154 East and West 
seemed to belong to the woodpeckers, the 
magpies, and the flowers. Occasionally a 
brook tempted me to loiter, sitting upon my 
horse in its midst, hypnotised by its murmur- 
ous song no doubt, while the horse plunged 
his sensitive nostrils in the cool water or 
cropped the grass on the bank. Doves cooing 
in the distance, the calling of valley quail, the 
didactic voices of vireos, and the impetuous 
little song of Parkman’s wren were the only 
sounds to break the silence. While the sun 
was warm, the California air readily surrenders 
its heat, so that to step into the shade of an 
oak is to find a refreshing coolness. In that 
enchanted country appeared no element of 
discord. ‘Tidytips nodded to the passing 
breeze; the golden baeria glistened in the sun. 
Over the land rested the spirit of peace as 
over few places in this distracted world—the 
spirit of the gentle race of flowers. 
On the fourth day I rode back across 
the painted fields, through the lupines and the 
larkspurs, through the golden splendour of 
the baeria,—up and out of Elysium. 
It was late in the season, perhaps too late for 
flowers, when I crossed the range over the 
Cashitas Pass into the Ojai Valley—once an 
Elysium also, it is averred, but now, alas, 
