206 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



throughout the greater portion of its range. Two 

 of the largest, growing at the head of Hope Val 

 ley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and 

 twenty-five feet six inches in circumference, re 

 spectively, four feet from the ground. The bark 

 is of a bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty 

 trees, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking 

 off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes 

 used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color 

 and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist's 

 eye, but to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull 

 and taciturn tree, never speaking to one's heart. I 

 have spent many a day and night in its company, 

 in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it 

 silent, cold, and rigid, like a column of ice. Its 

 broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all possi 

 bility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not 

 this rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence. 

 In calm, sun-days the Sugar Pine preaches the 

 grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without 

 moving a leaf. 



On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes in 

 sensibly out of existence like granite, the wind 

 exerting about as little control over it alive or dead 

 as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are un 

 doubtedly over 2000 years old. All the trees of the 

 alpine woods suffer, more or less, from avalanches, 

 the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Graps two or 

 three hundred yards wide, extending from the 

 upper limit of the tree-line to the bottoms of 

 valleys and lake basins, are of common occur 

 rence in all the upper forests, resembling the clear 

 ings of settlers in the old backwoods. Scarcely a 



