Santa Barbara. I now saw them growing wild on the slopes of the Ojai Valley foothills. Above the Pierpont Cottages are the buildings of a famous boys' school high in the foothills. For those who love warmth and glowing color, long tramps and long horseback rides into the mountain defiles above the valley, the Ojai is an ideal place to spend a charméd winter. We came away in the morning light, driving across the valley to the main road and ascending a steep hill to the Upper Ojai road. A glorious view of the whole valley unrolled before us, level as a floor, with its rich masses of fig trees and its shining orange and lemon trees, their green broken here and there by trim houses. Higher up were the cottages of the Pierpont Inn, and higher still the big building of the school, all over-topped by the great masses of the mountains behind. I felt that I should like to build a bungalow on the spot and live and die there.
We come on by a very rough, narrow, bumpy, and precipitous mountain road, past the summer cottages of Sulphur Springs into the Santa Paula Valley. We pass people planting young orchards of lemons and oranges, and we come through defiles, the bare, rugged hills rising above us on both sides. Sometimes these hills are clay-colored. Sometimes they are painted a delicate lavender by whole hillsides of blooming sage; sometimes sage not yet in bloom covers the hills with a delicate grey-green mantle. Other hillsides are a bright yellow from a yellow, string-like plant that nets itself in great masses over the entire slope. On the whole the country until we reach Santa Paula is rather bare. At Santa Paula there is a very pleasant inn. It was at Santa Paula that I saw a schoolhouse enclosure surrounded by a hedge-like row of trees, every tree a blooming mass of glorious yellow.
At Sespe we passed a very prosperous lemon and orange orchard of immense size where they were planting fresh orchards of slender young trees. Before we reached Saugus we had to ford the Santa Clara River, the bridge being down. We stuck in the soft sand in mid-river and T. was obliged to wade through the shallow water to the shore behind us, which happened to be nearest, to go in search of a countryman and horses. In the meantime I took off my boots and stockings and waded across to the far side of the stream. There I was just lacing my boots when a young gentleman appeared driving a small car. He debated as to the risk of driving across stream, but decided to try it. Driving slowly he succeeded in getting through and turned to wave his hat in triumph. I waved back and he pushed on his way. Soon T. appeared with a countryman driving two stout horses. They quickly pulled the car across and their master received a dollar for his services.
After an indifferent lunch at the Saugus railway station we went on over the fine Newhall grade, through Fernando and the great San Fernando Valley, through the brand new town of Van Nuys, and the settlement of Lankershim and the handsome suburb of Hollywood into Los Angeles. The San Fernando Valley, a wide plain with mountains in the far distance, has been turned by the magic of water from a vast, scrubby desert into a fruitful region, rapidly becoming populous. The San Fernando Mission Company has placed in front of the old San Fernando Mission on the broad highway which now runs past the Mission a charming flower garden. The bright flowers blaze out in the afternoon sun against a background of fragments of grey adobe wall. The Mission itself has but little to show. A caretaker lives in the fragment of the old monastery and shows one through the few deserted and dingy rooms. The finest thing in San Fernando Valley is the new boulevard which sweeps through the valley to Los Angeles and is known as the $500,000 boulevard. It is largely due to the generalship of Mr. Whitely, who is a Napoleon of real estate. Through the middle of the boulevard runs the electric car line. On each side of the car line is a border of rose bushes of different varieties. Outside of this border are two fine roads, one on either side; and again outside of these roads is a wonderful border planted in the following order: first, a line of rose bushes, and second, a line of Indian deodars, first cousins to the Lebanon cedars, these deodars alternating in their planting with a flowering shrub; third, comes a line of Austrian and other varieties of pines; fourth, is planted a row of palm trees. At present this planting is in its early stages, but when roses, shrubs, and evergreens are larger, as they will soon be under the bright California sun, the effect will be very rich and beautiful. Van Nuys has a fine new schoolhouse, and shining new dwellings of white glazed brick, built in the Italian and the Spanish style.
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