Our Italy

by Charles Dudley Warner

Such a climate is found in the extreme southern portions of California. At San Diego the rainfall is much less, the air is drier, and the number of sunshiny days very much larger than on our Atlantic seaboard, or in Central and Northern California. The winters are not cold; flowers bloom in the open air all the year round; the summers are not hot. The mountains and sea combine to give to this region a climate with few sudden changes, and with a comfortable range of all essential elements.

A residence during a part of the winter of 1889-90 at Coronado Beach, and a somewhat careful study of the comparative climatology of the south-western portions of the United States, leads me to think that we have few localities where the comforts of life can be secured, and which at the same time are so well adapted to the needs of a variety of invalids, as San Diego and its surroundings. In saying this I do not wish to be understood as preferring it to all others for some one condition or disease, but only that for weak hearts, disabled lungs, and worn-out nerves it seems to me to be unsurpassed.

Chicago, July 12, 1890.

THE COMING OF WINTER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

From Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke's altogether admirable book on Southern California I have permission to quote the following exquisite description of the floral procession from December to March, when the Land of the Sun is awakened by the first winter rain:

Sometimes this season commences with a fair rain in November, after a light shower or two in October, but some of the very best seasons begin about the time that all begin to lose hope. November adds its full tribute to the stream of sunshine that for months has poured along the land; and, perhaps, December closes the long file of cloudless days with banners of blue and gold. The plains and slopes lie bare and brown; the low hills that break away from them are yellow with dead foxtail or wild oats, gray with mustard-stalks, or ashy green with chemisal or sage. Even the chaparral, that robes the higher hills in living green, has a tired air, and the long timber-line that marks the cañon winding up the mountain-slopes is decidedly paler. The sea-breeze has fallen off to a faint breath of air; the land lies silent and dreamy with golden haze; the air grows drier, the sun hotter, and the shade cooler; the smoke of brush-fires hangs at times along the sky; the water has risen in the springs and sloughs as if to meet the coming rain, but it has never looked less like rain than it now does.

Suddenly a new wind arises from the vast watery plains upon the south-west; long, fleecy streams of cloud reach out along the sky; the distant mountain-tops seem swimming in a film of haze, and the great California weather prophet—a creature upon whom the storms of adverse experience have beaten for years without making even a weather crack in the smooth cheek of his conceit—lavishes his wisdom as confidently as if he had never made a false prediction. After a large amount of fuss, and enough preliminary skirmishing over the sky for a dozen storms in any Eastern State, the clouds at last get ready, and a soft pattering is heard upon the roof—the sweetest music that ever cheers a Californian ear, and one which the author of "The Rain upon the Roof" should have heard before writing his poem.

When the sun again appears it is with a softer, milder beam than before. The land looks bright and refreshed, like a tired and dirty boy who has had a good bath and a nap, and already the lately bare plains and hill-sides show a greenish tinge. Fine little leaves of various kinds are springing from the ground, but nearly all are lost in a general profusion of dark green ones, of such shape and delicacy of texture that a careless eye might readily take them for ferns. This is the alfileria, the prevailing flower of the land. The rain may continue at intervals. Daily the land grows greener, while the shades of green, varied by the play of sunlight on the slopes and rolling hills, increase in number and intensity. Here the color is soft, and there bright; yonder it rolls in wavy alternations, and yonder it reaches in an unbroken shade where the plain sweeps broad and free. For many weeks green is the only color, though cold nights may perhaps tinge it with a rusty red. About the first of February a little starlike flower of bluish pink begins to shine along the ground. This is the bloom of the alfileria, and swiftly it spreads from the southern slopes, where it begins, and runs from meadow to hill-top. Soon after a cream-colored bell-flower begins to nod from a tall, slender stalk; another of sky-blue soon opens beside it; beneath these a little five-petaled flower of deep pink tries to outshine the blossoms of the alfileria; and above them soon stands the radiant shooting-star, with reflexed petals of white, yellow, and pink shining behind its purplish ovaries. On every side violets, here of the purest golden hue and overpowering fragrance, appear in numbers beyond all conception. And soon six or seven varieties of clover, all with fine, delicate leaves, unfold flowers of yellow, red, and pink. Delicate little crucifers of white and yellow shine modestly below all these; little cream-colored flowers on slender scapes look skyward on every side; while others of purer white, with every variety of petal, crowd up among them. Standing now upon some hill-side that commands miles of landscape, one is dazzled with a blaze of color, from acres and acres of pink, great fields of violets, vast reaches of blue, endless sweeps of white.

