But we pass on, leaving the open country; we are soon in among the rolling lands, among foothills not unlike those of the Sierra Nevada in the San Joaquin valley. To the left are the San Bernardino Mountains, here and there a peak of boldest outline, and streams and cañons winding their way to the sea. At El Toro a number of passengers got off to take the stage to Laguna, a seaside hotel, where the farmers and business men of every color, from the heated interior valleys, delight to spend a day in fishing, hunting for abalones, or in watching the breakers roll against the sandy beach. A little farther on we stop at El Capistrano, or rather at San Juan Capistrano, the old ruined mission, situated in the most beautiful little valley, with its winding and sycamore shaded creek. The mission must have been one of the very largest in the State. The ruins are yet very extensive, consisting of long and regular adobe walls, and one-half of a yet magnificent looking church, in the regular Spanish style of architecture. A rather large size town of Mexican houses, with a Mexican population, and venerable fig trees, tall and wavy palm trees, and large but unkempt gardens, give the place a rather more important look than it perhaps deserves. There is but little sign that the boom was ever here. Still the valley is so beautiful and evidently so fertile, that it needs only work and taste to make it equal to the very best. We see yet the old mission pear trees, large and untrimmed, not unlike our drooping oaks, loaded with pears to such an extent that there appears hardly room for a blackbird to get through. The mission grapevines are all dead. Gigantic vines, which covered trellises and arbors, and which perhaps bore tons of grapes, with trunks as heavy as the body of a boy, are there yet, but without leaves and young shoots; they are dead, having surrendered to the vine pest of the country. After leaving Capistrano we follow the little creek to the sea. The valley is from one-half to one mile wide. Here and there are flourishing little vineyards, but mostly pastures and cornfields or patches of beans. At last we reach the sea, the Pacific, calm and blue, with breakers lashing the shore. To the right we leave the rocky promontory of the Capistrano Mountains, and for an hour or more run on the very beach. In stormy weather the spray of the breakers must wet the cars, which run only a stone’s throw from the water’s edge. This part of the route is the most interesting and the most refreshing to one coming from the interior plains. We are now in San Diego county. The shore is abrupt and bluffy, the hills bordering on the sea.