76 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



The song of Mignon came vividly before me as I walked 

 through the gardens of the City of the Angels. 



" Know'st thou the land where the lemon trees bloom, 

 Where the gold orange glows in the green thicket's gloom, 

 Where the wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, 

 And groves are of myrtle and olive and rose ?" 



Luscious fruits, of many species and unnumbered varieties, 

 loaded the trees. Gentle breezes came through the bowers. 

 The water rippled musically through the zanjas. Delicious 

 odors came from all the most fragrant flowers of the temper- 

 ate zone. Julius Froebel speaks thus of Los Angeles in his 

 book, Am AmeriJca : " I could wish no better home for my- 

 self and my friends than such a one as noble, sensible men 

 could here make for themselves. Nature has preserved here, 

 in its workings and phenomena, that medium between too 

 much and too little, which was one of the great conditions of 

 high civilization in the classic regions of ancient times. In- 

 deed, when we seek in other lands for places like Los Angeles 

 and Southern California generally, we must turn our eyes to 

 the Levant. In the United States there are [in 1858] no 

 kindred spots." The town is situated on the banks of the 

 Los Angeles River, twenty-five miles from the ocean. 



Dr. J. W. Hough writes thus : " The general view of Los 

 Angeles, from the old Fort, more nearly resembles that of 

 Damascus, ' the pearl of the Orient,' than any city I have 

 elsewhere seen. The hills skirt it on the north and west, as 

 the range of Anti-Lebanon does the eastern city ; while from 

 them your eye sweeps over the same broad, brown plain, in 

 the midst of which lies an island of verdure, (El Merj, or the 

 meadows, the Arabs call it) with the city embowered in its 

 midst. True, there are no minarets rising from the modern 

 town, and the Los Angeles River is a poor substitute for the 

 ancient Abana ; nor are the desert schooners, which take their 

 departure for the Colorado River, much like the caravans 

 which leave for the Euphrates. But the vineyards have the 

 same luxuriance, the pomegranates the same real blossom, and 



