Los Angeles, March 17.

If you are going from Los Angeles to San Diego, or vice versa, don’t go by boat unless you have a great affection for the sea. First, you must change at San Pedro, from cars to boat; second, the waterway occupies much more time; but what is most important, if you go by rail, over the Sante FÉ route, you get magnificent and diversified views of the ocean, close views of foot hills and distant views of snow-capped mountains. You pass through a fertile country, see picturesque cottages, large sheep and cattle ranches, and great rifts in the mountains that make you smile when you think of “gaps” in the east, which are so widely advertised. The train skirts the edge of the sea for scores of miles and recalls similar scenic features of land and water which you admire in travelling from Aberdeen to Ballater over the “Great North of Scotland Railway,” a pretty little road with a big sounding name. If you should have to stop on a switch, or for a “heated journal,” for five or ten minutes, you can step off the car platform and in a few minutes you can gather a large bouquet of sweet, wild flowers, among them fragrant “mignonette” as they call it here. Southern California might well be named the land of flowers, and this branch of the Sante FÉ is entitled to be called by that much abused term, picturesque.

Florida Oranges “Beaten.”—I wrote last season about some Florida oranges which Mr. Orvis showed me at the Windsor Hotel, Jacksonville. The largest of them, if I remember aright, measured thirteen inches in circumference and weighed twenty-three ounces. I asked, “who can beat these?” They are “beaten.” This morning I weighed an orange in Los Angeles which turned the beam at thirty-three ounces and which measured nineteen and one-quarter inches. This particular orange was light for its size, because it was not quite ripe nor “full” when picked. It came from George Bunce’s grove (pray do not print this “grave”) at Rivera, a small town nine miles from Los Angeles. The grove was only set out in 1888. All the oranges on the tree from which this one was picked were as large and as heavy as the one described, but there were only three of them.

All the ticket brokers’ offices, all the fruit stores, segar shops and all the shops of small traders and of places patronized by men have their doors and windows thrown open during business hours. No “protection” from the weather is needed. It is never cold enough for closed doors or windows in the daytime. Nor are some of these places of business closed even at night except by strong iron-wire netting covering the fronts of the stores. This open feature strikes a visitor as very strange at first, but one soon becomes accustomed to it. All through the winter open street cars are used.

Three years ago, when the Los Angeles boom was at its height, the foundation was laid near Main street for what was intended to be the largest hotel in the United States. There it stood and there it stands to-day (the foundation), the bricks appearing just one foot above the ground level. These bricks enclose a space of two acres. Pullman, of sleeping-car fame, was one of those interested, and he says that the idea has not been entirely abandoned. The idea may yet exist but the open lots and the brick foundation look very lonesome. Meanwhile Mr. O. T. Johnson erected a very handsome hotel, The Westminster, on the corner of Main and Fourth streets, which will accommodate two hundred and fifty guests. The site of the Westminster is choice; the house contains all the modern improvements; it is well furnished and well patronized.

As I write, in my bedroom of the Westminster Hotel, looking north I can see, without rising from my seat, great high mountains covered with snow. They present a most beautiful picture in this clear atmosphere, with the sun shining upon them.

That “cranky critic,” as the New York Hotel Gazette calls Max O’Rell, would be suited at the Westminster Hotel. O’Rell complains because in American hotels guests have regular seats; that each person upon entering the dining-room is not allowed to sit just where he pleases. The contrary is the rule in the hotel mentioned. A notice is prominently posted near the elevator which reads: “Positively no seats reserved in the dining-room.” The waiters are young, intelligent American girls of a good class, some from New York and some from Nebraska, all uniformed in white. They look neat and clean, are alert to take an order and quick in serving it.

Strawberry short-cake was part of the dessert at to-day’s luncheon in the Hotel Westminster. Fresh-picked strawberries are served every morning for breakfast. Not a dozen or two small, hard berries, such as I have seen served for a “portion” at hotel tables in Florida during February, but a saucerful for each guest of large, ripe berries that have a delicious flavor. Strawberry ice-cream was on the dinner menu—the cream made, not from “strawberry flavoring,” but of the honest fruit. Fresh peas and Lima beans figure on the bill, also oranges in profusion, picked from the groves hard by.

All the way between New Orleans, La., and Los Angeles, Cal., on the Southern Pacific railroad, you pay five to ten cents each for oranges; as soon as you reach Los Angeles, boys with baskets of the golden fruit swarm about the cars crying out, “Oranges, three for a nickel, six for a dime.” If you have a little patience you will hear, “Oranges, eight for a dime,” and if you wait till the train is about to start you can get ten for a dime. Possibly after you are out of hearing they are sold at ten cents a dozen.

In the cars of the Southern Pacific railroad that run between Los Angeles and the seaport town of San Pedro appears this printed notice: “Warning:—Passengers are hereby warned against playing games of chance with strangers, of betting on three card monte, strap, or other games. You will surely be robbed if you do.”