THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



into Mexico compose but a slender list of prospectors, 

 hunters, surveyors, and curious travellers. But some of 

 these have made careful studies, and this really wonder- 

 ful country is beginning to attract the attention of both 

 capitalists and settlers, though the former must do their 

 work before the latter can hope to occupy the land. 



Much time will be required to overcome the wide and 

 ingrained public prejudice against the Colorado Desert, 

 but it will finally be reclaimed and sustain tens of thou- 

 sands of prosperous people. It is more like Syria than 

 any other part of the United States, and the daring im- 

 agination may readily conceive that here a new Damas- 

 cus will arise more beautiful than that of old. 



With the occuption of the Colorado Desert and of the 

 great peninsula which adjoins it, a powerful impulse will 

 be given to agriculture, mining, and commerce in a vast 

 region now little peopled. One of the inevitable conse- 

 quences will be the rise of San Diego to the proportions 

 of a large city probably the largest in the southern part 

 of the coast. 



The future of California will be very different from its 

 past. It has been the land of large things of large es- 

 tates, of large enterprises, of large fortunes. Under an- 

 other form of government it would have developed a 

 feudal system, with a landed aristocracy resting on a 

 basis of servile labor. These were its plain tendencies 

 years ago, when somebody coined the epigram, "Cali- 

 fornia is the rich man's paradise and the poor man's 

 hell." But later developments have shown that what- 

 ever of paradise the Golden State can offer to the rich, it 

 will share, upon terms of marvellous equality, with the 

 middle classes of American life. Over and above all other 



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