and increasingly so from day
to day, as one comes to live with them in the different reserves. The
pleasure to be derived is cumulative--each acquisition of knowledge
adding to the satisfaction of that which comes after--it is of a sort,
however, to be experienced in the presence of the thing itself; any
description at a distance must necessarily be shadowy and unreal, only
the dry bones of something which one sees there, a thing of beauty and
instinct with life.

The characteristic feature of these southern forests is their open
nature; so far as the roughness of the mountains will permit, one may go
anywhere in the saddle without being hindered by underbrush. Outside of
their limits, however, and on many hillsides within the reserves, the
chaparral offers an impenetrable barrier; in some of them this growth
has captured the greater portion of their surface. The forests
themselves are often very beautiful; growing, as they do, openly, there
is constant sunlight during many months of the year, so that all the
ground is warm and vibrant with energy. As a natural consequence, great
individuality is shown in the tree forms, as different as possible from
the gloom and severe uniformity of the Oregon and Washington forests.
The former are dry, light, and cheerful; the latter, moist, dark,
silent, and somewhat forbidding. The northern forests of the Coast have
their attractive features, to be sure; they are fecund, solemn, and
majestic, but the prevailing note is not cheerfulness, as here in the
south.

In a paper of the present proportions it is impossible to give, except
in outline, a report of the summer's work. I began at San Juan
Capistrano, one of the old mission towns with a beautiful ruin, lying
near the sea on the west of the Trabuco Canyon Reserve. My first cruise
was through a chaparral country on the slope overlooking the Pacific. I
learned here of few deer and of relentless warfare against such as
remain. After that, from Elsinore, strange echo of that sea-girt castle
in Shakespeare's Denmark, I cruised so as to have as well an
understanding of the eastern slope of this, the smallest of the Coast
reserves. From Trabuco Peak we could study the physical geography of the
northern half of its area. I saw here what I did not again come across
in California--a small flock of the band-tailed pigeon, a bird as large
as the mountain quail, very handsome, indeed, and one that now should be
protected by law. These, as we