CONTENTdm
British Columbia Historical Books Collection
Aflalo, Frederick G. (Frederick George), 1870-1918
"An Englishman's fishing holiday on Vancouver Island and in the Kamloops area."-- Edwards, M. H., Lort, J. C. R., & Carmichael, W. J. (1975). A bibliography of British Columbia: Years of growth, 1900-1950. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, p. 2.
xii, 251 pages : frontispiece, photographs ; 23 cm
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SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS FISHING DAYS AND OTHERS IN CALIFORNIA AND CANADA * And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail; And life runs large on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new." F. G. AFLALO WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS WITHERBY & CO. 326 HIGH HOLBORN LONDON 1909 • PREFACE. If, as has been said, all good Americans go to Paris after they die, then assuredly all good fishermen should go to America before, for no other Continent has such amazing resources for their entertainment in river, lake, and sea. The salmon-fishing, it is true, is somewhat restricted, but for other game fishes of both fresh and salt, America is without a rival. Canada alone has scores of lakes and hundreds of streams not yet familiar to the white man, and long at rest from the Indian. California, less untrodden, it is true, than the Land of Snows, is none the less a wonderful fisherman's playground, with lakes and rivers that teem with trout, and with great variety of enormous fishes on its coast, one of them—still, alas, a dream—the elusive object of my happy raid. In each of these widely different countries, going by way of the sunny West Indies, and returning by way of the icy St. Lawrence, I spent some pleasant weeks, following a carefully planned itinerary, save where the gleam of some lake or river that I had not taken into account bade me ♦ / iv PREFACE halt and put my rod together. Needless to say, the finest waters, in which sport still borders on the miraculous draught, lie away at the end of horse-trails out of reach of those who hug the railroad. As a slave of time, I had to deny myself many such excursions, but I did manage to make an occasional side-track of thirty or forty miles to the haunts of fish which still, to their cost, mistake an artificial fly indifferently thrown for an ephemeral native of the water. Even with the limitations of my route, I enjoyed better sport in half-a-dozen weeks than I should have found at home in as many months, and, had only Catalina's attractions been less potent, I might, by spending all my time in the Dominion, have enjoyed the sport of my life. It is sometimes argued by fishermen with a month's holiday that Canada is too far away for their sport, since half at any rate of the vacation goes in the round journey. This is undeniable, yet I venture to say that, with their plans made beforehand under proper advice, they would get more fish and fishing in the remaining half of their freedom than in the whole month at home, while the cost of the journey would not exceed the rental of really first-class water in Scotland. This is no attempt at a guide book, but, like an earlier volume, a mere collection of random impressions of sport and scenery, of men and cities, during a trip of fifteen or twenty thousand PREFACE v miles. That the book concerns itself a little less with fishing, and a little more with matters of general interest than my last, will not, I hope, be accounted against it. Its atmosphere is chiefly that of the wonderful Pacific Slope which, with the coining rift, not, as of old, between North and South, but between East and West, is going, probably as a powerful Federation, to play so important a part in the history of new civilizations. H, here and there, my unpretentious narrative touches more serious issues, it does so only incidentally, since, ever on the move, I read such signs of the times only as he who runs. Moreover, I lack both the ambition and the right to advise Congress on the control of Japanese immigration, or to admonish Ottawa on its favouritism of American models. I am even unfashionable enough to suspect that Washington can settle its own difficulties, and Canada work out her own destiny without my help. This confession would be humiliating to some of my friends, but leaves me cheerful. Therefore I have now and again alluded to these problems only in so far as they caught the eye of a contemplative angler with leisure to look about him; and the control of the negro, the exclusion of the Asiatic, or the protection of fisheries is touched on as inoffensively, I hope, as the life and manners of Americans as I saw them at home. For the sea-fisherman, the chief interest of the vi PREFACE book will lie in the chapter on Catalina Island. For some years there has been no very accurate idea at home as to what sport that once famous rendezvous of tunas still affords. On the one hand, it was reported that the tunas still came, though in diminished numbers. At the other extreme, we were told that the fishing was beneath contempt. In the interests of those who might contemplate making the journey if fuller information from an unbiassed source were available, I decided to go out myself, and I made the trip fully as much with this object as in any sanguine 1/ J hope of getting a tuna. I got none. Neither did anyone else. What I did get was exciting sport with big fish on light tackle, and of this a fully illustrated account will be found in these pages. Of the photographs the greater number were taken by myself, but my thanks are due to the Hon. Howard Douglas, superintendent of Canada's National Park, for one of buffalo ; to the Pillsbury Company for three of the Yosemite; to Mr. Ironmonger for several of the Catalina subjects; and to the Portland Chamber of Commerce for the study of Portland roses. F.G.A. Teignmouth, Christmas, 1908. L CONTENTS. PART I.—From the Solent to the Golden Gates. CHAPTER I. DAYS ON THE CARRIBEAN. PAGE In Praise of Travel—The Way of the Sun—The Tagus—Wireless Telegraphy—The Sea Life—Barbados — Its Coloured Folk—An American Error of Judgment—Mosquitoes and their Enemies—Flying Fish : A Disappointment—How they are Caught—Yachting—Bathing —Hotels—Talking Birds—A Cruel Sport"—Theological Discussions —Carriage of Horses at Sea—Trinidad—Port of Spain—Indian Coolies —Indented Labour in the Colonies—Contrasts between East Indians and Negroes—Flowers and Birds—A Rose Garden—A Creole Luncheon —" Lappe "—The Pitch Lake—Quarantine—Reason for the American Regulations—Mosquitoes and Disease—Rata on the Spanish Main— Cartagena—Memories of Drake and the Inquisition—Trade of Cartagena—Fishing from the Ship——Baiting with " Bully Beef "— Colon—Work done on the Isthmus by Colonel Gorgas—Improvement of the Isthmus—Exigencies of Tropical Nature—Life in the Tropics: Headdress, The Siesta, Diet, Clothing, Maladies, Mosquitoes—Possibilities of the Panama Canal—Military Control—Wonderful Progress —Washington and the Independence of Panama—The Railroad— The Isthmus and the Railroad Companies—De Losseps and Suez— Difference between Colon and Panama—Negro Intelligence 3 CHAPTER H. NEW ORLEANS. Transfer of Baggage — The Preston — Quarantine at Costa Rica — Shipment of Bananas—More Medical Examination—Immigration Fee —Inquisitiveness of the Immigration Bureau—A Catechism—Up the Mississippi—Customs—Dreadful Streets of New Orleans—Its Antiquity and Repose—The Spirit of the South—North and South—The Suburbs — Cemeteries — Canals — American Hustle — West End — Lake Pontchartrain—Baseball as a Spectacle—Relation to Rounders—Antics of the Pitcher—His Trickery—The Colour Problem—A Fish Dinner at Antoine's and a Sequel ------*-- 48 vin CONTENTS CHAPTER III. A RAILROAD JOURNEY. pagb American Pride in their Railroads—Fast Trains and Others—One of the Others—Their Trains Compared with Ours—One-class Travel— The " Sunset Express"—Prohibition of Alcohol on the Train— Miserable Scenery—Stations—Bridge over the Pecos River—Langtry —Ciudad Juarez—A Glimpse of Mexico—Salton Sea—The Freak o£ a River—Flowery California—Pasadena and Los Angeles—First Sight of San Francisco --------- - 63 PART II.—California. CHAPTER I. SAN FRANCISCO. Recovery of the City—Rivalry of Seattle—Beauty of San Francisco- Van Ness Avenue—" Frisco "—Population—Golden Gates Park— I Monarch "—The Museum—Buffalo—The Seal Rocks—Swimming Baths—St. Francis Hotel - 74 CHAPTER II. THE LAKE OF MY DREAMS. Colours of Tahoe—The Truckee River—Truckee—Prohibition—Reno —An Academic Fisherman—Tahoe Trout—A Fine Specimen—Handline Fishing—" Jerry "—Minnow Fishing—An Invisible Boundary—Fishery Laws—Flies for the Truckee River—Poaching—Bird Life - - S2 CHAPTER III. [;THE FINEST SEA-FISHING IN THE WORLD. The Owl—San Pedro—Dr. Holder—Light Tackle for Sea Fishing— Freak Fishing—Description of Catalina Island*—Changes of Ownership —Goat Shooting—The Seals—Sea Gardens and Glass-bottomed Boats —" Jim "—Beautiful Seaweeds—Aquarium at Avalon—No Tunas— Possible Influence of Gasolene Launches : A Suggestion for the Tuna Club—The Yellowfin Tuna—Conditions of Fishing at Avalon—Light Tackle—The " Tip "—Reel and Line—Flying Fish and Sardines as Bait—Wilson Spoon—The Netsmen—Arrangement for Supply of Bait—Bigger Fish at San Clemente—Success of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Simpson—Mr. Calderwood's Big Salmon—Local Dissatisfaction with Clemente Awards—The Thirst for Buttons—In Praise of Catalina Fishing—Cost of the Trip as Compared with Florida—Guides- Mexican Joe I—George Herbert—Jim Gardner—A Day of Disasters —Yellowfin Tuna—Yellowtail—White Sea-bass — Albacore — Black Sea-bass — Barracuta — Rock-Bass — Swordfish — Dolphin —Sunfish— CONTENTS ix CHAPTER III—continued. page Sport with Yellowtail and White Sea-bass—Kelp—Method of Fishing— Part Played by the Guide—Hooking and Playing the Fish—Trouble of Rock-bass — Halibut— " Lucky Stones "—Fishing for Albacore— Other Possibilities—Sport with Black Sea-bass—Good-bye to Catalina 89 CHAPTER IV. THE YOSEMTTE VALLEY AND THE BIG TREES. The Menace of Forest Fires—Insufficient Patrolling of Reserves—The Wayijto Yosemite—John Muir's Favourite Bird at Home—View of Yosemite from Inspiration Point—Coaching in the Dust—Bridal Veil Falls—Charm of Valleys—The Grand Canyon—Mountain Climbing— Waterfalls in the Yosemite—Ride to Mirror Lake—The Camping Life —Tourist Version—Story of a Talking Dog—Trout in the Merced River —Native Indians—Coaching to Wawona—The Biggest Trees on Earth—Galen Clark, their Discoverer—Monster Sequoias—Shasta Springs—Analysis of the Water—Trout in the Sacramento—Farewell to California ----- £133 PART III.—Two Cities. CHAPTER I. A CITY OF ROSES. Portland's Rose-Worships—How It got Its Name—Trade in Grain, Lumber, Fish and Fruit-—Population—The Forestry Building and Its Contents—A Sliding Scale of Rudeness—Its Roses—Favourable Conditions of Soil and Climate—View from Council Crest—The City Park— Trip up the Columbia River—Inland Navigation in America—Trippers —Beautiful Scenery—The Cascades—Memeluse Island—Memories of Indians—Value of Associations—Waterfalls—Commerce—The Salmon- Wheels—Need for Protection of the Salmon—Netsmen versus Wheelmen—Hood's River—The Dalles—Barren but Fruitful Scenery—Where the Sick are Healed—Farewell to the Southern Pacific Railroad - 157 CHAPTER H. GOOD-BYE TO THE STATES. Scenery between Portland and Seattle—Tunnels—Chaotic State of Seattle-—Its Purity—Cigarettes Illegal—Evasion of the Law—Betting Allowed—Rivalry of Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco—Progress of Seattle—The Ordeal by Fire—Its Public Library—" Fourth of July " Celebrations—The Death Roll—Impressions of America— Americans as Sportsmen—Love of Winning—Too Much Competition —Ineffectual Fish and Game Laws—Politics—Newspapers—The Personal Factor in the Press—Manners—Spitting—Feet on the Mantelshelf—Conversation-r-Standard of Education—Republican Ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—Instances—Chivalry—State of the Labour Market ---------- 168 1/ } x CONTENTS PART IV.—Canada. CHAPTER I. THE PACIFIC SLOPE. PAGE The Romance of Canada—Past and Future—Fish and Game—The Land in Summer Dress—Contrast from the States—Beauty and Peace of Victoria—Sea-trout in a Park—The Empress Hotel—The Museum Voyage to Vancouver—Wreck of the Beaver—Anti-Japanese Movement—East and West—Outdoor Life—Stanley Park—Bathing at English Bay—Catching Salmon in Salt Water—Pacific Salmon and the yiy—Different Kinds of Salmon on the Pacific Slope—Journey along the Canadian Pacific Railroad—Scenery east of Vancouver— Mosquitoes—A Homesick Man—Kamloops—A Night Ride out to a Lake—The Most Wonderful Lake Fishing on Earth—Best Flies— Suggestions for Better Protection—Greedy Fishermen—Indian Modes of Fishing—Loons—Ospreys—Beavers—The Reproach of Lacrosse - 185 CHAPTER II. THE ROCKIES. Beautiful Railroad Scenery—The Great Divide—Banff—The Springs Hotel—Examination of the Alleged Americanisation of Canada—A Silly Scare—Dislike of Englishmen—Reasons for This—The Habitant— The National Park and its Buffalo—Man, the Preserver—Vastness of the Park—Amusements at Banff—Bathing in the Sulphur Springs— The Menagerie and Museum—Lake Minnewanka—Good-bye to the Rockies --- 209 CHAPTER III. CITIES OF THE PLAIN. Tamer Scenery of the Prairies—Prosperity and Weather of Calgary— Scarcity of Animal Life on the Prairies—Alfalfa Grass—A Stowaway on the Train—Winnipeg, a City of the Future—Passing Glimpses of Famous Fishing Grounds—The Shores of Superior—Toronto—Visit to Niagara Falls—Their Spell—Unconventional Way of Seeing Them— Montreal—Mass at Notre Dame—The Lachine Rapids—A Tame Excursion—Preponderance of French in Montreal—English as She is Understood—An Amusing Misprint—Lake Broom and Lake Magog —Changes in the Fishes of Lake Broom—Grasshoppers and Other Baits—The Helgramite—In Praise of the Black Bass—Pickerel— Muskallonge—" Sunfish "—Mosquitoes—Cost of Fishing—Quebec in Holiday Mood—The Mighty St. Lawrence—Its White Whales—Home on the Empress of Ireland—The Repatriated—Journey's Ending. - 221 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FACING PAGE Frontispiece—Hands across the Sea. Crowd on Bridgetown Quay ----- 8 Road in Trinidad ------- 16 New Orleans: In the Cemetery - 56 A Station on the S.P.R. 64 A Station on the S.P.R. 64 A Gorge from the Train ------ 68 The River between Mexico and the U.S.A. - 68 Near the Golden Gates ------ 77 On the Shores of Tahoe ------ 82 "Jerry" 85 Avalon 92 The Seals 96 Catch of Yellowtail 101 " Mexican Joe " -------- 108 White Sea Bass 113 Fast in a Good Fish 117 Dr. Holder Fishing 124 Black Sea Bass 128 The Enemies of Sport - 133 Bridal Veil Falls 134 r* XII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Yosemite Valley 139 Mirror Lake -------- 140 Yosemite Falls- - 145 Glacier Point 152 Portland Roses 160 Lumber --------- 162 A Salmon Wheel ------- 164 Another Fish Wheel 164 Victoria, B.C. 185 Prospect Point 192 Buffalo's Head 209 On the Range 213 Devil's Lake 220 Niagara : The Canadian Falls ----- 224 Niagara: The American Falls ----- 224 PART I.—FROM THE SOLENT TO THE GOLDEN GATES. CHAPTER I. DAYS OK THE CARIBBEAN. In Praise of Travel—The Way of the Sun—The Tagus—Wireless Telegraphy—The Sea Life—Barbados—Its Coloured Folk—An American Error of Judgment—Mosquitoes and their Enemies—Flying Fish : A Disappointment—How they are Caught—Yachting—Bathing —Hotels—Talking Birds—A Cruel " Sport "—Theological Discussions —Carriage of Horses at Sea—Trinidad—Port of Spain—Indian Coolies —Indentured Labour in the Colonies—Contrasts between East Indians and Negroes—Flowers and Birds—A Rose Garden—A Creole Luncheon —" Lappe "—The Pitch Lake—Quarantine—Reason for the American Regulations—Mosquitoes and Disease—Rats on the Spanish Main— Cartagena—Memories of Drake and the Inquisition—Trade of Cartagena—Fishing from the Ship—Baiting with " Bully Beef '*— Colon—Work done on the Isthmus by Colonel Gorgas—Improvement of the Isthmus—Exigencies of Tropical Nature—-Life in the Tropics: Headdress, The Siesta, Diet, Clothing, Maladies, Mosquitoes—Possibilities of the Panama Canal—Military Control—Wonderful Progress —Washington and the Independence of Panama—The Railroad— The Isthmus and the Railroad Companies—De Lesseps and Suez— Difference between Colon and Panama—Negro Intelligence. Family reasons made travellers of our first parents. One might have thought that after all these years such old scandals might be forgotten, but Fielding, who made only one voyage (which killed him), calls travel the curse of the race from the beginning. Anyway, travel is a blessing to many of their descendants. For myself, the " wanderlust" is in my bones. Paradoxical as it may seem, I find complete rest only in constant movement. Weeks at sea, even days on trains, are a blessed change after years of sedentary occupation in a village. I am neither seasick nor, like Mark Twain, do I take any pleasure in the spectacle b2 4 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS of those that are. Indeed, though I know a nasty sea by sight, not being of Morley Roberts's " little good men" who stay at home, it is hateful to me outside of the Royal Academy. I detest the discomfort of a rolling ship, the effort of clinging to elusive railings, the trouble of wedging myself in narrow bunks, the labour of reeling up and down the deck like DanHo, with the " Merry Widow" in pursuit. All this is very personal, but this, I fear, is a personal record. Those who dislike cold weather and detest rough seas cannot do better than proceed to the Southern States by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's boats. On a chilly April day, with snow still piled against the sheds at East Leigh, the promise of sunshine within the next day or two was good, and the thought of Barbados in less than a fortnight was better. It is no route for those who travel against time. For those whose life is barter there are quicker roads to Wall Street or the Chicago Pit. For invalids, on the other hand, it is invaluable, even though they take little more interest in life on board ship than they would in the garden of a Bournemouth open-air home. As a holiday jaunt for healthy idlers it is also the best of routes. Calm seas, sunny skies, and a port of call every day of the week after reaching Barbados are strong recommendations. Few sea trips of such short duration afford the same variety; several FASCINATION OF THE SEA 5 islands under British rule, a historic stronghold of the Inquisition, and the greatest engineering enterprise of any age are among its sights. Quarantine, it is true, has of late robbed it of some interest, but even a day alongside a wharf, with interludes of fishing and buying curios, is a pleasant change after nearly two weeks of sea and sky. The first three or four days after leaving the Solent are generally breezy. The Tagus ploughs her lonely furrow in all weathers in supreme contempt of the waves that fling themselves against her sides like packs of wolves. A great mailboat of her type is, no doubt, less beautiful than a brig under all sail, or than any little lateen- sailed felucca in Naples Bay. Yet there is something admirable in her inexorable progress. The ocean strives to sunder hemispheres. She succeeds in joining them. So is she mightier than the ocean. What is the fascination of the sea life ? I love it, yet cannot explain my attachment. Still, seeing that it casts its spell even over those who have to keep the lonely night watches, to check cargo going down hatches, to superintend the washing down of decks, is it surprising that it should appeal to an idler ? If there is one fault in the modern liner, it is her installation of wireless telegraphy. You are no longer completely cut off from the " trouble of ants" ashore. Yet, even so, it has its uses in peace and war. For 6 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS its uses in war, refer to Mr. Stead. For its uses in peace, I recall a pleasant memory of sending a Marconigram to Daly's Theatre from a couple of hundred miles west of the Irish coast, asking an audience of the " Merry Widow " for the next evening. The audience was graciously accorded, and thus I watched the poetic dancing of that festive relict both the day before I left England and the day of my return. A passenger's life on a mail boat is the perfect ideal of peace. Unless he plays bridge, or is sick, he need not have an unkind thought throughout the voyage. His bath and shave are achieved at leisure, and there follows an inordinate breakfast. At eleven there is broth or ice cream, according to latitude. At twelve comes the mild excitement of seeing who has won the sweep on the ship's run. Even in these anti-gambling days a ticket in the sweep is a permissible flutter even to missionaries. Then more over-eating at tiffin. The afternoon is spent in deck cricket or loafing, according to taste. Then he forces himself to take tea. Dressing for dinner, dining, and passing a pleasant evening over bridge, music, or flirtation, according to age and fancy, bring the day to a close. It is not a life of high ideals, but there might be worse ways of spending a fortnight on the high seas. There are gaps at table that first week. The deck-steward serves more food than those in the BOARD-SHIP RECREATIONS 7 saloon. Then, about noon on Tuesday, the weather brightens, and the sea falls calm. Comely ladies (and others) who, ever since the Tcujus passed the wreck of the Gladiator near the Needles, have wasted their sweetness on their own cabins, emerge on deck. Men don flannels. All try the frequent injudicious meal, for appetite waits on boredom and not on exercise. There is brave talk of dances and of sports. We all love the sea better in her gentle mood. We know that she may fool us again at an hour's notice. Still, like Horace's lady, she is Perflda, sed, quamvis perfida, cara tamen, and we hang on her smiles. Recreation on board ship has rules and regulations of its own. The laws of deck cricket would bring Mr. Lacey to the verge of hysteria. The lancers, as danced in a lively sea, include figures that would be voted striking even at a Covent Garden ball. Trifles amuse one under such conditions, and those only are happy who can so far unbend as to be amused by them. Did not Mr. Howells find recreation even in the gambols of a hat round the saloon ? The animal life outside, though not quite so uninteresting as Darwin found it, is confined to a few small flying-fish, an occasional " Portuguese Man-of-War " drifting past in iridescent splendour, and an odd company of boobies and whale-birds. A passing ship, a rainbow, perchance a distant waterspout (the more distant the better), complete the list, so that I 8 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS no one is sorry when at length, on a Monday morning, the low coast of Barbados breaks the skyline. What a contrast is this mathematical punctuality from those haphazard landfalls of the grand old navigators, who were warned of the coming journey's ending by the apparition of crabs and tunnies ! The captain of the Tagus does -not trouble about crabs and tunnies, but looks to his compass and chronometers, steering a bee-line from Cherbourg to Bridgetown much as one might steer a motor from Piccadilly to the Park, and making his ports of call as regularly as if they were stations on the Tube. Thus, not only do we reach Barbados " on time," to use a hideous Americanism, but we actually slowed down overnight, so as not to arrive too soon and dislocate the mail arrangements. Barbados is what may be described as a "tight little island," so far at any rate as the density of its population is concerned, for the blacks are packed as tight as sardines in a box. Unlike most of the Empire's outposts overseas, it has been British ever since— " Over the sand and the palm trees an English flag was flown." It is about the same size as the Isle of Wight, and must have close on three times as many inhabitants. The .whole of Bridgetown is as crowded during daylight as the Burlington Arcade in a AMERICANS AND NIGGERS 9 shower. Of its teeming population, the blacks form probably (I write from memory and not statistics) nine-tenths, an overweight of ebony of which the quays give early evidence, since not one white face is to be seen in all that seething throng. These Barbadian niggers are merry folk, more ready with their fists than those of Jamaica, who would talk the hind leg off a donkey, but rarely raise their hands. Dr. Herbert Bindley, principal of Codrington College, attributes much of their cheerful disposition to the influence of the Irish deported to the island by the protective Cromwell, and perhaps their love of a " scrap " is another bequest from Erin. In such a majority are the blacks in the streets of Bridgetown that it is not unusual to see even English ladies walk out into the wet road rather than force a way through the sable pack on the pavement. This concession to mere numbers invariably earns the contempt of our American friends, with whom Barbados is in growing favour as a winter resort. I have heard them pityingly remark that England's knack of managing native races, of which they have heard so much, is woefully overrated, and that Uncle Sam alone has the secret of keeping " niggers " in their place. But " they didn't know everythin' down in Judee," and in this they are quite wide of the mark. They should be told the story of the little L 10 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS man who, when a bully took up all the pavement, with the remark, " I never give fools the wall," walked out into the road, with a low bow and the retort: § Oh, don't you ? Now I always do " ! Americans would be wiser if they sometimes gave the wall. Ignorance of when and where to do so gracefully will always bring them up against trouble until they learn differently. It is no sign of weakness. The colour problem yet awaits solution (and perhaps a very grim solution, too) in the land where niggers are " kept in their place." In Barbados there is no colour problem at all. The Americans have -not begun to understand the rudiments of managing subject races. England had the art before even America was a Republic. The very entry of the United States into the ranks of the Powers might perhaps be quoted as an instance of British ignorance in such matters, but all the blessings of the Boston tea-party are not with America. So long as allowance is made for their superiority of numbers, which they neither forget nor expect those of different colour to ignore, the blacks are easily tolerable. Their womenfolk are patterns of good-nature, offending the eye only when they pathetically imitate European ideals of dress, hiding their woolly heads under ten-year-old Paris models, and crushing their homely feet into tight Northampton boots. So garbed, these poor ladies suggest monkeys astray from their cages. See them, however, FRIED FAIRIES II bareheaded and barefooted, in clean and simple print dresses, as they go swinging of a fine evening along the road that leads past the Marine Hotel, and you appreciate, even though their features be crude, the graceful carriage that takes your thoughts back to the equatorial lands of their origin. The first sight of Barbados is not much more inspiring than the coast of Essex. The island lacks the tropical beauty of Trinidad. Yet it has clean sea-water, untainted with Orinoco silt. It lacks also the malarial mosquito, a blessing attributed by Dr. Bindley to the hostility of the little native fishes known as " millions." It is suggested that these little benefactors, which were not long ago brought before the public at the Zoological Gardens, might with advantage be introduced into the malarial districts of Africa, and more recent memories prompt me to recommend Canada as another field for such merciful work. One of the institutions of Barbados is the flying-fish—of which, one afternoon two years ago, I ate a shoal 'at the Bridgetown Club. I dreamed of them ever since. I praised them in print. That morning, as the anchors went down in the bay, my one thought was to go ashore and devour another dish of these fried fairies at the same table. All the way in the tender I praised them with a fervour fanned to a blaze by their proximity, and suggestive of nothing so much as ngir^r^r^F^^a 12 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Colonel Newnham-Davis writing against time. Alas ! There were none on the dub lunch menu. If only the hotels had been equally disappointing, I should have gone to my grave with another illusion. Unfortunately flying-fish figured in the dinner bill, and then came the fall. Realising, with the first mouthful of rubbish that might have been flannel, that careless cooking could surely make vultures of ortolans, and hake of red mullet, I furtively looked at my fellow-sufferers and intercepted glances in which anger mingled with reproach. We all called hastily for meats. Yet I vow that, properly cooked, flying-fish are a dream, and their roe need not be bashful in the company of caviare. They are caught from small sailing boats, a fleet of which leaves the harbour in the early morning, returning with the spoils at sunsetj Lord Basil Blackwood, Colonial Secretary, took me out in his yacht to get a photograph of them, but the result was distressing. Snapshotting one small craft from another is a foregone failure. They are taken in scoop-nets, a dead fish being lowered in each net as an attraction, for flying-fish have the same instincts as those sympathetic folk who crowd round a cab accident or a fire. There is a curious belief that they are caught at night with a sail stretched behind a lantern. The fish are supposed to see the light, fly at the sail, and fall inside the boat. So, in all probability, since the moth-and-candle fe BATHERS AND SWIMMERS IS principle of heliotropy permeates most of creation, they would, but this is not the method adopted by Barbadians. life in Barbados cannot be very gay, but there should be worse places to live in. There is golf; there is a little shooting, and the best of sea- fishing. Rivers there are none, for the thirsty soil takes up all the rain as it falls. There is all the yachting a man wants, though the constant capsizing of native craft in the harbour does not make it more enjoyable. These boats are clumsy and unmanageable. The crews are continually thrown into the water, where they swim, if necessary, for days, until picked up. Then (such is the African intelligence) they put to sea again in the same or similar craft. The bathing is also good, particularly at Engineers' Pier, which belongs not to the Engineers, but to the Royal Mail Company. It is advisable to swim from the end of the pier, and not to wade in from the beach, for sea urchins are plentiful and no more comfortable to walk on than hedgehogs. On alternate Mondays it is also desirable to bathe elsewhere, as the pier is then the rendezvous of herds of negroes awaiting shipment to Panama. They earn high wages on the Isthmus and none at home, and they remit most of their pay to their families, a passion for thrift which may be indirectly connected with the regulation of the liquor supply in the Canal Zone. 1 14 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Those who, to avoid coaling horrors, spend the night on shore, usually go to the Marine Hotel. This establishment, which is clean and airy, is conducted on what is known throughout the States as the " American plan," that is, to say, you pay inclusive terms at the rate of a dollar for every shilling that similar comforts would cost at an English inn. " European style," on the other hand, which is optional at most hotels on the other side, means a separate charge for room and meals, also at the doUar-for-a-shilling rate, and you are then, of course, at liberty to feed where you please. In the bedrooms of this particular hotel a notice is posted to the effect that visitors are not allowed to take either monkeys or talking-birds to bed with them. I never tried either. For the benefit of those who, denied the sweets of such companionship at night, may desire its comfort by day, a caged monkey is provided in the grounds. As for talking-birds, every bush is their parlour, and the most conspicuous of them all is the so-called u blackbird," my old friend Quiscalus, of Jamaica. Barbadian bloods used in the good old times to make these birds a welcome excuse for betting. By gumming a morsel of red flannel on. the foreheads of two cocks and setting one at the other, they made them fight to the death, a simple pastime now made illegal under heavy penalties. The cargo which we took on at Barbados NIGGER PIETY 15 included not merely several hundred coloured ladies and gentlemen for Colon, but also seven horses for the Trinidad races. The coloured folk went as deck passengers, and devoted much time to the discussion of Talmudic subjects, including a hitherto unpublished soliloquy by the penitent thief on the Cross, who appears from his English to have been a Barbadian. Their conversation, of which, from their trick of sneaking every night to the railed-off deck outside my cabin, I heard more than enough, is a curious jumble of piety and filth, doubtless an accurate index of the mental condition of the converted black when he thinks none but his own folk are listening. My involuntary eavesdropping did not further endear to me this protegS of the Exeter Hall of other days. The horses, each with its own groom, were made perfectly comfortable during their one night at sea. I wish that the same might be said of a wretched hunter that we brought from Southampton to Barbados. It came on board the Tagua with such flimsy tackle that the first sea in the Bay broke every stitch and scared the poor brute to frenzy. The ship's butcher was a most patient man with animals. Two summers ago he looked after a pair of young alligators for me with the tenderness of a mother. Yet he could do nothing for this unhappy horse, which must have suffered tortures. Mr, Gilbert would have given the 16 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS shipper some punishment to fit his crime, and a fortnight in just such a horse-box would perhaps have enlarged his views on the definition of cruelty to animals. So the tight little island of " Bims " went down over the skyline, where first we had seen it the morning before. Though the month of May does not find it at its best, it is the one green spot in that ocean of blue, and as such a welcome change to weary eyes. Next daybreak we were running through muddy water along the rocky shores of Trinidad, and were soon anchored off Port of Spain, its capital, There is about Port of Spain a curiously Asiatic flavour. You taste it when you see Calcutta coolies squatting at street corners, and again at the sight of humped zebus grazing peacefully on the shady Savannah. Time was when the abolition of slavery disorganized the labour markets of America and the islands. Some form of cheap labour had to be introduced by way of supplementing the very modest energy of the emancipated " brother," who is brotherly only when idle. Thousands of Indians were, under stress of this necessity, dumped down in Trinidad in the course of time, and they now form a large resident colony. They seem contented in their quiet way, not miserably out of work and wage, like some I met two months later in British Columbia, where there is apparently no use for A ROAD IN TRINIDAD. [16] INDIANS AND NIGGERS 17 them, and where they appear to have been imported under a total misapprehension of their capacity for work. Critics of indentured labour have no lack of texts for their diatribes, but I doubt whether they would be wise in choosing Trinidad. Nor, perhaps, would Demerara serve their end much better. The negro, it is true, works best under cover. In the warehouse and the store he rises to moments of* positively honest toil. In the open air, on the other hand, he is rarely worth his hire, for he loafs in sunshine and cowers from rain. No ; the Kanakas, as I recall them on the burning plains of Queensland, are better capital for the politician bent on proving his case against one-sided contracts. Everywhere round Port of Spain the eye encounters these Indians, and is struck by the contrast between the silent dignity of the Oriental and the nigger's merry horseplay. Grave Hindu and rowdy Kru boy live and flourish side by side under the British flag, thrown together in an island far from their own continents by industrial conditions of which white men have no particular reason to be proud. They are no more reconcilable than oil and water. They differ in clothing, in. food, in religion, even in their rendering of the suzerain tongue. Babu English, even in Punch, has a topheavy dignity quite distinct from the free and easy patois of the African. The Hindu, answering a telephone, would probably ask the !: I: 18 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS name and title of the Beneficent Excellency at the other end. The nigger tersely enquires: I Is who ? " Even in May, before the rains, the green glory of Trinidad is resplendent with its embroidery of flamboyant and other blooms of crimson and of violet. On the hillsides the bay tree spreads its yellow canopy over happy birds. Feathery palms wave over trim gardens ablaze with roses. Gorgeous butterflies and jewelled humming-birds float amid the cups of nectar, sipping as they pause. In the evening everyone walks or drives round the Savannah, where the lamps of a thousand fireflies glimmer brightly even in the radiance of a brilliant tropical moon. By day, the prettiest drive near the town is along the Maraval Road, where you see the mountains and visit a little Indian settlement, with a patriarchal Babu giving silent greeting from his post beneath a tree bowed by the weight of sour oranges. The native dwellings look fragile indeed for a region of hurricanes, but there was method in the madness of their architects, for it appears that when a labourer is transferred from one cocoa plantation to another he takes up his house and walks. The white residents, of whom many belong to the old French and Spanish families established in the island before the British occupation, live in mansions of a more solid and enduring type, most of them standing in gardens of great beauty. A ROSE INCIDENT 19 A curious coincidence occurred in connection with one of these. Some of us were driving around the outskirts of the city, when a lady of the party, seeing such a wealth of roses, asked the driver where she could get (meaning, of course, buy) some for the Captain's table. To our horror he promptly drove through the gates of an obviously private residence, and, to make matters worse, a coloured footman, with whom he held some parley, came to the carriage and held out a salver for a card, as 9 Madame would want to know who had asked for the flowers." I gave my card, and also got out, in order, if possible, to apologise in person to Madame for the stupid blunder of the coachman. As it turned out, he had chosen the one resident in the island on whose acquaintance I had even a shadowy claim, for Madame's daughter and I were fellow passengers on the Tagus two years before, and only want of time had prevented my accepting her invitation to visit the house. So Madame most hospitably sent one of her gardeners to strip the rose bushes, and the inside of the carriage soon suggested a wedding party. The old customs are still honoured in the West Indies, and the blacks always beg, and get, white blooms in profusion whenever they " have a dead." One of my agreeable experiences in Trinidad was a pukker Creole lunch at the club as the guest of Mr. Skinner. A number of genial residents o 2 I 20 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS were of the party, and after a couple of hours of such entertainment I did not care whether I was judged by my food or my friends, both, as Brillat-Savarin and another agree, excellent tests of a man. I own frankly, and without reserve, to being greedy. My appetite is slight, but my curiosity over strange dishes is such that, compared with me on the brink of a new delicacy, Lot's wife was indifferent to the fate of the burning cities. And so it is that a little lunch with Dr. Bindley at Bridgetown, a second with Mr. Skinner at Port of Spain, and a fish dinner with an eminent lawyer of New Orleans, have their sacred niches in the temple of my gratitude, along with the sweet repose of Tahoe, the exhilarating sport of Catalina, the lull of the Yosemite, and the grandeur of the Rockies. Truly the table of my memory bears the wraiths of dishes fit for kings, and among these are none to surpass the wonder of the Pastel, the magic of Pepperpot, the magnetism of Crab-back, or the delicate aroma of Lappe. I will not describe these dishes. Let those fortunate ones bound for Port of Spain learn to know them at first hand. I would as soon dream of asking a beautiful lady's age as seek to know the ingredients of " pepperpot," but I would gladly burn my throat again to-day with a mess of it. The lappe is a little mild-eyed creature like an agouti, a rodent of amphibious habits, or at any rate quick to take to the water when 1 I i JL A DELICIOUS PET 21 pursued. Three days later I held in my arms a living one, which a gentleman was taking back from Savanilla as a pet to his pen in Jamaica. It was with reluctance that I relinquished it. With so many uneatable pets, from white mice to silkworms, it is wicked waste to keep a well- conditioned lappe alive! Late that afternoon, full of high living and plain thinking, I returned to the Tagus on board the Agent's launch. A sudden squall raised crests on the water and stirred up the Orinoco mud. Once again, like Froude, I had kept clear of the Pitch Lake, though only because I had no time. Otherwise I should have liked to visit the extraordinary hundred acres of inexhaustible pitch, the fortunate American owners of which, seeing that you might as well try to make a hole in the sea, eat their cake and have it too, a commercial " proposition " rarely put in practice. The next two ports of call were taboo under the existing quarantine regulations of the United States, and La Guyra was plague-stricken and out of the programme altogether. Even at Savanilla and Cartagena we had to gaze at the promised land, like Moses on Pisgah, though Colombia is hardly perhaps to be described as a land flowing with milk and honey. Savanilla is just a pier, and nothing more. No one, therefore, need feel regret at being confined to the ship. Cartagena, on the other hand, as I knew from a former visit, 1 II ! 22 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS is most picturesque and interesting for its memories of buccaneer days, and its long supremacy as headquarters of the Inquisition, of which, in its hopeless fight against enlightenment, it was the last ditch. This strict quarantine is unreservedly derided by angry globe-trotters as ridiculous. They regard it as specially devised to spoil their trip. They do not see why there should be any embargo on their going ashore and then rejoining the ship, seeing that passengers from either port are free to come on board and proceed to either Colon or New York. The policy is nevertheless dictated by the scientific creed of the American authorities, who hold that yellow fever can be conveyed only by the bite of the mosquito known as Stegomyia, whose venom takes some days to work. In no other way, they say, can the disease be spread. In this they may be right or wrong. I fancy that their conclusions will have to be modified in the light of further research, but meanwhile they cannot be blamed for putting them in practice. According to this theory, there can obviously be no risk in letting infected patients, already bitten by mosquitoes, come on board, since it is supposed they cannot transmit the fever to their fellow- passengers. On the other hand, to allow others ashore is to expose them to immediate attack by these insects, which are notorious for their love of new blood. The risk of allowing vessels alongside these long piers is very slight, for it is doubtful PLAGUE CARRIERS 23 whether mosquitoes would find their way so far from vegetation and fresh water. Whether or not the investigations of the next few years will undermine (as I believe) the mosquito's proud position as the one and only vehicle of malaria and yellow fever, no one can blame the Americans if they play for safety, and it is childish to grumble at the enforcement of not unreasonable precautions. The dread of all manner of animals as carriers of disease is a fetish. So, for the matter of that, it is at home. The rat is a suspect, and one depraved resident on the Isthmus, just about the time of our arrival, trapped some rats, dipped them in paraffin, then, having set them ablaze, turned them out as a warning to their race! Fortunately the police possessed themselves of him, and gave him private quarters for a few weeks to think out some more humane plan of keeping rats off his premises. The fuss made by the port authorities along the Main about the risk of rats going ashore from ships would incline one to believe that these animals had been successfully exterminated from the land. When, for instance, the Tagus was alongside the wharf at Savanilla, an officious little health officer made so much ado that it looked as if he expected a muster of the ship's rats along with the deck passengers. Yet enquiry from another source elicited the mournful truth that rats had completely devoured the port master's boots only the night before ! 