clean,
clear-headed, conscientious business type; always on his job, always
ready for whatever comes; in no sense an outdoor man; always at the
service of those around him; a man generous, kindly, appreciative,
devoted to his family and his friends; sound in his ideas--a
manufacturer who has faithfully and honestly served his countrymen.

It is after he gets home that a meditative man really makes such a trip.
All the unpleasant features are strained out or transformed. In
retrospect it is all enjoyable, even the discomforts. I am aware that I
was often irritable and ungracious, but my companions were tolerant,
and gave little heed to the flitting moods of an octogenarian. Now, at
this distance, and sitting beside my open fire at Slabsides, I look upon
the whole trip with unmixed pleasure.

IX

UNDER GENIAL SKIES

I. A SUN-BLESSED LAND

The two sides of our great sprawling continent, the East and West,
differ from each other almost as much as day differs from night. On the
coast of southern California the dominant impression made upon one is of
a world made up of three elements--sun, sea, and sky. The Pacific
stretches away to the horizon like a vast, shining, gently undulating
floor. Its waves are longer and come in more languidly than they do upon
the Atlantic coast. It justifies its name. The passion and fury of the
Eastern seas I got no hint of, even in winter. Its rocks, all that I saw
of them, are soft and friable. The languid waves rapidly wear them down.
They are non-strenuous rocks, lifted up out of a non-strenuous sea. The
mountains that tower four or five thousand feet along the coast are of
the same character. They are young, and while they carry their heads
very high, they are soft and easily disintegrated compared with the
granite of our coast.

As a rule, young mountains always wear the look of age, from their deep
lines and jagged and angular character, while the really old mountains
wear the look of youth from their comparative smoothness, their
unwrinkled appearance, their long, flowing lines. Time has taken the
conceit all out of them.

The annual rainfall in the Far West is only about one third of what it
is on the eastern side of the continent. And the soil is curiously
adapted to the climate. Trees flourish and crops are grown there under
arid conditions that would kill every green thing on the Atlantic
seaboard. The soil is clay tempered with a little sand, probably less
than ten