The day was a fine specimen of California summer, pure sunshine, unshaded most of the time by a single cloud.

As the sun rose higher, the heated air began to flow in tremulous waves from every southern slope.

The sea-breeze that usually comes up the foot-hills at this season, with cooling on its wings, was scarcely perceptible.

The birds were assembled beneath leafy shade, or made short, languid flights in search of food, all save the majestic buzzard; with broad wings outspread he sailed the warm air unwearily from ridge to ridge, seeming to enjoy the fervid sunshine like a butterfly.

Squirrels, too, whose spicy ardor no heat or cold may abate, were nutting among the pines, and the innumerable hosts of the insect kingdom were throbbing and wavering unwearied as sunbeams.
This brushy, berry-bearing region used to be a deer and bear pasture, but since the disturbances of the gold period these fine animals have almost wholly disappeared.