restoration from the ravages of the earthquake is about completed. With
its tiling and mosaic work, its striking mottoes upon the walls, and its
fine windows, it is very like an Italian church.

The town of Palo Alto is a pretty little settlement, depending upon the
University for its life.

From Palo Alto we drive on into the Santa Clara Valley. We are too late
to see the fruit trees in bloom, a unique sight; but the valley
stretches before us in all its exquisite greenness and freshness after
the spring rains. Miles of fruit trees, as carefully pruned and weeded
and as orderly in every detail as a garden, are on every side of us.
Prune trees, cherry trees, and apricot trees; there are thousands of
them, in a most beautiful state of cultivation and fruitfulness. No
Easterner who has seen only the somewhat untidy and carelessly
cultivated orchards of the East can imagine the exquisite order and
detailed cultivation of the California fruit orchards. We saw miles of
such orchards always in the same perfect condition. Not a leaf, not a
branch, not a weed is left in these orchards. They are plowed and
harrowed, sprayed and pruned, down to the last corner of every orchard,
and the last branch of every tree.

Through the clean aisles, between the green rows, run the channels for
the precious water that has traveled from the mountains to the plains to
turn tens of thousands of acres into a fair and fruitful garden.

The Santa Clara Valley is one of the loveliest valleys of all
California, and indeed of all the world. Set amid its orchards are
tasteful houses and bungalows, commodious and architecturally pleasing;
very different from the box-like farmhouses of the Middle West and the
East. On either side rise high green hills. It is a picture of beauty
wherever one looks.

At Santa Clara, on our way to San Jose, we stop to see the Santa Clara
Mission, just at the edge of the town. All that remains of the first
Mission is enclosed within a wall, the new church and the flourishing
new school standing next to the enclosure.

In the middle of the valley is the city of San Jose, an active, bustling
town, full of life and business. We spent a pleasant day at the Hotel
Vendome, an old-fashioned and delightful hostel, surrounded by a park of
fine trees and flowering shrubs. The Vendome is a good place in which to
rest and bask in the sunshine.

When we next motor through the Santa Clara Valley, we shall visit the
New Almaden qu