126 Fish Stories 



patches of oxalis with their clover-like leaves and white 

 flowers bar the way, covering the ground, creeping things 

 that never saw the sun in these abodes of silences. 



It is gratifying to think that this group of trees beneath 

 which the weary angler of the San Lorenzo may lie and take 

 his siesta, one of the wonders of the world, virtually belongs 

 to the people. " Sempervirens Park," including about four 

 thousand acres, has been bought by the State of California, 

 and will be preserved for all time with the many interesting 

 followers of redwood forests — the wax myrtle, California 

 nutmeg tree, the oxalis referred to, the Clintonia and Cali- 

 fornia whortleberry. One cannot contemplate a tree fifty 

 or sixty feet in circumference and two hundred to three 

 hundred feet in height without being impressed that he is 

 in the presence of some extraordinary manifestation of 

 nature. 



How long the trees have been growing is not known ; three 

 or four hundred years is given as their age by some author- 

 ities, but as new shoots rise from the old shrubs there is 

 little doubt that some pierced the sky here long before the 

 Christian era. We have no ancient castles, Ijut the sequoias 

 along this little trout stream, the mighty columns whose 

 shadows shelter trout in the San Lorenzo, were old when 

 Germany was a wilderness. 



When the sun dropped in the west and shadows began to 

 fall on the river I left the dark forest, and finding a trail, 

 dropped down the face of the canon to the river again. The 

 skyline here was sequoia, uneven and beautiful, bringing out 

 a peculiarity of the trees, their variation in shape and form. 

 Few trout streams have so many distractions as the limpid 

 San Lorenzo, which I again reached by forcing my way 

 through a maze of alders, fragrant bays and willows, 

 to find a series of little cascades, inviting to the fly-caster 

 and suggestive of hidden game. This is not the dream of a 

 fisherman, but merely a recital of things which appeal to some 

 idle and very imaginative and doubtless impractical people. 



