366 Life in the Open 



the statement that personally, after a trial of twenty 

 years, I prefer the summers of Southern California to 

 the winters, and after residing in almost every section of 

 the country I believe Southern California possesses a 

 more than remarkable climate, winter and summer, if 

 judged by my stadnard, the experience of two decades. 



I have seen winters when it rained too much, I have 

 seen five or six years when it did not rain enough. I 

 have seen long hot summers when the inland towns 

 were extremely uncomfortable, but judging the country 

 by the rule of general average, by five years, a decade, 

 or two decades, it stands in my estimation without peer, 

 as the nearest to the fabled perfect all around climate. 



Southern California has all the advantages of the 

 Riviera without any of its drawbacks, as the hot winds 

 from Africa, its cold winds from the Italian Alps, and 

 to-day it is the centre of high civilisation, radiating from 

 Los Angeles, a city with a winter population of two 

 hundred and fifty thousand souls, from which the pil- 

 grim can in a few hours, as I have shown, reach almost 

 any altitude from the snow line to the level of the sea. 



It is difficult to describe the peculiar climate of South- 

 ern California, which is now, and always will be, the 

 loadstone to attract thousands to its shores. The entire 

 country has been built up from a series of Spanish-Mex- 

 ican ranches to an American principality in thirty years 

 and is made up of the cream of the people of the East 

 and Europe, who have come to California not all as 

 pioneers or invalids, but in the main men and women 



