FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 17, 1900. 
An Earthly Paradise. 
For many months there had come to us from the 
South rumors, accompanied by exquisite "half-tones, 
of a land more nearly approaching the land of the 
blessed than any other in this wicked world, and 
Podgers and I had made up our minds that we would 
see it ere we quitted this mundane sphere. Unfortunate- 
ly, when the time came Podgers didn't materialize, and 
I was informed by one who knew that if there were any 
earthly or other paradises lying around that I jyroposed 
visiting I could take her along, I did. 
We .went by steamer to Port Los Angeles, and of 
that part of the trip the less said the better. I suppose 
it is the purpose of the steamship company to discourage 
as much as possible all passenger traffic; at least, I can 
find no other reason for a systematic course of filthy 
staterooms and abominable food outrageously cooked, 
which haSi been growing steadily woise for some years, 
until it has at last culminated in a condition of affairs 
beyond description. Fortunately or unfortunately, we 
are never sea sick— fortunately because we were spared 
that horror amid such surroundings, and unfortunately 
because we were hungry and things were too dirty and 
odoriferous to be eaten. 
However, we got to Los Angeles in what we had 
fondly imagined Avas ample time to catch the boat for 
Catalina, only to find 
that the schedule had 
been changed the day 
before, and we were 
twenty-three and a half 
hours early. 
As it was some years 
since we had last seen 
Los Angeles, we man- 
aged to get through the 
day without much diffi- 
culty, though it was 
Sunday, and patronized 
the electric cars with 
iiberxity, which is al- 
ways the easiest and 
cheapest way of seeing 
a place nowadays; if 
there is anything worth 
.seeing there is sure to 
be a Cable or electric 
car running there, and 
I don't know a better 
investment for a nickel. 
As far as we could 
make out, Los Angeles 
had changed from a 
town of some distinc- 
tion, not quite like all 
the rest of the world, a 
little tropical, a little 
Spanish, a little foreign, 
to a city of the com- 
monplace; very conven- 
ient, but very hot; and 
I am afraid we left it 
without regret early on 
Monday, after a very 
narrow escape from an- 
other failure to connect, 
owing to the discontin- 
itance of a line of cars 
that very morning. But for the inquiries and exertions 
of the porter of the hotel (he certainly earned his tip), 
who at the last minute succeeded in placing us aboard 
another line of cars, we should certainly have had to re- 
main another day in Los Angeles, and I fear we should 
not have enjoyed it. 
Los Angeles lies inland some half hour's ride from the 
port of San Pedro, and here in due time the train de- 
posited us on a long pier close by a miniature steamship, 
the Hermosa, a staunch and natty little craft very well 
adapted for the work she has to do. Santa Catalina 
Island is one of a group lying off the coast of California 
and forming the seaward boundary of the Santa Barbara 
Channel, the loveliest sheet of water on a calm moon- 
light night that exists outside of fairyland. This one in 
particular lies due south of San Pedro, for the coast of 
California makes a bend here, some two hours' sail — we 
didn't time it — we didn't care. While there might be 
blessings in store for us in the future, the Lord was good 
to us then, and we were happy. By and by — some time — 
the isand rose out of the ocean, but it was a long time 
before we got near enough to gather any details. Mean- 
time some of us watched for whales, which we didn't see, 
and flying-fish, which we did; and some watched the 
island slowly grow bigger, and hoped they might pre- 
serve their epigastric, equilibrium until safely on shore 
again. What a sail that was! 
_ Then we reached the pier, and disembarked in ample 
time for lunch, among a throng of well-dressed idlers 
seasoned with fishing hats and bathing costumes, who 
had gathered to see us come ashore. The exigencies of 
"the climate of Califormia" were nowhere more strik- 
ingly exemplified than at our reception. Among a motley 
group of white gowns and gorgeous sunshades we 
plunged, my wife and I clad in the sober garb of the 
northern zone, and bearing on our arms, she a fur cape 
and I an almost arctic overcoat, and we had needed them 
and should again, but not in this land of the blessed. 
At sea from San Francisco to about Santa Barbara, no 
clothing could be too warm, it seemed; from there on 
anything frorn nothing at all to a dress suit was ample 
for the occasion. On the other hand, those who left 
San Francisco by train found themselves in a few hours 
in such stifling heat that sleep became impossible. There 
was less than twenty-four hours of it, though, and some 
people would endure uncomolainingly tlie temperature of 
rather than risk seasickness. 
