 6 The Glacier Lakes Among the many unlooked for treasures that are bound up and hidden away in the depths of Sierra Solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise all kinds of travellers than the Glacier Lakes. The forests and the glaciers and the snowy fountains of the streams advertise their wealth in a more or less telling manner even in the distance, but nothing is seen of the lakes until we have climbed above them. All the upper branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like orchard trees with fruit. They lay embosomed in the deep woods, down in the groovy bottoms of canyons, high on-ball table-lands, and around the feet of the icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some conception of their lavish abundance may be found from the fact that, from one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day's journey to the east of Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed within a radius of ten miles. The whole number in this Sierra can hardly be less than fifteen hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarnes, which are innumerable. Perhaps two-thirds or more lie on the western flank of the range, and all are restricted to the alpine and subalpine regions. At the close of the last glacial period, the middle and foothill regions also abounded in lakes, all of which have long since vanished, as completely as the magnificent ancient glaciers that brought them into existence. Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous portions. They are mostly found in the upper branches of the canyons, and in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks. Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of dividing ridges. Their basins swung lengthwise, like hammocks, and very rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the range as to the head of some pass, that his waters are discharged down both flanks when the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease to form surprises to the studio's mountaineer. For, like all the love-work of nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the bright lake-highs in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking topography of any landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions, where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A beautiful system of grouping, in correspondence with the glacial fountains, is soon perceived, also their extension in the direction of the trends of the ancient glaciers. And in general, their dependence as to form, size, and position upon the character of the rocks in which their basins have been eroded. And the quantity and direction of application of the glacial force expended upon each basin. In the upper canyons we usually find them in pretty regular succession, strung together like beads on the bright ribbons of their feeding-streams, which pour white and grey with foam and spray, from one to the other. Their perfect mirror stillness make an impressive contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts. In Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman Spur, immediately above the Great Tuolumne Canyon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying near together in one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in a general view, furthered with Hemlocks Bruce, and fringed with sedge, they seem to me to be the most singly beautiful and interesting located lake cluster I have ever yet discovered. Lake Tahoe, twenty-two miles long, by about ten wide, and from five hundred to over sixteen hundred feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra Lakes. It lies just beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range, between the main axis and a spur, that puts out on the east side from near the head of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out, around many an emerald bay, and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters are everywhere, as keenly pure as any to be found among the highest mountains. Donner Lake, rendered memorial by the terrible fate of the Donner Party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the Trachea. A few miles further north lies Lake Independence, about the same size as Donner, but far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and are quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them are less than half a mile. Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by the filling in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size. But, all along the upper, freshly glaciated margin of the lake-bearing zone, every hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of the close network of streams, contains a bright brimming pool, so that the landscape, viewed from the mountaintops, seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of the larger lakes are encircled with smaller ones, like central gems girdled with sparkling brilliance. In general, however, there is no marked dividing line as the size. In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state here that in giving numbers, I include none less than five hundred yards in circumference. In the basin of the Merced River, I counted a hundred and thirty-one, of which a hundred and eleven are upon the tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pono Creek, which forms the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful lake, lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out from Buena Vista Peak. This is now the only lake left in the whole Pono Basin. The Ilewet has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than sixty-seven, the Tenure Eight, Hoffman Creek five, and Yosemite Creek fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluence of the Merced, Viz, the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite. The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm tree, and it requires but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading branches. The topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have a truly glorious spectacle, an avenue the length and width of the range, the long, slender, grey shafts of the main trunks, the milky way of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have the eyes to see them as they lie embedded in their meadows and forests and glaciers-sculptured rocks. When a mountain lake is born, when, like a young eye, it first opens to the light, it is an irregular expression as crescent, enclosed in banks of rock and ice, bare, glaciated rock on the lower side. The rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, and to let length, towards the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception, beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths. The winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its ways begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores. Sun spangles during the day, and reflected stars at night, its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier mud, sand grains and pebbles, giving rise to margin rings and plates of soil. To these fresh soil beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex, with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers. Then, as seasons grow warmer, and the soil beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gensions, daisies, dodecafons, violets, honey warts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new gardens, calmier with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic willow making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy branthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the usel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first to plant. So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from century to century. Grows of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the hemlocks bruce, until it is richly overshadowed and emboured. But while its shores are being enriched, the soil beds creep out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the light and mud particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly shallower, until, as length, the last remnant of the lake vanishes, closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its feeding stream goes winding on, without halting through the new gardens and groves that have taken its place. The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that flow into it. The character of the rocks over which these streams flow, and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes, in a series whose basins lie in the same canyon, and are fed by one and the same mainstream. The uppermost will, of course, vanish first, unless some other lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result. Because, at first, it receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings down, only the finest of the mud particles being carried through the highest of the series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the next would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But this simplicity as to duration is broken in a pond in various ways, chiefly through the action of side streams, that enter the lower lakes direct. Four, notwithstanding, many of these side tributaries are quite short. And during late summer, feeble, they all become powerful torrents in springtime when the snow is melting, and carry not only sand and pine needles, but large trunks and boulders, tons in weight, sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluence also have the advantage of access to the main lateral morians of the vanished glacier that occupied the canyon, and upon these they draw for the lake-filling material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacial pavements, where but little morian matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus a small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries. While the larger perennial trunk stream flowing over clean and during pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of years. The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake fillers is strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the most flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of level meadowlands, and dry sloping soil beds, planted with oak and pine. But it was once a lake stretching from wall to wall, and nearly from one end of the valley to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of water that ever existed in Sierra. And though never perhaps seen by human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically speaking, since it disappeared. And the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may easily be restored to the eye of imagination, and viewed in all its grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we find that the detris, which fills its magnificent basin, was not brought down from the distant mountains by the mainstreams, that converge here to form the river, however powerful and available for the purpose at first sight they appear. But almost wholly by the small local tributaries, such as those of Indian Canyon, the Sentinel, and the Three Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers, which lingered in the shadows of the walls long after the main trunk glacier, had receded beyond the head of the valley. Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once, leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then of course all the lakes would have come into existence at the same time. And the highest, other circumstances being equal, would, as we have seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually from the foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to see the light, and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of finding the lakes for the most present day at the foot of the range, we find them at the top. Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of years before those now brightening the alpine landscapes were born, and in general, owing to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the lowest of the existing lakes are also the oldest. A gradual transition being apparent throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested, meadow-rimmed, and contracted forms all the way up, to those that are newborn, lying bare, and meadowless among the highest peaks. A few small lakes, unfortunately situated, are extinguished suddenly by a single soup of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees, together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by land slips, earthquake tallices, etc. But these lake deaths, compared with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that of trees struck by lightning. The lake line is, of course, still rising, its present elevation being about 8,000 feet above sea level, somewhat higher than this toward the southern extremity of the range. Lower towards the northern, on account of the difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers due to difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably below this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently numerous to make any mark to regularity in the line. The highest I have yet found lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a glacier womb at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins, of perhaps 25 or 30, are still in process of formation, beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by the time they are born an equal or greater number will probably have died. Since the beginning of the close of the ice period the whole number in the range has perhaps never been greater than at present. A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the meantime, the pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of lake basin formation, for which fine, clear demonstrated materials abound in these mountains. In addition to what has already been given on the subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the solid. I must now make haste to give some near reviews of representative specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake belt, confining myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic of each. Shadow Lake. This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the existing lakes. It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of the mast, at an elevation of about 7,350 feet above the sea, and is everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction. Its original length was about a mile and a half, now it is only half a mile in length, by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest portion of the basin, ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are clasped around, on the north and south, by majestic granite walls, sculptured in true Yosemite style, into domes, gables, and battle-mented headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water, from a height of from 1,500 to 2,000 feet. The south lyoglacia eroded this magnificent basin, out of solid porphyritic granite, while forcing its way westward from the summit fountains towards Yosemite, and the exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls, ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well as the morians laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate, in the most unmistakable manner, the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth, and the tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and out of the basin, bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its channel, because of the greater delcivity. Consequently eroding it deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as the necessary result. With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us, it is not easy to realise that the old glacier that made them, vanished tens of centuries ago. Four, except in the vegetation that has sprung up, and the changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-everlances from the weaker headlands. The basin, as a whole, presents the same appearance that it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has undergone marked changes, one sees at a glance that it is growing old. More than two-thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with meadow grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of alluvium, stretching across from wall to wall, at the head, is evidently growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will, at length, close the lake forever. Every lever of fine wilderness would delight to saunter on a summer day, through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand, upon which the ripples play. Then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges, interrupted here and there by impenetrable tangles of willows. Beyond this are groves of trembling aspen. Then a dark, shadowy belt of two-leaved pine, with here and there a round Carex meadow, ensconced nest-like in its midst. And lastly a narrow outer margin of majestic silver fir, two hundred feet high. The ground beneath the trees is covered with a luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly tritism, bromas, and calamagrostis, with purple spikes and pinnacles arching to one's shoulders. While the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer with snowy flowers, hellenamis, golden rods, ergerons, lupines, castiliers, and lilies, and form favourite hiding and feeding grounds for bears and deer. The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top, with an imposing array of spirey silver firs. While the rifted precipices all the way down to the water's edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers, there's cinnamon-coloured bark showing finely upon the neutral grey of the granite. These, with a few venturesome dwarf pines and spruces, lean out over fishered ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and fearless manner. Moreover, the white furred Douglas spiree and dwarf Evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be affected. Rock ferns, too, are here, such as Allosaurus, Palaea, and Calanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fishes, and the delicate maiden hair, Cystoparis, and Woodsia, hide back in mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill. And then the orange wallflower holds up its showy pinnacles here and there in the sunshine, and Bahia makes bosses of gold. But notwithstanding all this plant beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of stern, unflinching rockiness. The ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not one-fiftyth of the whole surface is screened with plant life. The sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support clumps of cedar and pine, and up-curving tangles of chinkapin and live oak, growing on rough earthquake talises, girdle their bases. Small streams come cascading down between them, their firming margins brighten with gay primalesce, gileasce, and mimalesces. And close along the shore on this side, there is a strip of rocky meadow, enameled with butter-cups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses out on its bevelled border dip their leaves into the water. The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite, heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut into as yet by the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly since the lake came into existence. As soon as the stream is fairly over the lake-lip, it breaks into cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce abating one jot of its glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up basin, a mile below. Then swirling and curving drowsily through meadow and grove, it breaks forth anew into grey rapids and falls, leaping and gliding into glorious exuberance of wild bound, and dance down into another, and yet another filled-up lake basin. Then, after a long rest in the levels of little Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in the famous Nevada Fall. Out of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall, the battered, roaring river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and rapids, rests a moment in emerald pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of the veneral fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a bolder choked gorge of tremendous depth and wildness, into the tranquil reaches of the old Yosemite lake basin. The colour beauty about Shadow Lake, during the Indian summer, is much richer than one could hope to find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every leaf is tinted then, and the golden rods are in bloom, but most of the colour is given by the ripe grasses, willows and aspens. At the foot of the lake you stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly, and away, to right and left round the shores, sweeps a curving ribbon of meadow, red and brown dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there into hazy purple. The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright colour, that gleam out on the neutral granite grey, but neither the walls nor the margin meadow, nor yet the gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake itself, flashing with spangles, can hold your attention. Four, at the head of the lake there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the main aspen belt of the basin, which seems the very fountain whence all the colour below it had flowered, and here your eye is filled and fixed. This glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and extends across the basin, nearly from wall to wall. Rich bosses of willow flame in front of it, and from the base of these the brown meadow comes forward to the water's edge, the whole being relieved against the unyielding green of the conifer, while thick sun gold is poured all over. During these blessed colour days, no cloud darkens the sky, the winds are gentle and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere, and indescribably impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the usals at the head of the rapids sing always, while robins, cross-beaks, and the Douglas squirrels are busy in the groves, make a delightful company and intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration, without roughly in the deep, hushed calm and peace. This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the end of November, then come days of quite another kind. The winter clouds grow and bloom, and shed their starry crystals in every leaf and rock, and all the colours vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their well-known trails, fearful of being snowbound. Storms exceed storm, heaping snow on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the ground in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights, piling immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glories buried and lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines warm at times, calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines, and seek out his hidden stores, and the weather is never so severe as to drive away the grouse and little nut-hatches and chickadees. Toward May the lake begins to open, the hot sun sends down innumerable streams over the cliffs, streaking them round and round with foam. The snow slowly vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of green, then spring comes on a pace, flowers and flies enrich the air and the sod, and the deer come back to the upper groves like birds to an old nest. I first discovered this charming lake in the autumn of 1872, while on my way to the glaciers at the head of the river. It was rejoicing then in its gayest colours, untrodden, hidden in the glorious wilderness like unmind gold. Year after year I walked its shores, without discovering any other trace of humanity than the remains of an Indian campfire, and the thigh bones of a deer that had been broken to get at the marrow. It lies out of the regular ways of Indians, who loved to hunt in more accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge of deer-haunts had probably enticed them here for some hunger-time, when they wished to make sure of a feast, for hunting in this lake hollow is like hunting in a fenced park. I had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to a few friends, fearing it might come to be trampled and improved, like Yosemite. On my last visit, as I was sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand between the water and sod, reading the track of the wild animals that live here. I was started by a human track, which I saw at once belong to some shepherd, for each step was turned out 35 degrees or 40 degrees from the general course pursued, and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling fashion at the heel, while a row of round dots on the right indicated the staff that shepherds carry. None but a shepherd could make such a track, and after tracing it a few minutes I began to fear that he might be seeking pastorage, for what else could he be seeking? Returning from the glaciers shortly afterwards, nay worst fears were realised. A trail had been made down the mountainside from the north, and all the gardens and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed locusts, as if swept by a fire. The money-changers were in the temple. Orange Lake Besides these larger canyon lakes, fed by the main canyon streams, there are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of rock benches, entirely independent of the general drainage channels, and of course drawing their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they are mostly small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche detritus and the in-washings of powerful streams. They often endure longer than others, many times larger, but less favourably situated. When very shallow they become dry towards the end of summer, but because their basins are ground out of seamless stone, they suffer no loss save from evaporation alone. And the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June, makes their dry season short in any case. Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench-form. It lies in the middle of a beautiful glacial pavement, near the lower margins of the lake-line, about a mile and a half from the north-west of Shadow Lake. It is only about a hundred yards in circumference. Next, the water there is a girdle of caresses, with wide overarching leaves. In regular order a shaggy rough of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and there a bush of the mountain ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together form a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite stretches away in every direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved like a bunch of palms in a desert. In autumn, when the colours are ripe, the whole circular grove at a little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept fresh, a tuft of golden rods. Its feeding streams are exceedingly beautiful, notwithstanding their inconsistency and extreme shallowness. They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread in thin sheets upon the shining granite, and wander at will. In many places the current is less than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows with so little friction it is scarcely visible. Sometimes there is not a single foam-bell, or drifting pine-needle, or irregularity of any sort to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly it is seen to form a web of gliding lacework, exquisitely woven, giving beautiful reflections from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and differing from the waterlaces of large cascades in being everywhere transparent. In spring, when the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming full, and sends forth quite a large stream that slips glassily for two hundred yards or so, until it comes to an almost vertical precipice eight hundred feet high, down which it plunges in a fine cataract. Then it gathers its scattered waters, and goes smoothly over folds of gently-dipping granite, to its confluence with the main canyon stream. During the greater portion of the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear, either at head or foot of the lake, not even the whispered lappings of ripple waves along the shore, for the winds are fenced out. But the deep mountain silence is sweetened down then, by birds that stop here to rest and drink on the way across the canyon. Lake Star King A beautiful variety of the benchtop lakes, occurs just where the great lateral morayans of the main glaciers, have been shoved forward in out-swelling concentric rings, by small residual tributary glaciers, instead of being encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like orange lake. These lay embosomed in dense morayan woods, so dense that in seeking them you may pass by them again and again, although you may know nearly where they lie concealed. Lake Star King, lying to the north of the cone of that name, above the Little Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this variety. The usals pass by it, and so do the ducks. They could hardly get into it if they would, without plumping straight down inside the circling trees. Yet these isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the branches, are not altogether without inhabitants, and joyous animating visitors. Of course, fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally true of nearly every glacier lake in the range. But they are all well stocked with happy frogs. How did frogs get into them in the first place? Perhaps their sticky spawn was carried in on the feet of ducks, or other birds. Else their progenators must have made some exciting excursions through the woods, and up the sides of the canyons. Down in the still, pure depths of these hidden lakelets, you might also find the larvae of innumerable insects, and a great variety of beetles, while the air above them is thick with humming wings, through the mits of which flycatchers are constantly darting. And in autumn, when the huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grossbeaks come to feast, forming altogether delightful little by-worlds for the naturalist. Pushing our way upward towards the axis of the range, we find lakes in greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in aspect. At an elevation of about 9,000 feet above sea level, they seem to have arrived at a middle age. That is, their basins seem to be about half filled with alluvium. Broad sheets of meadowland are often seen extending into them, imperfect and boggy in many places, and more nearly level than those of the older lakes below them. And the vegetation of their shores is, of course, more alpine. Calmia, Lodenum and Cassiope fringed the meadow rocks, while the luxuriant weaving groves, so characteristic of the lower lakes, are represented only by clumps of the dwarf pine and hemlock's bruce. These, however, are often times very pictuously grouped on rocky headlands around the outer rim of the meadows, or with still more striking effect crowned some rocky islet. Moreover, from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs about these middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type, but are more broken and less sheer, and they usually stand back, leaving the shores comparatively free. While the few precipitous rocks that do come forward, and plunge directly into deep water, are seldom more than three or four hundred feet high. I have never yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the oozle is never wanting where the feeding streams are perennial. Wild sheep and deer may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely are bare. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots, that borrow beneath glacial boulders along the edges of the meadows. The highest and youngest of all the lakes lays nestled in glacier wombs. At first sight they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation, miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters are keen, ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass green towards the shallow shores, and around the edges of the small burges, usually floating about them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night, are occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions of their shores. And when their northern banks slope openly to the south, and are soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be brightened with flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind, which illustrates the floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems. Close up under the shadow of the Sierra Matahorn, on the eastern slope of the range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier lakes, at an elevation of about 12,000 feet. A short, ragged-edged glacier crawls into it from the south, and on the opposite side it is embanked and dammed by a series of concentric terminal morians, made by the glacier when it entirely filled the basin. Half a mile below lies the second lake, at a height of 11,500 feet, about as cold and as pure as a snow-crystal. The waters of the first come gurgling down into it over and through the morian dam, while a second stream pours into it direct from a glacier that lies to the southeast. Sheer precipices of crystalline snow rise out of deep water on the south, keeping perpetual winter on that side. But there is a fine summery spot on the other, notwithstanding the lake is only about 300 yards wide. Here, on August 25th, 1873, I found a charming company of flowers. Not pinched, crouching dwarfs scarce able to look up, but warm and juicy, standing erect in rich, cheery colour and bloom. On a narrow strip of shingle close to the water's edge, there were a few tufts of karex gone to seed, and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling wall, so inclined as to absorb and radiate, as well as reflect a considerable quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a thrifty thicket of carawania, covered with large yellow flowers. Several bushes of the Alpenribus, with berries nearly ripe and wildly acid. A few handsome grasses belonging to two distinct species, and one goldenrod. A few hairy lupines and radiant spurgeses, whose blue and rose-coloured flowers were set off to fine advantage, amid green carices, and along a narrow seam in the very warmest angle of the wall, a perfectly gorgeous fringe, of epilobium obcordatum, with flowers an inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion, and coloured as royally a purple as ever was worn by any hybrid plant of the tropics. And best of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full bloom, standing erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigour, as if growing on a Scottish briar. All this brave, warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face of the onlooking glaciers. As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are snow-buried in winter, to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and those most exposed to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or more. These last are, of course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some remain buried for years, when the snowfall is exceptionally great, and many open only on one side late in the season. The snow of the close side is composed of coarse granules, compacted and frozen, into a firm, faintly stratified mass, like the nave of a glacier. The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off in large masses like icebergs, which give rise to a precipitous front. Like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly white of the out-swelling bosses, the burges drifting in front, a glow in the sun, edged with green water, and the deep blue disc of the lake itself extending to your feet. This forms a picture that enriches all your outer life, and is never forgotten. But however perfect the season and the day, the cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always keenly felt. We approach them with a kind of mean caution, and steal unconfidently around their crystal shores, dashed anilities, as if expecting to hear some forbidden voice. But the love songs of the oozles and the love looks of the daisies gradually reassure us, and manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades the coldest and most solitary of them all. End of Chapter 6 The Glacier Lakes The Mountains of California by John Muir Chapter 7 The Glacier Meadows After the lakes on the high Sierra come the Glacier Meadows. They are smooth, level, silky lawns lying embedded in the upper forests on the floors of the valleys and along the broad backs of the main dividing ridges at a height of about 8,000 to 9,500 feet above the sea. They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places they have taken, and present a dry, even surface free from rock heaps, mossy, bogginess, and the frowsy roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, and shrubby vegetation. The sod is close and fine, and so complete that you cannot see the ground, and at the same time so brightly enameled with flowers and butterflies that it may well be called a garden meadow, or meadow garden. For the plushy sod is, in many places, so crowded with gentsians, daisies, evesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the flowers are only pricked in here and there singly, or in small ornamental rosettes. The most influential of the grasses composing the sod is a delicate calamagrostis with fine filiform leaves and loose, airy panicles that seem to float above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But right as I may, I cannot give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite beauty of these mountain carpets as they lie smoothly outspread in the savage wilderness. What words are fine enough to picture them? I, too, what shall we liken them? The flowery levels of the prairies of the Old West, the luxuriant savannas of the South, and the finest of cultivated meadows are coarse in comparison. One may, at first sight, compare them with the carefully-tended lawns of pleasure grounds, for they are as free from weeds as they and as smooth. But here the likeness ends. For these wild lawns with all their exquisite fineness have no trace of that painful, licked, snipped, repressed appearance that pleasure-ground lawns are apt to have, even when viewed at a distance. And not to mention the flowers with which they are brightened. Their grasses are very much finer, both in color and texture, and instead of lying flat and motionless, matted together like a dead green cloth, they respond to the touches of every breeze, rejoicing in pure wildness, blooming and fruiting in the vital light. Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions of the Sierra instill greater numbers than the lakes. Probably from 2,500 to 3,000 exist between latitude 36 degrees, 30 seconds, and 39 degrees, distributed, of course, like the lakes, in concordance with all the other glacial features of the landscape. On the headwaters of the rivers there are what are called, quote, big meadows, usually about from 5 to 10 miles long. These occupy the basins of the ancient ice seas where many tributary glaciers came together to form the grand trunks. Most, however, are quite small, averaging, perhaps, but little more than three-fourths of a mile in length. One of the very finest of the thousands I've enjoyed lies hidden in an extensive forest of the two-leaved pine on the edge of the basin of the ancient Tuolumne murla glas, about eight miles to the west of Mount Dana. Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne soda springs on the bank of the river, a day's journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken by openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the gray mountain peaks with their snowy gorges and hollows are lost to view. The ground is littered with fallen trunks that lie crossed and recrossed like Storm Lodge Tweet, and besides this closed forest of pines, the rich moraine soil supports a luxuriant growth of ribbon-leaved grasses, bromas, tritacum, calomagrostus, agrostus, etc., which rear their handsome spikes and panicles above your waist. Making your way through the fertile wilderness, finding lively bits of interest now and then in the squirrels and clark-crows and perchance in a deer or bear. After the lapse of an hour or two, vertical bars of sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts of the pines, showing that you are approaching an open space, and then you suddenly emerge from the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn lying smooth and free in the light, like a lake. This is a glacier meadow. It is about a mile and a half long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come pressing forward all around in close, serried ranks, planting their feet exactly on its margin and holding themselves erect, strict and orderly, like soldiers on parade. Thus bounding the meadow with exquisite precision, yet with free-curving lines such as nature alone can draw. With inexpressible delight you wade out into the grassy sun lake, feeling yourself contained in one of nature's most sacred chambers, withdrawn from the sternor influences of the mountains, secure from all intrusion, secure from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And notwithstanding the scene is so impressively spiritual and you seem dissolved in it, yet everything about you is beating with warm, terrestrial human love and life delightfully substantial and familiar. The resiny pines are types of health and steadfastness. The robins feeding on the sod belong to the same species you have known since childhood. And surely these daisies, larkspurs and goldenrods are the very friendflowers of the old home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest noon. Butterflies waver above the flowers and like them you lave in the vital sunshine too richly and hubbingeniously joy-filled to be capable of partial thought. You are all eye sifted through and through with light and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that meanders silently through the meadow from the east, special flowers call you back to discriminating consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the water's edge, forming bossy, out-swelling banks and in some places overlapping counter-sunt boulders and forming bridges. Here you find mats of the curious dwarf willow, scarce an inch high, yet sending up a multitude of gray, silky catkins illuminated here and there with the purple cups and bells of Brianthus and Vesinium. Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful as if nature had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The floating grass-panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst, so flu are they, and none of the flowers have tall or rigid stalks. In the brightest places you find three species of gentians with different shades of blue. Daisy's pure as the sky, Silky-leaved Ivesias with warm yellow flowers. Several species of orthocarpus with blunt bossy spikes red and purple and yellow. The Alpine, Goldenrod. Pence-stemmon and clover, fragrant and honey-full with their colors masked and blended. Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace the branching of their shining stems and note the marvelous beauty of their mist of flowers and glooms and pales exquisitely penciled. The yellow dangling, stamens and feathery pistols. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy realm of mosses, Hypnum, Dichronum, Polytricleum and many others. Their precious spore cups poised daintily on polished shafts, curiously hooded or open, showing the richly ornate peristomas worn like royal crowns. Creeping liverworts are here also in abundance and several rare species of fungi exceedingly small and frail and delicate as if made only for beauty. Caterpillars, black beetles and ants roam the wilds of this lower world, making their way through miniature groves and thickets like bears in a thick wood. And how rich too is the life of the sunny air. Every leaf and flower seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragonflies shoot in vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms and a rich profusion of butterflies. The leguminose of insects make a fine addition to the general show. Many of these last are comparatively small at this elevation and as yet almost unknown to science. But every now and then a familiar Vanessa, a Pepilio, comes sailing past. Hummingbirds too are quite common here and the robin is always found along the margin of the stream or out in the shallowest portions of the sod and sometimes the grouse and mountain quail with their broods of precious fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end. Flycatchers come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars while woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon curves. Birds, insects and flowers all in their own way telling a deep summer joy. The influences of pure nature seem to be so little known as yet that it is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind permeating one's very flesh and bones unfits the student for scientific pursuits in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is just the opposite. Instead of producing a dissipated condition the mind is fertilized and stimulated and developed like sun-fed plants. All that we have seen here enables us to see with sureer vision the fountains among the summit peaks to the east whence flowed the glaciers that ground soil for the surrounding forest and down at the foot of the meadow the moraine which formed the dam which gave rise to the lake that occupied this basin before the meadow was made and around the margin the stones that were shoved back and piled up into a rude wall by the expansion of the lake ice during long bygone winters and along the sides of the streams the slight hollows of the meadow which mark those portions of the old lake that were the last to vanish. I would feign ask my readers to linger a while in this fertile wilderness to trace its history from its earliest glacial beginnings and learn what we may of its wild inhabitants and visitors how happy the birds are all summer and some of them all winter how the pouched marmots drive tunnels under the snow and how fine brave a life the slandered coyote lives here and the deer and bears but knowing well the difference between reading and seeing I will only ask attention to some brief sketches of its varying aspects as they are presented throughout the more marked seasons of the year the summer life we have been depicting lasts with but little abatement until October when the night frosts begin to sting bronzing the grasses and ripening the leaves of the creeping heathwards along the banks of the stream to reddish purple and crimson while the flowers disappear all save the goldenrods and a few daisies that continue to bloom on unscathed until the beginning of snowy winter in still nights the grass panicles and every leaf and stalk are laden with frost crystals through which the morning sunbeams sift in ravishing splendor transforming each to a precious diamond radiating the colors of the rainbow the brook shallows are plated across and across with slender lances of ice but both these and the grass crystals are melted before midday and notwithstanding the great elevation of the meadow the afternoons are still warm enough to revive the chilled butterflies and call them out to enjoy the late flowering goldenrods the divine alpine glow flushes the surrounding forest every evening followed by a crystal night with hosts of lily stars whose size and brilliancy cannot be conceived by those who have never risen above the lowlands thus come and go the bright Sundays of autumn not a cloud in the sky week after week until near December then comes a sudden change clouds of a peculiar aspect with a slow crawling gate gather and grow in the azure throwing out satiny fringes and becoming gradually darker until every lake like rift and opening is closed and the whole bent firmament is obscured in equal structureless gloom then comes the snow for the clouds are ripe the meadows of the sky are in bloom and shed their radiant blossoms like an orchard in the spring lightly, lightly they lodge in the brown grasses and in the tasseled needles of the pines falling hour after hour day after day silently lovingly all the winds hushed glancing and circling hither-thither glinting against one another rays interlocking in flakes as large as daisies and then the dry grasses and the trees and the stones are all equally a bloom again thundershowers occur here during the summer months and impressive it is to watch the coming of the big transparent drops each a small world in itself one unbroken ocean without islands hurling free through the air like planets through space but still more impressive to me is the coming of the snow flowers falling stars winter daisies giving bloom to all the ground alike raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow and change the flowers in the sod but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark frozen sky the later snowstorms are off-times accompanied by winds that break up the crystals when the temperature is low into single petals and irregular dusty fragments but there is comparatively little drifting on the meadow so securely as it embosomed in the woods December to May storm succeeds storm until the snow is about 15 or 20 feet deep but the surface is always as smooth as the breast of a bird hush now is the life that so late was beating warmly most of the birds have gone down below the snow line the plants sleep and all the fly wings are folded yet the sun beams gloriously many a cloudless day in midwinter casting long lance shadows a thwart the dazzling expanse in June small flecks of the dead decaying sod begin to appear gradually widening and uniting with one another covered with creeping rags of water during the day and ice by night looking as hopeless and unvital as crushed rocks just emerging from the darkness of the glacial period walk the meadow now scarce the memory of a flower will you find the ground seems twice dead nevertheless the annual resurrection is drawing near the life-giving sun pours his floods the last snow wreath melts myriads of growing points push eagerly through the streaming steaming mold the birds come back new wings fill the air and fervid summer life comes surging on seemingly yet more glorious than before this is a perfect meadow and under favorable circumstances exists without manifesting any market changes for centuries nevertheless soon or late it must inevitably grow old and vanish during the calm Indian summer scarce the sand grain moves around its banks but in flood times and storm times soil is washed forward upon it and laid in successive sheets around its gently sloping rim and is gradually extended to the center making it drier through a considerable period the meadow vegetation