YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIES 



Once in five miles, or some such matter, we 

 passed a house (the driver knew every one by 

 its owner's name) ; two or three times a road- 

 runner was seen skulking amid the chaparral, 

 his long, expressive tail rising and falling ; and 

 by and by we came to clumps of trees that 

 pleased me as much, perhaps, as any of the 

 lesser things that I have seen in California : 

 California buckeyes ; not yet in bloom, but 

 covered with such a canopy of new leaves, and 

 so matchless in shape — low, round-topped, wide- 

 spreading, a perfect dome of greenery — well, 

 there is no saying how I appreciated their love- 

 liness. If they are not cultivated, as I have never 

 heard that they are, it must be, I should think, 

 because gardeners do not quite know their busi- 

 ness. About the same time, perhaps before it, 

 we passed my first fuchsia-flowered gooseberry- 

 bushes, their downward-curving branches hung 

 so thickly with long, odd-shaped scarlet blooms 

 that I felt at first as if I were looking at good 

 Yankee-land barberry-bushes loaded with dead- 

 ripe fruit. 



We had been on the road about four hours 

 when we met a man, a German, it seemed, in an 

 open wagon. "We'll ask ///;;/ about it," said the 

 driver; and he pulled up the horses. 



Such a creek ? Yes, the German knew it. It 

 125 



