ith
joyful enthusiasm, new life, new beauty, unfolding, unrolling in
glorious exuberant extravagance,--new birds in their nests, new winged
creatures in the air, and new leaves, new flowers, spreading, shining,
rejoicing everywhere.

The trees about the camp stand close, giving ample shade for ferns and
lilies, while back from the bank most of the sunshine reaches the
ground, calling up the grasses and flowers in glorious array, tall
bromus waving like bamboos, starry compositae, monardella, Mariposa
tulips, lupines, gilias, violets, glad children of light. Soon every
fern frond will be unrolled, great beds of common pteris and woodwardia
along the river, wreaths and rosettes of pellaea and cheilanthes on sunny
rocks. Some of the woodwardia fronds are already six feet high.

A handsome little shrub, _Chamaebatia foliolosa_, belonging to the rose
family, spreads a yellow-green mantle beneath the sugar pines for miles
without a break, not mixed or roughened with other plants. Only here and
there a Washington lily may be seen nodding above its even surface, or a
bunch or two of tall bromus as if for ornament. This fine carpet shrub
begins to appear at, say, twenty-five hundred or three thousand feet
above sea level, is about knee high or less, has brown branches, and the
largest stems are only about half an inch in diameter. The leaves, light
yellow green, thrice pinnate and finely cut, give them a rich ferny
appearance, and they are dotted with minute glands that secrete wax with
a peculiar pleasant odor that blends finely with the spicy fragrance of
the pines. The flowers are white, five eighths of an inch in diameter,
and look like those of the strawberry. Am delighted with this little
bush. It is the only true carpet shrub of this part of the Sierra. The
manzanita, rhamnus, and most of the species of ceanothus make shaggy
rugs and border fringes rather than carpets or mantles.

The sheep do not take kindly to their new pastures, perhaps from being
too closely hemmed in by the hills. They are never fully at rest. Last
night they were frightened, probably by bears or coyotes prowling and
planning for a share of the grand mass of mutton.

_June 10._ Very warm. We get water for the camp from a rock basin at the
foot of a picturesque cascading reach of the river where it is well
stirred and made lively without being beaten into dusty foam. The rock
here is black metamorphic slate, worn into smooth knobs in the stream
ch