Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/66

54 his hotel window, and across palms and pepper trees and orange groves to distant, azure, snow-capped mountains. He breathed the soft caressing air laden with perfume. His ears were filled with the buzzing of bees and humming birds, the warblings of many songsters. His eyes drank in the sunpatched world before him. He remembered that snow and ice and wind mentioned by the Colonel. And he lifted up his spirit in the sentiment expressed aloud by one tourist.

"Why should anybody die out here? They'll never get any nearer to heaven!"

Since the journey was long, short visits were unknown. People came in December and stayed through until June at least. By that time the country had them. They returned to their homes as insufferable nuisances. The exceeding pleasantness of Southern California was a new thing: it had not been described and over-described and advertised and made most of. The tourist had the intense proselyting zeal of one who discovers something, and has something new to tell. The term "California Liar" became current about this time. It was a misnomer. The "California Liar" was generally some Easterner or Middle-Westerner trying to translate super-enthusiasm into his native dialect.

Generally he returned the following winter and the next, until he became an habitué—provided he had the means and the leisure. If he had not these, he did one of two things: either he continued where he was and was either ignored or killed off by exasperated neighbours; or else he sold out and moved to his discovered heaven. There were a great many of the latter class; and more were coming every year. They were buying ten, twenty, forty acres and making themselves homes. Incidentally they were planting things, more or less as amusement or to keep occupied; and, astonishingly, some of them were making money. The two parent trees of Bahia navel oranges had budded thousands of old seedling stock. People were discovering irrigation. The land was stirring from its long sleep.

A small, dapper, quick-moving man entered the dining room and made his way directly to the Colonel's table. This was Watson, manager of the hotel. He carried a sheaf of papers