The How and Why Library/Geography/Section XIII
XII. Alice in Wonderland
Alice never forgot the time she went to California with her grandpapa. Grandpapa was going back to California. The first time he went in an ox-wagon, when he was ten years old. Now he was going back from New York City in a palace car. Grandpapa was seventy and Alice was ten. She was young enough to be foolish, and grandpapa was old enough to forget that he had ever been wise. So they went to California together, and they had a perfectly grand time.
Part of the fun came from grandpapa's pretending. You know a great many grown people can't pretend a bit. Grandpapa pretended that everything would look as it did when he was a boy. He told Alice Chicago would be a little city of twenty thousand people. He asked the colored porter of the car how big it was.
" 'Bout two million people, suh!"
"My, my, how it has grown since I was a boy," said grandpapa. Alice laughed and grandpapa's eyes twinkled. He pretended to be surprised all the time. Om-a-ha was a big city too. There was no fort, no fur-trading post, no Indians—there were no buffaloes. The grassy plains were covered with wheat and cornfields and busy towns. In front of the mountain wall was Denver, a city of more than one hundred thousand people.
The iron horse climbed right over the mountains. The railroad looped around the curves. It ran along the edges of cliffs, and through long snow-shed tunnels. "Now," said grandpapa, "you'll see bears that are bears. Don't the bears come down to the stations, and give you bear hugs, sometimes?" he asked the porter.
"No, suh, not that I evah noticed, suh. I reckon they done gone fah back in the mountains, suh!"
"Too bad, too bad," said grandpapa. "No bears, no big-horn sheep, no deer, no elk. Well, hello, there are some prairie dogs, barking at the train!" There were a few Indians at the station too, and flocks of woolly sheep on the mountain sides, with shepherds and collie dogs, and in the valleys were cattle, and cowboys on ponies. The snow peaks were there, and the dusty desert. But every once in a while they came to a mining town high up on a shelf of rock, or a green valley with canals running through farms. The water had been brought down from the mountains to make the desert bloom. In the very dryest part of the desert they found Salt Lake City, with sixty thousand people, in a big valley between mountains. The valley was all farms and orchards. The city streets were shaded by great trees, the houses set in green lawns. The train ran right across Great Salt Lake, twenty-five miles. Bathers were in the lake. They bobbed around like corks. The water was so salt they could not sink. The train climbed another steep mountain range, then slid down a long toboggan slope, through forests.
"Now," said grandpapa, "I know where I am. I'll show you where I helped my father wash gold out of the gravel in the river bed. It's just below in the valley."
This time he wasn't pretending. He really thought he could find the place, but the mining camp was gone. Gold mining was done up in the mountains. It was done in mills that crushed the gold-bearing rock. The river banks were lined with towns and farms and golden wheat fields. On the hill sides were flocks of sheep. The river grew wider. It met another river flowing north. They ran together and into wide water.
"Where are they going now?" asked Alice,
"Through the Golden Gate, to where the sun sets."
There was a big city built up the hill sides above the water. At its feet lay a wide harbor full of ships. Across the harbor they looked through a narrow strip of water walled with rocks. It was like a thick stone gate. Through the gate they saw the sun set in a great ocean. The city was called San Francisco. It's nickname was City of the Golden Gate. Alice wondered what lay out there over the wide water, where the sun set. She asked if they could get one of the ships and go to see.
"By and by, when we have seen the City of the Queen of the Angels."
Alice hugged herself. This was as good as a fairy story. She hadn't the least idea how it was coming out. Have you?
After they left the City of the Golden Gate they saw mountains two miles high, with lakes at the bottoms of their dark green pockets. They saw rivers sunk half a mile, and lined with steeples and towers of rock. Then they came to the Valley of Delight, Grandpapa called it Yo-sem-i-te Valley. There they left the train and got on a stage coach. One whole day Alice rode on a donkey.
They slept in a camp hotel. The valley was a mile deep. It was walled with mountains. Rivers fell from the tops of the cliffs. They tumbled after each other like Jack and Jill. A river jumped down a quarter of a mile. That was such fun, that it took a little run over rocks and jumped again. It played hide-and-seek and follow-the-leader and leap-frog down the rocks. Sometimes a falling brook spread out in a broad sheet. Sometimes it fell so far that it turned to spray and looked like a bride's long veil. The sun shone on the spray and turned it to rainbows.
Alice had no time to catch her breath before the next wonder. This was trees more than three hundred feet high and thirty feet thick. She had to lie on her back to see the tops of them. The trees looked very, very old. She thought they must have been born in the days when giants lived.
"Were they here when Columbus came to America?" Alice asked.
"Oh, yes, some of them were eight hundred years old when Columbus came."
Dear, dear! Alice wondered if they weren't tired standing and holding the blue sky up so long. Little white clouds seemed to be tangled in their evergreen leaves.
The farther south they went the warmer and dryer it became. Still there were wheat fields and sheep. By and by there were orchards of gray-green olive trees, and vineyards of big white grapes on gravelly hillsides. Some of the farms had queer houses of sun-dried yellow bricks, and with flat roofs. Many of the people were darker, with big black eyes. Every town and river was called "San" or "Santa" something. Grandpapa said that was Spanish for Saint.
Why, how did the Spanish people ever get away over into Southern California? Alice asked a sheep rancher that, as she drank milk and ate figs as sweet as honey in the patio of a farm house. Do you remember the patios in the houses in Cuba? He took off his broad-brimmed, gold-laced, pointed hat very politely, and said that he did not know. They had been there a good while. Then she asked a priest at an Indian mission church. He said the Spanish people came up from Mexico to live, many, many years before gold was found. The Spanish people made a garden out of the desert. They brought seeds and plants from Mexico, and they coaxed water down from the mountains. Many of the gold seekers did not go back home. They went down the valley five hundred miles to the Spanish towns, and they made more farms and towns near the sea around Los Angeles. The Spanish had built a town there of sun-dried bricks, and called it the City of the Queen of the Angels. Now it was a great, rich American city of three hundred thousand people.
No wonder the Spanish people called it that! For hours and hours the train ran south through fairy land, and into summer weather, although it was Christmas time. It ran through orchards of orange and lemon trees, through grapes and figs and plums, through groves of almond and walnut trees and olives. The towns were hidden by trees, the houses covered with roses. There were palm trees, and hedges of ger-an-i-ums, ten feet high.
Right over the city of Los Angeles were mountains with snow on them. A real Christmas tree was brought down from the mountains. On New Year's day there was a flower festival. Hundreds of carriages and au-to-mo-biles were covered with roses. Flower fairies rode in open cars. Alice was a white orange blossom in a bride's wreath of little girls. Thousands of people watched the flower pro-cess-ion. Alice was so happy she couldn't sleep a wink that night. She wanted to live in the City of the Angels forever. See California, page 308, San Francisco, page 1671, and Los Angeles, page 1116.