First, as to climate. This is the fifth of March; I have been here one week to-day, and every day of the seven has been about alike—dry, sunshiny, only on one or two days cloudy. On some days of the seven I have seen men bathing in the ocean, and the bathers said that the temperature was enjoyable—this in February. I am told that you can bathe in the surf the year round, but never mind what “I am told.”
And in temperature, I believe it to be the most equable climate in the world—but away with “beliefs,” I have a thermometer of my own, and the hotel has one also, but I have watched closely a government, self-recording instrument which is so placed that no ray of the sun nor no reflection can approach it, and the figures, signed by an official of the signal service in the United States army, record something like this for the current week: five A. M., 55 degrees; noon, 68 degrees; five P. M., 64 degrees. The figures quoted, to be exact, are those recorded on February 28; some days since then have been a trifle cooler.
You may suggest: “If there is almost continual sunshine during daylight, and the ground is always covered with grass and wild flowers, it must be very hot and trying in summer.”
Must it? Remember there is a bay on three sides of Coronado, and the Pacific ocean is on the other. But I will ask you to remember nothing. From the compiled records of the United States signal station here, I have “boiled down” a lot of facts and figures into this condensed form, to wit:—in ten years, from 1876 to 1885, both years inclusive, there were only one hundred and twenty days on which the mercury rose higher than 80 degrees. And the summer nights are far more pleasant than those you experience in New York.
What about the winter then? Here is the answer, gathered in the same way from the same official source. There were only ninety-three days in those same ten years upon which the mercury reached as low as 40, and on no day did it remain at 40 for more than two hours.
By comparing, as I did, the United States record of the mean temperature at Coronado for one year with a computation—made in the same year by Dr. Bennett of the mean temperature of the Mediterranean records, I find that the winter temperature of Coronado is 8 degrees higher than the winter temperature of the most favored foreign winter resorts, and the summer temperature 10 degrees lower, thus making an average of 9 degrees in favor of Coronado as an all-year-round resort.
I haven’t the honor of Mr. Douglas Gunn’s acquaintance, but in his interesting pamphlet concerning this region he says: “With scarcely a perceptible difference between summer and winter you wear the same clothing and sleep under the same covering the year round. The average annual rainfall is about ten inches, with an average of thirty-four rainy days in the whole year. And here most of the rain falls at night; there are very few of what Eastern people would call “‘rainy days.’”
My week’s experience agrees with Mr. Gunn’s observations. He says: “Almost every morning, about two hours after sunrise, a gentle sea breeze commences, attaining its maximum velocity between one and three P.M., then decreasing, and changing to a gentle land breeze during the night. The sea breeze increasing as the sun gains its height, modifies the power of its rays, and keeps the skin just comfortably warm. The gentle land breeze at night cools off the heat absorbed during the day, and makes every night refreshing.”
I could go on and quote to the same effect from no less distinguished an authority than the scientist Agassiz, who was in this locality nineteen years ago; also from Dr. Chamberlain in the New York Medical Record, who says “it is the sanitarium of the Military Division for the Pacific,” and from one known to me personally, Dr. Titus Munson Coan, a New York littérateur of reputation, who calls this “the most charming spot on earth;” but I fear that you might make some such remark as a very young clubman did (fifty years ago) on seeing “Hamlet” for the first time. Asked for his opinion, he said: “It’s a very good play, Fred, but too d——d full of quotations.”
The Location.—Coronado Beach proper occupies about one-half of the peninsula that forms the bay of San Diego. It is situated in the extreme southwestern corner of the State, in latitude 32 degrees 42 minutes 37 seconds north, longitude 117 degrees 9 minutes west, and is four hundred and eighty miles southeast from San Francisco. The peculiar shape of this unique peninsula makes it difficult to describe. Beginning as it does, very near the boundary line of Lower California, in Mexico, it reaches away to the westward for miles, until, at a point opposite the present city of San Diego, it forms a conjunction with what seems to have been an island, which, if squared, would measure about a mile and a half on each side. On the northeast and southeast are the slopes and peaks of the Coast Range and Lower California chain of mountains; southward lies the Pacific ocean; on the west is Point Loma, which forms the western boundary of the entrance to the bay, and breaks the force of the winter winds from the Pacific.