248 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFOENIA 



and impressively visible, not even by the lordly 

 tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gent 

 lest breeze. The waving of a forest of the giant 

 Sequoias is indescribably impressive and sublime, 

 but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of 

 winds. They are mighty waving goldenrods, ever 

 in tune, singing and writing wind-music all their 

 long century lives. Little, however, of this noble 

 tree- waving and tree-music will you see or hear in 

 the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly 

 Juniper, whose girth sometimes more than equals 

 its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it 

 grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf 

 Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest 

 and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even 

 in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, 

 short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, 

 and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest 

 thickets of the Two-leaved species bow in storms 

 with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it 

 is only in the lower and middle zones that the 

 meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all its 

 grandeur. 



One of the most beautiful and exhilarating 

 storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra occurred in De 

 cember, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one 

 of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The 

 sky and the ground and the trees had been thor 

 oughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day 

 was intensely pure, one of those incomparable bits 

 of California winter, warm and balmy and full of 

 white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest 

 influences of the spring, and at the same time en- 