24 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS The gilded spires of Cartagena gleamed a mile away in the early morning sun and brought memories of Drake, whose message to stiff-necked Dagos may still be read on its battered ramparts. We had to approach the wharf by a roundabout route, as the shorter cut to the city gates has been blocked by a dam of sunken hulks ever since the brave days of old when pirates from one European country or another (mostly from Plymouth) were liable to come unbidden on the wings of the first breeze from the sea. No sooner was the Tagus alongside, than the quay was thronged with an extraordinary mixture of men offering yet more extraordinary animals, including sloths, for sale. Conspicuous in the strange patchwork of humanity were some native Indians, with lank black hair and almond eyes, pathetic survivors of a race that is going down before the cruelty and kindness, equally fatal, of the dominant white. What days Drake must have had at Cartagena ! The good burghers feared him like the devil, and found him almost as hard to avoid. One likes to think that Spanish nursemaids frightened their naughty charges with the mere mention of his name, just as, a century later, the name of Marlborough was enough to bring baby Frenchmen to order. It was with a whole-hearted enthusiasm that this merry son of Devon harried the Spaniard, and few will believe the local libel about his flinging the nuns from the summit of La Popa INQUISITORS 25 because they would not divulge the whereabouts of the convent's treasure. No self-respecting Englishman would maltreat women who could keep a secret of any kind, though he might yearn to stuff them for the national collection. Yet the nuns of Cartagena were woundy rebels. A century later we find them in trouble with their own people for having shown their sympathy with a bishop who fell foul of the Inquisition, they were put in chains and whipped. It is as the last headquarters of that amazing corporation, even after it had fallen into disrepute in the land of its origin that Cartagena has its chief claim to historic fame, remaining in fact a centre of active persecution for three centuries after Ferdinand and Isabella received their pleasing mandate to recover the Americas "in order that the Most High might be worshipped and revered by the suppression of the condemned sects." Gifted with a scent for heretics, reminiscent of Gaboriau's detectives, the bloodhounds of the Suprema were rarely without material for daily proof of their devotion to the sacred cause of "recovering the Americas" for the purpose specified. They flogged, they tortured, they burnt. The smell of roasting was always in the air. Excommunication was commoner than benediction, and one zealous bishop even excom- municated a bale of wool, which, seen through a half-closed blind, he mistook for someone failing 26 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS to make his reverence as he passed. " Autos " were even arranged on a grand scale, with an eye to economy, as it was found that several heretics and infidels could be served .up in one roast at the ridiculously reasonable charge of two doubloons per head, including the cost of faggots, vine branches, straw, stakes, ropes and the cook's fee. But the heyday of this practical form of orthodoxy passed, and the end came swiftly. It was heralded by the French, who, in the last year of the seventeenth century, sacked Cartagena and lowered the pride of the Inquisitors. A little later it was suppressed in name, and when, in 1821, Spain lost Colombia to the Revolutionaries, these promptly disestablished the Church and confiscated as much property of the Inquisition as had not, in timely anticipation of such reverses, been secretly removed to the Mother Country. Spain had made a futile attempt to establish it in Louisiana, where it miserably failed, but in Mexico there was an Indian summer of organised torture down to at any rate the year of Waterloo. This younger Carthage of the Caribbean, as seen to-day, gives little evidence of its departed glory. Gone are the buccaneers and the inquisitors, and there remains but a picturesque and sleepy port, with fever scares and a prospering trade in hides, coffee, and tobacco. The hides are normal, the coffee moderate, and the tobacco SUSPICIOUS FISH 27 vile, fit only for the boorish epicures of provincial towns in Germany, where it finds its one market. No one walking through its shady streets to-day could believe that so peaceful a city had seen such stirring scenes; that merry rogues from glorious Devon had ever sacked its nunneries, or that its solid walls had guarded the last secrets of those who died in days when a motherly Church did not weakly spare the body and spoil the soul. It survives as a very lamb among South American lions, and revolution is powerless to wake it from its tranquil dreams beside the steaming lagoon. Those who, while in quarantine, find time hang heavily on their hands may have excellent sea- fishing at both Savanilla and this place, but they may be strongly advised to arrange beforehand, possibly with the agent of the Royal Mail Company, for a small boat to fish from, as otherwise, with the fine tackle indispensable in such clear water, not a single fish of any weight can be hauled in safety to the steamer's decks. The fish of the Spanish Main, which include tarpon, snappers, and other kinds, are the most suspicious of uneducated fish that ever I met in any sea. How or where they learnt to fear the gifts of the Greeks I know not, but no Thames roach is much more distrustful of man and his tackle. The only likely explanation is that the brilliant sun of those latitudes so illuminates the crystal water, even fathoms below the surface, that any but the finest gut tackle is 28 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS plainly seen, and even perhaps magnified. Anyhow, I can vouch for the fact that these fish will take a bait on fine tackle (and take the tackle as well), whereas thicker lines may dangle by the hour untouched even in the middle of a shoal. For the pellucid depths, which show the tackle to the fish, reveal these also to the fisherman, who is tantalised by the sight of monsters swimming round his baits, so close at times that he could almost jerk a bare hook into their chins. Very fine tackle is therefore essential. Even the wire leaders in use at Catalina would scare these fish along the Main, and strong salmon-gut is about the only material to use with any hope of cheating them. The only plan, therefore, is to fish out of a small boat moored alongside, and this should be easily procurable at both ports, with the help of the company's agent, who should, however, be written to beforehand, as he has other matters to occupy him on the day of arrival. On other voyages, when passengers were free to go ashore as they pleased, I was the only fisherman, but this time, under quarantine, there was such a crowd of enthusiasts eager to "waste the watery tribe " that the side of the ship furthest from the quay resembled Hastings pier during a competition. The waste of the watery tribe was exiguous, as I caught the only fish, a silvery, bream-like creature weighing about three pounds, and designated by the Barbadian niggers, to a BULLY BEEF AS BAIT 29 hundred of whom I presented it, a " moonfish." The rest of the company used hastily improvised handlines and large hooks baited with either raw beef or fish off the ice. After an hour or two without response, they retired and read books. I put out a couple of rods, each with a yard or so of stout single gut, and a single hook baited with " bully beef." One had a float, the other a sinker, so as to try different depths. For the " bully beef " I was indebted to the chief steward, who, remembering that I had learnt its virtues from a former captain of the Tagus, was so good as to send along a couple of tins as soon as the anchors were down. It is quite the most exasperating bait I ever tried to conjure with. Rag- worms, raw mussels, fresh pilchard, paste, can all be troublesome, but " bully beef " is nothing short of heartbreaking, for, even if it is induced to stay on the hook, it will probably wash off on striking the water twenty or thirty feet below. The proper way to use it is to plunge your hand into the sickly- smelling mess, and, discarding the fatty portions for groundbait, pick out the long solid pieces of lean meat. These are then doubled so as to make a solid bait for the hook to get a purchase on, and a little cotton may also be used to tie it on more firmly, care being taken that this does not in any way interfere with the penetrating power of the hook. Those who fish from the ship's deck should also, out of regard for the feelings of the i 13 30 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS hard-worked chief officer, be careful to keep this messy bait in the scuppers or on a tray, as nothing can be more annoying to him than the sight of grease trodden into his decks. No sooner had I put out my second rod than a fish, which looked, during my momentary vision of it, like a twenty or thirty pound tarpon, carried away the float and gut off the first. No sooner had I gone to reel in the remains than another good fish did likewise by the second. I call them " good fish" after the healing lapse of time. I called them something else then. Here, at any rate, was a sound, if- unsatisfactory, argument in favour of light tackle, though my neighbour, the Duke de Canevaro, an admiral in the Italian Navy, who was fishing at the Crimea during the war (fifteen years before I was born!) asked chaffingly whether it was better to have struck, and lost than never to have struck at all, his own experience during the past half-hour. I now armed both rods with stouter gear, with the not unexpected result that none of the big fish would look at the baits, my only capture being the aforementioned " moonfish." When I hauled this out of the water, half the niggers on the deck below went mad with excitement, and when I said they might take it off the hook and keep it for supper, there were signs of a free fight. Here, then, is the story of a failure, but one which may in the manner suggested, easily FISHING IN PORT 31 be turned into a success by those who come after me. Next morning, off Cartagena, where the limpid water beneath the wharf was alive with good fish up to at least six or eight pounds, I caught a few snapper of smaller size, but here again I was handicapped by the want of a dinghy to fish from. Colon has tarpon. Two years ago, Captain Laws, then in command of the Tagus, and myself rose several of about 20 lbs., also on " bully beef," but were smashed in every case. A voyage or two later, he managed to kill a brace. The truth is that the whole of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico is so little exploited with proper tackle that those waters may be regarded as overstocked with fine fish. Later in the week I was detained for some hours off Limon, the port of Costa Rica, where we loaded bananas. Passengers were quarantined, and I put in the time as usual, but here also, for want of a little boat, my tackle was repeatedly broken by five-pounders, which took a great fancy to the paste of bread and cheese which I made according to the recipe of a local sport. These necessarily brief hints on fishing in port are addressed only to the novice, as experienced sea-anglers will quickly grasp the peculiar conditions and adapt their tackle and baits to the needs of the case. Fishing at those anchorages ^J I I li i i ► 1 111 5 jjj 32 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS should prove really exciting sport with an old salmon-rod and single gut. The beginner should remember to keep the point of the rod well up and the line tight. Also, he should give the fish the butt as soon as he dare, else a shark may veryI likely be attracted to the spot and bite his catch in half. He should remember that it is not his until in the boat, and even then it must be handled with caution, for the fishes of the tropical seas are armed with sharp fins, and in their last struggles are apt to cut a careless hand to the bone. For myself the pleasant voyage drew quickly to a close once Cartagena lay behind; and next morning, in fact, I left the Tagus, with about six hundred and twenty others, including six hundred Barbadians. These had, before being allowed ashore, to undergo a rough and ready vaccination by Dr. Peirce, quarantine officer at that port. Some yelled at their first sight of the lancet; others bore the not very serious operation like stoics. They all, without exception, made furtive attempts to rub off the serum, but the doctor's eye was on them, as he sternly bade them keep their sleeves up until the incisions were dry. At Colon it was pelting. It usually is. This must still be one of the unhealthiest spots in the Caribbean, though, since Colonel Gorgas has been at work on the sanitation of the Isthmus, conditions have incalculably improved. The Colonel is the UK COLON AND THE COLONEL 33 one prominent official who has survived the many changes in the administration. Chief engineers have come, and chief engineers have gone, but the Colonel goes on for ever, making good in his wonderful warfare against the mosquitoes, cleaning native dwellings and screening others, filling in ditches, swamps, and crab-holes, all favourite nurseries of these Carter Patersons of disease. But for his untiring labours the Isthmus of Panama might still deserve its terrible reputation as a white man's grave. Though the old name dies hard, like all bad names, it is no longer deserved. By putting prevention before cure the Colonel has succeeded in editing a once fatal climate into the semblance of salubrity. Now, at any rate, the Isthmus, which once was altogether bad, is, like the curate's egg, good in parts. The mosquitoes have been driven back to the jungle, and the settlements have been made so habitable that no white man, woman, or child need fear at any rate a temporary residence. On the trains you meet little American girls going to school at Cristobal, the American quarter of Colon, not, perhaps, the apple-cheeked school children of Devon, but perfectly healthy (since in American children pallor is not necessarily a symptom of bad health), and boisterous enough to give their parents no anxiety as to their condition. This great work of improving the once hopeless Isthmus has proceeded steadily for some years now, though § f i i » if; 34 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS it was in 1905 that the campaign against Stegomyia waxed fiercest, as a result of which, I believe, there has been no authenticated case of yellow fever since 1906. Some notion of the magnitude on which this great peace army conducts its operations will be gathered from the fact that, as a single item, between two and three million gallons of oil are sprinkled in the course of a year. There is no difficulty in admitting that Colonel Gorgas and his staff have done wonders with the place, and only a churl would grudge his admiration. On the other hand, there is no need to exaggerate the sufficiently marvellous improvement wrought in the climatic conditions and to pretend, with some optimistic Americans (of whom, it is perhaps unnecessary to say, the Colonel is not one), that Colon to-day is as healthy and as agreeable as Nice. Panama, it should be remembered, lies, roughly speaking, in the same latitude as Borneo and the Gold Coast, neither of which could by the most fervent tourist agency be depicted as health resorts. All that can be claimed is, as has been said, that the Isthmus is no longer the white man's grave that once it was. Yet it is never wise to forget for a moment that tropical nature is inexorable in adapting her guests to their new environment. Those who seek her hospitality for better money than they can earn in kinder climates will find no Liberty Hall, where SUNSTROKE AND HEADGEAR 35 they may come and go, and dress, and eat and drink as they please. Fair-skinned families have to assume a darker complexion or go under. See how different the Jamaica Creole is from his English ancestry, how listless and apathetic, how inclined to " let things slide " in a fashion that would have horrified the squires or yeomen who were his great-grandfathers in Yorkshire or in Kent. The perils, real and alleged, of life in the tropics are little understood at home. Much is written about them with truth, and more without. Experience is the only school for both fools and wise men. The fools learn for themselves, and the wise men learn from the experience of the fools. This teaches residents to avoid sunstroke. The tenderfoot, on the other hand, displays a fine (and expensive) contempt for the noonday sun, stands on the hot side of the street, with a soft felt hat cocked rakishly on the side of his head, and then votes it hard luck when he has to go to bed for a month with an ice-cap to cool his fevered brow. The proper protection of the head and back of the neck is half the battle, and bald men run greater risks of sunstroke than those whose heads are well covered. A Panama or sola-topee is the best headgear. It should be broad in the brim, and draped with a flowing puggaree for the nape of the neck. A large leaf of cabbage or some other vegetable inside the crown is an additional protection. d2 36 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS The mid-day siesta is an excellent institution in tropical climates, which very insular Englishmen, newly arrived in a colony, are apt to despise as "Dago slackness." Yet it needs only a brief residence in the lands where the sun is lord of all to bring the conviction that the " Dago " is right, and that five hours of continuous brainwork, from, say, seven in the morning, are ample. The siesta is not always enjoyable. Those who cannot sleep in the daytime realise the truth of Voltaire's saying that " Boredom is the brother of repose " ; yet even boredom is better than brain fever. Discipline in diet is necessary if we are to make a success of life in the tropics. Absolute teetotal- ism may be the advantage that its advocates claim. I have neither tried it myself, though abstemious by conviction, nor studied the results obtained by others with a greater weakness for experiment. Of one thing, however, there need be no doubt, and that is that absolute moderation (if moderation can rightly be termed absolute) is essential. Any indulgence in excess is fatal. Yet I doubt whether, in any climate, whisky hurts the man who can stand it half as much as it hurts him who only thinks he can. There are two worse enemies to the stomach, at any rate, than a little alcohol, and these are fresh fruit and iced water. Excess in either will do more mischief than moderation in whisky. Anyone, more particularly with a turn for dysentery, should CLOTHING FOR THE TROPICS 37 avoid them as better men avoid sin, and even those who have hitherto kept clear of that horrid complaint should walk delicately among such traps, for that way lies trouble. I am sometimes asked—I suppose everyone is, whom his friends know to have strayed further than Margate—what is the best kind of clothing to take to the tropics. When the question is put by young ladies about to marry in India, I blushingly refer them to the very excellent handbook of hints to travellers published by the Royal Geographical Society, which is full of sound advice on such matters. Those whose advice is worth having are unanimous in sternly insisting on flannel worn next to the skin. Vendors of Jaeger clothing, indeed, would make it a capital offence to ignore this elementary rule of tropical hygiene. For years I have received such counsels with the respect they deserve and worn thick silk, an eccentricity which is, perhaps, allowable in the owner of an abnormally sensitive skin. For ordinary skins, no doubt, flannel is the best form of clothing. White clothes are in general favour, and I wear them in hot weather, even at home, as much as possible, but one distinguished American authority on tropical life quotes the laws of radiation and advises black raiment. On purely scientific grounds, there is reason in his choice; but on the few occasions when, at some function, black was de rigueur in the afternoon, I have suffered tortures. 38 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS The sensible course for the bird-of-passage, to whom alone these remarks are addressed, is to adapt himself to local conditions and not to try to adapt the conditions to himself. There is no sound reason why, with a little commonsense precaution, the tourist should not go through the tropics in perfect health and moderate comfort. His health may be safeguarded by a little preliminary dosing with that finest of all prophylactics —quinine, and by occasional recourse to Kutnow's Powder, or some other mild aperient. There are, indeed, dangerous ailments to which he is less liable than the resident, who might be thought to have earned the freedom of the Equator. One of these is dysentery, and the other is malaria. I have had such busy moments with both that my advice to avoid them at all costs comes from the heart. To comfort in those regions the greatest enemy is the mosquito, and my experience of her, from Sydney to the Rockies, teaches me that she is unavoidable. Prevention is out of the question, unless you spend the summer in bed inside mosquito curtains. As for cure, the most that can be done is to bathe the bites in raw ammonia, the counter-irritation of which seems to soothe the maddening pain. The one thing not to do is to dig your nails into the swellings. It poisons the blood even more than the venom from the insect. I always do it. Thanks to the unremitting campaign con- MOSQUITOES 39 ducted against their hordes by the American authorities, both Stegomyia and Anopheles are scarce indeed in the towns of the Isthmus, and the few that come in from the bush are rigidly excluded from the houses by a double armour of wire screens. The task of exterminating these insects in the settlements is simplified by their stay-at-home habits and aversion to travel from their native ditch, but there is always the danger that they may follow labourers in from the jungle. So deep is their cupboard-love that they will follow a human being anywhere. Towards the end of my trip, I landed for lunch on a little island in the middle of a Canadian lake, in which I had been fishing all the morning for black bass, without being bothered by a single insect. No sooner had I gone a few yards into the interior of this well-wooded islet to gather dry sticks for the camp fire than I disturbed the mosquitoes, a bevy of which followed me back to the shore, hovered about me all lunch-time, and then, an hour later, conducted me to the boat and kept me company for the rest of the afternoon. Among the lesser results achieved by Colonel Gbrgas at the Isthmus should surely be the deathblow to that singular belief, which still obtains in otherwise well-informed circles at home, to the effect that the opening of the Canal may be the means of introducing yellow fever, a malady hitherto peculiar to the Caribbean, into our Ill 40 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Asiatic possessions, which have so far been immune. These good folks argued that, whereas all the mosquitoes voyaging to India by way of the Horn are killed by the low temperature, the shorter, warmer route over tropical seas would keep them alive for dispersal at Asiatic ports. What they overlook is that the yellow-fever mosquito has always been equally plentiful on the Pacific side of the Isthmus, and had its introduction into the Far East been practicable, it would long since have been accomplished by vessels trading from Panama. The entire control of the Canal works is now in military hands, under the command of Colonel Goethals. The new regime has done all in its power not to offend the civilian element with militarism, realising that the two rarely harmonise with satisfactory results. Even with this exercise of tact, all dissatisfaction over the change of administration has not been dispelled. The successive resignations of Messrs. Wallace and Stevens are episodes which it would be impertinent on my part to criticise. In the opinion of those on the spot, Mr. Stevens at any rate severed his connection with the enterprise, for which he had so long and so disinterestedly laboured, because he was weary of continual interference from Washington, and resented the assurance with which cotton-planters from Louisiana and pork- THE PANAMA CANAL 41 packers from Chicago corrected and criticised his plans for the Canal. On this occasion I did not go over the Canal works. Colonel Gorgas was away on his holiday, and I knew none of those in command. Seen from the railroad the cuttings looked much the same as two years ago, but this, of course, was merely the illusion of an uneducated eye, for much has been accomplished since then. Nearly a hundred of those mechanical mastodons, the steam shovels, have been at work ever since, and, in the month before I was there they had shifted more million cubic yards of dirt than during any month in the previous history of the Canal. The largest of these shovels is registered as ninety-five tons, and such an one will calmly eat its way through a thousand tons of solid rock in an eight hours' day. So, at any rate, I was told by an American engineman who had worked on them, and was going back to the States to recruit. Much has been heard of the obsolete French machinery, scrap-heaps of which, lying along the railroad, are among the saddest sights on the Isthmus; but many of the old dredgers are equal to anything turned out by the American yards, and it is even whispered that a few of the " Spiggoty" engines are even superior to their own. Very pure-minded students of international law have made capital out of the way in which Washington interfered to free Panama from the 42 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS suzerainty of Colombia, on the understanding that all opposition to the construction of the Canal would be unconditionally withdrawn. This is the kind of coup which finds a hundred parallels in the making of overseas Britain. The rapid sequence of events which made Panama a free State and paved the way for the Canal occupied just a week of November, 1903. During the year before, the Governor of Panama had been killed in a sea-fight with revolutionaries in Panama Bay, and there had been unrest ever since. In the spring of 1903, the famous Hay-Herran Treaty between the United States and Bogota was presented for approval by Colombia. That State, after characteristic delays, withheld its sanction. Then it was that, swiftly and without bloodshed, Panama, with the support of Washington, shook off the rule of Colombia, and, as a result of the secession, signed the Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty. The Americans have also been accused of vandalism in endeavouring to change the name Colon to Aspinwall. No one with an ear for music would hesitate between the two, even if Colon did not commemorate a greater pioneer than a mere promoter of the Isthmian railroad. Yet, as a matter of fact, the American name was given first, and it was the natives who insisted on the other. It is, by the way, to be regretted, I think, that there is nothing to remind us of Balboa when he stood— " Silent upon a peak in Darien." THE ISTHMIAN RAILROAD 43 The railroad runs from Colon to Panama by a somewhat circuitous route, and its construction must have been a costly undertaking. The Chagres i River, a giddy torrent, in the level of which I have seen a difference of ten feet in as many hours, can give the canal builders all they want in the way of problems, but the Black Swamp is little less a thorn in the side of those responsible for the railroad. Thousands of tons of rock had to be flung into it in order to give the track some semblance of a solid foundation. Even then its appetite was far from satisfied, and as recently as 1907 twenty yards of the line, over which a full passenger train had safely passed only a few minutes before, vanished bodily into its maw. To avoid further risk it has been found necessary to divert the line round the most dangerous part of this death-trap. The suggested effect of the Panama Canal on the health of India has already been noticed. Others, who form their opinions more rapidly than wisely, have foretold that its completion will ruin the Isthmian Railroad. What is far more probable is that it will swell its passenger traffic, as tourists will leave the ship at either end of the Canal, devote an hour or two to seeing the town, and take a suitable train to catch the ship again at the end of its slow progress^ from one ocean to the other. It has also, on very vague evidence, been asserted that the CanaL will inevitably injure both the Canadian Pacific 44 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS and Southern Pacific Railroads. Poor, offending Canal! Is it not also to deflect the Gulf Stream and once more plunge the British Islands into the icy horrors of the Glacial Period ? Truly there is no end to the iniquities of this naughty enterprise. The only consolation to Americans is that nothing will be allowed to interfere with its completion. Washington is going to cut the Americas asunder, whatever happens. It will get more kudos than dividend out of the invest* ment. So far, as the financial promise of the Canal goes, De Lesseps may He at rest in his distant grave. His easy conquest of Suez was no schooling for the tremendous difficulties of Panama. Suez, for all time, will be the deadly rival of the younger Canal, and this may appease his manes! For her supply of labour on the works, America is still almost wholly dependent on our West Indian possessions. Other kinds of humanity have from time to time been tried, and of these some Spaniards alone proved superior to the niggers, but they are impatient of exposure, and have of late deserted wholesale. It would be difficult for two cities so closely associated, geographically and otherwise, to be more unlike than Colon and Panama. Colon faces the East, and stands knee-deep in Caribbean mud. Panama, dry-footed half the day, stares at the sunset, blinking over high walls and across -acres of uncovered sand. Panama has long been PANAMA 45 agreeably habitable, but} Colon is, and must long remain, one of the towns in which, as Americans say, men do not live for their health. Between them lie something under fifty miles of high mountains, dense forests and swift rivers, a beautiful country of its kind, but much of it deadly to the health and difficult for the engineer. Few stay, even for a night, in Colon unless compelled. Passengers by the Royal Mail Company's boats either spend the night on board (which teaches them that the mosquitoes have not quite taken farewell of the Isthmus), or else run over by the afternoon train to Panama, where they will find the Tivoli Hotel a roomy and well-conducted house. It is well screened against mosquitoes, and curtains are not needed on the beds, which makes sleeping much cooler. A moderately tuneful band plays of an evening in the square, not far from the hotel, and the stay ashore is altogether pleasant, the traveller scarcely realising that he is on the deadly Isthmus of Panama, the name of which was not so long ago synonymous with yellow fever. It was here that I got in quick succession two proofs of the curious limitations of the negro's mind. The first came to me late on the evening of my arrival. I looked in vain for a porter, forgetting how rare porters are in American stations. This is simply a case of supply and demand, as Americans of either sex carry their own " grips," and the porters forget that there 46 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS are other civilized travellers willing to pay for their services. Therefore I found no porter, but a white-haired old nigger, doubtless scenting, as he thought, an easily-earned " quarter," shuffled along the platform and took my kitbag under one arm and my suit-case under the other. An enormous white umbrella, which he had previously brandished, was tucked away under his left arm. He led the way to the tall turnstile, the only exit from the platform, which he charged full tilt. Then he put down the suit-case and deliberately fell over it. Recovering himself, his next move was to wedge the umbrella so firmly in the turnstile as to lock it to all comers. By this time several of us wished to get through, and his manoeuvres were so unpopular that willing hands disentangled him somewhat hastily from his predicament. Next morning, again, when I was ready to return to the station, my cab was blocked by that of my whilom angling companion, the Duke de Canevaro, who, being not quite ready to leave, told his cabman plainly to drive round and in at the other gate, so as to let me pass. The idiot, signifying that he understood, drove furiously off to the station, with the Duke's luggage, but without the Duke. Fortunately, having a slightly less battered cab-horse, I was able to head him off and send him back. And so I returned to Colon, meeting on the morning train the same little school children who A CONTINUAL DOWNPOUR 47 had, the evening before, come from Cristobal to their homes at Empire and Miraflores. The weather was beautiful at Panama and for twenty miles or more along the line. Then the sky darkened, and at the Caribbean end we found the same downpour, which had, in fact, never ceased, and which, for all I know to the contrary, may be still proceeding. 1 P CHAPTER II. NEW ORLEANS. Transfer of Baggage—The Preston—Quarantine at Costa Rica— Shipment of Bananas—More Medical Examination—Immigration Fee —Inquisitiveness of the Immigration Bureau—A Catechism—Up the Mississippi—Customs—Dreadful Streets of New Orleans—Its Antiquity and Repose—The Spirit of the South—North and South—The Suburbs — Cemeteries — Canals — American Hustle — West End — Lake Pontchartrain—Baseball as a Spectacle—Relation to Rounders—Antics of the Pitcher—His Trickery—The Colour Problem—A Fish Dinner at Antoine's and a Sequel. That afternoon I took regretful leave of the Tagus for the second time. The last was at Southampton, on a blazing day in July; this time it was May, with a deluge of rain and everything steaming. For the modest sum of thirty- five shillings, I had my luggage transferred to an adjoining wharf, about a hundred yards distant, where lay the little steamer that wa*s to carry me across the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. The carriage of each trunk cost a dollar, and of each smaller package half a dollar, in Panama money, which is worth just half of American currency. In the States the charges are approximately double; and, on the whole trip, out and home, I cannot reckon my expense with excess luggage and transfers to and from hotels at less than ten guineas. The local economist takes all his possessions in a case that would hold an elephant, BANANAS AT LIMON 49 and just his night things in a " grip " like a cigar case. The saving is considerable, but the discomfort is such as only an American would put up with. The Preston, chartered for the Gulf trade by the United Fruit Company, had no pretension to being a crack boat, and her accommodation, though sufficient, was homely. The Company, however, having found the popularity of the route increase beyond all its calculations, has lately built three new boats of its own, doubtless better adapted to passenger traffic. Even the Preston —a boat of about 1,500 tons—made the passage to New Orleans twelve hours sooner than we reckoned on, enabling us to get past the Mississippi quarantine on the Sunday night. The voyage, which occupies between six and seven days, is not very interesting, the only port of call, barred, like Cartagena, by quarantine, being Limon, on the coast of Costa Rica. Here, for five or six hours, we loaded bananas, between twenty and twenty-five thousand bunches, and all unripe. Such stupendous packing is only possible in the time with the aid of a highly ingenious loading machinery. Train after train, each with eight or ten trucks crammed from floor to roof with the fruit, packed in its own leaves, runs alongside, and the bunches are carried into three yawning hatches along endless bands worked by steam power transmitted from the ship's $r 50 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS boilers. So rapidly do these work that each hatch swallows upwards of twelve hundred bunches every hour ! It was during this uneventful passage that I appreciated how much more difficult of entry they are making " God's country" every year. At this rate it will in another ten years' time be as hard to get into as Paradise. The medical supervision alone is appalling. At Limon, for instance, a native doctor comes on board to examine our eyes and take our temperature. A second lies in wait for us at the quarantine station at the entrance to the Mississippi, where, shut like rats in a screened cage, we are once again tested with clinical thermometers and searched for the granular evidences of trachoma. A final examination, no less thorough, is held at the city wharf, only twelve hours later. Then, having satisfied themselves on the score of your health, they charge you an immigration fee of four dollars.* Finally, they put to you the following list of impertinent questions. Some of these, it is true, furnish information likely to be useful to the city police in its early concern with many of the immigrants. No one, however, but an American immigration agent could justify the impudence of Question 11 ! * This, on representations kindly made on my behalf by Mr. Carew-Hunt, H.B.M. Consul at New Orleans, the Immigration Bureau was so good as to refund to me three months later. ALIENS 51 QUESTIONS PUT TO ALIENS ENTERING THE PORT OP NEW ORLEANS. 1. What is your family name and given name ? 2. Your age and sex ? 3. Your ealhng or occu- pation ? 4. Are you able to read or write ? 5. What is your nationality ? 6. Your race ? 7. What was your last permanent residence ? 8. The name and address of the nearest relative or friend in the country whence you came ? 9. What is your final destination ? 10. Have you a ticket to such final destination ? 11. By whom was your passage paid ? 12. Are you in possession of $50 ? 13. Have you ever before been in the United States ? If so, where ? 14. Are you going to join a relative or friend ? 15. Were you ever in prison ? 16. Are you a polygamist ? An anarchist ? 17. Have you the offer of labour in the United States ? 18. What is the condition of your mental and physical health ? 19. Are you iirformed or crippled ? 20. What is your height ? 21. Your complexion ? 22. The colour of your hair and eyes ? 23. Have you any marks of identification ? 24. Where were you born ? By the time you have written an encyclopaedia on the subject of yourself, you are sorry you were born anywhere. Whether the Southern States are more exclusive, or whether the Republic generally has grown more chary of its hospitality, I do not know, but neither the questions nor the immigration fee formed any part of my unopposed landing on a Cunarder at New York two years earlier, and I would respectfully suggest a passport as an equivalent. The majority of the foregoing E 2 mmm 52 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS questions clearly relate to those intending to become good citizens of the United States. Those of lesser ambition who go to spend money in the land, and not to make it, might, with a more discriminating courtesy, be spared so tiresome a catechism. The hundred miles of Mississippi between the sea and the city cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called impressive. Few sea- reaches of great rivers are. All that I recall of the Thames below London, the Mersey below Liverpool, the Elbe below Hamburg, the St. Lawrence below Quebec—the last-named broadens imperceptibly into the ocean—is a confused blur of bell-buoys and mudflats, though the lowest reach of the Thames is at least hallowed by the brush of Turner. From what one sees of the greatest river in America next morning, during the last twenty or thirty miles to the city wharves, he will feel no regret that most of it was passed in the night. Like a carthorse plodding up a steep hill, the steamer touches first one bank and then hugs the other, zigzagging along the muddy waterway between equally depressing scenes, in which the rankest of greenery screens slimy creeks. Here and there an orange grove, or a little village peopled with blacks, breaks the monotony of verdure, but the eye soon wearies of such effects. The ear may be so fortunate as to catch a new sound, for mocking-birds are making merry in THE CUSTOMS 53 their bowers, and their music is sweet indeed after the hoarse cackle of sea-fowl. At last, round a sudden bend, a pall of smoke marks the greatest city of the South. The journey is at an end. You have but to go through a last medical inspection, and you are free to go ashore at the levee and clear your luggage at the Customs, the most conscientious Customs authorities I ever encountered in a world cursed with fiscal problems. There is a man with eyes that bore like gimlets, and there is a lady with hands that would strangle a python. He is an old hand who could smuggle so much as a cigarette past them. The Customs successfully negotiated, there remains the drive to your hotel over what are possibly the worst streets in any American city. This is a comparison which I hesitate to draw, for the worst American streets must be the vilest in the world. With that which leads from the New Orleans docks to the heart of the city may safely be compared Fulton Street, New York, as I last saw it, and any of the hilly streets in San Francisco or Seattle. Cars on tracks are in such general use throughout the States that wretched horses have to shift as best they may on the uncared-for space provided for them. About New Orleans there is nothing new but the name. Not her old namesake in the fairest part of France has studied to better purpose the arts of repose, which are scorned in the rest of 54 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS American cities. Grass grows in her streets* and wild flowers brighten the tracks of her cars. Hustle is no more honoured by her to-day than on that sad morning when the inevitable Farragut accomplished the not very miraculous feat of her capture by water. Canals and cemeteries are her emblem, for is she not the City of Rest ? It may be that a new era is dawning. It may be that hustle and the sky-scraper will come in with the Panama Canal, which is to give her new lease of prosperity. If so, she may be prosperous, but will no longer be so dear to many who love her now. You cannot wander, even for an hour or two, about the old quarters of the city without being infected by the Spirit of the South. My last entry into the Republic was past the feet of the Statue of Liberty, which looks grimly down on the tyranny of trusts. In the City of the North each good citizen demonstrates his equality, liberty and fraternity by shoving his neighbour's wife off the pavement. In the City of the South he shows it by his perfect courtesy to all and sundry. Yet, since achievement is not to be measured by haste, it is doubtful whether, even though reluctant to hustle and rush, the traders of New Orleans get through any less in the day than those of New York. Wandering in these old streets, my thoughts went back to a shady verandah in the city of NEW ORLEANS 55 Jacksonville, another stronghold of the South, where, two years earlier, I had sat next a white^ haired veteran of the Confederate army and listened to what he had to say, not so much of the soldiers who, merely in the way of duty, stormed the tottering walls of slavery, but of the carpet-baggers, the vultures and jackals of the retreating remnant, who swarmed down from their northern lairs and did more mischief in three months with their cheap claptrap than all the Federal rifles in as many years. The bitterness of civil war is dead or dying, yet even to-day you may hear pathetic stories of brutality and blood-lust, of lovely homes ruthlessly laid waste, of pianos, which in those day were rare and precious possessions, dragged from burning mansions and used as bins for troopers' horses ! In many respects New Orleans is a beautiful city. The restful suburbs reached by the Tulane Belt cars are far from the Cotton Exchange, where operators wail over the panics engineered by the unholy children of the New York pit. Some of the "homes" are pleasing to the eye, and I was just appreciating one when, alas, a well-meaning citizen on the car touched my arm and whispered the staggering truth that it cost its fortunate owner a hundred thousand dollars. J?ancy reckoning the beauty of a building in dollars! Oh, Columbia, Columbia! The lovely cemeteries are more restful even SSSESEfeZSSSS :***£■* 56 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS than the city. Owing to the difficulty of underground burial in so wet a soil, the dead are housed in beautiful marble houses, shaded by feathery palms and bordered with gorgeous flowers. And fortunately there is no one to tell you what they cost! Many of the finest monuments bear witness to the tender reverence in which the stricken South still holds the memory of its martyrs. Canals are another picturesque feature of the suburbs, many of them overgrown with a beautiful purple hyacinth and bordered by majestic marguerites. The picturesqueness of our inland waterways at home is too often ignored. Out there, in sleepy Louisiana they harmonise more completely with their surroundings, and the slow progress of barges is in keeping with the even life of America's one city that honours the principle of " More haste, less speed." There is something pathetic to European eyes in the troubles of ants in those mushroom cities of the West, where they alternately build and demolish their anthills. They run up a city, these breathless Americans, inside of a year. Then they invite all who have failed to make a living elsewhere. By this promising material it is first overcrowded, then burnt to the ground, and finally rebuilt twice as large as before. That is their idea of " beating the band." That is their notion of running the greatest A LAKE AND ITS FISH 57 country on earth. Praise be that other skies look down on quieter ambitions! West End, which lies on the shore of a broad lake much resorted to by fishermen of various hue, is a favourite resort of an evening, when car after car from the city discharges a merry freight for the roundabouts and other side-shows. By day, shorn of the attractions of Earl's Court and Coney Island, the shore of Lake Pontchartrain is not without quiet beauty, though its surface is very liable to sudden squalls, which may be fatal to those unacquainted with its vagaries. It is said to be full of large fish, and so it may be, but all that I saw caught in nets or on bamboos, by white men or by black, weighed about seven to the pound. For the benefit of the tourist I may, without unduly trespassing on the domain of the guide-book, mention that the lake is at the terminus of the cars which pass the cemeteries, so that one excursion will cover both. These cars are both frequent and unpunetual. Anyone so unfashionable as to be in a hurry, and complain to the conductor that the car is late, will be politely told that it is because the car in front is behind time. Though able to do its business in leisurely fashion, the New Orleans crowd shows the hot blood of the South at any rate when watching "ball-play." I went to a baseball fixture at Pelican Park and saw the local fancy badly :tfflfi-;w.»