First of all, we are both well. No cough, however obstinate, could abide this charming climate. And having no excuse for further stay we enter upon the “beginning of the end” of a holiday which now only lacks ten days of three months. What a pity to turn our backs on all the fruits we see growing around us, having enjoyed only the cherries, which are just coming in. Well, we have a basket of them, as big as plums, and so good! to solace the first days of the desert part of our journey. We shall have desert enough on the way home, as we cross Arizona and New Mexico by the Atlantic and Pacific railway, through the northern part of those Territories (having come out by the southern), a country quite new to us. How often we have wished for you and Lady Hooker! When and whence did I write you last? I think from Los Angeles and before our trip to San Diego. Instead of a short journey by sea (which my wife detests) we made a long circumbendibus by rail to the southernmost town in California; declined an invitation to go over the border into Mexican California; was, in fact, too unwell to do anything in the field, and so, finding the coast too cool and damp, returned, stopping two nights with Parish and wife, at their little ranch at San Bernardino, in a dry and warm region, a charming valley girt with high mountains, on the eastern side still snow-topped,--indeed they are so most of the summer. Back thence to Los Angeles we soon went, down to the port San Pedro, and took steamer for Santa Barbara, the very paradise of California in the eyes of its inhabitants, and indeed of most others. Our cruise of only eight hours on the Pacific was pleasant, and most of it in daylight. Arriving after dark, we found, to our surprise, the mayor of the little town on the wharf with a carriage for our party (wife, Farlow, and self), who drove us to the fine watering-place kind of hotel, and on being shown at once to our rooms we found them all alight and embowered in roses, in variety and superbness such as you never saw the beat of, not to speak of Bougainvilleas, Tacsonias, and passion-flowers, Cape-bulbs in variety, etc., etc., and a full assortment of the wild flowers of the season. Mrs. Gray was fairly taken off her feet. During the ten or eleven days we stayed, there were few in which we were not taken on drives, the most pleasant and various. The views, even from our windows, of sea and mountain and green hills (for California is now verdant, except where Eschscholtzia and Bahias and Layia, etc., and Lupines turn it golden or blue) were just enchanting; and on leaving we were by good management allowed to pay our hotel bill.... Had you been of the party I believe the good people would have come out with oxen and garlands, and would hardly have been restrained.