is the irrigating ditch; its “open sesame” is water; and the divinity who, at the call of man, bestows the priceless gift, is the Madre of the Sierras.  A Roman conqueror once said that he had but to stamp upon the earth and legions would spring up to do his bidding.  So Capital has stamped upon this sandy wilderness, and in a single generation a civilized community has leaped into astonished life.  Yet do we realize the immense amount of labor necessitated by such irrigation?  This mountain, for example, is covered with water pipes, as electric wires are carried through our houses.  Every few rods a pipe with a faucet rises from the ground; and as there are miles of roads and hundreds of cultivated acres, it can with difficulty be imagined how many of these pipes have been laid, and how innumerable are the little ditches, through which the water is made to flow.  Should man relax his diligence for a single year, the region would relapse into sterility; but, on the other hand, what a land is this for those who have the skill and industry to call forth all its capabilities!  What powers of productiveness may still be sleeping underneath its soil, awaiting but the kiss of water and the touch of man to waken them to life!  Beside its hidden rivers what future cities may spring forth to joyous being; and what new, undiscovered chemistry may not this mingling of mountain, sun, and ocean yet evolve to prove a permanent blessing to mankind!

[Illustration:  Grounds of the Smiley brothers on the “Converted mountain.”]

[Illustration:  Irrigating ditches.]

One hundred and twenty-six miles southwest of Los Angeles, one could imagine that he had reached the limit of the civilized world:  eastward, the desert stretches far away to the bases of the San Jacinto Mountains; westward, thousands of miles of ocean billows shoulder one another toward the setting sun; southward, extends that barren, almost unknown strip of earth, the peninsula of Lower California; yet in this cul-de-sac, this corner between mountain, desert, and sea, rises a charming and inspiring picture,—­San Diego.

[Illustration:  San Diego.]

The beautiful harbor of this city is almost closed, on one side, by a bold majestic promontory called Point Loma; and on the other, by a natural breakwater, in the form of a crescent, twelve miles long, upon the outer rim of which the ocean beats a ceaseless monody.  At one extremity of this silver strand, directly opposite Point Loma and close to the rhythmic surf, stands the Hotel Coronado; its west front facing the Pacific, its east side looking on the azure of the peaceful bay, beyond which rises San Diego with a population of twenty thousand souls.  To reach this hotel, the tourist crosses the harbor from the city by a ferry, and then in an electric car is whirled for a mile along an avenue which he might well suppose