90 Fish Stories 



I fancy Los Laurelles is two or three hundred feet above 

 the sea, just enough to give the winding, capricious Httle 

 stream a voice, which comes on the wind through the pines, 

 luring one to its pools, its alcoves of verdure. And so, 



having greeted H , the rancher, I slipped on an old hat 



with a pedigree, and waders, and in the language of the 

 nature writers, answered *' the call of the wild." It took 

 me down into the bed of the canon beneath big oaks and 

 sycamores, then to the wash where high freshets had left 

 polished stones and boulders — a mimic glacial moraine. All 

 the time the murmur of the Rio Carmelo was growing 

 louder, the high Santa Lucia range against which it coursed, 

 forming a sounding board; then a miniature forest — syca- 

 mores, alders, vivid cottonwoods, tall groups of Juncus or 

 rush in moist places, patches of cactus here and there, 

 through which the tall stems of Brodisea forced their way, 

 balancing the cluster lily with its lavender hues, and now 

 and then, the blue-eyed iris, cheek by jowl with the Spanish 

 bayonet. There were black and white willows, and over 

 them black live oaks, sycamores with clustered mistletoe, 

 and elders, while along the edges of the forest grew groves 

 of rippling wild buckwheat and sorrel with patches of scar- 

 let larkspur, buttercups and meadow rue. 



Louder came the rippling laughter of the waters, then 

 almost trapped in the maze of verdure, I threw myself 

 bodily into the brush, and literally fell crashing out upon the 

 sands of the little arroyo, where Junipero Serra and de 

 Nerve fished, and found solace for all the senses, and doubt- 

 less " tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in 

 stones, and good in everything." 



It was a fair little river at this point, widening out to one 

 hundred or more feet, flowing smoothly over dark pebbles, 

 with deep shadows in its upper reaches, then dashing out 

 into the strong light with just the ripple one might have ex- 

 pected. Here I waded in, crossed to the other side in the 

 deep shadow of the Santa Lucia, stood silently for a while in 



