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THE AMEICAIT BAHASGT7SThe late Bis!)op Gilbert Haven, while at*' tending the Methodist conference in Los Angelo's, wrote thus of that place:44 Having never seen the original, it comes very easy to compare it with its American icopies. ’ When at Bay root, and only a day’s ride from the famous city, we turned away ,to the north and left it, probably forever. Dr. Vandyke said: ‘ You are eight thousand miles from America, and only a few hours from Damascus; you had better visit the latter ere you go.’ But my companion, a Presbyterian clergyman, with whom I had traveled through Egypt and Palestine, was half sick and wished to catch the next steamer. I surrendered, and left Damascus for the next time. That was * seventeen years ago. ‘ The next time5 has not come yet.“ But a substitute has. Kb one need go eight thousand miles to see that city. He can find it in going half that distance. Take cars from any city on our Atlantic border, buying your ticket for Los Angelo?, and you are delivered as surely. safel3r. and swiftly as an express paek;ige at the depot of the American Damascus. It is less than four thousand miles from Kew York, and a palace car bears yon across the laud ocean without sickness or much weariness.“ This Damascus, like the oriental one* is reached by crossing a desert. ,ic * * The desert of Mojave gives way at last to the I broad lanch of San Fernando, some ten juries square—fnly forty to sixty thousandacres—the gift of the governor to a local preacher, well known elsewhere in the church, sunken here in a splendid wheat plantation. A preacher is supported here, and so all is not lost.The valley of our Damascus soon opens, and we are lauded in a garden of delights.44 See this pretty yard—a common front yard, no larger than an ordinal front yard | in any surburban city of the Fist. Here isservatorv. Here are roses blooming all the year. Here are geraniums ia abundance, and tall as rosebushes. The heliotrope twines itself up the pillars of the portico full of blossom and fragrance. Here are rhodc-dendros and oleanders growing like trees, while fuchsias are as numerous and varied and lovely as in their own aboriginal homes in the valleys of Cuernavaca. AHthis in a front yard twenty-five feet square ; all grown by a lawyer1* wife, who. had shestayed at home, would have last winter been shut in by snow for nearly half the winter. Here not a frost-bite mars the life and lov-liness the whole year through. A few feet lower down the moisture occasionally turnsto frost, but the dry hill-top is perfectly tropical. At our permanent stopping place, the genial home of Brother Bradley, the lay delegate to the general conference, there was a like profusion. A geranium grows bo tall and stout as to almost prevent the opening and shutting of our blinds. We pushed it away with dithculty. This was not on the second story. These stories are only one story brgh.Come a little nearer the town. Judge Wirsney’s house stands flush with the st reopen unwatered, and therefore^’grr.velly-looking walk admits ,to the'dwelling, .Don’t stay inside, cool though it be. Pass through. A back yard sloping up a few score feet in*eludes, perhaps, a third of an acre. Onthat bit of Eoil flourishes in the open air untouched of frost every tropical fruit. Four stately ucalypti, six years old, six^p to eighty feet high, are on the level plat behind the house, a half hundred feet square of shade and green and refreshment. From that pleasant bower climbthe few rods, three or four, that’bring you . to the end of his grounds. On that slopsyon can pluck and eat apples, cherries, pears, peaches, bananas, figs, .grapes of many kinds, oranges, lemons% pomegranates, while the Japanese persimmon, theguave, out of which comes the beet jelly, and oilier fruits, are getting ready for yontuse. The cherries fail to flourish. The*are too northern, and pine for the pine-tree. The judge proposes to get the mango planted in his garden, the fruit of which, the Oriental says, was the apple that ruined ISve and Adam.‘4 It was a novel sensation to sit tinderyour own flag, inside your own nation, and drink lemonade made from fruit grown on the place, eat bananas and oranges and figsand pomegranates and potatoes all from the tame patch. The judge’s brother, the doctor, has a banana orchard on a twenty-foot square adjoining, which gives them this delectable fruit fresh all the year. Where is Damascus by the side of these fruit and flower beds of Los Angeles*? The view from that upper ledge of the judge’s terrace is most enchanting. For a score of miles waves-the green sea of ceaseless life. There is Paeedena. Alhambra, and Sou Gabriel, and many other green spots stretching down to San Monica and the sea.*4 There we take a carriage and get a nearer view cf the paradise. Five miles across the dusty.moraine, and over a partially yet unclaimed desert—every inch of which responds instantly to the touch of water—through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant— and we enter Paeedena, which is a string of Yankee cottages embowered in. every tropical luxury of flower and fruit. Here dwells the celebrated cavalry leader, General Stone-jnah. Further down we aide amid hedges, flowers, gardens of cucumbers, squashes, water melons of fabulous size and quality. I saw one squash, a small one, weighing one hundred and thirty pounds. Cinderella’s coach could easily be made out of many of them. What delicious air — so softand healing 1 May it heal the sore lungs of our young brother ! What a banquet of iicwefs and fruit—such bouquets, such grapes, such everything * We got tired of praising and eating, especially Xhe latter; and great bunches—almost* big enough for two men to carry on their shoulders, Chinese fashion, out here Esehol fashion of old—accompanied us part way on our homotrip. They disappeared before the sharp-set appetites which they so fascinated and rrat-ified.nJTi
Newspaper Details
Altamont Knowersville Enterprise
Altamont, New York, US
Sat, Jan 29, 1887
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USA 15 Jun 2021
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