bearing luscious fruit of different kinds; now furnishing material
for clothing, fishing-nets, and matting; or putting forth those
slender fronds, frequently twenty feet in length, which are sent
North by florists to decorate dwellings and churches for festivals
and weddings! The palm is typical of the South, as the pine is of the
North. One hints to us of brilliant skies, a tropic sun, and an easy,
indolent existence; the other suggests bleak mountains and the
forests of northern hills, and symbolizes the conflict there between
man and nature, in which both fortitude and daring have been needful
to make man the conqueror. One finds a fascination in contrasting
these two children of old Mother Earth, and thinks of Heine's lines:

"A pine tree standeth lonely
On a northern mountain's height;
It sleeps, while around it is folded
A mantle of snowy white.

"It is dreaming of a palm tree
In a far-off Orient land,
Which lonely and silent waiteth
In the desert's burning sand."

[Illustration: HERMIT VALLEY NEAR SAN DIEGO.]

On my last day at San Diego, I walked in the morning sunshine on
Coronado Beach. The beauty of the sea and shore was almost
indescribable: on one side rose Point Loma, grim and gloomy as a
fortress wall; before me stretched away to the horizon the ocean
with its miles of breakers curling into foam; between the surf and
the city, wrapped in its dark blue mantle, lay the sleeping bay;