d the fields, added new streets, and sold at
ever-increasing prices the villa and home sites. The merchant and the
provision dealer do well, but after all, their territory is the city
itself. There is no great hinterland with which to deal. It is not due
to manufacturing interests, for as yet these have been but little
developed. It must be, as a lady said to me, "the sale of the climate,"
an unfailing stock of sunshine that has made Los Angeles the happy,
growing, extremely prosperous city that it is.

One may choose from many hotels one's hostel, or one may live in a
beautiful apartment, cook one's own breakfast of bacon and eggs, and
sally forth to any one of a dozen cafeterias for luncheon and dinner. We
found the Hotel Leighton on West Lake Park eminently satisfactory; a
spacious, quiet, well managed establishment with the spaces of the park
before it and the cars within three minutes' walk.

From Los Angeles we drove through the San Gabriel Valley, dominated by
snow covered Mount San Antonio, to Long Beach. The valley is a panorama
of new suburban towns, market gardens, and walnut groves. Long Beach is
a mixture of Coney Island, Atlantic City, and a solid, substantial
inland town. Its public buildings are very fine, its churches being
particularly handsome. Its big Hotel Virginia reminds one of the
handsome hotels along the boardwalk at Atlantic City, and its long
arcade of amusement halls, cheap jewelry shops, and other booths for
seaside trinkets is like Coney Island. This stretch of amusement halls
and shops lies along the seashore at a lower level than the city proper,
and does not impart its character to the rest of the town. It was at
Long Beach that I first heard a night-singing bird, somewhat like the
nightingale. The little creature sang gaily all night long in the park
opposite our hotel. Long Beach and San Pedro are both sailing points for
Santa Catalina Island, twenty-five miles away, whose purple-grey heights
can be dimly seen across the water. The trip to Catalina is in rather
small boats, and is likely to be somewhat trying; but the trials of the
two or three hours of voyage are amply awarded by the Island itself.

[Illustration: 1. Harbor, Catalina Island. 2. Seals on Rocks at Catalina
Island. 3. Catalina Island. 4. Home of Owner of Catalina Island.]

Santa Catalina has a curving, sickle-shaped harbor around which cluster
the hotels and boarding houses which make the home of the summer guests.
T