While he is discoursing I will be studying the history of the Indian baskets and report later.
CHAPTER VII.
CAMPING ON MOUNT WILSON.
"On every height there lies repose."
At Pasadena the mountain wall which guards the California of the South stands very near and looks down with pride upon the blooming garden below. The mountains which belong especially to Pasadena are but three miles away. Their average height exceeds slightly that of the Mt. Washington range in New Hampshire. The Sierra Madre system, of which they form a part, contains some peaks considerably higher.
Farther to the East, "Old Baldy"—Mt. San Antonio—raises its snowy summit to a height just close enough to ten thousand feet to test the veracity of its admirers. It is about ten miles from Pasadena by the eyes, but would be twenty by the feet, if they could walk an air line.
To the south and east of "Old Baldy" is Mt. San Jacinto, 12,000 feet above the Pacific, upon which it looks, in the far distance.
The majestic mountain wall, almost bending over the homes of Pasadena, with their vines and fig trees, their roses and lilies, their orchards of orange and lemon, and the distant snow-clad peaks glittering in the gentle sunshine, combine to form a perfect picture. There are detailed descriptions from the pens of those who feel an unctuous joy in painting the lily, kalsomining the calla, and adding perfumes to the violet, the rose, and the orange.
The "Pasadena Alps" are so smeared with oleaginous gush that I had conceived against them a sort of antipathy, which was not diminished by their barren, treeless appearance.