EARTII COVERINGS 
275 
sides the evergreens there are the sumac, the 
white and lavender lilacs, the madrofia, the 
manzanita, the wild mahogany, the choke- 
cherry, all rolled together along the hill-sides in 
great velvet waves fifteen feet or more in height. 
This is the chaparral—the dense thicket where 
the grizzly makes his home and breaks a path, 
where the mule-deer skulks at noonday, but 
where neither horse nor man finds easy thor- 
oughfare. Desolate enough might be the hill- 
sides of California, were it not for this thick 
carpeting of bush and stunted tree. And were 
it not for the grease-wood, the sage-brush, and 
the spiny cactus, how very bare and dreary 
would be the alkaline plains! These growths 
of the arid lands are far from being joyous, 
but they are singularly appropriate to the land- 
scape where they are seen. No other bushes, 
save these hardy shrubs, would live there, and 
nature does the best it can with every surface 
given it to care for. 
The clothing of the hills that lie along the 
Atlantic coast is something quite different from 
that of the Pacific slope or the plains. There 
is neither the density of the chaparral nor the 
meagreness of the sage-brush. The growth 
is more uniform. Oftentimes the laurel, the 
California 
chaparral. 
Sage- 
