When we first took possession of our hill-top early one June, nothing was farther from my thoughts.  “Suma Paz,” “Perfect Peace,” as the place was called, came to me from a beloved aunt who had truly found it that.  With it came a cow, a misunderstood motor, and a wardrobe trunk.  A Finnish lady came with the cow, and my brother-in-law’s chauffeur graciously consented to come with the motor.  The trunk was empty.  It was all so complete that the backbone of the family, suddenly summoned on business, departed for the East, feeling that he had left us comfortably established for the month of his absence.  The motor purred along the nine miles to the railroad station without the least indication of the various kinds of internal complications about to develop, and he boarded the train, beautifully composed in mind, while we returned to our hill-top.

It is a most enchanting spot.  A red-tiled bungalow is built about a courtyard with cloisters and a fountain, while vines and flowers fill the air with the most delicious perfume of heliotrope, mignonette, and jasmine.  Beyond the big living-room extends a terrace with boxes of deep and pale pink geraniums against a blue sea, that might be the Bay of Naples, except that Vesuvius is lacking.  It is so lovely that after three years it still seems like a dream.  We are only one short look from the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose mists the sun sets in flaming purple and gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering gray and shell-pink.  We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium box on the edge of the world, and watch the ever-varying splendor.  At night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us.  These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the bay.  The Pacific is a lonely ocean.  There are so few harbors along the coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts and pleasure craft hardly exist.  Occasionally we see the smoke of a steamer on its way to or from ports of Lower California, as far south as the point where the curtain drops on poor distracted Mexico, for there trade ceases and anarchy begins.  There is a strip of land, not belonging to the United States, called Lower California, controlled by a handsome soldierly creature, Governor Cantu, whose personal qualities and motives seem nicely adapted to holding that much, at least, of Mexico in equilibrium.  Only last summer he was the guest of our small but progressive village at a kind of love feast, where we cemented our friendship with whale steaks and ginger ale dispensed on the beach, to the accompaniment of martial music, while flags of both countries shared the breeze.  Though much that is picturesque, especially in the way of food—­enciladas, tamales and the like—­strays across the border, bandits do not, and we enjoy a sense of security that encourages