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Leaving one of his small boats for the use of those who remained in charge of the ships, he took the other two, and, placing in them some light cannon, prepared them as well as he could for any emergency that might be encountered. His party consisted of twenty soldiers, sailors, and helpers, besides his treasurer, Rodrigo Maldonado, and Gaspar de Castilleia, comptroller.

Down the road presented an enchanting procession of flowers, which changed from day to day as the season advanced; to-day the scarlet castilleia, or painter's-brush, flaming out of the coarse grasses; to-morrow the sand lily, lifting its dainty face above the bare sand; next week the harebell, in great clumps, nodding across the field, and next month the mariposa or butterfly lily, just peeping from behind the brush, with dozens of others to keep them company.

Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily L. parvum.

An Indian paint-brush with a flower in an oblong cream-colored spike, with purple blotches, was named Castilleia inconspicua, possibly because it is so much less conspicuous and alluring to the eye than its well-known and striking brother of the California fields, C. parviflora. This species has been of great interest to botanists, as when first observed it was placed in the genus Orthocarpus.

Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover, monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.