THE NAUTILUS. 23 



eagerness to secure some prize that imagined it was safe when within 

 a " crown of thorns." 



A few of the main creeks and sluiceways are shallow, broad and 

 open, and cannot be classed as canyons. Their creek-beds are some- 

 times bordered by small, narrow flats or slopes, with a background 

 of smooth rolling hills and sunny declivities that become more ab- 

 rupt, rocky and broken as they rise and join the main- ridge. On 

 some of these little flats, directly along the banks of the creek, there 

 are occasional patches of small willows, intermingled with bushes 

 and shrubs of various kinds. On the southern sides of these open 

 creeks or sluiceways the land generally rises more abrupt and rapidly 

 than on the opposite side, is more rugged and is densely clothed with 

 the impenetrable chaparral, mingled frequently with cactus, and 

 presenting rather a strange contrast to the barren, treeless and 

 shrubless slopes on the opposite side of the creeks. 



The aspect of these islands during the dry season is dreary 

 enough, and yet, even then, there is a sort of melancholy charm 

 about the scenery, especially to those who want to see and study old 

 mother nature in all her moods, which are about as changeable and 

 fickle as her greatest offspring, the genus Homo. 



The brown and sere vegetation, the barren and dried-up soil, 

 ridge and slope strewn with fragments of disintegrating ledges of 

 vari-colored rocks, the dumb waterless streams that sing no song 

 and produce no " speckled beauties " to the great disgust of the 

 enthusiastic " fly-throwers," and the hazy atmosphere that frequently 

 hangs like a veil over hill and mountain, and lends a dim, distant and 

 dreamy appearance to the landscape, are conditions not calculated 

 to excite our enthusiasm, and leaves the imagination about as barren 

 of glow as the landscape is of flowers and green grass. With the 

 advent of the wet or rainy season however, all this dreariness is 

 changed and so quickly that one wonders at the sudden transforma- 

 tion of the landscape from a dreary desert waste to a beautiful bloom- 

 ing garden wrought by the magic chemistry of the rains and dews 

 upon the dry, warm earth. 



Perhaps in no other part of our blessed republic is there so sudden 

 and rapid a transition in the growth of vegetation, and hence in the 

 general aspect of the landscape, as occurs in Southern California, 

 after the heavy rains fall and the ground becomes well saturated 

 with moisture. I know of no better fact that illustrates so well the 



