114 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



water of your canteen on a hot day ; only do not put 

 them into the canteen itself or the acid of the berry, 

 acting upon the metal of the vessel, may by and by 

 poison the water. The proper procedure is to stir 

 a few berries in a cup of water which quickly be- 

 comes as sour as sugarless lemonade and as re- 

 freshing. For this reason these sumacs also go by 

 the name of Indian lemonade berry. 



The man^anita, of which there are three or four 

 species indigenous to the State, is one of the best 

 known shrubs of the chaparral belt, often forming 

 thickets impenetrable except by the beasts of the 

 wild. The tortuous branches polished and dark 

 red, and the persistent, grayish leaves which a 

 twist of the petiole usually sets vertical, make the 

 manzanita one of the most noticeable of shrubs; 

 and the beauty, smoothness and hardness of the 

 wood fire the cane-collecting traveler with an am- 

 bition to add a manzanita specimen or two to his 

 armory, but he seeks long for a stick of it that does 

 not twist a dozen different ways to the foot. 



"I never yet," remarked an old mountaineer, 

 "saw a manzanita cane that didn't remind me of a 

 bow-legged man for crookedness, and I've been 

 looking for a straight one these thirty years. They 

 tell me there's an institution back East that has a 

 standing offer of five thousand dollars for a 



