m THE COAST RANGE. 5
sightly skeleton. Many of these foundation-hills, and particularly the little valleys between them were fin- ished in her happiest mood. Many of these cinders of spent forces have been well fleshed with soil, w^ell watered, made fragrant with gums and odorous plants, and toned in healthy glistening green.
But it is down into the valleys that you must go, into the valleys of the Coast Range, and that too be- fore man has mutilated everything, if you would see what nature has done for this strip of seaboard. There are natural meadows arabesque with tawny wild-oats, blossoming pea, and golden mustard, interspersed with indigenous vineyards, and fruit-bearing thickets. There are flower-gardens laid out in patterns by the deft fingers of nature, stars and crowns and chaplets of yellow, purple, white, and red. Scattered over broad park-like plains, and rising from tall wavy grass are oaks of various forms and species, some high with broad branches, and many scraggy and storm-bent. Here and there trees cluster in groves, and clumps of under-growth gather round to keep them company. Rising from the broad plain are solitary buttes, w^ith cloud-entangling crests, sharp and high; and all around the borders bluff promontories, and tongues of uplifted land timbered with beech and birch, ash, myrtle, and laurel, shoot out into the valley, some- times sudsiding in small round hills covered with tulips, wild onions, hemp, flax, and prickly chaparral. Now bring down through rocky canons the clear dancing water; lead it round in winding courses v/here it will best moisten the surface, broadening it occasionally mto lakes, locking it in lagoons, or leav- intj it in slug^o-ish slouo-hs; then go out while the morning is fresh and gray, just as the sun begins to pour a sensuous warmth into the air, to refine the mists and give lustre to the foliage, and to set life glowing under a blue and purple haze, and if the e^^es shine not with gladness, and the breast swells not
