Chapter 7

The Yellow Pine is the most abundant and widely distributed tree of the forests of California and is particularly characteristic of the Sierra Nevada, where it attains its finest development. The largest trees most commonly grow along the ridges and it is the ridges which the trails ordinarily follow. Here the traveler may journey day after day, over needle-carpeted or grassy ground, mostly free of underbrush, amidst great clean shafts 40 to 150 feet high, of really massive proportions but giving a sense of lightness by reason of their color, symmetry, and great height. No two trunks in detail of bark are modeled exactly alike, for each has its own particular finish; so it is that the eye never wearies of the fascination of the Yellow Pine but travels contentedly from trunk to trunk and wanders satisfyingly up and down their splendid columns--the finest of any pine.

W.L. JEPSON, in _Silva of California._

JULY 17.

MENDOCINO.

A vast cathedral by the western sea, Whose spires God set in majesty on high, Peak after peak of forests to the sky, Blended in one vast roof of greenery. The nave, a river broadening to the sea: The aisles, deep canyons of eternal build; The transepts, valleys with God's splendor filled; The shrines, white waterfalls in leaf-laced drapery; The choir stands westward by the sounding shore; The cliffs like beetling pipes set high in air; Roll from the beach the thunders crashing there; The high wind-voices chord the breakers' roar; And wondrous harmonies of praise and prayer Swell to the forest altars evermore.

LILLIAN H. SHUEY, in _Among the Redwoods._

JULY 18.

They were passing an orange-grove, and they entered a road bordered with scarlet geraniums that wound for a mile through eucalyptus trees, past artificial lakes where mauve water-lilies floated in the sun, and boats languorously invited occupants. Finally they came upon a smooth sward like that of an English park, embellished with huge date-palms, luxuriant magnolias, and regal banana-trees. Then they passed a brook tumbling in artificial cascades between banks thick with mossy ferns, and bright with blossoms. The children led their companion beneath fig and bay trees through an Italian garden; all of this splendid luxury of verdure had sprung from the desert as the result of a fortune patiently spent in irrigation.

MRS. FREMONT OLDER, in _The Giants._

JULY 19.

Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these rooted giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them trees have a personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there are "characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which towered in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnal trunk seemed to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was distant music in the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the clouds. Its song was more majestic than that of any other tree, and fell upon the listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but sweeter and more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial harp. Though there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree hummed its mighty song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to another world than this, some sphere of increasing melody.

C.H. KIRKHAM, in _In the Open._

JULY 20.

You will think the gentlemen were fine dandies in those Mexican days, when I tell you that they often wore crimson velvet knee trousers trimmed with gold lace, embroidered white shirts, bright green cloth or velvet jackets with rows and rows of silver buttons and red sashes with long streaming ends. Their wide-brimmed _sombreros_ (hats) were trimmed with silver or gold braid and tassels. * * * Each gentleman wore a large Spanish cloak of rich velvet or embroidered cloth, and if it rained, he threw over his fine clothes a _serape_, or square woolen blanket, with a slit cut in the middle for the head.

ELLA M. SEXTON, in _Stories of California._

JULY 21.

ON THE PLANTING OF THE TREES AT THE PACIFIC THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, OAKLAND.

And what shall be the children's tree, To grow while we are sleeping? The maple sweet; the manzanete; The gentle willow weeping; The larch; the yew; the oak so true, Kind mother strong and tender; Or, white and green, in gloss and sheen, Queen Magnolia's splendor? One wan, hot noon. His path was strewn, Whose love did all love quicken, With leaves of palm while song and psalm Held all the world to listen. For His dear sake, the palm we'll take-- Each frond shall be a prayer That He will guide, whate'er betide, Until we meet Him there.

CHARLES J. WOODBURY.

JULY 22.

The landscape, glazed with heat, seemed to faint under the unwinking glare of the sun. From the parched grass-land and the thickets of chaparral, pungent scents arose--the ardent odors that the woods of foot-hill California exhale in the hot, breathless quiescence of summer afternoons. * * *

The air came over it in glassy waves, carrying its dry, aromatic perfume to one's nostrils. On its burnt expanse a few huge live-oaks rose dark and dome-like, their shadows, black and irregular, staining the ground beneath them.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _The Pioneer._

JULY 23.

