Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/84

74 point of view, the direction, and the character of the landscape are continually changing. With no deep cuts, no tunnels, facing first one and then the other and finally all the points of the compass, sweeping around spurs, with distant views of land and sea, and near views of great beauty; then facing the steep sides of the mountain, its geology and flora affording interesting pictures; then over trestles with the branches of the bay, redwood, madrono, oak, and manzanita just out of reach—all these form beauties and attractions possessed by no other road known to the writer. A faint idea of the appearance of the road and of the scenery may be had from the appended photographs.

-—The advantages of Mount Tamalpais as a meteorological station have long been recognized, and



many efforts have been made to utilize them. It frequently projects many hundreds of feet above fogs which cover the adjacent shores, and during these periods one can look out upon an ocean of rolling, fleecy clouds which break upon the mountains around its base and visible from its summit. This freedom from obscuring conditions gives an opportunity to more freely observe and study meteorological phenomena, and caused the Weather Bureau to make a series of preliminary observations in 1897, and, these resulting favorably, a fully equipped permanent station was subsequently built. The results have fully equaled expectations. The advantages of the location may be briefly summarized as follows:

1. It is close to the coast line, and is so elevated that it is