Their sunward sides are gardens, their
shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae,
compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely
flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia
and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly
apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
My first visit to Bloody Canon was made in the summer of 1869, under
circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the
peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of
Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great valley of
California, when its flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I
beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so
glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground from the Coast Range
to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled for
weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns; then I
gave myself up to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that
sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits.
At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching,
botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains.
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