-.T.'J :r:™ Hi 58 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS whipped by a champion team from Atalanta. Whenever the visitors made a mistake they were jeered to the echo. Whenever the home team scored, it was frantically cheered. No Englishman who has seen baseball played will regret that not it but cricket is our national game; nor will he have any difficulty in understanding why Americans prefer baseball. For the American taste cricket is too dignified, too full of pauses, too helpful to the amateur and too little encouraging of professional crookedness. It lacks (perhaps one ought to say it should lack) the gladiatorial element which alone endears any game to an American crowd. Baseball is an altogether different game, yet it has its merits. As a spectacle, like lacrosse, it is far in advance of cricket, which, to the eye of the unbiassed foreigner, must—what is the use of denying it, when even Englishmen yawn and English crowds " barrack " !—be deadly dull at times. There is no stonewalling in baseball. You hit, or you go. The fielding is superb. Such fielding was never seen on any cricket field in the world. The Englishman's first impression of a baseball match will be that he is looking on at glorified rounders. When he has watched two rival teams of professionals play through half a dozen innings without scoring, he realises that the old game of the village green, though probably responsible for the inspiration of baseball, has been altered out of all recognition. The two BASEBALL AND SPORTSMEN 59 games are, in fact, as different as the old croquet and the new. The two coaches, at first and third base, who noisily advise the players when to run, will be another novel feature to the English onlooker ; and he will further be struck by the in- elegant contortions of the " pitcher," who twists and writhes like a caterpillar in order to make the ball spin in the air. All this is novel and interesting. The tricks by which a first-class pitcher often manages to dismiss his opponents are novel and beastly, but move the appreciative crowd to wild applause. I understand (though I was out of England at the time) that, ever since the representatives of the United States, for some reason or other, failed to carry off all the prizes at the Olympian Stadium, their countrymen have been criticising English sportsmanship in terms that admit of only one meaning. Once more, the old " win, tie, or wrangle " principle ! And they call themselves sportsmen. It is nothing short of pathetic. One feature I welcomed at the baseball match, after memories of Jai Alia in Cuba, and that was the prohibition of betting. The deafening cries of Spanish Corradores (otherwise " bookies ") after each change in the score did much to spoil one's enjoyment of Cuba's otherwise exciting game, making him envious of the deaf and ready to sign the wildest anti-betting bill ever framed. Baseball has a wonderful jargon of its own. Those effeminate stylists at 60 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS home who deplore the very mild slang of our sporting press would find tonic in a short course of baseball reports. New Orleans still counts manners above merchandise, and breeding before business. The stranger meets with a courtesy that he will look for in vain in most American cities. He is neither patronised, as in New York, nor is he pitied, as in San Francisco. New Orleans lives in the past. It has not, for all the failure of its appeal to arms, changed its perspective on the colour question, Nothing is openly said in favour of slavery. Politically the black man is, in a manner of speaking, the equal of the white. If he forces his favours on the white man's womenfolk, he is expeditiously lynched. European newspapers make a fuss about this mob law, but under similar conditions European men would probably do the same. To say that white women, old enough to know better, occasionally take a passing fancy to black gentlemen does not alter the case. More shame on the white women, but no excuse for the nigger when he serenades those who have no use for him. His white " brother " may no longer beat him, but he hates him as he never did in the days of his bondage. The more you see of the emancipated negro, the nearer you are to the saddening conviction that the " execrable sum of all villainies " could not have been so very much worse than the state of affairs that has resulted A FISH DINNER 61 from its abolition. The white man tolerates the black only under protest. With Artemus Ward, he admits that the " Afrikan may be our brother, but he isn't our sister, and our wife, and our uncle, and everything else." (Why, by the way, since so much of Artemus Ward's fun consists of phonetic spelling, has no one given Mr. Carnegie his due credit as a humorist ? ) One of my lasting memories of a charming old- world city is of a dinner, a princely fish-dinner, chez Antoine. Oh, little corner table in that unpretentious dining-room, what a banquet did your spotless cloth not bear that evening! What river-shrimps, what pompano! The pompano is the most delicate-flavoured fish in all the Gulf of Mexico, and is to be eaten, mark you, plainly boiled and outraged by no trapping of sauce or condiment. The plainness of such a dish is more beautiful than words can tell. The river-shrimp is a plebeian, a very guttersnipe among crustaceans, but what is birth in a shellfish ? His nursery may be in the foulest creeks in the river, or even, as some say, in the city sewers. I, for one, care not. Served at Antoine's, he is a poem, a hot and cold delight, boiled with red peppers and dished up on powdered ice. It is by such contrasts in temperature (compare with this the favourite strawberry ice served with hot chocolate sauce!) that strenuous epicures on the other side of the Atlantic love to tickle their jaded palates. ^mrf' 62 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS In this guise the river-shrimp is insidious. You feel like the man who had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough. Having acquired the local twist, by which each gem is quickly shorn of its armour and made ready for burial, you eat a pound or two before realising the growing pile of heads and tails. Oh, that May evening at Antoine's ! Oh, the sequel! The doctor who attends visitors at the Grunewaid Hotel played a part in it. So did I. Yet I would drink another bottle of his ordering. I would forego another night's sleep and another breakfast, if only I might first sup with Antoine. CHAPTER IH. A RAILROAD JOURNEY. American Pride in their Railroads—Fast Trains and Others—One of the Others—Their Trains Compared with Ours—One-class Travel— The ** Sunset Express "—Prohibition of Alcohol on the Train— Miserable Scenery—-Stations—Bridge over the Pecos River—Langtry —Ciudad Juarez—A Glimpse of Mexico—Sal ton Sea—The Freak of ft River—Flowery California—Pasadena and Los Angeles—First Sight of San Francisco. Americans are proud, and in some respects justly so, of their railroads. To have constructed railroads of any sort over some of those vast unpatrolled tracts of sand and sagebrush was a magnificent achievement. They also regard their trains as the last word in speed and luxury. That is quite another matter. A very young lady living at Reno, in Nevada, assured me that they were the fastest trains in the world. Being at last reluctantly convinced that the daily non-stop run from Paddington to Penzance is a little in advance of their average, she adroitly changed her line of argument and said that after all there was nothing wonderful in an old country like England beating a young one like America. If only a few other much-boomed American institutions could be discussed from the same standpoint we should arrive at a truer appreciation on both sides. As the poet said of the world, ^...j*-***.*****,*.* 3ES 64 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS America is still in the go-cart. That is the wonder of her. Now, a few of their " limited" trains, which travel light, do make very creditable runs. New York sends one to Chicago and another to Washington, and the famous " Owl" speeds silently out of San Francisco into the night. There are, however, other trains. It was by one of the others that I travelled from Reno back to San Francisco. In deference to the passion for naming trains, this might aptly be called the " Chesterfield." It is the soul of politeness. All notion of hustle is foreign to the perfect courtesy of its deportment. It is a gentleman, from locomotive to brake. It stops at every siding. It lets even freight-trains pass in the night. It stops at every whistling-post. It stops where there is no whistling-post. Its whistle is the voice of the sluggard, and its bell tolls the pace of a funeral. It would not frighten a tortoise. After ten thousand miles of railroad travel in America, I find it hard to compare the despatch and comfort of their trains with ours. Their best are a little better than ours. So much, perhaps, may be conceded. But their best are in a woeful minority, and their average is decidedly below ours. They believe in one class only. True, there is the option, even if you are not sleeping on the train, of paying extra for a place in the Pullman, but the whole accommodation of the STATIONS ON THE S.P.B. [64] ONE-CLASS TRAVEL 65 Pullman is so often, particularly in summer time, booked up a day or two in advance, that all sorts and conditions of travellers are thrown together in one car, and the sorts of traveller are many and strange in that land. They call the carriage first-class and charge first-class rates, and this, judged by the company, for third-class accommodation. They cannot realise that in England people pay the higher class fare, not so much for the better upholstering of the compartment, as for the smaller risk of unpleasant travelling companions. A prominent official of the Southern Pacific Railroad, over whose line I travelled through five States, including a month up and down California, assured me that England would soon come to one-class travel, and he pointed to the abolition of second-class on our lines north of London as the shadow of the coming change. It was useless to emphasize certain fundamental differences in English ideas and ideals as likely to preserve the existing system for a long time to come. He was firm in the belief that all inequalities in our " transportation" (this, in America, has nothing to do with sea-borne convicts) would ere long be swept away, and there I left it. On a train like the " Sunset Express," which runs from New Orleans through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, you get the best of Pullman accommodation, with dining . .jj 66 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS and observation cars, all of which somewhat mitigates the horror of a continuous railroad journey of two thousand five hundred miles, most of it hopeless desert. The food served on the " diner" is not quite execrable, and the prices are just short of prohibitive. Three almost satisfying meals a day can be had for about twenty-five shillings, exclusive of wine. Wine, indeed, cannot always be had on the journey, nor do Americans, who commonly drink iced water at table (and iced whisky everywhere else) feel the want of it. While the train is going through the States of Texas and Arizona it is against the State law to serve or drink wine on it at all. This deprivation lasts two whole days, while the train is running through scenery that might have been expressly designed to drive a man to drink. The thirsty traveller's first inference is that such prohibition was enforced to crowd Paradise with sober Americans. His next is that the authorities fear that, after one look at the landscape, one long panorama of desolation, travellers might at once exhaust the commissariat with fearful results. Neither explanation is correct. The real reason for this enforced teetotalism is that the young bloods of the West are inclined to show their accuracy with " guns" at point blank as soon as they have taken refreshment at a bar, and it is thought best to discourage such exhibitions on the trains. A fine of fifty dollars is A THIRSTY LANDSCAPE 67 therefore imposed on the conductor of the car for supplying alcoholic liquor, and a fine of three hundred, I believe, on anyone drinking it. I admit without contrition that, unable to control a thirst excited by one day of travel through a country of such heart-breaking appearance, with not even dead cattle enough to keep the vultures plump, I drank some white wine of my own in cups, a shameless imitation of cold bouillon. As Smiles says, no laws, however strict, can make the drunken sober. Smiles is always genial. Although there is here and there a fleeting gleam of beauty, I doubt whether one consecutive mile of the scenery between New Orleans and San Francisco is worth keeping awake for; and the observation car is welcome rather as a cool balcony for evening use, after the sun is down, than as an introduction to landscape better left unseen. All the first afternoon and evening you run through the rank jungle of Louisiana, and, as darkness gathers swiftly on the southern scene, you watch fireflies and feed mosquitoes. Next day the waning green of Texas gradually prepares you for the burning desert of New Mexico and Arizona; and only on the last day but one do the orange groves of California wipe out such ghastly memories. The memory of this journey has few landmarks to cling to. Here and there, at a station like El f2 irar 68 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Rio, you can get off the car for a few minutes to inspect the natives and stretch your legs. Here and there $lso you will be driven back to cover by the fearful energy of some singer or harpist, who strives to brighten your halt in the hope of earning a dole for his pains. A wild gorge, or a broad river gives the camera an excuse to poke its lens out of the window, but even these few " lions " are very tame. There is, for instance, the bridge over the Pecos River, which it spans at a height of 300 feet. As an example of architecture, I doubt whether it is a patch on the Forth Bridge, and a snapshot that I got of it looks so like the shaky affair at Grosvenor Road that I cannot publish it. Yet Americans clearly regard it as one of the Wonders of the World. The Wonders of the World have doubled in number since America got into the guide books. Another landmark, which had at least a human interest, was a tiny broken-down station named after " Mrs. Langtry," and it was by a strange mental process that those frowsy shacks overlooking the desert were able to conjure up a vision in a Worth gown bowing behind the footlights. The most memorable halt on the road is undoubtedly that at El Paso, where the traveller gets a couple of hours in which to hire a cab and drive over the bridge, which takes him over the Rio Grande del Norte and into Mexico. There A GORGE, SEEN FROM THE TRAIN. THE RIVER BETWEEN MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES. f68] A STRANGE SEA 69 is some trifling parley with a small Customs officer, and then the way is clear through Ciudad Juarez, lately the centre of a comic opera revolution, a city of mud huts, with citizens to match. Of quite different, and to my mind much greater, interest is the Saiton Sea, which the train passes on the last morning. As I saw it, with a stiff breeze curling its surface, it might indeed have been the sea, and great carp-like fish were leaping beneath a bridge close to the line. The strange history of this " sea " illustrates the brave struggle of man against the hostile forces of nature. It was formed by an impulse of that wayward river, the Colorado (which is by many geographers regarded as the first cause of the Grand Canyon, one of the few sights that I missed), which, in one of those side trips in which it delights, broke its bounds in the aiUtumn of 1904 and inundated an extinct sea-bed. The mighty river overflowed some irrigation works^ sweeping away every barrier opposed to it and filling up what had once been a sea, but was long dried up. Twice the resourceful natives dammed this destructive flood, and twice it overcame all obstacles, dashing entire villages to destruction. Once and for all, at enormous expense, the fierce Colorado River was tamed, but not before it had left a souvenir of its raid in the shape of an inland sea fifty miles long and probably not less than five hundred 70 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS square miles in area. In time, of course, probably indeed within the next ten or fifteen years, the Salton Sea will be off the map, for its depth nowhere reaches a hundred feet, and as it is exposed to terrific heat during most of the year, evaporation must be rapid and continuous. The long and tiring journey comes to a pleasant ending in the green and flowery State of California, a veritable taste of Eden after a surfeit of the the other place. As a change from sand and rock, we now have, on either side of the train, the yellow blaze of ripening oranges and the golden glory of the acacia. There is a halt of some hours at Los Angeles, and some of this may well be spent in Pasadena, one of the few pretty American towns that owe all to the hand of man and nothing to nature. There is an excellent lunch at the Maryland Hotel, where, at a moderate charge, you can spend a useful hour making up for days of leanness. Then there is a pleasant car ride to Los Angeles, through fields yellow with hay, and past ostrich and alligator farms. Los Angeles itself is a handsome city built on hills and endowed with a tremendous system of street cars. During my stay at Catalina Island I was dependent on the three rival Los Angeles papers for my news, and I gathered in that time that the cars have accidents enough to keep all three editors busy. After dining at the Van Nuys, to the strains of a small but correct orchestra, we can catch the train A FIRST GLIMPSE 71 to our journey's end. Next morning we skirt the famous harbour, which the expenditure of a few million dollars is to make much more famous in the near future. Before leaving the train, the curves of the line, as it passes in and out of tunnels, gives us our first glimpse of a great city only just recovering from the ruin in which, in a day and night, it was plunged two years ago by earthquake and fire. The first glimpse is disappointing. To be quite frank, later rambles in its inchoate streets did not dispel the gloom of it. In its heyday San Francisco must have been a splendid city. It will without doubt be so again. But it is now enjoying an entr'acte of topsyturvydom. It looks like a masterpiece unfinished for want of funds. It suggests what the Apollo Belvidere may have looked like when its unknown sculptor was only half through with his job. It is saddening and it is unsatisfying. PART IL—CALIFORNIA ii CHAPTER I. SAN FRANCISCO. Recovery of the City—Rivalry of Seattle—Beauty of San Francisco— Van Ness Avenue—" Frisco "—Population—Golden Gates Park— " Monarch "—The Museum—Buffalo—The Seal Rocks—Swimming Baths—St. Francis Hotel. As a promising convalescent, San Francisco excites pity for its hard fate, not untinged with confidence in its ultimate, if slow, recovery. The convalescence is not rapid, for the doctors are resolved that it shall be thorough. The municipal authorities have, not unreasonably, laid such troublesome restrictions on the rebuilding of any but high-class edifices of non-inflammable material that many leaseholders, unable to foot the bill of such construction, have been compelled to leave the ground unoccupied and remove their household gods to Seattle. A real estate agent of the city assured me that this exodus to Seattle and elsewhere had become a very grave proposition (everything is a " proposition " in America, from a boiled egg to a bishop), and that Seattle might become a dangerous rival of the older city. When I reached Seattle I found all hills and upheaval, in apparent imitation of San Francisco, but very little evidence of serious rivalry. Now that it is more or less in ruins, one wonders THE CITY 75 whether, even in its heyday, San Francisco could ever have been a pretty city. It has been compared to Naples and to Sydney, but it lacks the palaces of the first, and its harbour, or all that I saw of it, is not a patch on Sydney's. On the other hand, nothing can rob San Francisco of its Van Ness Avenue, which was the ne plus ultra of the great fire, and which remains one of the most alluring thoroughfares in the Far West. A comfortable crawl along the " Avenoo " at three in the afternoon shows California's best buying fine feathers for their pretty heads, and there are worse sights for an idle hour than that of handsome women shopping, at any rate for those who have not to pay. As for the beauty of the city—well, it needs American eyes (or Mr. Whibley's) to see elegance in skyscrapers; and I imagine that the average Englishman will call it a very handsome city and let it stay at that. He will also perhaps speak of it as " Frisco" (an abbreviation not wholly discarded by Americans themselves), unless he should catch sight of a pathetic appeal posted in the street cars, in which visitors are begged to desist from so undignified a name. For the citizens take their city very seriously. To Californians generally it is the hub of fashion. It ranks only after New York and Paris. Its opera season is a joy even to the further borders of Nevada, whence pilgrims flock each winter in their hundreds. Even to stay for a week in Ill 76 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS one of its immense hotels, spending money in the stores, lunching in the Bohemian shades of the Bismarck, and bathing in some of the two million gallons of the Sutro Baths, is a wild dissipation to look forward to for months. Like so many others in America, the city has leapt from nothingness to prosperity in a little more than half a century. In the early forties its population was about three hundred, and at the time of the fire it could not have been far short of three hundred thousand. A thousandfold increase in sixty years is good going, even for America; and those at any rate who are not bound to reside in it may give ungrudging admiration to this city of a hundred sandhills. The reclamation of the Golden Gates Park, from a site that nature appears to have designed as a golf course, is a monument of American enterprise. Those who walk or drive over its thousand acres, seeing the buffalo and the deer grazing in its beautiful glades, will find it hard to realise that only thirty years ago all this verdure should have been no more than rolling sand dunes. It makes a man feel ageing to think that he is years older than a domain which looks as if it might have been green when Columbus landed in the Continent. It h&s a suggestion of finish, indeed, which is in agreeable contrast with the inchoate upheaval of the neighbouring city. Footpaths twist and turn through woodland scenes, 1 %^&^w NEAR THE GOLDEN GATES. [77] A FAMOUS GRIZZLY 77 leading here to a gleaming lake, there to a Japanese tea garden. On every sward, the city's unemployed forget hunger in sleep, while more strenuous folk play mild lawn tennis on excellent courts. As an animal repository this park makes no pretence to rival Bronx or emulate the Yellowstone, yet Australian wallabies romp in sight of spotted deer from the Sandwich Islands; there are three corrals of buffalo; and the great head of a moose leans over a fence as the animal gets the scent of some neighbouring bears. One of these is the famous " Monarch," whose story is written by Mr. Seton-Thompson. This gigantic male of the Califoraian grizzly is said to weigh no less than eighteen hundred pounds, and is locally revered as the last of his kind, as not since his capture, sixteen years ago, has another of the sort been seen, dead or alive. This, of course, is only negative evidence, which, in an area exceeding the whole of the British Isles, cannot count for much, seeing that there are fewer inhabitants to patrol it than live in the city of London! It is not improbable, then, that others still live a sunny and undisturbed existence on the wild slopes of some unvisited canyon. Besides the living animals in the park, there is a good collection of beasts, birds, and fishes in the museum, and on its walls I found what to expect at Catalina in the way of yellowtail, sea-bass, and albacore. There, too, was the only tuna I saw on my travels. - / RIP!' 11 rip fill 111 I 78 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS I had not bargained to find my one and only tuna in a park, but there it was. Of the buffalo in the park I was, thanks to the assistance of the superintendent, who drove me round, able to get a photograph. The only difficulty was in keeping out of the picture a hayfork, with which one of the keepers had to keep back the biggest bull, which resented my intrusion. Buffalo, which are on the increase in America, may yet come back to their own. What a fine irony if, in the end, they should outlive the race that gave them back their heritage! Who knows but that, in the fulness of time, the buffalo may, like Shelley's bittern stalking over the ruins of London, once again range over the grass-grown site of Van Ness Avenue ! Of the surroundings of the city I do not pretend to know much, but I took a fine breezy walk round the cliffs that overlook the Golden Gates, by leaving the car ten minutes before it gets to its journey's ending at Cliff House (or rather the place where the House was before it was burnt to the ground) and scrambling down the path towards the sea. In places the path is narrow, and with the high wind that often blows you need the surefootedness of a goat to make the ramble a success. After many zigzag ups and downs you reach the famous Sutro Baths, and from a neighbouring point you look down on the equally celebrated Seal Rocks. A BATHING PALACE 79 The basking sea-lipns look to the naked eye like old mats hung out to dry. Then first one moves, and then another; a chorus of raucous barking greets the ear, and you. realise with regret that these historic seals are beyond the understanding of the camera you have brought purposely to take their portrait. Disappointed, you turn to the baths for a swim. They are the biggest in the world, but that brings little consolation as you lose your way repeatedly in a building not unworthy to rank with the Crystal Palace, and better adapted, one would have thought, to the trial spin of aeroplanes. Since even Americans cannot swim fifty deep, the object of so palatial a bath, beyond the fond pride of billing it as the largest on earth, is not apparent. Still, you have the reassurance that you are bathing in a couple of million gallons of Pacific water, and you can get it at almost any temperature, from normal up to eighty or ninety Fahrenheit. The dressing boxes are legion, and distracted bathers, shivering on emerging from the warmer tanks, may be seen scurrying to and fro like rabbits in search of their burrows. In an upper storey of this bathing palace is a museum, one of the most attractive exhibits being an enormous sea-lion, one time senior officer of the mess down on the rocks. The St. Francis Hotel is a Tower of Babel overlooking a small and humble public square, of which, for some sentimental reason, the citizens ZZ^_ I 80 SUNSET PLAYGROUPS are inordinately proud. It is a typical first-class American hotel; fairly luxurious, extremely expensive, and well situated for the busy quarter of the city, yet out of the worst noise. The bathrooms attached to the better bedrooms are about the best I struck in the trip, and it was a boon to be clean and at rest during brief interludes in the dirty insomnia of railway travel. The telephone calls you at any hour you wish, and you have to get out of bed to still its voice. This is better than drowsily answering a knock on your door and turning over to sleep again, for the man who can walk across a room, stop a telephone, and then creep back to bed should earn his living as an advertisement for a sleeping draught. You generally 'phone for chocolate and rolls; bathe and dress at leisure, and then proceed via the elevator to the basement cavern of the barber, who, for the modest sum of half-a-crown, will shave you and dash a few drops of eau de quinine on your hair. Then probably you are lured by the news stall in the hall, where you can buy the news, postage stamps, picture postcards and candies, or have your films admirably developed at reasonable cost. You next consult the head porter, a sympathetic and intelligent counsellor, as to the sights of the city. He suggests a dollar's worth on the " Sightseeing Car," and you thank him for his advice and promptly creep along Van Ness Avenue and gaze at the daughters of man. GOOD ADVICE 81 To me, however, in the sere and yellow of life the daughters of fish suggested greater sport, and my thoughts turned toward Catalina Island, the goal of my wanderings. First, however, I took the advice of a local sportsman and devoted a couple of days to Lake Tahoe, one of California's beauty spots, and just then famous by reason of the recent capture of a gigantic trout that weighed over thirty pounds. I never regretted acting on his suggestion. Indeed, so sweet are the memories of Tahoe that I shudder when I think that I might have gone through California without seeing it. i CHAPTER II. Hi THE LAKE OF MY DREAMS. Colours of Tahoe—The Truckee River—Truckee—Prohibition—Reno —An Academic Fisherman—Tahoe Trout—A Fine Specimen—Handline Fishing—" Jerry "—Minnow Fishing—An Invisible Boundary—Fishery Laws—Flies for the Truckee River—Poaching—Bird Life. In the clouds it lies, this lake of sweet memories, over a mile above the ocean, yet guarded by white- headed sentinels that tower another four thousand feet over the blue face of it. Switzerland has lakes that may perhaps equal Tahoe, but they cannot surpass it. As its depth ranges from two feet to two thousand, so its colours run through every wonderful play of blue and green that artists ever dreamt of. The opalescent sea is baffling in its magic patchwork, but the sea is simple beside Tahoe. The eye cannot mark where shade merges into shade. Parts of it, like the eyes of Swinburne's lady, are the " greenest of things blue," and, also like her eyes, they are unfathomable. The boatman's practiced eye can almost gauge the depth from each change of colour, but he who lacks such knowledge has a fuller enjoyment of its chameleon beauty. Over my desk hangs a panorama of this fairy lake, with its foreground of pine-clad headlands, and its background of snow-clad sierras, and I vow THE WITCHING SHORES OP TAHOE. [82] A HAPPY LAKE 83 the sight of it makes me as homesick as if I had been born on its lovely shores. There is about Tahoe a silent witchery that works in your blood. When I forget it my heart will be still. Here, indeed, is a happy lake. It cannot be vulgarised even by the hordes of tourists who flock all the summer long to its shores. Gaunt pines, crowding around its edge, look down on a second forest in its blue mirror. Little boats convey expectant fishermen to the haunts of its big trout. Others fish along the difficult banks of its one outlet, the Truckee River, which goes singing merrily beside the line, over snags and boulders that rob many a fisherman of his tackle, and past Truckee and Reno. Truckee consists of one street of saloons and a second of cottages. The spectacle of one saloon to every two or three hovels is a curious commentary on the wave of prohibition now surging over more enlightened States. That this insensate prohibition does not prevent drink is recognised by every sound authority on social science. That the closing of the saloons may even encourage lonely drinking, the worst and surest incentive to intoxication, is more than likely. There is no worse drunkard than he who gets drunk in his own company, and I shall be glad to see in ten years' time whether this much-vaunted prohibition has done anything for the United States. From what I have seen of it out there I have my doubts. Anyhow, there g2 # Sill 84 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS is none of it at Truckee, where saloons are so frequent that a man cannot be good if he wants to. Reno is a more promising town. It drinks and it also gambles, but it has a higher side, for there is a small new university. Just after my first (and last) day at Reno, the university bulked large in the American press by reason of the Mackay celebrations during Commencement Week, when Mrs. Mackay, daughter-in-law of its deceased benefactor, shocked the local matrons by smoking a cigarette at the banquet. She must be a callous lady, for, although the news of her solecism was cabled all over the world, she is said to have slept at nights. Reno has wide avenues planted with shady trees, and queer, picturesque, new little houses that look as if they had been built with children's bricks. A young lady of the town, who drove me round on the one morning I spent there, told me that one of these cost its unfortunate owner a hundred thousand dollars. I could only hope, for his dear sake, that most of it had been spent on the interior. In this homely town they average a murder a week, but the natives are used to such simple domestic episodes and take no notice of them. The students at the university wear bowler hats and dress as young Americans usually dress. One of the professors, a man of considerable attainments, with a deep bass voice and a passion for fishing, catches, on the fly, more Truckee trout than any JERRY. [85] TAHOE TROUT 85 other two fishermen in the neighbourhood. His academic duties leave him leisure to learn every pool and snare, and his inexhaustible patience is of the order possible only in dons. But I must get back to Tahoe and its trout. The Tahoe trout is known to American naturalists as Salmo henshatm, a dreadful " given name," which doubtless does honour to its discoverer. There is nothing wrong with this splendid fish, except its indifference to the fly. To catch it, you must use either spoon or minnow. Beyond the small black spots evenly distributed over the belly, I noticed nothing to distinguish it from ordinary lake trout. It belongs to the group known as " cut-throats," distinct from the rainbows and steelheads, and in the deepest parts of Tahoe it grows to an immense weight. Of the specimen weighing 31J lbs., caught on the Nevada side of the lake the week before I was there, mention has been made. I believe I am right in saying that this was caught on one of the outrageous handlines of copper wire, used with an enormous spoon, which are preferred not only by the professional fishermen of the lake, but also, I regret to say, by many of the visitors, who either cannot or will not use a rod. The one redeeming point about these otherwise barbarous handlines is that they undoubtedly spare the Tahoe trout and spoil the old red fish that lurk near the bottom of the lake. About s ii 86 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS eighteen inches above the spoon they commonly use a minnow, and the inference is that the more sportive Tahoe trout dash only at the spoon and are missed by the minnow hook. Whether the old red fish are a distinct species, or whether they are merely degenerate Tahoe trout, I am unable to say, as I caught none, and " Jerry," my boatman, was a little vague in his natural history. Like most of the professionals at Tahoe, Jerry is a German, who early in life decided that a change of climate, combined with evasion of compulsory service, was desirable. As has been said, the trout in the lake do not rise to a fly. Trolling with minnows is not very high-class sport, but the crime is partly condoned by the use of a six-ounce rod and fine line. The local methods, which even stoop to baiting the spoon with a minnow and a couple of worms, are " the limit " ! The boundary between the States of California and Nevada runs through the middle of the lake, an arbitrary frontier which gives many opportunities of poaching, for the open season starts in Nevada on May 1st, a month earlier than in California. Nothing is much easier than to let the boat drift accidentally over this imaginary barrier and poach Californian trout out of season. June is quite early enough, and early in that month I found the lake full of fish. Within half-an-hour of pushing off from the little landing stage below FISHING 87 the tavern I had a five-pounder kicking in the boat, and the same morning I caught five others, two of which weighed close on three pounds apiece. In the river, as in the lake, the day's bag is limited to either 25 lbs., or fifty fish, not exceeding that weight, and the size-limit is six inches. Flyfishing answers in the river for those who know the water. Those who do not, get exercise and good scenery. The favourite flies are "Rube Wood" (whatever that may be), Orange Coachman, Brown Hackle, or Dusty Miller, and a very small Wilson Spoon is sometimes used on the leader. The best pools are at the upper end, close to the lake, for below Truckee the poaching is terrible, and this in spite of severe penalties, notices of which are conspicuously posted in English, Italian and Sclavonian, a polyglot appeal to the mixed mining population of the district. Lake Tahoe is frequented by crowds of admirers to whom the fishing means nothing. The tavern, which is run at moderate prices on the "American plan," is extremely comfortable, and if you do not catch trout at any rate you can eat it at every meal. This is on the Californian shore, and lies at the terminus of the little railway from Truckee. It is also close to " Tahoe City," where there is a State hatchery worth visiting. Those wishing to fish the Nevada shore in May go to the inn at Glenbrook, which is reached by the daily steamer from Tahoe Tavern. 88 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Here, then, a little over two hundred miles from San Francisco, is the loveliest lake I ever dropped a line in. You can walk for miles around its shores in the shade of tall pines and on the soft carpet of their needles, without encountering anything more dangerous than the tame little ground-squirrels that all but take food from your hand. The birds of its shores are not less interesting than the fishes of its deeps. If you sit for a few moments on some fallen trunk, little white-cheeked woodpeckers come tapping fearlessly within reach of your camera. Mallard fly in pairs from shore to shore; seagulls float lazily against the blue haze of the peaks; and kingfishers (known locally as " king-snipe ") flash across the rocky inlets. Oh, the peace of my sweet lake in the Sierras! Out on the bosom of it, or lying by its margin, you wonder, with Thoreau, why men worry so. ^ CHAPTER III. THE FINEST SEA-FISHING IN THE WORLD. The Owl—San Pedro—Br. Holder—Light Tackle for Sea Fishing— Freak Fishing—Description of Catalina Island—Changes of Ownership —Goat Shooting—The Seals—Sea Gardens and Glass-bottomed Boats —" Jim "—Beautiful Seaweeds—Aquarium at Avalon—No Tunas— Possible Influence of Gasolene Launches: A Suggestion for the Tuna Club—The Yellowfin Tuna—Conditions of Fishing at Avalon—Light Tackle—The "Tip"—Reel and Line — Flying Fish and Sardines as Bait—-Wilson Spoon—The Netsmen—Arrangement for Supply of Bait—Bigger Fish at San Clemente—Success of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Simpson—Mr. Calderwood's Big Salmon—Local Dissatisfaction with Clemente Awards—The Thirst for Buttons—In Praise of Catalina Fishing—Cost of the Trip as Compared with Florida—Guides— " Mexican Joe "—George Herbert—Jim Gardner—A Day of Disasters —Yellowfin Tuna— Yello wtail — White Sea-bass—Albacore — Black Sea-bass — Barracuta — Rock-bass — Swordfish — Dolphin—Sunfish— Sport with Yellowtail and White Sea-bass—Kelp—Method of Fishing— Part Played by the Guide—Hooking and Playing the Fish—Trouble of Rock-bass—Halibut—" Lucky Stones "—Fishing for Albacore— Other Possibilities—Sport with Black Sea-bass—Good-bye to Catalina. And now for Catalina, taking the " Owl" one fine night from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and thence, by a slower train, to San Pedro, whence a boat runs daily to the island. Tragedy was in the air the day of my crossing, for there, close to the San Pedro breakwater, lay a grand American battleship, on which, only the day before, a boiler had exploded with fatal results. Some of the victims were dead, others, to whom God was less kind, were dying slowly in the wards. A very pleasant naval officer, with whom I travelled by a night train some weeks later, assured me that the scene had been a fearful one. He was 90 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS soon starting on the world-cruise, of which much has since been written, but not even the pleasant anticipation of his travels seemed able to efface the horror of that disaster. There was nothing of poetic inspiration in the view of Catalina's dim outline on the horizon as we steamed out of San Pedro, but to me, who had dreamt of its supposed tuna for years, it looked like the Promised Land, and the reminiscences of Dr. Holder, who kindly took me across, still further fired my desire. Every headland, every beach, recalled to him some stirring struggle such as he describes so graphically in his books, and by the time we were seated at lunch in the large room of the Metropole, it seemed hard to believe the gloomy report that tunas had temporarily forsaken the bay, and that I should not in all probability get even a sight of one. As events proved, I did not, yet, for all my disappointment (tempered by many a letter in which Dr. Holder warned me not to expect one) I shall not hesitate to describe the sea-fishing with light tackle as the most enjoyable I ever experienced all the world over. I have fished in many seas, from Florida to Copenhagen, and if there is better sport than playing a thirty-pound white sea-bass on light tackle, I want to know of it. True, Catalina has no tarpon, and the tuna, once its glory, seems to have departed. Still, the sporting value of a fish LIGHT TACKLE 91 depends in great measure on the tackle on which you catch it, and no one need, I think, contradict me if I say that a yellowtail of thirty or forty pounds gives as exciting sport on a nine-ounce rod as a tarpon of a hundred on the butcher's tackle hitherto used against it.