AT AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.
If one desires a thoroughly insular climate, he may cross to the picturesque island of Santa Catalina. All along the coast flowers bloom in the winter months, and the ornamental semi-tropical plants thrive; and there are many striking headlands and pretty bays and gentle seaward slopes which are already occupied by villages, and attract visitors who would practise economy. The hills frequently come close to the shore, forming those valleys in which the Californians of the pastoral period placed their ranch houses. At San Juan Capristrano the fathers had one of their most flourishing missions, the ruins of which are the most picturesque the traveller will find. It is altogether a genial, attractive coast, and if the tourist does not prefer an inland situation, like the Hotel Raymond (which scarcely has a rival anywhere in its lovely surroundings), he will keep on down the coast to San Diego.
The transition from the well-planted counties of Los Angeles and Orange is not altogether agreeable to the eye. One misses the trees. The general aspect of the coast about San Diego is bare in comparison. This simply means that the southern county is behind the others in development. Nestled among the hills there are live-oaks and sycamores; and of course at National City and below, in El Cajon and the valley of the Sweetwater, there are extensive plantations of oranges, lemons, olives, and vines, but the San Diego region generally lies in the sun shadeless. I have a personal theory that much vegetation is inconsistent with the best atmosphere for the human being. The air is nowhere else so agreeable to me as it is in a barren New Mexican or Arizona desert at the proper elevation. I do not know whether the San Diego climate would be injured if the hills were covered with forest and the valleys were all in the highest and most luxuriant vegetation. The theory is that the interaction of the desert and ocean winds will always keep it as it is, whatever man may do. I can only say that, as it is, I doubt if it has its equal the year round for agreeableness and healthfulness in our Union; and it is the testimony of those whose experience of the best Mediterranean climate is more extended and much longer continued than mine, that it is superior to any on that enclosed sea. About this great harbor, whose outer beach has an extent of twenty-five miles, whose inland circuit of mountains must be over fifty miles, there are great varieties of temperature, of shelter and exposure, minute subdivisions of climate, whose personal fitness can only be attested by experience. There is a great difference, for instance, between the quality of the climate at the elevation of the Florence Hotel, San Diego, and the University Heights on the mesa above the town, and that on the long Coronado Beach which protects the inner harbor from the ocean surf. The latter, practically surrounded by water, has a true marine climate, but a peculiar and dry marine climate, as tonic in its effect as that of Capri, and, I believe, with fewer harsh days in the winter season. I wish to speak with entire frankness about this situation, for I am sure that what so much pleases me will suit a great number of people, who will thank me for not being reserved. Doubtless it will not suit hundreds of people as well as some other localities in Southern California, but I found no other place where I had the feeling of absolute content and willingness to stay on indefinitely. There is a geniality about it for which the thermometer does not account, a charm which it is difficult to explain. Much of the agreeability is due to artificial conditions, but the climate man has not made nor marred.
The Coronado Beach is about twelve miles long. A narrow sand promontory, running northward from the main-land, rises to the Heights, then broadens into a table-land, which seems to be an island, and measures about a mile and a half each way; this is called South Beach, and is connected by another spit of sand with a like area called North Beach, which forms, with Point Loma, the entrance to the harbor. The North Beach, covered partly with chaparral and broad fields of barley, is alive with quail, and is a favorite coursing-ground for rabbits. The soil, which appears uninviting, is with water uncommonly fertile, being a mixture of loam, disintegrated granite, and decomposed shells, and especially adapted to flowers, rare tropical trees, fruits, and flowering shrubs of all countries.
The development is on the South Beach, which was in January, 1887, nothing but a waste of sand and chaparral. I doubt if the world can show a like transformation in so short a time. I saw it in February of that year, when all the beauty, except that of ocean, sky, and atmosphere, was still to be imagined. It is now as if the wand of the magician had touched it. In the first place, abundance of water was brought over by a submarine conduit, and later from the extraordinary Coronado Springs (excellent soft water for drinking and bathing, and with a recognized medicinal value), and with these streams the beach began to bloom like a tropical garden. Tens of thousands of trees have attained a remarkable growth in three years. The nursery is one of the most interesting botanical and flower gardens in the country; palms and hedges of Monterey cypress and marguerites line the avenues. There are parks and gardens of rarest flowers and shrubs, whose brilliant color produces the same excitement in the mind as strains of martial music. A railway traverses the beach for a mile from the ferry to the hotel. There are hundreds of cottages with their gardens scattered over the surface; there is a race-track, a museum, an ostrich farm, a labyrinth, good roads for driving, and a dozen other attractions for the idle or the inquisitive.
HOTEL DEL CORONADO.