Los Angeles herald., 1905-05-07
THE SERIOUS MINDED AND
GENTLE BURROS SOON
GROW IENDLY


might be-: Just as you think best,
my dear" Women are so unenter-
prising. 1t may even be that some
such triviality as the spring-cleaning
or summer-preserving kept Mrs. Col
umbus forever unniched in the halls
of fame.
Like the lost island of Atlantis, Fish
canyon dwelt as yet only in rumor
and the formless joys of the noun
taineer's imagination.
Assisted by the somewhat indefinite
mountaineer's, and the mountaineer's
own extraordinary instinct, we took
our way from Monrovia, where we had
procured a meek and lowly horse with
buggy to match, as a further means to
Undertaking" Fish canyon.
whats his name?" asked the noun
taineer, referring to our horse.
Bird" answered the stable man.
"Pegasus!" I murmured, not with
out trepidation; for while Pegasus is
all right in poems, I felt that coun-
try road and a bad buggy might offer
limitations to his talents.
Had Drawn a Milk Wagon
But Bird did no speed stunts. Rather
we decided in the first half mile-he
had a way of stopping before houses
on both sides of the street until we
got out of town-that the name might
have been bestowed in a moment of
inspiration by some former milkman
owner, for whom, applying the meta
phor to a purely commercial traffic,
Bird caught early worms in the shape
of customers.
But, once outside the town, Bird, re-
lieved of imaginary business cares, did
what was expected of him and the
miles rolled from under us, while the
wild flowers made a bright carpet on
either side, the river sang to us and
the mountains drew nearer and nearer.
What a delightful mystery to us
grown-up children a canyon is! What
treasures for us does the kindly noun
tain hold in these canyon pockets of
his
With unerring instinct-with the in
stinct of a child habituated to these
pocket treasures in an indulgent par
ent-the mountaineer drove Bird
straight to Fish canyon. And they
are hidden away so cleverly, these ma
ture pockets. Unless you are as clever
as the mountaineer you never would
guess this one. He drove straight to
it. Merely opening a gate in a barbed-
wire fence let us all at once into
fairyland.
That's where we came upon a stream
of dissolved jewelry."
Stream Of Liquid Gems
Do not mistake me. l do not allude
to the real stream of real water thus
in order to be poetic, thus describing
its lights and shades. mean it from a
hard and fast business standpoint, for
surely in California so strange sight
with all it's commercial meaning, may
with due apologies to Mark Twain, be
so called.
One is apt to dream of silvery streams
only to be met with the unromantiC
pipe of commerce, it's waters, alas
babbling sordidly of vulgar commercial
uses when 1t should be whispering Of
the visions OF mountainous,
How the stream laughed at us here
She never gave a hint of her secret II
her sober course through the valley ou
there, but how she laughed like a mis-
chievous child!
The sight, the smell, the heavenl!
quiet Of 1t! The road grew rough W.
gladly leaped from the buggy. AnC
Bird, with his natural limitations o
appreciation, was glad to stop, while
the mountaineer and 1 hastened on.
Just here. sad to relate in so charm
ing a place, one of my most eherishe'
illusions came to an end. There wa
stream with rocks In ii. You know
how the pictures show it's done-th
crossing? 1t looks easy. She steps light
ly from rock to rock. They are wei
behaved rocks apparently; they do no
turn over, they are not slippery or de
ceptive as to their distance apart