Evergreen trees and undergrowth fringed the tooth-shaped outlines which the blue haze softened and blended perfectly with the lighter tones overhead, and blurred deep and heavy in the interesting glades and canyons. The whole region presented a complicated system of sharp ridges, with immense circular cavities between, as if the entire country had suddenly cooled while boiling violently. From out this mass, rose bold rivers which trickled along for some distance; then, gaining in volume and velocity, rushed madly across the intervening plains to mingle their clear icy waters with the turbid, débris-laden Sacramento. Much of the land surface was reddened and discolored by the oxidization contained in the subsoil; and over it all was the brown and yellow color-scheme of the long, rainless summer months. There were live oaks in the foothills, white oaks in the valleys, with pale, yellowish-green moss festooning the gnarled limbs, and swaying in the breeze. The long acorns had been gathered and stored for future use. Tules covering the swampy shallows this side of the narrow timber belt on the river, were brown and seared. The wild grape vines were loaded with ripe fruit and each patch of wild oats had long since shed its grain. Here and there a white swan glided by in stately dignity on waters so clear that the fish could be seen; while the sycamores, oaks, and willows afforded shelter to a chattering family of magpies, bluejays, blackbirds, crows and turkey buzzards. A hawk poised itself in mid-air watching a chance to seize a meadow lark; while the sandhill-cranes, ducks, and geese disported themselves in the sloughs. In the less frequented parts of the valley, lumbering mastodons and hippopotami mingled with grizzly bears, elk, antelope, deer and diminutive wild horses. They were screened from view by scrub oak and pine whose northern exposure was rich in yellow moss. Here was found plenty of bur-clover and bunch-grass, both of which were withered by the hot summer wind and sun. Shocks of corn and piles of fodder, still cluttered the parched ground, bearing mute, but eloquent testimony of the recent invasion of an army of painstaking reapers. California in her brown coat is a promise fulfilled—a matured and sobered land, somewhat stern and forbidding of aspect, and set in her ways, but rich beyond compare in the abundance and variety of her harvest yield. Despite the shimmering, blistering heat, schools of salmon had been shooting the rapids and whirlpools of the Sacramento, hastening to the shallows. It was their spawning time. They fearlessly deserted the deep pools and were piled in an indiscriminate mass in the ripples. Animated by a kind of fury the fish were beating the sands with their tails. Sometimes, the female would wear her fins off entirely in this occupation. Then she deposited her eggs in the coarse gravel; but the greedy trout pounced upon and ate them as fast as laid if not prevented by the male salmon.