by Jack London
shouldn't know better. We're teaching it in all our agricultural
colleges, experiment stations, and demonstration trains. But the
people won't take hold, and the immigrant, who has learned in a
hard school, beats them out. Why, after I graduated, and before
my father died--he was of the old school and laughed at what he
called my theories--I traveled for a couple of years. I wanted to
see how the old countries farmed. Oh, I saw.
"We'll soon enter the valley. You bet I saw. First thing, in
Japan, the terraced hillsides. Take a hill so steep you couldn't
drive a horse up it. No bother to them. They terraced it--a stone
wall, and good masonry, six feet high, a level terrace six feet
wide; up and up, walls and terraces, the same thing all the way,
straight into the air, walls upon walls, terraces upon terraces,
until I've seen ten-foot walls built to make three-foot terraces,
and twenty-foot walls for four or five feet of soil they could
grow things on. And that soil, packed up the mountainsides in
baskets on their backs!
"Same thing everywhere I went, in Greece, in Ireland, in
Dalmatia--I went there, too. They went around and gathered every
bit of soil they could find, gleaned it and even stole it by the
shovelful or handful, and carried it up the mountains on their
backs and built farms--BUILT them, MADE them, on the naked rock.
Why, in France, I've seen hill peasants mining their stream-beds
for soil as our fathers mined the streams of California for gold.
Only our gold's gone, and the peasants' soil remains, turning
over and over, doing something, growing something, all the time.
Now, I guess I'll hush."
"My God!" Billy muttered in awe-stricken tones. "Our folks never
done that. No wonder they lost out."
"There's the valley now," Benson said. "Look at those trees! Look
at those hillsides! That's New Dalmatia. Look at it! An apple
paradise! Look at that soil! Look at the way it's worked!"
It was not a large valley that Saxon saw. But everywhere, across
the flat-lands and up the low rolling hills, the industry of the
Dalmatians was evident. As she looked she listened to Benson.
"Do you know what the old settlers did with this beautiful soil?
Planted the flats in grain and pastured cattle on the hills. And
now twelve thousand acres of it are in apples. It's a regular
show place for the Eastern guests at Del Monte, who run out here
in their machines to see the trees in bloom or fruit. Take Matteo
Lettunich--he's one of the originals. Entered through Castle
Garden and became a dish-washer. When he laid eyes on this
valley he knew it was his Klondike. To-day he leases seven
hundred acres and owns a hundred and thirty of his own--the
finest orchard in the valley, and he packs from forty to fifty
thousand boxes of export apples from it every year. And he won't
let a soul but a Dalmatian pick a single apple of all those
apples. One day, in a banter, I asked him what he'd sell his
hundred and thirty acres for. He answered seriously. He told me
what it had netted him, year by year, and struck an average. He
told me to calculate the principal from that at six per cent. I
did. It came to over three thousand dollars an acre."
"What are all the Chinks doin' in the Valley?" Billy asked.
"Growin' apples, too?"
Benson shook his head.
"But that's another point where we Americans lose out. There
isn't anything wasted in this valley, not a core nor a paring;
and it isn't the Americans who do the saving. There are
fifty-seven apple-evaporating furnaces, to say nothing of the
apple canneries and cider and vinegar factories. And Mr. John
Chinaman owns them. They ship fifteen thousand barrels of cider
and vinegar each year."
"It was our folks that made this country," Billy reflected.
"Fought for it, opened it up, did everything--"
"But develop it," Benson caught him up. "We did our best to
destroy it, as we destroyed the soil of New England." He waved
his hand, indicating some place beyond the hills. "Salinas lies
over that way. If you went through there you'd think you were in
Japan. And more than one fat little fruit valley in California
has been taken over by the Japanese. Their method is somewhat
different from the Dalmatians'. First they drift in fruit picking
at day's wages. They give better satisfaction than the American
fruit-pickers, too, and the Yankee grower is glad to get them.
Next, as they get stronger, they form in Japanese unions and
proceed to run the American labor out. Still the fruit-growers
are satisfied. The next step is when the Japs won't pick. The
American labor is gone. The fruit-grower is helpless. The crop
perishes. Then in step the Jap labor bosses. They're the masters
already. They contract for the crop. The fruit-growers are at
their mercy, you see. Pretty soon the Japs are running the
valley. The fruit-growers have become absentee landlords and are
busy learning higher standards of living in the cities or making
trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The Japs buy them
out. They've got to sell, for the Japs control the labor market
and could bankrupt them at will."
"But if this goes on, what is left for us?" asked Saxon.
"What is happening. Those of us who haven't anything rot in the
cities. Those of us who have land, sell it and go to the cities.
Some become larger capitalists; some go into the professions; the
rest spend the money and start rotting when it's gone, and if it
lasts their life-time their children do the rotting for them."
Their long ride was soon over, and at parting Benson reminded
Billy of the steady job that awaited him any time he gave the
word.
"I guess we'll take a peep at that government land first," Billy
answered. "Don't know what we'll settle down to, but there's one
thing sure we won't tackle."
