xxxii] CALIFORNIA TO QUEBEC i;3 



of Donner Lake on a continuous descent to Truckee and the 

 great Nevada silver-mines. The granite rocks in the pass 

 are everywhere ground smooth by ice into great bosses and 

 slopes, in the fissures of which nestle many curious little 

 alpine plants. 



I stayed here four days, taking walks in different direc- 

 tions, ascending some of the nearest mountains, exploring 

 little hidden valleys, and everywhere finding flowers quite 

 new to me, and of very great interest. The pentstemons 

 were of great beauty, especially one which grew in fissures 

 of the granite rocks, with clusters of sky-blue flowers and 

 yellow buds, forming a most striking combination. The 

 curious and beautiful Pedicularis greenlandica was common 

 in bogs, with tall spikes of purple-red flowers, having long, 

 strangely curved beaks, giving the appearance of some 

 fantastic orchid. The genus Gilia was abundant in various 

 curious modifications, one species (G.pungens) being like a 

 minute furze-bush. On some of the hillsides there were 

 sheets of the pretty butterfly- tulip {CalocJwrtus Nuttallti), 

 and in moister places the blue Camassia esculenta, the very 

 dwarf Bryanthus Breweri like a miniature rhododendron* 

 the pretty starlike dodecatheons, the brilliant castillejas, 

 and a host of others. Eriogonums, allied to our poly- 

 gonums, were abundant and varied, and there were many 

 curious composites and elegant little ferns in the rock- 

 crevices. One of the higher mountains was of volcanic 

 rock, and having once seen their characteristic forms, it was 

 evident that most of them were of this formation, being the 

 sources of the great extent of Pliocene lava-streams and ash- 

 beds which cover so much of the country in California, 

 Nevada, and Idaho. The older rock here is a kind of gneiss, 

 full of fragments of other rocks, both crystalline and volcanic, 

 producing a result similar to the rocks I found in the granitic 

 region of the Upper Rio Negro, and which I have figured in 

 my "Amazon and Rio Negro" (p. 423, cheap ed. p. 293). 

 The smooth, rounded forms of the rocks here are plainly due 

 to glaciation, and have quite a different character to the 

 globular or dome-form at the Yosemite and in Brazil, due to 



