Berkeley is built upon the slopes of hills to a height of six hundred feet. It is the seat of the University of California, and the location of the State Asylum for the Blind, the Deaf, and the Dumb. The University grounds are beautiful and under the Bernard plans, involving an ultimate expenditure of $50,000,000, the buildings will have no second place in American architecture. [Illustration: BEAUTIFUL BLUE CANYON, SEEN FROM THE TRAIN. THE GORGE LIES TREMULOUS BEHIND A VEIL OF SAPPHIRE DISTANCE, A PLACE OF LEGENDS.] [Illustration: AT CAPE HORN THE ROAD RUNS CLOSE TO THE CLIFF] The city is growing very rapidly and in the high average of its home places is not excelled anywhere. The new tourist resort, the Claremont Hotel, may be seen from the train. Oakland, third city of the State, has a population of 175,000. The cluster of cities of which it is the center—Berkeley, Alameda, Fruitvale, Elmhurst, and others—has a population of 240,000. Oakland’s bay water front extends fifteen miles and its estuary is being made into a great ship harbor, along which many industries are growing. The city is becoming a place of skyscrapers. It is a city, too, of homes; on the Piedmont hills and around Lake Merritt are beautiful drives with all the life of the country in the heart of the town. [Illustration: AMERICAN RIVER GLEAMS LIKE A RIBBON OF SILVER FAR FAR BELOW THE MOVING TRAIN] Leaving Oakland, 16th Street, the Overland Route through the city skirts the bay shore and at the long “made” ground of Oakland Pier the rail journey ends. [Illustration: THE SACRAMENTO, ONE OF CALIFORNIA’S TWO NAVIGABLE RIVERS. THE TORPEDO FLOTILLA OF THE GREAT AMERICAN FLEET CAME TO SACRAMENTO UP THE RIVER, IN 1908] Another route from Sacramento to San Francisco is along the foothill country of the Sierra, southward past Lodi and its great grape and peach lands to Stockton. Stockton, at the head of the bay navigation, is a prosperous city of 25,000 people with great natural resources near; gas, coal, electric power, and a million acres of as fat and fertile lands as may be found out of doors. Its manufactures are many and important, including flour and woolen mills, harvesters and other agricultural implements, mining machinery, street cars and railway cars, pottery and briquettes. It is in the heart of a great dairy section. Westward from Stockton there is a choice of two routes; to the north along the bay shore through Lathrop and Tracy past Byron Hot Springs, under the brow of Mount Diablo and thence through Martinez to Port Costa; or westward and then northward through the vine and fruit valleys surrounding Pleasanton, Livermore, Haywards, and the series of towns that ends in Oakland. [Illustration: SUTTER’S FORT, SACRAMENTO, STILL STANDS IN GOOD REPAIR, A MUTE HISTORIAN OF THE DAYS OF INDIAN RAIDS, THE OVERLAND COACH AND THE PONY EXPRESS]