The Land of To-Morrow 7 



alleled resources, California has been, for the many, 

 terra incognita. Over and over again I have been 

 asked the most absurd questions. A lady of rank 

 and fashion told me only the other day that she 

 hoped to visit California, because she wished to see 

 the — Andes. Another thought that the Golden 

 State belonged to England. A third was interested 

 in Yo Semite, but feared the terrors of the wilder- 

 ness. She really believed that I roamed my ranch 

 clad in skins of wild beasts, that the plains were 

 black with Apaches, the towns at the mercy of des- 

 peradoes ! Some of my friends have greeted me on 

 my return to England as if I were a long lost ex- 

 plorer. " How glad you must be," they say, holding 

 my hand in a fervent clasp, " to find yourself once 

 more in a civilised country." When I explain that 

 I have been living in a town of thirty thousand 

 people, a town better lighted, better kept, more 

 abundantly blessed with the amenities of life, than 

 two-thirds of the cathedral towns of England, I am 

 confronted by a pitying stare. 



I remember taking some English travellers to a 

 luncheon at the country house of a Calif omian. 

 After luncheon a drag came round, and we went for 

 a drive. The visitors cocked bewildered eyes at the 

 coach, the harness, the servants, the horses. When 

 their surprise found words, they overwhelmed our 

 host with compliments far too florid for his taste. 

 Silence would have been a subtler form of commen- 

 dation. French visitors would have conveyed their 

 sense of pleasure and concealed their amazement. 



But this ignorance of the West is passing away, 

 and with it will pass the fear also, that fear which 



