Chapter III: Part 3

High on Cloud's Rest, behind the misty screen,
Thy Genius sits! The secrets of thy birth
Within its bosom locked! What power can rend
The veil, and bid it speak--that spirit dumb,
Between two worlds, enthroned upon a Sphinx?
Guard well thine own, thou mystic spirit! Let
One place remain where Husbandry shall fear
To tread! One spot on earth inviolate,
As it was fashioned in eternity!

FRED EMERSON BROOKS, in _Old Abe and Other Poems._

You ask for my picture. I have never had one taken. I have my reasons. One is that a man always seems to me most of an ass when smirking on cardboard.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _Rulers of Kings._

MAY 26.

INVITATION TO AN INDIAN FEAST IN YOSEMITE.

As the time of the feast drew near, runners were sent across the mountains, carrying a bundle of willow sticks, or a sinew cord or leaf of dried grass tied with knots, that the Monos might know how many suns must cross the sky before they should go to Ah-wah-nee to share the feast of venison with their neighbors. And the Monos gathered together baskets of pinion nuts, and obsidian arrow-heads, and strings of shells, to carry with them to give in return for acorns and chinquapin nuts and basket willow.

BERTHA H. SMITH, in _Yosemite Legends._

MAY 27.

It is owing to the ever active missionary spirit among the Friars Minor (Franciscans) that millions upon millions of American Indians have obtained the Christian faith. The children of St. Francis were, indeed, the principal factors in the very discovery of America, inasmuch as the persons most prominently connected with that event belonged to the Seraphic Family. Fr. Juan Perez de Marchena, the friend and counsellor of Christopher Columbus, was the guardian or superior of the Franciscan monastery at La Rabida; * * * and the great navigator likewise belonged to the Third Order.

FR. ZEPHYRIN, in _Missions and Missionaries of California._

MAY 28.

JUNIPERO SERRA.

Not with the clash of arms or conquering fleet
He came, who first upon this kindly shore
Planted the Cross. No heralds walked before;
But, as the Master bade, with sandalled feet,
Weary and bleeding oft, he crossed the wild.
Carrying glad tidings to the untutored child
Of Nature; and that gracious mother smiled,
And made the dreary waste to bloom once more.
Silently, selflessly he went and came;
He sought to live and die unheard of men--
Praise made his pale cheek glow as if with shame.
A hundred years and more have passed since then.
And yet the imprint of his feet today
Is traced in flowers from here to Monterey.

MARY E. MANNIX.

MAY 29.

San Gabriel!
I stand and wonder at thy walls
So old, so quaint; a glory falls
Upon them as I view the past.
And read the story which thou hast
Preserved so well.

* * * * *

San Gabriel!
What souls were they who fashioned thee
To be a blessed charity!
What faith was theirs who bore the cross,
And counted wealth and ease but loss,
Of Christ to tell!

* * * * *

San Gabriel!
A glamour of the ancient time
Remains with thee! Thou hast the rhyme
Of some old poem, and the scent
Of some old rose's ravishment
Naught can dispel!

* * * * *

LYMAN WHITNEY ALLEN, in _A Parable of the Rose._

MAY 30.

Wherever a green blade looks up,
A leaf lisps mystery,
Whereso a blossom holds its cup
A mist rings land or sea,
Wherever voice doth utter sound
Or silence make her round--
There worship; it is holy ground.

JOHN VANCE CHENEY, _The Grace of the Ground_, in _Poems._

MAY 31.

TO MOUNT WILSON.

Thou mystic one! Thou prophet hoar!
Thy teachings quicken--man's shall fade.
Ere man was dust thou wert before;
Thy bosom for his resting place was made.
And when thou tak'st in thy embrace
And hold'st me up against the sky
And Earth's fair 'broideries I trace--
All girdled in by circling bands that tie
Unto her side my destiny--
Then unto me thou dost make clear
Why with Life's essence here I'm thrilled.
Then all thy prophecies I hear,
And in my being feel them all fulfilled.
And as the narrow rim of eye
Contains the vast and all-encircling sky.
So in the confines of the soul
The undulating universe may roll.
And out in space, my soul set free,
I turn an astral forged key
Which opes the door 'twixt God and me,
I hear the secrets of Eternity!
In Immortality I trust,
Believing that the cosmic dust--
Alike in man and skies star-sown--
Is pollen from the Amaranth blown.

LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN.

