From Yuma to Los Angeles. 253 



dark-green foliage, and the contrast in color between its leaf and its fruit is 

 restful to the eye, pleasing to the taste. But of this mu'^h more hereafter. 

 At the little town of Pomoni, with her mythological na ne and p'easant 

 gardens, the evidences of fruitfalness were still more abundant. The 

 orchards grow almost continuously on either hand. They stretch away to 

 still greater distances. They fl.ish up green and luxuriant again and again 

 as the delighted excursionists sweep on through their first surprises at the 

 spectacle of green leaves and ripening fruits in the middle month of winter. 



We were now in the valley of San G ibriel, an 1 were nearing the^ 

 metropolis of Southern California. The railway here bends to the west- 

 ward, as though it would plunge down to the Pacific. In the mid-afternoon 

 of this 18th of January, as we whirl on through what is now an almost con- 

 tinuous grove of orange trees, alternatir\g with orchards of apricots, peaches 

 and prunes, instinct touches our elbow and says, "City!" It is a great 

 distance back to the last one! But yonder are the spires of another; not 

 many spires, but many roofs, and even the beginning of noise on the streets. 

 Here, then, we are at the station of La Ciudad de la Reina de Los Angeles, 

 the City of the Queen (f Angels, or, for short, Los Angeles. Our stay in the 

 western metropolis, however, is to be but brief this afternoon, for we have 

 been invited by the officials of the Southern Pacific Railway to accept the 

 courtesy of a free excursion down to the town of Santa Ana, and the citi- 

 zens of that place have added their invitation. It is thirty-eight miles 

 distant, a little to the east of south. And here we go. 



It gives one a shudder, however, to be transferred from the luxurious cush- 

 ions of the Pullman to these bare and ratthng day-coaches; and, by the way, 

 what are these black-looking spots on the floor between the seats f But the ride 

 is a joyous one. You have to sit close together ; ladies or no ladies, it is all the 

 same. There is none of the stately distance and cold disdain of the sleeping- 

 coach, where everybody has a square yard to himself ; so we are happy on the 

 way. And here is the town of Anaheim ; and three or four miles further on is 

 the pretty Santa Ana herself. We can not see the lady, hoxever, to-night ; she 

 has retired. The excursionists are quartered on the town, and many of 

 them in the Hotel Brunswick. With the morning light they peeji out 

 of their windows, and, lo ! a vision is there— yards, not green, indeed, but full 

 of flowers, roses blooming, calla hlies standing with their big cups open to 

 the sunshine, and orange trees o;i every hand. Under those trees what do 

 you see? It is the scattered golden fruit. January and February are the 

 months of the ripening of the orange. Recently there has been a wind, a 

 high wind, a dreadful wind, in all California. Much fruit is shaken down, 

 but much more hangs on the bough. The orange stem, by the way, is, 

 fortunately, the toughest stem in nature ; you may pull and pull to no pur- 

 pose. It even resists your knife-blade as though it were of whalebone. 

 Nevertheless, this ill-omened wind twisted off much fruit, and there it lies. 

 Never the like of that did you see before, my friends. Those oranges lying 

 there under the trees on every hand are as thickly strewn and as little 



