grows an affair called the snow-plant. It is, when full
grown, about two feet in height, and shaped like a loosely constructed
pine-cone set up on end. Its entire substance is like wax, and the
whole concern--stalk, broad curling leaves, and all--is a brilliant
scarlet. Sometime you will ride through the twilight of deep pine woods
growing on the slope of the mountain, a twilight intensified, rendered
more sacred to your mood by the external brilliancy of a glimpse of
vivid blue sky above dazzling snow mountains far away. Then, in this
monotone of dark green frond and dull brown trunk and deep olive
shadow, where, like the ordered library of one with quiet tastes,
nothing breaks the harmony of unobtrusive tone, suddenly flames the
vivid red of a snow-plant. You will never forget it.

Flowers in general seem to possess this concentrated brilliancy both of
color and of perfume. You will ride into and out of strata of perfume
as sharply defined as are the quartz strata on the ridges. They lie
sluggish and cloying in the hollows, too heavy to rise on the wings of
the air.

As for color, you will see all sorts of queer things. The ordered
flower-science of your childhood has gone mad. You recognize some of
your old friends, but strangely distorted and changed,--even the dear
old "butter 'n eggs" has turned pink! Patches of purple, of red, of
blue, of yellow, of orange are laid in the hollows or on the slopes
like brilliant blankets out to dry in the sun. The fine grasses are
spangled with them, so that in the cup of the great fierce countries
the meadows seem like beautiful green ornaments enameled with jewels.
The Mariposa Lily, on the other hand, is a poppy-shaped flower varying
from white to purple, and with each petal decorated by an "eye" exactly
like those on the great Cecropia or Polyphemus moths, so that their
effect is that of a flock of gorgeous butterflies come to rest. They
hover over the meadows poised. A movement would startle them to
flight; only the proper movement somehow never comes.

The great redwoods, too, add to the colored-edition impression of the
whole country. A redwood, as perhaps you know, is a tremendous big
tree sometimes as big as twenty feet in diameter. It is exquisitely
proportioned like a fluted column of noble height. Its bark is
slightly furrowed longitudinally, and of a peculiar elastic appearance
that lends it an almost perfect illusion of breathing animal life. The
col