Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

TOILS AND PLEASURES
white with Mediterranean heath. In the crannies
of the ledge and about the spurs of the tall pine, a
red flowering stone-plant hung in clusters. Even
the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like
blossom. Close at the foot of our path nutmegs
prospered, delightful to the sight and smell. At
sunrise, and again late at night, the scent of the
sweet bay-trees filled the canon, and the down-
blowing night-wind must have borne it hundreds of
feet into the outer air.
All this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. The
madrona was here no bigger than the manzanita ;
the bay was but a stripUng shrub ; the very pines,
with four or five exceptions in all our upper caiion,
were not so tall as myself, or but a little taller, and
the most of them came lower than my waist. For
a prosperous forest tree we must look below, where
the glen was crowded with green spires. But for
flowers and ravishing perfume we had none to envy :
our heap of road-metal was thick with bloom, like
a hawthorn in the front of June ; our red, baking
angle in the mountain, a laboratory of poignant
scents. It was an endless wonder to my mind, as I
dreamed about the platform, following the progress
of the shadows, where the madrona with its leaves,
the azalea and calcanthus with their blossoms, could
find moisture to support such thick, wet, waxy
growths, or the bay-tree collect the ingredients of
its perfume. But there they all grew together,
healthy, happy, and happy-making, as though rooted
in a fathom of black soil.
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