Pause upon the gentle hillside, view San Carlos by the sea
'Gainst pale light a shape Morisco wrought in faded tapestry.
'Neath Mt. Carmel's brooding shadow, peaceful lies the storied pile,
And the white-barred river near it sings a requiem all the while.

* * * * *

Where were roofs of tiles or thatches, roughest mounds mark every
side,
And where once the busy courtyard searching winds find crevice wide.

* * * * *

AMELIA WOODWARD TRUESDELL, in _A California Pilgrimage._

JUNE 1.

In fifteen years the Mission of San Juan Bautista had erected one of the most beautiful and ornate chapels in Alta California, which, together with the necessary buildings for the padres, living rooms and dormitories for the neophytes, storehouses and corrals for the grain and cattle, formed three sides of a patio two hundred feet square, with the corrals leading away beyond. The Indians, with only a few teachers and helpers, had done all this work.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._

JUNE 2.

From his (the Indian's) point of view there is perhaps love; even, it may be, romance. Much depends upon the standpoint one takes. The hills that look high from the valley, seem low looking down from the mountain. * * * For the world over, under white skin or skin of bronze-brown, the human heart throbs the same; for we are brothers--aye, brothers all!

IDAH MEACHAM STROBRIDGE, in _Loom of the Desert._

We had seen the spire of the Episcopal Church, which forms so pleasing a feature in the bosom of the valley, pale and fade from sight; the lofty walls of the old Mission of San Gabriel were no longer visible Suddenly from out the silence and gathering shades fell upon our ears a chime so musical and sweet, so spiritually clear and delicate, that had honest John Bunyan heard it he might well have deemed himself arrived at the land of Beulah. * * * It was the hour of vespers at the Old Mission.

BEN C. TRUMAN, in _Semi-Tropical California._

JUNE 3.

The Mission San Gabriel and its quadrangle of buildings made a beautiful picture. It nestled against distant hills, and neither stood out from the dim background nor entirely melted within it. It attracted the eye--this pink, yellow-gray of the little stone church crowned with dull-reddish tile, and supported by a bulwark of quaint buttresses. The picture was perfect--but since then the chill hands of both temblor and tempest have touched rudely the charm and blighted the pride of all of the California Missions--San Gabriel Archangel.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._

JUNE 4.

Obey my word, O Ten-ie-ya, and your people shall be many as the blades of grass, and none shall dare to bring war unto Ah-wah-nee. But look you ever, my son, against the white horsemen of the great plains beyond, for once they have crossed the western mountains, your tribe will scatter as the dust before the desert wind, and never come together again.

BERTHA H. SMITH, in _Yosemite Legends._

San Juan, Aunt Phoebe, is one of the places where there is an old Mission. People in this country (California) think a great deal of them. I've remarked to Ephraim, "Many's the time," says I, "that the Missions seem to do more real good than the churches. They get hold of the people better, somehow. I'll be real glad to set me down in one, and I do hope they'll have some real lively hymns to kind of cheer us up."

ALBERTA LAWRENCE, in _The Travels of Phoebe Ann._

JUNE 5.

In proper California fashion we made our nooning by the roadside, pulling up under the shade of a hospitable sycamore and turning Sorreltop out to graze. We drew water from a traveling little river close at hand, made a bit of camp-fire with dry sticks that lay about, and in half an hour were partaking of chops and potatoes and tea to the great comfort of our physical nature.

CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS, in _A Pala Pilgrimage, The Travel Magazine._

JUNE 6.

Yellow-white the Mission gleamed like an opal in a setting of velvety ranges under turquoise skies. About its walls were the clustered adobes of the Mexicans, like children creeping close to the feet of the one mother; and beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley, of live-oak groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless springs and canyons of mystery, whence gold was washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent, insistent, appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the vaqueros.

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

The missions should be thought of today as they were at their best, when, after thirty years of struggle and hardship, they had attained the height of their usefulness, which was followed by thirty years of increase and prosperity, material as well as spiritual--the proud outcome of so humble a beginning--before their final passing away.

CHARLES FRANKLIN CARTER, in _The Missions of Nueva California._

JUNE 7.

Already the Emperor has given to us many fine paintings, vestments and a chime of sweetest bells. How we long to hear them calling out over the sea of vast silence, turning the white quiet into coral hues of deeper thrill! The church bells singing to the people of Al-lak-shak, recall the wandering Padres' labors among your thousands here in California. Those who cannot understand the great words of the teachers may look upon the beauteous pictures of the Madonna and the Child; all can understand that love.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._

JUNE 8.

