256 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping 

 over the edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on 

 grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on 

 flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, 

 falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree 

 and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the 

 region with telling changes of form, like mountain 

 rivers conforming to the features of their channels. 



After tracing the Sierra streams from their foun 

 tains to the plains, marking where they bloom 

 white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge gray 

 and foam-filled in boulder-choked gorges, and slip 

 through the woods in long, tranquil reaches after 

 thus learning their language and forms in detail, 

 we may at length hear them chanting all together 

 in one grand anthem, and comprehend them all in 

 clear inner vision, covering the range like lace. 

 But even this spectacle is far less sublime and not 

 a whit more substantial than what we may behold 

 of these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods. 



We all travel the milky way together, trees and 

 men ; but it never occurred to me until this storm- 

 day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are 

 travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many 

 journeys, not extensive ones, it is true ; but our 

 own little journeys, away and back again, are only 

 little more than tree-wavings many of them not 

 so much. 



When the storm began to abate, I dismounted 

 and sauntered down through the calming woods. 

 The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward 

 the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests 

 hushed and tranquil, towering above one another 



