78 ESSAY UPON REDWOOD 



ary of Mexico to Oregon ; here and there vanishing inland 

 altogether from view. Note their clean and elegant trunks, 

 Grecian pattern, cinnamon-red bark, fluted, as the deep, swift 

 water moveth without let or hindrance, 75 to 200 feet of 

 sheer shaft these, in brief, were our lofty landmarks, objects 

 of intense interest ; for they were the great colossal charac- 

 teristic evergreen emblems of laudable ambition, and our 

 golden goal ! bold ! nay, sublimely awe-inspiring ! mighty 

 monsters, these most imposing herculean pillars of the heav- 

 ens, from out whose blue vault they looked abroad o'er land 

 and sea, high above the hill-tops beyond the Bay, bearing 

 ever aloft triumphantly freedom's golden crown, responsive to 

 the last lingering rays of the sun, as he sinks to rest in the 

 western wave ! Alas ! what wits it now to us to know 

 whether they saw the Vandals, or the Vandals saw them ! 



Viewed from these higher interior summits, redwood for- 

 ests are full oft, in their season, overwhelmed in a billowy sea 

 of watery atmosphere, so perfectly immersed as to quite equal 

 a light rain, or so permeating with wet, that even shelter 

 above is vain ; hence these trees are transiently obscured, and 

 more commonly of a summer's eve altogether lost lost, un- 

 til the thick fog lifts the following day. In order to realize 

 this scene in some highly appreciable sense, one should take 

 somewhat of a bird's-eye view of it at a distance ; and although 

 charming at all hours, declining day, or best of all, in early 

 morning at 10 to n,when the slant light strongly defines 

 the lights and shadows on the denser low dutch, tumuloid, 

 tumble-down sort cf fog-clouds, as they " roll in at the Golden 

 Gate," or crowding up over hills, flowing down dales, slowly 



