Excerpt from The Musgrove Ranch: A Tale of Southern California The tree had flourished there generations before an American had set foot in the valley when the Musgrove Ranch had been a sheep walk, and Mexican shepherds had camped many and many a time under the dark, wide spreading branches. Now, in its Old age, it had a lordly carpet of blue grass spread about its feet, with groups of snow-white lilies and vivid geraniums brightening its solemn shade. There were garden seats, too, looking very modern under the gnarled old branches, and here the Musgrove family were seated this evening, as was their wont. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.