Summer fogs are usual in the coast counties. The mornings are pleasant and sunny till about eleven o'clock. At this time the sun's rays grow stronger in the interior valleys, and the hot air rises while trade-winds rush in from the cold ocean and fog settles down like a thick, gray cloud over the bay and hills. July and August are cold and foggy along the coastline, with strong west winds almost every day. In September the winds die away, and sometimes a shower or two falls. The rainless desert, or southeastern corner of our state, is the hottest region of all. Here the sun glares down till sand and rocks seem heated by a fiery furnace. Every living creature gasps and pants for breath in the scorching heat. There are no trees, but only cactus, that queer, prickly, thorny plant, often fifteen or twenty feet high in these wastes of sand, and low greasewood bushes. Under this vegetation snakes, lizards, and horned toads bask all day and search for food at night. If travellers wander from the road in crossing the desert, they are easily lost, and sometimes they die or go mad in the terrible heat. There are no springs, and water stations are a long way apart, so that lost people usually die of thirst. As the heat of the sun's rays quivers over the burning sands, a curious sight called a mirage is often produced. A cool, glassy lake or flowing river bordered with green trees seems pictured in the air, and the hot and weary traveller can scarcely believe that only sand and rocks are before him. Can you tell which season you like the best? You will find the one you choose in some part of this favored state. It is always summer in the south, and you may slide on the ice or throw snowballs all year in the high Sierras. SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS California is a wonderland where snowy mountains, mighty and ancient forests, glaciers and geysers, lakes and waterfalls, foaming rivers and the cliffs and rolling surf down her long sea-coast give new and beautiful pictures at every place. Through the whole state stretches the granite backbone of the Sierra Nevadas with its highest crest or ridge at the head-waters of the Kings and Kern rivers near Fresno. Here Mount Whitney and a dozen other great peaks of the High Sierras or California Alps lift their heads over thirteen thousand feet in the air. Here are to be seen most magnificent panoramas of lofty peaks, deep cañons, towering domes, and snow-clad summits. The finest forests, too, in the world grow on the slopes of the Sierras, the immense pines and giant _sequoias_ of the General Grant and other National Parks in this section being the largest and oldest of all. Kings River Cañon is a rugged gorge half a mile deep with the river rushing through it in thundering rapids and cascades.