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1. Front view of Ramona's home, old San Diego. Restored in 1910.

2. Altar in Mexican church, old San Diego, where Ramona was married.

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A relic of the past, a Spanish adobe in the foothills.

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On the Mountain Trail

By M. S. Hosmer

ROM Madrid to Heaven, and in Heaven a little window for looking back to Madrid."

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The words of the Spanish proverb express very prettily the feelings of many people who have made their home in Southern California. To them it would now seem an undesirable thing to live in a world rimmed with violet mountains; world where the clouds stay in the sky, instead of posing and drooping over the mountains; and where the trees are covered with mere leaves instead of with bluebells and goldenrod and Easter lilies.

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The mountains in Southern California are like rows and rows of green velvet folds, which in the distance appear violet-purple against the blue sky "dreams of mountains," shadowings of beauty, reflections of heaven they seem in the winter months when the distant peaks look like dainty, intangible cones of snow, before which drift and float soft and ever-changing cloud masses.

It seems impossible that we ordinary mortals, riding upon little donkeys called "burros," can ascend these ethereal heights. But such is the case. And as we follow the winding, precipitous paths up the mountain sides in the summer months, the charm of their beauty is in no way lessened.

Along the road beside us are precipices, over which our dreaming donkeys gaze while meditating whether to walk along or to go to sleep. Away down below are the tops of trees, and a big brook in the canyon beneath makes a continuous noise like the sound in a sea shell. Scattered over the sides of the dark green mountains,

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stalk. The latter part of the trail, near the top of the mountain, is narrow, and the road more rocky and bordered by high bushes. The full moon, appearing around a mountainside, adds a romantic glamor to the leafy surroundings where the only sound is the rhythmic chirring of small frog voices in the canyons below.

It has been a long day's journey with our slow and contemplative little burros, which would not go at all unless constantly exhorted with words and a small stick. But it has been a sunshiny, dreamy, dusty and delightful journey. Still, now that we are at the top of the mountain, we are glad to go to sleep in the warm little beds in our tent. People keep arriving all night, a new party arriving at the tent next ours and cooking their supper on their stove under the trees close by at midnight.

In the morning we make the acquaintance of our own tiny stove out under a tree; and then begins a delightfully informal Jack-and-Jill performance. We bring water in a big pail up the steep path from the pump below the tents; and we gather sticks and wood from the dead trunks of trees, with which to light our fire. Everyone is sociable, and our neighbors, who have risen earlier than ourselves, assist us in the search for firewood. We cook on our tiny stove outdoors, and little lizards come out of

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the bushes when we light the fire, and run up and down the slope beside us while we fry bacon and potatoes. The coffee smells delicious, and the stovepipe stops in midair, the smoke pouring out into the sky in plain sight of the stove, instead of being smuggled out through a decorous chimney, as is the way in houses. But we are gypsies now, and our breakfast tastes good spread upon the table which stands unevenly upon the ground outside the tent.

We do not intend to do much in the few days that we are on the mountain. We want to imbibe the atmosphere and the local color. Everyone else tears around and takes long tramps, but we prefer to sit all day under our pet tree where there is the prettiest view, and read our books and say every few minutes what a good time we are having. We found a perfectly heavenly place where we staid one entire day, under a tall tree, close to the tip edge of the mountain. Directly below us was the valley where Los Angeles, Pasadena and the other towns were; but these cities were hidden by clouds and we on the mountain looked down on the upper surface of the clouds spread out below us like

the ocean. There were openings in this floor of clouds, through which the sunlight was probably peeping upon the cities underneath. This expanse of clouds looked thick and strong enough to walk upon; it extended away out to the sky, as the ocean does, and its nearer edge boiled up a little around the lower peaks beside us, as the surf does on the shore. Ever so far away in the distance was the top of a blue mountain standing up through the clouds.

We were glad that we were upon the mountain-top in the sunshine. There were scarlet, honeysuckleshaped flowers floating among the grasses near us, apparently hardly attached to their invisible stalks, and numbers of humming-birds were darting low among them. Tiny gray and white lizards, with sometimes a horrid-looking larger one, were running across the road beside us all the time that we sat there reading. The sky was very, very blue, and the road beyond sandy and yellow; the tops of the tree-branches made a semi-circle of green lacework around the sky as we looked up, because we ourselves were down in a hollow by the road. There were many dear little views to

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