on on first
beholding it from the northern heights, aside from its associations of
romance and poetry, can be repeated in our own land by whoever will
cross the burning desert of Colorado, or the savage wastes of the Mojave
wilderness of stone and sage-brush, and come suddenly, as he must come
by train, into the bloom of Southern California. Let us study a little
the physical conditions.

The bay of San Diego is about three hundred miles east of San Francisco.
The coast line runs south-east, but at Point Conception it turns sharply
east, and then curves south-easterly about two hundred and fifty miles
to the Mexican coast boundary, the extreme south-west limits of the
United States, a few miles below San Diego. This coast, defined by these
two limits, has a southern exposure on the sunniest of oceans. Off this
coast, south of Point Conception, lies a chain of islands, curving in
position in conformity with the shore, at a distance of twenty to
seventy miles from the main-land. These islands are San Miguel, Santa
Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, Santa Barbara, San Nicolas, Santa Catalina,
San Clemente, and Los Coronados, which lie in Mexican waters. Between
this chain of islands and the main-land is Santa Barbara Channel,
flowing northward. The great ocean current from the north flows past
Point Conception like a mill-race, and makes a suction, or a sort of
eddy. It approaches nearer the coast in Lower California, where the
return current, which is much warmer, flows northward and westward
along the curving shore. The Santa Barbara Channel, which may be called
an arm of the Pacific, flows by many a bold point and lovely bay, like
those of San Pedro, Redondo, and Santa Monica; but it has no secure
harbor, except the magnificent and unique bay of San Diego.

[Illustration: MOJAVE DESERT.]

The southern and western boundary of Southern California is this mild
Pacific sea, studded with rocky and picturesque islands. The northern
boundary of this region is ranges of lofty mountains, from five thousand
to eleven thousand feet in height, some of them always snow-clad, which
run eastward from Point Conception nearly to the Colorado Desert. They
are parts of the Sierra Nevada range, but they take various names,
Santa Ynes, San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and they are spoken of all
together as the Sierra Madre. In the San Gabriel group, "Old Baldy"
lifts its snow-peak over nine thousand feet, while the San Bernardino
"Grayback" rises ov