STEEP TRAILS 



den bases, some to a level with our standpoint, 

 but none higher. And in the inspiring morning 

 light all are so fresh and rosy-looking that they 

 seem new-bom; as if, like the quick-growing 

 crimson snow-plants of the California woods, 

 they had just sprung up, hatched by the 

 warm, brooding, motherly weather. 



In trying to describe the great pines and 

 sequoias of the Sierra, I have often thought 

 that if one of these trees could be set by itself 

 in some city park, its grandeur might there be 

 impressively realized; while in its home for- 

 ests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary, 

 satiated traveler sees none of them truly. It 

 is so with these majestic rock structures. 



Though mere residual masses of the plateau, 

 they are dowered with the grandeur and re- 

 pose of moimtains, together with the finely 

 chiseled carving and modeling of man's tem- 

 ples and palaces, and often, to a considerable 

 extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely 

 observed, look like ruins; but even these stand 

 plumb and true, and show architectural forms 

 loaded with lines strictly regular and decora- 

 tive, and all are arrayed in colors that storms 

 and time seem only to brighten. They are 

 not placed in regular rows in line with the 

 river, but "a' through ither," as the Scotch 

 say, in lavish, exuberant crowds, as if nature 



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