Early Spring in California.

APRIL in California! What a dream of delight the words recall to the fortunate traveller whose times and seasons have been so happily ordered as to bring him to the Granite State at this favoured season; for all these Western States are like different worlds, according as we see them in the green loveliness of their fresh spring-time, or when the long summer's drought has transformed the flowery pastures into broad plains of yellow sun-dried hay and withered plants, all smothered in stifling dust.

Even when, forsaking the plains, the traveller turns his steps to the great mountain ranges, he only who arrives in the early spring-time can revel in their full beauty. For him, the hills are rainbow-hued with countless blossoms, and every streamlet, fed by the melting snows on the upper ranges, becomes a rushing river, and every waterfall is a vision of entrancing loveliness.

The summer wanderer travels in choking, blinding dust clouds. He finds the streams insignificant, the azaleas already on the wane, and even the largest waterfalls mere ghosts of their spring glory, while all the gleaming temporary falls, born only of the snows, have altogether disappeared.

I had, therefore, good cause to deem myself fortunate, when, owing to prolonged detention in the beautiful isles of the South Pacific, I landed in San Francisco on Easter morning, and received my first impressions of the New World from its exquisitely decorated churches, with their lavish display of flowers. Each church in the great city strove to outdo its neighbour in its profusion of roses and pure white lilies-chiefly the Calla lily, which we call Arum.

Throughout California the afternoon of Easter Day is the children's floral festival, and thousands of happy little ones march in procession, with gay banners and offerings of flowers, to take part in a joyous choral festival, and to present their gift of lovely fragrant flowers-perhaps also of money for the poor and suffering.

After this glimpse of what Californian gardens can produce, we made various expeditions in the neighbourhood, and everywhere the prominent object was the wealth of wild flowers. We drove for miles through lupine scrub-hardy, perennial lupines, indigenous to California, and able to flourish on the driest sand. So their growth has been greatly encouraged on the desolate sand dunes on which the great city has sprung up; and these pioneer lupines are doing a mighty work in

reclaiming thousands of acres of the arid, shifting sands. Each bush bears countless spikes of blossom, pink, lilac, white, blue, pale lemon, or orange colour; and besides these shrub lupines, all other varieties grow abundantly-small lemon-coloured flowers, large succulent blue lupines, and all manner of dwarfs.

Elsewhere we passed by patches of intensely blue larkspur, and a scarlet flower called painted brush, and many another beautiful wild flower. But, above all, our eyes rested in wonder on broad sheets of the most vivid orange, scattered here and there over the green pasture hills. We were told it was the California poppy, and, on nearer inspection, recognised the familiar eschscholtzia of our own gardens, which here, in its native land, attains a luxuriance unrivalled in exile.

But not till we reached the flower-strewn slopes of the Coast Range could we fairly lay claim to having some idea of the glories of this great floral region. Here hills and meadows were all alike ablaze with brighthued blossoms, scarlet and gold, pink, white, and lemon colour, blue and purple, of every shade. Flames of vivid colour lighted up the forest glades, and brightened the darkest ravines or the greenest grass slopes ; scarlet and blue larkspurs, musk and mimulus, blue nemophila and scarlet columbines, dwarf sunflowers and fritillaria, heartsease and forget-me-not, golden ranunculus and dwarf blue iris-these, and a multitude of flowers familiar to us in gardens, here overspread the land at their own sweet will.

In one morning's ramble I collected upwards of a hundred different flowers, and I was told that in the course of a Californian spring and summer I might find no fewer than six hundred species!

It was a great delight to me to find the jovial round face of the familiar sunflower, beaming a cheery welcome to its Californian birthplace; but we saw only a few blossoms. I was told, however, that there are tracts in the mountain districts to the south where, for miles and miles, successive ridges gleam like gold, owing to the myriads of these gigantic yellow daisies, so closely packed that there is no green to be seen, only a sheet of saffron hue. The same glory overspreads Southern Colorado, where purple asters also abound, and both grow so freely that they even spring up from the turf sods with which the miners roof their huts, giving quite an aesthetic touch to the dingy camps.

