Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/368

348 Not to make a great deal of this bareness and dryness would be to neglect a most essential feature. The annual rains begin in December, January, or February, and continue till June, diminishing in May, which is sometimes itself a dry month. In the autumn the leaves fall—what comparatively few there are to fall—as elsewhere, and are not renewed. "But you set up to be a land of perpetual summer, you know," one argues with the Californian, in the first state of surprise.

"So we are," he replies; "but that does not necessarily mean perpetual verdure. Look at the thermometer! look at the fertility of the land! You have but to run water on it by irrigation, and it will do whatever you please. Contrast this brown season with your own white one. The land is dry and easy to get about on, and the sky above is uniformly pleasant. Do you prefer your fields of sheeted snow, under the howling blasts? your quagmires of mud and slush, alternately freezing and thawing?" "Very true," I admit, accepting this different point of view.

Then, perhaps, by way of finishing touch, he adds, rising to a dignity well justified by the facts, "California sets up to be a land of relations, commercial, agricultural, mineral, and social, which have made it a power in the world. It has revolutionized values, struck the key-note of new social conditions, and begun a new commercial era. California has arrived at a point where she takes her place in the Union on the ordinary terms. We no longer depend upon a repute for astounding beauties and eccentricities—though of these, too, there is no lack, as you will find."