Francisco. As he walks the streets of the Golden City he sees it still before him, and as he ascends the Sacramento or San Joaquin, it confronts at every turn and bend of the winding stream, every change in his position revealing some new feature in the scene.
When he ascends the Sierra Nevada, on his way to the Yosemite, or climbs farther up to the line of eternal snow, and looks back toward the Pacific, the dark mountain looms up grander and more beautiful than ever, seeming to have increased in size while he has been climbing heavenward, and looming up apparently thousands of feet higher in the blue, hazy atmosphere than when he stood at its base in the valley miles and miles below. Located near the junction of the two great rivers which drain the vast interior basin of California between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, it rises abruptly from the plain to a height of nearly 4,000 feet; and standing isolated and solitary, with no rivals to dwarf it by comparison or detract from the effect of the picture—it is pre-eminently the great central feature of the landscape, travel which way you may. Placed by the side of Mount Shasta, or the high peaks of the Sierra, Mount Diablo would sink into insignificance, but standing alone in solitary grandeur, he is monarch of the land. No other mountain peak in America, perhaps in the world, commands a view of such wide extent of country and so wonderful and varied scenery; and he who has not ascended to its summit, certainly has not seen and can form no clear idea of California.
Old Californians of Spanish-American origin will