With great discomfort and considerable difficulty they threaded this miniature forest, starting all sorts of wild things as they went on. Cotton-tail rabbits fled before them. Gophers stuck their heads out of the ground, and viewed them with jewel-like eyes, then noiselessly retreated to their underground preserves. Large gray ground squirrels sat up on their haunches, with bushy tails curled gracefully around them and wee forepaws dropped downward as if in mimic courtesy, but scampered off at their approach. Flocks of birds arose from their feeding grounds, and lizards rustled through the dead leaves.

FLORA HAINES LOUGHEAD, in _The Abandoned Claim._

JULY 24.

THE SENTINEL TREE. (CYPRESS POINT, CALIFORNIA.)

A giant sentinel, alone it stands On rocky headland where the breakers roar, Parted from piny woods and pebbled shore. Holding out branches as imploring hands. Poor lonely tree, where never bird doth make Its nest, or sing at morn and eve to thee, Nor in whose shadow wild rose calleth bee To come on gauzy wing for love's sweet sake. Nature cares for thee, gives thee sunshine gold, Handfuls of pearls cast from the crested waves, For thee pink-throated shells soft murmurs hold, And seaweed vested chorists chant in caves. Whence came thee, lone one of an alien band. To guard an outpost of this sunset land?

GRACE HIBBARD, in _Forget-me-nots from California._

JULY 25.

IN THE MEXICAN JUNGLE.

The jungle, however, rang with life. Brilliant birds flew, screaming at their approach--noisy parrots and macaws; the _gaucamaya_, one flush of red and gold; a king vulture, raven black save for his scarlet crest. From the safe height of a saber, monkeys showered vituperations upon them. Once an _iguana_, great chameleon lizard, rose under foot and dashed for the nearest water; again a python wound its slow length across the path. Vegetation was equally gorgeous, always strange. He saw plants that stung more bitterly than insects; insects barely distinguishable from plants. Here a tree bore flowers instead of leaves; there flowers grew as large as trees. * * * Birds, beasts, flowers--all were strange, all were wonderful.

HERMAN WHITAKER, in _The Planter._

JULY 26.

Sitting in the white-paved pergola at Montecito. with overhead a leafy shelter of pink-flowered passifloras, looking out over the little lake, its surface dotted with water-lilies, its banks fringed with drooping shrubs and vines, the hum of the bee and the bird in the air--I looked down over a wonderful collection of nearly 200 rare palms and listened to the music that floated up from their waving branches like that of a thousand silken-stringed eolian harp; and there came into my mind visions of a people that shall be strong with the strength of great hills, calm with the calm of a fair sea, united as are at last the palm and the pine, mighty with the presence of God.

BELLE SUMNER ANGIER, in _The Garden Book of California._

JULY 27.

THE GIANT SEQUOIAS.

O lofty giants of the elder prime! How may the feeble lips, of mortal, rhyme A measure fitted to thy statures grand, As like a gathering of gods ye stand And raise your solemn arms up to the skies, While through your leaves pour Ocean's symphonies! What Druid lore ye know! What ancient rites-- Gray guardians of ten thousand days and nights, Watching the stars swim round their sapphire pole, The ocean surges break about earth's brimming bowl. The cyclone's driving swirl, the storm-tossed seas. Hymning for aye their myriad litanies!

* * * * *

What dawn of Life saw ye, Grand Prophets old? What pristine years? What advents manifold? When first the glaciers in their icy throes Were grinding thy repasts; and feeding thee with snows? What earthquake shocks? What changes of the sun? While ye laughed down their wrack and builded on!

JOHN WARD STIMSON, in _Wandering Chords._

JULY 28.

High above on the western cliff a giant head of cactus reared infernal arms and luminous bloom. One immense clump threw a shadow across the cliff road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the canyon to the mesa above the sea--the road over which in the old days the Mission Indians bore hides to the ships and flung them from the cliffs to the waiting boats below.

MARAH ELLIS RYAN, in _For the Soul of Rafael._

JULY 29.

