CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN.

MARCH 7.

BACK, BACK TO NATURE.

  Weary!  I am weary of the madness of the town,
    Deathly weary of all women, and all wine. 
  Back, back to Nature!  I will go and lay me down,
    Bleeding lay me down before her shrine. 
  For the mother-breast the hungry babe must call,
    Loudly to the shore cries the surf upon the sea;
  Hear, Nature wide and deep! after man’s mad festival
    How bitterly my soul cries out for thee!

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER,
in Of Both Worlds.

MARCH 8.

Across the valley was another mountain, dark and grand, with flecks of black growing chemisai in clefts and crevices, and sunny slopes and green fields lying at its base.  And oh, the charm of these mountains.  In the valley there might be fog and the chill of the north, but on the mountains lay the warmth and the dreaminess of the south.

JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN,
in Overland Tales.

The furious wind that came driving down the canyon lying far below him 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.