THE FOREST 



One who is accustomed only to our eastern 

 woods can have little idea of the true forest as it 

 occurs in the Sierra Nevada, which is a world of 

 itself, as distindt from any idea of the " woods " as 

 the snow peaks, the colossal granite domes and 

 the great canons of the Sierra are different from 

 the mild topography of the Berkshires. 



Here is a forest primeval such as was never 

 known east of the Cascade, not, at least, since that 

 remote period when the sequoia flourished in 

 Greenland. Man wanders, a mere pygmy, in a Brob- 

 dingnagian world of vast columnar trunks. This 

 is the true home of the great conifers, the sequoia, 

 silver fir, sugar-pine and Douglas spruce, — the 

 magnificent of the earth. There is no wilderness 

 of saplings as in the woods, and the general open- 

 ness of the forest is remarkable, so that one has 

 far-reaching vistas through splendid arches and is 

 able to appreciate the size and character of indi- 

 vidual trees. 



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