SOCIETY. 77 



the orange-groves the same ravishing beauty, while an occa- 

 sional palm, stateliest of trees, gives an oriental air to the 

 scene. One misses the ocean view, and the mountains lie 

 away upon the horizon ; the city itself is rather irregular and 

 has but few fine buildings. The beauty is in the environs, 

 where lovely cottages and lofty mansions peep out from amid 

 bowers in which lemons and limes and apricots are mingled 

 with oranges and walnuts and grapes. 



" Los Angeles owes its future promise, as Damascus does its 

 past greatness, to the water which flows so freely in its zanjas, 

 and to its situation with reference to the interior country. It 

 lies on the lap of a wide farming country, and in the midst of 

 thrifty settlements, such as El Monte, Los Nietos, Anaheim, 

 and Compton, while one who stands at the depot, and sees 

 now and then a car load of bullion passing down to the sea, 

 or a great wagon loading for Arizona, discerns therein the 

 promise of a mighty inland traffic, which, unless diverted when 

 the railroad system of the region shall be determined, must 

 make Los Angeles an important center." 



The embarcadero, or shipping point of Los Angeles, was San 

 Pedro, twenty-five miles distant to the southward, where a 

 couple of houses sheltered the few people who found occupa- 

 tion in the scanty trade, until 1858, when a small steamer was 

 obtained, and used to transport freight from the anchorage of 

 the ocean steamers at the San Pedro roadstead, four miles up 

 an estuary to Wilmington, which soon grew into a little town, 

 and now has a population of 1,000. In 1871, Congress appro- 

 priated $200,000 to build a breakwater, to make an artificial 

 harbor, and afterwards $225,000 more ; and the work is now 

 rapidly approaching completion. Some able engineers and 

 navigators have expressed the opinion that the breakwater 

 would be worthless, and that the harbor would have to be 

 built further out ; but the Los Angeles papers say there is no 

 longer room to doubt the success of the present structure. If 

 this statement be true, the harbor will be at New San Pedro, 