* The use of comparatively light tackle in salt water was a craze of mine ten years before anyone dreamt of it at Catalina. I catch all my bass and pollack at home on an old trout rod, and some of my criticisms of the billiard-cue type of sea-rod in vogue have not been approved by my friends of the British Sea Anglers' Society. Yet there are limits even for fine tackle. The nine-ounce rod and nine-thread line used at Catalina are admirable. You can hold such a rod in one hand by the hour without feeling tired. This, however, is light enough for practical fishing. The so-called " six-six-six" outfit, with a six- ounce rod and six-thread line, is freak-fishing, and life is not long enough to lend enjoyment to the fighting of a fifty-pounder for over three hours. Nor is such tackle particularly humane, for a great number of fish inevitably break away with the hook and line stuck in their jaws, and, as a matter of fact, though it seems a paradox, the # Mr. Streeter, a graduate in Catalina fishing, has lately founded a light tackle tarpon club at Aransas Pass, and that magnificent fish can now be taken on a nine-thread line, which gives it the sporting chance that it formerly did not get. n m ■■ ■- ""llftd ~: JBB 92 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS stoutest tackle is probably the kindest in the end, for, like straight shooting, it kills outright. There is, however, some excuse for the encouragement of light tackle, even in excess, when we consider the protective principle that dictates it. It prevents so many fish being killed, not so much because of the difficulty of killing them on light tackle (which is not very appalling to a moderately skilful fisherman), but because of the loss of time. Not the finest fisherman in the world could kill a big yellowtail on light tackle as quickly as on a tarpon rod, and the result is a great saving in fish. In the old days, scores of splendid fish were brought back daily to Avalon; but to-day it is exceptional for the fleet of amateurs to average six or eight good fish to each rod. For all that and all that, the six-ounce rod is to be recommended only to those Americans (excellent sportsmen, but for this one foible) who would rather land a fifty-pound fish to-day on tackle fitter for brook-trout than kill a fish in any other way. Before making so much fuss of the prowess of killing these heavy and powerful fish on " light tackle," it is as well to remember that the line, though fine to the eye, is all but unbreakable, and that, if the whole truth must be told, these light- tackle men kill their fish with the line, and not with the rod. Catalina Island lies about thirty miles from the mainland of California. It is exceedingly hilly, If! ij.T.-iirr.::,', its.;-j^: A FASCINATING ISLAND 93 and the ridges of the interior are said to be as alike as Chinamen's faces, which makes it dangerous to wander far from the seashore without a guide, more than one visitor having been lost in this way. Though few of the world's islands have, like Barbados, been British throughout their civilised history, there are few also that have not at some time or other been in the shadow of the Union Jack. Santa Catalina is among the lost British possessions, for at one time it belonged to an Englishman. Its original owner, an early Spanish governor of California, traded it for a horse, and it now belongs lock, stock, and barrel, to the Banning Company. H I say ungrudgingly that its fishing is without equal elsewhere, I frankly do not understand the extraordinary magnetism which this little island has for many who never hold a rod. They come for a month and remain for years. They are happy folk, with neither occupation nor ambition. Strenuous folk are cordially invited to stay away. Catalina would not be a paradise for the late President, but is rather an attractive half-way house for middle-aged men wanting to put in time until the burial service is read over them. Apart from the fishing, the amusements are few. There is a small golf course, and there is loafing in a perfect climate, with or without the social condition which Stevenson demands for freedom and completeness. If so minded, byj^the way, 94 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS you can shoot wild tame goats, which generations ago escaped from bondage and have become wilder than ever since they have been made the targets of nearly every bad marksman on his holiday. Jim Gardner, formerly reckoned among the best of the fishing guides, devotes most of his time nowadays to taking out parties after this dangerous and high-scented game. The seals may be shot with cameras only, else, being almost as tame as wild fleas, they would long since have been exterminated. Two or three of these engaging creatures generally bark all night long in the bay, like a pack of hounds, and the largest of them even comes out on the beach to be fed by visitors. To see the main colony, however, it is necessary to visit the Seal Rocks by water. The water is too lively on that side of the island to make photography a success, so I give a picture taken by Mr. Ironmonger from the beach. It is not uncommon to witness sham fights between the bulls, not, so far as I could see, serious duels, but rather in the nature of showy horseplay to attract the attention of the soft-eyed females. It is not thought locally that the seals do any appreciable harm to the inshore fishing, and in any case they are adequately protected by both State law and public opinion. Apart from the fishing, perhaps the sea-gardens are the most lasting memory of Catalina. They GARDENS OF SLEEP 95 give a glimpse of the perfect peace. You drift, as in an airship, over lovely gardens in which gorgeous creatures dart in and out of amazing tangles of flowers unknown above sea level. No dust troubles the canyons of their mountain gorges. No voice breaks the stillness of their groves and thickets. Their blooms have no scent. They are God's Gardens of Sleep. Brilliant goldfish are the cynosures of all eyes that look down on these birdless jungles. Blue perch swim steadily in shoals, and little kelp fish drift timorously out of reach of the looming forms of rock-bass prowling amid the dark chasms for a welcome meal. In yet humbler walks of life, there are the snails and worms of the sea-garden. Flabby sea-cucumbers cling to every rock, and sea- urchins lurk like hedgehogs in many a cranny. Beautiful abalone shells flash back the sunlight, and on all sides float strings of polyps, at first sight in aimless disorder, but really with a sense of direction, and no little skill in steering. Very wondrous is the animal and vegetable life of these marine gardens, and beauty without noise is a boon not easily overrated in a generation which has too little of the one and too much of the other. They are to be seen through the glass-bottomed boats which have for years been an institution at Catalina. The best are little rowing craft, though these have of late been superseded to some extent fiwyw" li 1 96 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS by the clumsy side-wheelers, which many patronise under the mistaken impression that the bigger boat means a bigger sight. On the contrary, they miss the charm of coming unawares upon the timid sea-creatures in their native haunts. The great side-wheelers not only disturb the suspicious objects of their quest by the shadow they send before them, but their clumsy paddles also tear off the waving ends of the long kelp and thus destroy the hiding places of the fish. One of the rowing boats of this kind belongs to a curious character known as Jim, at one time a sailor at Liverpool. He is an American citizen now, and the one occasion on which he forgot his new nationality was when, in Jamaica at the time of the earthquake, he fancied that by enlisting in the town guard he would stand a better chance of getting food. His eloquence, and a facile command of absolutely inaccurate natural history are the delight of thousands of his adopted countrymen, who gape with admiration when he unblushingly describes the holothurians as " the fourth lowest order of fish life." What he means by this I have not the vaguest idea, nor, I imagine, has he, but it goes down with the tourist. He has, however, a ready wit, and this, as they tell in Avalon, once got a visitor out of a scrape. This nervous tripper, having climbed to the top of the Sugarloaf and scrambled back, completely lost his nerve when he found that the sea had MAGIC OF THE SEA 97 risen during his absence, and that what had half-an-hour earlier been a dry causeway was now under water. He wrung his hands and cried aloud that he would wet his feet. Jim, who was rowing a party in the neighbourhood, saw his distress, heard his lament, and assured him that he need not wet his feet if only he would walk across on his hands. This moved the folks in the boat to laughter, which proved infectious, and the tide-bound adventurer, having recovered his spirits, waded over to the mainland, none the worse for his scare. Jim's ceaseless badinage is well enough for the merry tourists, but for perfect enjoyment of those lovely gardens give me a silence as complete as their own. As you look down into that maze of red, brown, and olive weeds, which wave in the strong currents like tree-tops in a gale of wind, you realise some of the magic of the changeless sea, and much of the littleness of the changing earth. From the peace of those sunlit homes beneath the waves, the " trouble of ants " seems remote indeed. All this, of course, is mere fantasy, since these submarine societies doubtless have their worries, and, for all its seeming peace, it is a world of rapine on which we look down. Yet the general impression is of unruffled calm, and the eye delights in Nature's infinite resource in the designing of colour and of texture. Men have named many of the seaweeds after materials 98 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS used in millinery, such as bridal veil, chiffon, chenille, and corduroy; but the dressmaker's art never dreamed of such tints or such elegance. A passing current wafts aside the coarser veil of brown kelp, and discloses a splendid patchwork of pink and heliotrope. The play of the morning sun on varying depths makes a thousand hues. The light in those sea-caverns seems polarised. There is no light on earth like unto it, and its magic will haunt me for years. Many creatures of the gardens may be seen at close quarters in the well-lighted tanks of the little aquarium in front of the Metropole. Here, so housed that the visitor can see them from all sides and not, as usual, in the dim recesses of tanks built in the wall, are yellowtail, lobsters, morays, whose ugly features recalled sunny days among the rocks of Madeira, and the Port Jackson shark, first described to science in Australian seas. Catalina earned its great reputation as the Mecca of big-game anglers by reason of the tuna, or tunny (they are identical), formerly found each summer in the bay, where it drove the flying-fish right on the beaches. There have been none of the big blue tunas worth speaking of for two or three years. Knowing this, it may be asked, wherefore did I adventure seven thousand miles on a wild-goose chase ? Well, in the first place, a deep-rooted belief in my luck as a fisherman, a BANISHMENT OF THE TUNA 99 belief which not this or other reverses have succeeded in destroying, persuaded me that I might find the tuna in spite of their defection in other years. Add to this the local conviction that their great ocean wanderings would probably be completed by last summer, and that one of their periodic visits was again due, and it will be seen that I had strong inducements. But they are gone. My own belief is that their departure is due to the disturbance caused by a hundred oil-launches, many of which, having the exhaust under water, must set up a terrible vibration in that silent realm below. The theory that the petrol had banished the flying-fish, and that the tunas had gone elsewhere for their favourite food, is quite untenable, for the simple reason that the bays often swarm with flying-fish, which the yellowtail and white bass may be seen driving out of the water in packs. My belief in the direct influence of the launches is confirmed by the rumour that the tunas are always, as of yore, out in the deeper water. Mr. Gilmour Sharp* who knows a tuna by sight if anyone does, assures me that he twice saw them from his launch out in the straits last summer, and he says that a " bone jig," a trolling bait cut out of whalebone, used from the small local steamers travelling at eight or ten knots, is invariably carried away, a feat which few fish but a tuna could accomplish at that pace. My suggestion h 2 'IP Ir II 100 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS that the launches are responsible for the departure of Catalina's glory does not meet with the approval of the genial vice-president of the Tuna Club, Mr. Manning, but he has no explanation to offer in exchange, beyond the vague conviction that the tunas, like all mackerel, are deeply imbued with the wanderlust, and that in their own good time, when they have seen enough of the world, they will return to their old haunts. It is devoutly to be hoped so. Meanwhile, seeing what an immense asset tuna-fishing is to the island, would it not be worth the while of the Tuna Club, in co-operation with the Banning Company, which enjoys a mild autocracy over the island, to stop all motor launches (with, of course, suitable compensation to the men compelled to use their oars) next season, and see whether the unwonted stillness did not induce the tunas to come in from the deep once more. All that would be required would be a very small premium to the men on each day's work, for they would be paid for some of their labour at the oars by the elimination of the item of petrol, which comes to a considerable figure on a week's engagement. I do not for one moment suppose that my suggestion will be acted upon, but that need not deter me from making it. Little harm would be done if it failed, as, after a couple of seasons of interregnum, petrol could resume its sway in 1911; and if, on the other hand, it succeeded, MR. BEEBE AND HIS YELLOWTAIL. [101] ILLX^-XWiBjrf&KZ*: EXCEPTIONAL SEA-FISHING 101 I should feel that I had in a measure justified the honour the Tuna Club did me in electing me to its very limited honorary membership. Of late years, it is true, on the authority of Dr. Starr Jordan, the yellow-fin tuna, a smaller cousin of the blue brigade, weighing from 20 lbs. upwards, has been allowed to rank as a tuna, a classification by no means pleasing to those who won their laurels with the heavier fish. Laurels, or buttons, count for a good deal at Catalina. Even without its tuna, though, the island offers exceptional sea-fishing to its visitors. Asked whether this is. worth the long and costly journey, I would say that much depends on individual enthusiasm. Personally, having once enjoyed the excitement of big fish on light tackle, I would go again next summer if some kind fairy would pay my expenses. On the other hand, had I foreseen the improbability of even a run with the fish I went forth to see, I might have chosen some nearer playground, and, so doing, should have missed the grand sport at Catalina. Ignorance was bliss. The two conditions of fishing at Avalon which will first strike Englishmen used to angling in the sea at home will be:— 1. The smoothness of the water, which is also so clear that large fish can be watched thirty feet below the surface. IMII* / 102 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS 2. The closeness of the deep water to the cliffs, which makes it possible to catch the finest fish within half-a-dozen boats' lengths of the beach. Here, then, are no long and wearisome trips to distant fishing grounds, with half the day taken up in beating and tacking, as in Cornwall. You are among the big fish within half-an-hour of leaving the hotel, and the way is so smooth that not the most sensitive need feel inconvenience from the sea. The tackle known as " light" (I do not allude to the " six-six-six ") may be briefly described. The rod is a solid bamboo, measuring six feet, including both butt and tip. The " tip " of an American rod is the longer upper joint. In England we should call it a " top," or " top joint," using the word " tip " for the agate or other ring at the extremity ; but Americans have a fancy for new names, and " tip " they will always call it. It weighs, as already mentioned, nine ounces, so that it can be held all the morning without a moment's fatigue, which is more than can be said of tarpon tackle. Yet, for all its lightness, it will, properly handled, play any fish in reason. The reel carries two hundred yards of fine but very strong undressed white line, and is controlled by either a leather brake (as on tarpon reels), or preferably by the pressure of the thumb (protected by a rubbej stall) on the line, spool, or inner rim. I THE NETTING EVIL 103 This is better, for those who understand how to do it than the leather brake, which is apt to put too severe a strain on the fine line. The bait, which is trolled a hundred and fifty feet or so behind the launch, consists of either a big flying-fish, a sardine, or a No. 7 Wilson spoon. The flying-fish, which is hooked through the lips, answers best among the bigger yellowtail at San Clemente or the Isthmus. In the neighbourhood of Avalon, where the fish as a rule run smaller,Niardines do equally well and cost nothing, the Italian and Sclavonian netsmen giving them on consideration of getting, the bulk of the catch. These foreigners net every acre of water round Catalina with results fatal to sport. Indeed, unless they are controlled in the near future, the splendid fishing of Catalina will be a thing of the past. On the last evening of my stay, for ins- stance, the clear water off White's landing, a favourite fishing ground, was, as I saw for myself, all but solid with white sea-bass, which were driving the flying-fish not in coveys, but in packs. No fewer than eight boats were hovering on the outskirts of this splendid shoal in readiness to shoot the nets round them as soon as darkness fell on the waters. Within certain reservations, it is true, seining is legitimate, but a bye-law touching the use of fixed nets might be more rigorously enforced. The scale on which the fish I I El 104 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS are destroyed may be inferred from the fact that Battista Falcone, the cleverest fisherman of them all, shipped, during two months of 1907, no less than three hundred tons of white sea^bass across to San Pedro ! The arrangement by which bait is given in exchange for the fish suited me well enough, as I rarely take any of my catch even at home, preferring to give my fisherman the benefit of the sales. I understand, however, that it does not meet with general approval at Avalon, and the Tuna Club is considering a more satisfactory basis on which to readjust matters. As has been said, the flying-fish, not as a rule required off Avalon, is essential in the capture of the really big fish off the neighbouring island of San Clemente, whither those repair who are anxious to beat all other records. Reward seems almost assured. During my stay, a very clever and enthusiastic fisherman, Mr. Beebe, left Avalon at midnight, with the avowed intention of winning the Light Tackle Club's gold button, a distinction which had so far eluded him. He did so, just after daybreak, with a fine yellowtail of 48\ lbs., and a friend in the same boat caught another of 43 lbs. The excitement over these two captures in one morning was so tremendous that imagination fails to picture the hysteria which must, a week or so after I left, have greeted Mr. Simpson, a Lancashire gentleman, who, after fishing for a couple of months with the poorest A MONSTER YELLOWTAIL 105 of success, went to Clemente and there landed on light tackle a magnificent yellowtail weighing over 60 lbs., the grandest specimen ever recorded. He bore off the palm who deserved it, and I am sure that not one of the American sportsmen at Catalina grudged Mr. Simpson, who was neither a very young man nor a very devoted angler, the splendid success which fell to him. This monster yellowtail, like Mr. Calderwood's recently resuscitated salmon of 103 lbs., and a more recent and less nebulous Lea carp of 15 lbs., shows that, all the world over, there are as good fish in the water as ever came out of it, and that rare prizes still await the fortunate. The trip to Clemente is not always a smooth one, and in order to cross the intervening strait when the water is safest, it is necessary to leave about midnight. Still, such discomfort did not deter even a veteran like Mr. Simpson, so that younger men need not shirk the ordeal. As Hazlitt says, the power of taking an interest in all manner of trifling and painful pursuits is a great happiness. The growing fashion, by the way, of resorting to Clemente for the big fish and " button " honours has roused considerable ill-feeling at Catalina. Many of the guides favour the restriction of the Club's awards to those who catch their fish at Catalina itself, because, they say, to include grounds so distant as Clemente gives the advantage to those amateurs who, regardless of expense, do their fishing on I 106 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS the grand scale, and thus shuts out the smaller sportsman from all chance of distinction. Distinction, in this case, means record-breaking, touching which I must, resisting a strong temptation to write nothing unpleasant of an island where I had so much sport, say a word in friendly criticism. The inordinate thirst for " buttons " does much to spoil the true spirit of sport. It may be suggested that, having carried away no honours myself, I am jealous of others. This, in a sense, is justified by the fact that I never even claimed the bronze button of the club, to which the very first fish I caught, a 33J lbs. yellowtail on light tackle, entitled me. Had it weighed but twenty-four ounces more I could have claimed a silver button, and that also would have remained in the island. I do not, however, urge for more than it is worth a purely personal objection to the competitive element in fishing, for I know that in these days such old-fashioned argument is like trying to stop the tides. All the same, it would be refreshing if a little of this button-hunger were to abate, for, if the truth must be told, it is all but intolerable to those not educated to such weird ideals. Dear old ladies jostle their grandchildren on the quay, all on the warpath for buttons. Gentle females, so I am told, toss through sleepless nights on their pillows because they have failed to qualify. Proud decores stroll languidly into dinner at the Metro- BUTTONS AND RIVALRY 107 pole long after the rest of the company is seated, and from the expression on their face you might think they heard a ghostly orchestra playing " See the Conquering Hero comes!" Almost everyone wears a button of some sort; indeed, it is as difficult to evade the stamp of skill (or at any rate of success) as Mark Twain found with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. Genial evening conversation on fishing round the comfortable fire in the hall is interlarded with such personalities as " By the way, when I won that gold button . . . ." or, " Say, tell us about that silver-button yellowtail of yours . . . ." The air reeks of rivalry. The secretary, or some other official, of the dub is everlastingly at his desk dispensing decorations or taking evidence from claimants. And the spirit of sport, as Walton knew it, as Holder still knows it, folds its wings and flies sadly away into the starry night. Having called the fishing at Catalina the finest sea-fishing in the world, I do not expect the statement to pass without challenge. Let me therefore, who have no interest whatever in " booming" that far-off resort, endeavour to justify what many may regard as a sweeping pronouncement. In the first place, I use the superlative with the reservation that comparison is intended only with such sea-fishing as I have either done myself or read of, in the Field, or elsewhere, from the pens of those who have fished 108 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS on the coasts of South Africa, New Zealand, and other regions unknown to me at first hand. Glancing through both experiences and records elsewhere, I cannot honestly find anything to equal the thrill of keeping a big white bass or yellowtail clear of the kelp on a light rod and line. Even the so-called " jewfish," better described as a black sea-bass, of the Californian coast, is a different " proposition" altogether from the jewfish of Florida keys, fighting like a soldier, and not, like the other, dying like a sheep. Even apart from the gameness of the fish and the lightness of the tackle on which they are caught, the aforementioned conditions of calm water and fishing within thirty or forty yards of the beach lend an attractiveness to sport at Avalon which is lacking at almost every other resort frequented by sea-anglers. Here and there, we all remember an oily day in our own seas, when, even five or ten miles from land, the sea is like a millpond; but on the north side of Catalina Island, facing San Pedro, nineteen days out of twenty may confidently be reckoned on as affording dead calm water. Only on the other aspect of the island, those who go round for black sea bass, past the Seal Rocks, may occasionally have to encounter a loppy sea, and even there I have known it as smooth as glass. The problem of finding such calm seas at home is no easy one, and those of delicate stomach and an incurable passion for ifcSiSHB MEXICAN JOE. [108] »'U THE COST 109 catching big sea-fish will, if they can afford the time and money, find .themselves amply repaid for the long pilgrimage to that far-off island. A word as to the cost of the trip may perhaps be in season. As regards the cost of travel, out and back, from England, much depends on the fare and accommodation insisted upon by individual taMes, but I imagine that it could be done with moderate comfort by a teetotaller for f 100. At Catalina itself, there is a daily charge of about 16s. 8d. for comfortable board and lodging at the Metropole, including a bedroom with bath attached, and capital food. The fishing, including the launch, man, and sardine bait, costs just under a guinea for the half-day, or £1 17s. 6d. for the whole day. The half-day, however, which extends, if necessary, from daybreak to noon, should suffice anyone but a zealot. Compared with the apparently more modest 15s. for the whole day in Florida, this looks at first sight exorbitant. A closer comparison results in favour of Avalon. In Florida, what with getting to the grounds and back, and loafing in the shade of the lighthouse during the hottest hours of the day, we rarely fished for more than three hours. At Avalon, on the other hand, the little motor launches reach the fishing grounds within half-an-hour or so of leaving the quay, so that little or no time is wasted by the way. Of the two, therefore, Catalina gives more actual 110 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS fishing for the money. Moreover, you need buy no tackle except hooks, for the guides keep both light and heavy tackle on board. This dispenses with the £20 outfit essential for Florida tarpon fishing, and the daily half-crown for bait is also eliminated from the bill, as the only outlay in this way at Avalon is an occasional flying-fish, costing fivepence, or a Wilson spoon at a dollar. There have, so they say, been times, in the golden days when tunas lashed the bay into foam, when the only flying-fish on the beach has fetched its five dollars, but it is doubtful whether such halcyon days will ever return. Of guides there is considerable choice, and the visitor will do well to be helped in his choice by consulting Mr. Manning, or some other member of the Tuna Club. The counsel may be given confidentially, but he will find no lack of wholehearted assistance in quest of sport, for I never knew a place where, if properly asked for, it was given more readily. There are, then, many guides and several good ones. The doyen of them all is a quaint character known all over the island as " Mexican Joe," who always has with him a mascotte in the person of " Trixie," an indescribable little dog which Dr. Holder has christened " The Tuna Hound," for the blase little animal has seen many a fine blue tuna brought to the gaff, which is more, alas, than I ever shall! Dr. HOLDER AND GUIDES 111 I went out with Joe and enjoyed not so much the sport, which was not of the best that morning, as the ceaseless interchange of old memories between him and Dr. Holder. The next best thing to fighting a tuna myself was to hear these veterans go over the old battles, and, well as Holder writes of such Titanic frays in his books, it is still more exciting to hear him recount them amid the scenes where they were fought to a finish one way or the other. My own guide, during the greater part of my visit, was one of the younger generation, George Herbert, who is, in a manner of speaking, in partnership with Jim Gardner. Gardner, once a very successful fishing guide, has, for reasons of his own, given up the water and now gets his living with horses (his original trade), as well as by piloting bloodthirsty chasseurs to the beetling haunts of feral goats. Having expected him to come out fishing with me, an arrangement made for me by Dr. Holder months in advance of my visit, I at first resented being put off with a locum, and curtly declined the proferred solace in the way of a goat shoot. Yet, as things turned out, Herbert gave me sport practically every time I was out with him; showed himself unfailingly civil and willing; and displayed no little knowledge of the fish and fishing in those seas. As in all fishing, needless to say, you are apt to get, even at Catalina, a streak of bad luck. Thus, I had a really hopeless day, a day in which m 112 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS accidents came not single spies but in battalions, on the 12th of June. At starting off, I lost a dollar spoon, which had never before been wetted, through Herbert going too fast just as a big fish took a fancy to it. YellowtaJLand white sea bass, and particularly perhaps the latter, have a way of seizing the Wilson spoon, which wobbles alluringly in the water, with more rage and fury than a fish-bait, and it is therefore desirable to troll more slowly, which may be done without in any way diminishing the attractiveness of the spoon. No sooner had I substituted a sardine on a new leader than I lost what must have been a splendid yellowtail in the kelp off Goat Harbour. I may, scared by the parting of the line a few minutes earlier, have fished a little nervously and thus let the fish get its head, but anyhow it went into the kelp, and there was no moving it. Of course I reeled in, only to find the line broken for the second time that morning, firmly wound round a huge stalk of the weed, and, what was even worse, I brought to the surface an enormous mass of waving fronds which got so entangled in the propeller that it took Herbert a precious twenty minutes at the best time of the tide to clear it. This kelp grows round the island with a luxuriance that lends beauty to the sea-gardens, but to the angler it is a nuisance, and to the bather a menace. So rarely does it let go its hold that the strongest swimmer is as helpless '! I tMmmWOBm THE WORST DAY 113 as a child if once it gets his feet in its slimy embrace. In what remained of my time before lunch I must, disgusted by repeated ill-luck (or bad fishing) have been careless, for I missed three good strikes in rapid succession, and caught nothing but rock bass and barracuta, neither of which count seriously at Avalon. But that perverse and contrary day was not yet over. Reluctant to draw a blank, I decided, contrary to rule, to fish in the afternoon as well. We went—goodness knows why !—in the other direction, and fished for three hours without getting a solitary bite. Even the rock bass gave us the go-bye. Then, chastened in spirit, we returned to Avalon to find that all the other boats, without exception, had brought back good catches from our old grounds. I have had many bad days in fishing; blank days only a few, and that, in view of the trouble and expense to which I went for no results, was the worst of them. Still, the fisherman learns cheerfully to take the rough with the smooth, and the sting was taken out of my failure next morning by the capture of two fish weighing between them 290 lbs. at an hour when most folk are abed. The principal game-fishes of Catalina, in the continued absence of the blue tuna, are the yellowfin tuna (Thynnus macropterus), whioh I did not see, and which was unknown in the island *m 1 mm 114 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS previous to the autumn of 1904; the yellowtail (Seriola dorsalis), a first cousin of the amber-jack of the Atlantic coast; the white sea bass (Cynoscion nobilis), which is found in the company of yellowtails; the bonito (Sarda chilensis), and the albacore (Oermo alalunga), the last two frequenting somewhat deeper water than the rest, though spending most of their time at the surface. All of these are taken on the nine-ounce tackle; and for heavier gear there is the black sea bass (Stereolepis gigas), miscalled jewfish, a name likely to lead to confusion with the wholly different jewfish of the Gulf Coast. There is abundance of other fishes, of course. There is the barracuta (Sphyrcena argentea), which puts up a poor fight beside that of the West Indian species, and which, with the rock bass, is accounted little better than vermin by Catalina amateurs. Then, too, there are various sharks, some of which often trouble those in search of black sea bass, though I was spared by them. There is the mighty swordfish (Xiphias gladius), which is the same all the world over, and which, when, as rarely happens, hooked by an angler, first leaps in the air and then charges the boat, giving its captor few dull moments until it is either gaffed or has made good its escape. As an instance of what luck will do, one of these rare captures was made by an elderly lady, who was, however, unable to play and land her remarkable victim. Then, too, there is the LEAPING SUNFISH 115 dolphin (Goryphcena hippurus), which has once been caught by Dr. Holder, and seldom by anyone else, and which leaps like a tarpon when hooked. On still days, I have seen half-a-dozen sunfish (Orthagoriscus mold), which, like the swordfish, seem to differ very little east and west, leaping in the sunlight like trout. This recalled a morning, many years ago, off Mevagissey, in Cornwall, when I hit one with a bullet from a Winchester rifle, and saw it jump again and again in the air, a feat that at the time seemed remarkable, but that later experiences at Catalina have made seem commonplace. Round the rocky headlands, too, particularly just beyond White's Landing, you may see beautiful goldfish, for all the world like those in an aquarium, feeding, with the sheepshead among the weeds. The yellowtail and white sea bass are found together and fished for at the same time, though the season for the latter is limited to a few weeks, being at its height in the middle of June. The yellowtail is a handsome mackerel-like fish, with golden fins, a stripe of paler yellow down the sides, and a silvery belly. To what weight it may grow cannot definitely be said, but Mr. Simpson's sixty-pounder is likely to be the record for some time to come. The first dash of a yellowtail is not perhaps superior to that of an albacore of like weight, but it has more staying power than the other, and even when it is apparently exhausted, a i2 f a mmm 116 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS glimpse of the boat will send it off again with little less frenzy than before. The white sea bass, which is related to the Atlantic bluefish, weakfish and so-called " sea trout" of Florida, is said to grow to a weight of a hundred pounds, but no one at Catalina ever heard of one exceeding half that weight. Silvery as a salmon fresh up from the sea, the bass has an iridescence that makes its colouring indescribable, but, when first seen out of the water, it is the most beautiful fish on that coast. Both are caught of great size close to the cliffs by trolling a flying-fish or sardine between one and two hundred feet behind the launch. The flying-fish (which weighs considerably more than the rod!) is hooked through the lips. The sardine is hooked through the lower lip and belly, two or three turns of fine wire being taken round the hook to keep it in position. There are days on which a No. 7 Wilson spoon, which may be bought at Avalon for a dollar, takes more fish than either, but, as has been said, it is necessary^ when using it, to troll more slowly, as the artificial bait seems to inspire greater fury in the pursuer, Which dashes at it like a peregrine and, as I know from sad experience, breaks the line away if the bait is going too fast in the opposite direction. The drawback of the kelp has been mentioned in connection with this inshore fishing. The only sport in which it does not trouble the angler is Htt METHOD OF FISHING 117 when he is after albacore, five or six miles from land. On all the best ground for yellowtail and white bass, it grows in perfect jungles, and the angler loses in it many a good fish which he could kill without difficulty in more open water. Now and then a fish is recovered from its protection, but this is a matter of luck rather than of skill, and the golden rule is to keep your fish at all costs (short of breaking the line) away from it. The method of fishing is simple. As soon as we reach White's Landing, the Twin Rocks, Goat Harbour, or any other favourite ground, the launch is slowed down to about three knots an hour and the bait allowed to trail a hundred and fifty feet astern. The angler sits in a comfortable chair, with his back to the guide. If he is alone the chair fits in grooves in the middle of the boat, close to the stern. When two are fishing, the seats are fixed side by side, a change that can be effected in a few seconds. Each chair is provided with a socket in which, when fishing with heavy tackle, the angler slips the butt of his rod, and thus relieves his arms of much of the strain. When using light tackle this is unnecessary, and would, indeed, throw too heavy a strain on the fine gear. Both yellowtail and white bass seem to feed best about the first three hours of the ebb, but many good fish are taken at other times. As the launch goes over the ground, your guide keeps on It 118 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS a look-out, and is quick to see any sign of fish. So clear and still is the water that I have seen a couple of hundred monsters swimming in a circle below the boat. Then comes disillusion, for all manner of baits may be trailed before their noses without moving one of them to respond. As soon as the guide sees a shoal of either yellowtail or bass, or, as more often happens, a company of both, he throws over a handful of sardines as " chum" (by which Americans mean ground- bait), shuts down the engine, and brings the boat in a circle round the fish, so that the bait passes right among them. This requires some little skill, as well as a knowledge of just how much line you have out at the time. Indeed, as in many other kinds of fishing, the guide counts for more in a successful day at Catalina than he is commonly given credit for. The solitary trout- fisherman, who wanders by himself along some mountain stream and finds, rises and creels every fish for himself, is at least entitled to talk of the fish he catches; but I often think that salmon fishermen might have a word for the gillie, on whom their dependence for a fish is often only less than that of the deerstalker for a head. There is not a moment's doubt when the bait is seized by either a bass or yellowtail, for the light rod bends like a reed, and the reel sings out as score after score of yards are torn off its barrel before the fisherman dare check it. The yellow- FIGHTING FISH 119 tail goes away along the surface with a tremendous rush, and the bass bores more like a pollack, giving the rod a series of jerks. To drive the hook into the mouth of a heavy fish without breaking the fine line is not always easy when the fish are biting warily, but it is to a great extent a question of luck, and my first white bass took, the bait with such determination that it hooked itself to perfection, and could have been lost only if the tackle had broken. Others, however, nibble suspiciously, and the bait has to be "fed to them " by quietly pulling ten or fifteen feet off the reel and letting the line run smoothly through the rings, as the least hitch might scare the hesitating fish away from the hook. These bass fight better than ours at home, and are thought much of at Avalon, where their season is a brief one; but the yellowtail is, on the whole, the more determined fighter of the two. His most dangerous moments are in the first rush, when he makes a direct line for the kelp, and again when, almost on the gaff, he catches sight of the boat and is off again with a sudden sprint that sometimes proves fatal on the short line out at the time. Not one of the yellowtails I caught gave up without this one supreme effort, though I was lucky enough to lose none in this way. A moment's carelessness, however, might result in disaster, since the fish has a way of suddenly pulling the top of the rod down on the gunwale, Mi 120 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS in which position its fate may be sealed a moment later. Not one foot of slack line must ever be left off the reel in fighting a fish, and it is in the judicious compromise between a tight line and breakage that the angler alone shows his skill in the use of light tackle. This, however, should not present much difficulty to anyone used to fishing elsewhere. When a fish is quite close to the boat, with the double line, which extends about a yard above the piano-wire of the hook, out of water, the boatman quickly grasps this in his left hand, and with the right strikes the gaff well into the fish. There are few kinds of fishing, particularly sea-fishing, that have not their " vermin" in some form or other. On the pollack grounds in Cornwall the chad and squid turn your fondest expectations to disappointment. On a Canadian lake, I was plagued with small perch. Elsewhere sharks, crabs or eels take bait intended for better game. At Catalina, the thorns in the angler's side are the rock bass. These prolific little fish, which average a couple of pounds, take bait after bait, some of them making quite a fight of it on light tackle, so that the angler thinks at first that he has hooked something that will count. The barra- cuta, which run to six or eight pounds, also play well for a minute or two, but they are spiritless creatures and give in very tamely after one halfhearted attempt at escape. The only other fish HALIBUT TAKING BAIT 121 liable to be taken on these grounds is a small halibut of ten or fifteen pounds. This happens most often when the bait is allowed to sink to the bottom. As it is, for some reason or other, derogatory to catch flatfish when in pursuit of round, I counted myself fortunate in escaping from halibut, several of which were caught during my stay. Not long ago, the report that halibut were taken in the course of trolling off Catalina Island caused a discussion in angling circles at home as to the likelihood of halibut taking a bait that moved rapidly through the water, and the foregoing explanation may possibly interest some who took part in the argument. It is usual, when a white bass is brought ashore, to cut the earstones, or otoliths, out of the head and present them to the captor. They are known at Avalon as " lucky stones," and popularly regarded as mascottes. They are in appearance not unlike large teeth of enamelled ivory, and they are grooved in several directions. The albacore is a fish of very different habits from either of the preceding. like