CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA for the Tourist Or the Tourist / WINTER EDITION " WINTER EDITION
CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA for the Tourist or the Tourist / WINTER EDITION " WINTER EDITION UNITED STATES RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION UNITED STATES RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION An Appreciation of California By EDWIN MARKHAM Author of "The Man with the Hoe," "California the Wonderful," etc. Written Especially for the United States Railroad Administration 0 you know your America, your homeland? If all the show places of the eastern hemisphere were lost to us; still, in California alone, would remain a noble recompense for every vanished glory. Along a thousand miles of Pacific shore line, with two great parallel mountain ranges protecting her wide domains and thousand sunny slopes and vales, there lies, awaiting your coming, this western empire of remarkable loveliness. Do you long for a Tyrolese, or for an Alpine climb? Try the High Sierras with their dark mysterious forests, their upper crests of eternal snow. For lakes exquisite as Como or Geneva, see California's high-born crystal waters, brides of the skies, blue as the heavens. Or to behold a perfect masterpiece of wildest beauty—ranking in nature as the Parthenon ranks in architecture—look upon Yosemite's cataracts and chasms: titanic, majestic, yet human and intimate. The oldest trees in the world are there, the most ancient living things upon the planet. The Sequoia groves, the Big Trees of Cali fornia, stand to-day, even as they stood when the Caesars rose and fell. Valleys bounteous as the Nile—warm, fecund, flourishing. Vales prodigal of fruits and flowers as the Happy Valley of Rasselas, will greet your gaze; and in magic thermal belts grow date-palm and orange, olive, fig and lemon, lusty as though tropic-born.
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