LiTEEiARY Landmarks on the Pacific Coast 

 The literature of southern California has its own 

 individuality, through having interpreted the dis- 

 tinctive features of that unique locality. It was 

 from her earlier home in the Inyo desert that Mary 

 Austin wrote The Land of Little Rain, and it has 

 been through a long residence in and about Los 

 Angeles that Charles F. Lummis has made himself an 

 authority on the Indians of the Southwest. But it is 

 chiefly tnrough Ramona that the early days in south- 

 ern California are remembered. Fortunately there are 

 some places remaining that not only are connected 

 definitely with the story itself, but, more than that, 

 carry into our own times some of the flavor of the 

 old life of which the story tells. Camulos lies in a 

 fertile valley, through which a branch railway line 

 penetrates the mountains back of Ventura. It was 

 to this rambling adobe casa, true to the old Spanish 

 type, with its courtyard and bells hung in their 

 frame, that Helen Hunt Jackson paid a brief visit 

 in 1884, when eagerly planning her novel; and 

 though legend has gone far beyond the truth in 

 ascribing historical actuality to the characters of 

 the story, the description of Ramona's home was 

 written from the accurately recorded memory of 

 this old rancheria. Throughout the southern coun- 

 try are ancient Indian villages that have furnished 

 yet other scenes for the story; and San Diego points 

 to the old Estudillo estate in Old Town, as the place 

 of Ramona's marriage. 



Very slight at best are the remains that carry 

 down to us the memory of California's colorful 

 youth; but what we have we cherish. For although 

 our coast may, and probably will, later develop new 

 aspects of literary interest, never again will it be 

 isolated. And that is much the same as saying that 

 it will never again be unique. 



REFERENCES 



BEASLEY, T. D. 



1914. A tramp through the Bret Harte country. (Paul 

 Elder & Co., San Francisco), pp. xv-f96, 23 pis., 

 map. 

 DAVIS, C. C, and ALDERSON, W. A. 



1914. The true story of Ramona, (Dodge Publ. Co., New 

 York.) 

 JAMES, G. W. 



1909. Through Ramona's country. (Little, Brown & Co., 

 Boston), pp. xvii+406, pis. 

 OSBOURNE, KATHARINE D. 



1911. Robert Louis Stevenson in California. (A. C. McClurg 

 & Co., Chicago), pp. vii+112. 69 illus. 



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