Beyond the California boundary the Southern Pacific Railway traverses
the broad Colorado desert. This is a barren, sandy wilderness, growing
nothing but yuccas and cactus, and is depressed far below the
sea-level. It is an inland salt-water lake that has mostly dried up,
the belief being that it was formerly an extension of the Gulf of
California. The railway route beyond passes between the San Jacinto
and San Bernardino Mountains, crossing the latter. These peaks rise
over eleven thousand feet, and beyond is the pleasant fruit-growing
San Bernardino Valley, originally settled by the Mormons in 1851. To
the southward is Riverside, in the fertile district where the seedless
navel oranges are successfully cultivated, the groves giving an
attractive exhibition of orange-growing. Here is the famous Magnolia
Avenue, one hundred and thirty feet wide and ten miles long, with its
double rows of pepper trees, and extending all the way through orange
groves. In its park is one of the finest cacti collections in
existence. Adjacent is Redlands, also a flourishing orange-growing
city, its sidewalks bordered by stately palms, rose-bushes, pepper
trees and century plants, while everywhere are orange trees in their
perpetual livery of brilliant green. Around it encircle the high San
Bernardino Mountains, thoroughly protecting the fertile valley. To the
southward the route then runs out to the Pacific Ocean bound to
Southern California, and following down the coast near San Juan passes
Dana's Point, over which, in the early Californian days, the hides
were thrown for shipment, as narrated by Dana in _Two Years Before the
Mast_. Ultimately it reaches the grand bay of San Diego, near the
Mexican boundary, which, next to San Francisco, is the best harbor on
the Pacific coast.
Here, spreading along the shores of the beautiful bay, is the ancient
Spanish town of San Diego, long sleepy, but lately enjoying a "boom"
when it found itself becoming a popular watering-place. To the
northward is the old Mission of San Diego, the first settlement by
white men in California, noted for its prolific olive groves. In the
town of adobé houses lived "Ramona" of whom Helen Hunt Jackson has
written, and there are still preserved here the original church bells
sent out from Spain to the colony. The outer arm of San Diego Bay is
Coronado Beach, a narrow tongue of sand, stretching twelve miles
northward, and ending in spacious expansions known as the North and
South Beaches. Upon the South Beach is the famous watering-place of
Coronado, with its great hotel alongside the ocean, the tower
commanding an extensive view, and its spacious surrounding
flower-gardens being magnificently brilliant. There are Botanical
Gardens, a Museum and an interesting ostrich farm, with railways for
miles along the pleasant shores, and at Point Loma are the lighthouses
guarding the entrance from the sea, the uppermost, elevated five
hundred feet, being the highest lighthouse in the world. Down near the
Mexican boundary is the suburb of National City, surrounded by olive
groves, and the visitors sometimes cross over the border to visit the
curious Mexican village of Tia Juana, a name which being freely
translated means "Aunt Jane." Extensive irrigation works serve the
country around San Diego, and the great Sweetwater Dam, ninety feet
high, closing a gorge, makes one of the largest water reservoirs in
existence.
This wonderful land of California into which we have come has a name
the meaning of which is unknown. One Ordonez de Montalva in 1510
published a Spanish romance wherein he referred to the "island of
California, on the right hand of the Indies, very near the Terrestrial
Paradise." When Cortez conquered Mexico, his annalist, Bernal Diaz del
Castillo, gave this name, it is said in derision, about 1535, to the
lower peninsula of California, then supposed to be an island, it
having been discovered the previous year by the Spanish explorer
Ximenes. The Jesuit missionaries came in the seventeenth century to
the lower peninsula, and in the eighteenth century to California
proper. It is an enormous State, stretching nearly eight hundred miles
along the Pacific, and inland for a width of two hundred or more
miles. It is mainly a valley, between the Coast Range of mountains on
the west and the Sierra Nevada, meaning the "snowy saw-tooth
mountains," on the east. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers flow in
the central valley, which stretches north and south for five hundred
miles. To the southward the mountain ranges join, and below them is
the special and favored region of Southern California. When first
settled, there were established from San Diego up to Sonoma twenty-one
Jesuit Missions, whose ruins and old buildings are now found so
interesting, and these early establishments converted the Indians, of
whom it is said that the charming climate offered them no
inducements to develop savagery, so that when the conversion time came
they were easily made serfs for the Missions, and worked in a way that
few other Indians ever did. There are two California seasons, the
rainy and the dry, the former lasting from November to May, while
there is almost unchanging dry weather from May till October. The
rainy season, however, is not as in the tropics, where there are
deluges daily, but it means that then it will rain if ever, and there
are in fact days without rain at all. California is a land of climatic
attractiveness, where, as it has been well said, "it is always
afternoon." Through vast irrigation systems, despite the dry season,
much of the surface has been made a garden. Water runs everywhere
copiously down from the mountains, and the shrubbery of all parts of
the world has been brought hither and successfully grown. The region
presents an universal landscape of foliage and flowers, luxuriant
beyond imagination. In Southern California the wild flowers, of which
the golden poppy is one of the most prominent, are extraordinary in
their number, variety and brilliancy. "The greatest surprise of the
traveller," writes Charles Dudley Warner, "is that a region which is
in perpetual bloom and fruitage, where semi-tropical fruits mature in
perfection, and the most delicate flowers dazzle the eye with color
the winter through, should have on the whole a low temperature, a
climate never enervating, and one requiring a dress of woollen in
every month."
[Illustration: _Cloister of Mission, San Juan Capistrano_]