158 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



The alpine willow, at an altitude between eight 

 and nine thousand feet, was just coming into bloom, 

 and was pleasantly fragrant, having a quality of 

 scent similar to that of the grapevine, this perfume so 

 exquisitely delicious as to make one cast a sort of sigh 

 as he inhaled it. The great meadows also were a won- 

 der of brightness and of sweet odors coming from the 

 myriad flowers of the dodekatheon, a plant known also 

 under other pleasant names, such as ''Shooting stars" 

 and "Ithuriel's spear." Individually, these pink and pur- 

 plish flowers with their umbel of twelve blossoms on a 

 single stem (which gives the name of the Twelve Gods) 

 have but slight scent, but from whole fields came delicious 

 odors, as fine and as worthy of renown as that from the 

 absinthe fields in Switzerland, or, as we are often assured 

 in poetry, from "fields of asphodel," — which, by the way, 

 though the poets seem unaware of the fact, is a plant 

 without perfume. I have seen it often in Sicily, in 

 Greece, and in Asia Minor, wraithlike and in mass hand- 

 some as it bows before the breeze, but without any en- 

 dowment of scent whatever. 



We passed the grave of a Basque sheep-herder, inclosed 

 within a primitive fence of logs, with its French inscrip- 

 tion on the carved headboard, beginning ''Id repose Jean 

 le Basque," or whatever his name may have been; and it 

 was the presence of this grave, I am told, which caused a 

 visitor to this cafion, who wrote up the pass at its head 

 in rather lurid style a year or two ago, to believe that it 

 was "Deadman's Canon," and, acting on that supposition, 

 to cause the change of names on the Government map in 

 Washington while this particular sheet was receiving its 

 final corrections, and while the editor of the series was 

 temporarily absent. The names are correctly given on 

 Le Conte's map ; "Copper Canon" for this, named after 

 an old copper mine at its source, and "Deadman's Canon" 

 for the other. 



In the afternoon we climbed over the rim of the valley, 

 ten thousand feet above the sea, which commands a view 



