THE DEAREST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

Western Star, Issue 834, 12 April 1884, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DEAREST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

Geapes at fivepeuce a pouud are an early and satisfactory indication that we have left the bare brown Sierras behind ns (writes a correspondent of the Daily News who ia on* a iouruey round the world, and has got to San Francisco), and have reached a valley land llowmg with milk and honey. Honey is mentioned here onlyj because it belongs to the quotation. 1 suppose it is made somewhere in. the States, but I have not met with it on any table, nor anywhere seen a beehive. Rut milk is . abundant, and of a

quality unknown in London. At the roadside station where grapes at fivepence a pound were dispensed by a benevolent negro wearing a snowy white apron, milk stood in jugs on a table in company with most excellent custard and apple-tarts, large, flat, and round. The milk having been standing half an hour there was an inch of thick cream at the top, and what followed did not seem to have suffered from this concentration. Piveper.ee a glass was the price of the milk, but that had evidently less reference to its intrinsic value than to the habitude in this neighbourhood of regarding ten cents as the lowest denomination of coin in which it is possible to deal. Everything was ten cents—the grapes by the pound, the custard and applepie by the slice, and the milk by the , glass. In England fivepence for a glass of milk taken in a country place might be regarded as dear; but in lordly California it was really a condescension on the part of the benevolent .negro and his family to take so small a coin. I have made a careful computation, and find that a dollar, nominally valued at four shillings, will buy of the necessaries of life exactly as much as a shilling will in England. Money is easily made here, wages are high, profits are large, and the country is full of men grown suddenly rich. A dollar here or there is a matter not worth the expenditure of time for its consideration. It is a broad, significant fact that a five-cent piece, value two peace-halfpenny, is practically the lowest coin current in the States, and that it will sometimes buy for you what a penny would bring in a more effete country. There are, of course, cents; but except to buy stamps, and ; in' New York an evening paper, you might as well be without them. Where the currency practically begins in everyday life is with the quarter, value one shilling. With these liberally dispensed, on the slightest provocation, one can get along comfortably through the needs and services of the day. Last night, strolling about the town : , Estopped to hear a street hawker who with leathern lungs and considerable humour was disposing of,his wares. ; Ho was selling a parcel of plated jewellery and a pack of cards, the price being halt a dollar. During the time I stood by he found at least twenty customers. No hawker in his senses would get up in the streets of London, or any other large English town, and attempt to sell things which he valued at two shillings. Sixpence would be a pretty high figure for such an audience as he would gather, and a penny a still more popular sum. Yet here, in this Californian crowd, two shillings were handed up almost as rapidly as he could pocket them. ...This is all verywell for the Californians, but for slowwitted Englishmen’a too rapid succession of. experiences is apt to stun. An English gentleman ‘now in this city took his wife for a walk in the Chinese quarter. In a neat little cafe the lady took a cup of tea, for which one dollar was demanded. After this the gentleman thought he would have his hair cut. On returning to his hotel he sent for the barber, who cut his hair, shaved and shampooed him, and charged him two dollars and a half!; It is true that in this case the gentleman is what the late Mr. G-. P. E. James was wont to call a belted earl.” But, making due allowances for that fact, 10s 6d for cutting and shaving seems dear.