34 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



no more trouble about its care ; for only in 

 darkness does vandalism flourish. 1 



The reserves of southern California, — the 

 San Gabriel, San Bernardino, San Jacinto, and 

 Trabuco, — though not large, only about two 

 million acres together, are perhaps the best ap- 

 preciated. Their slopes are covered with a 

 close, almost impenetrable growth of flowery 

 bushes, beginning on the sides of the fertile 

 coast valleys and the dry interior plains. Their 

 higher ridges, however, and mountains are open, 

 and fairly well forested with sugar pine, yellow 

 pine, Douglas spruce, libocedrus, and white fir. 

 As timber fountains they amount to little, but as 

 bird and bee pastures, cover for the precious 

 streams that irrigate the lowlands, and quickly 

 available retreats from dust and heat and care, 

 their value is incalculable. Good roads have 

 been graded into them, by which in a few hours 

 lowlanders can get well up into the sky and find 

 refuge in hospitable camps and club-houses, 

 where, while breathing reviving ozone, they may 

 absorb the beauty about them, and look comfort- 

 ably down on the busy towns and the most 

 beautiful orange groves ever planted since gar- 

 dening began. 



The Grand Canon Reserve of Arizona, of 

 nearly two million acres, or the most interesting 

 part of it, as well as the Rainier region, should 



1 See note, p. 27. 



