h I had seen the romance growing day by day in the
Berkeley in New York.

The undoubted scene of the loves of Ramona and Alessandro is the Comulos
rancho, on the railway from Newhall to Santa Paula, the route that one
takes now (unless he wants to have a lifelong remembrance of the ground
swells of the Pacific in an uneasy little steamer) to go from Los Angeles
to Santa Barbara. It is almost the only one remaining of the
old-fashioned Spanish haciendas, where the old administration prevails.
The new railway passes it now, and the hospitable owners have been
obliged to yield to the public curiosity and provide entertainment for a
continual stream of visitors. The place is so perfectly described in
"Ramona" that I do not need to draw it over again, and I violate no
confidence and only certify to the extraordinary powers of delineation of
the novelist, when I say that she only spent a few hours there,--not a
quarter of the time we spent in identifying her picture. We knew the
situation before the train stopped by the crosses erected on the
conspicuous peaks of the serrated ashy--or shall I say purple--hills that
enfold the fertile valley. It is a great domain, watered by a swift
river, and sheltered by wonderfully picturesque mountains. The house is
strictly in the old Spanish style, of one story about a large court, with
flowers and a fountain, in which are the most noisy if not musical frogs
in the world, and all the interior rooms opening upon a gallery. The real
front is towards the garden, and here at the end of the gallery is the
elevated room where Father Salvierderra slept when he passed a night at
the hacienda,--a pretty room which has a case of Spanish books, mostly
religious and legal, and some quaint and cheap holy pictures. We had a
letter to Signora Del Valle, the mistress, and were welcomed with a sort
of formal extension of hospitality that put us back into the courtly
manners of a hundred years ago. The Signora, who is in no sense the
original of the mistress whom "H. H." describes, is a widow now for seven
years, and is the vigilant administrator of all her large domain, of the
stock, the grazing lands, the vineyard, the sheep ranch, and all the
people. Rising very early in the morning, she visits every department,
and no detail is too minute to escape her inspection, and no one in the
great household but feels her authority.

It was a very lovely day on the 17th of March (indeed, I suppose it had
been p