FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



midst was covered with lily-pads and yellow 

 spatter-dock lilies, — old New England friends 

 whose homely faces were trebly welcome in these 

 far-off California altitudes. 



I never approached the meadow — which melt- 

 ing snowbanks all about still rendered impossible 

 of dry-shod exploration — without pleasing anti- 

 cipation of deer. They must frequent it I thought ; 

 but I looked for them in vain. The curiously dis- 

 tinctive slow drum-taps of an invisible William- 

 son sapsucker, a true Sierran, handsomest of the 

 handsome, were always to be counted upon ; 

 swallows and swifts went skimming over the 

 grass ; robins and snowbirds flitted about ; but if 

 deer ever came this way, it was not down in the 

 books for me to find them. 



At the end of the trail, after a tedious gravelly 

 slope, where I remember a close bed of the pretty 

 mountain phlox, with thin remnants of a snowdrift 

 no more than a rod or two above it, there re- 

 mained a brief clamber over huge boulders, with 

 tufts of gorgeous pink pentstemon growing in 

 such scanty deposits of coarse soil as the deso- 

 late, unpromising situation afforded, — the scant- 

 ier the better, as it seemed, for this clever econo- 

 mist is a lover of rocks if ever there was one. It 

 was to be found in all directions, in the Valley 

 and on the heights, but never anywhere except 

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