Page:A La California.djvu/225

Rh are in truth only "doing" California, know not what a treat they are missing in passing by Mount St. Helena without ascending it. The mountain rises only 4,345 feet above the sea, its altitude being really less than that of Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, but it so far overtops the surrounding hills and lesser mountains, that the view from its summit is grand and extended beyond the power of words to depict. From the broad Pacific on the west, to the snow-capped Sierra Nevada, which skirts the whole eastern horizon, and from San Francisco and the mountains of San Mateo, Alameda, and Santa Clara in the south, to the Black Buttes of Marysville and the valley of Russian River, the redwood forests of Mendocino and Sonoma, and the high mountain country of the Lakes on the northeast, northwest and north, the view is unbroken and uninterrupted, save by the isolated peaks of Mount Diablo, Tamalpais, and a few lesser landmarks of the Golden Land. The view from the summit of Tamalpais is worth a journey from Europe to behold—that from St. Helena is worth a hundred of it. To the stranger there is enchantment in the scene; to the old Californian, history, romance, suggestive memories, in every feature of the scene. Look over there to the eastward beyond the intervening coast-range foot-hills into the valley of the Sacramento! Who, standing here and looking down for the first time upon that broad, straw-colored valley, dry as the dust of the highway, and glimmering in the hot sunshine, would believe that a few years since it was one wide sea of turbid waters, forty miles from