s and
hiding-places in chaparral and beneath shelving precipices, as I have
never seen their tracks in any of the caves. This is the more remarkable
because notwithstanding the darkness and oozing water there is nothing
uncomfortably cellar-like or sepulchral about them.

When we emerged into the bright landscapes of the sun everything looked
brighter, and we felt our faith in Nature's beauty strengthened, and saw
more clearly that beauty is universal and immortal, above, beneath, on
land and sea, mountain and plain, in heat and cold, light and darkness.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BEE-PASTURES

When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its
entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy
Sierra to the ocean.

Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
wilderness--through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain,
park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
mountains--throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or
less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in
broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length--zones of polleny
forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild
rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of
bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere all
the year round.

But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a fire,
and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky cliffs and
fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus far has given
no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of alfalfa for
miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and honeysuckles
around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the dells, and small,
square orchards and orange-groves for broad mountain-belts of chaparral.

The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March,
April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so
marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a
distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred
flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias