JULY 28.
High above on the western cliff a giant head of cactus reared infernal arms and luminous bloom. One immense clump threw a shadow across the cliff road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the canyon to the mesa above the sea—the road over which in the old days the Mission Indians bore hides to the ships and flung them from the cliffs to the waiting boats below.
MARAH ELLIS RYAN,
in For the Soul of Rafael.
JULY 29.
Distinct from all others, the sequoias are a race apart. The big-tree, and the redwood of the Coast Range, are the only surviving members of that ancient family, the giants of the fore-world. Their immense trunks might be the fluted columns of some noble order of architecture, surviving its builders like the marble temples of Greece—columns three hundred feet high and thirty feet through at the base. Such a vast nave, such majestic aisles, such sublime spires, only the forest cathedrals know. Symmetrical silver firs, giant cedars and spruce, grow side by side with sugar pines of vast and irregular outline, whose huge branches, like outstretched arms, hold aloft the splendid cones—such is the ancient wood.
C.H. KIRKHAM,
in In the Open.
JULY 30.
Said one, "This city, as you know,