Page:A La California.djvu/42

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CHAPTER II.

IN THE MISTS OF THE PACIFIC.

The Crystal Springs.—The Music of the Night.—The California Night-Singer and the Legend of the Easter Eggs.—The Cañada del Reymundo.—Over the Sierra Morena.—Down the Coast.—Pescadero and its Surroundings.—Pigeon Point and the Wrecks.—A shipwrecked Ghost.—The Coast Whalers and their Superstitions.—An Embarcadero on the San Mateo Coast.—Ride to Point Anño Nuevo.

Riding on southward down the valley of San Andreas in the cool, quiet evening, we came to the Crystal Springs, one of the most beautiful of the summer resorts in the vicinity of San Francisco. There is a fine, large hotel, with a broad piazza all around it, just the place to sit and smoke a good cigar, have a quiet talk with your friends, and admire the beauty of the surrounding scenery, brought out in all its loveliness by the full autumn moon which was pouring down its full flood of mellow light upon the scene. The San Mateo Creek runs through a wild, tangled thicket in front of the house; parterres of flowers of every hue, in full bloom, fill the intervening grounds; and on the west the steep mountain sweeps around in a grand curve, forming a magnificent amphitheatre beside which the Coliseum is but the toy playhouse of a child. Away back in

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