My First Summer 



perfect specimens not burned or broken are 

 singularly regular and symmetrical, though 

 not at all conventional, showing infinite 

 variety in general unity and harmony ; the 

 noble shafts with rich purplish brown fluted 

 bark, free of limbs for one hundred and 

 fifty feet or so, ornamented here and there 

 with leafy rosettes ; main branches of the 

 oldest trees very large, crooked and rugged, 

 zigzagging stiffly outward seemingly lawless, 

 yet unexpectedly stopping just at the right 

 distance from the trunk and dissolving in 

 dense bossy masses of branchlets, thus making 

 a regular though greatly varied outline, 

 a cylinder of leafy, outbulging spray masses, 

 terminating in a noble dome, that may be 

 recognized while yet far off upheaved against 

 the sky above the dark bed of pines and firs 

 and spruces, the king of all conifers, not 

 \ only in size but in sublime majesty of be- 

 havior and port. I found a black, charred 

 stump about thirty feet in diameter and 

 eighty or ninety feet high, -. a venerable, 

 [ 350] 



