glow in the biting rays of an unobscured sun, where water holes are
accorded locations on the maps, and where, under the fluttering shade
of fluted palm boughs, life becomes a siesta dream. A land great in
its past and lean in its present. A land where the rattlesnake and
the sidewinder, the tarantula and the scorpion multiply, and where
sickness is unknown and fivescore years no uncommon span of life. A
land of strange contradictions! A peninsula which to the Spanish
_conquistadores_ was an island glistening in the azure web of
romance; a land for which the padres gave their lives in fanatic
devotion to the Cross; a land rich in history, when the timbers of the
_Mayflower_ were yet trees in the forest. Lower California, once
sought and guarded for her ores and her jewels, now a veritable terra
incognita, slumbering, unnoticed, at the feet of her courted child,
the great State of California. Lower California, her romance nigh
forgotten, her possibilities overlooked by enterprise and by the
statesmen of the two republics.

ARTHUR W. NORTH,
in _The Mother of California._



JANUARY 5.


Above me rise the snowy peaks
Where golden sunbeams gleam and quiver,
And far below, toward Golden Gate,
O'er golden sand flows Yuba River.
Through crystal air the mountain mist