Going thence by rail north to Santa Barbara, I inspected the narrow strip of the Santa Ynez Reserve, and the eastern and western sections of the Zaca Lake and Pine Mountain Reserve.  These are under the control of different forest supervisors; they are both largely composed of chaparral country, with scattered “pineries” on the mountains.  The hunting here is regulated, to a certain degree, by the problem of feed and water for the stock used by the hunters in gaining access to the ground.  Many enter these tracts from the south, as well as from the region adjacent to Santa Barbara, and the deer have a somewhat harassed and chivied existence, although, owing to the impenetrable nature of the chaparral outside of the pineries, there is a natural limit to the power of the sportsman to accomplish their entire extermination.  The present control of hunters by the forest rangers is only tentative; naturally we hope to have in an ever-increasing degree more scientific management both of the deer and of those who illegally kill them.  The sentiment of the community is enlightened, and would strengthen the hands of the Government in enforcing the law.  At present a ranger can do little more than maintain, so far as he can, his authority by threats—­threats which he has not the power to enforce.

In the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Reserves one finds himself at last in a forest country, with mountains which command respect, a section full of superb feed for the deer, feed of many sorts, for the deer have an attractive and varied bill of fare.  Whole hillsides are found of scrub oak, their chief stand-by, and of wild lilac or “deer brush,” the latter familiar to all readers of Muir as the Cleanothus, in those long periods of Miltonic sweep and dignity in which he summons the clans of the California herbs and shrubs; an enumeration as stately as the Homeric catalogue of the ships, and, to such as lack technical knowledge of botany, imposing respect rather by sonorous appeal to the ear than by visual suggestion to the memory.  That herbs should be marshalled in so impressive an array fills one with admiration and with somewhat of awe for these representatives of the vegetable kingdom.  As Muir pronounces their full-sounding titles, one feels that each is a noble in this distinguished company.  No one unprotected by a botany should have the temerity to enter, amid these lists, alone.

We visited this country in the season of flowers.  Whole hillsides of chamisal ("chamiz” or greasewood) bore their delicate, spirea-like, cream-colored blossoms—­when seen at a distance, like a hovering breath, as unsubstantial as dew, or as the well-named bloom on a plum or black Hamburg grape.  The superb yucca flaunted its glorious white standards, borne proudly aloft like those of the Roman legions, each twelve or fifteen feet in height, supporting myriads of white bells.  The Mexicans call this the “Quixote”—­a noble and fitting tribute to the knight of La Mancha.