"What's that?"
"Start in apple-growin' at three thousan' dollars an acre."
Billy and Saxon, their packs upon the backs, trudged along a
hundred yards. He was the first to break silence.
"An' I tell you another thing, Saxon. We'll never be goin' around
smellin' out an' swipin' bits of soil an' carryin' it up a hill
in a basket. The United States is big yet. I don't care what
Benson or any of 'em says, the United States ain't played out.
There's millions of acres untouched an' waitin', an' it's up to
us to find 'em."
"And I'll tell you one thing," Saxon said. "We're getting an
education. Tom was raised on a ranch, yet he doesn't know right
now as much about farming conditions as we do. And I'll tell you
another thing. The more I think of it, the more it seems we are
going to be disappointed about that government land."
"Ain't no use believin' what everybody tells you," he protested.
"Oh, it isn't that. It's what I think. I leave it to you. If this
land around here is worth three thousand an acre, why is it that
government land, if it's any good, is waiting the
re, only a short
way off, to be taken for the asking."
Billy pondered this for a quarter of a mile, but could come to no
conclusion. At last he cleared his throat and remarked:
"Well, we can wait till we see it first, can't we?"
"All right," Saxon agreed. "We'll wait till we see it."
CHAPTER VI
They had taken the direct county road across the hills from
Monterey, instead of the Seventeen Mile Drive around by the
coast, so that Carmel Bay came upon them without any
fore-glimmerings of its beauty. Dropping down through the pungent
pines, they passed woods-embowered cottages, quaint and rustic,
of artists and writers, and went on across wind-blown rolling
sandhills held to place by sturdy lupine and nodding with pale
California poppies. Saxon screamed in sudden wonder of delight,
then caught her breath and gazed at the amazing peacock-blue of a
breaker, shot through with golden sunlight, overfalling in a
mile-long sweep and thundering into white ruin of foam on a
crescent beach of sand scarcely less white.
How long they stood and watched the stately procession of
breakers, rising from out the deep and wind-capped sea to froth
and thunder at their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recalled
to herself when Billy, laughing, tried to remove the telescope
basket from her shoulders.
"You kind of look as though you was goin' to stop a while," he
said. "So we might as well get comfortable."
"I never dreamed it, I never dreamed it," she repeated, with
passionately clasped hands. "I. .. I thought the surf at the
Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.--Oh!
Look! LOOK! Did you ever see such an unspeakable color? And the
sunlight flashing right through it! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
At last she was able to take her eyes from the surf and gaze at
the sea-horizon of deepest peacock-blue and piled with
cloud-masses, at the curve of the beach south to the jagged point
of rocks, and at the rugged blue mountains seen across soft low
hills, landward, up Carmel Valley.
"Might as well sit down an' take it easy," Billy indulged her.
"This is too good to want to run away from all at once."
Saxon assented, but began immediately to unlace her shoes.
"You ain't a-goin' to?" Billy asked in surprised delight, then
began unlacing his own.
But before they were ready to run barefooted on the perilous
fringe of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and
wonderful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark
pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow
trunks. He was smooth and rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a
thatch of curly yellow hair, but his body was hugely thewed as a
Hercules'.
"Gee!--must be Sandow," Billy muttered low to Saxon.
But she was thinking of the engraving in her mother's scrapbook
and of the Vikings on the wet sands of England.
The runner passed them a dozen feet away, crossed the wet sand,
never parsing, till the froth wash was to his knees while above
him, ten feet at least, upreared a was of overtopping water. Huge
and powerful as his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile
in the face of that imminent, great-handed buffet of the sea.
Saxon gasped with anxiety, and she stole a look at Billy to note
that he was tense with watching.
But the stranger sprang to meet the blow, and, just when it
seemed he must be crushed, he dived into the face of the breaker
and disappeared. The mighty mass of water fell in thunder on the
beach, but beyond appeared a yellow head, one arm out-reaching,
and a portion of a shoulder. Only a few strokes was he able to
make are he was come pelted to dye through another breaker. This
was the battle--to win seaward against the Creep of the shoreward
hastening sea. Each time he dived and was lost to view Saxon
caught her breath and clenched her hands. Sometimes, after the
passage of a breaker, they enfold not find him, and when they did
he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip by a
smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and be thrown
upon the beach, but at the end of half an hour he was beyond the
outer edge of the surf and swimming strong, no longer diving, but
topping the waves. Soon he was so far away that only at intervals
could they find the speck of him. That, too, vanished, and Saxon
and Billy looked at each other, she with amazement at the
swimmer's valor, Billy with blue eyes flashing.
"Some swimmer, that boy, some swimmer," he praised. "Nothing
chicken-hearted about him.--Say, I only know tank-swimmin', an'
bay-swimmin', but now I'm goin' to learn ocean-swimmin'. If I
could do that I'd be so proud you couldn't come within forty feet
of me. Why, Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than
own a thousan' farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you, like a
fish--I swum, one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge Pier to Sessions'
Basin, an' that's miles--but I never seen anything like that guy
in the swimmin' line. An' I'm not goin' to leave this beach until
he comes back.--All by his lonely out there in a mountain sea,
think of it! He's got his nerve all right, all right."