JUNE. (IN CALIFORNIA.)

Oh June! thou comest once again
With bales of hay and sheaves of grain,
That make the farmer's heart rejoice,
And anxious herds lift up their voice.
I hear thy promise, sunny maid,
Sound in the reapers' ringing blade.
And in the laden harvest wain
That rumbles through the stubble plain.
Ye tell a tale of bearded stacks.
Of busy mills and floury sacks,
Of cars oppressed with cumbrous loads,
Hard curving down their iron roads
Of vessels speeding to the breeze.
Their snowy sails in stormy seas.
While bearing to some foreign land
The products of this Golden Strand.

PALMER COX, in _Comic Yarns._

JUNE 9.

MADAME MODJESKA'S DEVOTION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

During the hey-day of A.P.A.-ism in this section, Madame Modjeska returned from a triumphant tour and played for a week in Los Angeles. * * * She selected as her principal piece--Mary Stuart. * * * At the final scene of the play, as Mary Stuart passes out to her execution, Modjeska in the title-role held us spellbound by the intense emotions of the situation. The sight of her beautiful face, upturned to heaven, showing the expression of the zeal and fervor of her Catholic heart, was intensified by the manner in which she carried the crucifix and rosary in her hand, and was the last glimpse of her as she disappeared from the stage. There was a thrill passed over the audience, which had its effect, not only upon the unbeliever, but likewise upon the pusillanimous member of the church.

JOSEPH SCOTT, in _The Tidings._

JUNE 10.

The Mission floor was with weeds o'ergrown,
And crumbling and shaky its walls of stone;
Its roof of tiles, in tiers on tiers,
Had stood the storms of a hundred years.
An olden, weird, medieval style
Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile,
And the rhythmic voice of the breaking waves
Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves.
Strangely awed I felt, that day,
As I walked in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.

MADGE MORRIS WAGNER, in _Mystery of Carmel._

JUNE 11.

Up to the American invasion, the traveler in California found welcome in whatsoever house. Not food and bed and tolerance only, but warm hearts and home. Fresh clothing was laid out in his chamber. His jaded horse went to the fenceless pasture; a new and probably better steed was saddled at the door when the day came that he must go. And in the houses which had it, a casual fistful of silver lay upon his table, from which he was expected to help himself against his present needs. It was a society in which hotels could not survive (even long after they were attempted) because every home was open to the stranger; and orphan asylums were impossible. Not because fathers and mothers never died, but because no one was civilized enough to shirk orphans.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS. in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West, August_, 1892.

JUNE 12.

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white-hot sands. Birds, humming-birds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of the night-singing mocking bird. If it be summer and the sun well down, there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksey things dart across the open places, or sit motionless in the conning towers of the creosote.

MARY AUSTIN, in _The Land of Little Rain._

JUNE 13.

EL CAMINO REAL.

_El Camino Real_--"The Royal Road," is the poetic name given to the original government road of Spanish California that joined the missions from San Diego to San Francisco de Solano. The route selected by the Franciscan Fathers was the most direct road that was practicable, connecting their four Presidios, three Pueblos and twenty-one Missions. By restoring this road and making it a State Highway with the twenty-one missions as stations, California will come to possess the most historic, picturesque, romantic and unique boulevard in the world.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Missions and Landmarks._

JUNE 14.

Because we have such faith in the charms of California; because we have such faith in the future of our city that we believe that once strangers come here they will remain in it, as of old the hero remained in the land of the ever-young; because we believe that this state can support ten, aye, twenty times its present population, we extend an invitation to all home-seekers, no matter where found. Come to California! Its valleys are wide open for all to come through and build therein their homes of peace. Its coasts teem with wealth. The riches of its mountains have not been half exploited. We believe that all that is necessary to fill this State with a great and prosperous population is that the people should see the State and know it as it is.

FATHER P.C. YORKE, in _The Warder of Two Continents._

JUNE 15.

EL CAMINO REAL.

It's a long road and sunny, and the fairest in the world--
There are peaks that rise above it in their sunny mantles curled,
And it leads from the mountains through a hedge of chaparral,
Down to the waters where the sea gulls call.
It's a long road and sunny, it's a long road and old.
And the brown padres made it for the flocks of the fold;
They made it for the sandals of the sinner-folk that trod
From the fields in the open to the shelter-house of God.

