San Diego, 147 miles south of Los Angeles, is another beautiful place, the center of a delightful region, but its interest lies very largely in the fact that it was at this place the first white settler in California pitched his tent, as early as 1769. This great Spanish pioneer, Father Junipero Serra by name, became the founder of twenty-one missions in California, some of which still remain in a fair state of preservation, but a majority exist as mere reminders of the olden time when the Franciscan friars dominated that portion of the Spanish territory. In this southern region the landscape is monotonous, and the air is usually hot, from which fact, no doubt, came the name “California,” which, in the Spanish, signifies “hot furnace,” and was bestowed by the discoverer, in 1534.
MAGNOLIA AVENUE, RIVERSIDE, CAL.—The climate in Southern California is almost tropical, and the fruits, flowers and general vegetation are similar to those found in equatorial regions. In the Spanish language “California” signifies “hot furnace,” and this name was bestowed upon that country by the discoverer in 1534. It is therefore no matter of surprise that we should see reproduced in this photograph a scene that carries us in imagination to the central regions of Florida. Here the palm and the magnolia, the orange and the lemon, grow and bloom side by side.
THE GRIZZLY GIANT, MARIPOSA GROVE OF BIG TREES.
Proceeding northward, the scenery becomes more varied and pleasing, for above Los Angeles a mountainous district is passed, with the San Bernardino and Sierra de San Rafael ranges on the right, and the Monica and Santa Inez ranges on the left. Still further north are the San Benito Mountains, paralleling the San Juan River, along whose magnificent valley the railroad runs until it reaches Castroville on the coast, just above Monterey. This latter place is one of very great attractiveness, not only for its historical associations, as the seat of Spanish Government in California until 1847, but also because it is the best specimen of the old-time adobe cities which now remains, as well as the location of one of the most exquisite gardens and charming hotels that is to be found either in or out of America. The Hotel del Monte is a building of much beauty in itself, but the very large grounds which surround it have been cultivated until they are a veritable paradise of noble oaks, rich green lawns, and bewildering flower-beds, dimpled with every hue that nature is capable of painting. The old town is a ghost of antiquity, the skeleton of a remote past, whose bony fingers point backward, as if beckoning beseechingly to the long ago. There is the mission house, rickety and tattered, raising its palsied head barely above the adobe walls which once served so well to defend it against enemies. But the wall, very thick though it was, has been badly breached by the catapults of time, and having done faithful guard-duty in the early days, it is now like the grave of a hero, which has become a shrine, to which many are drawn by curiosity as well as by respect.
From Monterey northward the road runs through the incomparably beautiful and fertile Santa Clara Valley, a region where nature is always in good humor, and so fat that every time she laughs she shakes out a harvest. Towards the left spreads away a waving plain in richest cultivation, while on the right towers the Coast range of mountains, whose summits, bathed perpetually in a clear atmosphere, look in the distance like a vast ridge of sapphires supporting the sky.