86 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



white with a glow of yellow at the heart, and faintly 

 fragrant. Side by side with them amid the gray 

 leafage of the plant, were the spent flowers of yes- 

 terday, drooping dejected upon their stalks, com- 

 panioning the alert buds flushed with pink, of to- 

 morrow's blooming an epitome of life, affording, 

 like life anywhere, texts for pessimist and optimist 

 according to the point of view. 



So with the lengthening shadows, we came at last 

 to Seven Palms, and Eytel, slipping the pack from 

 our Eosinante, staked him in the midst of a patch 

 of salt grass, while the Professor and I started a 

 fire for the brewing of a cannikin of tea, hard by an 

 ancient palm. While in point of varied usefulness 

 the California fan-palm must yield to the mesquit, 

 it is sui generis for stately beauty in the desert 

 sylva one of the noblest of our native trees. To 

 one accustomed to seeing it only in straight rows 

 along city avenues and private roadways, the trunks 

 trimly shorn of all leafage well up to the growing 

 crown, the first sight of it in Nature's setting is re- 

 freshing in unstudied groups of few or several, or 

 in sinuous procession following the winding course 

 of some rivulet, into whose moist margin, crummy 

 with alkali, the trees love to sink their toes. 

 Around their huge bases are gathered sedges and 

 rushes, arrow-weed and salt-grass ; now and then 



