268 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



gentle manifested in the midst of what is called 

 violence and fury, but easily recognized by all who 

 look and listen for them. The rain brought out the 

 colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the 

 rich brown of the bark of the trees and the fallen 

 burs and leaves and dead ferns; the grays of 

 rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling 

 buds, and the warm yellow greens of the libocedrus 

 and mosses. The air was steaming with delightful 

 fragrance, not rising and wafting past in separate 

 masses, but diffused through all the atmosphere. 

 Pine woods are always fragrant, but most so in 

 spring when the young tassels are opening and in 

 warm weather when the various gums and balsams 

 are softened by the sun. The wind was now chafing 

 their innumerable needles and the warm rain was 

 steeping them. Monardella grows here in large beds 

 in the openings, and there is plenty of laurel in 

 dells and manzanita on the hillsides, and the rosy, 

 fragrant chamoebatia carpets the ground almost 

 everywhere. These, with the gums and balsams of 

 the woods, form the main local fragrance-foun 

 tains of the storm. The ascending clouds of aroma 

 wind-rolled and rain-washed became pure like 

 light and traveled with the wind as part of it. 

 Toward the middle of the afternoon the main flood 

 cloud lifted along its western border revealing 

 a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley some 

 twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun-lighted 

 and glistering with rain-sheets as if paved with 

 silver. Soon afterward a jagged bluff-like cloud 

 with a sheer face appeared over the valley of the 

 Yuba, dark-colored and roughened with numerous 



