Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/443

 Rh ing speculation ever flourished here. With this peaceable life, possibly in part as a result of it, there has grown up in the people an intense love of their land.

"And it is for their own section of the State," he goes on, "that this love exists. They call themselves, not Californians, but Southern Californians. The feeling is intense. I can only liken it to the overmastering love of the old Greek for the sunny shores that lay around the Ægean.

"For myself, I feel more and more each time that I visit the upper portion of the State that I am going into a strange land. And the impression never leaves me till upon my return I look down from the crest of the Tehachapi over the warm South-land."

I have thought it worth while to quote these passages, partly because they are amusing, partly because they accentuate the topographical situation, and also because they describe a character exactly opposite to that which exists. Everywhere is bustle, push, and enterprise. This people will sell you a corner lot or quarter-section of land with as great a gusto as any other, and at its full value. Whatever effect lapse of time may have upon them, the present inhabitants, few of whom are born here or even drafted from indolent climes, if lotus-eaters, are of a very wide-awake sort.

The City of the Angels is, in general, only another San José, upon a more hilly site. Its population must be about fourteen thousand. The long thoroughfare of Main Street proceeds, from the depot, at first through a shabby Spanish quarter, locally known as "Sonora," consisting of one-story, whitewashed, adobe houses. Passing