* * * * *

We will take the road together through the morning's golden glow,
And will dream of those who trod it in the mellowed long ago.

JOHN S. MCGROARTY, in _Just California._

JUNE 16.

Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different colored spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled with square mission bricks; but many were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for unwary feet.

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

JUNE 17.

Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before, had called the Californias their own; living a life of Arcadian magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates clad in silk and lace, _botas_ and _sombreros_, mounted upon steeds as gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of their lives--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and consequence today.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _The Californians._

JUNE 18.

The house was a ruinous adobe in the old Mexican quarter of Los Angeles. The great, bare, whitewashed room contained only the altar and a long mirror in a tarnished gilt frame; one, the symbol of earthly vanity; the other, the very portal of heaven. All the carved mahogany furniture had long since gone to buy food and charcoal or a rare black gown.

AMANDA MATHEWS, in _The Old Pueblo._

All sorts of men came here in early days--poor men of good family who had failed at home, or were too proud to work there; desperadoes, adventurers, men of middle life and broken fortunes--all of them expecting everything from the new land, and ready to tear the heart out of any one who got in their way. * * * Of course, there are Californians and Californians.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _A Whirl Asunder._

JUNE 19.

Beneath the surface--ah, there lie a numerous host, sad relics of bygone times. In our cities in poverty, wretchedness, and, alas! too often in dissipation, or, happier fate, in canyon or on hillside where woodman's axe is heard, one may find men wearily, sadly, often faithfully performing their daily labor who were born heirs to leagues of land where ranged mighty herds of cattle and horses--men who as boys, perhaps, played their games of quoits with golden slugs from the Indian baskets sitting about the courtyard of their fathers' houses.

HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI, in _Some of Our Spanish Families._

JUNE 20.

Jameson's cord led out to the Spanish quarter. Some old senoras, their heads covered with shawls, their clothes redolent with the smell of garlic, from time to time shambled across his pathway. They were heavy old women, in worn flapping slippers and uncorseted figures. * * * With them, this saying, "It is time to be old," to throw down the game like some startled player, and cast one's self on the mercies of the Virgin, had come twenty years or so before it should.

FRANCES CHARLES, in _The Siege of Youth._

A JUNE WEDDING.

The sweetheart of Summer weds today--
Pride of the Wild Rose clan:
A Butterfly fay
For a bridesmaid gay,
And a Bumblebee for best man.

CHARLES ELMER JENNEY, in _Out West, June_, 1902.

JUNE 21.

They went to a one-room adobe on the plaza. A rich, greasy odor came out from it with puffs of the onion-laden smoke of frying things which blurred the light of the one candle set in the neck of a bottle. * * * In the centre of the floor a circle of blackened stones held a fire of wood coals, on the top of which rested a big clay griddle. Cakes of ground corn were frying there, and on the stove were _enchiladas_ and _tamales_ and _chili-con-carne_ being kept warm. The air was thick with the pungent, strong smells.

GWENDOLEN OVERTON, in _The Golden Chain._

JUNE 22.

The homely house furnishings seemed to leap out of the darkness; the stove, the littered table, and the couch, the iron crucifix, and the carved cradle in the corner--all his long life Juan will see them so--and 'Cencion turned; the dusky veil was blown and rent like the sea mist, revealing--Holy Mother of Heaven! her father, Cenaga, the outlaw! Juan Lopez fell on his knees below the window, the smoking rifle clattered from his broken grasp, and the missile sped, aimless and harmless, high into the adobe wall.

GERTRUDE B. MILLARD, in _An Outlaw's Daughter, S.F. Argonaut, Nov._, 1896.

IN HUMBOLDT.

Dim in the noonday fullness,
Dark in the day's sweet morn--
So sacred and deep are the canyons
Where the beautiful rivers are born.

LILLIAN H. SHUEY, in _Among the Redwoods._

JUNE 23.

The glow of the days of Comstock glory was still in the air. San Francisco was still the city of gold and silver. The bonanza kings had not left it, but were trying to accommodate themselves to the palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous--men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of Roman empresses.

The sudden possession of vast wealth had intoxicated this people, lifting them from the level of the commonplace into a saturnalia of extravagance. Poverty, the only restraint many of them had ever felt, was gone. Money had made them lawless, whimsical, bizarre. It had developed all-conquering personalities, potent individualities. They were still playing with it, wondering at it, throwing it about.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _Tomorrow's Tangle._

JUNE 24.

