gpttt of tfy (gocftto 



clean a sweep; generally it burns away the 

 smaller limbs and the foliage, leaving the tree 

 standing all blackened and bristling. This fire, 

 like thousands of others, consumed the litter 

 carpet on the forest floor and the mossy covering 

 of the rocks; it ate the underbrush, devoured 

 the foliage, charred and burned the limbs, and 

 blackened the trunks. Behind was a dead for- 

 est in a desolate field, a territory with millions 

 of bristling, mutilated trees, a forest ruin im- 

 pressively picturesque and pathetic. From a 

 commanding ridge I surveyed this ashen desert 

 and its multitude of upright figures all blurred 

 and lifeless; these stood everywhere, in the 

 gulches, on the slopes, on the ridges against the 

 sky, and they bristled in every vanishing 

 distance. Over the entire area only a few trees 

 escaped with their lives; these were isolated in 

 soggy glacier meadows or among rock fields and 

 probably were defended by friendly air-currents 

 when the fiery billow rolled over them. 



When I entered the burn that afternoon the 

 fallen trees that the fire had found were in ashes, 

 the trees just killed were smoking, while the 



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