Emerging from a particularly
tedious breadth of chaparral, I found myself free and erect in a
beautiful park-like grove of Mountain Live Oak, where the ground was
planted with aspidiums and brier-roses, while the glossy foliage made a
close canopy overhead, leaving the gray dividing trunks bare to show the
beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom of the canon was dry
where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus indicated water
at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a bucketful in a
hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead bees, wasps,
beetles, and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would, therefore,
require boiling and filtering through fresh charcoal before it could be
made available. Tracing the dry channel about a mile farther down to its
junction with a larger tributary canon, I at length discovered a lot of
boulder pools, clear as crystal, brimming full, and linked together by
glistening streamlets just strong enough to sing audibly. Flowers in
full bloom adorned their margins, lilies ten feet high, larkspur,
columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and overarching in lavish
abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its rugged arms over all.
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