ninety-nine and ninety-nine one-hundredths per cent of the peaches of
the world. I pause to say here that none of these figures is true. They
are all made up for the occasion. But don't despair! I am sure that they
don't do California justice by half. Any other Californiac - with the
mathematical memory which I unfortunately lack - will provide the
correct data. Somebody told me once, I seem to recall, that the Santa
Clara valley produces sixty per cent of the worlds prunes. But I may be
mistaken. What I prefer to remember is one day's trip in that springtide
of prune bloom. For hours and hours of motor speed, we glided through a
snowy world that showed no speck of black bark or fleck of green leaf; a
world in which the sole relief from a silent white blizzard of blossom
was the blue of the sky arch, the purple of distant lupines alternating
with the gold of blood-centered poppies, pouring like avalanches down
hills of emerald green.

Getting out of the scenery zone only to fall into the climate zone.
Reader, it's just the same with the climate as the scenery. It's got to
be done some time, so why not now?

That's what California produces in the way of scenery and fodder. So
now, let's consider the climate, even if I am invading Jesse Williams's
territory. For it has magical properties - that climate of California.
It makes people grow big and beautiful and strenuous; it makes flowers
grow big and beautiful; it makes fleas grow big and - strenuous. It
offers, except in the most southern or the most mountainous regions, no
such extremes of heat or cold as are found elsewhere in the country. Its
marvel is of course the season which corresponds to our winter. The
visitor coming, let us say in February, from the ice-bound and
frost-locked East through the flat, dreary Middle West, and stalled
possibly on the way, remains glued in stupefaction to the car window. In