ightful, and the steamy fragrance, and the burst
of bird song from a multitude of thrushes and finches and warblers that
have nests in the chaparral.

The nights, too, are delightful, watching with Shasta beneath the great
starry dome. A thousand thousand voices are heard, but so finely blended
they seem a part of the night itself, and make a deeper silence. And how
grandly do the great logs and branches of your campfire give forth the
heat and light that during their long century-lives they have so slowly
gathered from the sun, storing it away in beautiful dotted cells and
beads of amber gum! The neighboring trees look into the charmed circle
as if the noon of another day had come, familiar flowers and grasses
that chance to be near seem far more beautiful and impressive than by
day, and as the dead trees give forth their light all the other riches
of their lives seem to be set free and with the rejoicing flames rise
again to the sky. In setting out from Strawberry Valley, by bearing off
to the northwestward a few miles you may see

"...beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads,
And [bless] the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers."

This is one of the few places in California where the charming linnaea
is found, though it is common to the northward through Oregon
and Washington. Here, too, you may find the curious but unlovable
darlingtonia, a carnivorous plant that devours bumblebees, grasshoppers,
ants, moths, and other insects, with insatiable appetite. In approaching
it, its suspicious-looking yellow-spotted hood and watchful attitude
will be likely to make you go cautiously through the bog where it
stands, as if you were approaching a dangerous snake. It also occurs in
a bog near Sothern's Station on the stage road, where I first saw it,
and in other similar bogs throughout the mountains hereabouts.

The "Big Spring" of the Sacramento is about a mile and a half above
Sisson's, issuing from the base of a drift-covered hill. It is lined
with emerald algae and mosses, and shaded with alder, willow, and thorn
bushes, which give it a fine setting. Its waters, apparently unaffected
by flood or drouth, heat or cold, fall at once into white rapids with
a rush and dash, as if glad to escape from the darkness to begin their
wild course down the canyon to the plain.

Muir's Peak, a few miles to the north of the sp