A Thousand-Mile Walk 



ception of its amazing richness. Count the 

 flowers of any portion of these twenty hills, or 

 of the bottom of the Hollow, among the streams : 

 you will find that there are from one to ten 

 thousand upon every square yard, counting 

 the heads of Composite as single flowers. Yel 

 low Composite form by far the greater portion 

 of this goldy-way. Well may the sun feed them 

 with his richest light, for these shining sunlets 

 are his very children rays of his ray, beams 

 of his beam! One would fancy that these Cali 

 fornia days receive more gold from the ground 

 than they give to it. The earth has indeed 

 become a sky; and the two cloudless skies, ray 

 ing toward each other flower-beams and sun 

 beams, are fused and congolded into one glow 

 ing heaven. By the end of April most of the 

 Hollow plants have ripened their seeds and 

 died ; but, undecayed, still assist the landscape 

 with color from persistent involucres and co 

 rolla-like heads of chaffy scales. 



In May, only a few deep-set lilies and eriog- 

 onums are left alive. June, July, August, and 

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