the yellowtail it resembles the mackerels in both form and colouring, but is easily distinguished by the long narrow pectoral fins. The torpedo-shaped body and sweeping fins suggest speed even in the museum and when one of twenty or thirty pounds is fighting you along the top of the water at the end of a hundred feet of line, you are not long in doubt 122 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS as to its mettle. The albacore, which has to be sought three or four miles from land, is a miniature tuna, or a monstrous mackerel, according to the point of view. Indeed, fishing for albacore is mackerel fishing on the grand scale, suited to an adversary fifty times as large as the average mackerel, and having as much original sin to the square inch. You use a rod and line no heavier than those used in catching mackerel at home, and you fish from a launch dancing over the high seas at three or four miles an hour. While, therefore, whiffing for mackerel is usually the tamest of fun, albacore fishing on identical lines is full of exciting moments. The fish are not, as in the case of yellowtail or white bass, sought on any particular ground, but the bait is trailed astern until an albacore takes it, and until the novice acquires just the right knack of striking neither too soon nor too late, he is sure to lose a few, as albacore are very smart in getting the bait off the hook, and the spoon has no attraction for them. These fish often go in small shoals, and more often still in pairs. As soon, therefore, as one has been caught, it is usual to troll in circles over the same ground on the chance of picking up at any rate a second. A sardine is the best bait, and in the opinion of some experts albacore prefer one that is stiff with salt rather than the softer perfectly fresh fish. It is unnecessary to let out quite as much line as when FISHING FOR ALBACORE 123 fishing for yellowtail, which are shy fish, whereas an albacore will seize it close to the boat. Its first rush is a fine exhibition of strength, and equal, I think, to that of the yellowtail, though it does not hold out so long. Still it neither bores nor sulks, but keeps the angler busy until gaffed. There are many reasons why fishing for albacore should offer a welcome change from the days inshore with other fish. There is exhilaration in the open water, with, as a rule, fresher air than you get under the cliffs. There is no kelp to catch your bait or save the fish. Last, but not least, there is nothing in the way of vermin to rob the hooks. He who goes after albacore may safely count on hooking nothing of meaner calibre. The only alternatives, neither of which should be unwelcome, are a tuna or a swordfish. With neither would the light tackle survive more than a few moments. The tuna would tow the boat until tired of the exercise, and then break the line. The swordfish would also break the line, but might first drive its rapier clean through the planks of the launch. It is said that fishermen soon acquire the trick of dodging such attacks, but the schooling must be exciting. The black sea bass, which should be tackled on a tarpon rod and reel, is locally know as the " jewfish." As the name has the high sanction of Jordan and Evermann, it must be accepted, and, for the matter of that, large sea bass are so called anil 124 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS all the world over. Dr. Holder has an idea that the word is a corruption of " June fish," and June certainly appears to be the favourite month for their capture. Yet, if only on sporting grounds, the risk of confusion with the jewfish of Florida is to be deplored. I do not for one moment suggest a revision of fish classification according to the behaviour of each kind when hooked, but two creatures could scarcely be more different than these namesakes of east and west. The Florida fish dies as a worn-out cab-horse might die if attacked, and, for all its enormous size and great weight, can without difficulty be killed on tarpon tackle from an anchored boat. The Pacific fish heads straight for the open sea, and you have to cast off the anchor and be towed half a mile or so before there is any prospect of checking its exuberance. I only went once after black sea bass at Catalina, and was so lucky as to kill the two shown in the photograph within an hour. How great was my fortune will be gathered from the fact that Dr. Holder, the pioneer of Catalina fishing, has never in all these years succeeded in capturing one on the rod, though on the handline, formerly the approved method of fishing for them, he has killed scores. This substitution of heavy rods and reels for handlines accounts for the Catalina photographer, the energetic Mr. Ironmonger, having inscribed the legend " light tackle" on the negative. I A SEA BASS EXCURSION 125 hasten to repudiate any notion of my having tried to fight such grisly game on a nine-ounce rod. There are, no doubt, some among my American Mends who have killed them on the " six-six-six," but I do not aspire to such honours. As these monster sea bass are caught up to a weight of nearly 500 lbs., mine were trifles, yet, despatched within an hour, they gave me all the exercise I wanted for the day. An excursion after these great fish, which are only known to lie in one or two reefs round the island, is a novelty, differing from both inshore sport with yellowtail or essays in deeper water after albacore. The only drawback for some is the need of anchoring in water that is not always as smooth as could be wished. There is, it is true, a ground where these fish are sometimes caught close to White's Landing, but those who anchor on it get more fishing than fish. With the object of being on the more distant but better ground just after the first of the morning ebb, Herbert was ready for me soon after six, which entailed a hurried but sufficient breakfast at an eating-house that is open all night long, a great convenience to the guides, as well as to such strenuous amateurs as cannot wait for' the opening of the Metropole coffee-room at half-past six. Just before reaching the Seal Rocks, past which our course lies this morning, we put out a spoon for a barracuta, a thick slice of which is 126 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS as good a bait as any for the monsters we are in search of, and I got one of these pike-like fishes almost immediately. There were seals on the rocks, and others on the beach, though their silly faces gave no evidence of the supermannish qualities attributed to them by Mr. E. V. Lucas. Three or four sunfish were leaping just off the point. Some years ago, one of these marine monstrosities was accidentally hooked through the back fin out of Mr. Gilmour Sharpe's launch, and finally brought to the gaff after a long and mighty struggle. After we had left the Seal Rocks astern, we began to feel a long and regular swell, which Herbert regarded as rolling up from the distant Mexican coast, but there was fortunately none of the choppy sea which sometimes, on this side of the island, makes fishing an impossibility, not merely because of the discomfort, but also because, in water thickened by much undertow from the shore, you are apt to catch nothing but sharks. As soon as Herbert had picked up his favourite ground, down went the anchor, a little white buoy being made ready to slip the cable on in case we might be so fortunate as to get a run. Two heavy rods were now put out, one baited with a slab cut from my barracuta, and the other with the head of a yellowtail. The bait has to lie perfectly still on the bottom, and does most execution when there is a strong westerly current AN EXCITING TIME 127 to move it gently to and fro. All the conditions were favourable, and in fact I had waited only a few minutes when the check on one of my reels began to make slow music, and I slipped it out of action, as the great fish must be allowed to move off with it, unsuspecting any hitch, before it would be safe to strike. Herbert told me to count' twenty before doing so, and that twenty seemed to take an hour. Meanwhile he had reeled in the other line, and was ready to throw the anchor- rope overboard if the fish held. " Now, sir, let him have it! " I did. Then he let me have it, pulling the rod down into the water before I could slip the butt in the leather socket under my chair, and rushing off with eighty or ninety yards in a mere preliminary frolic. Then, as I got the butt home, Herbert put out the oars, for the sudden moves of a big bass must be followed very cautiously, and the engine is useless for such work. The line was now tight, and we settled down comfortably to what looked like a long interview, the bass towing the boat gently but firmly half a mile further from the land, with every now and again a little joyous rush of twenty or thirty yards off the reel, just by way of showing his quality. I knew that the tarpon tackle was sound enough, so I acted on Herbert's admonition to " sock it into him." Such a burst of speed did this inspire that he ran the line through the bait, which came 128 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS in view, only to be cut loose and recovered by Herbert in case some shark or other marauder might be attracted by it and bite through both it and the line, as had more than once happened to me with a kingfish, when catching tarpon in Florida. Within about twenty minutes, being fresh that morning and full of energy, I had him alongside, floating belly upwards, for the gaff, and back we went to the old^spot, picking up our buoy without difficulty. Then I put the same bait on again for luck, and luck it brought me, for Herbert had done no more than make the rope fast when he had to cast off again, as I was in a second fish, seemingly fiercer than the first. Once more the reel screamed and the rod bowed. Once more we were towed, this time parallel with the land. Once more I " socked it in." Once more a great bass, a little larger than the first, rolled helpless at the surface, and was in turn gaffed and made fast astern, and all this in little over fifty minutes from the time when we started to fish. I had had enough of it. I am a keen fisherman, but a brace of fish weighing between them not far short of 300 lbs. is work enough for a holiday hour, and I consented to my guide's fervent request to have one more try " for a real dandy one," only with a muttered prayer that the " dandy " might be away from home. My prayer was answered, and, after we had spent half-an-hour longer, with only an MY MORNING S BRACE. [128] SATISFIED AND TRIUMPHANT 129 immense moray—whose thoughtful face so aptly illustrates the old saw that " beauty is its own excuse "—for reward, I gave it up, fully satisfied with the morning's bag. It remained only to hoist the two great fish on board, as towing them would take too much way off the launch. This, with some considerable difficulty we did, though not before they had twice rolled back into the water and twice been recovered, each time by more exhausted men. Then we steamed back to Avalon, to be met on the quay by a crowd eloquent in congratulations, and to run the gauntlet of chaff and cameras. On the wharf I had leisure to examine my prizes more carefully than had been possible on the launch, and I found them to be perch-like fishes, with no teeth, but with bony plates like nutmeg- graters just inside the mouth. They prey, so Herbert told me, on the little whitefish, in whose company they live, no doubt on the principle of " I think of all thou art to me." The only resemblance between their behaviour and that of their tamer namesake of the Gulf Coast is at the beginning and end of your acquaintance. That is to say, they take the bait at first with the same sneaking hesitation, and, at the end of the fray, they come up like a log, or, as Catalina sportsmen expressively term it, " logey." Well, I had been after the big bass and got them. " Oh, frabjous II 130 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS day! " I had killed a brace of them at an hour when few people had finished their breakfast, and for the rest of the day was studiously lazy. Both were swarming with a kind of sea-lice, and what became of them I have no idea. Perhaps the old seal in the harbour knows. Such, then, are my impressions of Catalina fishing as it is to-day. In placing it so high among my memories of sport in salt water, I have no wish to discount the attractions of tarpon- fishing in Florida. Could I but re-visit my tarpon- grounds with the nine-ounce tackle, I should probably add a postscript to the effect that Catalina is unfortunate in being without that plentiful and athletic fish, the sensation of playing which on a light rod and line must be exquisite. As, however, I wrote of it at the time, the pleasure of catching tarpon, a fish which, from the angler's point of view, is undoubtedly superior to any found nowadays at Catalina, was in great measure marred by the brutality of the tackle and also by the wicked wastefulness of ruthlessly slaughtering one splendid fish after another merely for the vanity of weighing it on probably inaccurate scales and without any afterthought of putting it to any kind of use. No such reproach need embitter the sportsman's contemplative moments at Catalina, where the fish are first of all caught on sportsmanlike tackle and then find a ready market. The arrangement, already referred to, GOOD-BYE TO AVALON 131 is that " Mike " (who is a Ruthenian, and not an Irishman) takes the fish in exchange for as many sardines as will last all day for bait. And so, when my time came, the steamer took me back to San Pedro, and I gazed at the fading image of Avalon, the little town piled terrace on terrace up the side of the green hill. The flotilla of glass-bottomed boats, having shown the wonder of the sea-gardens to the day's excursionists, were getting back to their moorings, where they would lie until the smoke of next day's steamer rose above the horizon, and bade them make ready for another company of visitors, for until the coming of July and its more permanent crowds, Avalon slumbers through its afternoons. Tame seals were plunging beside the little wharf, where happy fishermen were setting out for the evening fishing. Gulls, the worst-mannered and dirtiest gulls I ever met, perched everywhere. They are scared (see photograph) off the boats by strips of bunting, which have for them a nameless terror, and the railings of the Tuna Club House are for similar reasons decorated with a chevaux- de-frise of nails. Well, my pleasant stay is over. Not so much as the sight of a tuna cleaving the blue water has rewarded my longing eyes. It was bad enough, three years ago, to fare to Madeira and back and fail with the same fish; it may seem ignominious x 2 132 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS to record, after so short an interval, a second failure that took me thousands of miles instead of hundreds. Yet I cannot regret the voyage, for it taught me the delights of light tackle, and it introduced me to several desirable fish hitherto strangers. \% ■ill v it ENEMIES OF SPORT AT AVALON. L133] CHAPTER IV. THE YOSEMITE VALLEY AND THE BIG TREES. The Menace of Forest Fires—Insufficient Patrolling of Reserves—The Way to Yosemite—John Muir's Favourite Bird at Home—View of Yosemite from Inspiration Point—Coaching in the Dust—Bridal Veil Falls—Charm of Valleys—The Grand Canyon—Mountain Climbing— Waterfalls in the Yosemite—Ride to Mirror Lake—The Camping Life —Tourist Version—Story of a Talking Dog—Trout in the Merced River —Native Indians—Coaching to Wawoma—The Biggest Trees on Earth—Galen Clark, their Discoverer—Monster Sequoias—Shasta Springs—Analysis of the Water—Trout in the Sacramento—Farewell to California. " The Yosemite Valley is burning, and the National Grove of giant trees is threatened." So ran a telegram to the news agencies a fortnight after my return home, and back went my thoughts to that delectable valley and to those magnificent sequoias to which I had paid willing homage some weeks earlier. Following close on the heels of the devastating fire at Fernie, the news of this second conflagration in a region peculiarly endeared to me by associations, was indeed unwelcome. These colossal forest fires appear to be unavoidable in the vast timber tracts of the American continent. All possible precaution may be taken, so far as it can ever be possible to control such areas with any small and inexpensive force of forest police, but in such summers as those lands enjoy, without a drop of rain for months together,[it takes so little to start a blaze, so much 134 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS to get it under. Just how much the giant timber of the Mariposa Grove may, apart from popular sentiment, be worth to the United States in general* and to California in particular, I am not in a position to estimate, but, judging from the yearly returns of its pilgrims, it cannot fall far short of a million dollars annually. In view of this, are a couple of young troopers sufficient protection for so vast a forest ? These youths, no doubt, do what they can. They are civil and alert lads, and, as I saw myself, faithfully accompany every coach through the reserve and keep an eye on all stragglers. They are, in fact, sufficient to deter malefactors from cutting their initials on those hallowed trunks, or from carrying away the snow- plants or other rare and valued flowers. When, however, it is a question of controlling an outbreak of fire, at first suspicion of which one of them at any rate would have to gallop off hotfoot to the camp in Yosemite, a distance of over thirty miles, to summon more adequate assistance, the flames must for a time have things their own way, and it does not take many hours for them to get the mastery. It is to be hoped that the recent scare, the first for many years, may have taught the Government a lesson. It has taken over the Grove from the State of California, and the responsibility is a national one. I plead for a | better protection of the giant sequoias in no presumptuous spirit such as should say " I told you BRIDAL VEIL FALLS. [134] WATER-OUZELS 135 so," for the American nation generally has an excellent idea of how to protect its own property; but, in a measure, everyone who has adventured as far from home as I did to see these wonderful trees is entitled to resent any carelessness which might lead to their destruction. Before visiting them I spent some happy days in the Yosemite Valley, which is reached from Merced, a station on the Southern Pacific Railroad, a few hours' run from San Francisco, by a toy railway which follows every bend of the frolicsome Merced River, as far as El Portal, the gateway of the Reservation. Down comes the river through fairy canyons, and the little water-ouzels, tripping over their slippery boulders, took my thoughts back to a sunny afternoon in May twelve years earlier, when Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, with whom I was having tea at his house in Dorset, begged me to read John Muir's "Mountains of California," and particularly the beautiful description of that gifted author's favourite bird, the water-ouzel. Never perhaps in any language, ancient or modern, was a bird more sympathetically written of, and I little thought, when enjoying Muir's eloquent tribute to his little friend, that I should ever watch it in the very scenes amid which he studied its fascinating ways. Ten years ago, the joy of gazing on the valley from Inspiration Point, a vista of greater beauty i 18 jnfiii ■ —^—~^ 136 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS than even the leader of Israel could have beheld from Pisgah,entailed a dreadful coach ride from the nearest town, seventy miles away; and it is not to be wondered at that many English tourists of an earlier generation gave Yosemite a wide berth. Nowadays, when the locomotive toorts right up to the mouth of the valley, leaving only a dozen miles by coach into the heart of it, there is no excuse for passing by this lovely retreat, and those who do so miss the prettiest spot in all California, if not indeed in all the land. Not to-day is the way to the valley one of roses, for even a dozen miles of coaching along bad and dusty trails is a trial to the fastidious traveller, and if he goes, as go he should, the further thirty and odd miles out to the Big Trees, he will get, in a week of June, particularly after a snowless winter like that of 1907-8, all the dust he wants for years. Even enveloped in aprons and rugs, he feels throughout the journey like dust returning unto dust, and, unless so lucky as to secure a box seat, his senses are at times so choked that they would be indifferent to a view of Paradise itself. Your first introduction to the Yosemite Valley, by way of the Bridal Veil Falls, is so enchanting that you fall in love with it even before the coach sets you down at Camp Ahwahnee, or whatever other destination you may have chosen for your stay. For myself, Camp Ahwahnee, the first stop, looked inviting enough, and there, in a com- THE BRIDAL VEIL 137 fortable tent, in sound of the plash of ceaseless waterfalls and the song of happy birds, I spent a restful week. The rainbow effect of the setting sun on the delicate fabric of the Bridal Veil is, without exception perhaps, the most beautiful vision of the kind in any traveller's note-book, and this, which is but one of many falls, and by no means the highest in the valley, enjoys the largest share of the pilgrim's affections because it is the first to bid him welcome, and the last to speed him on his way when he must once more go forth into the turmoil of the outer world. There is a charm about every valley. It is the complement of the mountains and reflects their spell. It appeals particularly to lazy men. I love valleys, and could spend weeks lying in them and looking up at summits that I have not the least ambition to scale. Those who visit the Grand Canyon of Arizona reverse the process and peer over the edge of the world. I missed that spectacle, and have not yet lived down the reproach. " What! Not seen the Grand Canyon ? My! Why, you haven't seen America!" (In parenthesis, I submit that I never said I had.) Doubtless I should have included that freak of the Colorado River in my programme, only, as previously remarked, I saw all of Arizona that I wanted from the train, and my one desire was to get out of it alive. Mountains attract me in the abstract. I love to watch, but 138 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS not to climb them. The changing lights of sunsets on their snows, so far as these can be seen from below, are a joy to me, but I have no wish to leave my footprints on them. The ascent of peaks, hackneyed or untrodden, leaves me unmoved. I have ridden on a barb four thousand feet above the foothills of the Atlas, but an angel's eye-view of earth is an impression I can afford to wait for. In the Yosemite, therefore, as elsewhere, I did no climbing, not even on the ample back of a mountain mule, but found the ground floor of the valley itself four thousand feet above the ocean, beautiful enough in all conscience, without crawling after the eagles. Over a sandy foundation, it runs riotously green beside the winding river, and bids you rest in alluring meadows, rare, indeed, in so arid a region as California. Such retreats tempt men of taste to lie peacefully on their backs and gaze reverently at the mountains, pitying the busy folk who are unhappy unless they climb them. The trees throughout the valley are chiefly conifers, which break all the world's records out at Wawona, but other kinds mark the course of the Merced, and there is luxuriant undergrowth bright with many-coloured berries in the tangled thickets off the high road. For height, the waterfalls are among the finest in the world, though, as compared with Niagara, their volume is in- *j*m,«*-*nm«.t l\ r -^- EXQUISITE FALLS 139 significant. While, however, Niagara sends its ten million gallons of water every second over only a hundred and fifty feet of rock, the little cascades of Yosemite tumble, with subdued voices, over thousands. The Ribbon Fall, the highest of them all, comes sheer down 3,300 feet, and the Yosemite Falls, in their three leaps, cover 2,600, drenching you with spray a hundred yards away. Even the lovely Bridal Veil, which does not depend on altitude for its attractiveness, tumbles not far short of a thousand feet, and adds its soothing whisper to the voices of the valley. It is in a field under the Yosemite Falls that the main body of cavalry is encamped, and each morning the bugle echoes amid the hills. Then is the witching hour to have a horse brought round to your tent and gallop out to Mirror Lake, or some other loveliness within easy reach. I have ridden mountain horses in other continents, though never before with the high-peaked Mexican saddle. This peak, which is used for carrying the lasso, was a constant terror to me, for it made riding a nightmare, with a sword of Damocles ever poised for an upward cut. The mountain hireling is admirable on trails along which he proceeds at a walk, surefooted and reliable. Over the flat he is not exhilarating. If he gallops for a hundred yards, or canters for two, he thinks that he has done all that can reasonably be miiiiifilii --. - mm 140 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS asked of him, and falls back into his favourite walk. Still, he is undoubtedly safer for the majority of American tourists. There has been a good deal in print about the high standard of riding in the States. One pictures even the men and women of American cities sitting perfectly at their ease on vicious broncos, but the tourists you meet at resorts like the Yosemite affect a restful style of horsemanship to which hill ponies are admirably adapted. Mirror Lake is a feast for the eye and a harvest for the camera. I took many pictures of it, but rejected them all in turn for one lent to me by the Pittsburg Company, who has caught the extraordinary effect of the " duplicate line of trees and hills," as I heard a Yankee drummer call it, at its best. To get this result, you have to catch the sun at a certain angle, and I arrived at the wrong moment. There are many Mirror Lakes and other Bridal Veil Falls, in the United States, but I saw none to rival those of Yosemite. It was pleasant to live once more in camp, even under the somewhat artificial conditions which made life comfortable. My last camp, with the exception of a few nights spent on a lonely islet in the Atlantic, not far from Madeira, was pitched in the higher Atlas. That was the real thing, with native servants, prowling thieves from neighbouring villages, and all the other minor discomforts incidental to this romantic style of life. The . - LUXURIOUS CAMPING 141 genuine camping life owes not a little of its glamour to the enthusiasm of travellers who describe it after they return home. In the monotonous luxury of cities, they forget the drawbacks and recall only the freedom, the exemption from rent, rates and taxes, the " fun " of impromptu meals ; the diversion of visits from interesting and picturesque natives ; the charm of continual change of residence. They forget that the meals are mostly garbage, and the picturesque natives thieves. They omit to mention that if you camp near water, you get mosquitoes; and that if you camp away from it you are overrun with ants. Our American friends leave the real thing to schoolboy fiction, and stage-manage their holiday camps in agreeable imitation of it, with none of the drawbacks. Ahwahnee is just such a comfortable make-believe. In your tent there is electric light, and an electric bell, which you press when you want ice or boiling water. Within easy reach is a hot or cold bath. There is a cheerful writing-room, and there is a spacious dining- room. Every day there is one post in and another out, and there is telegraphic connection with the outer world. There is, for the sociable, a huge camp fire, round which, each evening, the brave and the fair foregather for the exchange of fiction under the pleasing guise of reminiscence, an exercise in which Americans avowedly excel most other 142 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS nations. Young ladies sing coon songs, relating the heart-hunger of dusky suitors for the favours of damsels plain or coloured. Old gentlemen, pressed for their contribution, recount stirring experiences with bears that, in all probability, they never saw or smelt outside Bronx or the Yellowstone. One man told a good story which so well illustrates genuine American humour, that I may perhaps be pardoned for reproducing it here. A ventriloquist was exhibiting a " talking dog " at a country fair. The turn amused the crowd hugely, and, although the intrinsic value of the animal was about a dollar, he made it talk, to all appearance, so fluently that a yokel, much impressed with its ability, promptly offered a hundred dollars for it. The offer was accepted, with a becoming show of hesitation, and the animal changed hands. Just as its new owner had dragged it as far as the threshold, it turned towards its late master, and, straining at the chain, said, in a loud voice :— " Oh, you've sold me, have you ? Then I'm d d if I say another word ! " Needless to say the bumpkin, without suspecting the trick that had been played on him, was glad to sell it back for its real value. There are trout in the Merced River. I saw several, but they take catching. It is one of the streams (we all know others nearer home) to which men fare forth in the morning with a book stuffed AN INDIAN FISHERMAN 143 full of flies, with an assortment of which they flog the water all the livelong day, then, just as darkness is falling, put on a worm and catch a trout or two. The only really successful fisherman in the valley at the time of my visit was an Indian, who used, I believe, an immense stone-fly for bait, and with it caught his ten or fifteen pounds of trout for the camp day after day. With one of the camp porters acting as intermediary, I all but succeeded in bribing him to take me along, but my bait was less attractive than his, and I never learnt his secret. The Indians are slowly but surely dying out, yet a few survive, and sorry spectacles most of them are, creeping into camp like jackals for the odd bits thrown to them. On the whole, the Americans behave towards them with great kindness, cherishing no resentment for the terrible treatment of the pioneers at the hands of those whose land they filched. It was during my week in the Yosemite that I drove out for the night to Wawona to see the biggest trees on earth. They lie more than thirty miles away from the valley, and the drive by coach is both tiring and expensive, though, as the coaching company has to keep up an immense staff and stable, the charge can hardly be called excessive. All the same, I have heard even American tourists grumble at it, and, as a rule, they are happy only when overcharged. The sight of <! 11 144 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS enormous trees would not in the ordinary way attract me, but I felt that to come so far without paying them a visit would be an unpardonable eccentricity even in one who commonly fights shy of the " lions " of the guide book. One afternoon, therefore, found me on the back seat of a coach, where I was soon so completely wrapped in dust as to be oblivious of scenery and everything else worth living for. Some of the men who drive these coaches are characters. One—I wish I might recall his name, which was either Sullivan, or something like it—was capital company. I sat next to him on the return journey, and found him courteous and well-informed, a patriotic American, but by no means a bigot. Another— I wish I had his name also, though for different reasons—proved himself an " acrimonious and surly republican," as somebody said of somebody else, who, with the perspective of the gutter, mistook insolence for independence, fearful of being civil lest he should appear servile. This is a not uncommon attitude with Americans of his class, but I never, before or since, met a more offensive case* After a quiet night at the Wawona Hotel, I set out next morning by coach to do the remaining distance to the trees. Trees, even the biggest and oldest of them (and these are by far the oldest living creatures on this earth), have not, as a rule, appealed to me for their own sake. ' «4\ WONDROUS TREES 145 With the exception of the horse-chestnuts in Bushey Park, on bygone Chestnut Sundays, I doubt whether I ever took a second look at one. In my careless springtime they held the nests and eggs of birds, and so were worth an occasional climb in truant hours. In the adipose autumn of life they offer grateful shade after painful walks, and so earn thanks. Yet from these hoary giants, contemporaries of the respectable dinotherium, which were bathing their leaves five thousand years ago in the sunshine of an unnamed California, only the veriest Vandal could withhold his tribute of reverence. What, in the silent presence of these gaunt survivors of for- gotten ages, on which history is silent, matter the puny lives of men, the passing of dynasties, the wars and pacts of nations ! If the lifeless majesty of the mountains makes man realise his littleness, what tremendous sensations does he not feel in presence of these wondrous trees, which, even with the heart burnt out of them, even with carriage drives cut clean through their trunks, live on and still feel the sap coursing through their aged veins. Their discoverer, Galen Clark, who was a year old when Napoleon's empire fell at Waterloo, is still living. I found him one afternoon seated in the shady porch of his little cottage in the Yosemite Valley, peering through his spectacles at a newspaper. I got him to talk of his beloved ■ 146 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS trees, and the old eyes kindled over the only topic in all the world which interests this Georgian relic. Over half a century ago a consumptive, regarded as incurable, he came to California and lived the open life with the Indians. It was in the course of a hunting expedition that he, quite accidentally, stumbled on the amazing secret of Mariposa, and for many years he was the recognised guardian of the grove. He still cherishes for the sequoias a devotion passing the love of man, and is proud to have seen them pass from oblivion to honour, jealously protected by the Government, guarded by patrols of cavalry, visited by travellers from every land, and recognised in picture and in word as among the wonders of the world. I wish that he might not also see their hallowed trunks defaced by enormous labels naming them after States, soldiers, and other wholly inappropriate sponsors. I would as soon see a label hung around the neck of the Venus of Milo. Having far exceeded the spell allotted to the sons of man, and having seen his beloved qyroteges in safe hands, he does not care how soon he passes from that valley to the Valley of Death, and lies in the grave dug by his own hands at the foot of the Yosemite Falls. When his time comes California will mourn the last of the pioneers. Every grand sight of earth is worth the winning, and Nature's masterpieces must be sought in the wilderness and not at the city gates. Though all Mfc ■- "" ~~ —— ^mm A TRYING DRIVE 147 roads lead to Rome, there is but one to Mariposa, and one could wish that the Romans had built it. Still, if the road is hard, these vegetable relics of the tertiary are worth its discomfort. More or less cheerfully, therefore, the cheerfulness dwindling hour by hour, the pilgrim does the two-and-thirty mile drive out from the valley, over dreadful gradients and shocking roads. The only solace of such roads is that they keep the reek of petrol out of Yosemite, and that alone is something to return thanks for. So distressing is the dust in June, after a snowless winter, that the traveller passes through fearful moments in which all his choking senses unite in one wild wish that Galen Clark might more charitably have carried the secret of his precious trees to the little grave under the Falls. Later, when time has softened the memory of clinging dust, blazing sun, and jolting tracks, he is thankful to have seen such trees as never were in any other land. For our audience of the forest monarchs we are gradually prepared in an ante-chamber of lesser satellites. For a mile or two we drive through serried ranks of pine, fir, balsam, and cedar, which, dwarfed by no grander majesty, appear to be the appointed objects of our arduous quest, for their trunks must taper a hundred feet and more to the blue sky. Then comes something that makes everyone on the coach hold his breath. The stage draws up before the looming form of " Grizzly l2 -—J k-~- --— I 148 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Giant," who measures a hundred feet round the base and stands in a clearing, better lighted than most of his peers. Sadly treated by the winds and snows of tens of centuries, scarred by the tongues of forest fires, the work of careless man or silent lightning, the gnarled veteran still defies the hand of time. There are taller trees by far in the grove. There is the " Wawona" (Oh, those labels !) 260 ft. high, through which we drive our team of four, with room to spare on either side. There is one other at least which tops " Wawona " by 20 ft. Yet, somehow, " Grizzly Giant," standing alone, gives the lasting impression of them all. Another sensation, in different perspective, is that of walking up the sloping trunk of " Fallen Monarch," an inclined plane 285 ft. long, and there is something saddening about this tree corpse prone on its open grave of pine needles. The giant sequoias impressed ine vividly, yet I doubt whether a fuller appreciation of the silent wonder of them would not come with subsequent visits. At first sight, you do not get over the sense of monotony inalienable from any great tract planted wholly with conifers. Whether we know them amid the great snows of Switzerland, or in the sandy parts of Hampshire, their unfailing verdure is apt to pall in the absence of deciduous trees which, with the passing seasons, cast and renew their raiment like snakes in springtime. NOBLE TREES 149 Their resinous scent lacks the blended bouquet of more varied woodlands. Their evergreen groves lack the choir of " Love's Meinie." The Grove at Mariposa is also waterless, a blot on many a fair landscape in California. Yet, for all its imperfections, for all its arduous approaches, for all my woeful ignorance of plant life, I would not for much have missed the sight of these splendid trees. That they happen to be the tallest trees, the oldest trees, the most famous trees in the world is nowise the measure of my appreciation, for I lack the soul for record-breaking. My joy was rather that, looking up at them, I was in the Presence. I felt minded to remove my shoes. It was as if we all stood in the dim nave of some ancient cathedral reared ages before man worried the earth. I uncovered in their cold shadow as before the Holy of Holies. Back to Yosemite I coached the same afternoon, nothing loth to be at rest once more in that sweet valley, in which, had I not been the slave of time, I would gladly have droned away a summer month. The guide book says that to " do " Yosemite without making the Glacier Point trip is like seeing Rome without St. Peter's. I hate guide books as bitterly as the old gentleman in I Guy Livingstone." Therefore I left out the Glacier Point, and contented myself with buying the photograph, given on an earlier page, of a proud gentleman waving a handkerchief from the : fi ;fi M 150 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS overhanging platform at its summit. I loafed instead through an idle week by the riverside, dreaming away my days on a carpet of iris and Indian paintbrush, dozing, with the love songs of hiding birds, and the murmur of hurrying waters for my lullaby, and with the soothing scent of laurel and of lilac in my nostrils. So still I lay at times that little squirrels and busy ants climbed over me, a Gulliver among the Lilliputians. A rare access of energy was satisfied by a ride out to the Falls. Then, when darkness fell swiftly on the valley, we would foregather round the blazing log fire and enjoy its feast of harmony and personal fiction. No one, with a day or two to spare at San Francisco, should miss seeing the Yosemite. The guide book, with unconscious paradox, says that no one can " afford " to do so. Seeing that a week's visit cannot cost him much less than fifteen pounds, including the trees, such counsel smacks of Mr. Chesterton. All the same, the advice is sound enough. An inexorable time-sheet compelled me to tear myself away from one of the most entrancing spots in all my travels. It was a sad day when I boarded the coach back to Portal, and a sadder still when I sat in the toy train bound for Merced and the outside world. In the valley, they seemed to put back the clock. Since the bell of the locomotive did not drown the song of the waterfalls, trains might never have been invented. Yet it A HEALING SPRING 151 had to be good-bye at last, and from San Francisco I set my face northward and started, so to speak, on the homeward journey. My last halt in the State of California, where I had spent exactly a month, was at Shasta Springs, not far from its northern border, where it marches with Oregon. The famous springs bubble up in a basin alongside the station, and as each train slows down crowds of passengers alight with all manner of receptacles, and press round the miraculous fountain for draughts of the healing water. What it heals I do not know, but it tastes beastly enough to be wholesome, suggesting sweet soda-water. For the benefit of those curious in such matters, I append the official analysis:— Bicarbonate of Sodium (per gallon) . .. 63420 Chloride .. 34-353 Biborate • 1-628 Arsenate • .. 0151 Phosphate »» >» )> >> • .. 0102 Iodide & Bromide „ „ „ .. [traces] Chloride of Potassium „ „ .. 2133 Sulphate „ » >» »* 1071 Bicarbonate of Lithium ,, „ 1-360 Carbonate „ Calcium ,, ,, .. 21-ees Fluoride >» .. [traces] Carbonate ,, Magnesium „ .. 84-757 ,, „ Iron „ „ 1-450 j» „ Manganese „ . .. 0013 ,, Barium ) „ Strontium f " O-Oll Alumina i u .. 0-334 Silica JJ »» • .. 3-665 216113 m Thus a whole brew of inorganic chemistry can II I Pi 152 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS be swallowed out of a thimble, and in spite (perhaps because) of its dreadful taste, it is shipped all over the State in yellow tanks, some of which may usually be seen on a siding. A discussion on the efficacy of the water for various complaints produced a good story of an American who discovered a wonderful natural spring for diseases of the liver. Having purchased it, he made a fortune out of the pilgrims who came for the cure. Indeed, he himself was eventually the finest advertisement it ever had, for it is reported (by one of his countrymen) that he built himself a palace close to the springs, and when, at the ripe age of ninety-eight he died, it took several able-bodied men over an hour to kill his liver with hammers. Beside the little railway station at Shasta Springs runs the noisy Sacramento River, fed at every few yards by miniature waterfalls, and full of trout. I had only one evening there, and only an hour to spare for the water. Out of my only available cast of three small flies I lost two in a snag just as darkness was coming on. With the survivor, a redspinner, I made a cast or two and caught a seven-inch trout, then lost the last of the Mohicans and clambered back up the zigzag path to the hotel, which occupies a pleasant position on a hilltop and, of course, in full view of snowy Mount Shasta, the pride of the neighbourhood. A number of residential cottages GLACIEB pOINT. [152] NORTHWARD BOUND 153 cluster round the main building, each with two or more rooms and a bathroom. After the beauties of the Yosemite, Shasta Springs, which is much advertised as a health resort, seem to me overrated, but it was not amiss as a last halt in a State which had given me its hospitality for a month. It was in these latitudes that, in contrast to more southern conditions, the evenings noticeably lengthened out, and on the train, northward bound for Portland, you could sit in the observation car, watching the Alpengluh on the hilltops till nearly ten at night. PART HI.