JET. 74.] TO J. D. HOOKER. 767 



LATHBOP, CALIFORNIA, May 1, 1885. 



We have only this morning left Rancho Chico and 

 have set our faces eastward. Waiting for our train I 

 improve the rare bit of leisure to write a line. 



First of all, we are both well. No cough, however 

 obstinate, could abide this charming climate. And 

 having no excuse for further stay we enter upon the 

 " beginning of the end " of a holiday which now only 

 lacks ten days of three months. What a pity to turn 

 our backs on all the fruits we see growing around us, 

 having enjoyed only the cherries, which are just coming 

 in. Well, we have a basket of them, as big as plums, 

 and so good ! to solace the first days of the desert part 

 of our journey. We shall have desert enough on the 

 way home, as we cross Arizona and New Mexico by 

 the Atlantic and Pacific railway, through the north- 

 ern part of those Territories (having come out by the 

 southern), a country quite new to us. How often we 

 have wished for you and Lady Hooker ! 



When and whence did I write you last ? I think 

 from Los Angeles and before our trip to San Diego. 



Instead of a short journey by sea (which my wife 

 detests) we made a long circumbendibus by rail to the 

 southernmost town in California ; declined an invitation 

 to go over the border into Mexican California ; was, in 

 fact, too unwell to do anything in the field, and so, 

 finding the coast too cool and damp, returned, stop- 

 ping two nights with Parish and wife, at their little 

 ranch at San Bernardino, in a dry and warm region, 

 a charming valley girt with high mountains, on the 

 eastern side still snow-topped, indeed they are so 

 most of the summer. Back thence to Los Angeles 

 we soon went, down to the port San Pedro, and took 

 steamer for Santa Barbara, the very paradise of Cali- 



