stitution in which exceptional men and women will find exceptional opportunities. It will not undertake all kinds of work, but it will guarantee that what it does will be done by the best men in the best way." "It will be a democratic institution, as befits one with a serious purpose, which must go directly to the point in whatever it has in hand. The ideals of the past will guide its future, and its means are ample to see these ideals are fulfilled.” With these words in his ears a member of Stanford's pioneer class may, in coming years, when he visits his "gentle mother," stroll down from Palo Alto through the memory-crowded Arboretum and know in his heart that, while marble and mortar are unstable, the soul of the scholar is there. Mount Shasta. Helen Fitzgerald Sanders. Child of the dark, primeval seas, In centuries long passed to nought, Where conquered Force and conscious Power Lord of the Lordly Mountain Range. Keeper of Nature's archives vast, The record of the æons gone; Though they have passed, thou livest on, The heart of Man falls fainting low Alone, supreme, a Lord of Lords, T IIERE is always something covered in the even expanse of the manzanita thicket. When the young manzanita bushes stand apart, we see easily the openness of the shining, wine red branches, but this simplicity of standing is not long with them; the movement is always to mass together, to intertwine, to hide, to shut out, to live in the world of its own. Become thoroughly acquainted with this bunchy monotone of dun-green and the odd, interesting world of its undergrowth is soon perceived. One of those wonderful, teeming underworlds whose secrets remain unsolved, unsought. A whimsical shrub it is, virile, prankish. Its matted grip holds stubbornly, tenaciously to the soil; its stiff, verticalgrowing leaves are cactus-like in their power to withhold evaporation, in heat scorched places, while under kinder skies it raises its attitude and throws out more supple branches. Many trees and plants adapt themselves readily enough to extremes of climate, to the struggle against great heat or cold, to scanty soil, to wind-harassed exposure; but their changed aspect is mostly out of the normal. We pity these and wish them back in more favorable locations. But never the manzanita. Over precarious, rocky footing it bunches itself securely, on storm-beaten inclines, in rich, deep hollows, or crumbling hillsides, it climbs with the same thick, matted monotone of even, dun-green; undisturbed, always triumphing; composed in any standing. Late in the Autumn when the yellow of the goldenrod is past, when its ranks droop, dusty, seedy, ragged; when the aster stems are scant in faded purple; when the pale panicled glory of those flowers loved of the wind, all the waving, plumy grasses-is at its full and feathery height, what new flower is this gleaming red in the chapparal? In an Autumn-painted world, when leaves are flushed, drooping, loosening to their fall the manzanita takes the time to send a fresh scarlet young sprig of leaves, bright above its old foliage, like some tropic flower. Untouched by the Fall's fire haze is this spray of leaves, tight and trim and fresh. The long, burning Summer hours have put on layer upon layer of deepening, changing hues from green to red upon it. From somewhere in the whimsical centre of the manzanita has this tongue of red leaves sprung, asking not the brush of Autumn, but brilliant of itself at first unfolding. We gather it exultingly, striking its blood red spikes among various fluffy, etherial, neutral-tinted grasses. Can summertime outshow this gathering? In the days of the New Year, the wet, raw, promising days, the manzanita has a daintier marvel bedecking its greygreen. The woods and the waysides are moist, dripping; the air is earthyodored, sweet. From the layered infusion of soaked winter leaves a steaming breath arises, mouldy, yet wholesome. The swift rain has whipped out the pungency of the mints and sages, the balsam of the pines is beaten down to our level. What is this sudden-coming, springtime, flower perfume floating elusive past our face? One moment heavy, honey-sweet; the next trailed out thin, lost on the air. The breeze takes it, tosses it, whirls it high, sweeps it down a canon, lets it fall, goes back to it again, lifts it, wafts it before us. Pace it keeps thereafter with our seeking feet. At last we find them, the first pink manzanita blooms, translucent, rain-thinned, drops of perfume which shake off at a touch are scattered beneath the brush, baptizing the damp, stirring earth. No after surprise of the blossoming year is quite so poignant-sweet as this first wafted breath of the manzanita coming when the earth is soaked and sodden under a wet moon. out on the open will always assume the mimicking of some crawling, creeping or springing animal. As you peer into the shadows about the brush something impish seems to emanate from the shrub. when the beautiful, smooth, Indian-red branches lie on your hearth-stone, cut for your firewood, they seem to turn and twist intelligently