CALIFORNIA

ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE

"Twixt the seas and the deserts,

'Twixt the wastes and the waves, Between the sands of buried lands And ocean's coral caves,

It lies not East nor West,

But like a scroll unfurled,

Where the hand of God hath hung it, Down the middle of the world.

It lies where God hath spread it,
In the gladness of His eyes,
Like a flame of jeweled tapestry
Beneath His shining skies;
With the green of woven meadows,
And the hills in golden chains,
The light of leaping rivers,

And the flash of poppied plains.

Days rise that gleam in glory,
Days die with sunset's breeze,
While from Cathay that was of old
Sail countless argosies;
Morns break again in splendor
O'er the giant, new-born West,
But of all the lands God fashioned,
'Tis this land is the best.

Sun and dews that kiss it,
Balmy winds that blow,
The stars in clustered diadems
Upon its peaks of snow;
The mighty mountains o'er it,
Below, the white seas swirled-

Just California stretching down
The middle of the world.

THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE (From a Painting by William Wendt)

CALIFORNIA

ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE

T

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THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE

HE cosmographers have done their worst, at last-or their best. It is wholly a matter of which way you care to look at it. Nothing remains, any more, for the imagination. There is not a terra incognita left on the face of the earth.

From Dan to Beersheba is now a mere day's Marathon for the members of an amateur athletic club. The whole "cow country," even, has been fenced in. All that lingers is the long baffled heel which is to be placed on the South Pole; and that is liable to happen any day. Then the last parallel and meridian will have been checked up, and Marco Polo may rest content in his forgotten grave.

But the situation is not without compensation, though the ultimate Treasure Island has been plowed knee-deep and John Silver need never come back to muster another cut-throat crew. And the compensation is this, that the poet's dreams-ages old-of a "Land of Heart's Desire" have been realized in the actual discovery of that earthly Paradise. It is certainly California.

Happily, there is no country unbeloved. It may be that you will have seen a Patagonian pining among the green fields of a sunny land for the desolate plains where he was born. Or it may be that you have turned from the note of a flute in a music hall to see