—TWO CITIES. CHAPTER I. A CITY OF ROSES. Portland's Rose-Worship—How It got Its Name—Trade in Grain, Lumber, Fish and Fruit—Population—The Forestry Building and Its Contents—A Sliding Scale of Rudeness—Its Roses—Favourable Conditions of Soil and Climate—View from Council Crest—The City Park— Trip up the Columbia River—Inland Navigation in America—Trippers —Beautiful Scenery—The Cascades—Memeluse Island—Memories of Indians—Value of Associations—Waterfalls—Commerce—The Salmon —Wheels—Need for Protection of the Salmon—Netsmen versus Wheelmen—Hood's River—The Dalles—Barren but fruitful Scenery—Where the Sick are Healed—Farewell to the Southern Pacific Railroad. Between me and Canada, as I bade good-bye to California, there still lay Portland, the city of roses, and Seattle, the city of upheavals, and in each I spent a few days. Portland has a unique claim to remembrance among American business centres, a worship of the rose in which it rivals ancient Rhodes. Withal, it pays strict attention to business, and strives with might and main to ship more lumber, can more fish, and pack more fruit than its neighbour. Its name was the result of a toss-up by two of its founders, who were undecided whether it should be called Portland or Boston. For the Englishman enquiring the cost of transportation thither, the name has sinister memories, but there is nothing about the place to recall the seaport of Dorset. Its commerce is large and on the increase, It is a huge grain mart, with an annual shipment of Bi I 158 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS sixty million bushels of wheat. Its trade in lumber is enormous, and the State of Oregon lays claim to one-sixth of the standing timber of all the United States. States, like statesmen, are often taken at their own valuation, and, although the claim seems a bold one, I have no means of questioning its accuracy. It is said that one thousand million feet of lumber have been cut down in Oregon in a single year. More shame to the destroyers ! It is a market for the salmon of the Columbia River, which are canned at Astoria. Besides grain, lumber and fish, it makes huge shipments of fruit, particularly cherries, which are grown at the Dalles and elsewhere along the river banks. Its population is two hundred thousand, or twice the entire population of all Oregon in the eighteen-seventies. Qa marche! Everyone goes to see the Forestry Building, the one standing souvenir of a recent exhibition. He goes to please the natives, and he leaves well pleased with himself, for it is worth the visit. A huge log cabin, it is estimated to contain a million feet of lumber, and some of its contents are worthy of such a frame. After my gigantic friends of Mariposa they may have seemed mere toothpicks, but a single fir log containing over 8,000 feet of wood, and another cut from a cedar that must, it is said, have been two feet in diameter when Columbus landed in America, are exhibits not to be sneezed at. A notice of exclusion posted on T'" ~ '■ A'Jffli i'liirfiitw A CITY OF ROSES 159 one of the doors in, so to speak, three languages, gave me great pleasure. It ran:— (English). No admittance. (French). Point d'admission. (American). Keep out! This sliding scale of rudeness reminded one of the old story of how Frenchmen, Germans, and Englishmen are supposed to light their cigars. The Frenchman first offers the match to his neighbour and then lights his own cigar. The German lights his cigar and then offers the match. The Englishman lights his cigar and throws the match away. The trade of Portland is doubtless both creditable and satisfactory to the City Fathers, but what most strikes the uncommercial visitor is not so much its skyscrapers, its water frontage, its shipping, or its elevators, as the roses which luxuriate on all sides, in every garden, and in every office. The very office-boys brighten the corners in which they lurk with bowls of roses. I found the large dining hall of the comfortable Commercial Club covered with gorgeous blooms, and was told that members take it in turn to provide these daily from their own gardens. The street cars run between walls of roses, and the air is heavy with their scent. This is a very paradise for the loveliest of flowers, with its soft climate, yellow clay soil, gentle winds 160 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS bringing moisture from the ocean, a variation of under ten degrees in the cycle of a winter's day and night, and an average annual rainfall of just over forty inches. It would be difficult to enumerate a more fortunate combination of conditions for the rose-grower, and Portland glories in its yearly Rose Festival, a pretty ambition indeed among all the commercialism of that country. The bushes, which bear their lovely burden in May and again in September, are uninjured by the breath of winter, and probably no other city in the New World can compare with Portland as a rose-garden. The city itself is beautified in every direction by the flowers, as well as by the green of its well- timbered suburbs, and a delightful view may be had of it and the surrounding country, stretching away to the snow-crest of Mount Hood and other peaks, from Council Crest, reached by the city cars. The City Park has the intrinsic charm of all American parks. It has wildness, but it lacks polish. Here is none of the finish perceptible in London parks, and each is good to the eye in its own way. By climbing zigzag paths of easy gradient, the visitor comes to the beginnings of a small Zoo, in which brown, black, and white bears, with deer, eagles, coyotes and raccoons, represent the national fauna, while a not too prosperous colony of kangaroos and a few other equally modest exotics complete the collection. r5zrt! ■ '~:- -----"•■"' I^-^*. ■ .~~^^-^.J JS PORTLAND BOSES. ill [160J A RIVER TRIP 161 Roses are the dominant feature of the park as of every other enclosure. I saw them a month too late, when their faded petals lay thick in every pathway, but at the end of May they must have been a dream of fragrance and colour. While at Portland I made the celebrated river trip up a hundred miles of the Columbia. I hardly know whether to advise others to do likewise. It is certainly a magnificent stream, with a few picturesque reaches and a succession of interesting salmon-wheels. On the other hand, the round trip, out to The Dalles and back, makes a very tiring day of it. A couple of hundred miles on a small steamer is an undertaking for one daylight, and, on the day I chose, the conditions, fatiguing at all times, were aggravated by the presence of a large party of excursionists, who had to be taken up and set down at places not ordinarily visited by the steamer. As a result, I was on board the Bailey Oatzert from seven in the morning until near midnight, a prolonged outing which marred my enjoyment of an otherwise interesting glimpse of one of the finest rivers in America. Even so, as was the case with the dusty coach rides round Yosemite, time soon softened my memory of the more disagreeable elements of the jaunt, and I was glad to have been. With the exception of a hundred miles of the Mississippi, the lower portion of which scarcely runs "... with current swift and undefiled." II 162 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS my wanderings in the New World had not embraced anything in the way of inland navigation, and a fleeting memory of Artemus Ward's salty reference to the sea-dogs of the Ohio decided me to embark on this Columbia River steamer in company with some hundreds of other trippers. There is no getting away from the fact that I was one of them. Of what use hating the profane crowd unless, like the poet, you also shun it! True, I did not chew popcorns, peanuts, gums, or candy. I did not counsel perfect strangers to " rest their faces." I did not run up and down the decks dribbling ice-cream out of wafer cones on the shoes and dresses of my neighbours. I did not spit on the deck, or clear my throat with a noise like that of tearing calico. Yet, none the less, I was a tripper that day as much as any of the two hundred and fifty Sunday School protegees who joined the boat at one hamlet called Vancouver, and were set down at another by the name of Caisson Springs. I am sure that these joyous animals were godly on Sundays, but this was a Wednesday. Friendly they certainly were, but even their friendship was exacting, and I was audibly voted "a blasted Britisher " because I mildly expressed my unwillingness to take a group with my large camera and to mail the pastor two hundred and fifty copies for free distribution to his sheep. The unkindly criticism left me unmoved, but I was genuinely sorry to see the A MAGNIFICENT RIVER 163 evident disappointment on some of the children's faces. Even a hundred miles from the ocean the Columbia is a magnificent water-road, fed, just below Portland by the humbler Willamette. Folks declare that the Willamette is a lovely stream nearer its head-waters, but, like many another river, it has feet of clay, and it was pleasant to leave it for the grander torrent that runs from British territory to float millions of feet of lumber down to American sawmills. All the way at any rate to Hood's River the scenery is beautiful, particularly on the Oregon bank. As you ascend the foaming flood you have Oregon on your right and Washington on your left, and the palm for scenery lies with the former. There is a halt at the Cascades, for it is here that the river drops fifty feet in nine miles, and we must bide in the lock until the waters find their level. The scenery just beyond the Cascades is magnificent. Memeluse Island, where generations of buried redskins crumble in their dust, has the same halo of associations as the Rhine, with its Lorelei, and the Hudson, with its Rip van Winkle, who never lived, but who is invaluable as a magnet for the sentimental tourist. Ages before the intrepid Lewis and dark found their way down the Columbia to the western ocean, the Indians used to assemble here in their thousands for great festivals, the celebration of which these scenes m2 •dfc ^M 164 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS will never see again. Have you an eye for waterfalls ? Here are Multnomah and the Bridal Veil, tumbling over the rocks with the joy of life inseparable from falling waters, and if the Bridal Veil has, like Niagara, been tamed to useful work, no trace of its bondage is visible from the boat. For the Columbia's commerce I lack appreciation, but the river sends miles of- lumber to the greedy sawmills that ever scream for more, tons of fruit to the Portland stores, and millions of salmon to the Astoria canneries. The salmon in this part of the river are taken in wheels, a number of which we pass on either side. As a fisherman, I abhor these engines, and rejoice that the need of a fairway for navigation should at any rate keep them out of the middle of the stream, though unfortunately it is on either bank that they would in any case do most execution. Turning the salmon's inevitable ascent of the stream to its own destruction, they are at once the simplest and most devilish of devices for its capture, yet, if the supply of crisp and creamy Chinook salmon, such as I enjoyed for breakfast in the city, is to be kept up, I fear that their contribution is as necessary as that of the seines and gill-nets at the river bar. Here, as elsewhere in the States, the big man has squeezed the small out of business, and all the wheels are in the hands of a combine. Yet difficulties are put in their way by the netsmen, SALMON WHEELS, COLUMBIA RIVER. [164] RIVAL SALMON FISHERS 165 though, in America as in this country, class legislation which benefits one mode of fishing at the expense of a rival, is unpopular. Protection of some sort, with a weekly and yearly close time will, before long, have to be devised for the salmon of the Columbia, and the pity is that Congress has not sole control of such matters, for in Federal legislation alone lies their hope. As these salmon do not take a fly there is unfortunately none of the support from influential sportsmen which means so much in the passing of salmon laws at home. The Salmon and Trout Association would make short work of advising Government on so simple a proposition as the protection of salmon in the Columbia, but in the States there is no one to agitate for restraints on over-fishing but the fishermen themselves, and their activity, needless to say, is directed against every mode of fishing but their own. Thus, when I was at Portland, two antagonistic bills were being presented, one, from Dalles, which aimed at hindering netsmen down at the bar, but left the wheels alone, and the other, from the netsmen at Astoria, demanding the total abolition of the wheels. Both were too severe, and neither embraced the all-important clause of a close time in early spring. Meanwhile, the salmon are growing fewer, for even the enormous shoals from the Pacific are not inexhaustible. Ill 9 I SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Above Hood's River, where I saw at closer quarters the snowy sides of Mount Hood, which I had seen two days earlier from the Portland Heights, sixty miles away, the scenery grows less attractive, and on the Washington bank some of it is little better than Arizona's worst. The Dalles, the limit of my voyage, is mentioned in guide books for its cherries. Well, I saw no cherries, but I walked in burning streets and realised that a very thin crust separated my soles from the regions Dore loved to draw. This may be one of the greatest fruit-growing districts of the State, but the barrenness of the hills around The Dalles was gruesome to behold. It would seem, however, that fruit-ranching may be not unprofitable amid scenes that recall the sand- pictures in Mr. Hichen's "Garden of Allah," for a week or so later, a little west of Kamloops, a homesick Englishman, with whom I had some conversation on the train, got off at a village among some sandhills to look after a fruit farm in which he was interested. During this river trip we stopped at several spas of local reputation, one of them owned, as large letters set forth, by a man named Belcher. He stood on the wharf, a portly man, whose appearance, even though his name would scarcely fit in a sonnet, must have cheered the cripples who, in stretchers or on crutches, went down our gangway to be made whole men again. PORTLAND AGAIN 167 Once again, after a too long day, the old Bailey Oatzert came to rest, a little before midnight, at the foot of Alder Street, and back I crept, cold and tired, to the Portland Hotel, not, on the whole, sorry to have seen a hundred miles of the Columbia and a few more of the Willamette, but firm in the conviction that not for the freedom of the City of Portland would I have done the trip again at short notice. At Portland I took regretful leave of the Southern Pacific Railroad, than which no other line (barring its toy allies at Tahoe and Merced) had carried me since the latter days of May. Some three thousand miles its comfortable cars had carried me, through half-a-dozen States, from the realm of the mangrove to that of the fir tree, from the tropical Mississippi, home of the alligator, to the Columbia fed by Canadian snows. 1 ;'' I CHAPTER II. GOOD-BYE TO THE STATES. Scenery between Portland and Seattle—Tunnels—Chaotic State of Seattle—Its Purity—Cigarettes Illegal—Evasion of the Law—Betting Allowed—Rivalry of Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco—Progress of Seattle—The Ordeal by Fire—Its Public Library—" Fourth of July" Celebrations—The Death Roll—Impressions of America— Americans as Sportsmen—Love of Winning-—Too Much Competition —Ineffectual Fish and Game Laws—Politics—Newspapers—The Personal Factor in the Press—Manners—Spitting—Feet on the Mantelshelf—Conversation—Standard of Education—Republican Ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—Instances—Chivalry—State of the Labour Market. It was by the Northern Pacific that I made the short journey from Portland to Seattle, bitterly regretting that want of time precluded a side-track to the Yellowstone Park, the one serious gap in my travels. The scenery between the two cities is of no high order, but there are green mountains and rushing rivers, and the cool evenings made a long after- dinner cigar on the observation car more agreeable than it had been further south. On this track some of the tunnels, which are less common on American railroads than on ours, are of great length, and the coal used on the locomotive is not perfumed with myrrh, with the result that, in one of the longest, half-a-dozen of us who were too lazy to come in from the rear car, were all but blinded, and kippered. I was much exercised SEATTLE AND CIGARETTES 169 as to the object of some fringes hung across the line near the tunnels, and the brakeman informed me that these were intended to warn the man who sits on the top of the cars in freight trains to duck his head before the tunnel knocks it off. Pleasing life! Seattle, the chief port of Washington State, apart from being what Americans like to call " quite a city," had an added interest for me because, as has been mentioned, it was indicated as a possible rival to San Francisco. The only rivalry I could see was in the upheaval of its streets, for ambitious schemes of re-grading the hillfl have reduced it to such a state of chaos that the rivalry to San Francisco is more apparent than real. It may be that for business purposes the levelling of those gradients is a pressing need, but, in the place of the City Council, I should have thought twice before sanctioning operations that temporarily subject the city to the conditions of earthquake, while burdening it with immense expenditure, and finally robbing it of much of the beauty to its present arrangement of terrace rising on terrace from the water's edge. In some ways Seattle is a very pure city. You cannot openly buy or sell a cigarette at the tobacconist's. Cigarette-smoking may, for all I know, be the most vicious form of taking tobacco yet devised. As a confirmed, though not immoderate, smoker of cigarettes for the last twenty m 1 170 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS years, I daresay that the habit deserves all that has been said against it. It is, however, one thing to discourage excess by timely medical advice, or even by a non-professional appeal to the young with a cane, but it is quite another proposition to make the sale of cigarettes illegal, and subject to a fine of fifty dollars. As is the case with alcohol, the result of such maternal legislation is not prohibition, or even prevention, but merely a premium on duplicity. I bought all the cigarettes I wanted, all that was necessary being a little fiddling behind the counter, and the ostensible purchase of cigars if any stranger loitered in the doorway. This seemed to me very degrading, but Americans delight in " diddling " the law ; and, as long as the law makes such an ass of itself, no one will blame them. On the other hand, while insisting that its smokers shall use pipes or cigars, Seattle allows them to. bet, and is, in fact, almost the last ditch of the harassed bookmaker in that land of freedom. The remarkable anti-betting wave of legislation started by Governor Hughes in New York was flung back by the State of Washington, with the result that I saw at the July meeting a finer string of horses than that hitherto modest fixture had ever previously attracted. Whether Seattle takes itself seriously as a rival of San Francisco, I know not. The more immediate object of its emulation appears to be SEATTLE'S AMBITIONS 171 Portland, and to that easier victory it is directing all its resources, advertising far and wide its magnificent sea-frontage and its proximity to Alaska and the Canadian ports. It has a serious rival in Vancouver. Those acquainted with industrial conditions on the Pacific Slope foresee a trend northward, attracted mainly by the shorter sea-route to the Far East, and also by the more stable climate. In every respect I should have thought Vancouver the rival most to be dreaded by the City of the Golden Gates, but our American friends are reluctant to admit the possibility of their trade going over the border. First planned in 1852, Seattle was at first slow to develop. Only twenty-five years ago uncut timber covered the site of what to-day are crowded suburbs. Its population touches two hundred and fifty thousand, and will probably be doubled soon after the Exposition of 1909, for such gatherings usually have this effect in the States. Another road to greatness in that continent is through the flames, and Seattle, like Jacksonville, and Chicago, has gone through its ordeal by fire and emerged triumphant. I found the public library, a Carnegie donation, which once had a fire to itself, a splendid building with a hundred thousand volumes, including works by myself^ Shakespeare, and Mr. Bernard Shaw. To see Seattle at its gayest, one must be there on the "Fourth." I was. I envied the deaf, -\ Ill 111 172 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS if not the dead, and left soon after daybreak on the fifth. Out at Lake Washington, and again at Luna Park, I marked the rampageous revelry of frowsy patriots, with all its tomfoolery of crackers and star-spangled rowdyism. The Fourth of July is a great occasion. It celebrates the birth of a nation by the death of the individual. Last summer the Chicago Tribune published a bigger death-rate from accidents than ever before. Seventy-one deaths and over 2,500 wounded would read as damage enough for a battle. Those who survive mark their patriotism by the loss of a finger or an eye. Many interesting and important events happened on the Fourth of July. In 1776 Jefferson's Declaration of Independence gave a new nation to a world that had too many as it was. In 1898 the Americans drove Cervera's wooden ships on the beach at Santiago. (On this see Dooley.) In 1905 Senator Mitchell was found guilty in land fraud cases. Americans have therefore a wide choice of events to celebrate, and they make noise enough to do honour to them all. At Seattle, taking the Canadian Pacific steamer to Victoria, I bade good-bye to the States. The night before I stood on the roof-garden of the Lincoln Hotel and saw the moon look down on the all-night pyrotechnics of patriots. I had been six weeks in the land, in its cities and amid its mountains, and it left much the same impression *%£*, AMERICAN SPORTSMEN 173 as those which were formed on a previous visit. America must for a long time yet strike the visitor from older lands as a spoilt baby in a perambulator, a baby of great promise and sure fulfilment, but destined to undergo much discipline before it arrives at years of discretion. Canada gives the same impression, but there is a gratifying conviction that it is being better brought up. It was as sportsmen that Americans interested me more on this occasion. I am glad that the regrettable rancour of the American athletes against the fairest committee of sportsmen that could be picked anywhere* in the world was still in the future while I was in the country. I am glad also that the ludicrous fiasco of insufficient funds for the reception of the gladiators on their return home was likewise undreamt of. These subjects give rise to acrimonious discussion, and there was enough to discuss without them. What did once again strike me unfailingly, in the baseball field, and in some other branches of sport, was the hunger for victory. " Win, tie, or wrangle" has been suggested as their motto, and on the athletic track it is more often than not the mood with which they enter in the fray. They are fine performers with both rod and gun, but the game-hog is too rampant, and the fisherman thinks too much about " beating the band " to enjoy his sport in the true spirit of Walton. Their fish and game laws are for the most part gffl||:i Bitili 174 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS hopeless. They bridle at the " feudal " conditions which permit riparian ownership and private game-preserving, but their sport suffers terribly just because everybody's business is nobody's business, and, with the continual conflict between State and Federal laws, they do not know even the beginnings of proper protection. One need only read half-a-dozen copies of a really sound sporting paper like Forest and Stream to realise that the more intelligent Americans all but despair of effectual preserving under existing conditions. Always hard in a democracy, the efforts of reformers are peculiarly obstructed in the United States, which might do worse than study the more harmonious working of Federal and Cantonal law in Switzerland. Of those favourite critical subjects, politics and graft, I am not qualified to write, but, judging from conversations among Americans themselves during the preliminary stages of the Presidential Election (I was at San Francisco at the time of Mr. Taft's sensational nomination), I gather that there is very little liberty for the voter, who does the bidding of The Machine, and cannot even vote for a republican president and a democratic vice- president, even if he thinks both men best for the posts. As for election literature it is bad enough in all conscience at home; in the United States it isoffal. Their newspapers generally strike a personal note undreamt of in other lands. When, recently, <%%h^ AMERICAN JOURNALISM 175 there was some talk at home of The Times changing hands, a witty member of the managerial department expressed a hope, based on personal grounds, that future issues would not be illustrated. Had that august organ fallen into American hands, it is pretty certain that every issue would have been thus embellished, and that a Sunday number would have been printed with coloured plates for the young. The personal element in American newspapers, which, in a land of liberty, leaves no freedom for even the humblest, is merely amusing to the visitor, but would, one might think, prove torture to the sensitive American. Frankness compels the admission that they seem to like it, and I have even heard it whispered that they pay heavily for the privilege of publicity. " Isn't it lovely?" an American lady said to me one Sunday morning at Catalina,> "they just have a dandy story about you in to-day's paper ! " The said story related my capture of the two big sea bass, and added some flattering opinions that I had expressed on the fishing in the island, but it did not strike me as particularly "dandy." This is the sort of heading you see in any daily paper out there :— Divorce of a $5,000,000 Husband. or, again:— Candie Van Htxyler visits her old School- friend, Sadie Fish, at her $50,000 Shooting Box in the Adirondack^. 176 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS or, even:— Look at Home, Girls 1 Oaklands Beauty condemns Marriages with Titled Dudes. Now, the proper knowledge of mankind may be man, but we contrive at home to take some little interest in the world's politics without such detailed information about others as insignificant as ourselves. Can anyone visit a country without seeing something of its manners ? American manners are delicate ground to tread upon, and in fact there is no single standard, since what passes for good manners in Arizona might cause eyebrows to be raised on Broadway or Van Ness Avenue. They have been called a " jerry-built nation," but the term, though broadly suggestive of the somewhat hurried welding of very divergent characters, hardly does them justice. If it is possible to consider them as a whole, I should say that they have a profound contempt for pretty manners as fit only for French dancing masters. Such a saying as " Manners makyth man" seems to them rank snobbery, and, though they dearly love a title (and hanker still more after decorations in the form of buttons or ribbons than even the French), they honour the more democratic postulate of Burns. The standards of behaviour differ in every country. It cannot be denied that an American will spit into the fire before ladies, and A NATIONAL HABIT 177 in their presence also he will use his toothpick, or clear his throat with a noise like an angry steam-saw. It cannot also be denied that, unlike his English cousin, he removes his hat when they enter the lift, and gives up his seat to them in the cars. The strange habit of spitting, which, being as infectious as yawning, is also widely established in Canada, has been attributed by sociologists to the catarrh induced by the hard dry climate of the Eastern States. If this explanation be the correct one, it is singular that the soft wet climate of the Pacific Slopes should not have corrected it. Americans themselves occasionally make the national weakness for this homely habit the subject of mild jokes. They tell a story, for instance, of a progressive theatrical manager who, having achieved satisfactory results with a notice posted in the house :— Do Not Smoke ! Remember the San Francisco Fire ! promptly, and with like success, tried a second, which ran :— Do Not Spit ! Remember the Texas Floods ! The excessive smoking of cigars at a " nickel" (2£d.) apiece probably does more than the climate to encourage spitting, and even when, as many of them do, Americans "smoke dry," holding an unlighted cigar between their lips for half-an-hour, i I 178 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS I have noticed that they spit, as though to complete the illusion. * Another habit, essentially American, is that of resting the feet on the mantelshelf. I confess that, in a company of men, this position seems to me delightful. The American is a utilitarian aux bouts des pieds, and he resents seeing a ledge six inches wide thrown away on bric-a-brac. Moreover, in that country, they shine your shoes (at ten cents a time) so elegantly that two or three pairs of well-shod feet are no mean substitute for Sevres vases or Dresden shepherdesses. In his conversation the average educated American is always snappy, if a trifle sententious. His peculiar drawl, erroneously described as a nasal twang, has been traced to the Sabbath (and week-day) intoning of the Pilgrim Fathers. A large number of Americans are directly sprung from the pious adventurers in the Mayflower. What loins they must have had ! Here and there, a phrase in everyday use in polite circles strikes harshly on ears unaccustomed to it, but much of this feeling is insular prejudice. It may seem abrupt for a lady, when she does not catch your meaning, to ask " How's that ? " but at any rate it has more meaning than 11 beg your pardon." And why take exception to those ever-recurring phrases " You bet," and " I guess," since everyone is a gambler in America, and guesswork is at any rate more modest than certainty I ***«L ^ AMERICAN LIBERTY 179 That the standard of education is much higher than in England may be taken as an axiom. In the Information Bureau of one of the biggest hotels in the south I found a clerk, aged about eighteen, who had never heard of a State called Nevada. From the surprise (to give it no other name) expressed by Americans to whom I told this experience, I am convinced that the case must be exceptional. For the visitor bred in a monarchy, the practical expression of the Republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity is occasionally confusing. One measure of the American's liberty will have been gauged by readers of these pages who have seen how betting is prohibited, and how whisky may not be sold on trains running through Texas, or cigarettes in the shops of Seattle. More often than not, too, he will find that personal liberty is construed as the liberty of one particular person at the expense of his neighbours. If you have reserved a section (i.c, two seats going with the berths overhead) on a Pullman car, any honest dirty fellow (dirt and honesty are associated by courtesy in that country) may plant himself in one of them until the conductor shifts him. If you are seated in a full street car, any free Republican can stand upon your feet without remonstrance from the conductor, and if you shift him he will probably sit in your lap. The equality is amazing. The porter at the hotel n2 Ml n Nil 11 t! 180 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS addresses you as " Friend," which is encouraging, and the way in which any policeman of whom you ask a direction will rest his hand on your shoulder while pointing it out makes you feel yourself back at school. The brotherhood of the American nation is very beautiful. The same sort of brotherhood may be heard in Irish log cabins in Kerry. Trust wars, strikes, and boycots are but pebbles on the surface of its smoothness. Chivalry found an asylum in America when it fled from France. Here is a cutting from a newspaper of July 15th :^— "People See Woman Drown and Steal Her Goods. " Chicago, July 13th.—While 100 men and boys sat or stood within a comparatively few feet of her, and in sight of nearly 1,000 others, an unidentified woman fell off the North Pier, at the mouth of Chicago River, yesterday, and was drowned. Although she screamed repeatedly for assistance, not a hand in the crowd that watched her was lifted to assist her. Instead, gazers stole the woman's hat and purse, which she had placed on the pier beside her, and fled. A half-hour later the body was taken from the water by men from the life-saving station. The lady was neatly dressed." In view of the newspaper reports that have of late thrown some doubt on its financial condition, people at home sometimes ask whether the United *H,m» . LABOUR IN AMERICA 181 States is still the open labour market that it used to be. As a matter of fact, its trade has been in sore straits. I was assured by an official of a great railroad that whereas, in 1907, they had not trucks enough to carry the freight, there were, a year later, not sidings enough to accommodate the empty trucks ! These untoward conditions find their faithful reflection in the downward trend of immigration. Liners have of late booked more steerage passengers eastward than towards the sunset. Disillusionised emigrants have been returning to Europe at a rate which alarms Congress, and, from the scare of too many aliens, America is entering on the (to her) novel phase of a shortage of unskilled labour. If the following cutting from an American paper does not exaggerate the situation, is it to be wondered at that America no longer, as has always been its boast, attracts the martyrs of monarchy ? " ' Unable to earn enough to maintain physical efficiency, 10,000,000 people in the United States are dependent in greater or less degree on charity. Seven millions of them work when they can get work, but at bare living wage which allows no provision for periods of non-employment. As many as 3,300,000 children of the tenements are of the number. Boston has 20,000 of them; New York has 70,000. Underfed, stunted in body, unable to do brain work, they are the seed of the next generation. The death-rate among them fi 182 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS is four or five times that in more prosperous communities. The Fall River mills, the Chicago stock yards, the Pennsylvania mines, the New York and Boston sweatshops, are centres of wretchedness. Disease and death follow. There is nothing else to look forward to. The masses of the poor are getting poorer. A few are amassing enormous wealth. The middle class is disappearing. Men in Chicago stock yards average $5 a week. Skilled labour earns $17 or £18.' These startling statements, implying that one in eight of the population of the U.S. is in poverty, were made before the Twentieth Century Club of Boston by Robert Hunter, chairman of the New York Child Labour Committee." Of course, the dark days will pass, and a land of such inexhaustible resources both above and below ground can have no anxiety about its future. All the same, such a crisis in the labour market must give pause to those who hold the reins of government, and the juxtaposition of progress and poverty, of mendicant and millionaire, may perhaps console us quieter folk in Europe with the reflection that dollars are not all of life. The American nation harbours an extraordinary mixture of high and low ideals, or rather, perhaps, high ideals in a materialist task. Herein, as Professor Henry Van Dyke modestly tells us, lies the secret of its extraordinary success. CHAPTER I. THE PACIFIC SLOPE. The Romance of Canada—Past and Future—Fish and Game—The Land in Summer Dress—Contrast from the States—Beauty and Peace of Victoria,—Sea-trout in a Park—The Empress Hotel—The Museum —Voyage to Vancouver—Wreck of the Beaver—Anti-Japanese Movement—East and West—Outdoor Life—Stanley Park—Bathing at English Bay—Catching Salmon in Salt Water—Pacific Salmon and the Fly—Different Kinds of Salmon on the Pacific Slope—Journey along the Canadian Pacific Railroad—Scenery east of Vancouver— Mosquitoes—A Homesick Man—Kamloops—A Night Ride out to a Lake—The Most Wonderful Lake Fishing on Earth—Best Flies-— Suggestions for Better Protection—Greedy Fishermen—Indian Modes of Fishing—Loons—Ospreys—Beavers—The Reproach of Lacrosse. There is about Canada a romance which, for Englishmen at any rate, is lacking in the United States. It is to be confessed, in all kindness, that the romance lies in the land rather than in its people, for there is nothing morbidly sentimental about either the British Canadian or the French habitant, while the only really romantic element, the aboriginal Indian, is but a seedy remnant of a race that is played out. The land, however, is as romantic as anyone could wish. Whether you enter it by the magnificent gate of the Rockies, in the balmy climate of the Pacific Slope, or whether, trending eastwards, you go in by the icy St. Lawrence and the historic eastern cities, you are quickly aware that here is a land of legend and tradition, of magnificent industrial possibilities, no doubt, in the future, but of no ! * jM 186 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS less superb poetic adventure in the past. For the sportsman it has, if that were possible, even greater promise than for the settler, for, thanks to timely protection, its vast tracks will long harbour all manner of big game, and its lakes and rivers, than which there are none^finer in all the world, will breed fish enough for sportsmen down to the third and fourth generation at least. And beyond such promise, not even the most altruistic need trouble about posterity. Those who go so far for sport are usually fitted out for big game shooting, as a result of which Canada has been described from the sportsman's standpoint mostly in her winter mantle; but the sun-worshipper should woo Our Lady of the Snows when she dons her robe of green, and has white only for her crown. Should he be a fisherman, she will richly reward his homage. With myself, ready, after a month of American cities striving to " beat the band," to give thanks for the ladylike repose of Victoria, Canada was a case of love at first sight. I am not as a rule susceptible—at any rate as regards new countries. I take time to form for them an affection like that which I feel for older scenes. But Canada, I confess it, took me off my feet. How much of its irresistible appeal may have been due to leaving Seattle, with the reek of patriotic powder still in the air, for the perfect peace of Puget Sound framed in the snow-capped mountains of Washing- A QUEEN AMONG CITIES 187 ton, I cannot say, but I bent the knee to Canada and shall ever number her among my loves. Nor, in all the land, or what I saw of it, is there a more beautiful city than Victoria. Her name has the right associations, for she is a queen among cities. There is nothing virile about her beauty. She has no wish to beat the band or anything else. She has no rival, for she recognises none. She detests hustle. Washington, and not Chicago, is her model. She loves a Parliament House, or a park, better than the skyscraper and elevator. Such trade, in fish or lumber, as her sons engage in on their own account, is conducted, as it were, without her cognisance, for she puts comfort above commerce. Come to me, she says, and rest! Make your home here, far from the worries of more pushing cities. One of these days, no doubt, in the not distant future, the immense area of Vancouver Island will be developed commercially, and great fortunes will be made out of its timber and other resources, while its geographical position, facing the Far East, will also contribute mightily to its importance. To-day, however, it is still virgin country, lovely and peaceful, in a climate that is very near perfection. For the fisherman Vancouver Island is holy ground by reason of the splendid sport obtainable with steelhead trout in the Cowichan River. This is a long journey from Victoria, but even II ; I ii \ J 188 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS here, in the city, is a park, known as The Gorge* in which it is possible to catch sea-trout on the fly in salt water, a chance surely all but unique in all the eleven-and-a-half million square miles of the British Empire. The possibility is a little remote, perhaps, but there is the chance, though I confess to having laboured through a warm July afternoon, throwing coachmen and trailing spoons without touching one of the many good fish which I saw from the bridge. The comfortable Canadian Pacific steamer from Seattle brings the visitor right up to the steps of Parliament House, though even more conspicuous is the magnificent hotel lately erected by the same company, a palatial caravanserai, not piled floor on floor, after the Tower of Babel pattern dear to the States, but arranged symmetrically about a spacious entrance hall, all done in green and upholstered with a refinement of taste of which the lady responsible should be prouder than if the Sultan of Turkey had bestowed on her all the insignia of the Order of Chastity. Even were this a guide book, which it is not, the public buildings of Victoria would call for little remark, but a word must be said in praise of the small museum in the Government Building, if only because the Curator has wisely resisted a temptation into which his kind too often fall, and has sternly excluded sensational exotics, such as lions and elephants, in favour of purely local types. A BEAUTIFUL APPROACH 189 The remainder of the journey to Vancouver, which lies on the mainland, may be done by the same steamer from Seattle, but a more convenient arrangement is to leave Victoria at night, reaching Vancouver in time for breakfast next morning. On board the Princess May I found a bunk so roomy that my slimness, usually an advantage to me on boats and trains, was wasted, for the Claimant could have slept in it like a little child. What sort of scenery may lie immediately outside Victoria I do not know, for I slumbered until we were within an hour of our destination, but if it is all as beautiful as the last ten miles, it should be worth doing in daylight. Headland after headland unfolds to the view, reminding those who know Sydney Harbour of old times, and the reservation known as Stanley Park, which I afterwards found to contain big trees, buffaloes and other attractions, is particularly attractive as seen from the water. One corner of it has a sad interest for Canadians, for a hundred yards away lie, so far as any one knows to the contrary, the crusted remains of the historic Beaver, which was, I believe, the first steamer ever used on the Pacific Ocean. There at any rate she went down, and there in-all probability she rests, a memory of pioneer days. You see at once the moment the steamer is alongside, the vast difference between commercial Vancouver and the elegant sister city on the other afts^to 190 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS side of the Sound. Here, with busy wharves and crowded streets, is something more like Seattle, or San Francisco. Indeed, Vancouver is to Canada what San Francisco is to the United States, and the two cities, north and south, join hands in their resentment of yellow immigration. All up and down the Pacific Slope the blaze of hatred, fanned by the blast of agitators, and stoked with the fuel of legitimate grievance as well, has run like a prairie fire. The Chinaman has in a measure lived down the hatred in which he was held by the last generation, and in fact the gentleman with the smile that is " childlike and bland " is to-day far less an object of attack than his yellow cousin, whom white men in the West regard as the rabbit that gnaws the grass and starves the sheep. Also they consider him a clever spy, with dark objects for which the earning of his livelihood, in the sixty or seventy callings that he has invaded, is a mere cloak. In these suspicions it is possible, if not probable, that white men exaggerate the danger, but their resentment of the influx of Japanese, which has reached close on 120,000, is assuming the aspect of practical politics, and has gone too far to be dismissed as a mere passing prejudice. The fact of his having at his back a Government ill-disposed to play the game, so long put up by Europe against Pekin, of " heads I win ; tails you lose ! " merely increases the hostility felt against the "Jap," THE ASIATICS 191 and I am not sure, from what I heard, that the alliance between Downing Street and Tokio has done much to mitigate ill-feeling in the Dominion, but has rather embittered those Canadians who mistakenly but none the less emphatically, see in it a willingness on the part of Britain to ally herself with the enemiesjof her sons. Anyway, whatever may be the issue, the people of the Pacific Slope, both north and south of the Columbia River, are faced with a very pretty problem if they persist in stemming Asiatic immigration. Men of property west of the Rockies tell you unhesitatingly that some such cheap form of labour is absolutely essential if the fruit is not to rot on the trees for want of picking, or the earth to go sour for lack of farming. Men of no property, who are more numerous than the others, say that the trees and earth can both be damned so long as wages do not fall below two dollars a day. Unfortunately for the Asiatic and for commerce, it is in both " God's country " and Sir Wilfred Laurier's, the men of no property who have the last word. What one feels about Vancouver, even more, I think, than about New York or Quebec, is the part which it plays in linking the Old World and the New. None who know both are disposed to deny that " East is East and West is West," yet here the two stare at one another across a strip of ocean, and you can almost see the easternmost stronghold of the Empire from this, the * Oil 111 ,j I 192 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS farthest west, which brings home to you the truth of the saying that it is an Empire on which the sun never sets. You watch a C.P.R. steamer heading west and realise, with something of a shock, that in a few days she will drop anchor in the Far East. You remember, on thinking it over, that Vancouver and Japan, blinking defiance across the sunset, are all but equi-distant, west and east, from Greenwich. What geography lesson, what pedantry of ushers, what poring over the atlas or the globe is so convincing of the earth's roundness as these reflections, as you pace up and down the balcony of the Vancouver Club ! Travel is the only sound education in geography. I doubt not there are Oxford dons who could pull me up a hundred times on heights and depths and distances over the long road I have just travelled, but they are welcome to their book lore, so I have seen the real thing. It is amazing, considering what a short time we men have on earth, how little even those of us with the opportunities trouble to see of our inheritance. For all their attention to business, Vancouver folk are an essentially outdoor community. In this they differ from the Americans of cities, and approximate rather to the people of Sydney and elsewhere in Australia, who, as I remember them fourteen years ago, could always, in the stress of business, find time for a picnic, or at any rate for an al fresco luncheon. Every noon you may see PROSPECT POINT, VANCOUVER. 