ely) of golden foam-topped combers; a State that
looks up one clear and unimpeded waterway to the evasive North Pole, and
down another clear and unimpeded waterway to the elusive South Pole and
across a third clear and unimpeded water way straight to the magical,
mystical, mysterious Orient. This sense of amplitude gives the Native
Son an air of superiority... Yes, you're quite right, it has a touch of
superciliousness--very difficult to understand and much more
difficult to endure when you haven't seen California; but completely
understandable and endurable when you have.

--Californiacs read every word, Easterners skip this paragraph--

Man helped nature to place Italy, Spain, Japan among the wonder regions
of the world; but nature placed California there without assistance
from anybody. I do not refer alone to the scenery of California which is
duplicated in no other spot of the sidereal system; nor to the climate
which matches it; nor to its super-mundane fertility, nor to its
super-solar fecundity. The railroad folder with its voluble vocabulary
has already beaten me to it. I do not refer solely to that rich
yellow-and-violet, springtime bourgeoning which turns California into
one huge Botticelli background of flower colors and sheens. I do not
refer to that heavy purple-and-gold, autumn fruitage, which changes it
to a theme for Titian and Veronese. I am thinking particularly of
those surprising phenomena left over from pre-historic eras; the
"big" trees--the sequoia gigantea, which really belong to the early
fairy-tales of H. G. Wells, and to those other trees, not so big
but still giants--the sequoia sempivirens or redwoods, which make of
California forests black-and-silver compositions of filmy fluttering
light and solid bedded shade. I am thinking also of that patch of
pre-historic cypresses in Monterey. These differ from the straight,
symmetrical classic redwoods as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the
Apollo. Monstrous, contorted shapes--those Monterey cypresses look
like creatures born underground, who, at the price of almost unbearable
torture, have torn through the earth's crust, thrusting and twisting
themselves airward. I refer even to that astonishing detail in the
general Californian sulphitism, the seals which frequent beach rocks
close to the shore, a short car ride from the heart of a city as big as
San Francisco.

--and this--

California, because of rich gold deposits, and a richer golden,
suns