Hither come the San Gabriel
lads and lassies, to gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in
the cool water, glad to escape from their commonplace palm-gardens and
orange-groves. The delicate maidenhair grows on fissured rocks within
reach of the spray, while broad-leaved maples and sycamores cast soft,
mellow shade over a rich profusion of bee-flowers, growing among
boulders in front of the pool--the fall, the flowers, the bees, the
ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little poem of wildness,
the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of Mount San
Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main Eaton Canon.
From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western
rim of the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks,
which is about 5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I
crossed the middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate
ridges and across its eastern rim, having to contend almost everywhere
with the floweriest and most impenetrable growth of honey-bushes I had
ever encountered since first my mountaineering began. Most of the Shasta
chaparral is leafy nearly to the ground; here the main stems are naked
for three or four feet, and interspiked with dead twigs, forming a stiff
_chevaux de frise_ through which even the bears make their way with
difficulty.
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