from your hand. The grain of the wood is so beautiful in its warm, orange-yellow sections; the bark is polished by the masterhand of the elements. Just this short stick of manzanita wood is a thing of beauty in itself; I sigh as it goes to the burning. are After the blossom time, soon the miniaAs the big seeds grow ture apples form. they push into thinness the sweet, astrinThe brown, torgent, powdery skin. tuous, weather polished branches strangely like those other brown, weather beaten ones who come to strip off the berries for food. A meager, astringent food which the Indians rub into a meal; thankful if the crop be large, uncomplaining if their Brother of the twisted branch is that year scant in his bounty. When the rains descend another provender is spread beneath the manzanita. shade. The great edible Boletti mushroom scatters itself like numerous big, round, brown pincushions in the rich. The delectable little layer of leaves. a purple Russula finds here also a bed for its liking, and the Chantarelle a lodgment too. Enough to feed an army, and an army these feed; Italians, Indians, squirrels, woodpeckers, coyotes, bears, ants, beetles and flies. A few sunny days will bring the wild. bees, then the manzanita brush is brimming, humming fullness of life. The waxen bells hang out faster and faster. A time of joy for the bees; a joyous time for the manzanita, The intertwining branches hug each other ecstatically, the stiff, grey leaves are more erect than ever in pride, all the pink globules tremble in ecstacy, the joy of giving and receiving permeates this music-droning, fragrant harmony of blossom and bee. Under its firm leaf covering the most realistic expression of the manzanita exists. Study the queer roots and branches; what quaint shapes, are here; what odd, distorted contouring. A leering face, a crouching form, an uplifted threatening arm. Disjointed fragments of birds, animals, dwarfs. Here the red roots seem to claw the earth with long talons; there a bent figure goes marching off under the leaves. A dead branch thrown The manzanita it is, with other chapconserves the running paral, which moisture on the watersheds, when a treedestroying country prays in vain for rain. Where cloud calling forests are lowered and ruined, the manzanita springs up right sturdily, covering the barrenness that Man has made, holding the precious escaping rivulets a little longer on the hillsides and hollows. As you push your way through a manzanita thicket the brush springs against you in evident good will, upholding your stumbling feet, letting go at the right moment. You emerge from a chemisal or ceanothus thicket with scratches, but the manzanita is almost caressing as it closes about you. Once make friends with it and you have friends of a hundred more. Drop down in the under brush, you have disappeared from the face of the earth. The thick branches will not stir to betray you, the winds hurry over, baffled, unable to move its rigid overgrowth. Here comes the pretty grey squirrel, climbing a whole. mountainside under the safe Cover of leaves. Up and down his thoroughfare he runs and his enemies not aware. The wild doves descend to feed, the noise of their coming cuts the air like a musical rocket. Fewer and fewer they come, however, year by year. Soon these pretty, quivering necked, irridescent visitors will come no more. The chapparal wren is too curious to stay away from your proximity long; there she is bobbing and tilting in the brush, examining you with bright, amber-colored eyes. The regard of the chapparal wren is much to be prized. You have dropped down into another world and you settle yourself on the warm carpet of fine bark shavings and leaves, peering into the shadows where points of light waver and dance. The sunlight flickers through on the brown earth; mottled flecks of color are about you; you find that you are looking directly on the earthy wood-brown wings of a night hawk, almost indistinguishable from the ground. The instant your eyes perceive it, it flies to other cover. You lean back and a big, heavy moth, disturbed, flutters sleepily on to your lap, crawls with whirring, vibrating wings up a branch to settle itself again. Through this mighty forest, to them, beetles and ants come and go right over you if you will not get out of the way. The horned toad scuttles into the dry leaves; the owl rests here by day. A snake glides past, entering the brush with the grace of many changing, merging, following lines. He is a harmless snake, but as he pauses in the shadows, jeweled eves lifted, defensive, furtive, against the shining smooth bark, he is a bit disturbing, but a friend also if you choose. For you must not intrude into a manzanita world in fear, but in restful assurance that you will be accepted, welcomed by its people. A varied life leads the manzanita. The coming and the going of its visitors, seen and unseen; its tragedies and its comedies; its beauty and its oddity are pregnant with picturesque, virile interests, a phase of that same virile, picturesque California. |