J~L 



i ': 



THE BEE-PASTURES 339 



rocky cliffs and fence-corners, while, on the other 

 hand, cultivation thus far has given no adequate 

 compensation, at least in kind ; only acres of alfalfa 

 for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental 

 roses and honeysuckles around cottage doors for 

 cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small, square 

 orchards and orange-groves for broad mountain- 

 belts of chaparral. 



The Great Central Plain of California, during the 

 months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, 

 continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously 

 rich that, in walking from one end of it to the 

 other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot 

 would press about a hundred flowers at every step. 

 Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and innumer 

 able composites were so crowded together that, had 

 ninety-nine per cent, of them been taken away, the 



(lain would still have seemed to any but Califor- 

 ians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honey- 

 ' ul corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising 

 |bove one another, glowed in the living light like a 

 Sunset sky one sheet of purple and gold, with the 

 bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it 

 from the north, the San Joaquin from the south, 

 and their many tributaries sweeping in at right 

 angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into 

 sections fringed with trees. 



Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, 

 countersunk beneath the general level, and wider 

 toward the foot-hills, where magnificent oaks, from 

 three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses 

 of shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And 

 close along the water's edge there was a fine jungle 