Distinct from all others, the sequoias are a race apart. The big-tree, and the redwood of the Coast Range, are the only surviving members of that ancient family, the giants of the fore-world. Their immense trunks might be the fluted columns of some noble order of architecture, surviving its builders like the marble temples of Greece--columns three hundred feet high and thirty feet through at the base. Such a vast nave, such majestic aisles, such sublime spires, only the forest cathedrals know. Symmetrical silver firs, giant cedars and spruce, grow side by side with sugar pines of vast and irregular outline, whose huge branches, like outstretched arms, hold aloft the splendid cones--such is the ancient wood.

C.H. KIRKHAM, in _In the Open._

JULY 30.

Said one, "This city, as you know, Though young in years, as cities go, Has quite a history to repeat If records have been kept complete. Oft has it felt the earthquake shock That made the strongest building rock. And more than once 'gone up' in smoke Till scarce a building sheltered folk. The citizens can point to spots Where people fashioned hangman's knots With nimble fingers, to supply Some hardened rogues a hempen tie, Whom _Vigilantes_ and their friends Saw fit to drop from gable-ends."

PALMER COX, in _The Brownies Through California._

JULY 31.

ROSEMARY.

Indian summer has gone with its beautiful moon. And all the sweet roses I gathered in June Are faded. It may be the cloud-sylphs of Even Have stolen the tints of those roses for Heaven. O bonnie bright blossom! in the years far away. So evanished thy bloom on an evening in May. The sunlight now sleeps in the lap of the west, And the star-beams are barring its chamber of rest. While Twilight is weaving her blue-tinted bowers To mellow the landscape where slumber the flowers. I would fain learn the music that won thee away, When the earth was the beautiful temple of May; For our fancies were measured the bright summer long To the carols we learned from the lark's morning song. They still haunt me--those echoes from Child land--but now My heart beats alone to their musical flow. _Then_ I never looked up to the portals on high, For our Heaven was here; and our azure-stained sky Was the violet mead; the cloud-billows of snow Were the pale nodding lilies; the roses that glow On the crown of the hill, gave the soft blushing hue: The gold was the crocus; the silver, the dew Which met as it fell, the glad sunlight of smiles. And wove the gay rainbow of Hope, o'er our aisles. But the charm of the spring-time has vanished with thee; To its mystical speech I've forgotten the key; Yet, if angels and flowers _are_ closely allied, I may trace thy lost bloom on the blushing hillside; And when rose-buds are opening their petals in June, I'll feel thou art near me and teaching the tune. Which chanted by seraphim, won thee away On that blossoming eve, from the gardens of May.

MARY V. TINGLEY LAWRENCE, in _Poetry of the Pacific._

A VOICE ON THE WIND.

And out of the West came a voice on the wind: O seek for the truth and behold, ye shall find! O strive for the right and behold, ye shall do All things that the Master commandeth of you. For love is the truth ye have sought for so long, And love is the right that ye strove for through wrong. Love! love spheres our lives with a halo of fire, But God, how 'tis dimmed by each selfish desire!

CHARLES KEELER, in _Idyls of El Dorado_ (out of print).

AUGUST 1.

THE AGE OF THE SEQUOIAS.

Prof. Jordan estimates that the oldest of the sequoias is at least 7000 years old. The least age assigned to it is 5000 years. It was a giant when the Hebrew Patriarchs were keeping sheep. It was a sapling when the first seeds of human civilization were germinating on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile. It had attained its full growth before the Apostles went forth to spread the Christian religion. It began to die before William of Normandy won the battle of Hastings. It has been dying for a thousand years. And unless some accident comes to it, it will hardly be entirely dead a thousand years from now. It has seen the birth, growth and decay of all the generations and tribes and nations of civilized men. It will see the birth and decay of many more generations. It is the oldest living thing on the face of the earth.

G.W. BURTON, in _Burton's Book on California._

AUGUST 2.

Adown the land great rivers glide With lyric odes upon their lips, The sheltered bay with singing tide Forever woos the storm-tossed ships-- And yet, for me more magic teems By California's willowed streams.

* * * * *

For some the crowded market place. The bustle of the jammed bazaars. The fleeting chance in fortune's race That ends somewhere amid the stars-- Give me a chance to gather dreams By California's willowed streams.

