Home of the Mountain Lion I49 



chaparral, yet in ten feet, by passing around a spur of 

 the mountain, I reached the north side where the snow 

 was a foot deep on the trail and every peak and slope 

 was covered with snow as far as the eye could reach. 

 Not only could one see winter and semi-tropic summer 

 at a sweeping glance, but could leap from one to the 

 other. This marvellous transformation is often seen 

 lower down. On the upper slopes are found many pines, 

 ponderosa, albicaulis y and monticola, false hemlock, white 

 cedars, and juniper, up to five thousand feet the buck- 

 thorn, and beneath it the splendid wild fuchsia making 

 or forming a forest garden in itself. 



Up to four thousand feet the great mass of the chap- 

 arral has been made up of Adenostoma, the " grease- 

 wood" of the Mexicans, and from the heights the eye 

 sweeps over masses of this rich green vestment that 

 rises and falls, dips into abysmal cafions, tumbling 

 into the valleys like waves of the sea. We may pass 

 through a narrow belt of madrona on the three-thousand- 

 foot level, and now see the spreading, smooth, almost 

 polished arms of the manzanita that reaches up to the 

 greater heights ; then, if on the higher mountains, come 

 to forests and parks of pine, and then to the summits of 

 bare and barren rock, crowned with snow in winter, 

 and often bearing it far into the summer. 



The highest mountain in the southern Sierras is 

 Grizzly Peak, or Grayback, eleven thousand seven 

 hundred and twenty-five feet, capping the San Ber- 

 nardino section of the Sierra Madre, and remarkable as 



