Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/376

 356 from which his great prototype sailed away to Peru—and swam out half a mile into the bay. It was for refreshment in his troubles, as some say, but, as the general opinion is, with the purpose of suicide. At any rate he was never seen alive again.

The house that was his is notched into the hill-side, in a rolling country, much pleasanter than the plain at Menlo Park. A pretty gorge behind it is dammed to furnish a water-supply. There are gas-works, a bowling-alley, and an elaborate Turkish bath among the out-buildings, and a grange-like barn of solid stone, ivy-grown, which cost $80,000. The immense house is wood, white, in the usual fashion, and, with its numerous stories and windows, is not unlike a large country hotel. A peculiar arrangement and great spaciousness give it a palatial air within. The principal rooms open into one another by glass partitions, which can be rolled away, so that in large gatherings there need be no crowding through doorways. There is an arcade above, around a grand staircase, with tribunes projecting, in which young women in colors, at an evening party, for instance, would look particularly houri-like. What in another house would be the ordinary veranda is here a delightful promenade, glazed in, and provided with easy furniture and a parquetry floor. Behind a row of such main apartments as drawing-room and library comes a parallel row, of which one is a great ball-room, entirely faced with mirrors. Pianos, mantels, and stair-posts are of California laurel—a new industry encouraged by the owner among many others.

We drove from Belmont back through a succession of cup-like dells in the lower mountains, a number of them dammed to form pretty lakes, the sources of supply for the Spring Valley Water Company—a corporation of great prominence at San Francisco. The slopes at first