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176 covers all the soil and leaves no room for vegetation. All the lower valley lands are dotted with huge oaks, with pensile limbs like trailing grape-vines, which fairly sweep the ground, and often loaded with greenish-gray moss, which gives the landscape such an aspect as that of the lowland country of Texas and Louisiana, where the Creole-moss abounds. Higher up, the pines and redwoods bristle on every height, and fill every cañon, imparting a sombre grandeur to the scene. Westward, a range of foot-hills, densely covered with oak, manzanita, and the peerless madrono, skirt the valley; and back of them, farther towards the ocean, towers a higher mountain range, breaking the sea breeze, and shielding the valley from the chill ocean fogs, the terror of visitors to San Francisco. Before us, at the foot of a conical hill, covered with grapevines, flowering shrubs and magueys (the "century plant" of Eastern hot-houses), and surmounted with an oriental summer-house, is the plain hotel building; and running around the grand rise which encircles "Mount Lincoln," is a row of neat cottages, each with its large yard filled with flowers and thrifty-growing palm-trees in front. Over to the southeast of the hotel stands a large structure, from the doors and windows of which steam is escaping. This is the great swimming-bath house. From many points along the level ground in that direction steam rises from the black earth, and a small creek of hot water, gathered from many sources, runs away through a deep, wide ditch. Mud baths, steam baths, shower baths, sulphur baths, and every kind of bath, in fact,