THE WONDERLAND OF CALIFORNIA 



By Herman Whitaker 



Author of "The Planter," "The Settler," "Cross-Trails," Etc. 



FROM her earliest beginnings Cali- 

 fornia was steeped in romance. 

 Within her borders the early dis- 

 coverers placed "El Dorado," the fabu- 

 lous land whose shining streams rippled 

 over boulders of solid gold, and history 

 aided their pleasant conspiracy. For two 

 centuries the silver-laden Spanish gal- 

 leons laid their courses from the Philip- 

 pines to Cape Mendocino, then skirted a 

 thousand miles along the Californias on 

 their way south to Panama — a fact well 

 known to Sir Francis Drake, the gallant 

 pirate, who laid up his vessel, the Golden 

 Hind, to wait for them in a little harbor 

 northward of San Francisco Bay. 



Later came the brown-robed padres 

 and Dons in buff and scarlet to color the 

 land with their picturesque life and invest 

 it with dreamy, religious idealism. If 

 more practical, the "gold rush" of '49 

 was nevertheless merely the successful 

 sequel of the search for "El Dorado," 

 and established forever that fabled land 

 within California's borders. 



Surely, in view of all this, a heavy dis- 

 count of her pretensions would seem in- 

 evitable ; yet out of the full knowledge 

 gained by 20 years' roaming within her 

 borders I do not hesitate to assert that 

 California is the customary exception to 

 every rule — gains instead of depreciates 

 on closer acquaintance. 



First impressions are always vital, and 

 one of California's principal assets in- 

 heres in the fact that, whether you come 

 from the north, south, east, or west, she 

 is not to be caught like a slovenly beauty, 

 in negligee, with her stockings down at 

 the heel. 



THE LAND OE LITTLE RAIN 



It would be better, of course, if you 

 could come in by trail, as in the old days, 

 with a white-tilted prairie schooner that 

 pitched up and down or wallowed in the 

 sandy trough of blue ranges that run like 

 breaking waves across the desert from 

 Old Mexico to the Canada line. A closer 



intimacy would be established between 

 you and the country. But, seen through 

 a car window, the desert, with its lonely 

 mesas, monolithic masses that loom in 

 violet distances, is beautiful beyond de- 

 scription — unless it be that of Mary Aus- 

 tin in "The Land of Little Rain." 



This is the heart of it, that magic land 

 swathed in golden sands and girded with 

 crimson and chrome mountains that 

 sometimes wear around their brows a 

 cooling band of snow. From the shim- 

 mering horizon the shining wastes of the 

 Mojave run northward across Death Val- 

 ley between the high Sierras and certain 

 broken ranges almost to the Yosemite. 



It is a country useless from man's point 

 of view, and the bones of many an ad- 

 venturer testify to the fact; yet it yields 

 a living to its own little animals and 

 plants that burrow or sink their roots 

 down to the water under its kiln-baked 

 sands. Over the whitening bones snakes 

 and lizards, horned toads, the Gila mon- 

 ster, coney and jack-rabbit frisk or crawl 

 in unconscious cynicism. 



They are scorned by the soaring vul- 

 ture ; likewise the lone coyote that stands 

 on a sand hummock and blinks at your 

 train. Over the shining surfaces, that re- 

 flect like huge mirrors the intolerable 

 glare of the sun, broods a breathless calm. 

 But this is broken, on occasion, by wind- 

 puffs that lift the alkali in sudden whorls. 

 Always they are to be seen, these little 

 winds, dancing over the hot face of the 

 desert 



A REGION OE YUCCA AND CACTI 



Southward the desert runs to yucca, 

 grotesque shapes that march with the 

 train for leagues upon leagues, flinging 

 their shrunken arms like posturing 

 dwarfs. Elsewhere cactus chaparral 

 clothes the nakedness of the land, and, in 

 its season, this blossoms into sudden 

 beauty. The yellow blooms of the hui- 

 siche, vermilion tips of the okatilla, ma- 

 genta buds of the nopal, and "crucifixion 



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