Our fortnight at "Frisco" being ended, we crossed the bay to Oakland and took seats in the sleeper for Los Angeles. Judge Thornton, of the Supreme Court of California, an elder of St. John's Church, was a fellow-passenger, whom I found to be the brother of a friend of years ago in New York, as well as a sympathetic Presbyterian and a genial Virginia gentleman. There were also others, ministers and elders, bound like ourselves to the annual meeting of the Synod of the Pacific at Pasadena. As usual, a few miles took us from under the chill and murky canopy of the San Francisco fog into the characteristic sunshine of inland California. Our route followed the overland line thirty-two miles to Port Costa. Thence it turned to the right, southeast, skirting the Sacramento river, through the rich and flowery fruit land of Contra Costa county, in sight of Mount Diablo to the south, past Byron Hot Springs in the midst of a noted. wheat belt, and Tracy, where there is a Presbyterian church, though my telegram sent ahead did not procure me a sight of the pastor. Then we crossed the San Joaquin river and came to Lathrop, the junction of the line northward to Stockton and Sacramento, with the Sunset route southward, a place now notorious through the recent Terry tragedy. On our return we breakfasted in the same room at the same hour at which this bloody affair came off.

From Lathrop our route was southward through the great San Joaquin valley. This wonderful valley, richer than many a stately kingdom of the old world, is some 200 miles in length by an average of 30 miles broad, and is pretty much one magnificent wheat field, storing in the golden garner of its broad breast the perennial and pitiless sunshine which beats upon it every day in the year, and rendering steadier and larger re

turns than quartz veins or placers. It includes parts of nine counties, of which the railroad, I think, crosses four, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno and Tulare. There are said to be hundreds of smaller valleys adjacent which are equally fertile. It contains some 5,000,000 acres of the richest arable land, besides perhaps 150,000 acres of land now unproductive, but equally valuable when reclaimed. For a country so new, the amount of crops and stock here raised is prodigious. All cereals and vegetables and fruits grow in luxuriance and perfection. The yield of corn and wheat and flax and hemp and jute and hops is enormous, and of apples, peaches, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines, olives, lemons, limes, nuts and grapes there is no end. Irrigation is everywhere necessary, but water is abundant, and there are canals and ditches and artesian wells which already supply a large part of the valley. The great canal at Merced, taking its water from the San Joaquin river, is 100 miles long, 68 feet wide and 6 feet deep, and has cost millions, an investment which will be richly repaid. Every little station is at least a big wheat depot, and we passed them every few miles. As the train sped along for hours, the steady glare of the merciless sunshine on the broad, yellow, treeless plain, with the constant dust, gave me the impression of wearisome and intolerable heat. I tried in passing to reach by telegram Rev. Mr. Lyons, our Presbyterian pastor at Merced, and Rev. Mr. Hurd, at Fresno, but did not succeed in getting a sight of either. It seemed to me a curious illustration of the religious indifference of the people in general, which is found to be so great an obstacle to all church and mission work, that I could not find a man on the crowded platform at Fresno, although I asked a dozen, including the ticket agent,

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who knew Mr. Hurd or had ever heard of him. Rev. P. F. Phelps has since succeeded him in the pastorate. The church now reports 117 members, that at Merced 60, that at Modesto 54, and that at Tracy 16. That is about all the hold our Church has gained so far on this broad valley along the railroad. Our work much needs pushing and reinforcing in this splendid region.

At Berenda we passed the junction of the Yosemite branch railroad, eastward to Raymond, where the stages are taken for the famous valley. We passed it with regret, having taken places for the trip at San Francisco, and then found it necessary to give them up in view of other engagements. Sight-seeing, of course, however tempting, had to yield to home missions. Our regret was somewhat lessened by the reports from tourists to the valley of terribly rough roads and dust six inches deep, which made discomfort at least equal interest and pleasure. To the eastward here the Sierra Nevada mountains rise to a height of 15,000 feet, Merced being only ten miles from the foothills. The valley is here 40 miles wide, it being 30 miles to the Contra Costa range on the west. Madera, further on, does an immense lumber business, and has a big flume 50 miles long to float it from the saw-mills in the mountains. They tell hair-raising stories about rapid transit in V-shaped boats in these flumes, which in rate of alleged speed almost equal the "flying Scotchman," or the late propositions for electric railways. Fresno is a thrifty and lively town of 7000, with some 17,000 acres of vineyards near by, mostly the delicious Muscat, and the business is only begun. The products freighted from this county are enormous, and the land is valued up to $200 per acre. Irrigating canals costing $2,000,000, draw ing water from the inexhaustible sources of the Sierras, and distributed to the boundaries of every lot of 160 acres, have turned a sterile tract into a luxuriant garden. Selma, Kingsbury and Goshen store and ship millions of bushels of wheat. The places are small, but it would seem as if our Church ought to have an early foothold in these and many other like points. Near

