that ever the sun shone on, Napa. At the lower end of this valley we pass through the thriving, prosperous-looking, young city of Napa, with its grain warehouses on the banks of a navigable creek, and vessels' masts showing over the housetops, as in Chicago. The streets are wide, and the houses, which have a neat and homelike Eastern air, are surrounded with blooming gardens and orchards, laden with red and golden fruit, and vines borne down to the very earth with luscious white, flame-colored, and purple grapes. Napa looks an attractive place for a quiet home, and such its people consider it.
The sun has gone down in the purple west, and the full, round autumn moon climbs the Eastern horizon as we glide away northwards through the valley of Napa. The still, pure air is illuminated by the rays of the moon to an extent hardly to be credited in less favored lands beyond the Rocky Mountains; and trees, rocks, houses, vineyards, orchards and shadowy mountains stand out clear and distinct; every object within a range of many miles is seen almost as if by daylight. The valley is one wide, yellow stubble-field, only broken by patches of vineyard, long banks of grain in sacks, piled up in the fields, and left uncovered for months with perfect impunity in this rainless season; huge stacks of straw and hay, pressed into bales for the, market, and white farm-houses, many of them very costly, indicating the possession of wealth and taste by their proprietors. At intervals we pass through natural parks, where the mighty live-oaks are scattered through the whole broad valley, like apple trees in an
