On several New Year's Days I have made this wonderful and memorable trip. The climatic conditions are so peculiar that within three hours' time of enjoying a swim in the warm waters of the Pacific one may be snowballing his friends, sleighriding or tobogganing on the heights of Mount Lowe. The accompanying pictures give some faint idea of the unrivaled charm of this unique trip. Sometimes I have started at the snow in the mountains, but on New Year's Day, 1897, I first took a swim in the Pacific Ocean at Long Beach. This, "the Atlantic City of the West," is twenty-one miles southeast of Los Angeles, and the beach is one of the finest in the world. It has a gentle slope, is of firm sand, and is equally as good for horseback riding and driving as for bathing. Its great length of solid sand is what suggested the name, hence it is an ideal spot for those who love the ocean and the sands. Here, with several friends, I reveled in the surf and beyond, and then returned to the hotel with an appetite vigorous and healthy. The cravings of hunger satiated, the train whirled me back towards the mountains. Now the electric cars of the Pacific Electric Railway, over a broad-gauge track, surpass even the steam cars in their speed and easiness of motion. The green lawns of Long Beach were left behind, that the eye might feast upon the rich green of the alfalfa fields and sugar beet ranches. The old Dominguez Ranch was passed, the mesa upon which the last fight with the Mexicans took place before California was secured to the United States, and the interesting gardens of the industrious "heathen Chinee." Never for a moment were we out of sight of the majestic Sierra Madre Range, while hoary San Antonio (so inappropriately and disrespectfully called "Old Baldy," by the uncouth and irreverent), lifted his sentinel head in watchfulness over the ever-verdant and glorious San Gabriel Valley. To the right and somewhat to the rear was the cloud banner mountain of Southern California, Mt. Santiago, while further away to the east were the giant peaks of San Bernardino, San Gorgonio and San Jacinto.

On reaching Los Angeles change was made to the Pasadena cars and a thirty minutes' ride conveyed me to the flower-embowered streets and avenues of Pasadena, where a score of thousands of citizens and visitors were assembled to enjoy the annual Tournament of Roses. This great mid-winter festival fully illustrates the climatic felicities of this God-blessed region. It is a midsummer fÊte, where, generally, flowers are lavishly expended in a wealth of floral decorations that to an eastern mind seems incredible. Floats, carriages, tally-hos, bicycles, horses and burros, decorated with choicest flowers, pass in procession through the streets and avenues, cheered by enthusiastic visitors. After reveling in the scene, the electric cars whirled myself, a solitary unit among several hundreds of people, to the heights of Echo Mountain and Alpine Tavern. Here, taking horse, and accompanied by a distinguished medical professor of the University of Minnesota, we were soon on the north slopes of Mount Lowe, where scores of patches of snow were seen. In the mid-winter air we rode without any inconvenience from cold, even light overcoats being unnecessary. Returning to Echo Mountain, we enjoyed there a concert, and then the doctor and I returned to Pasadena and Los Angeles, respectively, he delighted with the novelty of his trip, and I satisfied that in no other country in the world can such a three-hours' New Year's Day trip be enjoyed than in our "Land of the Sun Down Sea."