dingy evergreen
oaks everywhere about us.

There are some cultivated grounds and gardens in the neighborhood, but
everywhere interspersed among them are wild fields. The trees have a
determined look, as they stand and hold possession of them. The
cultivated ones that border the streets, in contrast with them, appear
quite tame. I find myself thinking of the latter sometimes as if they
were artificial, and only these old aborigines were real; they have so
much more character and expression. I heard a lady criticising Alameda,
saying that there were so many trees, you could not see the place. We
have a general feeling, all the time, as if we were camping out, and
everybody else were camping out too. The trees are scattered
everywhere; and it is quite the fashion, in this humble part of the
town, for people to live in tents while they build their own houses.
These trees are of a very social kind, bending low, and spreading their
branches wide, so that any one could almost live in them just as they
are. They are a great contrast to the firs which we had wholly around us
on Puget Sound. They have strange fancies for twisting and turning. I
have never seen two alike, nor one that grew up straight. It is not
because they are so yielding,--they are as stiff and rugged as they can
be,--it must be their own wild nature that makes them like to grow in
strange, irregular ways. Sometimes, when I look at great fields of them,
I feel as if I were in the midst of a storm, every thing has such a
wind-swept look, although it is perfectly still at the time. One day I
came upon a body of them, that appeared as if they had all been stopped
by some sudden enchantment, in the midst of running away. Often we see
trees that look as if they had come out of the wars, with great clefts
in their sides, and holes through them. Their foliage is very slight;
there is very little to conceal their muscular look. It seems as if we
could feel in them the will that tightened all the fibres.

MAY 15, 1878.

The great event to us lately has been the advent of the baby lizards.
The streets are all laid with planks, clean and sunny. The lizards
delight in them, they are so bright and warm. I like to see, as I walk
along, these curious little bodies, in old-fashioned scale armor,
stopping and looking about, as if they were drinking in the comfort of
the sunshine, just as I am. Although they stop a great deal, it is very
difficult to catch one, for their