As we stepped from the pier to the beach I did not have 
time for more than a glance, but once settled in the hotel 
after lunch 1 pointed my camera out of the window of our 
roorn and took some pictures of a ^new, Avhich if we had 
seen nothing more would have been accepted as payment 
in full for the expenses and discomforts of the trip. That 
part of the show "was alone worth the price of admis- 
sion." I wish I could describe it. Many abler pens than 
mine have tried it, and to my mind utterly failed to 
convey the true impression. Avalon lies in a half-moon 
facing the Pacific. Now that expresses nothing, but if 
you had seen that half-moon; if you had seen that cloud- 
less ocean tumbling so gently and so lovingly into the 
arms of that crescent, dotted here and there in the dis- 
tance by the skiff or the launch of the fisher after great 
fish, sparkling in the foreground with gay dresses, bright 
smiles and happy laughter, while midway long lines of an- 
chored wherries bobbed and courtesied to the swells from 
the sea, and the dudes on the beach, inviting us so coax- 
ingly to come for a row. Oh, if you could have seen 
that and half a hundred other things as I did in that 
first half hour, you might have become as great a lunatic 
as I am. Did you ever read "The Eartlily Paradise" of 
Morris? Well, tliere is nothing thei'e that describes 
Avalon, of course, but as I think of the poems which go 
to make up that fantasy, I often think how perhaps he and 
he only could have done justice to my theme. 
But there was a serpent in this Eden — there always is. 
The band played every evening while we were at dinner 
and for an hour after, and then it went over to the pavil- 
ion and played two hours more for the dancers; and it 
was a very good band. It was. under the circumstances, 
the best band I ever heard. With the assistance of the 
moonlight and the "plashing waves" it a little excelled 
any performance of the kind I ever attended — Gilmore 
and Sousa were no better — but, as I say, there was a 
BUFFALO CART, CHINO AND SOLDIERS. SAN FELIPE;, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS,, JAN. 10, I9OO. 
serpent, and that serpent was a cottage or cabin or some- 
thing, on a spur of the mountain somewhere; I never 
found out exactly where it was, but it nearly drove me 
frantic, for it seemed it was the custom for certain in- 
dividuals, who didn't have much to occupy their minds, 
to set out from the hotel and climb the trail to that cot 
in just the shortest possible time, and then come back 
to the hotel and brag about it on the veranda all the even- 
ing. Now, after you have endured that for a week and 
had your after-dinner concert regularly ruined, you grow 
desperate. I did. I determined to break all records as 
regards that cottage, so I set out for it one day after 
lunch and plodded along easily until the mountain began 
to grow steep; then I followed a trail, which presently 
brought me out on a shoulder overlooking a new beach 
so perfectly satisfying that I stayed there doing nothing 
and pretending to sketch, taking an occasional photo and 
smoking until it was time to get back to the hotel for 
dinner and find out what had become of the head of the 
familj'. So I broke all records, for it is going on two 
years since I set out for that cot, and I haven't got there 
yet and don't know and don't care where it is. 
When I rejoined my family I found she had been swim- 
ming with a friend, but she hadn't enjoyed it as much 
as she had expected to. She wasn't accustomed, she 
said, to being hung up in a glass case to be gazed at in a 
bathing suit. Some people could stand it, but she 
couldn't, for, as to any protection from the gaze of on- 
lookers afforded by the water, the difference between 
being out of it wasn't worth mentioning, and she never 
tried it again, though I noticed she hadn't the slightest 
objection to sitting on the pier and watching the antics 
of the others. 
One of the many happy things in this paradise is the 
fact that everybody who comes to the island must land at 
one place and come through one gate. Now, you may be 
as economical as you please, and live as cheaply as you 
like, or you may spend just as much money as you can. 
if that is your way of enjoying yourself, but you've got 
to "behave." The whole place is private, and if you get 
"funny" you go aboard the steamer next day, whether 
you like it or not, and you don't get back to Catalina 
again in a hurry. The result is that if you want to go 
fishing, madam wants a stage ride and the kids want to 
go swimming, you can all gratify your individual tastes 
without the slightest danger of annoyance. How long 
this happy state will continue I don't know. Vigorous 
efforts are constantly being made to force the barriers, 
but so far I am happy to say. without success. 
