PREFACE 



IT will probably be ver>' difficult to find any one in 

 x\merica or England, fond of true manly sports, 

 vrho has not heard of the leaping tuna and its 

 home, the Channel Islands of the Pacific Coast, which, 

 like chalices of emeralds, are strung along the coast 

 of CaUfomia approximately from latitude 31° to 35°. 

 The region corresponds to that of the ^Mediterranean 

 — Southern France, Spain, Italy, and Cairo — and to 

 Charleston and Northern Florida on the Atlantic 

 Coast. It has all the appearance, with its palms and 

 semitropic verdure, of the tropics, yet it has not a trop- 

 ical climate, the winters being cool and bracing, and 

 the summers cooler than any seashore region on the 

 Atlantic Coast south of Xova Scotia. 



What Aladeira, the Ri^'iera, and the Azores are to 

 Europe, the Channel Islands of CaUfomia have become 

 to the United States, a great national playground \as- 

 ited annually by an army of pleasure-seekers and trav- 

 ellers not only from this countr}% but from all over the 

 world — a contingent which will be augmented many 

 fold as years go by, when the Isthmus Canal is opened, 

 and yachts and other vessels can easily reach this 

 coast. 



Nowhere, so far as knowm, at least not within two 

 and a half hours from a city of three hundred and fifty 

 thousand inhabitants, such as Los Angeles, can be 

 foimd islands with a semitropic yet bracing climate. 



