ks and plants
and animals and glorious weather. Beauty beyond thought everywhere,
beneath, above, made and being made forever. I gazed and gazed and
longed and admired until the dusty sheep and packs were far out of
sight, made hurried notes and a sketch, though there was no need of
either, for the colors and lines and expression of this divine
landscape-countenance are so burned into mind and heart they surely can
never grow dim.

[Illustration: HORSESHOE BEND, MERCED RIVER]

[Illustration: ON SECOND BENCH. EDGE OF THE MAIN FOREST BELT ABOVE
COULTERVILLE, NEAR GREELEY'S MILL]

The evening of this charmed day is cool, calm, cloudless, and full of a
kind of lightning I have never seen before--white glowing cloud-shaped
masses down among the trees and bushes, like quick-throbbing fireflies
in the Wisconsin meadows rather than the so-called "wild fire." The
spreading hairs of the horses' tails and sparks from our blankets show
how highly charged the air is.

_June 6._ We are now on what may be called the second bench or plateau
of the Range, after making many small ups and downs over belts of
hill-waves, with, of course, corresponding changes in the vegetation. In
open spots many of the lowland compositae are still to be found, and some
of the Mariposa tulips and other conspicuous members of the lily family;
but the characteristic blue oak of the foothills is left below, and its
place is taken by a fine large species (_Quercus Californica_) with
deeply lobed deciduous leaves, picturesquely divided trunk, and broad,
massy, finely lobed and modeled head. Here also at a height of about
twenty-five hundred feet we come to the edge of the great coniferous
forest, made up mostly of yellow pine with just a few sugar pines. We
are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making
every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our
flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about
us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and
trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,--a part of all
nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal. Just now I
can hardly conceive of any bodily condition dependent on food or breath
any more than the ground or the sky. How glorious a conversion, so
complete and wholesome it is, scarce memory enough of old bondage days
left as a standpoint to view it from! In this newness of life we seem to
have been so alwa