I like and admire Victoria. It is so pleasant to come in from the dark,
misty, coarse, loud-tongued Pacific, and the December colorlessness of
Japan to bright blue waters crisped by a perpetual north wind--to the
flaming hills of the Asian mainland, which are red in the early
morning, redder in the glow of noon, and pass away in the glorious
sunsets through ruby and vermilion into an amethyst haze, deepening
into the purple of a tropic night, when the vast expanse of sky which
is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars.
Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here
many things that I love,--bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns,
dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the spurious banyan,
date, sago, and traveler's palms, and numberless other trees and
shrubs, children of the burning sun of the tropics, carefully watered
and tended, but exotics after all.

It is a most delightful winter climate. There has not been any rain for
three months, nor will there be any for two more; the sky is cloudless,
the air dry and very bracing. It is cold enough at night for fires,
and autumn clothing can be worn all the day long, for though the sun is
bright and warm, the shade temperature does not rise above 65 degrees,
and exercise is easy and pleasant. At night, even at a considerable
height, the lowest temperature is 40 degrees. It is impossible to
praise the climate too highly, with its bright sky, cool dry air, and
five months of rainlessness; but I should write very differently if I
came here four months later, when the mercury ranges from 80 degrees to
90 degrees both by day and night, and the cloudy sky rests ever on the
summits of the island peaks, and everything is moist, and the rain
comes down continually in torrents, rising in hot vapors when the sun