Chap. X. CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA. 579 
miles towards the interior, and never occur during the 
winter, which, in many respects, is the finer season at San 
Francisco. I have seen days. of this period when, after a 
shower of rain, the sky was as bright as on the table-land 
of Mexico, the air as balmy as on a morning in Nicaragua, 
and nature had all the freshness of a lovely May in Ger- 
many. Whoever has enjoyed such a day, walking along 
the hills in the rear of San Francisco, with the view over 
the bay and the mountains around it, will never forget its 
charms. Snow may occasionally fall in January, or a 
light frost occur during the night ; but I saw roses, pelar- 
goniums, fuchsias, and calceolarias flowering in the gardens 
of San Francisco at Christmas. 
It is an important feature of the climate of California in 
general, that it has a most favourable influence upon the 
energy of the mind as well as of the muscular system : 
the climate excites to activity. In this character it corre- 
sponds to that of the Mexican table-land and the interior 
of western Texas, but nowhere have I observed it extend- 
ing, in its full and undiminished influence, down to the sea- 
coast, except in California, even in the southern district. 
There — in a region where the orange, the olive, the fig, and 
the date grow — men feel as active and energetic as in the 
central and northern sections of Europe. This feature 
of the Californian climate cannot remain without an es- 
sential influence upon the future destiny of this favoured 
region . 
A footpath leads along the shore of the bay in a northerly 
and westerly direction from the city towards the Golden 
Gate, now passing over the beach where the zoologist 
can find a rich harvest of shells, of medusas and other 
mollusca, — now over rocks of serpentine, worthy of the 
attention of the geological explorer — now over a wilderness 
2 P 2 
