wn the hillside, certain
aspects of the bay from the heights of Berkeley, with the expanses of
hills and water and the inevitable fog smudging a smoky streak here and
there, are more like the picture-country of the Japanese masters than
any American reality.

If I were to pick the time when I should travel in California, it would
be in the early summer. All the rest of the world at that moment is
green. California alone is sheer gold. One composite picture remains in
my memory-the residuum of that single trip into the south. On one side
the Pacific--tigerish, calm, powerfully palpitant, stretching into
eternity in enormous bronze-gold, foam-laced planes. On the other side,
great, bare, voluptuously--contoured hills, running parallel with the
train and winding serpentinely on for hours and hours of express speed;
hills that look, not as though they were covered with yellow grass, but
as though they were carved from massy gold. At intervals come ravines
filled with a heavy green growth. Occasionally on those golden
hill-surfaces appear trees.

Oh, the trees of California!

If they be live-oaks--and on the hills they are most likely to be
live-oaks--they are semi-globular in shape like our apple trees, only
huge, of a clamant, virile, poisonous green. They grow alone, and each
one of them seems to be standing knee-deep in shadow so thick and moist
that it is like a deep pool of purple paint.

Occasionally, on the flat stretches, eucalyptus hedges film the
distance. And the eucalyptus--tall, straight, of a uniform slender size,
the baby leaves of one shape and color, misted with a strange bluish
fog-powder, the mature leaves of another shape and color, deep-green
on one side, purple on the other, curved and carved like a scimitar of
Damascus steel, the blossoms hanging in great soft bunches, white
or shell-pink, delicate as frost-stars--the eucalyptus is the most
beautiful tree in the world. Standing in groups, they seem to color the
atmosphere. Under them the air is like a green bubble. Standing alone,
the long trailing scarfs of bark blowing away from their bodies--they
are like ragged, tragic gypsy queens.

Then there is the madrone. The wonder of the madrone is its bole. Of
a tawny red-gold--glossy--it contributes an arresting coppery note to
green forest vistas. Somebody has said that in the distance they look
like naked Indians slipping through the woods.

Last, there is the redwood tree! And the redwood is mor