runs from ocean to ocean and which
is destined to be one of the famous highways of the world.

The Stockton Inn is a beautiful modern hostel, European in plan, with
every convenience, not to say luxury. One should go up on its roof
garden for an afternoon cup of tea just for the pleasure of looking down
on the San Joaquin River, whose headwaters run up into the town. Boats
lie all along the piers, and it looks very like a bit of Holland. I
could have easily believed that I was looking down on an Amsterdam canal
from the roof garden of the Stockton Hotel. All through California, but
more particularly between Monterey and Los Angeles and along the coast,
we had seen workmen tramping from place to place, sometimes alone,
usually in bands of six or seven. They carried their blankets rolled on
their backs, and many of them were clear-eyed, respectable looking men.
We saw one such man in Stockton on his way to take the river boat. He
had his blanket on his back, and he wore a somewhat battered straw hat.
His trousers were ragged, and he looked as if he had tramped many a
weary mile. He was tall and bony, with a sandy beard. I took him to be a
Scot. I was so anxious to help the poor fellow out that I urged T. to
speak to him and offer him a suit of clothes. To our surprise the man
refused them in a very free and easy, genial way. "O, nay, thank you,"
he said, "I'm doin' all right."

[Illustration: 1. Roof Garden, Stockton Hotel. 2. Head of San Joaquin
River, Stockton.]

Stockton is a city with wide streets, an open plaza, and a Courthouse
surrounded by a border of green lawn and palm trees. I saw a turbaned
Hindoo lying asleep under a palm tree in the afternoon sun on the
Courthouse lawn. White men lay asleep near him. It was at Stockton that
we saw our first rodeo or round-up. The rodeo is a part professional and
part amateur Wild-West show. The cowboys wear their gayest shirts, of
red and pink and variegated silks. They wear their handsomest "chaps" or
riding trousers, cut very wide, and made of buckskin or of sheepskin
with the wool side out. They have on their widest-brimmed, highest
crowned sombreros and their most ornately stitched boots. The cowgirls
are in brown or grey velveteen, or perhaps in khaki. They, too, wear
broad-brimmed hats and riding boots with spurs. Some of them wear red
silk handkerchiefs knotted about their necks. We saw such an exhibition
of cattle lassoing and of roping and throwing steers, of rop