n great swell, and send the waters, churned
into spray and foam, into the air with a thousand hues in the sun. The
shock of these sharp collisions mingles with the heavy ocean boom.
Cypress Point is one of the most conspicuous of these projections, and
its strange trees creep out upon the ragged ledges almost to the water's
edge. These cypresses are quite as instinct with individual life and
quite as fantastic as any that Dore drew for his "Inferno." They are as
gnarled and twisted as olive-trees two centuries old, but their
attitudes seem not only to show struggle with the elements, but agony in
that struggle. The agony may be that of torture in the tempest, or of
some fabled creatures fleeing and pursued, stretching out their long
arms in terror, and fixed in that writhing fear. They are creatures of
the sea quite as much as of the land, and they give to this lovely coast
a strange charm and fascination.

CHAPTER, XVI.

FASCINATIONS OF THE DESERT.--THE LAGUNA PUEBLO.

The traveller to California by the Santa Fe route comes into the arid
regions gradually, and finds each day a variety of objects of interest
that upsets his conception of a monotonous desert land. If he chooses to
break the continental journey midway, he can turn aside at Las Vegas to
the Hot Springs. Here, at the head of a picturesque valley, is the
Montezuma Hotel, a luxurious and handsome house, 6767 feet above
sea-level, a great surprise in the midst of the broken and somewhat
savage New Mexican scenery. The low hills covered with pines and pinons,
the romantic glens, and the wide views from the elevations about the
hotel, make it an attractive place; and a great deal has been done, in
the erection of bath-houses, ornamental gardening, and the grading of
roads and walks, to make it a comfortable place. The latitude and the
dryness of the atmosphere insure for the traveller from the North in our
winter an agreeable reception, and the elevation makes the spot in the
summer a desirable resort from Southern heat. It is a sanitarium as well
as a pleasure resort. The Hot Springs have much the same character as
the Toeplitz waters in Bohemia, and the saturated earth--the
_Muetterlager_--furnishes the curative "mud baths" which are enjoyed at
Marienbad and Carlsbad. The union of the climate, which is so favorable
in diseases of the respiratory organs, with the waters, which do so much
for rheumatic sufferers, gives a distinction to Las Vegas Hot Sp