days at the ranches. I should tell of them both at the same time to be truly realistic, but the exigencies of narration make it seem better to write of the two experiences as if they were separate. So first, the ranches.
I have told at length of my birthplace, the San Justo. Although it, as well as the southern ranches, was devoted to sheep raising, there were many differences between them. The houses and gardens at San Justo were of New England type, built and developed according to the early associations of the young men. At the other ranches the homes were of adobe, old ones, handed down from an earlier period.
The locations and surrounding country also differed greatly. In the north the house stood in a valley between wooded hills, with no wide outlook. The southern houses were each placed on the brow of a mesa, with a view across a characteristic California river which might be a dangerous torrent or a strip of dry sand, according to the season of the year. The eyes could follow across flat lands, treeless, except for a few low-growing willows, to far, blue, mysterious mountains. It was a very empty land, empty of people and towns, of trees and cultivated lands.
The people on the northern ranch were but two miles from a village, with friends, a post office and a church, and San Francisco, a real city, not far away nor hard to reach. When Aunt Margaret came to Los Cerritos there was not a railroad nor a street car within five hundred miles, and Los Angeles, the small
