SYDNEY HARBOUR
When we were sailing from Batavia in Java
to Colombo there was a New Yorker on
board, who was buying rubber in anticipation of
the needs of belligerents, and who knew most of
the places in the world where rubber was to be
raised or bought. His views on Australia we have
forgotten, and his denunciation of the Indies, as
places where the white resident must deteriorate,
do not matter here. What we do recall is the dislike
he expressed, as an Eastern American, for the
pretensions of the West, especially of California.
"There's nothing they've got," he would say,
"that they don't want to tell you about. Why,
you take a Californian, and he'll stand there and
blow out his chest, and talk to you about his
climate and climate! There's Los Angeles. . . .
I want to tell you right now, that Los Angeles
is the one place on God's earth, where you can
get a sunstroke and a frozen foot at the same
time."
Other Americans, Californians, to whom we
