San Buenaventura was another Mission, and is now a health-resort at the coast outlet of Ventura valley, and beyond is Santa Barbara, the "American Mentone," one of the most charming California resorts. The old Spanish Mission, with its towers and corridors, is famous, and was built in 1786, being well-preserved and having a few of the Franciscan monks yet in charge. A curiosity of the neighborhood is _La Parra Grande_, the "Great Vine," having a trunk four feet in diameter and covering a trellis sixty feet square, its annual product being eight thousand pounds of grapes. Farther along the coast is the charming Bay of Monterey, with the Spanish town of Monterey on its southern shore. In 1770 the Mission of San Carlo de Monterey was founded here, and it was the Mexican capital of California until the American conquest in 1846, then depending chiefly on a trade in tallow and hides. It has not grown much since, however, and the old adobé buildings have not undergone change in a half-century. It is now a popular resort, having the noted Hotel Del Monte, the "Hotel of the Forest," located in spacious and exquisite grounds, the park embracing seven thousand acres. Upon the northern side of Monterey Bay is Santa Cruz, its chief town, also a summer-resort, having a background made by the Santa Cruz Mountains. This was a Mission founded in 1791, and five miles northward is the Santa Cruz grove of big trees, containing a score of redwoods or sequoias, of a diameter of ten feet or more, the largest being twenty-three feet. Within a hollow in one of these trees General Fremont encamped for several days in 1847. To the northward is the prolific fruit region, the Santa Clara Valley, where Mission Santa Clara was founded in 1777. The city of this valley is San José, with twenty thousand people, distantly surrounded by mountains, and, like all these places, a popular resort. The Calaveras Mountains are to the eastward, and here, on Mount Hamilton, twenty-six miles southeast, is the Lick Observatory, at forty-two hundred feet elevation. It was founded by a legacy of $700,000 left by James Lick, of San Francisco, and is attached to the University of California, being among the leading observatories of the world. It has one of the largest and most powerful refracting telescopes in existence, the object-glass being thirty-six inches in diameter. Mr. Lick is buried in the foundation pier of this great telescope which he erected. There is a magnificent view from the Observatory, which is exceptionally well located, its white buildings, shining in the sunlight, seen from afar.