o watch the procession of nature
here from late November or December to April. It is a land of delicate
and brilliant wild flowers, of blooming shrubs, strange in form and
wonderful in color. Before the annual rains the land lies in a sort of
swoon in a golden haze; the slopes and plains are bare, the hills yellow
with ripe wild-oats or ashy gray with sage, the sea-breeze is weak, the
air grows drier, the sun hot, the shade cool. Then one day light clouds
stream up from the south-west, and there is a gentle rain. When the sun
comes out again its rays are milder, the land is refreshed and
brightened, and almost immediately a greenish tinge appears on plain and
hill-side. At intervals the rain continues, daily the landscape is
greener in infinite variety of shades, which seem to sweep over the
hills in waves of color. Upon this carpet of green by February nature
begins to weave an embroidery of wild flowers, white, lavender, golden,
pink, indigo, scarlet, changing day by day and every day more brilliant,
and spreading from patches into great fields until dale and hill and
table-land are overspread with a refinement and glory of color that
would be the despair of the carpet-weavers of Daghestan.

This, with the scent of orange groves and tea-roses, with cool nights,
snow in sight on the high mountains, an occasional day of rain, days of
bright sunshine, when an overcoat is needed in driving, must suffice
the sojourner for winter. He will be humiliated that he is more
sensitive to cold than the heliotrope or the violet, but he must bear
it. If he is looking for malaria, he must go to some other winter
resort. If he wants a "norther" continuing for days, he must move on. If
he is accustomed to various insect pests, he will miss them here. If
there comes a day warmer than usual, it will not be damp or soggy. So
far as nature is concerned there is very little to grumble at, and one
resource of the traveller is therefore taken away.

But is it interesting? What is there to do? It must be confessed that
there is a sort of monotony in the scenery as there is in the climate.
There is, to be sure, great variety in a way between coast and mountain,
as, for instance, between Santa Barbara and Pasadena, and if the tourist
will make a business of exploring the valleys and uplands and canons
little visited, he will not complain of monotony; but the artist and the
photographer find the same elements repeated in little varying
combinatio