Out of the city we ran straight away on Santa Clara Street for a distance of five or six miles to Junction House, where the mountain road begins. It was built nearly forty years ago by Santa Clara County at a cost of eighty thousand dollars, the work being authorized to secure the location of the Lick Observatory on the mountain. It is a smooth, well-engineered road, with grades not exceeding ten per cent excepting a few steep pitches near the summit. It swings upwards in wide arcs or narrow loops as the topography of the mountain demands. It is broad enough for vehicles to pass easily, presenting no difficulty to a moderate-powered motor, though in places a sheer precipice falls away from its side and there are abrupt turns around blind corners which call for extreme care.
The winding course of the road up the mountainside affords vantage for endless panoramas of the surrounding country. Indeed, were there no observatory on Mount Hamilton the views alone would well repay the ascent and we paused frequently to contemplate the scene that spread out beneath us. The day was not perfectly clear, yet through the shimmering air we could see the hazy waters of San Francisco Bay some twenty miles to the northwest, and beyond the valley to the southwest, the blue Santa Cruz Range which we crossed the previous day. Just beneath us lay the wide vale of the Santa Clara—surely one of the most beautiful and prosperous of the famous valleys of the Golden State—diversified by orchards and endless wheatfields, with here and there an isolated ranch-house or village. The foothills nearer at hand were studded with oaks and sycamores, with an occasional small farm or fruit orchard set down among them. It was a beautiful day—the partial cloudiness being atoned for by many striking cloud effects and the play of light and color over the landscape.
Midway of the ascent is a little settlement in a pleasant grassy dell, where a plain though comfortable-looking hotel—the Halfway House—offers the wayfarer an opportunity for refreshments, which can not be obtained at the summit. Here we arranged for a lunch on our return, but we had no idea of eating it in the hotel with the delightful nooks we had passed still fresh in mind. The last three or four miles of the climb are by far the most difficult, reminding us not a little of the Mount Wilson ascent; but we experienced no trouble and soon came to the open summit with the vast dome of the observatory crowning it. Around this clusters a village of about fifty people who live here permanently—the families and assistants of the men who devote their lives to the study of the stars. One of the ladies whom we met in the observatory office said, when we asked her of life on the mountain,