Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1905 — FROM THE PACIFIC COAST. [ARTICLE]

FROM THE PACIFIC COAST.

Intere«tlng Letter From nr. Lucius Strong. 315 So. Bunker Hill Avenue, Los Angeles, Cali., Feb. >2. Editor Democrat:—Since my last we have been visiting the parks and beaches. The parks are all well supplied with flowers and palms, and a number of them have a variety of wild animals and birda. The most important one, called the Cheetes, is supplied with a great amount of animals, a roller coaster and tobogan slide. A band of fifty pieces discourses music every afternoon. Occasional an air ship ascends, to enliven the occasion. The beach towns are numerous. Some of them are in a prosperous condition while others are but little more than towns on paper. San Pedro will be the most important one of all. The government is buildiug a harbor there. Its distance from this city is about twenty-eight miles and is the place of embarkation for the Catalina Island. Large quantities of lumber arrive at this point, which supplies this city and the surrounding country. The people here seem to think that the completion of the San Pedro harbor and the Panama canal will be all that is necessary to make Los Angeles one of the largest and best cities in the United States. I think a great deal of this is wind, and that the ones who are supposed to be benefited the most will never know the difference when it comes to paying freight bills. The railroads will undoubtly control everything that is to be transported and tix rates to suit. The people of the city thought that the building of the Salt Lake road would help to solve the rate problem by making it a competing eastern line. They now think that there will be no competition, that the three roads will be under one supervision and rates will not change. The boom spirit rages here to an alarming extent. There are enough vacant lots advertised for sale to add a half million inhabitants to the city if occupied by the usual number to the lot. When the bubble bursts there will be mourning, no doubt. A trip to the Catalina island is one of the most pleasurable of any of the side trips. It requires about two and one half hours. To return about the same. The island is seven miles wide and twenty-two miles loug, and is owned by one or two persons, the Bannings, except about eighty lots where the town of Avalon stands. There are about 40,000 sheep besides wild goal 8 ranging over the island. The people living there have no other way of making a living than taking care of tourists, selling curios and running row boats with glass bottoms so that passengers can see the wonders in the submarine gardens of the ocean. There is a school of sealions hanging around the landing expecting something to eat. They have become quite tame and seem to understand what it means to call them. Their performances afford a good deal of amusement for tourists. There is no chance for the town to expand as it is fenced in by mountains so high that the moon can hardly get over when it is full. Our mail has been very slow getting in for two weeks, on account of washouts. Respectfully Yours, L. Strong.

Owner’s Rights In Highway*. If a farm deed is bounded by, on or upon a road, it usually extends to the middle of the roadway, says a Vermont correspondent of American Cultivator. There are a few exceptional cases, but ordinarily the farmer owns the soli of half the road and may use the grass, trees, stones, gravel, sand or anything of value to him either on the land or beneath the surface, subject ouly to the superior rights of the public to travel over the road and that of the highway surveyor or other similar officer to use such materials for the repair of the road, and these materials he may cart away and use elsewhere on the road, but he has no right to use them for his own private purposes. No other man has a right to feed his cattle there or cut the grass or trees, much less deposit his wood, old carts, wagons or other things thereon, and after notice to the owner the farmer may remove them to some suitable place, and if they are lost or injured it Is not his fault. A ' The Chftage of a Name. How family names change In the course of many years is illustrated by the conversion of “BotevUe" into “Thynne.” An English deed bearing date in the closing days of the fifteenth century shows three brothers then flourishing— John BotevUe of BotevUe and Thomas and William Botevile. The trio are distinguished from all other Boteviles by the explanation “of the Inne,” or family residence, the title to which had come to their Joint possession. John’s grandson was known as Ralph BotevUe-of-the-Inne, from which the transition to Ralph Thynne is easy. His descendants have been Thynnes ever since _ w