noon
So it was that they spent that day -- in leisure approach -- the patient Croesus , with his burden , always in the lead , and Czar , like a merry sprite , playing here and there . Several times they stopped to rest beside the road , while provident Croesus gathered a few mouthfuls of grass or weeds . Many times they halted to enjoy the scene that changed with every step . Their road led always upward , with a gradual , easy grade ; and by noon they had left the cultivated section of the lower valley for the higher , untilled lands . The dark , glossy-green of the orange and the lighter shining tints of the lemon groves , with the rich , satiny-gray tones of the olive-trees , were replaced now by the softer grays , greens , yellows , and browns of the chaparral . The air was no longer heavy with the perfume of roses and orange-blossoms , but came to their nostrils laden with the pungent odors of yerba santa and greasewood and sage . Looking back , they could see the valley -- marked off by its roads into many squares of green , and dotted here and there by small towns and cities -- stretching away toward the western ocean until it was lost in a gray-blue haze out of which the distant San Gabriels , beyond Cajon Pass , lifted into the clear sky above , like the shore-line of dreamland rising out of a dream sea .