Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/367

 Rh The guide-book promises, "after a few minutes' ride, orchards, vineyards, elegant farm-houses, prospects to charm all who love the beauties of nature." But, really one—rubs his eyes—where are they? The ground is mournfully bare and brown. Hardly a tree or a bush is seen; not a green blade of grass. At length some small trees, a variety of scrub-oaks, at a little distance resembling the olive! Farm-houses are few, and not at all "elegant." The hills are of the color of camel's hide, and not unlike the camel's humps.

At Millbrae, finally, there is a glimpse of the wooden towers, in the American style, of a villa, and a large dairy barn. At Belmont the low hills are close at hand. At Menlo Park a charming flower-bed is cared for, by the track, as at foreign railway-stations. We are in the chosen site for villa residences of the San Francisco millionnaires. The surface is flat, and with its growth of oaks recalls the outskirts of Chicago, as at Hyde Park or Riverside. The valley widens till the hills are distant and veiled in blue, with tawny grain-fields between; but still no verdure! And where are the wild flowers? One hardly expects them now "by the acre and by the square mile," it is true, since it is autumn; but of all the primroses, the larkspur, the lupin, the poppies of tradition, not one! Not a narcissus! not a chrysanthemum! Oh, my predecessors! what shall I think of you?

In the spring the flowers bloom and carpet the earth as grass carpets it elsewhere. Speaking of the spring the eulogists do not say a word too much. But it is my originality to have seen Southern California in the autumn and winter—as it is for seven months of every year, and as it may be, in exceptional seasons, the whole year through.