lly overhung with a haze, and of
magnificent color changes. Across the bay to the north lies Mount
Tamalpais, about 5,000 feet high, and so close that ferries from the
water front took one in less than half an hour to the little towns of
Sausalito and Belvidere, at its foot.

It is a wooded mountain, with ample slopes, and from it on the north
stretch away ridges of forest land, the outposts of the great Northern
woods of Sequoia semperrirens. This mountain and the mountainous
country to the south brought the real forest closer to San Francisco
than to any other American city.

Within the last few years men have killed deer on the slopes of
Tamalpais and looked down to see the cable cars crawling up the hills
of San Francisco to the north. In the suburbs coyotes still stole and
robbed hen roosts by night. The people lived much out of doors. There
was no time of the year, except a short part of the rainy season, when
the weather kept one from the woods. The slopes of Tamalpais were
crowded with little villas dotted through the woods, and those minor
estates ran far up into the redwood country. The deep coves of
Belvidere, sheltered by the wind from Tamalpais, held a colony of
"arks" or houseboats, where people lived in the rather disagreeable
summer months, going over to business every day by ferry. Everything
invited out of doors.

The climate of California is peculiar; it is hard to give an
impression of it. In the first place, all the forces of nature work on
laws of their own in that part of California. There is no thunder or
lightning; there is no snow, except a flurry once in five or six
years; there are perhaps a dozen nights in the winter when the
thermometer drops low enough so that there is a little film of ice on
exposed water in the morning. Neither is there any hot weather. Yet
most Easterners remaining in San Francisco for a few days remember
that they were always chilly.

For the Gate is a big funnel, drawing in the winds and the mists which
cool off the great, hot interior valleys of the San Joaquin and
Sacramento. So the west wind blows steadily ten months of the year and
almost all the mornings are foggy. This keeps the temperature steady
at about 55 degrees--a little cool for comfort of an unacclimated
person, especially indoors. Californians, used to it, hardly ever
thought of making fires in their houses except in the few exceptional
days of the winter season, and then they relied mainly upon
f