water the ponies.

"There," he remarked casually, "is the first sugar pine."

Bob's eye followed the indication of his whip to the spreading, graceful
arms of a free so far up the bed of the stream that he could make out
only its top. The ponies, refreshed, resumed their methodical plodding.

Insensibly, as they mounted, the season had changed. The oaks that, at
the level of Sycamore Flats, had been in full leaf, here showed but the
tender pinks and russets of the first foliage. The dogwoods were quite
dormant. Rivulets of seepage and surface water trickled in the most
unexpected places as though from snow recently melted.

Of climbing there seemed no end. False skylines recurrently deceived Bob
into a belief that the buckboard was about to surmount the top. Always
the rise proved to be preliminary to another. The road dipped behind
little spurs, climbed ravines, lost itself between deep cuts. Only
rarely did the forest growths permit a view, and then only in glimpses
between the tops of trees. In the valley and against the foothills now
intervened the peaceful and calm blue atmosphere of distance.

"I'd no idea from looking at it this mountain was so high," he told
Welton.

"You never do," said Welton. "They always fool you. We're pretty nigh
the top now."

Indeed, for a little space the forest had perforce to thin because of
lack of footing. The slope became almost a precipice, ending in a bold
comb above which once more could be glimpsed the tops of trees. Quite
ingeniously the road discovered a cleft up which it laboured mightily,
to land breathless after a heart-breaking pull. Just over the top Welton
drew rein to breathe his horses--and to hear what Bob had to say about
it.

The buckboard stood at the head of a long, gentle slope descending,
perhaps fifty feet, to a plateau; which, in turn, rose to another crest
some miles distant. The level of this plateau, which comprised, perhaps,
thirty thousand acres all told, supported a noble and unbroken forest.

Mere statistics are singularly unavailing to convey even an idea of a
California woodland at its best. We are not here dealing with the
so-called "Big Trees," but with the ordinary--or extraordinary--pines
and spruces. The forest is free from dense undergrowths; the individual
trees are enormous, yet so symmetrical that the eye can realize their
size only when it catches sight of some usual and accustomed object,
such as men or horses or the buildings in