No visit to Pasadena would be complete without an excursion to the neighboring mountains, which not only furnish the inhabitants with water, but, also, contribute greatly to their happiness and recreation.  For, having at last awakened to the fact that comfort and delight awaited them in the recesses and upon the summits of their giant hills, the Californians have built fine roads along the mountain sides, established camping-grounds and hostelries at several attractive points, and, finally, constructed a remarkable elevated railroad, by which the people of Los Angeles can, in three hours, reach the crest of the Sierra Madre, six thousand feet above the sea.  Soon after leaving Pasadena, a trolley takes the tourist with great rapidity straight toward the mountain wall, which, though presenting at a distance the appearance of an unbroken rampart, disintegrates as he approaches it into separate peaks; so that the crevices, which look from Pasadena like mere wrinkles on the faces of these granite giants, prove upon close inspection to be canons of considerable depth.  I was surprised and charmed to see the amount of cultivation which is carried to the very bases of these cliffs.  Orchards and orange groves approach the monsters fearlessly, and shyly drop golden fruit, or fragrant blossoms at their feet; while lovely homes are situated where the traveler would expect to find nothing but desolate crags and savage wildness.  The truth is, the inhabitants have come to trust these mountains, as gentle animals sometimes learn by experience to approach man fearlessly; and, seeing what the snow-capped peaks can do for them in tempering the summer heat and furnishing them water from unfailing reservoirs, men have discerned behind their stern severity the smile of friendship and benevolence, and have perceived that these sublime dispensers of the gifts of Nature are in reality beneficent deities,—­their feet upon the land which they make fertile, their hands uplifted to receive from the celestial treasure-house the blessings they in turn give freely to the grateful earth.

[Illustration:  Looking down on the San Gabriel valley.]

[Illustration:  The Alpine tavern.]

[Illustration:  The great incline.]

To reach their serrated crests the trolley car, already mentioned, conveys us through a wild gorge known as Rubio Canon, and leaves us at the foot of an elevated cable-road to ascend Mount Lowe.  Even those familiar with the Mount Washington and Catskill railways, or who have ascended in a similar manner to Muerren from the Vale of Lauterbrunnen, or to the summit of Mount Pilate from Lucerne, look with some trepidation at this incline, the steepest part of which has a slope of sixty-two degrees, and, audaciously, stretches into the air to a point three thousand feet above our heads.  Once safely out of the cable car, however, at the