The California Birthday Book | Page 2

slopes of the mountains, and when I first
saw it, its beauty was entrancing. Away to the south, on its borders,
were hills of purple, each reflected as clearly as though photographed,
and still beyond rose the caps and summits of other peaks and
mountains rising from this inland sea, whose waters were of turquoise;
yet, as we moved down the slope, the lake was always stealing on
before. It was of the things dreams are made of, that has driven men
mad and to despair, its bed a level floor of alkali and clay, covered with
a dry, impalpable dust that the slightest wind tossed and whirled in air.

CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER,
in Life in the Open.
JANUARY 3.
When the green waves come dashing,
With thunderous lashing,

Against the bold cliffs that defend the scarred earth,
He wheels
through the roaring,
Where foam-flakes are pouring,
And flaps his
broad wings in a transport of mirth.
JOSIAH KEEP,
in The Song of the Sea-Bird_, in _Shells and
Sea-Life.
JANUARY 4.
A long jagged peninsula, where barren heights and cactus-clad mesas
glow in the biting rays of an unobscured sun, where water holes are
accorded locations on the maps, and where, under the fluttering shade
of fluted palm boughs, life becomes a siesta dream. A land great in its
past and lean in its present. A land where the rattlesnake and the
sidewinder, the tarantula and the scorpion multiply, and where sickness
is unknown and fivescore years no uncommon span of life. A land of
strange contradictions! A peninsula which to the Spanish
conquistadores was an island glistening in the azure web of romance; a
land for which the padres gave their lives in fanatic devotion to the
Cross; a land rich in history, when the timbers of the Mayflower were
yet trees in the forest. Lower California, once sought and guarded for
her ores and her jewels, now a veritable terra incognita, slumbering,
unnoticed, at the feet of her courted child, the great State of California.
Lower California, her romance nigh forgotten, her possibilities
overlooked by enterprise and by the statesmen of the two republics.
ARTHUR W. NORTH,
in The Mother of California.
JANUARY 5.
Above me rise the snowy peaks
Where golden sunbeams gleam and
quiver,
And far below, toward Golden Gate,
O'er golden sand flows

Yuba River.
Through crystal air the mountain mist
Floats far
beyond yon distant eagle,
And swift o'er crag and hill and vale

Steps morning, purple-robed and regal.
CLARENCE URMY,
in A Vintage of Verse.
JANUARY 6.
With the assistance of Indians and swinging a good axe himself, the
worthy padre cut down a number of trees, and, having carried the logs
to the Gulf Coast, he there constructed from them a small vessel which
was solemnly christened El Triumfo de la Cruz.
Let Ugarte be remembered not only as a man of fine physique, the first
ship-builder in the Californias, but as an ardent Christian, a wise old
diplomat and a fearless explorer. He stands forth bold, shrewd and
aggressive, one of the most heroic figures in early California history. *
* *
At the same time that Ugarte was exploring the Gulf of California,
Captain George Shevlock of England was cruising about California
waters engaged in a little privateering enterprise. On his return to
England, Shevlock set forth on the charts that California was an island.
This assertion was not surprising, for at this time a controversy was
raging between certain of the Episcopal authorities on the Spanish
Main as to which bishopric las Islas Californias belonged! Guadalajara
was finally awarded the "island."
ARTHUR W. NORTH,
in The Mother of California.
JANUARY 7.
CALIFORNIA.
A sleeping beauty, hammock-swung,
Beside the sunset sea,
And
dowered with riches, wheat, and oil,
Vineyard and orange tree;
Her
hand, her heart to that fair prince
Whose genius shall unfold
With

rarest art her treasured tales
Of life and love and gold.
CLARENCE URMY,
in A Vintage of Verse.
JANUARY 8.
BACK TO CALIFORNIA.
To the Californian born, California is the only place to live. Why do
men so love their native soil? It is perhaps a phase of the human love
for the mother. For we are compact of the soil. Out of the crumbling
granite eroded from the ribs of California's Sierras by California's
mountain streams--out of the earth washed into California's great
valleys by her mighty rivers--out of this the sons of California are made,
brain, and muscle, and bone. Why then should they not love their
mother, even as the mountaineers of Montenegro, of Switzerland, of
Savoy, love their mountain birthplace? Why should not exiled
Californians yearn to return? And we sons of California always do
return; we are always brought back by the potent charm of our native
land--back to the soil which gave us birth--and at the last back to Earth,
the great mother, from whom we sprung, and on whose bosom we
repose our tired bodies when