was the breath of the approaching multitude of storm-demons. The giant
trees on the slopes of the canyon seemed to brace themselves against
the impending assault. * * *
At the bottom of the canyon, the Sacramento River here a turbulent
mountain stream, and now a roaring torrent from the earlier rains of
the season, fumed and foamed as it raced with the wind down the canyon
hurrying on its way to the placid reaches in the plains of California.
W.C. MORROW,
in _A Man: His Mark._
MARCH 9.
THE ROCK DIVING OF MOUNTAIN SHEEP.
On another occasion, a flock ... retreated to another portion of this
same cliff (over 150 feet high), and, on being followed, they were
seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind another, by two men who
happened to be chopping where they had a fair view of them and could
watch their progress from top to bottom of the precipice. Both ewes
and rams made the frightful descent without evincing any extraordinary
concern, hugging the rock closely, and controlling the velocity of
their half-falling, half-leaping movements by striking at short
intervals and holding back with their cushioned, rubber feet upon
small ledges and roughened inclines until near the bottom, when they
"sailed off" into the free air and alighted on their feet, but with
their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they appeared to be
diving.
JOHN MUIR,
in _The Mountains of California._
MARCH 10.
The ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of foot-hills,
broad low ranges, cross-systems, canyons, little flats, and gentle
ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the river below. And from
under your very feet rose range after range, tier after tier, rank
after rank, in increasing crescendo of wonderful tinted mountains to
the main crest of the Coast Range, the blue distance, the mightiness
of California's western systems. * * * And in the far distance,
finally, your soul grown big in a moment, came to rest on the great
precipices and pines of the greatest mountains of all, close under the
sky.
STEWART EDWARD WHITE,
in _The Mountains._
MARCH 11.
TO YOU, MY FRIEND.
To you, my friend, where'er you be,
Though known or all unknown to me;
To you, who love the things of God,
The dew-begemmed and velvet sod,
The birds that trill beside their nest.
"Oh, love, sweet love, of life is best;"
To you, for whom each sunset glows.
This message goes.
To you, my friend. Mayhap 'tis writ
We ne'er shall meet. What matters it?
Where'er we roam, God's light shall gleam
For us on hill and wold and stream.
And we shall hold the blossoms dear,
And baby lips shall give us cheer,
And, loving these, leal friends are we,
Where'er you be.
To you, my friend, who know right well
That life is more than money's spell,
Who hear the universal call,
"Let all love all, as He loves all,"
Oh, list me in your ranks benign,
Accept this falt'ring hand of mine
Which, though unworthy, I extend.
And hold me friend.
A.J. WATERHOUSE.
MARCH 12.
Strength is meant for something more than merely to be strong;
And Life is not a lifetime spent in strain to keep alive.
CHARLES F. LUMMIS,
in _The Transplantation._
MARCH 13.
HER KING.
A winsome maiden planned her life--
How, when she was her hero's wife,
He should be royal among men,
And worthy of a diadem.
Through all the devious ways of earth
She sought her king;
The snows of Winter fell before--
She walked o'er flowers of vanished Spring
Into the Summer's fragrant heat;
She bent her quest, with rapid feet,
Then saddened; still she journeyed down
The Autumn hillsides, bare and brown,
Through shadowy eves and golden morns;
And lo! she found him--crowned with thorns.
ANNA MORRISON REED.
MARCH 14.
The area of San Francisco Bay proper is two hundred and ninety square
miles; the area of San Pablo Bay, Carquinez Straits, and Mare Island,
thirty square miles; the area of Suisun Bay, to the confluence of the
San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, is sixty-three square miles. The
total bay area is therefore four hundred and eighty square miles; and
there are hundreds of miles of slough, river, and creek. A yachtsman,
starting from Alviso, at the southern end of the bay, may sail in one
general direction one hundred and fifty-four miles to Sacramento,
before turning. All of this, of course, in inland waters.
CHARLES G. YALE,
in _The Californian._
MARCH 15.
It was the green heart of the canyon, where the walls swerved back
from the rigid plain and relieved their harshness of line by making a
little sheltered nook and filling it to the brim with sweetness and
roundness and softness. Here all things rested. Even the narrow stream
ceased its turbulent down-rush long enough to form a quiet pool.
Knee-deep in the water, with drooping head and half-shut eyes, drowsed
a red-coated, many-antlered buck.
