We also passed patches of belated scarlet larkspur, shooting stars, and glaring golden-rod.
Half a mile up we reached Barker Creek, now a bowlder-strewn arroyo which aroused my covetousness to high degree.

How I would love to build, with my own hands, a cottage, bungalow or house of some kind with these great bowlders, of varied sizes and colors, shapes and material.
Just above the junction of Barker Creek and the Rubicon is "Little Hell Hole," a camping-place almost as famous as its larger namesake, and noted for the fact that half a mile away is a small canyon full of mineral springs--sulphur, iron, soda, magnesia, etc.

Naturally it is a "deer-lick," which makes it a Mecca during the open season to hunters.
The springs bubble up out of the bed of the stream, the water of which is stained with the coloring matter.

When the stream runs low so that one can get to the springs he finds some of them as pleasant to the taste as those of Rubicon and Glen Alpine.
As we got higher we left the spruces behind, and the junipers, covered with berries, began to appear.

Then we came to open spaces where the wind began to sing in the tops of the pines.
About a mile up Barker Creek, Watson showed me the course of one of his trails back to the Tavern.