Beautiful as were the plains in their robes of flower-embroidered verdure, I craved to reach the beautiful Sierra Nevada; and, hearing that the rapid melting of the snows had opened the roads to the farfamed Yō-Semité Valley, I resolved to start without delay. One afternoon on the railway, and two long days of coaching, brought us to the forest belt.

The railway ran us along a small portion of the vast wheatfield which now extends well-nigh six hundred miles from north to south. However dear to the farmer, it is not attractive to the lover of beautiful, uncultivated nature, and I was glad to escape from its monotony, and

arrive at a region of gently undulating hills, all clothed with rich tall grass of a peculiarly lovely light green, ideal pastures where happy cattle were luxuriating; and here, too, the beautiful grass was but a groundwork whereon were showered masses of vivid crimson and purple, white, scarlet, and gold.

Onward we toiled, uphill and down, winding round about among the foothills, which in places are densely clothed with chaparral (i.e. brushwood, with a large proportion of flowering shrubs), and elsewhere are grassy and park-like, adorned with fine clumps of buck-eye and live-oak— in other words, Californian horse-chestnut and ilex. And, far and near, the grassy slopes were tinged with rainbow hues where the bright sunlight played on banks of wild flowers.

As we reached the higher levels, we found deep banks of snow lying in places; but even close by these some kindly blossoms had contrived to expand, and in the shelter of the great pine forest I found some beautiful specimens of a plant altogether new to me (Sarcodes sanguinea), a strange, bright-scarlet crimson blossom, like a very fleshy hyacinth. It is called the snow-flower, because it rises right out of the earth as soon as ever the snow melts, after the manner of our snowdrop; but instead of being enfolded in smooth green leaves, each crimson bell is wrapped in a crimson leaflet, which uncurls as it rises above the earth, forming a sort of hyacinthine pyramid of blossom eight inches in height. It has only two or three inches of thick stem, and really suggests little tongues of flame darting out of the newly thawed earth, quite close to snowdrifts. I do not know whether it is found in any other country, but I have never heard of it elsewhere.

When we reached the higher levels, and caught sight of a succession of grand mountain summits all robed in dazzling white, we fully realised our good fortune in having arrived while there was yet sufficient snow to let us see the Sierra Nevada* in its true character.

One farewell shower swept down from the mountains and enfolded us, while we were passing through a belt of magnificent old pines. The falling flakes shrouded the mountains in a filmy gauze-like veil, while the distant clumps of dark pines, wrapped in grey shadow, were indistinct and phantom-like. Those nearer to us loomed gigantic, their vast size exaggerated by the magnifying mist and the swirling of the fitful snow showers. Silently, silently, the soft feather-like flakes fell, not a breath of air stirring to disturb them, as they settled on every twig and spray more lightly than ever butterfly rested on a flower.

Suddenly the clouds cleared off, revealing a heaven more intensely azure than I have ever seen even in the tropics; and then a flood of golden sunlight was outpoured on the beautiful, dazzling earth, and the glory of the forest was beyond all description. Each stately pine seemed transformed to a pyramid of glistening alabaster with strata of

* Sierra Nevada, range of snow.

malachite, as we caught glimpses of the dark-green undersides of the graceful, sweeping boughs, weighed down beneath their burden of myriad snowflakes.

On every side of us, in the low-lying forest or the hanging wood that clothed the steep mountain side, rose ten thousand times ten thousand tall white spires and minarets and pinnacles, as in some idealised Oriental city (but assuredly no marble ever gleamed so purely-not even the dream-like tombs of Agra).

On every grassy reed, each hazel twig and manzanita bush, the light flakes lay in fairy-like crystals-even the silken webs of the busy spiders had caught their share, and now sparkled like jewels in the sunlight. And every great rock-boulder was snow-capped, and each stern, rugged crag was softened by a powder-like dusting, lightly sprinkled wheresoever a crevice or a furrow gave it a chance of resting, and far above all uprose the eternal hills, robed in spotless white, pure and dazzling.

We halted for a couple of nights at a comfortable ranch, in the heart of the forest, beside a picturesque stream known to white men as Big Creek ; and thence explored a magnificent grove of glorious old pines, interspersed with majestic specimens of the Sequoia gigantea, which people in England will persist in calling Wellingtonia, to the unmitigated and most just annoyance of all Americans.