Upon this—merely the warp of the carpet about to cover the land—the sun fast weaves a woof of splendor. Along the southern slopes of the lower hills soon beams the orange light of the poppy, which swiftly kindles the adjacent slopes, then flames along the meadow, and blazes upon the northern hill-sides. Spires of green, mounting on every side, soon open upon the top into lilies of deep lavender, and the scarlet bracts of the painted-cup glow side by side with the crimson of the cardinal-flower. And soon comes the iris, with its broad golden eye fringed with rays of lavender blue; and five varieties of phacelia overwhelm some places with waves of purple, blue, indigo, and whitish pink. The evening primrose covers the lower slopes with long sheets of brightest yellow, and from the hills above the rock-rose adds its golden bloom to that of the sorrel and the wild alfalfa, until the hills almost outshine the bright light from the slopes and plains. And through all this nods a tulip of most delicate lavender; vetches, lupins, and all the members of the wild-pea family are pushing and winding their way everywhere in every shade of crimson, purple, and white; along the ground crowfoot weaves a mantle of white, through which, amid a thousand comrades, the orthocarpus rears its tufted head of pink. Among all these are mixed a thousand other flowers, plenty enough as plenty would be accounted in other countries, but here mere pin-points on a great map of colors.

As the stranger gazes upon this carpet that now covers hill and dale, undulates over the table-lands, and robes even the mountain with a brilliancy and breadth of color that strikes the eye from miles away, he exhausts his vocabulary of superlatives, and goes away imagining he has seen it all. Yet he has seen only the background of an embroidery more varied, more curious and splendid, than the carpet upon which it is wrought. Asters bright with centre of gold and lavender rays soon shine high above the iris, and a new and larger tulip of deepest yellow nods where its lavender cousin is drooping its lately proud head. New bell-flowers of white and blue and indigo rise above the first, which served merely as ushers to the display, and whole acres ablaze with the orange of the poppy are fast turning with the indigo of the larkspur. Where the ground was lately aglow with the marigold and the four-o'clock the tall penstemon now reaches out a hundred arms full-hung with trumpets of purple and pink. Here the silene rears high its head with fringed corolla of scarlet; and there the wild gooseberry dazzles the eye with a perfect shower of tubular flowers of the same bright color. The mimulus alone is almost enough to color the hills. Half a dozen varieties, some with long, narrow, trumpet-shaped flowers, others with broad flaring mouths; some of them tall herbs, and others large shrubs, with varying shades of dark red, light red, orange, cream-color, and yellow, spangle hill-side, rock-pile, and ravine. Among them the morning-glory twines with flowers of purest white, new lupins climb over the old ones, and the trailing vetch festoons rock and shrub and tree with long garlands of crimson, purple, and pink. Over the scarlet of the gooseberry or the gold of the high-bush mimulus along the hills, the honeysuckle hangs its tubes of richest cream-color, and the wild cucumber pours a shower of white over the green leaves of the sumach or sage. Snap-dragons of blue and white, dandelions that you must look at three or four times to be certain what they are, thistles that are soft and tender with flowers too pretty for the thistle family, orchids that you may try in vain to classify, and sages and mints of which you can barely recognize the genera, with cruciferæ, compositæ, and what-not, add to the glare and confusion.