The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Carquinez Woods, by Bret Harte

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Title: In the Carquinez Woods

Author: Bret Harte

Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2310]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

By Bret Harte

CHAPTER I.

The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts of
sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in unfathomable
depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunks
of the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns, and the
dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the echoless aisles, still
seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed.
Light and color fled upwards. The dark interlaced treetops, that had all
day made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their
lost spires glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilight
that did not come from the outer world, but seemed born of the wood
itself, slowly filled and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall,
colossal trunks rose dimly like columns of upward smoke. The few fallen
trees stretched their huge length into obscurity, and seemed to lie on
shadowy trestles. The strange breath that filled these mysterious vaults
had neither coldness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the
noiseless foot that trod their bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have
been tombs, the fallen trees enormous mummies; the silence the solitude
of a forgotten past.

And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring sound like
breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticulate and stertorous
gasps. It was not the quick, panting, listening breath of some stealthy
feline or canine animal, but indicated a larger, slower, and more
powerful organization, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or
as if a fragment of one of the fallen monsters had become animate.
At times this life seemed to take visible form, but as vaguely, as
misshapenly, as the phantom of a nightmare. Now it was a square object
moving sideways, endways, with nei