THE SEQUOIA 273 



est inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted 

 with new species of pine and fir and spruce as 

 with friendly people, shaking their outstretched 

 branches like shaking hands, and fondling their 

 beautiful little ones ; while the venerable abori- 

 ginal Sequoia, ancient of other days, keeps you 

 at a distance, taking no notice of you, speaking 

 only to the winds, thinking only of the sky, 

 looking as strange in aspect and behavior among 

 the neighboring trees as would the mastodon or 

 hairy elephant among the homely bears and deer. 

 Only the Sierra Juniper is at all like it, stand- 

 ing rigid and unconquerable on glacial pave- 

 ments for thousands of years, grim, rusty, silent, 

 uncommunicative, with an air of antiquity about 

 as pronounced as that so characteristic of Sequoia. 

 The bark of full grown trees is from one to 

 two feet thick, rich cinnamon brown, purplish on 

 young trees and shady parts of the old, forming 

 magnificent masses of color with the underbrush 

 and beds of flowers. Toward the end of winter 

 the trees themselves bloom while the snow is 

 still eight or ten feet deep. The pistillate 

 flowers are about three eighths of an inch long, 

 pale green, and grow in countless thousands 

 on the ends of the sprays. The staminate are 

 still more abundant, pale yellow, a fourth of an 

 inch long ; and when the golden pollen is ripe 

 they color the whole tree and dust the air and 

 the ground far and near. 



