Chaparral 125 
fields. Here and there are little colonies of 
zygadene, a graceful white lily remotely 
suggesting a jonquil. Brilliant scarlet paint- 
brushes gleam amid the sages, while whole 
fields are reddened by the countless blos- 
soms of the pink paint-brush, called ‘‘es- 
cobita’”’ by the Mexicans, which, being 
translated, means a little whisk-broom. 
The Santa Inez—an offshoot of the Coast 
Range—attains an altitude of about four thou- 
sand feet and presents from the Montecito 
valley the appearance of a wall or rampart, 
far more imposing than the altitude would 
indicate. They are big little mountains, bold 
and individual, and their topography is pe- 
culiar by reason of the innumerable cafions 
and lesser barrancas at right angles to the 
axis of the range, which are not passes but 
merely lead into other cafions, parallel to the 
axis and presenting an appearance of im- 
mense cirques. The barrancas in every case 
end in a blank wall. Fairly good-sized 
streams flow through these blind cafions, 
having their origin in the interior parallel 
cafions where they are fed by springs; that 
is, they all rise in the range itself on its outer 
slope. 
After a cold rainstorm early in February, 
