A Summer in a Canyon by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
page 47 of 218 (21%)
page 47 of 218 (21%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
with a gay canopy, twenty feet square. Three sides were made by
hanging full curtains of awning cloth from redwood rods by means of huge brass rings. These curtains were looped back during the day and dropped after dark, making a cosy and warm interior from which to watch the camp-fire on cool evenings. As for the Canyon de Las Flores itself, this little valley of the flowers, it was beautiful enough in every part to inspire an artist's pencil or a poet's pen; so quiet and romantic it was, too, it might almost have been under a spell,--the home of some sleepy, enchanted princess waiting the magic kiss of a princely lover. It reached from the ocean to the mountains, and held a thousand different pictures on which to feast the eye; for Dame Nature deals out beauty with a lavish hand in this land of perpetual summer, song, and sunshine. There were many noble oak-trees, some hung profusely with mistletoe, and others with the long, Spanish greybeard moss, that droops from the branches in silvery lines, like water spray. Sometimes, in the moonlight, it winds about the oak like a shroud, and then again like a filmy bridal veil, or drippings of mist from a frozen tree. Here and there were open tracts of ground between the clumps of trees, like that in which the tents were pitched,--sunny places, where the earth was warm and dry, and the lizards blinked sleepily under the stones. Farther up the canyon were superb bay-trees, with their glossy leaves and aromatic odour, and the madrono, which, with its blood-red skin, is one of the most beautiful of California trees, having an open growth, like a maple, bright green lustrous leaves, and a brilliant red bark, which peels off at regular seasons, giving place to a new |
|