After many monotonous hours of riding through the Great American Desert with its vast stretches of wilderness, stone, and sage brush, the traveler is suddenly whirled into the developed portion of Southern California, with its gardens, orchard and vineyards, its avenues of stately palms, beautiful dark green groves of oranges and lemons studded with golden fruit; its infinite variety of scene and climate due to an intermixture of brown mountains, foothills and rich valleys; its lavish display of bloom and color, under a blue sky that seems ever cloudless; its invigorating air, gracious and balmy as an eastern May day.

The remarkable climate of Southern California is principally due to its unique situation, with the mild Pacific ocean, studded with rocky and picturesque islands on the west; the lofty Sierra Nevada mountains, with their snow-clad peaks, rising from five to eleven thousand feet in height, shutting it in on the north; while to the east and south lies the Great Desert, waterless and treeless. This region, then, is entirely cut off from the climatic conditions that affect the rest of the world. Florida is in climatic sympathy with the Atlantic coast, and the rest of our interior country from Texas to Manitoba, like Italy, feels more or less the climatic variations of the surrounding continent; but this region alone is said to manufacture its own climate, and to prohibit importation of all others. The Great Desert is cool at night and intolerably hot in the day time, sending up a large volume of hot air, which flows westward to the |Pacific, and parts with the heat, creating an immense vacuum which is filled by air from the coast every afternoon, known as the "trade wind." Later in the evening, when the desert cools, the current changes, and goes the other way, carrying westward an air as pure as that of the Sahara, and nearly as dry, nowhere coming in contact with marshy or malarious influences or other agencies injurious to health. This interaction between ocean and desert prevents that condition of atmosphere known in the east as "muggy." It is claimed by good authority that children in this climate are exempt from those diseases of childhood considered inevitable in other localities. Gastric and intestinal diseases are rare; hepatic and kindred troubles unknown. Of pneumonia and lung affections no other land is so free. Among the accounts of early days in California many cases of unusual longevity are cited among natives, many of whom are said to have reached the age of one hundred and thirty, and some even one hundred and forty years, as a result of simplicity of life and diet in this equitable climate. The importance of thoroughbred horses to this region has led to the interesting discovery that the desirable qualities of the California horse are not racial, but climatic; their only rival in strength, endurance, speed, and intelligence being the Arabian.

In the extreme northwestern portion of this region lies the rich Arroyo Grande Valley with its marvelous possibilities; possibilities of beauty and utility limited only by the imagination and the labor necessary to bring it into realization. let us imagine, for a moment, the beauties that would result from terracing the clear crystal stream of water with a series of low dams, fifty to one hundred yards apart, extending up the valley as far as the eye can reach, at the same time conserving an immense supply of water that could be piped all over the valley and foothills for irrigation and other purposes. The stream flowing, as it does, through a small deep ravine would make this possible.

Overlooking this valley toward the east, and nestling among beautiful evergreen cypress hedges, will be the Headquarters cottage when completed. To the west lies the restless Pacific, with the curving crescent beach known as "Pismo." Its beauty is now somewhat obscured by unsightly sand dunes, but awaiting only the magic touch of labor, guided by the artistic wand of imagination to transform it into a scene out-rivaling "Ancient Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency."