unhealtliy. The climate of California is reliable;
though her women may be fickle, her winds are not.
Rain she sends at rain-time, and this having passed
prayers are of no avail.
Thus along the centuries seasons come and go, while over all diurnally sweeps the half-tropic sun. In the broad arch float flocks of light clouds, or spread out in long fleecy folds between which at night silently sails the melancholy moon. From the sparkling white on alpine domes the gray and golden sunlight smiles across the amphitheatre, enfolds the lustrous clouds which send shadows crawling along the mountain- side and over the plains, nods with its earliest rays to sleepy ocean, dances back from sea to snow-peak; then, palpitating in purple, it rises from violet-banks and grizzly hills, and mingles with the russet haze of the horizon, or creeps in tenderer tones through evanescent mists into deep canons and murky ravines, and glows warm and tremulous over the sombre shades below.
Before descending to the more practical affairs of life in this region, I might point you out some of the so-called wonders of the arena-rim ; though I may say to jou that long since I arrived at the conclusion that there is in heaven or earth no one thing more wonderful than another. With whatsoever we are un- familiar, that to us is wonderful when seen ; wonder is but the exclamation of ignorance.
Yonder at the northern end, lonely and white, stands Mount Shasta, girdled by lesser volcanic peaks that look like pigmies beside the monarch of the north which lifts its front so proudly above the solemn forest- sea that beats in mournful monotones upon its base. To one not cradled amid such sio-hts its awful orandeur beside our puny life is crushing. Standing in the clear atmosphere, unrivalled and apart, like Orion it catches from over the eastern ridofe the first ravs of morninof, and flashes them far down the vista; while at evening
