6 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



or nearly so, for thousands of feet, advance their 

 brows in thoughtful attitudes beyond their com 

 panions, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, 

 seemingly conscious yet heedless of everything go 

 ing on about them, awful in stern majesty, types 

 of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the 

 frailest and most fleeting forms ; their feet set in 

 pine-groves and gay emerald meadows, their brows 

 in the sky; bathed in light, bathed in floods of 

 singing water, while snow-clouds, avalanches, and 

 the winds shine and surge and wreathe about them 

 as the years go by, as if into these mountain man 

 sions Nature had taken pains to gather her choicest 

 treasures to draw her lovers into close and confid 

 ing communion with her. 



Here, too, in the middle region of deepest canons 

 are the grandest forest- trees, the Sequoia, king of 

 conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow Pines, Doug 

 las Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a 

 giant of its kind, assembled together in one and the 

 same forest, surpassing all other coniferous forests 

 in the world, both in the number of its species and 

 in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow 

 in melody through their colossal spires, and they are 

 vocal everywhere with the songs of birds and run 

 ning water. Miles of fragrant ceanothus and man- 

 zanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens 

 and meadows, and damp, ferny glens in endless 

 variety of fragrance and color, compelling the ad 

 miration of every observer. Sweeping on over 

 ridge and valley, these noble trees extend a con 

 tinuous belt from end to end of the range, only 

 slightly interrupted by sheer-walled canons at in- 



