7 6 Life in the Open 



to San Luis Rey, where the fox was but an excuse, a 

 leader to bring one in touch with new beauties, new 

 scenes. I spent an entire winter in the Sierra Madre 

 between two of its most attractive caftons, and very 

 frequently went hunting with a grey- or foxhound. 

 What game we found and ran to earth in these splendid 

 glades ! We found banks of wild tiger lilies, cliffs with 

 backgrounds of bluebells ; there were brakes as tall as 

 a man, fragrant bays, and down the valley, on the slopes 

 by San Jacinto, the Matilija poppy with great white 

 petals and golden centre. We hunted the fox in the 

 splendid Santa Margarita Rancho that overlooks Elsi- 

 nore, and wandered among the mountains that rise 

 back of the fine old Missions of San Juan Capistrano 

 and San Luis Rey. We hunted in the Coast Range, 

 down the cafion of Laguna with its many caves, and 

 along shore, where the rocks reach out into the sea. 

 All over Southern California the little fox is found, and 

 I commend it to the sole and tender mercies of your 

 camera at times when the hen-roosts are not robbed. 

 If it is a good fox-hunting winter, this first rain holds 

 for several days and gives the thirsty earth an inch or 

 two of rain ; then watch the staging of nature's trans- 

 formation scene. The change is so sudden, comes on 

 so quickly that almost the following week you may see 

 the alfileria rippling away over lowland and mesa ; 

 the rains have washed the seeds of the clovers in wind- 

 rows, and the first green along the roads and trails 

 comes in circles, and arcs, then fills the interstices, and 