CLARENCE URMY, in _Sunset Magazine._

AUGUST 3.

But what the land lacks in trees it nearly makes up in shrubs. Three varieties of sumac, reaching often as high as fifteen or eighteen feet, and spreading as many wide, stand thick upon a thousand hill-sides and fill with green the driest and stoniest ravines. Two kinds of live oak bushes, two varieties of lilac, one with white, the other with lavender flowers, the _madrona_, the coffee-berry, the manzanita, the wild mahogany, the choke-berry, all of brightest green, with _adenostoma_ and _baccharis_, two dark-green bushes, looking like red and white cedar, form what is called the chaparral. Three varieties of dwarf-willow often grow along the water-courses, and with the elder, wild grape, rose and sweet-briar, all well huddled together, the chinks filled with nettles and the whole tied together with long, trailing blackberry vines, often form an interesting subject of contemplation for one who wants to get on the other side.

T.S. VAN DYKE, in _Southern California._

AUGUST 4.

You who would find a new delight in the wild and waste places of the earth, a new meaning to life, and an enlarged sympathy with your fellow creatures, should seek them out, not in the books, but in their homes. One bird learned and known as an individual creature, with a life all its own, is worth volumes of reading. Listen to their call-notes; observe their plumage and their motions; seek out their homes, and note their devotion to their young. Then will the lower animals become invested with a new dignity, and the homes builded not with hands will become as sacred as the dwelling-place of your neighbor.

CHARLES KEELER, in _Bird Notes Afield._

AUGUST 5.

THE NAVEL ORANGE 250 YEARS AGO.

Most Americans know an orange by sight, and we of California count it a blood relation. We do grow the best orange in the world, and ship thousands of loads of it in a year; and we have a modest notion that we invented it, and that we "know oranges." But the handsomest, the fullest and the most erudite treatise on oranges ever printed does not derive from California, nor yet from the Only Smart Nation.... On the contrary, it was printed in Rome in the year 1646.... More accurate drawings of these fruits have never been printed; and the illustrations cover not only the varieties and even the "freaks" of the Golden Apple, but the methods of planting, budding, wall-training and housing it. Perhaps the point likeliest to jar our complacent ignorance is the fact that this venerable work describes and pictures seedless oranges, and even the peculiar "sport," now an established variety, which we know as the "Navel." Two hundred and fifty seven years ago it was called the "Female, or Foetus-bearing orange;" but no one today can draw a better picture, nor a more unmistakable, of a navel orange.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS, in _Out West._

AUGUST 6.

THE SIERRA NEVADAS.

Serene and satisfied! Supreme! As lone As God, they loom like God's archangels churl'd; They look as cold as kings upon a throne;

* * * * *

A line of battle-tents in everlasting snow.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

AUGUST 7.

TO THE VIOLET.

Welcome little violet, I gladly welcome thee; Peeping with thy dewy eyes So shyly out at me.

Modest little violet Hide not thy face away. I love thee and thy sweet perfume, Thy purple-hued array.

Sweetest little violet, I'll pluck thee gently dear, I'll nurture thee so tenderly-- Then have of me no fear.

Sweetest little violet, Delight of every heart; No flow'ret rare is like thee fair, None praised as thou art.

BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH.

AUGUST 8.

August is a word of dire import in the bird-lover's calendar. It means virtually the end of the bird season. The wooing and nesting and rearing the family are all over, and now looms before the feathered population that annual trouble--the change of dress, the only time in his life--happy soul!--that he has to concern himself about clothes.

In the business of getting a new suit he has more trouble than a fine lady, for he has to shake off the old garments, while getting the new, bit by bit, here a feather and there a feather, today a new wing-quill; tomorrow a new plume on his dainty breast.

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

AUGUST 9.

CHILDREN IN A CALIFORNIA GARDEN.

Legendry and literature may be taught to your children in the garden. Tell them the pretty story of how Cupid's mother gave the rose its thorns; the tale of the sensitive plant; and point out to them the equipment of the cacti for their strange, hard life on the desert; the lovely human faces filled with the sweetness of remembrance that we find in the pansy bed. Show them the delight of the swift-flying hummingbird in the red and yellow blossoms of the garden, and the sagacity of the oriole in building his nest near the lantana bush--so attractive to the insects upon which the scamp feeds.

