WE drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in the afternoon. The sun warmed me to theheart. A broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, laden with perfume. Up at the topstood Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed spurs, and radiatingwarmth. Once we saw it framed in a grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line andcolour a finished composition. We passed a cow stretched by the roadside, her bell slowly beatingtime to the movement of her ruminating jaws, her big red face crawled over by half a dozen flies, amonument of content.A little farther, and we struck to the left up a mountain road, and for two hours threaded one valleyafter another, green, tangled, full of noble timber, giving us every now and again a sight of MountSaint Helena and the blue hilly distance, and crossed by many streams, through which we splashedto the carriage-step. To the right or the left, there was scarce any trace of man but the road wefollowed; I think we passed but one ranchero's house in the whole distance, and that was closed andsmokeless. But we had the society of these bright streams-dazzlingly clear, as is their wont, splashing from the wheels in diamonds, and striking a lively coolness through the sunshine. Andwhat with the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of foliage tossing in the breeze, the glimpsesof distance, the descents into seemingly impenetrable thickets, the continual dodging of the roadwhich made haste to plunge again into the covert, we had a fine sense of woods, and spring-time, and the open air.Our driver gave me a lecture by the way on Californian trees-a thing I was much in need of, havingfallen among painters who know the name of nothing, and Mexicans who know the name ofnothing in English. He taught me the madrona, the manzanita, the buck-eye, the maple; he showedme the crested mountain quail; he showed me where some young redwoods were already spiringheavenwards from the ruins of the old; for in this district all had already perished: redwoods andredskins, the two noblest indigenous living things, alike condemned.At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden gate with a sign upon it like an inn. "ThePetrified Forest. Proprietor: C. Evans," ran the legend. Within, on a knoll of sward, was the houseof the proprietor, and another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum, where photographs andpetrifactions were retailed. It was a pure little isle of touristry among these solitary hill