times learn by
experience to approach man fearlessly; and, seeing what the
snow-capped peaks can do for them in tempering the summer heat and
furnishing them water from unfailing reservoirs, men have discerned
behind their stern severity the smile of friendship and benevolence,
and have perceived that these sublime dispensers of the gifts of
Nature are in reality beneficent deities,--their feet upon the land
which they make fertile, their hands uplifted to receive from the
celestial treasure-house the blessings they in turn give freely to
the grateful earth.

[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN ON THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.]

[Illustration: THE ALPINE TAVERN.]

[Illustration: THE GREAT INCLINE.]

To reach their serrated crests the trolley car, already mentioned,
conveys us through a wild gorge known as Rubio Canon, and leaves us
at the foot of an elevated cable-road to ascend Mount Lowe. Even
those familiar with the Mount Washington and Catskill railways, or
who have ascended in a similar manner to Muerren from the Vale of
Lauterbrunnen, or to the summit of Mount Pilate from Lucerne, look
with some trepidation at this incline, the steepest part of which has
a slope of sixty-two degrees, and, audaciously, stretches into the
air to a point three thousand feet above our heads. Once safely out
of the cable car, however, at the upper terminus, we smile, and think
the worst is over. It is true, we see awaiting us another innocent
looking electric car by which we are to go still higher; but we are
confident that nothing very terrible can be experienced in a trolley.
This confidence is quickly shattered. I doubt if there is anything in
the world more "hair lifting" than the road over which that car
conveys its startled occupants. Its very simplicity makes it the more
horrifying; for, since the vehicle is light, no massive supports are
deemed essential; and, as the car is open, the passengers seem to be
traveling in a flying machine. I never realized what it was to be a
bird, till I was lightly swung around a curve beneath which yawned a
precipice twenty-five hundred feet in depth, or crossed a chasm by a
bridge which looked in the distance like a thread of gossamer, or saw
that I was riding on a scaffolding, built out from the mountain into
space. For five appalling miles of alternating happiness and horror,
ecstasy and dread, we twisted round the well-nigh perpendicular
cliffs, until, at last the agony over, we walked into the mount