immortalize the spring fields of California. The wonderful greenness of the grass, the glowing masses of yellow, and the deep gentian blue of the lupine would rank with the coloring of McWhirter's "Tyrol in Springtime." California in the spring is an ideal State in which to motor. We were sorry that we could not accept our host's invitation to motor still farther north into Lake County, a county of rough roads but fine scenery.

Northern California has not yet been developed or exploited for tourists as has the southern part of the State, but there is beautiful scenery in all the counties north of San Francisco. As we drove through Sonoma (Half Moon) Valley, we saw the green slopes of Jack London's ranch, not many miles away. Jack London's recent book, "The Valley of the Half Moon," describes the scenery of this region.

Back of Vallejo, reached by ferry from San Francisco, lies the lovely Napa Valley, filled with fruit ranches. Its southern end is narrow, but as one drives farther north it widens out into a broad green expanse of orderly fruit farms and pleasant homes, dominated by green hills on either side. Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley were the first of many enchanting valleys which we saw in California. As I look back on our long drive, it seems to me now that in California you are always either climbing a mountain slope or descending into a green valley flanked by ranges of hills. Calistoga, at the northern end of Napa Valley, has interesting literary associations. It was on the slope of Calistoga Mountain that Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon and had the experience of which we read to-day in "The Silverado Squatters."

San Francisco is a pleasure-loving town. When its people are not eating in public places to the sound of music, they are likely to be amusing themselves in public places. The moving picture, the theatre, the vaudeville, all flourish in this big, gay, rushing city. The merchants of San Francisco have shown great courage and daring in the erection of their big buildings almost immediately on the stones and ashes of the old ones. They have done all this on borrowed money and loaded themselves with heavy mortgages, trusting to the future and to fat years to pay off their indebtedness. They have done an heroic work in a solid, impressive way, and deserve all the business that can possibly come to them.

In San Francisco I saw for the first time that great California institution, the cafeteria. They pronounce this word in California with the accent on the "i." To a traveler it seems as if all San Francisco must take its meals in these well equipped and perfectly ordered restaurants. You enter at one side of the room, taking up napkin, tray, knife, fork, and spoons from carefully arranged piles as you pass along a narrow aisle outlined by a railing. Next comes a counter steaming with trays of hot food, and a second counter follows with rows of salads and fruits on ice. After one's choice is made, the tray is inspected and the pay-check estimated and placed on the tray by a cashier. You are then free to choose your table in the big room and to turn over your tray to one of the few waiters in attendance. You leave on the opposite side of the room, passing a second cashier and paying the amount of your check.

It is a great game, this of choosing one's food by looking it over as it stands piping hot or ice cold, in its appointed place. The attendants are evidently accustomed to the weakness of human nature, bewildered by so overwhelming an array of viands. They keep calling out the merits of various dishes as the slow procession passes. "Have some broiled ham? It's very nice this morning." "Try the bacon. It's specially good to-day."

California people are much given to light housekeeping and to taking their meals in cafeterias and other restaurants. Doubtless this fashion may have been inaugurated by the fact that an ever increasing tourist population, living in hotels and lodgings, must be taken care of. But many of the Californians themselves are accustomed to reduce the cares of housekeeping to the minimum, and to take almost all their meals away from their own homes. The servant question is a serious one in California; and this type of co-operative housekeeping seems to commend itself to hosts of people. We enjoyed it as pilgrims and travelers, but one would scarcely wish to have so large a part of the family life habitually lived in public places.

CHAPTER II

In the heart of San Francisco stands a tall, slender iron pillar, with a bell hanging from its down-turned top, like a lily drooping on its stalk. This bell is a northern guide post of the famous El Camino Real, the old highway of the Spanish monks and monasteries on which still stand the ruins of the ancient Mission churches and cloisters. We purpose to drive south the entire length of the six hundred miles of El Camino Real; and then turning northward to cross the mountain backbone of the State of California, and to come up through the vast and fertile stretches of its western valleys, meeting the Lincoln Highway at the town of Stockton.

It is the morning of the 21st of April when we swing around the graceful bell, run along Market Street to the Masonic Temple, turn left into Mission Road, and from Mission Road come again into El Camino Real. We first pass through the usual fringe of cheap houses, road saloons, and small groceries that surrounds a great city. Then comes a group of the city's cemeteries, "Cypress Grove," "Home of Peace," and others. We have a bumpy road in leaving the city, followed by a fine stretch of smooth, beautiful cement highway. On through rolling green country we drive, and into the suburb of Burlingame with its vine covered and rose embowered bungalows, and its houses of brown shingle and of stucco. The finer places sit far back from the road in aristocratic privacy, with big, grassy parks shaded by noble trees in front, and with the green foothills as a background.

At San Mateo, a town with the usual shaven and parked immaculateness of highclass suburbs, we have luncheon in a simple little pastry shop. The woman who gaily serves us with excellent ham sandwiches, cake, and coffee, tells us that she is from Alsace-Lorraine. She and her husband have found their way to California. From San Mateo we drive to Palo Alto, where we spend some time in visiting Leland Stanford University. The University buildings of yellow sandstone with their warm red tiled roofs look extremely well in the southern sun. Here are no hills and inequalities. All the buildings stand on perfectly level ground, the situation well suited to the long colonnades and the level lines of the buildings themselves. It is worth the traveler's while to walk through the long cloisters and to visit the rich and beautiful church, whose restoration from the ravages of the earthquake is about completed. With its tiling and mosaic work, its striking mottoes upon the walls, and its fine windows, it is very like an Italian church.

The town of Palo Alto is a pretty little settlement, depending upon the University for its life.

From Palo Alto we drive on into the Santa Clara Valley. We are too late to see the fruit trees in bloom, a unique sight; but the valley stretches before us in all its exquisite greenness and freshness after the spring rains. Miles of fruit trees, as carefully pruned and weeded and as orderly in every detail as a garden, are on every side of us. Prune trees, cherry trees, and apricot trees; there are thousands of them, in a most beautiful state of cultivation and fruitfulness. No Easterner who has seen only the