340 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFOKNIA 



of tropical luxuriance, composed of wild-rose and 

 bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing 

 vines, wreathing and interlacing the branches and 

 trunks of willows and alders, and swinging across 

 from summit to summit in heavy festoons. Here 

 the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the 

 flowers of the drier plain had withered and gone 

 to seed. And in midsummer, when the " blackber 

 ries " were ripe, the Indians came from the moun 

 tains to feast men, women, and babies in long, 

 noisy trains, often joined by the farmers of the 

 neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with 

 commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, 

 while their home orchards were full of ripe peaches, 

 apricots, nectarines, and figs, and their vineyards 

 were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuri 

 ant, shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the 

 smooth, treeless plain, they made no heavy divid 

 ing lines in general views. The whole appeared as 

 one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the 

 mountains. 



When I first saw this central garden, the most 

 extensive and regular of all the bee-pastures of the 

 State, it seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy 

 and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new 

 map along the foot-hills at my feet. 



Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Eange 

 through beds of gilias and lupines, and around 

 many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland, 

 I at length waded out into the midst of it. All 

 the ground was covered, not with grass and green 

 leaves, but with radiant corollas, about ankle-deep 

 next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five or six 



