In the Santa Clara. 275 



lar appearance. When the phenomenon first caught my attention I thought 

 that the trees in question had been set equidistant by hand. It is difficult 

 to impress the reader with a notion of the extreme regularity which is dis- 

 played in the distribution of the thin, small woods of California. When they 

 were planted nature must have been just fresh from a recitation in geome- 

 try. At intervals you will behold, from the car window, as you pass along, 

 an area of perhaps a half mile in extent where the live oaks, rising above the 

 pasture lands, have almost precisely the appearance of an old orchard in 

 which the trees have risen to rather gigantic proportions. In the California 

 landscapes, at least in all of those before you reach the real forests of the 

 mountains, you never see a clump of trees crowded together or scattered at 

 the capricious intervals which characterize such growths in our States of the 

 Mississippi valley. 



I have still time, before we reach Monterey, to speak of another general 

 feature of the California method as it relates to trees. The people of these 

 valleys have done admirably in the matter of bordering their highways- 

 Rarely will you find a road in a well settled district without its two rows of 

 trees. These are already well grown, and as you bowl along you are com- 

 forted by having on either hand a long line of well developed trunks and 

 branches. For this admirable purpose the Californians have chosen two 

 kinds of trees. These are the pepper tree and the eucalyptus, both ever- 

 green and beautiful in form. The pepper tree is a daisy in its way, having 

 the general features of a willow as to its trunk, and a cypress as to its top. 

 The foliage is fine, and depends from the branches most gracefully. One of 

 the greatest merits of the tree is found in the wax-like or varnish-like finish 

 of the small, bright leaves. It is to this circumstance that it owes its power 

 of shedding the dust. Your dust, of what sort soever, finds a difficult lodg- 

 ment in this dark-green top. Great clouds of that fine sand and pulverized 

 soil, blown up by the wind and driven against these long rows of pepper 

 trees, go over them and through them, and leave them clean and bright^ 

 Very diflerent is the eucalyptus. This is a tall and aspiring tree, tapering 

 as it rises, like the Lombardy poplar. The body has something of the ap- 

 pearance of a sycamore as to its color, though not so white; and the cinna- 

 mon-like bark on the lower parts curls up from the trunk or falls away. The 

 eucalyptus is a rapid grower. I believe that it outgrows any other tree with 

 which I am acquainted, unless it should be the Japanese Pawlonia tmperi- 

 alis. At the age of ten years the eucalyptus is already a fine tree, eighteen 

 inches in diameter, and from sixty to eighty feet high. The planting of these 

 highway-border trees is going on everywhere in the valleys of California. It 

 is an admirable enterprise, and the spirit that begat and promotes it is worthy 

 of all praise. 



Before reaching the old town of Monterey you skirt the bay of the same 

 name, leaving it on the right. The town itself stands at the bottom of the 

 haven. It is by no means a large or commodious body of water, and I 

 should think that its wide mouth, open oceanward, would swallow a pretty 



