UNDER THE REDWOODS 



LIKE my fellow tourists, though I was touring 

 alone, I stopped at Santa Cruz for a sight 

 of "the big trees." They would disappoint me 

 at first, I had been warned; but nothing of the 

 kind happened. After a day and a half spent in 

 their shadow I could still only look up and won- 

 der ; and that, neither more nor less, was what I 

 did on the first instant. Nor did my admiration 

 exhaust itself upon the few largest and tallest. A 

 little more in girth, or even a little more in height, 

 seemed not to count for much with me. Even 

 after I had looked for hours at the biggest and 

 tallest of them I found myself seized with a feel- 

 ing of something like awe at the sight of a group 

 of smaller ones (smaller, but how they soared !) 

 growing directly upon the roadside halfway be- 

 tween the famous grove and the city. 



The grove itself is much less a grove, and much 

 more a forest, than I had expected to find it. I 

 was there almost by myself, having planned things 

 to that end, and after getting away from the gate 

 and the buildings near it, could wander about by 

 the hour with a sense of real woodland seclusion 

 and wildness. Not that a man could walk steadily 

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