They slept in a camp hotel. The valley was a mile deep. It was walled with mountains. Rivers fell from the tops of the cliffs. They tumbled after each other like Jack and Jill. A river jumped down a quarter of a mile. That was such fun, that it took a little run over rocks and jumped again. It played hide-and-seek and follow-the-leader and leap-frog down the rocks. Sometimes a falling brook spread out in a broad sheet. Sometimes it fell so far that it turned to spray and looked like a bride's long veil. The sun shone on the spray and turned it to rainbows.
Alice had no time to catch her breath before the next wonder. This was trees more than three hundred feet high and thirty feet thick. She had to lie on her back to see the tops of them. The trees looked very, very old. She thought they must have been born in the days when giants lived.
"Were they here when Columbus came to America?" Alice asked.
"Oh, yes, some of them were eight hundred years old when Columbus came."
Dear, dear! Alice wondered if they weren't tired standing and holding the blue sky up so long. Little white clouds seemed to be tangled in their evergreen leaves.
The farther south they went the warmer and dryer it became. Still there were wheat fields and sheep. By and by there were orchards of gray-green olive trees, and vineyards of big white grapes on gravelly hillsides. Some of the farms had queer houses of sun-dried yellow bricks, and with flat roofs. Many of the people were darker, with big black eyes. Every town and river was called "San" or "Santa" something. Grandpapa said that was Spanish for Saint.
Why, how did the Spanish people ever get away over into Southern California? Alice asked a sheep rancher that, as she drank milk and ate figs as sweet as honey in the patio of a farm house. Do you remember the patios in the houses in Cuba? He took off his broad-brimmed, gold-laced, pointed hat very politely, and said that he did not know. They had been there a good while. Then she asked a priest at an Indian mission church. He said the Spanish people came up from Mexico to live, many, many years before gold was found. The Spanish people made a garden out of the desert. They brought seeds and plants from Mexico, and they coaxed water down from the mountains. Many of the gold seekers did not go back home. They went down the valley five hundred miles to the Spanish towns, and they made more farms and towns near the sea around
