The main line of The Overland Route ends at San Francisco where the great liners of the Pacific Mail, Toyo Kisen Kaisha and other steamship companies take up the work of transporting travelers by sea trails made pleasant by the sunshine and blue, placid waters of the mid-Pacific, to the islands of the South Seas and the great countries of the Orient. [Illustration: THE OVERLAND LIMITED ENTERING THE YARDS OF THE OAKLAND STATION] [Illustration: OAKLAND IS A CITY OF BEAUTIFUL HOMES, MANY OF THEM CLUSTERING AROUND THE SHORES OF LAKE MERRITT] Nearly four thousand miles of lines northward to Portland, Oregon, and southward to Los Angeles and beyond, carry Overland Route passengers to all important cities of California and Oregon. Indeed, the end of the transcontinental trip is at the open door to wonderland. North and south are the attractions of mountains, shore and valley; the greatest of coniferous forests, our highest mountain peaks outside of Alaska, the deepest and wildest of mountain canyons, the oldest and greatest of giant trees, the largest and most beautiful of mountain lakes; the long beaches with wooded uplands and mountains beyond marked here and there with resorts, flower embowered, delightful winter and summer; the semi-tropic fruit orchards of a sunshiny country surpassing in extent and variety those of any other section; altogether a wonderland not to be matched in all the world. “_Lo! here sit we by the sun-down seas_ _And the White Sierra. The sweet sea-breeze_ _Is about us here; and a sky so fair_ _Is bending above, so cloudless, blue,_ _That you gaze and you gaze and you dream, and you_ _See God and the portals of heaven there._ “O seas in a land! O lakes of mine! By the love I bear and the songs I bring Be glad with me! lift your waves and sing A song in the reeds that surround your isles!— A song of joy for this sun that smiles, For this land I love and this age and sign; For the peace that is and the perils pass’d; For the hope that is and the rest at last! * * * “A rush of rivers and a brush of trees, A breath blown far from the Mexican seas, And over the great heart-vein of earth! .... By the South-Sun-land of the Cherokee, By the scalp-lock-lodge of the tall Pawnee, And up La Platte. What a weary dearth Of the homes of men! What a wild delight Of space! Of room! What a sense of seas, Where the seas are not! What a salt like breeze! What dust and taste of quick alkali! .... Then hills! green, brown, then black like night, All fierce and defiant against the sky!