Climate of Southern California 365 



liable to affect the climate as Southern California. It 

 is an oasis of limited extent encompassed by deserts 

 which have few equals for heat on the habitable globe. 

 There are mountains of great height, abysmal sinks two 

 hundred and eighty-two feet below the level of the sea ; 

 indeed the country is a maze of mountains, the people 

 living in the valleys or along the seashore enjoying 

 what is, in all probability, the most perfect climate 

 known. 



The impression has gone abroad that Southern Cal- 

 ifornia is a winter resort, with a burning summer, when 

 in point of fact the shores of the Pacific from Santa Bar- 

 bara to San Diego, and often miles inland, are remark- 

 ably cool in summer ; the heat conditions which hold on 

 the North Atlantic coast being unknown. There are 

 warm, often intensely hot, days in the interior towns and 

 valleys in August and September, but the nights are 

 almost always cool, and one of the objections some peo- 

 ple have to Southern California is that one cannot dress 

 in light clothing and sit out of doors every evening, as 

 they are, as a rule, too cool. As an illustration of San 

 Gabriel Valley climate, I am writing these lines on 

 August twenty-first in Pasadena, twenty-eight miles from 

 the ocean, at noon. My room faces the north, or the 

 garden, and the windows and doors are open. It is a 

 warm day in Pasadena, but my room thermometer shows 

 70, and this has been the average for me all summer 

 with few exceptions ; later it becomes warmer for a few 

 days, then cools off again ; all of which leads me up to 