[November,

Goshen they tell of raising five crops of alfalfa-the peculiar grass of Californiain a year, pumpkins 200 pounds in weight and 8 feet around, potatoes 12 pounds in weight and corn 20 feet high. Near here is a branch road to Visalia, the seat of Tulare county, in the midst of oaks and orchards and vineyards and fertile fields. We have a church here, but it numbers only 17 members. Building up a congregation in almost any of these places is a sharp test of talent and patience. Artesian wells are plenty hereabouts, one having been made to irrigate 1200 acres. A dozen live gospel ministers in this county would equal in spiritual fertilizing power as tilizing power as many flowing artesian wells.

At Caliente the train is on a sharp up grade. We have left the rich valley and reached the edge of the Sierra mountain climb. In the next 25 miles the train rises to the summit of Tehachapi pass, at an elevation of 3964 feet. In the course of the climb the road passes 17 tunnels, winds around the points of mountain spurs, threads deep cuts and skirts dizzy gorges and fearful chasms, while from the point of almost every twist Caliente, the starting-point, can be seen away down the cañon. The peaks rise ragged a thousand feet above, and the ravines yawn as far below. Near Keene we pass the "Loop," where the road winds 3795 feet and crosses itself 78 feet above its former level. Tehachapi summit is 3964 feet in altitude, and thence the road descends toward the Mohave desert, passing a little salt lake, and countless numbers of the cactus called the Yucca palm, which has been utilized in making very good paper. At Mohave we find the rare phenomenon in a desert of a first-rate restaurant and an unimpeachable meal-or at least we did on our return trip, much of our ride southward here being in the night. The desert is curiously covered with numberless conical buttes of various sizes, and is desolate and barren enough, although sheep seem to thrive on it. From the torrid fervors of the San Joaquin valley we had passed into the welcome coolness of the mountain night air, and now we came into a tropical climate

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once more.

Then we climb through the Soledad pass of the mountains of that name, past the cañon which Vasquez, the bandit, once made his rendezvous, and where the dwellers are mostly Mexicans. Then the train threads the tunnel through the San Fernando mountains, 6967 feet long, at an elevation of 1469 feet. As we emerge from the darkness, the verdurous San Fernando valley bursts on us as a beautiful surprise, whose well-known old mission is on the right, embowered in orange groves and olive yards.

At last we reach Los Angeles-the Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles-the seat of Los Angeles county, 482 miles from San Francisco, and the chief city of southern California. It was founded in 1781. In 1822 Mexico took it from Spain. In 1846 the United States took possession. In 1850 it was incorporated. In 1870 it had 8000 people. Now it has nearly or quite 100,000. It is a great city already, though only fairly started. The "boom" increased its valuation and trade far beyond any present or possible reaction. Banks, waterworks, schools, university, churches, library, opera house, electric lights and cars, papers, mills and factories, all are here and more to follow. The railroads report a larger increase of freight than San Francisco itself. The county has every grain, vegetable, fruit and berry of temperate and semi-tropical latitudes, and a long list of mineral products, and the climate is health-giving and healthrestoring beyond compare. The city is girt with gardens and groves, and you see everywhere the graceful palm and cypress, the stately eucalyptus and the regal live oak.

As to our Church's work in the city and Presbytery of Los Angeles, the goodly story has been too often rehearsed in these pages to need full repetition now. Seven years ago the First church of Los Angeles was still dependent on the Board of Home Missions, as it had been through various fortunes, mostly discouraging, for many years. Now it reports 495 communicants, and gave the Board last year nearly $1200, in spite of the severe drain of the colony of 100 or so which went out from it last autumn under

Dr. Chichester, then its well-loved and singularly successiui pastor, to form Immanuel church, which already numbers 300 communicants, and gave the Board this year $190. With these the city has now nine Presbyterian organizations, including a Welsh, Spanish and Chinese church, with 1452 communicants in all. The Spanish church is under charge of Rev. A. M. Merwin, long known as a foreign missionary in Chili, while the school has been long well cared for by Miss Ida L. Boone.

