The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-02

| DlOWlnS so HdTu we COulu Dsii SlS hfCp
 our breath, it was the very embodiment
 of faith and courage, If ever flower
 preached a sermon that little flower did,
 and it rested one like magic,
 l hardly know which is the more de- Iightful to meet new friends or come
 unexpectedly upon the old It was cer- tainIy most exhilerating pleasure to
 find spots in the meadows, blue with
 fringed gentians, as we did at Bear
 valley winding up among the San Ser
 nardino mountains, Cows were pastur-
 ed there and sight, smell and action
 took us back to our childhood. AS we
 leaped from bog to bog, filling our
 hands with the blue beauties, we felt as
 if we were just twelve years old again.
 On our way to the valley we found
 the cardinal flowers, one of California $
 rarest wild flowers, one of California s
 rarest wild flowers, seeming almost
 more beautiful in her rich velvet than
 those that dwell by the brooks and mill-
 bands of New England. There we
 found the pyrola which we had sean too
 on Mt, Taquitz. The shooting stars
 tpodecatheon) instead of being edged
 with color as ours are, are crimson, but while ours are with us in February we
 found these in September.
 Altitude and the coming of the rains have quite as much to do as the sun ill the making of our floral calendar. A
 year ago last fall, when the rains came early and continued al frequent inter- | Vals, we found the maHzanita in full
 bloom early in November, while usually | it is as late as February And if we
 climb the mountains late in July we
 find that, while the berries on the
 bushes of the canyons and lower slopes
 are quite ripe, they are less and less
 matured as we ascend till when we reach their highest range we find them only in blossom, or even bud, so that botanically we may travel back from early spring to autumn in a few hours.
 AS you probably know, the manzanita is a sort of big brother of the trailing arbutus, There is little sign of l1inship, i but once we saw a freak that showed some relationship. A branch had in some way been blown to the ground and covered with earth eight to ten feet from the trunk, and from the covered branch roots had sprung and set forth a new plant The madrona, too, is of the same family. Its generic name in fact is arbutus. The grove on the old Wilson Trail, the only one, I under tand, for many miles, was burned in the mountain fires last summer Only one or two trees escaped. The roots. fortunately, were not injured, and early in February they had already sent forth fine, thrifty shoots. There is curious thing about that burned dis trict. Usually in such places sl is black and charred for years but there, though everything looks dead there is nothing to indicate that they were kill ed by fire. Our winter torrents actually secured them clean.
 There was only about an eighth of a mile of the trail burned, but that was a part of one of the loveliest gardens I have ever seen, Oaks, frs and bay trees, interspersed with ferns, covered the shaded slopes while on the banks above the trail were beds of larkspur, of purest azure, the dainty, white wocd- land star of Bethlehem and pale blue nomophilas, with an occasional gleam of the scarlet paint-brush. Over the sur ny slopes clematis ran riot, and farther on thickets of ceanothus were clothed in purple mist
 One of the pleasantest features of a new trip is the floral surp!ises ever i1 store. On the shores of Hemet lake 100 miles inland, we fund the sand verbena of the seashore. We had hard ly spoken of the unusual location, when gull sailed over our heads and the
 mystery was solved.
 In the canyons east of Raymond hill, We find goldenrod six or eight feet high On the very top of Grey Back, 11,494 feet above the sea, we found it scarcely an inch high, growing in the crevices between the broken stones as we had found little yellow violets on the top of HOld Baldy," by the side of a huge snow bank. Tiny they have to be, for if one more aspiring should lift it's head above the protection of the sur rounding stones it would be snapped off by the sharp winds in the twinkling of an eye, Ambition is not encouraged at high attitudes. Lie loW'' is the com mand that nature gives to all her moun- tain children Even the pines, some times two feet in diameter, grow flat on the ground like creeping vines One doeS not WOnuef when, even Tn mld- summer days, the winds blows so hard that it is difficult to face it. while in the winter even from here, 20 miles a way, we have seen the snow lifted and carried horizontally far out into the valley, mighty pennons of white.
 Our high mountains agree nearly enough in altitude and situation to ex- pect common fora, but it is not al all the case. l know that comparisons are not only odious, they are very unsafe unless one has sufficient data to judge from, and one or two visits at different seasons of different years is not suf- fcient, but as far as we could judge there is astrili ng difference. San Jacinto abounds in springs to within a feet of it's summit, while on Baldys great bulk ther is only one spring on each of it's two trails but Nhieon the upper reaches of San Iacinto we@found no flowers Baldys 1ld, brown face continually breaks into ; 1owery smiles Besides the violets and nariposas the prickly poppy grew far l ID toward the peak, and sweet scented sillias and penstemous. Growing amid l heb rohen stones right in the trail so hat we had to turn our mules aside to