Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/456

 436 filled by artesian wells, which flow from iron pipes a few feet above the ground, the water overspreading the top in a thin film, like a globe of glass, reflecting neighboring objects. Such globe-like films, sparkling from a distance, are a frequent item in the prospect. As there has never been any forest, no unsightly stumps indicate recent clearings. The country, in consequence, does not look new. Where settled at all, it has a surprisingly old and civilized air.

The temperature, this late November day—on which there are telegrams in the papers of snow-storms at the North and East—is perfection. It is neither hot nor cold. A sybarite would not alter it. Bees hum in the profuse clusters of heliotrotpe about the porches. A single Jacqueminot rose on a tall stem, a beauty whose sway will not be gainsaid, makes its vivid crimson felt from the greensward a long way off. Among the older estates this is pointed out as the home of "Don Benito," that of "Don Tomas," so and so, the family name being usually American. Audacious in love as in other things, enterprising Americans have married into the Spanish families, both before and since the conquest, and succeeded to their acres. Very few of Spanish stock still retain any property of note.

If there be or ever existed any real earthly Paradise, I think it might bear some such complexion as that of the Sierra Madre Villa, on the first bold rise of the mountains at San Gabriel. I cannot vouch for it as a hotel, for hotel it is, but I vouch for it as a situation. The air was heavy with the fragrance of extensive avenues of limes as I came up to it. The orange-trees were propped up, to prevent their breaking under their weight of fruit. Forty oranges on a single bough! I saw it with my own eyes. Some of the trees, by the freak of a recent