320 Recreations of a Sportsman 



it several miles across the entrance of the little 

 valley, perhaps the finest display of thundering 

 spume to be seen on the coast so fine and im- 

 pressive that they have named the little resort 

 with its one or two homes, Surf. You change 

 cars at Surf to go to Lompoc, somewhere up in 

 the Coast Range, and take a little branch line 

 with a fussy engine that has the distinction of 

 having hauled more mustard plasters in em- 

 bryo than any other line in the world. It steams 

 up the Santa Ynez Valley, a wide opening in 

 the Coast Kange, which leads up through one 

 of the most fertile regions in California. 



In various parts of the State you meet mustard 

 and its golden sheen in March and April, but 

 there it is growing wild, racing up the sides of 

 steep caiions away from the range, filling little 

 valleys, always beautiful; but in the valley of 

 the Santa Ynez it is cultivated and planted, not 

 by the acre, but by the square mile ; in fact, you 

 see but little else, and the sight of hundreds of 

 acres of golden mustard is one to remember, for 

 there is nothing quite like it, and the man who 

 invented the term "field of the -cloth of gold" 

 must have known such a field, or the " poppy " 

 fields of Southern California. 



The valley spreads out wider and wider, merg- 

 ing into the hills, and everywhere level and 

 beautiful, the Santa Ynez in the centre over- 

 flowing here and there, with rivulets, doubtless 