Menlo Park, originally a large Spanish grant, had long since been cut up into country places for what may be termed the "Old Families of San Francisco!" The eight or ten families that owned this haughty precinct were as exclusive, as conservative, as any group of ancient families in Europe. Many of them had been established here for twenty years, none for less than fifteen. This fact set the seal of gentle blood upon them for all time in the annals of California.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _The Californians._

JUNE 25.

John Bidwell, prince of California pioneers, was my chief in a memorable camping trip in the northern Sierras. What a magnificent camper was Bidwell! What a world of experience, what a wealth of reminiscence! What a knowledge; what unbounded hospitality! Not while life lasts can I forget the gentle yet commanding greatness of this man, whose friendships and benefactions were as broad as his spreading acres of Rancho Chico.

ROCKWELL D. HUNT, in _Camping Out in California, Overland Monthly, September_, 1907.

JUNE 26.

The average stage-driver merits one's liveliest gratitude. He is the essence of good nature and thoughtfulness. His stories, tinctured by his own quaint personality, ward off the drowsy wings of sleep and materially shorten the long hours of the night. * * * To the households scattered along his route he is the never-failing bearer of letters, and newspapers, and all sorts of commodities, from a sack of flour to a spool of cotton. His interest in their individual needs is universal, and the memory he displays is simply phenomenal. He has traveled up and down among them for many years, and calls each one by his or her given name, and in return is treated by them as one of the family. He is sympathetic and friendly without impertinence, and in spite of your aching head and disjointed bones, you feel an undercurrent of regret that civilization will soon do away with these fresh and original characters.

NINETTA EAMES, in _Overland Monthly, January_, 1888.

JUNE 27.

When the June sunshine gladdened the Sacramento Valley, three little bare-footed girls walked here and there among the homes and tents of Sutter's Fort. They were scantily clothed, and one carried a thin blanket. At night they said their prayers, lay down in whatever tent they happened to be, and, folding the blanket about them, fell asleep in each other's arms. When they were hungry they asked food of whomsoever they met. If anyone inquired who they were, they answered as their mother had taught them: "We are the children of Mr. and Mrs. George Donner." But they added something which they had learned since. It was: "And our parents are dead."

C.F. McGLASHAN, in _History of the Donner Party._

JUNE 28.

This cart was gaily decorated with a canopy which was in fact an exquisitely embroidered silken bedspread. The background was of grass-green silk, embroidered over the entire field with brightest red and yellow, pink and white roses, with intertwining leaves and stems, making the old _carreta_ appear to be a real rose-bower blooming along the King's Highway. From the edges hung a rich, deep, silken knotted fringe. Beneath the heavy fringe again hung lace curtains.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._

A half-naked beggar will find a dirty ribbon out of an ash-barrel to ornament himself, if he happens to be a she. * * * We women are such striking guys without our first little aids to the ugly.

MIRIAM MICHELSON, in _Anthony Overman._

JUNE 29.

During this unsettled period (1849), the "judge of first instance," or alcalde, sat each day in the little school-room on the plaza of San Francisco, trying cases, and rendering that speedy justice that was then more desirable than exact justice, since men's time, in those early days of 1849, was worth from sixteen dollars to one hundred dollars per day. The judge listened to brief arguments, announced his decision, took his fees, and called up another case; hardly once in a hundred trials was there any thought of an appeal to the Governor at Monterey.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, in _Mining-Camps._

JUNE 30.

Like the senators Cineas found at Rome, they were an assembly of kings, above law, who dealt out justice fresh and evenly balanced as from the hand of the eternal. In all the uprisings in California there has never been manifested any particular penchant on the part of the people for catching and hanging criminals. They do not like it. Naturally the law detests vigilance because vigilance is a standing reproach to law. Let the law look to it and do its duty.

HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, in _Popular Tribunals._

AMONG THE MARIPOSA BIG TREES.

Older than man or beast or bird,
Ancient when God first spake and Adam heard--
We gaze with souls profoundly stirred
And plead for one revealing word.
But the great trees all are silent.

BENJAMIN FAY MILLS.

JULY 1.

VINTAGE IN THE GOLDEN LAND.

O fruit of changeless, ever-changing beauty!
Heavy with summer and the gift of love--
Caressingly I gather and lay you down;
Ensilvered as with dew, the innocent bloom
Of quiet days, yet thrilling with the warmth
Of life--tumultuous blood o' the earth!
The vital sap, the honey-laden juice
Dripping with ripeness, yields to murmuring bee
A pleasant burden; and the meadow-lark
With slow, voluptuous beak the nectar drinks
From the pierced purple.

