THE FORESTS OF THE YOSEMITE PARK 127 



the young saplings only are thus carefully cov- 

 ered and put to sleep in the whitest of white 

 beds for five or six months of the year, but trees 

 thirty and forty feet high. From April to May, 

 when the snow is compacted, you may ride over 

 the prostrate groves without seeing a single branch 

 or leaf of them. In the autumn they are full of 

 merry life, when Clark crows, squirrels, and chip- 

 munks are gathering the abundant crop of seeds 

 while the deer rest beneath the thick conceal- 

 ing branches. The finest grove in the park is 

 near Mount Conness, and the trail from the 

 Tuolumne soda springs to the mountain runs 

 through it. Many of the trees in this grove are 

 three to four or five feet in diameter and about 

 a hundred feet high. 



The mountain hemlock is widely distributed 

 from near the south extremity of the high Sierra 

 northward along the Cascade Mountains of Ore- 

 gon and Washington and the coast ranges of 

 British Columbia to Alaska, where it was first 

 discovered in 1827. Its northmost limit, so far 

 as I have observed, is in the icy fiords of Prince 

 William's Sound in latitude 61°, where it forms 

 pure forests at the level of the sea, growing tall 

 and majestic on the banks of the great glaciers, 

 waving in accord with the mountain winds and 

 the thunder of the falling icebergs. Here as in 

 the Sierra it is ineffably beautiful, the very love- 

 liest evergreen in America. 



