16 SAN DIEGO TO 
dinner we rode five miles, to the house of Joseph W. 
Osborne, Hsq., a merchant of San Francisco, who had 
invited me to make him a visit. Mr. O. had pre- 
ceded us a couple of days, and met us at his gate, 
giving us a warm reception. 
Mr. Osborne’s place was the most beautiful and 
picturesque I had seen in the valley. In fact, it was 
the only house wherein there was any attempt at taste 
and comfort; for the country was too new to expect 
much in this way yet. But even his was a small and 
unpretending cottage after the New England fashion. 
The valley here is about four miles in width. Where 
it opens on St. Pablo Bay it is about six miles, but it 
eradually contracts towards the north. At the entrance 
it is an open plain, destitute of trees, and covered with 
luxuriant grass; but here it assumes a new aspect, 
such a one, too, as I had not before seen in the coun- 
try. It is now studded with gigantic oaks, some of 
them evergreen, though not so close together as to 
render it necessary to cut any away to prepare the 
land for cultivation. These magnificent oaks are found 
sometimes in long lines, and again in clusters of twenty 
or thirty, forming beautiful groves; then again a space 
of ten or twenty acres will occur without a single tree. 
If this romantic valley were transferred to the older 
countries of Hurope, it would be taken for the domain 
of a prince or a nobleman. It answers to the idea one 
has of the old and highly cultivated parks of England, 
where taste and money have been lavished with an 
unsparing hand, through many generations. As one 
emerges from or enters each grove, he involuntarily 
expects some venerable castle or mansion to appear ; 
