WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 

 IN CALIFORNIA 



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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF EARLY COLLECTORS 



SITTING in an easy chair of a winter's night, the 

 lamp aglow at my elbow and the fire crackling 

 on the hearth before my toasting feet, I find an 

 especial fascination in reading of the adventures of 

 pioneers carving their heroic way through the vir- 

 gin forests and across the unmapped plains and 

 deserts of this New World. I prefer particularly 

 some personal narrative of the actors themselves, 

 setting forth in straightforward, simple phrase- 

 ology what they themselves saw, did, suffered and 

 enjoyed, rather than the embellished histories of 

 the closet historians, or the fanciful narratives of 

 avowed romances. To work out on the map, for 

 instance, the routes traversed by Fremont or Juan 

 Bautista Anza, where white men had not set foot 

 before ; to put a finger on the spot where their mot- 

 ley caravans crossed such and such a river, their 

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