* * * * *

How good it is, to sense the vineyard life!
To touch the fresh-veined leaves, the straggling stems,
The heavy boughs that bend along the ground;
And like a gay Bacchante, pluck the fruit
And taste the imperial flavors, beauty-wild
And singing child-songs with the bee and bird,
Deep in the vineyard's heart, 'neath the open sky--
Wide, wide, and blue, filled with sun-flooded space
And the silent song of the ripening of days!--
Eternal symbol of the bearing earth--
Harvest and vintage.

RUBY ARCHER.

JULY 2.

Whatever you believe when you are alone at night with the little imp of conscience seated on the bedpost and whispering to you what to do, whatever you believe to be best for yourself and best for your city at that time, you do that thing and you won't be far wrong.

ANDREW FURUSETH.

JULY 3.

Above an elevation of four thousand feet timber is quite abundant. Along the river-bottoms and low grounds the sycamore is found as clean-limbed, tall and stately as elsewhere. The cottonwood, too, is common, though generally dwarfed, scraggy and full of dead limbs. A willow still more scraggy, and having many limbs destroyed with mistletoe, is often found in the same places. The elder rises above the dignity of a shrub, or under-shrub, but can hardly be found a respectable tree. Two varieties of oak are common, and the alder forms here a fine tree along the higher water-courses.

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

JULY 4.

A WESTERN FOURTH.

Here, where Peralta's cattle used to stray;
Here, where the Spaniards in their early day
Rode, jingling, booted, spurred, nor ever guessed
Our race would own the land by them possessed;
Here, where Castilian bull-fights left their stain
Of blood upon the soil of this New Spain;
Here, where old live-oaks, spared till we condemn.
Still wait within this city named for them--
We celebrate, with bombshell and with rhyme
Our noisiest Day of Days of yearly time!
O bare Antonio's hills that rim our sky--
Antonio's hills, that used to know July
As but a time of sleep beneath the sun--
Such days of languorous dreaming are all done!

MARY BAMFORD, in _Fourth of July Celebration, Oakland_, 1902.

JULY 5.

THE LIVE-OAKS.

In massy green, upon the crest
Of many a slanting hill,
By gentle wind and sun caressed,
The live-oaks carry still
A ponderous head, a sinewy breast,
A look of tameless will.
They plant their roots full firmly deep,
As for the avalanche;
And warily and strongly creep
Their slow trunks to the branch;
A subtle, devious way they keep,
Thrice cautious to be stanch.
A mighty hospitality
At last the builders yield,
For man and horse and bird and bee
A hospice and a shield,
Whose monolithic mystery
A curious power concealed.

RUBY ARCHER, in _Los Angeles Times._

JULY 6.

FATE AND I.

"Thine the fault, not mine," I cried.
Brooding bitterly,
And Fate looked grim and once again
Closed in and grappled me.
"Mine, not thine, the fault," I said,
Discerning verity,
And Fate arose and clasped my hand
And made a man of me.

HAROLD S. SYMMES, in _The American Magazine, April_, 1909.

JULY 7.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF TREES.

Dear brotherhood of trees! With you we find
Robust and hearty friendship, free from all
The laws of petty gods men travail for.
No wrangle here o'er things of small avail--
No knavery, nor charity betrayed--
But comrade beings--'Stalwart, steadfast, good.
You help the world in the noblest way of all--
By living nobly--showing in your lives
The utmost beauty, the full power and love
That through your wisdom and your long desire
Thrill in your vibrant veins from heart of earth.
Open your arms, O Trees, for us who come
With woodland longings in our pilgrim souls!

RUBY ARCHER.

JULY 8.

The scene was a ravine that had been cloven into the flank of a mighty mountain as if by the stroke of a giant's axe. For about half a mile this gash ran sharp and narrow; but at the upper end, the resting place of the travelers, it widened into a spacious amphitheatre, dotted with palm trees that rose with clean cylindrical boles sixty to eighty feet before spreading their crowns of drooping leafage against the azure of a cloudless sky--a wonderful touch of Egypt and the East to surroundings typical of the American Far West.

EDMUND MITCHELL, in _In Desert Keeping._

The noblest life--the life of labor;
The noblest love--the love of neighbor.

