er eleven thousand feet above the sea. Southward of
this, running down into San Diego County, is the San Jacinto range, also
snow-clad; and eastward the land falls rapidly away into the Salt Desert
of the Colorado, in which is a depression about three hundred feet below
the Pacific.

[Illustration]

The Point Arguilles, which is above Point Conception, by the aid of the
outlying islands, deflects the cold current from the north off the coast
of Southern California, and the mountain ranges from Point Conception
east divide the State of California into two climatic regions, the
southern having more warmth, less rain and fog, milder winds, and less
variation of daily temperature than the climate of Central California to
the north.[A] Other striking climatic conditions are produced by the
daily interaction of the Pacific Ocean and the Colorado Desert,
infinitely diversified in minor particulars by the exceedingly broken
character of the region--a jumble of bare mountains, fruitful
foot-hills, and rich valleys. It would be only from a balloon that one
could get an adequate idea of this strange land.

[Footnote A: For these and other observations upon physical and climatic
conditions I am wholly indebted to Dr. P. C. Remondino and Mr. T. S. Van
Dyke, of San Diego, both scientific and competent authorities.]

The United States has here, then, a unique corner of the earth, without
its like in its own vast territory, and unparalleled, so far as I know,
in the world. Shut off from sympathy with external conditions by the
giant mountain ranges and the desert wastes, it has its own climate
unaffected by cosmic changes. Except a tidal wave from Japan, nothing
would seem to be able to affect or disturb it. The whole of Italy feels
more or less the climatic variations of the rest of Europe. All our
Atlantic coast, all our interior basin from Texas to Manitoba, is in
climatic sympathy. Here is a region larger than New England which
manufactures its own weather and refuses to import any other.

[Illustration]

With considerable varieties of temperature according to elevation or
protection from the ocean breeze, its climate is nearly, on the whole,
as agreeable as that of the Hawaiian Islands, though pitched in a lower
key, and with greater variations between day and night. The key to its
peculiarity, aside from its southern exposure, is the Colorado Desert.
That desert, waterless and treeless, is cool at night and intolerably
hot