BELLE SUMNER ANGIER, in _The Garden Book of California._

AUGUST 10.

ON JOAQUIN MILLER.

Sierra's poet! high and pure thy muse Enthroned doth sit amongst the stars and snows; And from thy harp olympian music flows, Of glacier heights and gleaming mountain dews. Of western sea and burning sunset hues. And we who look up--who on the plain repose, And catch faint glimpses of the mount that throws Athwart thy poet-sight diviner views. And not alone from starry shrine is strung Thy lyre, but timed to gentler lay, That sings of children, motherhood and home, And lifts our hearts and lives to sweeter day. Oh, bard of Nature's heart! thy name will rest Immortal in thy land--our Golden West!

DORA CURETON, in _Sunset Magazine._

AUGUST 11.

THE PESSIMIST.

The pessimist leads us into a land of desolation. He makes for the sight blossoms of ugliness; for the smell repellant odors; for the taste bitterness and gall; for the hearing harsh discord, and death for the touch that is the only relief from a desert whose scrawny life lives but to distress us.

ABBOTT KINNEY, in _Tasks By Twilight._

The leaves of the wild gourd, lying in great star shaped patches on the ground, drooped on their stems, and the spikes of dusty white sage by the road hung limp at the ends, and filled the air with their wilted fragrance. The sea-breeze did not come up, and in its stead gusts of hot wind from the north swept through the valley as if from the door of a furnace.

MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM, in _Stories of the Foothills._

AUGUST 12.

ENTICEMENT.

Then haste, sweet April Dear. Thou alone canst find her. Her hair so soft, so silken soft thy breezes blow And thou shall laugh with her, give her thy first sweet kiss. On her white blossom's snow ... Why, why, dost thou not fly, on clouds of love. 'Tis thou alone canst find her. Thou fain would'st ask doth she love thee. Thou knowest well She loves thee, April Dear.

ADRIADNE HOLMES EDWARDS.

AUGUST 13.

Our pitcher-plant is one of the most wonderful and interesting of all the forms that grow, linking, as it were, the vegetable world with the animal, by its unnatural carnivorous habits.

No ogre in his castle has ever gone to work more deliberately or fiendishly to entrap his victims while offering them hospitality, than does this plant-ogre. Attracted by the bizarre yellowish hoods of the tall, nodding flowers, the foolish insect alights upon the former and commences his exploration of the fascinating region.

But at last, when he has partaken to satiety and would fain depart, he turns to retrace his steps. In the dazzlement of the transparent windows of the dome above, he loses sight of the darkened door in the floor by which he entered and flies forcibly upward, bumping his head in his eagerness to escape. He is stunned by the blow and plunges downward into the tube below. Here he struggles to rise, but countless downward-pointing, bristly hairs urge him to his fate.

MARY ELIZABETH PARSONS, in _The Wild Flowers of California._

AUGUST 14.

Sausalito is noted for its abundance of flowers. These not only grow in thick profusion in the quaint hillside gardens, but are planted beside the roadways, covering many an erstwhile bare and unsightly bank with trailing vines, gay nasturtiums and bright geraniums. There is something in the spirit of this hillside gardening, this planting of sweet blossoms for the public at large, that is very appealing.

HELEN BINGHAM, in _In Tamal Land._

AUGUST 15.

A GROUP OF CACTI. (IN CALIFORNIA.)

Flower of the desert, type mysterious, strange, Like bird or monster on some sculptured tomb In Egypt's curious fashion wrought, what change Or odd similitude of fate, what range Of cycling centuries from out the gloom Of dusty ages has evolved thy bloom? In the bleak desert of an alien zone, Child of the past, why dwellest thou alone? Grotesque, incongruous, amid the flowers; Unlovely and unloved, standing aside, Like to some rugged spirit sheathed in pride; Unsmiling to the sun, untouched by showers-- The dew falls--every bud has drunk its fill: Bloom of the desert, thou art arid still!

MARY E. MANNIN.

AUGUST 16.