A Thousand-Mile Walk 



ception of its amazing richness. Count the 

 flowers of any portion of these twenty hills, or 

 of the bottom of the Hollow, among the streams : 

 you will find that there are from one to ten 

 thousand upon every square yard, counting 

 the heads of Composites as single flowers. Yel- 

 low Composites form by far the greater portion 

 of this goldy-way. Well may the sun feed them 

 with his richest light, for these shining sunlets 

 are his very children — rays of his ray, beams 

 of his beam! One would fancy that these Cali- 

 fornia days receive more gold from the ground 

 than they give to it. The earth has indeed 

 become a sky; and the two cloudless skies, ray- 

 ing toward each other flower-beams and sun- 

 beams, are fused and congolded into one glow- 

 ing heaven. By the end of April most of the 

 Hollow plants have ripened their seeds and 

 died; but, undecayed, still assist the landscape 

 with color from persistent involucres and co- 

 rolla-like heads of chaffy scales. 

 . In May, only a few deep-set lilies and eriog- 

 pnums are left alive. June, July, August, and 

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