But we did not tarry in Los Angeles long enough to learn all this. The Synod of the Pacific was in session already at Pasadena, nine miles west, and thither we went on after half an hour's stop. It was Friday morning. We got quarters at the Carleton House. The synod was meeting in the beautiful new edifice of the First Presbyterian Church. Numerous brethren gave us a hearty welcome, including many already met at San Francisco. To me the chief privilege of the occasion was the chance of meeting brethren, especially home missionaries, whom this was my only chance of seeing and knowing; and the main regret was that time and opportunity did not suffice for me to get hold of them all. Indeed, many of them did not give me the chance I would have been glad to be helped to, of looking into their faces and clasping their hands. It was a genuine pleasure to meet and greet Rev. Robert Strong, my wellproved old-time comrade of Princeton cloisters and Adirondack camps, who had found here for a score of years the health and useful activity denied him in the East, and who, though deprived of the privilege of preaching, serves the presbytery most efficiently as its stated clerk. It was a great delight to meet Dr. Chichester, even under prostrating affliction, and our stirring synodical missionary of southern California, F. D. Seward, and A. M. Merwin, whom I had known years ago in the East, and W. A. Waddell, the active pastor at San Pedro, and A. R. Bickenbach, of Glendale, and Isaac White, of Ensenada, pioneer across the line in lower California, and Dr. Wheeler, of Sacramento Westminster

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tion, and thus prepare the coming generation to stand on equal terms in every respect with their white neighbors. The most important of these measures was the establishment of manual labor boarding-schools, to be conducted by such missionary societies as were willing to enter into contracts with the government, at stipulated rates for each scholar, and which were to receive protection and encouragement from government agents. The essential element in this plan was the Christian character of these schools. The Secretary of the Interior, in his annual report of 1856, sets this forth in no equivocal terms. "Above all," he says, "should Christian instruction be introduced and sedulously prosecuted by teachers devoted to the cause in the true spirit of their divine mission. Without this, all the subordinate means will be in vain, and the great duty which humanity imposes on us to rescue this unhappy race from entire degeneration and speedy extinction will be but a delusive dream of impracticable philanthropy. As a race, in mental and moral capacity they are inferior to no other."

The Presbyterian Board had for some years been conducting missions among three of these tribes, viz., the Iowas, Sacs and Omahas, and gladly entered into contracts with the government to carry out the avowed policy of both in respect to these, and including with them also the Ottoes and Kickapoos.

By the terms of these contracts, three new buildings, each adapted for from seventy-five to one hundred children of both sexes, were to be erected by the Board on the reservations. The Iowas and Sacs had already sufficient accommodation in the mission house built for them jointly ten years before. The Omahas also had their mission house at Bellevue; but as their reservation was seventy-five miles further north, another was needed, being one of the three new buildings required.

The erection of these manual labor boarding-schools, with the appliances and outfits, in an unsettled country, where labor was high and mechanical skill difficult to obtain, where lumber had to be drawn long

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distances by ox teams, and where doors and sashes and shingles and supplies generally had to be purchased in St. Louis, Cincinnati and New York, involved an amount of detail and anxiety by the executive officers and the missionaries on the ground superintending the work which cannot now be appreciated. The missionaries referred to were the late Rev. S. M. Irvin, of the Iowa, and Rev. William Hamilton, then and now of the Omaha mission. The heavy expense incurred was met in part by advances of the government from the Indian funds within the contracts, but mainly by the Board, though none of it from its ordinary receipts.

By the provisions of the Omaha treaty, a grant of four contiguous quarter sections of land, embracing the mission premises at Bellevue, was made to the Board, with the consent of the Indians and as an expression of gratitude for past services rendered them. This land almost immediately acquired a speculative value, Bellevue being the first seat of the territorial government of Nebraska, and opposite whose bluffs it was supposed the Union Pacific Railroad would find its most eligible Missouri crossing. Before reasonable expectations from such advantages died out and the city of Omaha rose into prominence and became a successful rival for the railroad bridge, the six hundred and forty acres were surveyed into city lots, put into the market, and a sufficient number sold to cover the expense of the new buildings and to stock them with clothing and provisions.

Teachers also were engaged, whose salaries and travelling expenses were met not from the Indian annuities, but from funds furnished by the churches, as in the case of other missionaries.

Thus the Board's equipment was complete for carrying out the beneficent plans of Commissioner Manypenny and Secretary McClelland, of President Pierce's Cabinet. Missionary teachers were on the ground, with abundant supplies for the naked boys and girls in the wigwams, anxiously waiting for their coming into the school, and using what power they possessed to induce them