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 36 sun. The ocean mists rolling in through the Golden Gate half hid the towns which skirt the bay. The hills of Alameda, high and etherealized, rested like great straw-colored and purple clouds against the horizon; while Mount Diablo, monarch of the inland country, reared his dark head into the blue sky, above the mists and the lower mountains, like some great rocky island, seen from the shores of an unknown sea. Southward, between the hills of San Mateo and the Sierra Morena, stretching away for miles toward the redwood-covered heights of Santa Clara, lay the ever-beautiful Cañada del Reymundo. Live-oak groves are scattered through it, and near its centre rests a quiet little lake, with an island of green tules in the middle. All around the sides of the valley, among the groves in the little cañons, nestle quiet farm-houses, and in the centre, upon an elevated mesa, stands the last relic of the old semi-feudal Spanish-American times. This is an adobe house of one story, with broad veranda, formed by the wide roof being carried out all around. No garden, no grain-fields, not a single fruit-tree flourishes near it. The ranchero who built it and dwelt here among his herds, and paid tribute to the Holy Mother Church and the Most Catholic monarch, Don Carlos "of Spain, and India King," some eighty years ago, thought the country capable of no higher improvement, and dreamed not of the paradise it was to become when he and his should give place to the stranger who dwelt beyond the great Sierra Nevada somewhere. He built no roads, planted no trees, and left behind only