ter uncommonly fertile, being
a mixture of loam, disintegrated granite, and decomposed shells, and
especially adapted to flowers, rare tropical trees, fruits, and
flowering shrubs of all countries.

The development is on the South Beach, which was in January, 1887,
nothing but a waste of sand and chaparral. I doubt if the world can show
a like transformation in so short a time. I saw it in February of that
year, when all the beauty, except that of ocean, sky, and atmosphere,
was still to be imagined. It is now as if the wand of the magician had
touched it. In the first place, abundance of water was brought over by a
submarine conduit, and later from the extraordinary Coronado Springs
(excellent soft water for drinking and bathing, and with a recognized
medicinal value), and with these streams the beach began to bloom like a
tropical garden. Tens of thousands of trees have attained a remarkable
growth in three years. The nursery is one of the most interesting
botanical and flower gardens in the country; palms and hedges of
Monterey cypress and marguerites line the avenues. There are parks and
gardens of rarest flowers and shrubs, whose brilliant color produces the
same excitement in the mind as strains of martial music. A railway
traverses the beach for a mile from the ferry to the hotel. There are
hundreds of cottages with their gardens scattered over the surface;
there is a race-track, a museum, an ostrich farm, a labyrinth, good
roads for driving, and a dozen other attractions for the idle or the
inquisitive.

[Illustration: HOTEL DEL CORONADO.]

The hotel stands upon the south front of the beach and near the sea,
above which it is sufficiently elevated to give a fine prospect. The
sound of the beating surf is perpetual there. At low tide there is a
splendid driving beach miles in extent, and though the slope is abrupt,
the opportunity for bathing is good, with a little care in regard to the
undertow. But there is a safe natatorium on the harbor side close to the
hotel. The stranger, when he first comes upon this novel hotel and this
marvellous scene of natural and created beauty, is apt to exhaust his
superlatives. I hesitate to attempt to describe this hotel--this airy
and picturesque and half-bizarre wooden creation of the architect.
Taking it and its situation together, I know nothing else in the world
with which to compare it, and I have never seen any other which so
surprised at first, that so improved on a t