WCP452

[1]

Stockton, July 1st. 1887.¹

My dear Annie²

Yours announcing that you have at last let the house duly reached me here 3 days ago as my return from a short journey with John³ to see some more "Big Trees." I am very glad you have succeeded at last as it will give you & Violet⁴ a nice change, and if I should get home while it is still let it will not much matter as we can meet somewhere & have a little holiday. I am delayed here by a very disagreeable and annoying illness. Just a week ago when I & John started for Santa Cruz I had a little swelling on my upper lip which I thought nothing of. It increased however rapidly till the lip swelled to double its size & became very painful besides making me look hideous. Returning here after 3 days it was so bad & as impossible to poultice — for it was worst on the lower edge of the lip — that I had a doctor & he lanced it, but nothing came out but some dark blood — Since then I have been in the house with a large open ulcer on the edge of the lip swollen out so as to make it much difficult to eat or drink or to keep any thing in it & so tender and sore [2] that nothing can be fastened on it. So I have been holding it in warm milk & water, half the day, & living on slop, and a spiritual friend has mesmerized it, & it is I think getting slowly better, as the size of the inflamed part is much reduced. As they say here, it is the nearest place possible to have anything like a boil.

When I am well I am going to Lake Tahoe & the Summit Station on the Sierra Nevada where I hope to get some good plants and ferns. When I got your letter I had a few ferns just brought from the Santa Cruz Big Trees, so I send them to Miss Jekyll⁵ instead of to Mr. Marshall, as I thought they might not be attended to when he was away during the holidays. I have found now that the American post office people ^{in country place} do not know the rules as to the Foreign Sample Post, as I have just heard that some of my ferns &c. posted here when we returned from the Yosemite two weeks ago has not been sent "because not stamped sufficiently" — whereas it was fully stamped. I think in the future it will be safer to put double stamps as so as to ensure no [3] delay lost or loss from this cause.

I sent you a "Golden Gate" with a report of my Spiritual lecture at Washington San Francisco and also one of our "wonderful seànce” which has converted John and staggered all the family. Having finished my Scientific lectures here, & being offered very liberal terms for one on Spiritualism. I thought I might as well accept it & secure it to an audience of over 1000, & received $140 — more than I have ever had for a scientific lecture. This has led to a request to deliver it at Chicago on my way home where I shall get probably as much, so that Spiritualism will pay better than Nat. Hist. — In this place there are 5 doctors who are all Spiritualists, besides lots of other people. I enclose 3 spec. of ferns as samples of which grow in the mountains here. No. 1. I think I sent in the lot from Yosemite with two or three others allied to it. No. 3. I sent in the last lot, many specimens –but I fear they will only grow in pots as there is no frost where it grew. The Yosemite lot ought to be hardy. [4] They like plenty of sun, and stones. The weather is now fearfully hot and the sun glaring here. When it is only 90° in the house we call it cool! I am now more than ever convinced of California being a wretched country to live itn, though with a nice lot of, say, 160 acres of the Redwood forest looking over near the Pacific, a most lovely and enjoyable place might be made where everything would grow, even better than in Germany. At Santa Cruz there are masses of scarlet geraniums 10 feet through and 5-6 high. They grow like weeds, & all the Australian & Cape plants grow as fine as in their native country. The Redwood forests on the Western slope of the Coast range of Mountains are the finest I have seen for beauty and variety. The two large trees at the entrance to a house above the Country are "Redwoods," I think. They grow 300 feet high and nearly as big as the other "Big Trees." The name is Sequoia sempervirens It was too late there for the spring flowers, and those in blossom were poor. Our blue Ceanothus or one almost exactly like it, formed much of the underfwood in the forests.

Your affectionate Husband | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]