Saxon and Billy ran barefooted up and down the beach, pursuing
each other with brandished snakes of seaweed and playing like
children for an hour. It was not until they were putting on their
shoes that they sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy
was at the edge of the surf to meet him, emerging, not
white-skinned as he had entered, but red from the pounding he had
received at the hands of the sea.
"You're a wonder, and I just got to hand it to you," Billy
greeted him in outspoken admiration.
"It was a big surf to-day," the young man replied, with a nod of
acknowledgment.
"It don't happen that you are a fighter I never heard of?" Billy
queried, striving to get some inkling of the identity of the
physical prodigy.
The other laughed and shook his head, and Billy could
not guess that he was an ex-captain of a 'Varsity Eleven, and
incidentally the father of a family and the author of many books.
He looked Billy over with an eye trained in measuring freshmen
aspirants for the gridiron.
"You're some body of a man," he appreciated. "You'd strip with
the best of them. Am I right in guessing that you know your way
about in the ring?"
Billy nodded. "My name's Roberts."
The swimmer scowled with a futile effort at recollection.
"Bill--Bill Roberts," Billy supplemented.
"Oh, ho!--Not BIG Bill Roberts? Why, I saw you fight, before the
earthquake, in the Mechanic's Pavilion. It was a preliminary to
Eddie Hanlon and some other fellow. You're a two-handed fighter,
I remember that, with an awful wallop, but slow. Yes, I remember,
you were slow that night, but you got your man." He put out a wet
hand. "My name's Hazard--Jim Hazard."
"An' if you're the football coach that was, a coupl
e of years
ago, I've read about you in the papers. Am I right?"
They shook hands heartily, and Saxon was introduced. She felt
very small beside the two young giants, and very proud,
withal, that she belonged to the race that gave them birth. She
could only listen to them talk.
"I'd like to put on the gloves with you every day for half an
hour," Hazard said. "You could teach me a lot. Are you going to
stay around here?"
"No. We're goin' on down the coast, lookin' for land. Just the
same, I could teach you a few, and there's one thing you could
teach me--surf swimmin'."
"I'll swap lessons with you any time," Hazard offered. He turned
to Saxon. "Why don't you stop in Carmel for a while? It isn't so
bad."
"It's beautiful," she acknowledged, with a grateful smile,
"but--" She turned and pointed to their packs on the edge of the
lupine. "We're on the tramp, and lookin' for government land."
"If you're looking down past the Sur for it, it will keep," he
laughed. "Well, I've got to run along and get some clothes on. If
you come back this way, look me up. Anybody will tell you where I
live. So long."
And, as he had first arrived, he departed, crossing the sandhills
on the run.
Billy followed him with admiring eyes.
"Some boy, some boy," he murmured. "Why, Saxon, he's famous. If
I've seen his face in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand
times. An' he ain't a bit stuck on himself. Just man to man.
Say!--I'm beginnin' to have faith in the old stock again."
They turned their backs on the beach and in the tiny main street
bought meat, vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag
Saxon away from the window of a fascinating shop where were
iridescent pearls of abalone, set and unset.
"Abalones grow here, all along the coast," Billy assured her;
"an' I'll get you all you want. Low tide's the time."
"My father had a set of cuff-buttons made of abalone shell," she
said. "They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven't thought about
them for years, and I wonder who has them now."
They turned south. Everywhere from among the pines peeped the
quaint pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not
prepared, where the road dipped to Carmel River, for the building
that met their eyes.
"I know what it is," Saxon almost whispered. "It's an old Spanish
Mission. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the
Spaniards came up from Mexico, building missions as they came and
converting the Indians"
"Until we chased them out, Spaniards an' Indians, whole kit an'
caboodle," Billy observed with calm satisfaction.
"Just the same, it's wonderful," Saxon mused, gazing at the big,
half-ruined adobe structure. "There is the Mission Dolores, in
San Francisco, but it's smaller than this and not as old."
Hidden from the sea by low hillocks, forsaken by human being and
human habitation, the church of sun-baked clay and straw and
chalk-rock stood hushed and breathless in the midst of the adobe
ruins which once had housed its worshiping thousands. The spirit
of the place descended upon Saxon and Billy, and they walked
softly, speaking in whispers, almost afraid to go in through the
open ports. There was neither priest nor worshiper, yet they
found all the evidences of use, by a congregation which Billy
judged must be small from the number of the benches. Inter they
climbed the earthquake-racked belfry, noting the hand-hewn
timbers; and in the gallery, discovering the pure quality of
their voices, Saxon, trembling at her own temerity, softly sang
the opening bars of "Jesus Lover of My Soul." Delighted with the
result, she leaned over the railing, gradually increasing her
voice to its full strength as she sang:
"Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,