that this is the famous san joaquin aquin valley so wide at its lower end tha chaft the sierras on the one side and the coast range on the other are scarcely visible for hundreds of miles we follow along this valley with tropical climate and tropical fruits its and find it getting warmer and warmer the further we go at length we reach its southern end near bakersfield and find ourselves in a region where irrigation is as extensively em aloyed as in utah in addition the country is dotted in every direction on the east by the pyramidal stacks slacks of oil rigs and the immense tanks filled with crude oil bear evidence of the mineral wealth of this region after we leave bakersfield the railroad again ascends ever cyer the famous tehachapi pass where after a most delightful ride through a long canyon and over steep hills we pass around a loop and through a tun L 40 4 V i M t lumber redion of southern california nel going out on the other side near the summit and soon afterwards pass over and down toward mojave which lies in the desert of deserts which extends apparently unlimited for hundreds of miles until it passes beyond the colorado river on the east here the fantastic shapes of the wild yuccas make one almost feel as ans though he had been translated to the desert plains of africa and yet it is only a few hours ride from civilization it is but a short time after we leave mojave and that most intensely hot and disagreeable region that we pass downward again into the cultivated regions of the orange groves and orchards of gou southern thern california it is not long afterward before wo come out into the country around los angeles which is green as far as the eye can n see with the foliage of orange groves and d we occasionally see the trees spotted ith yellow fruit though long out of season los angeles is undoubted undoubtedly adly the queen CRY ty of the southwest and richly deserves its reputation as the greatest winter resort la 14 the world it was a revelation to us to travel sixty miles on the railroad from los angeles toward san bernardino and to be nearly the entire distance in the midst of what seemed to be a continuous orange grove here we found palm palin trees growing some of them one hundred feet high and in addition the towns were beautified by many different kinds of palms entirely foreign to a resident of the great basin to us it seemed like a dreamland so strange and peculiar was the vegetation many odthe of the houses are covered with the most beautiful purple vines and by climbing rose bushes which perhaps had better belter be called rose trees everything bore the mark of the most careful cultivation and attention and the whole region seemed more like a garden spot than anything else of all the beautiful places we have ever seen pasadena which is scarcely more than a suburb of los angeles was the best to us it has always seemed like dikea a paradise and never more than at this time one sometimes wonders if the people have any conception of the pil privileges u under which they live and yet in talking with them he finds they are all thoroughly imbued with the idea that there is no place in the world like pasadena and there is no climate like that of southern Calif california orLIa |