My First Summer 



of three thousand feet or more, feathered 

 with hemlock and pine ; and huge shining 

 domes on the east, over the tops of which 

 the grinding, wasting, molding glacier must 

 have swept as the wind does to-day. 



July 28.- -No cloud mountains, only 

 curly cirrus wisps scarce perceptible, and the 

 want of thunder to strike the noon hour 

 seems strange, as if the Sierra clock had 

 stopped. Have been studying the magnified 

 fir, - - measured one near two hundred and 

 forty feet high, the tallest I have yet seen. 

 This species is the most symmetrical of all 

 conifers, but though gigantic in size it sel- 

 dom lives more than four or five hundred 

 years. Most of the trees die from the attacks 

 of a fungus at the age of two or three cen- 

 turies. This dry-rot fungus perhaps enters 

 the trunk by way of the stumps of limbs 

 broken off" by the snow that loads the broad 

 palmate branches. The younger specimens 

 are marvels of symmetry, straight and erect 

 as a plumb-line, their branches in regular 



[ 224 ] 



