To the south the eye rests upon a vast lake, which can be seen ten or twelve miles distant from the slopes of the mountains, and when I first saw it, its beauty was entrancing. Away to the south, on its borders, were hills of purple, each reflected as clearly as though photographed, and still beyond rose the caps and summits of other peaks and mountains rising from this inland sea, whose waters were of turquoise; yet, as we moved down the slope, the lake was always stealing on before. It was of the things dreams are made of, that has driven men mad and to despair, its bed a level floor of alkali and clay, covered with a dry, impalpable dust that the slightest wind tossed and whirled in air. CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER, in _Life in the Open._ JANUARY 3. When the green waves come dashing, With thunderous lashing, Against the bold cliffs that defend the scarred earth, He wheels through the roaring, Where foam-flakes are pouring, And flaps his broad wings in a transport of mirth. JOSIAH KEEP, in _The Song of the Sea-Bird_, in _Shells and Sea-Life._ JANUARY 4. A long jagged peninsula, where barren heights and cactus-clad mesas glow in the biting rays of an unobscured sun, where water holes are accorded locations on the maps, and where, under the fluttering shade of fluted palm boughs, life becomes a siesta dream. A land great in its past and lean in its present. A land where the rattlesnake and the sidewinder, the tarantula and the scorpion multiply, and where sickness is unknown and fivescore years no uncommon span of life. A land of strange contradictions! A peninsula which to the Spanish _conquistadores_ was an island glistening in the azure web of romance; a land for which the padres gave their lives in fanatic devotion to the Cross; a land rich in history, when the timbers of the _Mayflower_ were yet trees in the forest. Lower California, once sought and guarded for her ores and her jewels, now a veritable terra incognita, slumbering, unnoticed, at the feet of her courted child, the great State of California. Lower California, her romance nigh forgotten, her possibilities overlooked by enterprise and by the statesmen of the two republics. ARTHUR W. NORTH, in _The Mother of California._ JANUARY 5. Above me rise the snowy peaks Where golden sunbeams gleam and quiver, And far below, toward Golden Gate, O'er golden sand flows Yuba River. Through crystal air the mountain mist Floats far beyond yon distant eagle, And swift o'er crag and hill and vale Steps morning, purple-robed and regal. CLARENCE URMY, in _A Vintage of Verse._ JANUARY 6. With the assistance of Indians and swinging a good axe himself, the worthy padre cut down a number of trees, and, having carried the logs to the Gulf Coast, he there constructed from them a small vessel which was solemnly christened _El Triumfo de la Cruz_.