1192] ft *H11 11 SALT-WATER SALMON FISHING 193 merry parties lunching in the glades of Stanley Park, and every evening the cars to English Bay are crowded with light-hearted folk eager to bathe in its brackish water, to the strains of a charmingly unconventional band, whose zeal is above the petty tyranny of the baton, since it is at any moment apt to render the "Holy City" in waltz time, or to reduce the Maxim's Chorus from the "Merry Widow" to the decorous measure of a marche funebre. A word of caution may be given with regard to the tides here at low water, for they are tricky, and indeed a couple of Canadian ladies were drowned on the beach only two days after I bathed there. The fisherman will not perhaps find much to detain him at Vancouver itself, unless he is there at the running of the Cohoe salmon, when he may get exciting sport with these, trolling in the sea with a large spoon. It is not a high-class way of catching a salmon, but, for all that, I regretted being there a fortnight too soon for the fun. How often the wandering angler arrives that fortnight too early! How much more often he arrives a fortnight too late! For myself, it was the same, for I could not wait for the salmon any more than, three thousand miles further East, the Empress of Ireland would, when the time came, wait for me during the week of the Quebec celebrations, when accommodation on steamers was at a premium. So I missed the novelty of this salt-water salmon- i lit 194 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS fishing, though residents assured me that it soon became monotonous. It is needless to add that these Pacific salmon will not take the fly, for the fact is as well-known as the alleged remark of the English official that we might as well give America a region in which the beastly salmon would not even rise to a fly! Various ingenious reasons have been assigned for their reluctance to behave like self-respecting salmon on the Atlantic side, but the real explanation is perfectly simple. It lies in no peculiarity of the salmon themselves, beyond perhaps their reluctance to fool with feather and tinsel when they have so immense a journey before them, but rather in the elementary fact that the water of these rivers is so thick with mud that the fish could not see a fly even if it carried an electric light. As further proof of this, for the suggestion of which I am indebted to Mr. Cambie, one of the pioneers in British Columbia, may be adduced the undoubted fact of salmon having occasionally, though not often, been taken on the fly off the mouth of the Fraser, in the clearer salt water. So exhausted are the fish with their terrific struggle up the mighty waters of that river that they soon deteriorate, and even if they could be induced to take a fly it is not likely that a fish of fifty pounds would give the same sport as one of ten in the Tay or Tweed. Another peculiarity about these Pacific salmon, seemingly misunderstood by sportsmen at home, VoL^ PACIFIC SALMON 195 is the fact that there is only a really great run every fourth year. There are fish, of course, in intervening seasons, even enough of them to keep the canneries moderately busy, but the big run is every fourth summer. This is accounted for by the fact that the fish do not, as in our. rivers, return to the sea after spawning in the upper waters of the Eraser and Columbia, but die in the nursery of their offspring. What the youngsters do to find the way back over hundreds of miles to their home in the ocean, goodness knows, but they get back in safety without their parents showing them the way, and it takes at least three years of ocean food to bring them to full size and back into theriver. There seem to be, with some allowance for confusion, at any rate four different kinds of salmon on that coast, and these appear in the following order, starting in April and May. First come the spring fish, or quinnats, not unlike our own salmon, and growing to a weight of at least 80 lbs. It is possible that these sometimes get back to the sea, as where else could they put on such weight ? Certainly not during their abstinence in fresh water. Quinnats take a Devon, though not a fly, in parts of the Thompson River. After these, in July, come the sockeyes, passing through the San Juan Strait in mighty armies. The third to arrive are the Cohoe, which give the best sport on the spoon. Last and, from the commercial standpoint, least, come the humpbacks (humped o2 f 196 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS only in the breeding season), which have a rancid smell that disgusts white men but does not repel Japanese, with whom alone they find a ready market. And so, in the fulness of time, a meagre fulness, but one necessitated by my programme, I entrusted myself to the C.P.R., and started out on the long railroad journey across Canada. This can be done by anyone fleeing from justice in about five days. Lacking this inducement to hurry, and desirous rather of picking up a fish or two by the way, I made four halts and should, with- another week to spare, have made at least two more, for it was with the greatest reluctance that I hardened my heart and let the train bear me past the famous trout of the Nipigon, and the beauty of the Muskoka Lakes. My first stop for fishing was at Kamloops, only a day's journey east of Vancouver, near which, according to a nephew and namesake of the illustrious Lord Brougham, who has lived many years in British Columbia, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of its fishing, there was a lake in which any duffer could catch on the fly all the trout he wanted. Mr. Brougham paid the lake this tribute, which proved no exaggeration, on purely impersonal grounds, little knowing how closely it appealed to me. The first day's journey does not touch the Rockies, but the train follows a beautiful course VEILED WORKERS 197 beside the noisy Fraser, which rushes to meet it round a hundred bends, leaping over massive rocks and glorying in the power that it gathers from its allies every few miles towards the sea. Little villages in which, as a change for eyes so long accustomed to American mining towns, the church is more in evidence than the saloon, lie along the line as it plunges through the Coast Range, and here and there a rude cross stands on the brink of a precipice to mark, in a setting of wild flowers, some unforgotten grave at the edge of the steep. The mosquitoes are tiresome in this part of the country, and you see the workers on the permanent way all veiled like Touaregs, so that, when I had seen only half-a-dozen, I imagined that bee-keeping was a local industry. During the afternoon the grandeur of the morning scenery changes abruptly to a sandy belt reminiscent of Arizona, but in which, with little visible suggestion of Covent Garden, fruit-farming is, I understand, an increasingly remunerative industry. So at any rate I was told by a travelling acquaintance on the train, who, it turned out, was well acquainted with my part of Devonshire, and as homesick a man as I ever struck. Homesickness is a curious affliction of protean perspective. It consists for the most part in wanting to be where you are not, for it is odds that your homesick man has not got back to his own folk a month before he chafes to be away again. I 198 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Thus, on the evening of the first day, I came to Kamloops. Now Kamloops is a spot about which anyone in love with Canada wishes to say as little as possible. It has some reputation as a sanatorium for consumptives, and its situation, at the fork of two rivers, cannot in fairness be called unpicturesque. For all that and all that, one glance at its single street was satisfying. I did not want more, but made immediate enquiries about some sort of conveyance to take me forthwith the two-and-twenty miles to the lake in the hills. Kindly residents warned me that it was a bad drive to start out at seven in the evening, even with half a moon hung in the heavens to light the way. I thanked them for their counsel, and still pursued enquiries about the trap. I pointed out that I ran some risk of Kamloops growing on me and keeping me from my purpose. Within an hour, a dull-looking youth, whose appearance, however, proved dazzling by comparison with what it hid, brought round a " Democrat" and a pair of likely-looking horses, mother and son. I clambered into this welcome vehicle and drove off, leaving many a head shaking ominously at the door of the inn. It was a perfect July evening, and under ordinary circumstances there would have been nothing alarming in the prospect of a twenty- mile sally into the back blocks. Unfortunately, the circumstances were extraordinary. The lad at the reins was an idiot, and, what was worse, AN IDIOT DRIVER 199 the mare and her son knew it. Now, there is only one way in which horses behave when they know incompetence sits behind them. They walk, and so this pair walked uphill, downhill, and along the flat. During the first couple of hours I noticed nothing amiss. The scenery was not of Canada's best, but the late sunset lit up the pines and sagebrush and gleamed on the surface of little alkaline lakes until nearly ten o'clock. Then it became apparent that there was a want of harmony. The driver thought the animals did not know the way. The animals knew he did not. They fell out. Every few minutes a crack with a long whip produced a spasmodic burst that all but flung me into the ditch. Then they resumed their walk. Soon after it fell dark we struck the timber: struck it in more senses than one. Tree after tree we grazed in our painful progress. Sometimes the horses hit the trees on purpose, but more often my idiot drove them against the trunks. By this time it was intensely cold, well in the neighbourhood of freezing point. The fall in temperature did not, however, deter the mosquitoes, who knew that they had a soft thing, and bit my unresisting face and hands until they could drink no more. Mosquitoes in hot weather are disagreeable, but in place. Mosquitoes in a frost are terrible. Eleven o'clock had long passed. Towards midnight the idiot began to tell pleasing stories about " bad men " who had recently held Ill {Mil ill SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS up travellers round Kamloops. His teeth were chattering with cold and fear. If only I had known the road through the timber I would have sat on him and taken the reins, but I was helpless. Then, of a sudden, half-a-dozen wild horses, or as nearly wild as that country breeds, dashed out of the shadows and curvetted about our team with a fury that would have demoralised it had it been less than half asleep. Long afterwards— I had grown too numbed to take any note of the passing of time—my ear caught the welcome baying of a dog. I almost wished it might be a Wolf, so the end could be swift. Did ever the music of Beckford's pack sound sweeter in his ears than the solitary bark in the night! Did ever Landseer draw, or Sir Walter Scott sing, a hound more beautiful than the ragged old setter that came bounding out through the trees and wagging friendly welcome. Thank goodness, I thought, this wretched midnight drive is at an end. Was it ? The idiot on the box had been gradually losing his nerve, and the sudden apparition of the hound finished him. He descended from the box, scratched his vacant head, vowed that he would find the way, and disappeared in the blackness, closely followed by the dog. In vain, hoping that its teeth might meet in his calf, I strained my ears to hear his cries. I was disappointed in this reasonable desire, for no sound came. I was left to my Own thoughts, which were not of the most RAINBOW COTTAGE 201 agreeable. It seemed that I might freeze to death. For the sake of appearances, I stood at the horses' heads, but they evinced not the slightest desire to do other than freeze with me. As men will, who stare death in the face* I took a rapid review of my past life. I had done very little harm, I found, and no good at all. From this satisfactory survey I was roused by the return of the natural, who, with evident pride, informed me that he had found the cottage. And so, at length, I reached Rainbow Cottage, under auspices the reverse of bright. Cowan* the owner, who holds the post of ranger in the Long Lake Fbrest Reserve, was, not unreasonably, brief in his welcome. There is no telegraphic communication with the outer world, and I was thus unable to let him know that he would be roused at something after midnight by an unexpected visitor. A closer acquaintance next day improved matters, and on the day following that, when he drove me back to Kamloops behind a perfect team and in two- thirds of the time taken by the boy, we parted the best of friends. From a Vancouver barrister, who was fishing there at the time, and who likewise emerged in his pyjamas to know what the disturbance was about* I received the encouraging information that the lake was crammed with trout, and that he had caught several two-pounders that morning. He also imparted the equally welcome assurance I III illl 202 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS that it was useless to fish before the sun had warmed the water, and that nine o'clock would be early enough. I had heroically resolved, if necessary, to be out at six, but the promise of two or three hours more in bed was comforting, and in a few minutes I was sound asleep and dreaming the things that make life pleasant to all fishermen. Trout Lake, or Fish Lake, is in the heart of the Long Lake Forest Reserve, lying four or five thousand feet above sea level, between the coast range and the Selkirks. The Reserve embraces sixty thousand acres of timber jealously guarded against fire, not for its very slight commercial value, but because it holds the snow and rainfall in trust for the Yale division of British Columbia* In that land water is more precious than timber. This is also a fish and game preserve, and in it the angler with time to spare may fish half-a- dozen lakes in which the trout-fishing, wonderful, as I am about to describe, in the worst of them, improves in direct ratio to the inaccessibility of each from Kamloops. The nearest is twenty-two miles distant. The way, as will be gathered from what has been said, is not a path of roses, but the sport makes such discomfort of no account. What the remoter lakes may offer I do not know from personal experience. They can be got at only by horse trail, and I have been told by men who know them that the trout run very large, and are almost too plentiful for good sport. ^ TROUT LAKE 203 For ordinary tastes Trout Lake should be good enough. I gladly threw back anything under a pound, and I may add, as a further tribute to the fishing, that my action in throwing a trout-fly is not unlike Bosanquet's on a slow wicket. Yet at the very first cast I hooked two, one of close on two pounds, the other half a pound less. These lake rainbows jump like tarpon six or eight times, and they fight like demons. No one can help catching trout on this lake. You can have the boat poled along a mile of reeds, casting as you go into the " pockets " and hooking a fish of some size at every cast. It is at the edges of the lake, on the shallows, that you get all the fish on the fly. The centre, where the water is a hundred feet deep at the least, offers only a casual big fish on the spoon, and the spoon should be altogether barred. Many flies do well on the shallows, and among them a red-bodied Montreal, a green- bodied cow-dung, a March brown, a Zulu, a Parmachene belle, and a silver doctor, all tied on No. 5 or 6 hook. These can be bought at Vancouver if necessary. The Fish Commissioners have the lake under some little control, but, if it is to keep up its wonderful reputation for long they will be well advised in making the rules far stricter than they are at present. Thus, in addition to prohibiting the spoon, which can never be necessary on a lake where fish rise so greedily to the fly, the ! ml 204 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS size-limit might well be raised from eight inches to ten, and the day's bag of twenty-five might, equally without offending any true sportsman, be reduced from five-and-twenty to a score. An inexpensive permit, or licence, might also be exacted, not so much perhaps with a view to raising revenue, as to compel some form of registration, and thereby enabling Cowan, who has the supervision of a very large area, to know who is fishing on the other lakes. Finally, as the snow is late in melting, which has the result of retarding the spawning of fish both in the lake itself and in Meadow Creek, its only outlet, the opening might well be changed from May 1st to June 1st. I offer these suggestions in no spirit of telling the Commissioners their own business, but solely out of gratitude for the excellent fishing I enjoyed on the lake during my limited stay, and in the hope that the same chances may be offered to those who come after. Moreover, as past evidence goes to show, the fish-hog, as he is euphoniously styled in the New World, needs some kind of check on his activity. When it is mentioned that two " sportsmen " have been known to take away the immense bag of 1,363 fish within a week, while, on another occasion, two rods caught forty-five fine trout in a quarter of an hour, wonder will perhaps be felt that the lake should still, without any attempt at re-stocking, furnish such remarkable sport, and such inroads, apparently indulged **2LU; TROUT IN GREAT PLENTY 205 in without prejudice to the water, may even be cited as strong arguments against the need of further restriction. This, however, is false reasoning. No enclosed water can withstand the effect of such drainage on its resources for long, and since these lakes must long be a great national asset in one of the fairest playgrounds in all the Empire, the present generation should jealously safeguard their future. A light breeze is desirable for perfection in the fishing. There are, I understand, waters in the Dominion on which, contrary to the general rule at home, perfectly still days, without a breath of air, give the fly-fisherman his best sport. On Trout Lake, however, nothing much could be done without a ripple on the water, but very little wind was necessary to get the trout on the move, and, once they were stirring, it does not take anything of a fisherman long to reach the day's limit. In winter the lake freezes over, but in the month of July I found the water extraordinarily warm. How many thousands of trout there may be in its depths, no one can guess. They break the water in all directions, and may be seen in their scores among the reeds, out of reach of the fly, and snatching natural insects from the stems. They are all rainbows, and have always been in the lake, breeding in the most prolific fashion. Long before the white man found out this paradise 206 | SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS aboriginal Indians used to trap and spear its trout, though it is doubtful whether they made such catches as are made to-day on the fly* since the shape of the lake, which is about four miles in length and very shallow at the edges, does not lend itself to such primeval poaching. The Indians are gone now, and the trout are taken in legitimate fashion only, which is something to be thankful for. It has its interests for the naturalist as well. At any moment you may see or hear half-a-dozen loons, their ghostly laughter echoing round the mere. They are nasty enemies of the fisherman, and Cowan does what he can to keep them down, but they are quick to dive at the flash of a gun, and it takes an exceptional marksman to bag his bird, unless he can do so with a small-bore rifle, the surest weapon for all divers. A pair of ospreys might usually be seen when I was there, either quartering the surface of the lake, or sitting on their favourite trees watching the intruders in the boat. Along the well-timbered banks dwell the mink and the musk-rat, both with an appreciation of trout that brings them into collision with the Ranger, and, perhaps most interesting of all, there is a colony of twenty or thirty beavers, whose overnight activity is apparent in the tangles of newly-felled timber on the shore. Ever since the year 1905, these typical Canadians have been rigidly protected, and they •Hf SENSATIONAL LAKE-FISHING 207 are sacred until at any rate 1911, when, in all probability the period of their immunity from persecution will, in deference to popular sentiment, be indefinitely extended. Consequently, Cowan lets them work in peace, though under protest. It is not that they devour a single trout, for they are the strictest of vegetarians. The harm they do is in damming up the streams and thus cutting off the very necessary running water from the growing fry. So, on my third day after leaving Kamloops I returned to it. In the interval I had seen for myself what assuredly must be the most sensational lake-fishing with the fly in all the world. At any rate, not having visited the neighbouring lakes, I find it hard to believe in the existence of better. Fishermen at home, to whom, since my return, I have related the wonders of Trout Lake, have pooh-poohed it as " duffer's work." God rest them when their time comes, and bless them in the interval! These are the men who, fishing on the principle of " art for art's sake," boast of catching one trout a month. If they caught two they would think it greedy. Well, everyone to his fancy. For them the arduous labour and the poor return. For me, if I may choose, another turn on Trout Lake, where the reel sings at every cast. I recognise the reasonable inference of these killjoys. I deprecate most emphatically any skill as a factor in the ease with u 208 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS which I caught my trout back of Kamloops. But I would rather, any day, be lucky than skilful, if I may not be both ; and so I say again: Give me Trout Lake. There cannot be its equal. From Kamloops I travelled as far as Banff with the Westminster Lacrosse Team, which had an enormous banner over its specially reserved car. Each player wore a badge with a salmon, and a weird verse of doggerel setting forth how its victory would be bigger than a cohoe, or even than a humpback. As a matter of fact, I believe the team got at any rate one thorough defeat. Lacrosse is rather under a cloud by reason of the brutality with which it is played. I recollect, even during my short time in Canada, a player pleading guilty in the police-court to assaulting the referee. It made one feel at home again. i I 1* A BUFFALO S HEAD. [209] *?[ m CHAPTER n. THE ROCKIES. Beautiful Railroad Scenery—The Great Divide—Banff—The Springs Hotel—Examination of the Alleged Americanisation of Canada—A Silly Scare—Dislike of Englishmen—Reasons for This—The Habitant— The National Park and its Buffalo—Man, the Preserver—Vastness of the Park—Amusements at Banff—Bathing in the Sulphur Springs— The Menagerie and Museum—Lake Minnewanka—Good-bye to the Rockies. About the grandeur of the C.P.R. run through the Rocky Mountains there can be no two opinions. Shorter distances one can recall in Switzerland, in Java, even perhaps in the Blue Mountains of Australia, which are perhaps equal to its best, but for a two-day panorama of snow- peaks and green valleys, of grey glaciers and blue lakes, where is its equal ? Its beauty defies the pen and baulks the camera, and not all the coloured enlargements and florid booklets circulated by tourist departments can even attempt to do justice to the awful majesty of such scenery. If the route has a drawback, it is that all the beauty of it is crowded into the first three days out of Kamloops, and that, even in that stage, the tourist cannot, unless he steps off the train either continually or at uninteresting stations, see the whole of it, for much is passed in the night. Still, the daylight is long in July at any rate, and those Willi:: 210 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS who are sparing of sleep contrive to get their fill of Nature at her best. Peak is piled on peak, till they seem as if they must topple over. The morning sun lights now a field of ice, anon a mighty river. Until the morning after you are through Kamloops on the evening train, these streams all hurry west to seek their Nirvana in the bosom of the Pacific. Then, on the second day out of Vancouver you run past the Great Divide. Here is the parting of the ways, the backbone of the New World, for you see two little streams, starting from a common bed, diverging by devious routes to oceans three thousand miles apart. Another lesson in applied geography within the week ; first, the roundness of the earth, and now the watershed. Henceforth the rivers run with the train. Banff is at the zenith of Rocky Mountain scenery. With so much that is beautiful in this bewitching Canada, I am not sure that Banff itself is not a little overrated, but its popularity is unquestioned, and the Springs Hotel is all through the season crammed from ground floor to roof. The register of this comfortable hostelry shows an enormous preponderance of Americans, and even the manager is of that nationality, a fact which drew from an irate Englishman a tirade on the threatened Americanisation of Canada. Of this subject I was a little weary, for it has been exploited by journalists and others for just a trifle more than it is worth. Scares of AMERICANISATION 211 this kind make " good copy," and this one is about as serious as the invasion of England by German waiters. To what, reduced to its lowest terms, does this Americanisation (dreadful word !) of Canada precisely amount ? To not much more, I think, than that so fair a land, lying at the door of the States, draws, as might be expected, more tourists and traders from them than from another source three thousand miles away. Is Canada, which needs capital even more than labour, to decline dollars when she cannot get pounds ? Is her acceptance of them any sound evidence that she wants to change her flag and see the star- spangled banner float over Ottawa ? Canadians are the product of a peculiarly exacting environment. They are neither English nor American. This, in fact, is the rock on which the ordinary polemic is wrecked. Canada is a young giantess playing with a great heritage, and she must come to years of discretion in her own way. She will not be bullied nor driven by newspaper men on their holiday. Within a century it may be that her sons have lost as well as gained something. Their gain is obvious: self-reliance, resourcefulness, adaptiveness, all the qualities called for in the development of new territory under rigorous climatic conditions. Their loss is less apparent, and it may perhaps be ungrateful to point it out in so many words, but it includes idiosyncracies that have lent colour r2 212 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS to this American bogey. They show a tendency to talk through their hats, and occasionally even through their noses, and they share with their neighbours a weakness for long-distance spitting. That they have no immoderate love for the average Englishman who settles in their midst is well authenticated, but I am unable to say from actual experience whether, as some say, notices of vacancies are invariably accompanied by the injunction that " No Englishman need apply." On the other hand, it would be folly to deny that most of the Englishmen exported to the Dominion (by families who have no pressing need of them at home) are of the kind to warrant their uncompromising attitude. At heart, the British Canadian is loyal enough, not always perhaps with the penny - plain - and - twopence - coloured loyalty that lately blared in the flag-draped alleys of Quebec, but with the sounder, if less demonstrative sentiment common to Canadian prairie, Indian plain, and Australian bush. As for the average French Canadian of the working class —the habitant pure and simple a la Drummond— my knowledge of him is negligible, but I am given to understand that he is somewhat like the modern Moor, imbued with no sense of patriotism, no loyalty to any flag. He owns allegiance to neither England nor France, and cares nothing about developing the country beyond the satisfying of his own immediate wants. It is necessary to FAMOUS BUFFALOS 213 grasp the superb apathy of the habitant in order to understand why Quebec, for all the superiority of her geographical position, is so far behind Montreal in commercial prosperity. But I digress. The outstanding feature of Banff is the National Park, and the centre of attraction in that reserve is the herd of buffalo. Of all the creatures nearly exterminated by the ruthlessness of man, red or white, during the past half century, none was more magnificent as a type than the shaggy buffalo of the rolling prairie. The story of its persecution is too old a scandal to need reviving here, and it is more encouraging to contemplate recent efforts for its rehabilitation. In this worthy act of repentance, both the great Governments of America are bearing their share ungrudgingly. The beginnings of the herd in the National Park at Banff were modest, but an immense addition to their numbers was made by a business deal in which Mr. Douglas, the superintendent, paid two hundred thousand dollars for the famous Flathead herd, or all that could be mustered of it. The animals, four or five hundred in number, were mustered on their native ranges in Montana, by Messrs. Pablo and AUard, their owners, with the co-operation of seventy-five picked cowboys, who took two months to effect the round-up. The animals were then transported by train to Alberta, a journey of over a thousand miles, with extremely few casualties. II 214 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS There is a kind of unrehearsed justice about the restoration of this herd to Canadian soil, for its four original members were of Canadian stock. They were driven over the border into Montana five-and-thirty years ago by Samuel, an Indian, who eventually sold out and, I regret to say, spent the money in light refreshment, with the result that his body was found under a bridge a day or two after the deal. The buffalo do remarkably well in their great corral in the Park, keeping to themselves as a rule, so that few are seen from either the line or the road, and a closer inspection can be made only in the company of a keeper. Their traditional pugnacity seems to have been exaggerated. At any rate, one only has died fighting. The oldest of them must be thirty-five years, and, as the cows breed regularly, there is reason for hoping that in that vast enclosure, thickly planted with spruce, larch and fir, carpeted with rich grasses, and made beautiful with the bloom of the Indian paintbrush, wild rose and yellow columbine, these splendid, much-wronged creatures may thrive and multiply for all time. It is well that this should be so, for it will wipe out a little of the stain left by a generation that is gone. Man, the Destroyer, has had a long and eventful innings, leaving the earth poorer by his wasteful slaughter. Before the followers of murderous Cain and hairy Esau, the beasts of the field have, little by little, receded. Man, the NATIONAL PARK 215 Preserver, is the more finished product of a later civilization. It is his duty to protect not merely the animal and vegetable world, but his own race against itself, since, without some check on the . execution done by arms of precision, posterity would be robbed of its inheritance. Space is the keynote of the land across the western ocean. Nature favours grandeur out there. It cannot, perhaps, be claimed that man always follows her lead, yet his perspective is unconsciously adjusted to greater distances than that of men cribbed in old-world cities. Inspired, perhaps, by the best ideals of her powerful neighbour, Canada is setting aside vast reserves in which no man may carry arms or cut down timber; and it is gratifying to realise that her National Park is the greatest on earth. They have nothing like it in the States, for it is nearly double the extent of the famous Yellowstone, embracing as it does close on three and a half million acres, or a territory equal to nearly the whole of Yorkshire! A tract of such enormous area might at first sight seem unmanageable, and indeed there are responsibilities I would rather carry than those of Mr. Howard Douglas, the superintendent. Yet immensity is necessary to ensure safety for the game. In a smaller tract, though poachers might be more effectually prevented from killing animals within the park limits, there would be ! 71 am 216 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS little difficulty in a gang of unarmed confederates driving the game outside. In using the word park, it is perhaps necessary, for the benefit of readers at home, to distinguish between this National Park of Canada and enclosures like Hyde Park, or the private parks of landowners. A park, in the national sense of a game reserve, is neither a public playground, with swans on a lake and tea houses, nor is it a private enclosure in which deer and cattle graze placidly under a canopy of spreading oaks. It includes within its boundaries villages that will some day be cities, mining centres, roaring rivers and unplumbed lakes, mountains that rise ten thousand feet into the altitudes of eternal snow, and forest so dense that the eye cannot pierce their screen more than a few yards from the road. In the Banff Park there are hundreds of miles of horse trails. Every summer the Canadian Alpine Club devotes weeks to the exploration of peaks still uncanonised by the Whympers and Fitzgeralds. Fishermen spend weeks in the pursuit of trout in a hundred bubbling streams. Invalids spend weeks in the pursuit of health, bathing in the sulphur springs, and scribbling fervent testimonials setting forth how they threw away their crutches and played leap-frog. Banff itself, the headquarters of the superintendent, is a model village, over which he exercises a mild autocracy, running everything for the benefit a BANFF AND SULPHUR 217 of the tourist, so far at any rate as is compatible with the interests of the animals. It lies on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, five hundred miles east of Vancouver, and only men of affairs go through without breaking the journey. Tourists linger at the Springs Hotel and spend happy days in bathing, riding, and Alpine climbing. Very indifferent horsemen and Amazons, attired after the model of Buffalo Bill, ride not incautiously among the woodland trails, though every now and then you get a fleeting vision of the real cowboy, in " chaps " and fringed gloves, thundering along on a broken-hearted bronco that has tried in vain to make dust return to dust. Banff, with the snow peaks and the bridge spanning the swift Bow River, has a Scottish-Swiss sort of beauty. The sulphur baths are an attraction by themselves. There is one close to the hotel, but the most frequented is a cave about a mile away. Here, on the site of a superannuated geyser, the water, strongly impregnated with sulphur, comes welling up in a natural basin at a temperature of about 90° F., and you emerge smelling like a cheap Canadian match, and fearful of rubbing against the wall and igniting. Owing to the peculiar action of the sulphur on the stone steps, these are more slippery than ice, and much harmless enjoyment is furnished in watching the brave and the fair alight, not always on their feet. So hot is J Him 218 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS the water that the air, even in July, is cold by contrast, and it is advisable to rub down briskly with a hard towel without loitering about. These sulphur baths are considered invaluable as a cure for eczema and other interesting affections of the skin. Never having suffered from these maladies, I was unable to add my testimonial to the rest, but, contrary to what might be expected of so warm a bath, it certainly leaves an invigorating sensation afterwards. Apart from the moose, elk, and buffalo in the Park, a few native animals are exhibited in cages in a small menagerie behind the rustic building in which the superintendent has his office. Bears, pumas, wolves, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, and eagles form the chief attractions. The dens are extremely clean, and an installation of running water encourages that virtue which, in four- footed creatures, comes even before godliness. In one den there were at the time of my visit a trio of bears, two brown and a cinnamon, which sparred and played with the same enjoyment as a baby bear and monkey I had seen at a fair at Seattle. Half an hour passed imperceptibly in watching their antics, as one of the black bears would climb up a dead tree in the den, to be followed by his cinnamon playmate, with which it had a stand-up sham fight on the floor. Creatures that die in either the menagerie or Park find a Valhalla in a small museum within the THE DEVIL'S LAKE 219 building, which contains, among other interesting material, an elk, a buffalo, and a gigantic trout, The elk died in fair fight, for these animals, like the red deer in Scotland, are much given to combats ending fatally. Moose, on the other hand, are never known to fight to the death. The moose, by the way, is a prolific deer. They have a cow in the Park which has been an inmate ever since she was a bottle-fed calf of a few weeks old. In her third year she gave birth to twins, and she has, without fail, presented the collection with twins every summer since. The immense trout in the museum came from Lake Minnewanka, which is about nine miles from Banff, and celebrated as the haunt of monster trout that take the spoon in the deep water. The meaning of the Indian name is virtually " Devil's Lake," and I thought that I had hooked the venerable owner when, within half a mile of the shore, something grisly rose from out the bosom of the mere and nearly pulled a 20 ft. Hardy salmon rod out of my grasp. Caring very little for trolling in fresh water, I was not sorry that no further notice was taken of my spoon, but applied myself to conversation with Mr. Collins, proprietor of the local inn, as he pulled me over the best water available in the time. Here, indeed, was a contrast to my troutful lake of two days earlier. In place of reed-fringed, lowJying shores, we had here towering cliffs and water of great depth to the very 220 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS edge. The scenery round Minnewanka is magnificent. The trout (when you get them) are also magnificent, but the place will be still better worth a visit in future seasons, as the C.P.R. people have stocked two neighbouring lakes with the famous Nipigon trout, which will take the fly freely. The drive from Banff, past the buffalo corral, and through the prettiest mining village in the world, is over an excellent road, and, even by those who do not yearn after one of its thirty- pounders, Minnewanka is beautiful enough to be seen for its own sake. Soon after leaving Banff you bid good-bye to the Rockies, and it was just before running into Calgary that I looked back on that glorious range and dreamt of all its unfished rivers singing in their descent to none but the mountain birds. And to think that one of these fine days they will be as surely fished out as any leat on Dartmoor ! Yet British Columbia will long be a playground for both rod and gun. What else than a Paradise for the fisherman could it be, a well-watered country with its population of a quarter of a million straggling over a territory equal to France, Italy, and the Low Countries together ! 4 m DEVIL S LAKE. [220] CHAPTER III. CITIES OF THE PLAIN. Tamer Scenery of the Prairies—Prosperity and Weather of Calgary— Scarcity of Animal Life on the Prairies—Alfalfa Grass—A Stowaway on the Train—Winnipeg, a City of the Future—Passing Glimpses of Famous Fishing Grounds—The Shores of Superior—Toronto—Visit to Niagara Falls—Their Spell—Unconventional Way of Seeing them— Montreal—Mass at Notre Dame—The Lachine Rapids—A Tame Excursion—Preponderance of French in Montreal—English as She is Understood—An Amusing Misprint—Lake Broom and Lake Magog —Changes in the Fishes of Lake Broom—Grasshoppers and Other Baits—The Helgramite—In Praise of the Black Bass—Pickerel— Muskallonge—" Sunfish "—Mosquitoes—Cost of Fishing—Quebec in Holiday Mood—The Mighty St. Lawrence—Its White Whales—Home On the Empress of Ireland—The Repatriated—Journey's Ending. Once the Rockies he behind, the Canadian Pacific route, or, for that matter, any other, lays no claim to scenic beauty. One man on the train indeed, who might have been first cousin to the sea captain who returned thanks for his first Channel fog after a year in the tropics, welcomed the prairies after a surfeit of mountains, but his strange relief found no echo. Indeed, you best love the beauty of the Rockies when you are ranning over the prairie, the rolling sea of grass that stretches away fifty miles to the skyline, with no sign of life for miles other than a small mob of cattle or a lean* stupid-looking coyote. After the first day of its monotony, you wonder how you could have ever closed your eyes with the wondrous mountains around you. In the 1 i 1 .... ..... ..