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Show THE PACIFIC SLOPE. Ill and half- Southern, half- Spanish air of shiftlessness. The road runs unfenced through a constant succession of wheat fields, whence the grain had been cut late in May ; and the prevailing impression was of drought. There were fields parched and cracked open, dust in great heaps among the dried vegetation, grass withered and burnt, while the largest creeks were entirely dried up or shrunk to mere rivulets, pursuing their sluggish and doubtful course away down at the bottom of deep gulches, which in winter and spring are filled by immense torrents. At night the horizon was lighted up by fires raging in the stubble on the high lands, or among the tules lower down, and by day the sun was obscured, and distant objects hidden by the smoke or light haze, which corresponds to our eastern Indian summer, and is here the immediate precursor of the first rain. Having since visited California at other seasons, I find it to pos-ssess an almost aggravating regularity of climate. To begin with the year, January is the month when the heaviest rains are passed, and the ground is settling for the spring growth. Soon this valley is beautiful indeed. Strawberries and other early fruits are early in market, the plains are of a rich green, plowing is pushed forward with vigor, wheat is sown, and springs quickly into growing life. In March the rainy season appears to come again, though, generally, the " later rain'' is light. Thence the showers grow slowly less and less frequent till some time in May. The wheat is about full grown, early potatoes begin to appear, and slight signs of drought are mani-fest. The grass , gets ripe, the Spanish oats ( wild) begin to turn yellow, and early in June the wheat is harvested. It lies or stands in shocks on the ground, to be threshed out at will; for no rain need now be apprehended. The surface begins to show signs of extreme drought; by the middle of July the freshets are all past and the marshes dried up ; the ground cracks open in long fissures, into which the grass seeds fall and are preserved to another growing season. As summer advances all the minor vege-tation loses its green ; the grass, dead ripe, stands cured to a bright yellow, varied in places by a dirty brown ; creation assumes a gray and dusty color, and only the purple fig leaves and faint green of of those trees which have a deeper root relieve the general aspect of barrenness. On the slopes of the Sierras, the red dust lies six inches in depth, and the prospect is brightened only by occasional patches of verdure along the mountain streams, and the pale- green oval leaves of the manzanita. Still the heavens remain clear. Then one may see through the |