On one side, beginning at the very lip of the pool, was a tiny meadow,
a cool, resilient surface of green, that extended to the base of the
frowning wall. Beyond the pool a gentle slope of earth ran up and up
to meet the opposing wall. Fine grass covered the slope--grass that
was spangled with flowers, with here and there patches of color,
orange and purple and golden. Below, the canyon was shut in. There was
no view. The walls leaned together abruptly and the canyon ended in a
chaos of rocks, moss-covered and hidden by a green screen of vines and
creepers and boughs of trees. Up the canyon rose far hills and peaks,
the big foot-hills, pine covered and remote. And far beyond, like
clouds upon the border of the sky, towered minarets of white, where
the Sierra's eternal snows flashed austerely the blazes of the sun.
JACK LONDON,
in _All Gold Canyon._
MARCH 16.
Except you are kindred with those who have speech with great spaces,
and the four winds of the earth, and the infinite arch of God's sky,
you shall not have understanding of the desert's lure.
IDAH MEACHAM STROBRIDGE,
in _Miner's Mirage Land._
MARCH 17.
ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN CALIFORNIA.
This day we celebrate is a day of faith, faith in God and the
motherland. It is a day of gratitude to the God whose grace brought
our fathers into the Christian life, a day of gratitude to the nations
which received our fathers and blessed them with the privileges of
citizenship. Let us not mind the minor chord of sorrow and
persecution. Let us rather take the major chord of glory and of honor,
and from the days of scholarship and of freedom to the present moment
of a world's national power, let us chant the hymns of glory and sing
of victory.
BISHOP THOMAS J. CONATY.
MARCH 18.
Said one, who upward turned his eye,
To scan the trunks from earth to sky:
"These trees, no doubt, well rooted grew
When ancient Nineveh was new;
And down the vale long shadows cast
When Moses out of Egypt passed,
And o'er the heads of Pharaoh's slaves
And soldiers rolled the Red Sea waves."
"How must the timid rabbit shake,
The fox within his burrow quake,
The deer start up with quivering hide
To gaze in terror every side,
The quail forsake the trembling spray,
When these old roots at last give way,
And to the earth the monarch drops
To jar the distant mountain-tops."
PALMER COX,
in _The Brownies Through California._
MARCH 19 AND MARCH 20.
A WINDOW AND A TREE IN ALTADENA.
By my window a magician, breathing whispers of enchantment,
Stands and waves a wand above me till the flowing of my soul,
Like the tide's deep rhythm, rises in successive swells that widen
All my circumscribed horizon, till the finite fades away;
And the fountains of my being in their innermost recesses
Are unsealed, and as the seas sweep, sweep the waters of my soul
Till they reach the shores of Heaven and with ebb-tide bear a pearl
Back in to the heart's safe-keeping, where no thieves break through
nor steal.
* * * * *
By my window stands confessor with his hands outstretched to bless me,
And on bended knee I listen to his low "Absolvo te."
Ne'er was mass more sacramental, ne'er confessional more solemn,
And the benediction given ne'er shall leave my shriven soul.
* * * * *
Just a tree beside my window--just a symbol sent from Heaven--
But with Proteus power it ever changes meaning--changes form--
And it speaks with tongues of angels, and it prophesies the rising
Of the day-star which shall shine out from divinity in man.
LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN.
MARCH 21.
IN THE REDWOOD CANYONS.
Down in the redwood canyons cool and deep,
The shadows of the forest ever sleep;
The odorous redwoods, wet with fog and dew,
Touch with the bay and mingle with the yew.
Under the firs the red madrona shines,
The graceful tan-oaks, fairest of them all,
Lean lovingly unto the sturdy pines,
In whose far tops the birds of passage call.
Here, where the forest shadows ever sleep,
The mountain-lily lifts its chalice white;
The myriad ferns hang draperies soft and white
Thick on each mossy bank and watered steep,
Where slender deer tread softly in the night--
Down in the redwood canyons dark and deep.
LILLIAN H. SHUEY,
in _Among the Redwoods._
MARCH 22.
You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy and gradually
ascending creek-bed of a canyon, a half hour of laboring steepness in
the overarching mountain lilac and laurel. There you came to a great
rock gateway which seemed the top of the world. * * * Beyond the
gateway a lush level canyon into which you plunged as into a bath;
then again the laboring trail, up and always up toward the blue
California sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, and redwood chaparral
into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the creamy yucca, and the
fine angular shale of the upper regions. Beyond the apparent summit
you found always other summits yet to be climbed, and all at once,
like thrusting your shoulders out of a hatchway, you looked over the
top.
STEWART EDWARD WHITE,
in _The Mountains._
MARCH 23.
DONNER LAKE.
So fair thou art--so still and deep--
Half hidden in thy granite cup.
From depths of crystal smiling up
As smiles a woman in her sleep!
