Charles Nordhoff, “California: How to Go There and What to See by the Way”
Harper’s Magazine, May 1872
THOUGH California has been celebrated in books, newspapers,
and magazines for more than twenty years, it is really almost as little known to
the tourist — a creature who ought to know it thoroughly, to his own delight
— as it was to Swift when he wrote, in his description of the flying island of
Laputa, "The continent of which this kingdom is a part extends itself, as I
have reason to believe, eastward to that unknown tract of America westward of
California, and north to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a hundred and
fifty miles from Logado," and so on.
California is to us Eastern people still a land of big
beets and pumpkins, of rough miners, of pistols, bowle-knives, abundant fruit,
green wines, high prices — full of discomforts, and abounding in dangers to
the peaceful traveler. A New
Yorker, inefficient except in his own business, looking to the government,
municipal, State, or Federal, for almost every thing except his daily dollars;
overridden by a semi-barbarous foreign population; troubled with incapable
servants, private as well as public; subject to daily rudeness from car-drivers
and others who ought to be civil; rolled helplessly and tediously down town to
his business in a lumbering omnibus; exposed to inconveniences, to dirty
streets, bad gas, beggars, loss of time through improper conveyances; to high
taxes, theft, and all kinds of public wrong, year in and year out — the New
Yorker fondly imagines himself to be living at the centre of civilization, and
pities the unlucky friend who is "going to California."
He invites him to dine before he sets out, "because you will not get
a good dinner again till you return, you know." He sends him, with his
parting blessing, a heavy navy revolver, and shudders at the annoyances and
dangers which his friend, out of a rash and venturesome disposition, is about to
undergo.
Well, the New Yorker is mistaken. There are no dangers to
travelers on the beaten track in California; there are no inconveniences which a
child or a tenderly reared woman would not laugh at; they dine in San Francisco
rather better, and with quite as much form and a more elegant and perfect
service, than in New York; the San Francisco hotels are the best in the world;
the noble art of cooking is better understood in California than any where else
where I have eaten; the bread is far better, the variety of food is greater; the
persons with whom a tourist comes in contact, and upon whom his comfort and
pleasures so greatly depend, are more uniformly civil, obliging, honest, and
intelligent than they are any where in this country, or, so far as I know, in
Europe; the pleasure-roads in the neighborhood of San Francisco are unequaled
any where; the common
If this seems incredible to what out there they call an
Eastern person, let him reflect for a moment upon the fact that New York
receives a constant supply of the rudest, least civilized European populations;
that of the immigrants landed at Castle Garden the neediest, the least thrifty
and energetic, and the most vicious remain in New York, while the ablest and
most valuable fly rapidly westward; and that, besides this, New York has
necessarily a large population of native adventurers; while, on the other hand,
California has a settled and permanent population of doubly picked men.
"When the gold was discovered," said a
Californian to whom I had expressed my wonder at the admirable quality of the
State's population, "wherever an Eastern family had three or four boys, the
ablest, the most energetic one, came hither.
Of that great multitude of picked men, again, the weakly broke down under
the strain; they died of disease or bad whisky, or they returned home.
The remainder you see here, and you ought not to wonder that they an
above your Eastern average intelligence, energy, and thrift.
Moreover, you are to remember that, contrary to the commonly received
belief, California has a more settled population than almost any State in the
Union. It does not change; our people can not move west, and very few of them
remove back to the East. What we
have we keep, and almost all, except the Chinese, have a permanent interest in
the State. Finally"' added this old miner, who is now a banker, and
whom you could not tell from a New Yorker, either in his dress or the tones of
his voice, or in the manner in which he transacts business, and who yet has not
been "home," as he calls it, for seventeen years — "finally,
you must remember that of our immigrants who came from China, not a single one,
so far as is known, but knew how to read, write, and keep at least his own
accounts on his own abacus when he passed the Golden Gate.
We are not saints out here, but I believe we have much less of a frontier
population than you in New York." And
my experience persuades me that he was right.
Certainly in no part of the continent is pleasure-traveling so exquisite and unalloyed a, pleasure as in California. Not only are the sights grand, wonderful, and surprising in the highest degree, but the climate is exhilarating and favorable to an active life; the weather is so certain that you need not lose a day, and may lay out your whole tour in the State without reference to rainy days, unless it is in the rainy season; the roads are surprisingly good, the country inns are clean, the beds good, the food abundant and almost always well cooked, and the charge moderate; and the journey by rail from New York to San Francisco, which costs no more than the steamer fare to London, and is shorter than a voyage across the Atlantic, is in itself delightful as well as instructive. Probably twenty Americans go to Europe for one who goes to California; yet no American who has not seen the plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Salt Lake, and the wonders of California can honestly, say that he has seen his own country, or that he even has an intelligent idea of its greatness. It is of this journey from New York to San Francisco that I wish to give here, such an accurate and detailed account as will, I hope, tempt many who contemplate a European, tour to turn their faces westward rather, sure that this way lies the most real pleasure.