California has both white and purple sweet wild mint, and her sage-bushes yield to the bees honey next to that made from clover for richness and whiteness. Everywhere on the trail Yermah’s companions found the Yerba Buena, which name in later years was applied to their beloved Tlamco. There were no quartz or gravel mines in those days. The battea of the Mexican and the horn-spoon of the “forty-niner” had no place in the pack-train—for the auriferous gravel had not been thrown to the surface in great ridges, and the blue veins which are the natural beds for gold were in some instances thousands of feet below the surface. The combined action of air, water, sunshine, frost and earthquake were yet to disintegrate the matrix of quartz and set the precious metals free, or else to ingulf them in tons of molten lava after vaporizing them in the bowels of the earth. Time has wrought many of these changes since, and the heavy rains have washed the light silica into the water courses, and thence to the valleys, thus forming the soil and gravel which has yielded gold in this sun-down land. It was here that the early prospector found his reward, and it is here also that the battle over the disposal of the débris left by hydraulic process has been fought out by miner and husbandman. Then the cactus family, those outcasts of the desert which are said to have survived the last glacial period, flourished in all their quaint ugliness. By long centuries of adaptation of scanty means to the ends of growth, the cactus has discarded its leaves and developed a fleshy stem, cylindrical, rectangular, triangular, flat, or round, but always armed with long needles. As a compensation, it bears exquisite blossoms of dainty tissue pistils and yellow ravelings of stamens, while its fruits might have been the golden apples of Hesperides. Akaza directed his party to take a trail leading to the south side of the Merced River, nearly two thousand feet lower than the route followed by tourists of later times. Suddenly from out one of the gray-green clusters of cacti darted a coarse-plumaged bird, marked with brown and white specks on the upper part, while the lower portion of its body was a dingy white. Oghi gave chase immediately, but it distanced him, with insolent flinging of sand and dust which quite surprised this intrepid hunter. He did not know whether to be frightened or ashamed of himself. At an encouraging word from Yermah, he laid his ears back close to his head and again tried the chase. The bird manifested no disposition to fly or to leave the trail. The trumpeter blared a command to halt, and the entire expedition came to a standstill. “Dismount for refreshment and rest, first giving attention to the horses,” was the word passed along the line.