&T. 74.] TO J. D. HOOKER. T67 
Laruror, CALIFORNIA, May 1, 1885. 
We have only this morning left Rancho Chico and 
have set our faces eastward. Waiting for our train I 
improve the rare bit of leisure to write a line. 
First of all, we are both well. No cough, however 
obstinate, could abide this charming climate. And 
having no excuse for further stay we enter upon the 
“beginning of the end” of a holiday which now only 
lacks ten days of three months. What a pity to turn 
our backs on all the fruits we see growing around us, 
having enjoyed only the cherries, which are just coming 
in. Well, we havea basket of them, as big as slid 
and so good! to solace the first days of the desert part 
of our journey. We shall have desert enough on the 
way home, as we cross Arizona and New Mexico by 
the Atlantic and Pacifie railway, through the north- 
ern part of those Territories (having come out by the 
southern), a country quite new to us. How often we 
have wished for you and Lady Hooker ! 
When and whence did I write youlast? I think 
from Los Angeles and before our trip to San Diego. 
Instead of a short journey by sea (which my wife 
detests) we made a long circumbendibus by rail to the 
southernmost town in California ; declined an invitation 
to go over the border into Mexican California; was, in 
fact, too unwell to do anything in the field, and so, 
finding the coast too cool and damp, returned, stop- 
ping two nights with Parish and wife, at their little 
ranch at San Bernardino, in a dry and warm region, 
a charming valley girt with high mountains, on the 
eastern side still snow-topped, — indeed they are so 
most of the summer. Back thence to Los Angeles 
we soon went, down to the port San Pedro, and took 
steamer for Santa Barbara, the very paradise of Cali- 
