IN CALIFORNIA 83 



and blooming as the rose had to do with artesian 

 wells and alfalfa. Perhaps it had ; but that day, as 

 we footed it through acres of trailing pink abronias 

 and across violet sheets of dainty gilias, and brushed 

 past a score of different shrubs daleas, kramerias, 

 encelias begemmed with exquisite blossoms in blue 

 and crimson and yellow, I realized that there was 

 another blooming of the desert, besides that of 

 man's nurturing, and quite as worthy of regard. 

 The conventional talk that I had heard about the 

 desert flora was of its thorns and ill smells and for- 

 biddingness ; but here was pure beauty. 



Not always are the desert flowers, like the 

 abronias and gilias, massed in colonies ; oftener are 

 they distributed at more or less wide intervals, for 

 in that land of scanty moisture, crowding would 

 mean death ; and it is only after the eye becomes ac- 

 custqmed to the sparsely clothed waste of sand and 

 rock, that one begins to catch here and there the 

 glint and glow of color that marks the presence of 

 flowers. The gorgeous petal-masses of the cactus 

 tribe, in pink and yellow and magenta of half a 

 dozen shades, will sooner or later catch half an eye, 

 as will the brilliant spurts of scarlet that spring like 

 flame from the upper part of the whip-like, almost 

 leafless stalks of the ocotillo or candlewood (Fou- 



