1CLIMATE. 99 



The Pacific Railroad, running eastward from Oakland, a 

 suburb of San Francisco, passing over the Sierra Nevada, the 

 summit of which is reached in 274 miles, enables the traveler 

 along its line to place himself in any comfortable degree of 

 heat or cold, in ordinary summer days. He can find banks of 

 snow near Cisco in July. Ten miles west of Oakland is the 

 ocean-beach, where a chilling wind blows without ceasing. 

 Going from the coast, the traveler would gradually get into a 

 warmer clime, until, in Stockton, he would find the thermom- 

 eter indicating $5, most of the summer noons; and pro- 

 ceeding up the sides of the Sierra, he would gradually rise 

 into greater cold, to the eternal frost on the summit. A branch 

 road, running south to Fort Yurna, would enable the traveler 

 to enjoy almost as great a variety of temperature in the winter. 



73. Clear Days. On an average, there are two hundred 

 and twenty perfectly clear days in a year, without a cloud, in 

 the Sacramento Basin ; eighty-five days wherein clouds are 

 seen, though in many of them the sun is visible; and sixty, 

 rainy. Italy cannot surpass that. New York has scarcely 

 half so many perfectly clear days. From the first of April 

 till the first of November there are, in ordinary seasons, fifteen 

 cloudy days ; and from the first of November till the first of 

 April, half the days are clear. It often happens that weeks 

 upon weeks in whiter, and months upon months in summer, 

 pass without a cloud. Near the ocean shore, coast-clouds or 

 fogs are frequently blown up from the sea, but they disappear 

 after ten o'clock in the morning. 



74. Sirocco. Several cases are on record, of a sirocco, 

 or burning-hot wind, visiting the coast. One was felt at the 

 town of Santa Barbara, on the 17th of June, 1859. The 

 Gazette newspaper of that place, published six days after- 

 ward, said : 



"Friday, 17th June, will be long remembered by the in- 

 habitants of Santa Barbara, from the burning, blasting heat 

 experienced that day, and the effects thereof. Indeed, it is 



