CHAPTER XIV. 

 THE ROSE. 



For the greatness and the gladness of it in California, the rose is 

 rescued from the later chapters on shrubs, trees and vines, although 

 the rose blooms on all of them, and placed here, alone and first of the 

 garden flowers to be separately characterized. 



The rose came to California at creation's noon day, judging by the 

 natural beauty and finish of the three indigenous species. Next, per- 

 haps, came the Castilian, for the Spanish pioneers could hardly have 

 forgotten the roses of Castile when making plant collections which 

 would comfort, sustain and perhaps assist them also, while pursuing 

 their arduous task of softening the savage, aboriginal heart. With the 

 early American settlers, who came first seeking pelts and afterwards 

 gold, and with the people of all nations who joined them in the latter 

 quest, there came the best roses the world possessed at the middle of 

 the last century. Rose slips crossed the plain in the old emigrant 

 wagons, and planted beside the miners' cabins on the hillsides or near 

 the bars of the rivers, or beside the first farmers' shacks in the valleys, 

 grew beyond all measures prevailing in the places whence they came; 

 they embowered buildings, they laid hold on native trees and shot 

 their streamers of bloom beyond the branch-circuit of the pines or 

 garlanded the heads of stalwart oaks. As residential buildings statelier 

 grew, in the development of the state, the rose advanced, clothing their 

 sides and softening their roof-lines until it would be difficult now to 

 find a California home or a California heart which is not loyally and 

 joyfully beneath the dominion of the rose. 



But the beneficence of roses in early days should not be forgotten 

 in worship of present supremacy. It is fit to tell the children how 

 those cuttings crossed the plains, cherished and kept moist all the 

 weary way that the pioneer women might have a reminder of home in 

 a new, strange land. And how those pioneer roses reveled in the warm, 

 red soil of the foothills, and cheered many lives which were full of 

 loneliness and longing and often of deep disappointment! With what 

 affection the roses spread a mantle of beauty and fragrance over the 

 forsaken ruins of deserted camps, and how they grow to this day in 

 such solitary places until their stems look like the trunks of old grape 

 vines, but are still full of sap to push out new wood and new bloom 

 aloft joy but to the birds and the passing travelers. 



The Rose in California Life. There are few, if any, places in the 

 world where the rose enters more fully and constantly into daily life 

 than it does in California. There are many places probably where 