The pine trees whisper where they lean
Above thy tide; and, mirrored there
The purple peaks their bosoms bare,
Reflected in thy silver sheen.
So fair thou art! And yet there dwells
Within thy sylvan solitudes
A memory which darkling broods
And all thy witchery dispels.
DANIEL S. RICHARDSON,
in _Trail Dust._
MARCH 24.
DONNER LAKE.
Donner Lake a pleasure resort! Can you understand for one moment how
strange this seems to me? I must be as old as Haggard's "She," since I
have lived to see our papers make such a statement. It is years since
I was there, yet I can feel the cold and hunger and hear the moan of
the pines; those grand old trees that used to tell me when a storm was
brewing and seemed to be about the only thing there alive, as the snow
could not speak. But now that the place is a pleasure resort--the moan
of the pines should cease.
VIRGINIA REED MURPHY.
MARCH 25.
THE LURE OF THE DESERT LAND.
Have you slept in a tent alone--a tent
Out under the desert sky--
Where a thousand thousand desert miles
All silent 'round you lie?
The dust of the aeons of ages dead,
And the peoples that tramped by!
* * * * *
Have you lain with your face in your hands, afraid,
Face down--flat down on your face--and prayed,
While the terrible sandstorm whirled and swirled
In its soundless fury, and hid the world
And quenched the sun in its yellow glare--
Just you and your soul, and nothing there?
If you have, then you know, for you've felt its spell,
The lure of the desert land.
And if you have not, then you could not tell--
For you could not understand.
MADGE MORRIS WAGNER,
in _Lippincott's._
MARCH 26.
One of the most beautiful lakes in the world is Lake Tahoe. It is six
thousand feet above sea-level, and the mountains around it rise four
thousand feet higher. * * * The first thing one would notice, perhaps,
is the wonderful clearness of the lake water. As one stands on the
wharf the steamer _Tahoe_ seems to be hanging in the clear green
depths with her keel and propellers in plain sight. The fish dart
under her and all about as in some large aquarium. * * * Every stick
or stone shows on the bottom as one sails along where the water is
sixty or seventy feet deep.
ELLA M. SEXTON,
in _Stories of California._
MARCH 27.
A PLAINSMAN'S SONG--MY LOVE.
Oh, give me a clutch in my hand of as much
Of the mane of a horse as a hold,
And let his desire to be gone be a fire
And let him be snorting and bold!
And then with a swing on his back let me fling
My leg that is naked as steel
And let us away to the end of the day
To quiet the tempest I feel.
And keen as the wind with the cities behind
And prairie before--like a sea,
With billows of grass that lash as we pass.
Make way for my stallion and me!
And up with his nose till his nostril aglows,
And out with his tail and his mane,
And up with my breast till the breath of the West
Is smiting me--knight of the plain!
Oh, give me a gleam of your eyes, love adream
With the kiss of the sun and the dew,
And mountain nor swale, nor the scorch nor the hail
Shall halt me from spurring to you!
For wild as a flood-melted snow for its blood--
By crag, gorge, or torrent, or shoal,
I'll ride on my steed and lay tho' it bleed,
My heart at your feet--and my soul!
PHILIP VERRILL MICHELS,
in _Harper's Weekly._
MARCH 28.
Lo, a Power divine, in all nature is found,
A Power omniscient, unfailing, profound;
A great Heart, that loves beauty and order and light.
In the flowers, in the shells, in the stars of the night.
JOSIAH KEEP,
in _Shells and Sea-Life._
MARCH 29.
BACK TO THE DESERT.
Call it the land of thirst,
Call it the land accurst,
Or what you will;
There where the heat-lines twirl
And the dust-devils whirl
His heart turns still.
* * * * *
Back to the land he knows,
Back where the yucca grows
And cactus bole;
Where the coyote cries,
Where the black buzzard flies
Flyeth his soul!
BAILEY MILLARD,
in _Songs of the Press._
MARCH 30.
DRIVING THE LAST SPIKE, 1869.
Under the desert sky the spreading multitude was called to order.
There followed a solemn prayer of thanksgiving. The laurel tie was
placed, amidst ringing cheers. The golden spike was set. The
trans-American telegraph wire was adjusted. Amid breathless silence
the silver hammer was lifted, poised, dropped, giving the gentle tap
that ticked the news to all the world! Then, blow on blow, Governor
Stanford sent the spike to place! A storm of wild huzzas burst forth;
desert rock and sand, plain and mountain, echoed the conquest of their
terrors. The two engines moved up, touched noses; and each in turn
crossed the magic tie. America was belted! The great Iron Way was
finished.
SARAH PRATT CARR,
in _The Iron Way._
MARCH 31.
THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST.
All wearied with the burdens of a place
Grown barren, over-crowded and despoiled
Of vital freshness by the weight of years.
A sage ascended to the mountain tops
To peer, as Moses once had done of old,
Into the distance for a Promised Land:
And there, his gaze toward the setting sun.
Beheld the Spirit of the Occident,
Bold, herculean, in its latent strength--
A youthful destiny that beckoned on
To fields all vigorous with natal life.
The years have passed; the sage has led a band
Of virile, sturdy men into the West.
And these have toiled and multiplied and stamped
Upon the face of Nature wondrous things.
Until, created from the virgin soil,
Great industries arise as monuments
To their endeavor; and a mighty host
Now labors in a once-untrodden waste--
Quick-pulsed with life-blood, from a heart that throbs
Its vibrant dominance throughout the world.
Today, heroic in the sunset's glow,
A figure looms, colossal and serene.
In royal power of accomplishment,
That claims the gaze of nations over sea
And beckons, still, as in the years agone.
The weary ones of earth to its domain--
That they may drink from undiluted founts
An inspiration of new energy.
LOUIS J. STELLMAN,
in _Sunset Magazine, August_, 1903.
DESERT LURE.
The hills are gleaming brass, and bronze the peaks,
The mesas are a brazen, molten sea,
And e'en the heaven's blue infinity,
Undimmed by kindly cloud through arid weeks,
Seems polished turquoise. Like a sphinx she speaks,
The scornful desert: "What would'st thou from me?"
And in our hearts we answer her; all three
Unlike, for each a different treasure seeks.
One sought Adventure, and the desert gave;
His restless heart found rest beneath her sands.
One sought but gold. He dug his soul a grave;
The desert's gift worked evil in his hands.
One sought for beauty; him She made her slave.
Turn back! No man her 'witched gift withstands.
CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM,
in _Ainslee's, July_, 1907.
APRIL 1.
Hark! What is the meaning of this stir in the air. why are the brooks
so full of laughter, the birds pouring forth such torrents of sweet
song, as if unable longer to contain themselves for very joy? The
hills and ravines resound with happy voices. Let us re-echo the
cheering vibrations with the gladness of our hearts, with the hope
arisen from the tomb of despair. With buoyant spirit, let us join in
the merry mood of the winged songsters; let us share the gaiety of the
flowers and trees, and let our playful humor blend with the musical
flow and tinkle of the silvery, shimmering rivulet. Greetings, let
fond greetings burst from the smiling lips on this most happy of all
occasions! The natal day of the flowers, the tender season of love and
beauty, the happy morn of mother Nature's bright awakening! The
resurrection, indeed! The world palpitating with fresh young life--it
is the Holiday of holidays, the Golden Holiday for each and all--the
Birth of Spring.
BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH,
_Copyright_, 1907.
APRIL 2.
Almost has the Californian developed a racial physiology. He tends
to size, to smooth symmetry of limb and trunk, to an erect, free
carriage; and the beauty of his women is not a myth. The pioneers were
all men of good body; they had to be to live and leave descendants.
The bones of the weaklings who started for El Dorado in 1849 lie on
the plains or in the hill cemeteries of the mining camps. Heredity
began it; climate has carried it out.
WILL IRWIN,
in _The City That Was._
APRIL 3.
AN EASTER OFFERING.
I watched a lily through the Lenten-tide;
From when its emerald sheath first pierced the mould.
I saw the satin blades uncurl, unfold,
And, softly upward, stretch with conscious pride
Toward the fair sky. At length, the leaves beside,
There came a flower beauteous to behold,
Breathing of purest joy and peace untold;
Its radiance graced the Easter altar-side.
And in my heart there rose a sense of shame
That I, alas, no precious gift had brought
Which could approach the beauty of this thing--
I who had sought to bear the Master's name!
Humbly I bowed while meek repentance wrought,
With silent tears, her chastened offering.
BLANCHE M. BURBANK
APRIL 4.
For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations,
deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars. It comes
upon one with new force that the Chaldeans were a desert-bred people.
It is hard to escape the sense of mastery as the stars move in the
wide, clear heavens to risings and settings unobscured. They look
large and near and palpitant; as if they moved on some stately service
not needful to declare. Wheeling to their stations in the sky, they
make the poor world fret of no account. Of no account you who lie out
there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands off in the scrub from
you and howls and howls.
MARY AUSTIN,
in _The Land of Little Rain._
APRIL 5.
DESERT CALLS.
There are breaks in the voice of the shouting street
Where the smoke drift comes sifting down,
And I list to the wind calls, far and sweet--
They are not from the winds of the town.
