El Camino Real 205 



fancy. Its vast enclosure, its long line of arched corri- 

 dors, the belfry, its tiled roof, the artistic chimney, the 

 great dome, half fallen in, razed to the ground in the 

 earthquake of 1812, are all fascinating parts of the whole. 

 It is impossible to more than suggest the charm of San 

 Juan, but the coachers found it irresistible and tarried at 

 the little inn. Portala, the first Governor of California, is 

 said to have named San Juan Capistrano, having been 

 impressed by its beauties of location, its restfulness, its 

 tranquillity. San Juan is not only the land of man" ana 

 but of the day after, and then the air which brings the 

 music of the sea up the canon but you must know it. 



The coachers might have kept on the road to El 

 Toro, Aliso, and so to Santa Ana over a good and 

 fair country and through a region abounding in great 

 ranches and olive groves, but they left the King's 

 Highway again for a detour along an attractive beach, 

 passing Arch Rock, reaching Laguna, on a little bay, at 

 the mouth of a big cafton that comes plunging down to 

 the sea from the upland mesa. Here there is a little 

 hamlet and hotel, and the coachers have converse with 

 a motor party who have come down from Santa Ana in 

 one hour. The climb up Laguna Cafion to the upland 

 mesa and the valley is one of the features of the trip, 

 and then en route Laguna affords some of the best quail 

 shooting in California, while the beach fishing for rock 

 bass is sport of no mean quality. 



Laguna has a charming rocky shore, to some extent 

 unusual on the mainland in Southern California. Here 



