rtion was the Giant Forest.

We entered it toward the close of the afternoon, and rode on after our
wonted time looking for feed at less than twenty cents a night. The
great trunks, fluted like marble columns, blackened against the western
sky. As they grew huger, we seemed to shrink, until we moved fearful
as prehistoric man must have moved among the forces over which he had
no control. We discovered our feed in a narrow "stringer" a few miles
on. That night, we, pigmies, slept in the setting before which should
have stridden the colossi of another age. Perhaps eventually, in spite
of its magnificence and wonder, we were a little glad to leave the
Giant Forest. It held us too rigidly to a spiritual standard of which
our normal lives were incapable; it insisted on a loftiness of soul, a
dignity, an aloofness from the ordinary affairs of life, the ordinary
occupations of thought hardly compatible with the powers of any
creature less noble, less aged, less wise in the passing of centuries
than itself.

XIX

ON COWBOYS

Your cowboy is a species variously subdivided. If you happen to be
traveled as to the wild countries, you will be able to recognize whence
your chance acquaintance hails by the kind of saddle he rides, and the
rigging of it; by the kind of rope he throws, and the method of the
throwing; by the shape of hat he wears; by his twist of speech; even by
the very manner of his riding. Your California "vaquero" from the
Coast Ranges is as unlike as possible to your Texas cowman, and both
differ from the Wyoming or South Dakota article. I should be puzzled
to define exactly the habitat of the "typical" cowboy. No matter where
you go, you will find your individual acquaintance varying from the
type in respect to some of the minor details.

Certain characteristics run through the whole tribe, however. Of these
some are so well known or have been so adequately done elsewhere that
it hardly seems wise to elaborate on them here. Let us assume that you
and I know what sort of human beings cowboys are,--with all their
taciturnity, their surface gravity, their keen sense of humor, their
courage, their kindness, their freedom, their lawlessness, their
foulness of mouth, and their supreme skill in the handling of horses
and cattle. I shall try to tell you nothing of all that.

If one thinks down doggedly to the last analysis, he will find that the
basic reason for the differences between a cowboy and ot