My First Summer 



many ill-defined species, are now mostly out 

 of flower, and many of the composite are 

 beginning to fade, their radiant corollas van- 

 ishing in fluffy pappus like stars in mist. 



We had another visitor from Brown's 

 Flat to-day, an old Indian woman with a 

 basket on her back. Like our first caller 

 from the village, she got fairly into camp 

 and was standing in plain view when dis- 

 covered. How long she had been quietly 

 looking on, I cannot say. Even the dogs 

 failed to notice her stealthy approach. She 

 was on her way, I suppose, to some wild 

 garden, probably for lupine and starchy 

 saxifrage leaves and rootstocks. Her dress 

 was calico rags, far from clean. In every 

 way she seemed sadly unlike Nature's neat 

 well-dressed animals, though living like them 

 on the bounty of the wilderness. Strange 

 that mankind alone is dirty. Had she been 

 clad in fur, or cloth woven of grass or 

 shreddy bark, like the juniper and liboce- 

 drus mats, she might then have seemed a 

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