The Land of To-Morrow 9 



dons who owned hundreds of leagues were in the 

 habit of giving it away. A miner, shrewder than 

 his fellows, asked Mariano Vallejo for a farm. 

 Vallejo gave him eight thousand acres of fine land, 

 and bade him take more if he wanted more. Others 

 followed. The Haggins, the Tevises, the Millers ac- 

 quired principalities for a song. When the psycho- 

 logical moment came, these vast ranches were 

 subdivided and put on the market, on the world's 

 market. Mr. Nordhoff wrote a book about California 

 that was widely read. Pamphlets, maps, special 

 editions of newspapers, lecturers, agents of the trans- 

 portation companies. Boards of Trade, proclaimed 

 the virtues of Californian soil. Of course, the facts, 

 quite amazing enough in themselves, were embel- 

 lished. It was a day of individual successes. One 

 man had cleared four hundred pounds sterling from 

 one acre of cherries ! Another had made a fortune 

 out of apricots, or oranges, or ostriches. Not a 

 word was said of the patience, labour, and special 

 knowledge that had made such results possible. 

 Eeading the pamphlets one was not only assured of 

 success, but failure was proved to be impossible. 

 The prose, in which these alluring statistics were 

 embalmed, was homely enough, mere fustian, but 

 the poetry that lay between the lines of it might 

 have lent enchantment to a dustbin. Great stress 

 was laid upon the climate. To the farmer in the 

 East, or mid- West, to the British labourer, to the 

 French or German peasant, — all of them groaning 

 and travailing under conditions more or less intolei^ 

 able, the slaves of the elements, the playthings of cy- 

 clones and blizzards, — to these poor weary workers, 