LORENZO SOSSO, in _Wisdom for the Wise._

JULY 9.

THE LIVE OAKS AT MENLO PARK.

The road wound for some half mile through a stretch of uncultivated land, dotted with the forms of huge live-oaks. The grass beneath them was burnt gray and was brittle and slippery. The massive trees, some round and compact and so densely leaved that they were impervious to rain as an umbrella, others throwing out long, gnarled arms as if spellbound in some giant throe of pain, cast vast slanting shadows upon the parched ground. Some seemed, like trees in Dore's drawings, to be endowed with a grotesque, weird humanness of aspect, as though an imprisoned dryad or gnome were struggling to escape, causing the mighty trunk to bow and writhe, and sending tremors of life along each convulsed limb. A mellow hoariness marked them all, due to their own richly subdued coloring and the long garlands of silvery moss that hung from their boughs like an old, rich growth of hair.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _Tomorrow's Tangle._

JULY 10.

MADRONA.

No other of our trees, to those who know it in its regions of finest development, makes so strong an appeal to man's imagination--to his love of color, of joyful bearing, of sense of magic, of surprise and change. He walks the woods in June or July and rustles the mass of gold-brown leaves fresh fallen under foot, or rides for unending weeks across the Mendocino ranges--and always with a sense of fresh interest and stimulation at the varying presence of this tree.

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

JULY 11.

THE WOODS OF THE WEST.

Oh, woods of the west, leafy woods that I love.
Where through the long days I have heard
The prayer of the wind in the branches above,
And the tremulous song of the bird.
Where the clust'ring blooms of the dog-wood hang o'er--
White stars in the dusk of the pine,
And down the dim aisles of the old forest pour
The sunbeams that melt into wine!

* * * * *

Oh, woods of the west, I am sighing today
For the sea-songs your voices repeat,
For the evergreen glades, for the glades far away
From the stifling air of the street,
And I long, ah, I long to be with you again
And to dream in that region of rest.
Forever apart from this warring of men--
Oh, wonderful woods of the west!

HERBERT BASHFORD, in _At the Shrine of Song._

JULY 12.

The Mohave yucca is a remarkable plant, which resembles in its nature both the cactus and the palm. It is found nowhere save in the Mohave Desert. It attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and the trunk, often two or three feet in diameter, supports half a dozen irregular branches, each tipped with a cluster of spine-like leaves. The flowers, which are of a dingy white color, come out in March and last until May, giving off a disagreeable odor. The fruit, however, which is two or three inches long, is pulpy and agreeable, resembling a date in flavor.

ARTHUR J. BURDICK, in _The Mystic Mid-Region._

JULY 13 AND 14.

Throughout the coast region, except in the extreme north, this Live Oak is the most common and characteristic tree of the Coast Range valleys which it beautifies with low broad heads whose rounded outlines are repeated in the soft curves of the foothills. Disposed in open groves along the bases of low hills, fringing the rich lands along creeks or scattered by hundreds or thousands over the fertile valley floors, the eyes of the early Spanish explorers dwelt on the thick foliage of the swelling crowns and read the fertility of the land in these evergreen oaks which they called Encina. The chain of Franciscan Missions corresponded closely to the general range of the Live Oak although uniformly well within the margin of its geographical limits both eastward and northward. The vast assemblage of oaks in the Santa Clara Valley met the eyes of Portola, discoverer of San Francisco Bay, in 1769, and a few years later, Crespi, in the narrative of the expedition of 1772, called the valley the "Plain of Oaks of the Port of San Francisco." Then came Vancouver, Englishman and discoverer. Although he was the first to express a just estimate of the Bay of San Francisco, which he declared to be as fine as any port in the world, nevertheless it is his felicitous and appreciative description of the groves of oaks, the fertile soil (of which they were a sign), and the equable climate that one reads between his lines of 1792 the prophecy of California's later empire.

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

JULY 15.

Huge live-oaks, silvered with a boar of lichen, stretched their boughs in fantastic frenzies. Gray fringes of moss hung from them, and tangled screens of clematis and wild grape caught the sunlight in their flickering meshes or lay over mounds of foliage like a torn green veil. * * *

For nearly two miles the carriage drive wound upward through this sylvan solitude. As it approached the house a background of emerald lawns shone through the interlacing branches, and brilliant bits of flower beds were set like pieces of mosaic between gray trunks.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _The Pioneer._

JULY 16.

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.