Beyond the West: containing an account of two years' travel in the other half of our great continent far beyond the old West, on the plains, in the Rocky mountains, and picturesque parks of Colorado. Also, characteristic features of New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho ... Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and ... California, the end of the West ... the great continental railroad, together with the ... most wonderful natural scenery in the world .../ by George W. Pine.

BEYOND THE WEST.
flora] life seems not so much the adornments of the
place as it is of Portland. But the cities of California
and pleasant valley homes, embowered with trees,
flowers and festooning vines, are more to be admired,
more wonderfully beautiful than can be found elsewhere on this continent. Here the lemon verbena
is a hot house plant; there it is a bush several feet
high. Here you will see an oleander beautifying
a parlor; there you will find hundreds of bunches
in some yards in full blossom among what looks like
showers of roses. No one can visit this sunset land
without feeling the magic influence of flowers steal
ing insensibly over him.
"God might have bidden the earth bring forth
Enough tor great and small,
The oak tree and the cedar tree
Without a flower at all.
We might have had enough, enough
For every want of ours,
F'or luxury, medicine, and toil
And yet have had no flowers.
The ore within the mountain mine
Requireth none to grow;
Nor doth it need the lotus-flower
To make the river flow.
The clouds might give abundant rain,
The nightly dews might fall,
And the herb that giveth life to man
Might yet have drunk them all.
Then wherefore, wherefore were they made,
All dyed with rainbow light:
All fashioned with exquisite grace,
Upspringing day and night:
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