Here the
wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the drier
plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the
"blackberries" were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to
feast--men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the
farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home
orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and
their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant,
shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain,
they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared
as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains.
When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of
all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant
gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along
the foot-hills at my feet.
Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias
and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned headland,
I at length waded out into the midst of it.
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