is not greatly affected thereby for it gradually rises with the rising ground keeping on the surface like water plants rising on the swell of waves but at length the elevation of the meadowland goes on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the specific meadow plants when of course they have to give up their places to others fitted for the new conditions the most characteristic of all the newcomers at this elevation above the sea are principally sun loving gileas originae and composite and finally forest trees hence forward the obscuring changes are so manifold that the original lake meadow can be unveiled and seen only by the geologist generally speaking glacier lakes vanish more slowly than the meadows that succeed them because unless very shallow a greater quantity of material is required to fill up their basins and obliterate them than is required to render the surface of the meadow too high and dry for meadow vegetation furthermore owing to the weathering to which the adjacent rocks are subjected material of the finer sort susceptible of transportation by rains and ordinary floods is more abundant during the meadow period than during the lake period yet doubtless many a fine meadow favorably situated exists in almost prime beauty for thousands of years the process of extinction being exceedingly slow as we reckon time this is especially the case with meadow circumstance like the one we have described embosomed in deep woods with the ground rising gently away from it all around the network of tree roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing but in exceptional cases beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of landslips earthquake avalanches or extraordinary floods just as lakes are in those glacier meadows that take the places of shallow lakes which have been fed by feeble streams glacier mud and fine vegetable humus enter largely into the composition of the soil and on account of the shallowness of this soil and the seamless watertight undrained condition of the rock basins they are usually wet and therefore occupied by tall grasses and sedges whose coarse appearance offers a striking contrast to that of the delicate lawn making kind described above these shallow soiled meadows are often still further roughened and diversified by partially buried moraines and swelling bosses of the bedrock which with the trees and shrubs growing upon them produce a striking effect as they stand in relief like islands in the grassy level or sweep across in rugged curves from one forest wall to the other throughout the upper meadow region wherever water is sufficiently abundant and low in temperature in basins secure from flood washing handsome bogs are formed with a deep growth of brown and yellow sphagnum picturesquely ruined with patches of kalmia and latum which ripen masses of beautiful color in the autumn between these cool spongy bogs and the dry flowery meadows there are many interesting varieties which are graduated into one another by the varied conditions already alluded to forming a series of delightful studies hanging meadows another very well marked and interesting kind of meadow differing greatly both in origin and appearance from the lake meadows is found lying a slant upon moraine covered hillsides trending in the direction of greatest declivity waving up and down over rock heaps and ledges like rich green ribbons brilliantly illumined with tall flowers they occur both in the alpine and subalpine regions in considerable numbers and never fail to make telling features in the landscape they are often a mile or more in length but never very wide usually from 30 to 50 yards when the mountain or canyon side on which they lie dips at the required angle and other conditions are at the same time favorable they extend from above the timber line to the bottom of a canyon or lake basin descending in fine fluent lines like cascades breaking here and there into a kind of spray on large boulders or dividing and flowing around on either side of some projecting islet sometimes a noisy stream goes bawling down through them and again scarcely a drop of water is in sight they owe their existence however to streams whether visible or invisible the wildest specimens being found where some perennial fountain as a glacier or snowbank or moraine spring sends down its waters across a rough sheet of soil and a dissipated web of feeble oozing rivulets these conditions give rise to a meadowy vegetation whose extending roots still more obstruct the free flow of the waters and tend to dissipate them out over a yet wider area thus the moraine soil and the necessary moisture requisite for the better class of meadow plants are at times combined about as perfectly as if smoothly outspread on a level surface where the soil happens to be composed of the finer qualities of glacial detritus in the waters not in excess the nearest approach is made by the vegetation to that of the lake meadow but where as is more commonly the case the soil is coarse and bouldery the vegetation is correspondingly rank tall wide-leaved grasses take their places along the sides and rushes and knotting carousels in the wetter portions mingled with the most beautiful and imposing flowers orange lilies and larks per seven or eight feet high lupines, scenicios, alliums, painted cups, many species of mimulus and pentstemon the ample boat-leaved veratrum alba and the magnificent alpine columbine with spurs an inch and a half long at an elevation of from seven to nine thousand feet showy flowers frequently form the bulk of the vegetation then the hanging meadows become hanging gardens in rare instances we find an alpine basin the bottom of which is a perfect meadow and the sides nearly all the way around rising in gentle curves are covered with moraine soil which being saturated with melting snow from encircling fountains gives rise to an almost continuous girdle of down-curving meadow vegetation that blends gracefully into the level meadow at the bottom thus forming a grand smooth soft meadow-lined mountain nest it is in meadows of this sort that the mountain beaver, heplodon, loves to make his home excavating snug chambers beneath the sod, digging canals, turning the underground waters from channel to channel to suit his convenience and feeding the vegetation another kind of meadow or bog occurs in densely timbered hillsides where small perennial streams have been dammed at short intervals by fallen trees still another kind is found hanging down smooth flat precipices while corresponding leaning meadows rise to meet them there are also three kinds of small pothole meadows one of which is found along the banks of the main streams another on the summits of rocky ridges and the third on glacier pavements all of them interesting in origin and brimful of plant beauty End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful in the world and grow in a delightful climate on the most interesting and accessible of mountain ranges yet strange to say they are not well known more than sixty years ago David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanist and tree-lover wandered alone through fine sections of the sugar pine and silver fir woods wild with delight a few years later other botanists made short journeys from the coast into the lower woods then came the wonderful multitude of miners into the foothill zone mostly blind with gold dust soon followed by sheep men who with wool over their eyes chased their flocks through all the forest belts from one end of the range to the other then the Yosemite Valley was discovered and thousands of admiring tourists passed through sections of the lower and middle zones on their way to that wonderful park and gained fine glimpses of the sugar pines and silver firs along the edges of dusty trails and roads but few indeed strong and free with eyes undimmed with care have gone far enough and lived long enough with the trees to gain anything like a loving conception of their grandeur and significance as manifested in the harmonies of their distribution and varying aspects throughout the seasons as they stand arrayed in their winter garb rejoicing in storms putting forth their fresh leaves in the spring while steaming with resiny fragrance receiving the thundershowers of summer or reposing heavy laden with ripe cones in the rich sun gold of autumn for knowledge of this kind one must dwell with the trees and grow with them without any reference to time in the almanac sense the distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived these as we have seen extend in regular order from one extremity of the range to the other and however dense and somber they may appear in general views neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank malarial selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco with their boundless contiguity of shade the monotonous uniformity of the deodor forests of the Himalaya the black forest of Europe or the dense dark woods of Douglas spruce where rolls the Oregon the giant pines and furs and sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight rising above one another on the mountain benches marshaled in glorious array giving forth the utmost expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and harmony the inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most distinguishing characteristics the trees of all the species stand more or less apart in groves or in small irregular groups enabling one to find a way nearly everywhere along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth park like surface strewn with brown needles and burrs now you cross a wild garden now a meadow now a ferny willowy stream and ever and on you emerge from all the groves and flowers upon some granite pavement or high bare ridge commanding superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near one would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback through the successive belts all the way up to the storm beaten fringes of the icy peaks the deep canyons however that extend from the axis of the range cut the belts more or less completely into sections and prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise this simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest as a whole within the comprehension of every observer the different species are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one another as controlled by soil, climate and the comparative vigor of each species in taking and holding the ground and so appreciable are these relations one need never be at a loss in determining within a few hundred feet the elevation above sea level by the trees alone four notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several thousand feet and all pass one another more or less yet even those possessing the greatest vertical range are available in this connection in as much as they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude crossing the treeless plains of Sacramento and San Joaquin from the west and reaching the Sierra foothills you enter the lower fringe of the forest composed of small oaks and pines growing so far apart that not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear noonday after advancing fifteen or twenty miles and making an ascent from two to three thousand feet you reach the lower margin of the main pine belt composed of the gigantic sugar pine, yellow pine, incense cedar, and sequoia next you come to the magnificent silver fir belt and lastly to the upper pine belt which sweeps up the rocky eclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed wavering fringe to a height from ten to twelve thousand feet this general order of distribution with reference to climate dependent on elevation is perceived at once but there are other harmonies as far reaching in this connection that become manifest only after patient observation and study perhaps the most interesting of these is the arrangement of the forest in long curving bands braided together into lace like patterns and outspread in charming variety the key to this beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers where they flowed the trees followed tracing their wavering courses along canyons over ridges and over high rolling plateaus the cedars of Lebanon says Hooker are growing upon one of the moraines of an ancient glacier all the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines but moraines vanish like the glaciers that make them every storm that falls upon them waste them cutting gaps disintegrating boulders and carrying away their decaying material into new formations until at length they are no longer recognizable by any safe students who trace their transitional forms down from their fresh moraines still in process of