296 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



east as Boulder Creek. Here five or six days 

 were spent, and it was delightful to learn from 

 countless trees, old and young, how comfortably 

 they were settled down in concordance with cli- 

 mate and soil and their noble neighbors. 



Imbedded in these majestic woods there are 

 numerous meadows, around the sides of which 

 the Big Trees press close together in beautiful 

 lines, showing their grandeur openly from the 

 ground to their domed heads in the sky. The 

 young trees are still more numerous and exu- 

 berant than in the Fresno and Dinky groves, 

 standing apart in beautiful family groups, or 

 crowding around the old giants. For every ven- 

 erable lightning-stricken tree, there is one or 

 more in all the glory of prime, and for each of 

 these, many young trees and crowds of saplings. 

 The young trees express the grandeur of their 

 race in a way indefinable by any words at my 

 command. When they are five or six feet in 

 diameter and a hundred and fifty feet high, they 

 seem like mere baby saplings as many inches in 

 diameter, their juvenile habit and gestures com- 

 pletely veiling their real size, even to those who, 

 from long experience, are able to make fair ap- 

 proximation in their measurements of common 

 trees. One morning I noticed three airy, spiry, 

 quick-growing babies on the side of a meadow, 

 the largest of which I took to be about eight 

 inches in diameter. On measuring it, I found to 