-, 222 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS prairies, the wonder is that you can ever keep them open. Happier those who travel west, with the promise of snow peaks to make up for the horrors of the plains. The eastward route is all bathos and regret. Calgary, round which the country is still broken, the aftermath of foothills, is commonly described (by its own folk) as the handsomest city in Alberta, from which the traveller infers that the others have been laid out with an eye to business rather than beauty. Of its prosperity there can, however, be no question, and at the time I saw it the place had just been boomed as the scene of the Dominion Fair, and was carrying its honours very lightly. Its present population must be between ten and twenty thousand. A few thousand one way or the other do not signify, for in another few years it will inevitably have fifty. It is a sunshine city, with, so they say, a milder climate than any other between the Rockies and Quebec. The official estimate modestly claims but three hundred and fifty days of sunshine in the year, an estimate which seemed to me perfectly reasonable, although on the only day I was there it pelted " cats and dogs." A drummer, who joined the train at Calgary, assured me that the climate was as that of Paradise. Have commercial travellers, I wonder, any special knowledge about the weather in Heaven ? On the prairies west of Medicine Hat you may A WICKED CHILD 223 see a stray wisp of antelope, but coyotes are the chief animal break in the monotony, and there is not one bird an hour. Through great tracts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba the levels reach away so evenly to far horizons that you might be crossing the green ocean. Alberta has its coal, and behind Edmonton and Calgary there is, I believe, smiling agricultural country, but just alongside the railroad there is nothing but short grass, which has the one advantage over the longer luxuriance further back of being practically immune from prairie fires. Here and there I was shown great crops of alfalfa, which is much prized as food for pigs and even cattle. Alfalfa appeals to the farmer who likes to eat his cake and have it too, since, taking deep root like clover, it gives a succession of crops that he looks for in vain in his other grasses. It was hereabouts on the train that many of us were interested in a wicked small boy, promising scion of an undetermined race (his English was broken, and I could not catch him with my rudimentary efforts in three other tongues), eight years of age, so they said, who had run away from home and had been travelling free of charge up and down the C.P.R. for the past week. No one knew where he had joined the train, and the Chief of Police in that district told me that he had tried in vain to locate the lad's parents. A lost child had been advertised for at a place fifty miles i 1 lit 224 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS up the line, and this atom of human drift had been sent there, only to be returned as the wrong article. When last I saw the little scallywag he was being taken under escort to Winnipeg. He was not, if the truth must be told, the engaging kind of child that a philanthropist would adopt at sight, for he bit and kicked like a maniac. After two days of dead levels, the train runs smoothly into Winnipeg, a city with no past, but with a future above anxiety, content to lack the historic associations of Quebec, and anxious only to out-Chicago Chicago as a temple of booms, corners, and all the other saturnalia of trade for which, alas, I have no soul. The skyscraper has replaced the log cabin of the Hudson Bay pioneers, and from the twentieth storey the busy clerk may look out on cultivated prairies freed for ever from the menace of the Redskin. In twenty years the population of Winnipeg has leapt from ten thousand to ten times the number. In another twenty—small doubt of it—it will touch a quarter of a million. Its wealth, already immense, will then be fabulous. And so may the shadow of its opulent Chamber of Commerce never grow less ! To Toronto I journeyed by the new C.P.R. track, through Sudbury and the Muskoka Country, passing, to my lasting regret, not only the famous Nipigon trout, but also the fairylike Muskoka Lakes, which offer exceptional sport to those with the time to seek it. The attractive feature of this THE FALLS : CANADIAN (ABOVE) AND AMERICAN (BELOW) m [224] NIAGARA 225 daylight run to Toronto is the close companionship of Lake Superior, round the winding shores of which, and all but in the water, the train runs for hours. The memory of ten thousand acres of water mirroring a million Christmas trees lives even with the more pretentious pictures of the Rockies. Superior was peaceful at the time of my passing, as a result of which I was less able to appreciate Kipling's resentment of its " quiet horror " than his Canadian friend's rejoinder that it was a useful piece of water. Toronto, a compromise between the old French settlements and the American newness of Winnipeg, inclines on the whole to the Chicago model, and is a handsome, busy city. For myself, it was chiefly attractive as the junction for Niagara Falls, which may be conveniently reached by daily excursion steamers over Lake Ontario. I almost missed Niagara. With a constitutional horror of sightseeing, particularly in the company of trippers, I was careful not to visit the too famous Falls on the occasion of my last visit to the States. I had a horror of seeing them profaned by a crowd of cheap New Yorkers, eloquent with the smart wit of the Bowery. I preferred to imagine them as seen by the lonely Indian. Being so near as Toronto, however, I could not resist their call, and glad I am that I obeyed it. To have seen the Niagara Falls as I saw them in sunshine and in storm, in a torrent of rain that Q - II II I 1111 rail illli 226 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS matched their roar, and then, an hour later, with their glorious spray suffused with rainbow hues is to have seen a beauty almost more than natural. Niagara remains the one tremendous memory of my travels. They advertise it on the hoardings, yet advertisement cannot vulgarise its majesty. They harness it to the base needs of commerce, yet even machinery cannot stale its charm and infinite variety. There are some who sneer at Niagara, but they would criticise Paradise. To tell the truth, the much-talked-of harnessing of Niagara does very little to destroy its beauty, nor, I am thankful to say, is it desecrated, as one has been led to believe, by monster displays of advertisements. Here and there, it is not to be denied, the merits of some commodity or other are set forth in situations offensively conspicuous, and below the bridge which joins Canada with the United States there are evidences of the utilisation of the Falls by a generation which is nothing if not practical, and which would not hesitate, were such enterprise feasible, to run an overhead railroad over a rainbow. The mathematical aspect of this amazing tumble of waters has no attraction for me, but some reader may be interested to know that seven million horse-power has ' been computed as well within its capacity. The estimate must hjstve been made by the sort of man who would calculate in cold blood the initial velocity of his soul on its flight to the next THE UTILITARIAN SPIRIT 227 world. The practical application of such figures is found in the electric lighting of the city of Toronto, eighty miles away. Now and again, the Falls avenge themselves on their puny tyrant. During the violent thunderstorms, particularly, which are not uncommon in their neighbourhood, the power stations are compelled to shut down for fear of accident, and I found Toronto plunged in darkness on the evening of my return, her hotels in darkness, and her street cars at a standstill, for over an hour. It is probable that the harnessing of Niagara has great future possibilities, and if these can be realised, without further disfigurement of earth's grandest spectacle, it will be difficult to stem the enterprise of those on the spot. Thus, a distinguished marine engineer has already predicted that fast steamers will yet be driven across the Atlantic by wireless electricity generated by the Falls. The prophecy sounds wild to our ears, yet surely not so fantastic as Nelson or Napoleon would have found the suggestion of Marconigrams. It is senseless to cavil at the utilitarian spirit of the present day. The gigantic installations that convert Niagara's picturesque forces to the performance of all manner of useful work are but an exaggerated version of the picturesque mill-wheel on any river. Yet, while acknowledging it as inevitable, such machinery has no attraction for me. For the horse-power equivalent of Niagara I cared nothing, but it was a delight to stand q 2 J 228 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS within a few feet of the Canadian Fall, by far~the finer of the two, watching the daring martins fly into the blinding clouds of spray, with what object I could not even hazard a guess, and almost losing count of all other objects in the deafening turmoil which suggested the dreadful day on which the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of Heaven opened. In the overpowering presence of a million tons of falling water, it was easy to realise the unimportance of human destinies. Back I went across the darkening waters of Ontario, the better for my audience of Niagara. Let the tripper desecrate, let the engineer utilise. The spell of the Falls is eternal. And yet, from the tourist's standpoint, I had not " done" them. I had not been the " fifty cents round trip " in the Maid of the Mist. I had not, for another half-dollar, put on oilskins and " gone behind the green water." I had not even taken the advice of Dickens, so liberally circulated in the guide books. I had merely gratified a wish to see and hear the Falls, paying no heed to the arithmetic of dull statisticians, or to the importunities of clinging touts. I had satisfied my curiosity by leaning over the horseshoe brink and having all my senses whirled away in indescribable confusion. And this I did with a stubborn neglect of the side-shows. Thanks to American enterprise, everything is " extra," and for anyone but a paralytic, life round THE SIDE-SHOW GIRL 229 the Falls works out at about a dime a minute. I simply did not pay it. It was not so much that I grudged the money, but it seemed profanity to put your hand in your pocket every few seconds to enjoy the freedom of God's masterpiece! It is this side-show element which ruins Niagara as a spectacle, and neither the advertisement nor the mechanical harness. What with guides and suits for the " Cave of the Winds," round trips on the Maid of the Mist, hydraulic elevators, inclined railways and belt-line trips, a sovereign goes in half-an-hour, and the tourist, continually giving or getting change, gets a warped view of this wondrous spectacle, and regards it as a kind of Coney Island " proposition," with free entrance but continuous imposition inside the turnstiles. Not that the average tourist minds this in the least; indeed, his temperament is such that he rather likes the extortion than otherwise, just as he readily buys every kind of fruit and candy offered on the steamboat. Yet humanity of this grade need not obstruct your vision more than now and again. It is possible, with a little manoeuvring, to turn your back on the trippers and your face to the Falls, losing all thought of man's vileness in the roaring swirl of the waters round Goat Island, or enjoying their more subdued murmur from a solitary seat in the Viotoria Park, on the Canadian side, the only spot where privacy is possible. 230 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS To Montreal I came on a Sunday, and attended a wonderful mass at the Church of Notre Dame, with inspiring music and a pleasing sermon, in French, on timely preparation for death. The preacher, a fiery Jesuit with a magnificent delivery, so clear as to be intelligible even to a foreigner at the opposite end of the great building, exhorted us not to wait until the final moment when the doctor says " There is no hope; send for the priest" ; but to make our preparations little by little and day by day. As I still had a few thousand miles of railroad and steamer before me, the subject was not without personal interest. This is one of Montreal's (pronounced Mon'real) many beautiful old churches, relics of the French occupation, and in its dim naves one got, I think, a truer inspiration of the old-time spirit than from watching the somewhat tawdry masquerade at Quebec. Notre Dame treasures in its west tower the biggest bell in the New World. Le Gros Bourdon, as it is called, which weighs nearly 25,000 lbs., was cast in London ten years after Queen Victoria came to the throne. In the seminary adjoining Notre Dame are all the baptismal registers of the city, and here in fact they have been kept since 1710. It was just a fortnight ago that I had steamed past Prospect Point, in the Sound off Vancouver, where lie the remains of the first boat that ever steamed on the Pacific, and of that relic I was nimm It ( THE LACHINE RAPIDS 231 reminded this Sunday afternoon, when someone pointed out to me a tablet, close to the cathedral, marking the site of the factory where were built the engines which propelled the first steamer across the Atlantic. The one " lion " in the immediate vicinity of the city is the " shooting " of the Lachine Rapids* Candour compels the confession that it is a banal outing. If one could shoot these not very impressive narrows in a birch bark canoe paddled by Indians, there might be some excitement in it, with what may be called a sporting chance of sudden death. But to go through the Rapids, particularly when the river is in flood and the rocks covered, in a large steamer, packed with trippers sucking fruit, is tame sport indeed, and I made the trip only to satisfy a resident who warmly advised it. Fortunately I never saw him again after taking his advice. We are still, therefore, excellent friends. The excursion has just one advantage over many, such as my Columbia River outing, for it is done in an hour or two between luncheon and dinner. A train leaves the Grand Trunk Station at five in the afternoon, and connects with the steamer at Lachine, and the steamer, after making its perilous passage, which rocks it about as much as we used to rock under London Bridge in the days when the City had steamers on its river, delivers you back in Montreal at half-past six. One or two of the 232 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS passengers got their half-dollar's worth by being sick but for the rest it was dull fun. Montreal is very French. Those of whom, in the streets, the visitor asks the way speak either the English of Paris, or none at all. The French is not of Paris, but a curious patois not very difficult to understand in the towns, but more obscure. I understand, up country. Yet few French Canadians admit any difficulty in understanding English, and the majority have an answer ready whether they understand or not. An amusing instance of this occurred one evening at dinner at the Place Viger Hotel. A small ladies' orchestra was playing in the hall, and the following conversation ensued between myself and the waiter:— Myself: | Waiter, is there a 'cello in the orchestra ? " Waiter: " No, sir; they are all young girls, sisters ! " On the steamer ^that " shot" Lachine, also, I enquired of a fellow-passenger, whether there was a car out to the mountain, and he replied :— " No ; there is a small lake on the top." What the presence of a lake had to do with the means of reaching the place was not very evident. Subsequent enquiry suggested that he referred to a distant mountain in Vermont or New York, and not to the suburban height that was in my mind when I asked the question. It was also at If iram I 1 I FISH OR PAGEANT 233 Montreal (in the Gazette for July 20th) that I saw one of the funniest anachronisms ever misprinted. The heading ran: " A Rembrandt for America.— Artist's Portrait of His Motor in Sanderson's. Collection Bought Privately by B. Attman !" With only three days left in Canada, I had to choose between the pomp and circumstance of Quebec's ceremonial— The rum-tum-tum Of the military drum And the guns that go boom! boom! or satisfy an old ambition to catch a black bass, a fish regarded by many on both sides of the Hudson as the premier game fish of America. It did not take long to decide. His Majesty has no more loyal subject than myself, but I would rather catch fish than watch pageants, and I consoled myself with the reflection that, given the same choice, Efts Royal Highness would in all probability far rather have spent the 22nd of July fishing. But liberty is for ^subjects, not for Princes, so he reviewed regiments while I caught my bass and pickerel in that peaceful contentment which is the enviable portion of obscurity. Wishing to make as certain as possible of a fish in the very limited time left me in the New World, I consulted Mr. Kerr, the C.P.R. chieftain at Montreal, and by him was handed over to the tourist department, with the very satisfactory result that Mr. Lane, a keen angler and old Trinity 1 / 234 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS man, gave up a couple of days to show me the whereabouts of bass in Lake Broom, eighty miles, or a little more from the city. Earlier in the day we inspected Magog Lake, a fine sheet of water in the same direction, but local rumour was depressing, and we decided to push on to the smaller, but more promising lake, reaching Knowl- ton late that evening and finding in the hall of the hotel an encouraging string of fine bass and other fish. The lakes of Canada are remarkable for both their number and the diversity of their character and contents. In Trout Lake, on the further side of the Rockies, I found a reed-fringed mere, deep only in the middle, stocked by Nature with rainbow trout, and harbouring no other kind of fish. In Minnewanka, in the heart of that range, I fished in a crater-like basin, recalling Tahoe, though lacking much of its beauty, with deep- water fishing only for trout of great size. In the first of these it is admitted that the fly kills more than any other lure ; in the second, all the trolling is with spoons. Lake Broom differs from both of them. Physically, it approximates more to the water behind Kamloops, for the mountains are far away, and it is as shallow at the margin, though fringed with more rocks than reeds. In its variety of fish, however, it is probably more remarkable than any other lake of the size—it is not over five miles A LAKE OF MANY FISH 235 long and three miles at its greatest width—in the world. Its list of fishes, which now number thirteen, has been the work of many changes, both natural and artificial. Ten years ago, for instance, it contained little besides trout. Then someone introduced black bass. Away went the trout, a little way they have when black bass join the company, and the black bass best know how. Five years ago there was not a perch in the lake. Then someone—fortunately for him his name has slipped the memory of residents—put in some perch, and now they swarm everywhere, robbing every hook of the bait meant for bass. As has been said, the fishes of Broom Lake are thirteen in number. Of these the trout and muskalonge are nebulous, but local fishermen maintain that a few of the former have survived and grown to great proportions, and that there is a single " longe " in the deeper parts of the lake, which has been seen but never caught. The rest are bass, pickerel, perch, bull-pout (a catfish), sunfish, sucker—we had all these in the boat within an hour of starting operations—chub, shiner, shad, whitefish, and eels. This is an amazing motley for so small and so isolated a sheet of water, and if we could but know the exact manner in which ten of these kinds (about the bass and perch there is little room for doubt) came to be there, the reading would make a fascinating page in the study of animal distribution. l ill 236 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Scarcely less remarkable than the diversity of the fish is their persistence. For years the lake has, one would have thought, been fished to death. The professional fishermen of Knowlton and another village on its shores are legally allowed to Use two rods and a handline apiece, and some of them exceed even this too generous licence. To see their boats anchored, with lines or rods streaming in every direction, reminds one of mackerel-boats in Cornwall, and the lake needs to be almost as inexhaustible as the sea to bear such exploiting as it does. The fact that it continues to give good sport year after year only illustrates once again what is so often maintained and as often disputed, that, so long as nets are strictly prohibited, fair fishing with hooks cannot exhaust a fishery. The black bass is the chief sporting fish, though shad and whitefish take a fly readily in the month of September. When I was there the shad were not to be seen, but the whitefish were everywhere in evidence, dead, the victims of an unstudied mortality. Whitefish, averaging a pound in weight, or a little less, were to be seen on all sides, floating on the water, or cast up on the rocky shores of the lake. The principal live baits used for bass in Lake Broom are the native suckers, shiners and chub—these are indiscriminately bracketed together as " minnows"—as well as worms, grasshoppers, and the little fresh water lobsters nidi BAIT 237 found beneath the stones on the shores of the island. These are little black crayfish, beautifully shaped, and very active in the water, so that three-fourths of those brought to light by moving the stones escape with a single leap. The grasshoppers were plentiful in July, blown for the most part on to the surface of the lake, where they drifted aimlessly with the wind, a few being caught by us in the landing net as they went by. I had a bass of a pound the moment I put one on the hook, but no further luck with them. It was while holding a lively old grasshopper between my lips until needed for the hook that I learnt for the first time how sharply these insects can bite, for it pinched my lips till it drew blood and escaped in the confusion. One other bait I saw used on this lake, with moderate success, and that was the helgramite, or " dobson," brought over by an American from New Hampshire. At first sight this horrible object is easily mistaken for a centipede, but as a matter of fact it is the larva of a great black insect which flies only at night, like a bat, and looks almost as large. The dobson deposits great masses of eggs. It is a favourite bait for black bass, about two inches long, and furnished with horny nippers. Some sportsmen in a neighbouring boat had a wire-covered cage full of these creatures, and whenever one crawled out they were both up on the thwarts out of its way. It has one great advantage as a bait. Its 1 I / 238 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS skin is so tough that it can be used again after a bass is caught. In that lake, at any rate, bass did not prefer it to live minnows. The praises of the black bass have been too often sung to need recapitulation. They are familiar to its own countrymen, and even on this side we know by heart the famous eulogy—was it Dr. Henshall's—which runs : " Inch for inch, pound for pound, he is the gamest fish that swims." This is a sweeping statement, for fishes vary so much individually and in different localities, and the beautiful trout will always have, at any rate for Old World sportsmen, hallowed associations that can never invest the bass. It is surely enough to say that the black bass, a handsome bronze- coloured perch, is a born warrior, fighting even in the landing net and leaping gallantly even with the handicap of a two-ounce lead on the line. It can hardly be necessary to compare it with the trout, and, in view of the difference in their sizes, comparison with the salmon would be absurd. On the fly, which it takes on this lake in June and August, but not, for some reason of which I could get no satisfactory explanation, in the intervening month, the fish is said to leap eight or ten times, and, even on the live bait it is out of water the moment it feels the sting of the hook. We fished with primitive floats consisting of bottle corks, the bait lying about six feet down. Owing to variable winds, the corks were continually PICKEREL AND LUNCH 239 drifting away from the boat, so that the effect was the same as fishing a swim in running water. It was necessary, in this minnow-fishing, to let the cork go well under before striking, disregarding all preUminary trembling. When baiting with a smaller bait, such as grasshopper, a quick strike, on the other hand, answered best. Of pickerel I caught but three small examples, about 3 lbs. each, though on a light trout-rod the first rush of even these youngsters is not unattractive. This fish, also known as the dore, has been extolled by many writers as a fighter, but it is not a patch on the bass, and it has a degree of vitality after being taken off the hook that makes it very hard to kill. It is not bad eating, but here again the bass beats it. After fishing, we landed on the only island in the lake, and made a fire, over which, proving himself an adept in such details, Mr. Lane cooked some of the fish, and very good they tasted. I am not prepared to say that his art was that of the fish-cook at Delmonico's, but one's judgment is lenient under such pleasant conditions, and the fillets of bass and pickerel were certainly appetising. I have mentioned the real, or alleged, presence of a single muskallonge in Broom Lake. Had we stayed at Magog we should in all probability have caught one of these monster cousins of the pike. Yet a day's " longe " fishing is strenuous I 240 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS work, for the fish, which run up to a weight of forty or fifty pounds, have to be tempted with a terrific tandem spoon, bristling with three triangles, and sometimes supplemented with a morsel in the shape of a three-pound perch. With this tremendous offering the fisherman has to troll over weedy ground, necessitating continual hauling in of the spoons to remove vegetable impedimenta, so that it would require a very fine fish to compensate him for such toil. The I sunfish " mentioned in the foregoing list is not (need I say ?) the monstrous fish so-called that I saw leaping in the ocean at Catalina, but a little perch-like creature (Eupomotis) with rainbow reflections on its silvery scales. We caught several, but they are of no use. Broom Lake should certainly be visited by anyone at Montreal in the fly season, preferably in August, for by that time the mosquitoes and black flies, a scourge in parts of Canada earlier in the summer, cease from troubling, and the angler is at rest. In July (which is not a good fly month) we were not troubled by mosquitoes on the water before lunch. Then, unfortunately, after landing on the island I tramped into the bush to gather dry sticks for the camp fire and disturbed a band of these marauders, which promptly followed me back to camp, hovered around during lunch, and accompanied us back to the boat. Once you reach the lake fishing is inexpensive. The QUEBEC 241 brothers Benoit, at Knowlton, keep a variety of light boats and charge only 12s. 6d. a day, including man and bait, and there is room for two anglers at that price in each boat. As this includes five or six miles of rowing the charge cannot be considered exorbitant. As for the cost of living, well, as elsewhere in Canada, outside of the cities, living is neither very cheap nor very good. Knowlton boasts two hotels, and after putting up (at 8s. 4d. a day) at the better of them, I cannot advise anyone to try the worse, for it must be bad indeed. Still, at the one I chose you get a clean bed, which is much. For the rest, up-country Canadians are not epicures. And now my pleasant trip was nearing its close. Next day I was in Quebec, so disguised in its bunting, so crowded with soldiers and sightseers, so utterly unlike itself, as I imagine it to be normally, that I cannot even say I have seen the most picturesque city in the Dominion. I did, it is true, walk up its hilly streets to the famous Chateau Frontenac, but so packed was that hostelry with the strangest human wildfowl ever gathered under one roof that I was glad, after getting my mails, to leave again and seek refuge on board the Empress of Irelcmd, then lying alongside and due to leave the scene of revelry that afternoon. Quebec, seen from the river, has a suggestion of Gibraltar and, but for the events celebrated at the Tercentenary, might seem 242 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS impregnable. An interesting reminder of that great struggle came my way at the Place Viger Hotel, where, at the next table, sat descendants and namesakes of Levis, Montcalm, and Mirepoix. The mighty St. Lawrence runs silently to the ocean, for it is only your mountain brooks that make a noise. Down the great stream dropped the Empress of Ireland, the first two days of the homeward voyage in calm water, with visions of icebergs, some purely imaginary, but no less interesting, on either side. She was far from crowded, as many whom she had taken out were waiting for the end of the festivities, and some little sightseeing afterwards. The most instructive element was that in the third class, where I found a crowd of English and foreign folk seeking repatriation in the lands they had left in life's springtime with hopes that had since miscarried. I gathered from some of these poor creatures that they had had their fill of visionary fortunes and were anxious to return, while they yet had the means, to the humbler realities of their fatherlands. We were followed across the ocean by the Indomitable, bearing His Royal Highness at record speed back to Cowes. A fortnight later I had the pleasure of lunching with her navigating Commander at his house, the oldest inhabited house in fair Devon, and he was surprised that I had not HOME AGAIN 243 contrived to see the famous white whales of the St. Lawrence, many of which he noticed as his vessel steamed down the estuary. Well, my trip was over. I was returning from play to work, from sunset lakes and rivers to the old mill. It was a satisfactory retrospect to have travelled fifteen thousand miles, to have seen something of two lands like Canada and California, comparing great cities, living amid glorious scenery, and enjoying some of the most sensational fishing in a fishful life. If I had attempted rather too much in the three months at my disposal, the trip had at least not lacked variety, for during the whole time I went on for ever, like the rivers of my wanderings. Such holiday jaunts are no doubt demoralising, for the fishing at home, which of yore gave such keen delight, seems tame after the memories of Tahoe, Trout Lake and Catalina. Still, even a millionaire cannot eat his cake and have it too. The poor man is in even worse straits—and so with me in the early sunset of a hurried life—for he cannot even buy another like it! THE END. 1 i INDEX. Acacia, 70 Ahwahnee, Camp (Yosemite), 136 Albacore, 77, 114, 115, 121, 122 Alberta, 213 Alcohol, Use and Abuse of, 36 Alfalfa Grass, 223 Aliens, Catechism for, 51 Alligator Farm, 70 America, Impressions of, 173 American Athletes, 173 Conversation, 178 Falls (Niagara), 225 Game Laws, .173 Manners, 176 Newspapers, 175 " Plan," 14 Politics, 174 Sportsmanship, 59, 173 Standard of Education, 178 Americanisation of Canada, 210 Anopheles, 39 Antelope on the Prairies, 223 Antoine's (New Orleans), 61 Aquarium at Avalon, 115 Aransas Pass, Tarpon at, 91 Arizona, Journey through, 67 Artemus Ward, 61 AspinwaU, 42 Astoria, 165 Athletes, American, 173 Angler, 109, 113, 129 Baggage, Transfer of, 48 " Baily Gatzert," The, 161, 167 Baits, Curious, 29 Balboa, 42 Bananas, Loading, 49 Banff, Americans at, 210 Amusements at, 217 Bathing at, 217 Buffalo at, 213 Menagerie at, 219 • Museum at, 219 Banning Company, The, 93, 100 Barbados, Amusements at, 9, 13 Bathing at, 13 Mosquitoes at, 11 Niggers at, 9 Population of, 9 Size of, 8 Yachting at, 13 Barracuta, 114, 125 Baseball as a Game, 58 Bass, Black, 39, 235, 236, 238 Black Sea, 108, 114, 123, 124 Rock, 95, 113, 120 White Sea, 104, 112, 115, 116 Bathing at Banff, 217 Barbados, 13 San Francisco, 79 Vancouver, 193 Bears, 160, 218 " Beaver," Wreck of the, 189 Beavers in British Columbia, 206 Beebe, Mr., 104 Bell, Montreal's, 230 Betting, 170 Bindley, Dr., 9, 11, 20 Black Bass, 39, 235, 236, 238 Sea Bass, 108, 114, 123, 124 Blackwood, Lord Basil, 12 Bluefish, 116 Bonito, 114 Boobies, 7 Bridal Veil Falls (Columbia River), 164 (Yosemite), 139 Bridgetown, 8, 9 Brillat-Savarin, 20 British Sea Anglers' Society, 91 Broom Lake, 234, 235, 236 Brougham, Mr., 196 Buccaneers, The, 26 Buffalo at Banff, 213 at San Francisco, 78 Vancouver, 189 Y\ h ill n ♦ 246 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Bull-p#ut, 235 " Bully-beef " as Bait, 29 Buttons awarded at Catalina, 105 Calderwood, Mr., 105 Calgary, Climate of, 222 California, Cities of, 75 Climate of, 79 Fishing in, 81 I Grizzly, 77 | Mountains of," 136 Scenery of, 75 Size of, 75 Cambie, Mr., 194 Camping Out, 138 Canada, Americanisation of, 210 Cities of, 187 Climate of, 187 Fishing in, 186 Loyalty of, 212 Mosquitoes in, 39 National Park of, 213 People of, 185 Romance of, 186 Canadian Falls (Niagara), 225 Pacific Railroad, 43, 209, 223, 224 Canals of New Orleans, 56 Canal, The Panama (see Panama) Canyon, The Grand, 138 Caribbean, Fishing in the, 27 Carnegie, Mr., 61 Cars, Street, in Los Angeles, 70 in New Orleans, 55 Politeness on, 57 Cartagena, Drake at, 24 Fishing at, 27 | Inquisition at, 22 Trade of, 26 Cascades, The (Columbia River), 163 Catalina Island, 70, 81, 92, 108 Catechism for Aliens, 51 Cemeteries of New Orleans, 55 Chagres River, 43 Cherbourg, 8 Cherries, 158 | Chesterfield," The, 64 Chicago, 171 Chinook Salmon, 164 Chivalry, 180 Chub, 235, 236 "Chum," 118 Cigarette Smoking, 169 Cigars, 159, 170 Ciudad Juarez, 69 Clark, Galen, 145, 147 Clemente, Fishing at San, 104 Cliff House (San Francisco), 78 Climate for Roses, 160 Clothing for the Tropics, 37 Clubs at Bridgetown, 11 Catalina, 100 Portland, 159 Port of Spain, 17, 20 Vancouver, 192 Coaching, 137 Codrington, 9 Coffee, 26 Cohoe Salmon, 193 Colombia, 42 Colon, Health of, 32, 45 Rain at, 47 Tarpon at, 31 Columbia, British, 16, 194 River, 161, 1C3, 191, 231 OorradoreSy 59 Coryphcena, 115 Oowan, Mr., 201, 204 Cowichan River, 187 Crab-back, 20 Creole Lunch, A, 19 Cromwell, 9 Customs at New Orleans, 53 Gynoscion, 114 Dalles, The, 161 Darien, 42 Declaration of Independence, 172 De Lesseps, 44 Demerara, Indented Labour in, 17 " Devil's Lake," 219 Dickens, 228 Diet in the Tropics, 36 Dolphin, 115 Dominion Fair, The, 222 Dooley (on Cervera), 172 Dore, 239 Douglas, Hon. Howard, 215 Drake at Cartagena, 24 Eagles, 160, 21& Earthquake, San Francisco, 169 Edmonton, 223 Education, 179 Eel, 120, 235 Elk at Banff, 219 El Paso, 68 El Rio, 67 1 Empress of Ireland," 193 English Bay, Bathing at, 193, 241 Equality, American, 179 Eupomotis, 240 m INDEX 247 " European Style," 14 Excommunication, Wholesale, 25 " Fallen Monarch," 148 Farragut, Admiral, 54 Fireflies, 67 Fire at San Francisco, 75 Seattle, 171 Fires, Forest, 134 Fishery Laws, 174 Fishing at Barbados, 12 in Broom Lake, 235 in Campbell River, 31 at Cartagena, 31 at Catalina, 130 in Cowiohan River, 187 in Devil's Lake, 219 in Lake Ponchartrain, 57 in Lake Tahoe, 85 in Magog Lake, 28 in Sacramento River, 163 at Savanilla, 27 in Trout Lake, 202 —i— at Vancouver, 194 in Yosemite, 142 Fish Lake, 202 Flamboyant, 18 Flathead Herd of Buffalo, 213 Flies for Canada, 203 for Truckee River, 87 Float-fishing, 29 Flying-fish as Bait, 12 as Food, 12 Method of Catching, 12 Food in Canada, 186 on Board Ship, 6 Forest Fires, 134 Forestry Building, 158 Fourth of July, 171 •JTraser River, 194, 197 Fraternity, American, 179 French in Montreal, 230 Freshwater Lobster, 236 " 'Frisco," 75 Frontenac, The Chateau, 241 Fronde, 21 Geography, Practical, 192, 210 Glacier Point (Yosemite), 149 " Gladiator," The, 7 Glass-bottomed Boats, 95, 132 Glenbrook, 87 Goat Harbour (Catalina), 117 Goat-shooting, 94 Goethals, Colonel, 40 Golden Gates Park, 76 Golf at Barbados, 13 Catalina, 93 Gorgas, Colonel, 32, 34, 39, 41 Gorge Park (Victoria), 188 Gourmet, Notes for the, 11, 20 Grain Trade of Portland, 157 Grasshoppers as Bait, 237 Great Divide, The, 210 Grizzly, Californian, 77 "Grizzly Giant," 148 Guides, Fishing, 117 Gulf Stream, Panama Canal, The, 44 and Halibut, 121 Handline-fishing, 85 Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty, 42 Hay-Herran Treaty, 42 Hazlitt, 105 Headgear for the Tropics, 35 Helgramite, 237 Henshall, Dr., 238 Herbert, George, 111 Hides, 26 Holder, Dr. C. F., 110, 111, 124 Holothurians, 96 Homesickness, 83, 197 Hood's River, 163, 166 Horsemanship in America, 140 Horses at Sea, 15 Hotels at Banff, 210 Barbados, 14 Catalina, 109 Los Angeles, 70 Montreal, 232 New Orleans, 62 Panama, 45 Pasadena, 70 Portland, 159 Quebec, 241 San Francisco, 79 Seattle, 172 Shasta Springs, 153 Tahoe, 87 Victoria, 188 Houses, Moveable, 18 Howells, Mr., 7 Hudson, The, 163 Hustle, American, 56 Icebergs, 242 Immigration Fee, 50 Impoliteness, Degrees of, 159 Indented Labour in British Columbia, 190 in Demerara, 17 #. 1 1 ; i % 'I 248 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS / II Indented Labour in Trinidad, 17 Indian Coolies and Negroes, 8 Paintbrush, 150, 214 Indians, American, 163 " Indomitable," The, 242 Inland Navigation, 162 Inquisition, Memories of the, 26 Inspiration Point (Yosemite), 136 Irish Deported to Barbados, 9 Ironmonger, Mr., 94 Jai Alia, 59 Jamaica, 21 Japanese Immigration, Control of, 191 " Jewfish," 123 " June fish," 124 Kamloops, 196, 198, 201, 207 Kanakas, 17 Kelp, Trouble of, 112 Kerr, Mr., 233 Kingfisher, 88 Kipling, Mr., 225 Knowlton, 236, 241 Labour Market in America, 181 Lachine Rapids, 231 Lacrosse, The Reproach of, 208 Lane, Mr., 233, 239 La Guyra, 21 Lake Brodm, 234, 236 Devil's, 219 —— Magog, 234 Minnewanka, 219, 234 Pitch, 21 *jj Pontchartrain, 57 Tahoe, 82 Trout, 202, 205, 207, 208, 234, 243 Langtry, Mrs., 68 La Popa, 24 Lappe, 20 Launches and Tunas, 99 Liberty, American, 179 Light Tackle Club, 91 for Sea Fishing, 91 I Limited " Trains, 64 Limon, Port, 31, 49 Line used at Catalina, 92 Tahoe, 85 Liverpool, 52 Lobster, Freshwater, 236 "Logey" 130 | Longe," 235, 239 Long Lake Forest Reserve, 202 Loon, 206 Los Angeles, 70 Louisiana, 65, 67 Lucas, Mr. E. V., 126 Lumber in Oregon, 158 Magog Lake, 234 Maid of the Mist, The, 228, 229 Mallard, 88 Manitoba, 223 Manners, American, 176 Manning, Mr., 100 Mantelshelf, Feet on the, 178 Maraval, 18 Mariposa Grove, 134 Mark Twain, 3, 107 Mass at Montreal, 230 Mechanical Uses of Waterfalls, 229 Medicine Hat, 222 Medicine in the Tropics, 38 Memeluse Island, 163 Menagerie at Banff, 219 at San Francisco, 77 Merced, 136, 139 Mersey, The, 52 Mexico, 26, 68 Gulf of, 61 New, 67 " Millions," 11 Mink, 206 Minnewanka, Lake, 219, 234 Minnow-fishing, 239 Mirror Lake (Yosemite), 140 Misprint, A Good, 233 Mississippi, On the, 161 " Monarch," 77 Montana, 213 Montreal, 230, 231, 232 Moose at Banff, 218 Morays, 98, 130 Mosquitoes in Barbados, 11 in Canada, 197 in Panama, 40, 45 Mountain Trails, 138 Muir, John, 136 Multnomah Falls,. 164 Museum at Banff, 219 at San Francisco, 77, 79 Muskallonge, 235, 239 Muskoka Lakes, 196 Musk-rat, 206 National Park of Canada, 216 Navigators, Ways of the Old, 8 Negresses and the Fashions, 10 Negroes, Intelligence of, 45 MM INDEX 249 Negroes, Theology of, 15 Vaccination of, 32 Nevada, 75 New Mexico, 67 New Orleans, Baseball at, 57 & Canals of, 56 Cemeteries of, 55 Cotton Exchange, 55 Repose of, 53 Streets of, 54 —- Suburbs of, 55 Niagara in Harness, 226 Possibilities of, 227 Spell of, 228 Nipigon River, 196 Northern Pacific Railroad, 168 North versus South, 54 Notre Dame Cathedral (Montreal), 230 Nuns of Cartagena, 24, 25 Observation Car, 67 One-class Travel, 64 Ontario, 225 Oregon, 151, 158 Orinoco, 21 Orleans, New (see New Orleans) Orthagoriscus, 116 Osprey, 206 Ostrich Farm, 70 Otoliths, 121 Pacific Slope, The, 190 Panama Canal, The, 42 Climate of, 39 Park at Banff, 213 Portland, 160 San Francisco, 76 Vancouver, 192 Victoria, 229 Pasadena, 70 Pastel, 20 Pecos River, Bridge over the, 68 Pelican Park (New Orleans), 57 " Pepperpot," 20 • Perch, 120, 235 Pickerel, 235, 239 Pilgrim Fathers, The, 178 Pitcher, 59 Pitch Lake, The, 21 Place Viger (Montreal), 232 Pompano, 61 Portal, El, 136 Porters, Scarcity of Railway, 46 Port Jackson Shark, 98 Portland, City Park at, 160 1 Commerce of, 157 Forestry Building at, 158 Population of, 158 —— Roses at, 159 Portuguese Man-of-War, 7 Prairies, Animal Life on the, 223 Presidential Eleotion, 174 Preston, The, 49 Princess May, The, 189 Prohibition of Alcohol, 66 Betting, 59 Cigarettes, 169 Prospect Point (Vancouver), 192 Protection of Salmon, 165 Trout, 174, 203 Puget Sound, 186 Pullman Cars, 179 Quarantine Laws, 32 Quebec, 241 Quinine, 38 Quinnat Salmon, 195 Quiscalus, 14 Raccoons, 218 Railroad, Canadian Pacific, 43, 209, 223, 224 Northern Pacific, 168 Panama, 41 Southern Pacific, 44, 65, 136, 167 Travel in America, 64 Railroads, Panama Canal and The, 41 Rainbow Trout, 234 Reno, 83, 84 Republican Ideals, 179 Riding, 141 Rio Grande del Norte, 68 River-shrimp, 61 River, Bow, 217 Columbia, 161, 163, 191 231 Fraser, 194, 197 Mississippi, 161 Sacramento, 153 St. Lawrence, 242 Truckee, 83, 85 Willamette, 163 Roberts, Mr. Morley, 4 Rock-bass, 95, 113, 120 Rockies, Scenery of the, 209 Rod used at Catalina, 91, 102 Roses at Portland, 160 in Trinidad, 18 <l H 250 SUNSET PLAYGROUNDS Rough Seas, 4 Royal Geographical Society, 37 Royal Mail S. Co.'s Route, 4 St. Francis Hotel (San Francisco), 79 Sacramento River, 152, 153 St. Lawrence River, 242 Salmo henshawi, 85 Salmon and Trout Association, 165 Salmon, Different Kinds of Pacific, 195 in the Columbia River, 195 Protection of, 165 Wheels, 164 Salton Sea, The, 69, 70 San Juan Strait, 195 Sarda, 114 Sardine as Bait, 112, 118 Savanilla, 21, 23 Seagulls, 88, 132 Sea-gardens (Catalina), 94 Horses at, 15 Life, The, 5 Sickness, 6 Treachery of the, 97 Seal Rocks at Catalina, 94, 125 at San Francisco, 78 " Sea-trout," 116 Seattle, Celebrations at, 172 Library at, 171 Population of, 171 Races at, 170 Trade of, 171 Upheaval of, 74 Seaweed, 112 Selkirks, The, 202 Sequoias, The, 148 Seriola, 114 Seton-Thompson, Mr., 77 Shad, 235, 236 Sharp, Mr. Gilmour, 99, 126 Shasta Springs, 151, 153 Shelley, 78 Shiner, 235, 236 Siesta, The, 36 Simpson, Mr., 105, 115 Skinner, Mr., 19, 20 Smiles, Samuel, 67 Sockeye Salmon, 195 Soil for Roses, 159 Southern Pacific Railroad, 44, 65, 167 Spain, Port of, 16, 20 Spanish Labour at Panama, 44 Spanish Main, Fishing on the, 28 Spanish Main, Mosquitoes on the, 22 Quarantine on the, 22, 27 Rats on the, 23 Spas on the Columbia River, 152 Sphyrcena, 114 Spitting, Habit of, 177 Spoon-bait, 219 Sportsmanship, 173 Squirrels, 218 Stanley Park (Vancouver), 189 Steam-shovels, 41 Steelhead Trout, 187 Stegomyia, 22, 34, 39 Streets, Dreadful, 54 " Style, European," 14 Stevens, Resignation of Mr., 40 Streeter, Mr., 91 Sucker, 235 Sudbury, 224 Suez Canal, 44 Sulphur Springs, 217 Sunfish, 115, 126, 235, 240 " Sunset Express," The, 65 Superior, Lake, 225 Swimming Baths at San Francisco, 79 Swordfish, 114, 123 Tackle, Fishing, 92 Taft, Nomination of Mr., 174 Tagus, The, 5, 7, 8, 15, 19, 21, 23, 29, 31, 32, 48 Tahoe, Lake, 82 Tarpon at Aransas Pass, 91 at Colon, 31 at Savanilla, 27 —— on Light Tackle, 31 Telephone, The, 17, 80 Texas, Journey through, 65 Thames, The, 52 Theology of Niggers, 15 Thynnus, 113 " Tip " of Fishing-rods, 102 Tobacco, 26 Toronto, 224, 225, 227 Trains, American, 63 Travel, In Praise of, 3 Railroad, 3 Sea, 4 Trees, The Big, 137, 148 Trinidad, Birds of, 18 Coolies in, 18 Flowers of, 18 Trippers, 162, 231 Troopers in the Yosemite, 135 11 INDEX 251 Tropics, life and Health in the, 35 Trout in Devil's Lake, 219 in Sacramento River, 153 in Tahoe, 85 in Trout Lake, 234 in Truckee River, 83 in the Yosemite, 143 Trout Lake, 202, 205, 207, 208, 234, 243 Truckee, 83, 84 Tulane Belt Cars (New Orleans), 56 Tuna, The, 100, 101, 113, 123 Club, The, 100, 101, 104, 110 Tunnels, 168, 169 Twin Rocks (Catalina), 117 United Fruit Company, The, 49 University of Reno, The, 84 Vaccination of Niggers, 32 Vancouver City, 191 Island, 187 Van Ness Avenue (San Francisco), 75, 78, 80 Vermont, 232 Victoria, 187 Voltaire, 36 Washington, 163 Waterfalls of the Columbia River, 164 Waterfalls of Niagara, 225 of Yosemite, 140 Water-ouzel, 136 Wawona, 148 Weakfish, 116 West End (New Orleans), 67 Whale-birds, 7 Whales, White, 243 Wheels, Salmon, 164 Whitefish, 129, 130, 235, 236 White's Landing (Catalina), 115, 117, 125 Willamette, The, 163 Wilson Spoon, The, 103, 110, 116 Winnipeg, Prosperity of, 224 Wireless Telegraphy, 5 Worms as Bait, 236 Yachting at Barbados, 13 Yellow Fever, Mosquitoes and, 39 The Panama Canal and, 45 Yellow-fin Tuna, 113 Yellowstone Park, The, 168 Yellowtail, 114, 122 Xiphias, 114 Yosemite Falls, 139, 147 Valley, The, 136, 145 Zoological Gardens, 11, 160
Includes an index. Other copies: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/936929709 Part of: Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection
Books
III-0015
English
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
London : Witherby & Co.
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Original Format: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. F5019 .A35
United States--Description and travel
Canada--Description and travel
California--Description and travel
Fishing--California
Fishing--British Columbia
Sunset playgrounds : fishing days and others in California and Canada
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