formation through those that are more and more ancient and more and more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering had the ice sheet that once covered all the range been melted simultaneously from the foothills to the summits the flanks would of course have been left almost bare of soil and these noble forests would be wanting many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown up on lake and avalanche beds and many a fair flower and shrub would have found food and a dwelling place in weathered nooks and crevices but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare rocky desert it appears therefore that the Sierra forest in general indicate the extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines of climate for forest properly speaking cannot exist without soil and since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock and only upon elected places leaving a considerable portion of the old glacial surface bare we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even a moss is growing though soil alone is required to fit them for the growth of trees 200 feet in height the nut pine Pinus Sabiniana the nut pine the first conifer met in ascending the range from the west grows only on the torrid foothills seeming to delight in the most ardent sun heat like a palm springing up here and there singly or in scattered groups of five or six among scrubby white oaks and thickets of seanothus and manzanita it's extreme upper limit being about 4,000 feet above the sea it's lower about from 500 to 800 feet this tree is remarkable for its airy widespread tropical appearance which suggests a region of palms rather than cool resiny pine woods no one would take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind it is so loose in habit and so widely branched and its foliage is so thin and gray full grown specimens are from 40 to 50 feet in height and from 2 to 3 feet in diameter the trunk usually divides into 3 or 4 main branches about 15 and 20 feet from the ground which after bearing away from one another shoot straight up and form separate summits while the crooked subordinate branches aspire and radiate and droop in ornamental sprays the slender grayish green needles are from 8 to 12 inches long loosely tasseled and inclined to droop in handsome curves contrasting with the stiff dark colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner no other tree of my acquaintance so substantial in body is in its foliage so thin and so pervious to the light the sunbeams sift through even the leafiest trees with scarcely any interruption and the weary heated traveler finds but little protection in their shade the generous crop of nutritious nuts which the nut pine yields makes it a favorite with indians, bears, and squirrels the cones are most beautiful measuring from 5 to 8 inches in length and not much less in thickness rich chocolate brown in color and protected by strong down curving hooks which terminate the scales nevertheless the little Douglas squirrel can open them indians gathering the ripe nuts make a striking picture the men climb the trees like bears and beat off the cones with sticks or recklessly cut off the more fruitful branches with hatchets while the squaws gather the big generous cones and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out then in the cool evenings men women and children with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by the soft resin with which they are all bedraggled form circles around campfires on the bank of the nearest stream and lie in easy independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering as heedless of the future as the squirrels Pinus tuberculata this curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet growing in close willowy groves it is exceedingly slender and graceful in habit although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth long curved branches producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form the foliage is of the same peculiar gray-green color as that of the nut pine and is worn almost as loosely so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it at the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones not on branches but on the main axis and as they never fall off the trunk is soon picturesly dotted with them the branches also become fruitful after they attain sufficient size the average size of the older trees is about 30 or 40 feet in height and 12 to 14 inches in diameter the cones are about four inches long exceedingly hard and covered with a sort of salacious varnish and gum rendering them impervious to moisture evidently with a view to the careful preservation of the seeds no other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special localities it is usually found apart standing deep in chaparral on sunny hill and canyon sides where there is but little depth of soil and where it found at all it is quite plentiful but the ordinary traveler following carriage roads and trails may ascend the range many times without meeting it while exploring the lower portion of the Merced Canyon I found a lonely miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountainside planted with this singular tree he told me that he called it the hickory pine because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood it is so little known however that it can hardly be said to have a common name most mountaineers refer to it as that queer little pine tree covered all over with burrs in my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of facts whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated first all the trees in the groves I examined however unequal in size are of the same age second those groves are all planted on dry hill sides covered with chaparral and therefore are liable to be swept by fire third there are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves but there is always a fine hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral fourth the cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the tree or branch to which they belong dies a full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would perhaps be out of place here but I may at least call attention to the admirable adaption of the tree to the fire swept regions where alone it is found after a grove has been destroyed the ground is at once sown lavishly with all the seeds ripen during its whole life which seem to have been carefully held in store with reference to such a calamity then a young grove immediately springs up giving beauty for ashes sugar pine, Pinus Lambertiana this is the noblest pine yet discovered surpassing all others not merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty it towers sublimely over every ridge and canyon of the range at an elevation of from 3 to 7000 feet above the sea attaining a most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet full grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high and from 6 to 8 feet in diameter near the ground though some grand old patriarch is occasionally met that has enjoyed 5 or 6 centuries of storms and attained a thickness of 10 or even 12 feet living on undecayed, sweet and fresh in every fiber in southern Oregon where it was first discovered by David Douglas on the headwooders of the Umpqua it attains still grander dimensions one specimen having been measured that was 240 feet high and over 18 feet in diameter 3 feet from the ground the discoverer was the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas spruce is named and many other plants which will keep his memory sweet and fresh as long as trees and flowers are loved his first visit to the Pacific Coast was made in the year 1825 the Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity as he wandered in the woods collecting specimens and unlike the fur gathering strangers they had hitherto known carrying nothing about trade and when at length they came to know him better and saw that from year to year the growing things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of pursuit they called him the man of grass a title of which he was proud during his first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made Fort Vancouver his headquarters making excursions from this Hudson Bay post in every direction on one of his long trips he saw in an Indians pouts some of the seeds of a new species of pine which he learned were obtained from a very large tree far to the southward of the Columbia at the end of the next summer returning to Fort Vancouver after the setting in of the winter rains bearing in mind the big pine he had heard of he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley in search of it and how he fared in what dangers and hardships he endured are best told in his own journal from which I quote as follows October 26 1826 weather dull cold and cloudy when my friends in England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think I have told them nothing but my miseries I quitted my camp early in the morning to survey the neighboring country leaving my guy to take charge of the horses until my return in the evening about an hour's walk from the camp I met an Indian who on perceiving me instantly strung his bow placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and stood on the defensive being quite sure that conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile intentions the poor fellow having probably never seen such a being as myself before I laid my gun at my feet on the ground and wave my hand for him to come to me which he did slowly and with great caution I then made him place his bow and quiver of arrows beside my gun and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my own pipe and a present of a few beads with my pencil I made a rough sketch of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain and drew his attention to it when he instantly pointed with his hand to the hills 15 or 20 miles distant towards the south and when I expressed my intention of going thither cheerfully set out to accompany me at midday I reached my long wish for pines and lost no time in examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens and seeds new and strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions and are therefore frequently overrated so that lest I should never see my friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely grand tree I shall here state the dimensions of the largest I could find among several that had been blown down by the wind at 3 feet from the ground its circumference is 57 feet 9 inches at 134 feet 17 feet 5 inches the extreme length 245 feet as it was impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down I endeavored to knock off the cones by firing at them with ball when the report of my gun brought eight Indians all of them painted with red earth armed with bows arrows bone tip spears and flint knives they appeared anything but friendly I explained to them what I wanted and they seem satisfied and sat down to smoke but presently I saw one of them string his bow and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and suspended off the wrist of his right hand further testimony of their intentions was unnecessary to save myself by flight was impossible so without hesitation I stepped back about five paces cocked my gun drew one of the pistols out of my belt and holding it in my left hand and the gun in my right showed myself determined to fight for my life as much as possible I endeavored to preserve my coolness and thus we stood looking at one another without making any movement or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes when one at last who seemed to be the leader gave a sign that they wished for some tobacco this I signified that they should have if they fetched a quantity of cones they went off immediately in search of them and no sooner were they out of sight than I picked up my three cones and some twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat hurrying back to the camp which I reached before dusk I now right lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me and penning these lines by the light of my Colombian candle namely an ignited piece of rosin wood this grand pine discovered under such exciting circumstances Douglas named in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London the trunk is a smooth round delicately tapered shaft mostly without limbs and colored rich purpleish brown usually in liven with tuffs of yellow lichen at the top of this magnificent bowl long curving branches sweep gracefully outward and downward sometimes forming a palm like crown but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I have ever beheld the needles are about three inches