This is such a forest as can only be seen in California, beautiful beyond all words, with long arcades of stately columns, brown, red, or yellow, representing pines, cedars, and firs of many sorts, each straight as an arrow, and towering from two to three hundred feet in height, to vanish in a crown of interlacing misty green foliage. Such a forest should be the haunt of all good spirits, as in truth the Indians fully believe.

On the fifth day after leaving San Francisco, we reached a mountain ridge about 7,000 feet above the sea. Suddenly we caught our first sight of the Valley, lying about 3,000 feet below us, an abrupt chasm in the great rolling expanse of billowy granite ridges, or I should rather describe it as a vast sunken pit, with perpendicular walls, and carpeted with a level and most verdant meadow, through which flows a river gleaming like quicksilver.

Here and there, a vertical cloud of spray on the face of the huge crags told where some snow-fed stream from the upper ranges had found its way to the brink of the chasm-a perpendicular fall of from two to three thousand feet.

The fall nearest to where we stood was pointed out as the Bridal Veil, but the Indians call it Pohono. It seemed a floating film of finest mist, on which played the loveliest rainbow lights; for the sun was already lowering behind us, and the afternoon shadows were stealing over the Valley, though the light shone clear and bright on the cold white granite crags, and on the glittering snow peaks of the High Sierras.

Each mighty precipice, and rock needle, and strange granite dome,

was pointed out to us by name, as we halted on the summit of the pass ere commencing the steep descent. The entrance to the Valley is guarded by a stupendous square-cut mass of white granite, which the Spanish settlers have dubbed El Capitan. It is a grand massive cliff, projecting so far from the main rock wall as to suggest the idea of a huge keep, wherein the Genii of the Valley may have braved the siege of the Ice Giants.

I doubt if in the whole rock world another crag exists which can compare with this. Just try to realise its dimensions. A massive face of smooth, cream-coloured granite, half a mile long, half a mile wide, three-fifths of a mile high. Its actual height is 3,300 feet. Think of our beautiful Castle Rock in Edinburgh with its 434 feet, or Dover Castle, 469 feet, or even Arthur's Seat, 822 feet-what pigmies they would seem could some wizard transport them to the base of this grand crag, on whose surface not a blade of grass, not a fern or lichen, finds holding ground, or presumes to tinge the bare clean-cut precipice.

Imagine a crag, just the height of Snowdon, with a lovely snow stream falling perpendicular from its summit to its base, and a second and larger fall in the deep gorge where it joins the great rock-wall of the Valley. The first is nameless, and vanishes with the snows; but the second never quite dries up even in summer. The Indians call it Luny-oo-too-koo-ya, to describe the plaintive note of the wood doves which find shelter in the gorge.

Descending to the Valley, we forded the stream which forms "The Bridal Veil," and agreed that if Pohono be in truth, as the Indian legend tells, the spirit of an evil wind, it surely must be a repentant and glorified spirit, for nothing so beautiful could be evil. It is a sight to gladden the angels-a most ethereal fall, light as steam, swaying with every breath.

It falls from an overhanging rock, and often the current produced by its own rushing seems to pass beneath the rock, and so checks the whole column, and carries it upward in a wreath of whitest vapour, blending with the true clouds.

When the rainbow plays upon it, it too seems to be wafted up, and floats in a jewelled spray, wherein sapphires and diamonds and opals, topaz and emeralds, all mingle their dazzling tints. At other times, it rushes down in a shower of fairy-like rockets, in what appears to be a perpendicular column, a thousand feet high, and loses itself in a cloud of mist among the tall dark pines which clothe the base of the crag.

A succession of stupendous rock needles have been designated "Cathedral Spires," and one mighty obelisk, a thousand feet in height, towering from a pedestal of two thousand feet more, all of solid granite, is known as The Sentinel, keeping watch and ward over the peaceful Valley below, where greenest pastures lie, beside the stillest of waters.

Farther up the Valley, two gigantic Domes of the whitest granite are built up on the foundation of the great encompassing wall. One stands