Once fairly at sea, our steamer turned her prow sharply south, and all the way down followed the coast from headland to headland. Usually we steamed along some five or six miles off shore, with the land itself always in view, and the ocean everywhere like a millpond. From the Columbia to the Golden Gate in December, we had found the Pacific to belie its name; but now steaming farther south, we saw it in its calmness and beauty, and felt like christening it anew. Most of the way, the sky was magnificently clear, the weather moderate, the air bracing and stimulating, while the whole Coast was a shifting panorama of beauty and grandeur. The ocean too smooth for sea-sickness, we strolled about the deck by twos and fours, or lolled for hours on the settees, inhaling life and vigor at every breath, until we almost seemed to be navigating fabled seas or voyaging into paradise. The Coast itself, never out of sight, rose generally in abrupt hills or mountains, and these were now green and gold to their summits. In places, whole hillsides seemed alive with wild-flowers of every hue, while here and there flocks and herds dotted the landscape far and near. Now and then an adobe house gleamed out of some sheltered nook; but, as a rule, houses were infrequent, and trees and shrubbery very scarce. A few stunted oaks and cedars fringed the ravines here and there, but as a forest they were nothing to speak of. The Coast Mountains lifted themselves everywhere, smooth to the summit as if shaven, with no glory of trees to shelter or crown them; and in summer, when their verdure dries up and blows away, they must seem very bald and desolate.