O I lean to the rush of the desert air
And the bite of the desert sand,
I feel the hunger, the thirst and despair--
And the joy of the still border land!
For the ways of the city are blocked to the end
With the grim procession of death--
The treacherous love and the shifting friend
And the reek of a multitude's breath.
But the arms of the Desert are lean and slim
And his gaunt breast is cactus-haired,
His ways are as rude as the mountain rim--
But the heart of the Desert is bared.
HARLEY R. WILEY,
in _Out West Magazine._
APRIL 6.
In the universal pean of gladness which the earth at Eastertide raises
to the Lord of Life, the wilderness and the solitary place have part,
and the desert then does in truth blossom as the rose. And how
comforting are the blossoms of the desert when at last they have come!
When the sun has sunk behind the rim of the verdure-less range of
granite hills that westward bound my view, and the palpitating light
of the night's first stars shines out in the tender afterglow, I love
to linger on the cooling sands and touch my cheek to the flowers. Now
has the desert shaken off the livery of death, and ... is become an
abiding place of hope.
CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS,
in _Blossoms of the Desert._
APRIL 7.
There had been no hand to lay a wreath upon his tomb. But soon, as
if the weeping skies had scattered seeds of pity, tiny flowerets,
yellow, blue, red, and white, were sprouting on the sides of the
grave. * * * A delicious perfume filled the air. The desert cemetery
was now a place of beauty as well as a place of peace. But the silence
and solitude remained unbroken, except when a long-tailed lizard
scurried through the undergrowth, or a big horned toad, white and
black, like patterned enamel, took a blinking peep of melancholy
surprise into the yawning ditch that blocked his accustomed way.
EDMUND MITCHELL,
in _In Desert Keeping._
APRIL 8.
To those who know the desert's heart, and through years of closest
intimacy--have learned to love it in all its moods; it has for them
something that is greater than charm, more lasting than beauty a
something to which no man can give a name. Speech is not needed, for
they who are elect to love these things understand one another without
words; and the desert speaks to them through its silence.
IDAH MEACHAM STROBRIDGE,
in _Miner's Mirage Land._
At length I struck upon a spot where a little stream of water was
oozing out from the bank of sand. As I scraped away the surface I saw
something which would have made me dance for joy had I not been
weighed down by the long boots. For there, in very truth, was a live
Olive, with its graceful shell and a beautiful pearl-colored body.
JOSIAH KEEP,
in _West Coast Shells._
APRIL 9.
DESERT DUST.
With all its heat and dust the desert has its charms. The desert dust
is dusty dust, but not dirty dust. Compared with the awful organic
dust of New York, London, or Paris, it is inorganic and pure. On those
strips of the Libyan and Arabian deserts which lie along the Nile, the
desert dust is largely made up of the residuum of royalty, of withered
Ptolemies, of arid Pharaohs, for the tombs of queens and kings are
counted here by the hundreds, and of their royal progeny and their
royal retainers by the thousands. These dessicated dynasties have been
drying so long that they are now quite antiseptic.
The dust of these dead and gone kings makes extraordinarily fertile
soil for vegetable gardens when irrigated with the rich, thick water
of the Nile. Their mummies also make excellent pigments for the brush.
Rameses and Setos, Cleopatra and Hatasu--all these great ones, dead
and turned to clay, are said, when properly ground, to make a rich
umber paint highly popular with artists.
JEROME HART,
in _A Levantine Log-Book._
APRIL 10.
The mountain wall of the Sierra bounds California on its eastern side.
It is rampart, towering and impregnable, between the garden and the
desert. From its crest, brooded over by cloud, glittering with crusted
snows, the traveler can look over crag and precipice, mounting files
of pines and ravines swimming in unfathomable shadow, to where, vast,
pale, far-flung in its dreamy adolescence, lies California, the
garden.
GERALDINE BONNER,
in _The Pioneer._
APRIL 11.
MIRAGE IN THE MOHAVE DESERT.
They hear the rippling waters call;
They see the fields of balm;
And faint and clear above it all,
The shimmer of some silver palm
That shines thro' all that stirless calm
So near, so near--and yet they fall
All scorched with heat and blind with pain,
Their faces downward to the plain,
Their arms reached toward the mountain wall.
ROSALIE KERCHEVAL.
APRIL 12.
The desert calls to him who has once felt its strange attraction,
calls and compels him to return, as the sea compels the sailor to
forsake the land. He who has once felt its power can never free
himself from the haunting charm of the desert.
GEORGE HAMILTON FITCH,
in _Palm Springs, Land of Sunshine Magazine._