"Eight years ago," was the reply, "this elevation on which we stand was a heap of yellow sand, like many unconverted mountains that we see about us; now it has been transformed into a dozen miles of finished roads and extensive gardens enclosing two fine residences."
"Pardon me," I exclaimed, "here are trees thirty feet high."
"All grown in eight years," he answered.
"Still," I again protested, "here are stone walls, and curbed and graded roads."
"All made in eight years," he reiterated.
"But, in addition to this mountain, how about the twenty miles of orange groves surrounding it, the thirty thousand dollar public library of Redlands, and its miles of asphalt streets?"
"All in eight years," he said again, as if, like Poe's raven, he had been taught one refrain.
THE SIERRA MADRE AND THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.
