observation car platform had disappeared into her stateroom. The young man
gathered his things together in readiness to leave the train at the next
stop.

In the flying pictures framed by the windows, the dairy pastures and
meadows were being replaced by small vineyards and orchards; the canyon
wall, on the northern side, became higher and steeper, shutting out the
mountains in the distance and showing only a fringe of trees on the sharp
rim; while against the gray and yellow and brown and green of the
chaparral on the steep, untilled bluffs, shone the silvery softness of the
olive trees that border the arroyo at their feet.

With a long, triumphant shriek, the flying overland train--from the lands
of ice and snow--from barren deserts and lonely mountains--rushed from the
narrow mouth of the canyon, and swept out into the beautiful San
Bernardino Valley where the travelers were greeted by wide, green miles of
orange and lemon and walnut and olive groves--by many acres of gardens and
vineyards and orchards. Amid these groves and gardens, the towns and
cities are set; their streets and buildings half hidden in wildernesses of
eucalyptus and peppers and palms; while--towering above the loveliness of
the valley and visible now from the sweeping lines of their foothills to
the gleaming white of their lonely peaks--rises, in blue-veiled,
cloud-flecked steeps and purple shaded canyons, the beauty and grandeur of
the mountains.

It was January. To those who had so recently left the winter lands, the
Southern California scene--so richly colored with its many shades of
living green, so warm in its golden sunlight--seemed a dream of fairyland.
It was as though that break in the mountain wall had ushered them suddenly
into another world--a world, strange, indeed, to eyes accustomed to snow