The California Condor 



ranges of the coastal system, and our means of conveyance was a two- 

 wheeled cart plus a saddle horse, for there were three in the party. The 

 cattle country was at its lushest stage of pasturage. Grass, so fresh 

 and luxuriant that one almost envied the stolid steers, gave way in spots 

 and acre-wide streaks to flowers of gorgeous hue. There were blue-eyes 

 and brodceas (a little late) and shooting stars (a little early), but most of 

 all there were blue lupines in billows, escholtzias that set the earth aflame, 

 and owl's clover that quenched it again with purple torrents, — around 

 every turn in the hills a conspiracy of elemental pyrotechnics! As the 

 mountains strengthened, the pasture gave way to chaparral, at first 

 chamise, the sturdy homespun of California, then manzanita and dotting 

 live oaks, and ceanothus an endless host. Soon digger pines, quaintest 

 of evergreens, waved their ghostly arms or whispered to top-heavy 

 neighbors. And the view! Looking backward to the north as far as 

 eye could reach was an endless panorama of rolling hills, hills varied by 

 yellow escarpments, blue timber in belts, dark green scumble of chap- 

 arral, and here and there great blocks or ribbons of clearest grass green. 

 We crossed ranches, or consolidated holdings, boasting 30,000 acres each, 

 40,000, and then 60,000. We had escaped from civilization. 



After a night and a half day spent with an old settler in the enjoy- 

 ment of old-fashioned hospitality, in form at least forty years behind the 

 times, and in spirit a half millenium ahead of common practice, we set 

 out on foot with a single pack-horse and threaded for half a day the 

 devious trails which penetrate a buckthorn wilderness, and which work 

 gradually toward the heart of the hills where the Condor has his lair. 



A night on the ground and a dip in a brawling stream makes us fit 

 for Condor-gazing an hour before daybreak; but the morning is foggy 

 and we cannot see well. Breakfast is not only al fresco but al freezo, 

 because we are not advertising our presence by tell-tale fires. Turkey 

 Vultures abound, and they circle about an elevated chimney of rock 

 which projects above the climbing sea of chaparral. They weary the 

 attention, strained upon larger quarry, and we do not escape from false 

 alarms until we have battled for an hour with the thorny jungle, and have 

 gained the vantage point of a huge boulder, a fallen fragment of moun- 

 tain which overtops the chaparral. By and by Kelly descries a Condor 

 some 2000 feet above, distinguishable rather by sturdiness of motion than 

 by size from the nearer "Buzzards." The great bird is soaring over the 

 heights of his ancestral castle, but he soon settles in the top of a pine 

 tree where we can study him with binoculars and telescope. We have 

 a pretty good idea that his optical apparatus is better than ours at that, 

 for he is ill at ease and presently casts off again. Soon he is joined by 

 another bird, and as they wheel and pitch in the clearing atmosphere, 



1721 