I wish I could give you an idea how clear the water is 
ligre, I had but just come from a visit to Lake Tahoe, 
where the water was of a purity which I had beard ex- 
tolled all my days — I thought I had never seen sucli 
transparency in water; I had, but didn't realize it — ^but 
when we hung over the side of the boat, and counted 
the grains of sand on the bottom, as though there had 
been no water there, and when we anchored in 20 feet of 
water and I could and did look over to the anchor to see 
that the "key" in the stock was in its proper place, I 
began to think we were not on water at all. Lest I seem 
a little wild in my statements of this to me most wonder- 
ful transparency, I append a table compiled by a scientific 
chap connected with the Boston Water Works, by which 
he shows that the waters of Lake Tahoe rank very low 
in comparison with the ocean. The tableJs as follows: 
Lake Tahoe 33 
Mediterranean 45.5 
Mer des Antilles 50 
Pacific Ocean 59 
Lac Lucal 60 
There is a kind of boat used here which is much and.i 
jtistly celebrated, and yet is something of a humbug ■ 
with it all — "a boat with a glass bottom." Imagine a 
big motherly skiff with an awing; build in this a center- 
board trunk 5 or 6 feet long and 12 inches wide; pad the 
edges well, so one can lean one's arm on it with comfort; , 
in this trunk slip a box with a plate glass bottom, and 
through this you and the kids can study "the darksome 
caverns of the ocean" without any danger of being fas- 
cinated into falling overboard. Now, where the humbug 
comes in is that you can study them to still better ad- 
vantage without the glass bottom by simply looking over 
the side of the boat, provided the sun is overhead and 
you keep in the shadow 
of the awning; and 
what sights you do see! 
The bottom is in most 
parts sand, liberally be- 
sprinkled with boulders,- 
and every boulder is the 
starting point of the 
most wondrous growths 
of kelp that the mind 
ever could conceive, 
while the play of light 
as they gently wave in 
the unnoticed swell con- ' 
verts the whole into a 
scene of jeweled splen- 
dor that would drive the 
greatest scenic artist of 
the age wild with envy; 
and no two seconds ex- 
actly the same; the 
gradual drifting of the 
skiff, although hardly 
noticeable under ordi- 
n a r y circumstances, 
carries one almost too 
swiftly along above this 
natural kaleidoscope — 
only you seem poised 
in mid air, and it is the 
scene which moves like 
a panorama beneath 
you. And the fish! A 
little way beyond us, 
just outside the kelp, 
scores of folks are fish- 
ing. In here where we 
are the kelp is too thick, ' 
and we can watch a 
small school of little 
ones lazing along over 
a patch of white sand, 
then like a flash they disappear among the jewelled 
leaves, and the cause of it all, a gentleman with an open 
countenance and 2 feet or so of length sails into view 
just too late for his breakfast that time. Then there 
swiftly glides into the field my "gutta percha fish." He 
is about 8 inches long, or a little over, of brilliant Ver- 
million all over, from the tip of his nose to the tip of his 
tail. His fins and tail don't seem rayed like ordinary 
fishes, but as though moulded of red chewing-gum. Hi's 
whole body is covered with scales, it is true, but they 
don't seem like scales, but as though the fish were a 
make-believe of rubber or gum, and the scales had been 
marked on by drawing lines with the back of a knife. 
Then there was the "electric" fish, a chap about as long 
as my finger, who seemed to have liberally bedecked 
himself with disproportionately large opals of great 
splendor, which flashed in the sun like an electric shirt 
stud. 
Of the yellowtail and tuna fishing I have but little to 
say. Those subjects have been well exploited already; 
but I may, frorn the standpoint of an ignoramus, give 
some points of interest to others in the same category. 
In the first place both are well known in other waters 
under other names, the yellowtail being, I am told, the 
horse mackerel, and the tuna the albicore of the ocean. 
The value of the fish consists in the fact that they are 
good fighters, and they are given a sportsmanlike chance 
in the fight, and the skill required to capture them with- 
out loss of tackle is its own reward — like virtue. Both 
fish are trolled for with a hook as big as a cod hook, or 
thereabouts— I am no expert, I admit— fixed on a shank 
of white bone, and though ignorant people use hand lines 
and some, like the writer, use nothing at all, the usual 
ng is a 7-foot rod, with a reel that will carry 1,000 feet 
of line, about as big as a boy's kite string. Now it is 
quite a job to tire out a 3-foot yellowtail with such taclcJgr 
but when it comes to a tuna, which may weigh over 200 
pounds, one is apt to find that his day's work is cut out 
for him, and that the eight-hour law doesn't always apply 
I have watched the captain of the ship I was on in the 
Pacific, with an oar for a pole, .a stout cod line and hook 
and a white rag for a lure, inveigle every single indi- 
vidual of a school of twelve albicore (swimming in plain 
sight alongside) on to the main deck of the vessel; but 
that, after he had hooked them, was as Paddy played the 
fiddle, "by main strength." But in this fishing no haiid 
must help until the fish is brought to gaff. 
The. tuna seems eminently designed for speed as the 
pectoral fins are brought close to the side of the body 
and fit in recesses which just leave them flush witb' the 
surface, while the dorsal, folding fan-wise, disappears in 
a recess in his back bone or thereabouts, exactly as an 
