waved white with Mediterranean heath. In the crannies of the ledge
and about the spurs of the tall pine, a red flowering stone-plant hung
in clusters. Even the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like
blossom. Close at the foot of our path nutmegs prospered, delightful to
the sight and smell. At sunrise, and again late at night, the scent of
the sweet bay-trees filled the canyon, and the down-blowing night wind
must have borne it hundreds of feet into the outer air.

All this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. The madrona was here no
bigger than the manzanita; the bay was but a stripling shrub; the very
pines, with four or five exceptions in all our upper canyon, were not so
tall as myself, or but a little taller, and the most of them came lower
than my waist. For a prosperous forest tree, we must look below, where
the glen was crowded with green spires. But for flowers and ravishing
perfume, we had none to envy: our heap of road-metal was thick with
bloom, like a hawthorn in the front of June; our red, baking angle in
the mountain, a laboratory of poignant scents. It was an endless wonder
to my mind, as I dreamed about the platform, following the progress of
the shadows, where the madrona with its leaves, the azalea and
calcanthus with their blossoms, could find moisture to support such
thick, wet, waxy growths, or the bay-tree collect the ingredients of its
perfume. But there they all grew together, healthy, happy, and
happy-making, as though rooted in a fathom of black soil.

Nor was it only vegetable life that prospered. We had, indeed, few
birds, and none that had much of a voice or anything worthy to be called
a song. My morning comrade had a thin chirp, unmusical and monotonous,
but friendly and pleasant to hear. He had but one rival: a fellow with
an ostentatious cry of near an octave descending, not one note of which
properly followed another. This is the only bird I ever knew with a
wrong ear; but there was something enthralling about his performance.
You listened and listened, thinking each time he must surely get it
right; but no, it was always wrong, and always wrong the same way. Yet
he seemed proud of his song, delivered it with execution and a manner of
his own, and was charming to his mate. A very incorrect, incessant human
whistler had thus a chance of knowing how his own music pleased the
world. Two great birds--eagles, we thought--dwelt at the top of the
canyon, among the crags that were print