CHAPTER IV.
EN ROUTE TO LOS ANGELES.
"Bless me, this is pleasant, Riding on the rail!" On the Surf Line from San Diego to Los Angeles, a seventy-mile run along the coast, there is so much to see, admire, and think about, that the time passes rapidly without napping or nodding.

Take a chair seat on the left of car--the ocean side--and enjoy the panoramic view from the window: the broad expanse of the Pacific, its long curling breakers, the seals and porpoises tumbling about in clumsy frolics, the graceful gulls circling above them, the picturesque canons, and the flocks of birds starting from the ground, frightened by our approach.

This we watch for more than an hour; then the scene changes, and, leaving the water, we have glimpses of wondrous carpets of wild-flowers, the golden poppy predominant, miles of brilliant green on either hand, peeps at the three missions, the groves at Orange, the town of Santa Ana, and Anaheim, the parent colony, the first of all the irrigated settlements of Southern California, now a wealthy city.
The missions are always interesting.

San Juan Capistrano was seriously injured by an earthquake in 1812; the tower was shaken so severely that it toppled over during morning mass, killing thirty of the worshippers, the priests escaping through the sacristy.

It was the latest and costliest of the missions.