We had left behind us the scattering timber of the lower foothills.  The sides of the canyon were clothed and garlanded in various shades of green from top to bottom.  Black oak trees in their fresh, new garbs of early summer, intermingled with stately pines.  All space between these trees was filled with a rich growth of all the flowering shrubs known to our California mountains.  In the damper places a wild tangle of ferns and vines and bracken entirely hid the earth from view.  Lilacs, white and purple, in full bloom emitted a fragrance which rendered the air intoxicating and nearly overpowered one’s senses.  Mingled with these bushes were the Cascara Segrada, bright-leafed maples, and the brilliantly colored stems and vividly green leaves of the Manzanitas, some in full bloom, some in berries set.  The graceful red bud, found in luxuriant growth in Lake County, was also here.  Likewise the elders, with their heavy clusters of yellow blossoms.  The buckeye, with its long, graceful blossoms, reached far up above the undergrowth.  The mountain sage, differing materially from the valley sage and bearing a yellow flower, was also here.  The mountain balm, with its long purple blossoms, mingled its colors with its neighbors.  Occasionally an humble thistle, with its blossom of purple base and intense pink center, thrust up its head through some leafy bower.  Crowding all of these was the grease wood with its yellow bloom, the snow-bush or buckthorn, with a blossom resembling white lilac and fully as sweet, and all the other shrubs of our mountain chaparrals, all, however, blended into one beautiful and fragrant bouquet, so exquisitely formed that man’s ingenuity could never equal it in arranging floral decorations.  Then again a turn in the road would bring us great masses of tall dogwood with its shining leaves and beautiful white blossoms with yellow centers.  They also, like the ferns, sought the cooler, darker spots.  Never before have I seen the California slippery elm or leatherwood tree in such perfect form.  It makes a stately branching tree.  Its great yellow blossoms almost cover the limbs.  The shade of the flower is a deep golden yellow.  When mingled with the dogwood, the intense green of the foliage of the two trees, coupled with the white and yellow decorations, made a bouquet of rarest beauty.  Thimble-berry bushes, rich in color, bright of leaf and rank of growth, sported their great white blossoms with much grace and dignity.  Yellow buttercups, carnations, violets of three colors, white, yellow and purple, half hid their graceful heads under the tangled growth of various grasses by the wayside.  The wild iris moved their varicolored flowers with each passing breath of air.