t on the
north stretch away ridges of forest land, the outposts of the
great Northern woods of Sequoia sempervirens. This mountain and the
mountainous country to the south bring the real forest closer to San
Francisco than to any other American city. Within the last few years men
have killed deer on the slopes of Tamalpais and looked down to see the
cable cars crawling up the hills of San Francisco to the south. In
the suburbs coyotes still stole in and robbed hen roosts by night. The
people lived much out of doors. There is no time of the year, except
a short part of the rainy season, when the weather keeps one from the
fields. The slopes of Tamalpais are crowded with little villas dotted
through the woods, and these minor estates run far up into the redwood
country. The deep coves of Belvidere, sheltered by the wind from
Tamalpais, held a colony of "arks" or houseboats, where people lived in
the rather disagreeable summer months, coming over to business every day
by ferry. Everything there invites out of doors.

The climate of California is peculiar; it is hard to give an impression
of it. In the region about San Francisco, all the forces of nature work
on their own laws. There is no thunder and lightning; there is no snow,
except a flurry once in five or six years; there are perhaps half a
dozen nights in the winter when the thermometer drops low enough so that
in the morning there is a little film of ice on exposed water. Neither
is there any hot weather. Yet most Easterners remaining in San Francisco
for a few days remember that they were always chilly.

For the Gate is a big funnel, drawing in the winds and the mists
which cool off the great, hot interior valleys of the San Joaquin and
Sacramento. So the west wind blows steadily ten months of the year; and
almost all the mornings are foggy. This keeps the temperature steady
at about 55 degrees--a little cool for the comfort of an unacclimated
person, especially indoors. Californians, used to it, hardly ever think
of making fires in their houses except in a few days of the winter
season, and then they rely mainly upon fireplaces. This is like the
custom of the Venetians and the Florentines.

Give an Easterner six months of it, however, and he, too, learns to
exist without chill in a steady temperature a little lower than that to
which he was accustomed at home. After that one goes about with perfect
indifference to the temperature. Summer and winter, San Francisc