ls
stretching into the sea; the hundreds of hamlets, with picturesque homes
overgrown with roses and geranium and heliotrope, in the midst of orange
orchards and of palms and magnolias, in sight of the snow-peaks of the
giant mountain ranges which shut in this land of marvellous beauty.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT.

California is the land of the Pine and the Palm. The tree of the
Sierras, native, vigorous, gigantic, and the tree of the Desert, exotic,
supple, poetic, both flourish within the nine degrees of latitude. These
two, the widely separated lovers of Heine's song, symbolize the
capacities of the State, and although the sugar-pine is indigenous, and
the date-palm, which will never be more than an ornament in this
hospitable soil, was planted by the Franciscan Fathers, who established
a chain of missions from San Diego to Monterey over a century ago, they
should both be the distinction of one commonwealth, which, in its seven
hundred miles of indented sea-coast, can boast the climates of all
countries and the products of all zones.

If this State of mountains and valleys were divided by an east and west
line, following the general course of the Sierra Madre range, and
cutting off the eight lower counties, I suppose there would be conceit
enough in either section to maintain that it only is the Paradise of the
earth, but both are necessary to make the unique and contradictory
California which fascinates and bewilders the traveller. He is told that
the inhabitants of San Francisco go away from the draught of the Golden
Gate in the summer to get warm, and yet the earliest luscious cherries
and apricots which he finds in the far south market of San Diego come
from the Northern Santa Clara Valley. The truth would seem to be that in
an hour's ride in any part of the State one can change his climate
totally at any time of the year, and this not merely by changing his
elevation, but by getting in or out of the range of the sea or the
desert currents of air which follow the valleys.

To recommend to any one a winter climate is far from the writer's
thought. No two persons agree on what is desirable for a winter
residence, and the inclination of the same person varies with his state
of health. I can only attempt to give some idea of what is called the
winter months in Southern California, to which my observations mainly
apply. The individual who comes here under the mistaken notion that
climate eve