long finally tempered and arranged in rather close tassels at the ends of slender branchlets that close the long out sweeping limbs how well they sing in the wind and how strikingly harmonious an effect is made by the immense cylindrical cones that depend loosely upon the ends of the main branches no one knows what nature can do in the way of pine burrs until he has seen those of the sugar pine they are commonly from 15 to 18 inches long and three in diameter green shaded with dark purple on their sunwood sides they are ripe in September and October then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing but the empty cones become still more beautiful and effective for their diameter is nearly doubled by the spreading of the scales and their color changes to a warm yellowish brown while they remain swinging on the tree all the following winter and summer and continue effectively beautiful even on the ground many years after they fall the wood is deliciously fragrant and fine in grain and texture it is of a rich cream yellow as if formed of condensed sunbeams retinospora obtusa seabold the glory of eastern forest is called fusinoki tree of the sun by the Japanese the sugar pine is the sun tree of the Sierra unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen and in accessible places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel but the regular lumbermen with their saw mills have been less generally destructive thus far than the shinglemakers the wood splits freely and there is a constant demand for the shingles and because an axe and saw and frow are all the capital required for the business many of that drifting unsteady class of men so large in California engage in it for a few months in the year when prospectors, hunters, ranchhands, etc. touch their bottom dollar and find themselves out of employment they say well I can at least go to the sugar pines and make shingles a few posts are set in the ground and a single length cut from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and roof of a cabin all the rest the lumbermen makes is for sale and he is speedily independent no gardener or haymaker is more sweetly perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business but the havoc they make is most deplorable the sugar from which the common name is derived is to my taste the best of sweets better than maple sugar it exudes from the heartwood where wounds have been made either by forest fires or the axe in the shape of irregular crisp candy like kernels which are crowded together in masses of considerable size like clusters of resin beads when fresh it is perfectly white and delicious but because most of the wounds on which it is found have been made by fire the exuding sap is stained on the charred surface and hardened sugar becomes brown Indians are fond of it but on account of its laxative properties only small quantities may be eaten bears so fond of sweet things in general seem never to taste it at least I have failed to find any trace of their teeth in this connection no lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the sugar pine nor will he afterward need a poet to call him to listen what the pine tree saith in most pine trees there is a sameness of expression which to most people is apt to become monotonous for the typical spiree form however beautiful affords but little scope for appreciable individual character the sugar pine is as free from conventionalities of form and motion as any oak no two or a light even to the most inattentive observer and notwithstanding they are ever tossing out their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant gestures there is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all possibility of the grotesque or even picturesque in their general expression they are the priests of pines and seem ever to be addressing the surrounding forest the yellow pine is found growing with them on warm hillsides and the white silver fur on cool northern slopes but noble as these are the sugar pine is easily king and spreads his arms above them in blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition the main branches are sometimes found to be 40 feet in length yet persistently simple sell them dividing at all except near the end but anything like a bare cable appearance is prevented by the small tasseled branchlets that extend all around them and when these suburb limbs sweep out symmetrically on all sides a crown 60 or 70 feet wide is formed which gracefully poised on the summit of the noble shaft and filled with sunshine is one of the most glorious forest objects conceivable commonly however there is a great preponderance of limbs toward the east away from the direction of the prevailing winds no other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self contained in approaching it we feel as if in the presence of a superior being and begin to walk with a light step holding our breath then perchance while we gaze all stricken along comes a merry squirrel chattering and laughing to break the spell running up the trunk with no ceremony and gnawing off the cones as if they were made only for him while the carpenter woodpecker hammers away at the bark drilling holes in which to store his winter supply of acorns although so wild and unconventional when full grown the sugar pine is a remarkably proper tree in youth the old is the most original and independent in appearance of all the Sierra Evergreens the young is the most regular a strict follower of coniferous fashions slim, erect, with leafy supple branches kept exactly in place each tapering in outline and terminating in a spirey point the successive transitional forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and bold freedom of maturity offer a delightful study at the age of 50 or 60 years the shy fashionable form begins to be broken up specialized branches push out in the most unthought of places and bend with the great cones at once marking individual character and this being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of the sunlight, winds, snowstorms, etc the individuality of the tree is never again lost in the general forest the most constant companion of this species is the yellow pine and a worthy companion it is the Douglas spruce, Libycedrus, Sequoia and the white silver fir are also more or less associated with it but on many deep soiled mountain sides at an elevation of about 5,000 feet above the sea it forms the bulk of the forest filling every swell and hollow and down plunging ravine the majestic crowns approaching each other in bold curves make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams pour silverying the needles and gilding the massive bowls and flowery park-like ground into a scene of enchantment on most sunny slopes, the white-flowered, fragrant Shamiah Beisha is spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson Sarkotys, the wild rose and innumerable violets and gillias not even in the shadiest nooks will you find any rank untidy weeds or unwholesome darkness on the north sides of ridges the bowls are more slender and the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, cyanothin lotus and flowering dogwood but never so densely as to prevent the traveler from sauntering where he will while the crowning branches are never impenetrable to the rays of the sun and never so interblended as to lose their individuality view the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridgetop each tree presents a study in itself and proclaims the surpassing grandeur of the species yellow or silver pine, Pinus ponderosa the silver or yellow pine as it is commonly called ranks second among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree and almost rivals the sugar pine in stature and nobleness of port because of its superior powers of enduring variations of climate and soil it has a more extensive range than any other conifer growing on the Sierra on the western slope it is first met at an elevation of about 2,000 feet and extends nearly to the upper limit of the timber line crossing the range by the lowest passes it descends to the eastern base and pushes out for a considerable distance into the hot volcanic plains growing bravely upon well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins, arctic ridges and torrid lava beds planting itself from the lips of craters flourishing vigorously even there and tossing ripe cones among the ashes and cinders of nature's hearse the average size of full-grown trees on the western slope where it is associated with the sugar pine is a little less than 200 feet in height and from 5 to 6 feet in diameter those specimens may easily be found that are considerably larger I measured one growing at an elevation of 4,000 feet in the valley of the Merced which is a few inches over 8 feet in diameter and 220 feet high where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are favorable it presents a striking contrast in form to the sugar pine being a symmetrical spire formed of a straight round trunk clad with innumerable branches that are divided over and over again about one half of the trunk is commonly branchless but where it grows at all close, three-fourths or more become naked the tree presenting then a more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods the bark is mostly arranged in massive plates some of them measuring 4 or 5 feet in length by 18 inches in width with a thickness of 3 or 4 inches forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature the needles are of a fine warm yellow-green color 6 to 8 inches long, firm and elastic and crowded and handsome radiant tassels on the upturning ends of the branches the cones are about 3 or 4 inches long and 2 and a half wide growing in close sessile clusters among the leaves the species attains its noblest form in filled up lake basins especially in those of the older Yosemites and so prominent a part does it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite Pine ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or more in height and the branches close the trunk nearly to the ground as seen in the illustration the Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern portion of the range in the wide basins of the McLeod and Pitt rivers where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any other tree it differs from the ordinary form in size being only about half as tall and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark, greyish-green foliage, less divided branches and larger cones but intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation impossible although some botanists regard it as a distinct species it is this variety that climbs storm-swept ridges and wanders out among the volcanoes of the great basin whether exposed to extremes of heat or cold it is dwarfed like every other tree and becomes all knots and angles wholly unlike the majestic forms we have been sketching old specimens bearing cones about as big as pineapples may sometimes be found clinging to rifted rocks at an elevation of seven or eight thousand feet whose highest branches scarce reach above one's shoulders I have often times feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were towering in all their winter grandeur laden with snow, one mass of bloom in summer too, when the brown, stamina clusters hang thick among the shimmering needles and the big purple burrs are ripening in the mellow light but it is during cloudless windstorms our most impressively beautiful when they bow like willows their leaves streaming forward all in one direction and when the sun shines upon them at the required angle entire groves glow as if every leaf were burnished silver the fall of tropic light on the royal crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle the fervid sun flood breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance rays like mountain water among boulders but to me there is something more impressive in the fall of light upon these silver pines it seems beaten to the finest dust and is shed off in myriads of minute sparkles that seem to come from the very heart of the trees as if, like rain falling upon fertile soil it had been absorbed to reappear in flowers of light this species also gives forth the finest music to the wind after listening to it in all kinds of winds night and day, season after season I think I could approximate to my position on the mountains by this pine music alone if you would catch the tones of separate needles climb a tree they are well tempered and give forth no uncertain sound each standing out with no interference accepting during heavy gales then you may detect the click of one needle upon another readily distinguishable from their free wing like hum some idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that notwithstanding they are so long the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar shimmering of the light are made at the rate of about 250 per minute when a sugar pine and one of this species equal in size are observed together the latter is seen to be far more simpler in manners more lifely graceful and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated but then it is, on the other hand much less dignified and original in demeanor the silver pine seems eager to shoot aloft even while it is drowsing in autumn sun gold you may still detect a skyward aspiration but the sugar pine seems too unconsciously noble and too complete in every way to leave room for even a heavenward care Douglas spruce pseudo suga douglissii this tree is the king of the spruces as the sugar pine is the king of prines it is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any forest and one of the largest and longest lived of the giants that flourished throughout the main pine belt often attaining a height of nearly 200 feet and a diameter of 6 or 7 where the growth is not too close the strong spreading branches come more than halfway down the trunk and these are hung with innumerable slender swaying sprays that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves that create at right angles all around them this vigorous spruce is ever beautiful welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the mellow summer light and maintaining its youthful freshness undiminished from century to century through a thousand storms it makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July the rich brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this time revealing the young leaves which at first are bright yellow they appear as if covered with gay blossoms while the pendulous bracted cones with their shell-like scales are a constant adornment the young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful family groups each sapling exquisitely symmetrical the primary branches are whirled regularly around the axes generally in fives while each is draped with long feathery sprays that descend in curves as free and as finely drawn as those of falling water in Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests growing tall and mass-like to a height of 300 feet and is greatly prized as a lumber tree but in the Sierra it is scattered among other trees or form small groves seldom ascending higher than 5,500 feet and never making what would be called a forest it is not particular in its choice of soil wet or dry, smooth or rocky it makes out to live well on them all two of the largest specimens I have measured are in the Yosemite Valley one of which is more than 8 feet in diameter and is growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied the South Fork Canyon the other is nearly as large growing upon angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous front of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall no other tree seems so capable of adapting itself to earthquake talises and many of these rough boulder slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively especially in Yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls incense cedar libra cedrus decarins the incense cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed throughout this portion of the forest without exclusively occupying any considerable area or even making extensive groves it ascends to about 5,000 feet on top on the warmer hillsides and reaches the climate most congenial to it at about from 3,000 to 4,000 feet growing vigorously at this elevation on all kinds of soil and in particular it is capable of enduring more moisture about its roots than any of its companions accepting only the sequoia the largest specimens are about 150 feet high and 7 feet in diameter the bark is brown of a singularly rich tone very attractive to artists and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of any other evergreen in the woods casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge top the color alone of its spiree summits is sufficient to identify it in any company in youth, say up to the age of 70 or 80 years no other tree forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom the branches swoop outward and downward in bold curves at the top which aspire while the lowest droop to the ground and all spread out in flat, ferny plumes beautifully fronded and implicated upon one another as it becomes older it grows strikingly irregular and picturesque large special branches put out at right angles from the trunk form big stubborn elbows and then shoot up parallel with the axis very old trees are usually dead at the top the main axis protruding above ample masses of green plumes gray and lichen covered and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers the plumes are exceedingly beautiful no waving fern frond and shadowy dale is more unreservedly beautiful in form and texture or half so inspiring in color and spicy fragrance in its prime the whole tree is thatched with them so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof making fine mansions for storm bound birds and mountaineers so that you can see the libra cedrus in all its glory you must go to the woods in winter then it is laden with myriads of four sided, stamina cones about the size of wheat grains winter wheat producing a golden tinge and forming a noble illustration of nature's immortal vigor and virility the fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long born on the outside of the plumey brancelets where they serve to enrich still more the surpassing beauty white silver fir abys concolor we now come to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts composed almost exclusively of two noble firs a concolor and a magnifica it extends with no marked interruption for 450 miles at an elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea in its youth a concolor is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly whirled in level colors about its whitish gray axis which terminates in a strong hopeful shoot the leaves are in two horizontal rows along brancelets that commonly are less than eight years old forming handsome plumes pinaded like the fronds of ferns the cones are grayish green when ripe, cylindrical about from three to four inches long by one and a half to two inches wide and stand upright on the upper branches full grown trees favorably situated as to soil and exposure are about 200 feet high and five or six feet in diameter near the ground though larger specimens are by no means rare as old age creeps on the bark becomes rougher and grayer the branches lose their exact regularity many are snow bent or broken off and the main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot but throughout all the vicissitudes of its life on the mountains come what may the noble grandeur of the species is patent to every eye magnificent silver fur or red fur abes magnifica this is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra Woods far surpassing its companion species in this respect and easily distinguished from it by the purplish red bark which is also more closely furrow than that of the white and by its larger cones more regularly whirled and fronded branches and by its leaves which are shorter and grow all around the branchlets and point upward in size these two silver furs are about equal the magnifica perhaps a little taller specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not rare on well ground moraine soil at an elevation of from 7500 feet above sea level the largest that I measured stands back three miles from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley 15 years ago it was 240 feet high with a diameter of little more than 5 feet happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these suburb trees in full flower and fruit how admirable the forest work of nature is then seen to be as one makes his way up through the midst of the broad fronded branches all arranged in exquisite order around the trunk like the world leaves of lilies and each branch and branchlet about as strictly pineate as the most symmetrical fern frond the stamina cones are seen growing straight downward from the underside of the young branches in lavish perfusion making fine purple clusters amid the grayish green foliage on the top most branches the fertile cones are set firmly on the branches they are about six inches long three wide covered with a fine gray down and streaked with crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from above both the silver furs live 250 years or more when the conditions about them are at all favorable some venerable patriarch may often be seen heavily storm marked towering in severe majesty above the rising generation with a protecting grove of saplings each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems wanting other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture as if nature had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from the rest of the woods it is from this tree called red fir by the lumberman that mountaineers always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within its limits two rows of the plushy branches along the middle and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers for a pillow from the very best bed imaginable the essences of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one's body the sounds of falling water make a soothing hush while the spaces between the grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the starry sky even in the matter of sensuous ease any combination of cloth, steel springs and flowers seems vulgar in comparison the fir woods are delightful sauntering grounds at any time of year but most so in autumn then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light and drip with balsam the cones are ripe and the seeds with their ample purple wings model the air like flocks of butterflies while deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves and birds and squirrels in the branches make a pleasant stir and gives a peculiar impressiveness to every tree no wonder the enthusiastic Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species even in the Sierra where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration we linger among these colossal furs with fresh love and extol their beauty again and again as if no other in the world could henceforth claim our regard it is in these woods the great granite domes rise in the Sierra and here too we find the best of the garden meadows they lie level on the tops of the dividing ridges or sloping on the sides of them embedded in the magnificent forest some of these meadows are in great part occupied by Vera Tromalba which here grows rank and tall with boat shaped leaves 13 inches long and 12 inches wide ribs like those of Cipropidium Columbine grows on the drier branches and sedges several species of Castilea also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets and daisies but the glory of these forest meadows is a lily the flowers are orange colored and quite small the smallest I ever saw of the true lilies but it is showy nevertheless for it is 7 to 8 feet high and waves magnificent regimes of 10 to 20 flowers stands out in the open ground with just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe for its feet and show it off to best advantage a dry spot a little way back from the margin of a silver fur lily garden makes a glorious campground especially where the slope is toward the east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the range the tall lilies are brought forward and all their glory is relieved against the outer darkness and the nearest of the trees with their world branches tower above you like larger lilies and the sky seen through the garden opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars in the morning everything is joyous and bright the delicious purple of the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white while the sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks then the spires of the furs in the hollows of the middle region catch the glow and your camp grove is filled with light the birds begin to stir seeking sunny branches on the edge of the meadow for sunbaths after the cold night and looking for their breakfasts every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly arrayed innumerable insects begin to dance the deer withdraw from the open glades and ridgetops to their leafy hiding places as the dew vanishes every pulse beats high every life cell rejoices the very rocks seem to tingle with life and God is felt brooding over everything great and small End of Chapter 8 Part 1