The California Palestine [pp. 13-25]

1The Cal fornia Palestine.
TWILIGHIIT AT BEI,LOTA.
use in the hills. Prudent travelers have
them even on light buggies.
Much that is called valley is honestly
mesa, or a border of foothills. You are
asked by a friend in San Mateo, or Santa Clara, or Alameda, to visit his valley
vineyard. You find it perhaps nearly
level, and yet on hill soil, not sediment
"bottom," the wheat lands lying a hundred feet lower, and the bay as much
lower again. Its few feet of elevation
bring it into the hill climate, and out of
the frost.
The long winding Californian valleys,
like the five beautiful ones that center
at San Francisco Bay, or like those that
reach the Pacific at San Buenaventura,
or San Luis Obispo, or the Salinas, have
wooded spurs of the hills that extend
far into them. Some of them run out
into the bay or ocean, and then there is
a bold, wooded promontory, perhaps
nameless till some lover of such a sight
takes possession and plants his home in
the redwoods or pines. Such a promontory, famous in early days of San Francisco, is occupied by the suburb of Sausalito. It is one of the mountain ridges, descending southward from Tamalpais, and
jutting into the bay; it is one of the
coast defenses of the range, and it is not
far across its blooming gardens to the
breakers of the Pacific.
If a person who wished to study California either for pleasure, health, or investment would buy a span of horses
and a buggy, and starting in April, after
the winter rains, travel over the State,
SAND) DUNES OF THE COAST RANGE,
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