e through fine sections of the Sugar Pine
and Silver Fir woods wild with delight. A few years later, other
botanists made short journeys from the coast into the lower woods. Then
came the wonderful multitude of miners into the foot-hill zone, mostly
blind with gold-dust, soon followed by "sheepmen," who, with wool over
their eyes, chased their flocks through all the forest belts from one
end of the range to the other. Then the Yosemite Valley was discovered,
and thousands of admiring tourists passed through sections of the lower
and middle zones on their way to that wonderful park, and gained fine
glimpses of the Sugar Pines and Silver Firs along the edges of dusty
trails and roads. But few indeed, strong and free with eyes undimmed
with care, have gone far enough and lived long enough with the trees to
gain anything like a loving conception of their grandeur and
significance as manifested in the harmonies of their distribution and
varying aspects throughout the seasons, as they stand arrayed in their
winter garb rejoicing in storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the
spring while steaming with resiny fragrance, receiving the
thunder-showers of summer, or reposing heavy-laden with ripe cones in
the rich sungold of autumn. For knowledge of this kind one must dwell
with the trees and grow with them, without any reference to time in the
almanac sense.

The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived.
These, as we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of
the range to the other; and however dense and somber they may appear in
general views, neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest
hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank, malarial
selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their "boundless contiguity of
shade," the monotonous uniformity of the Deodar forests of the Himalaya,
the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark woods of Douglas Spruce
where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and Sequoias hold
their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another on the
mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the utmost
expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and
harmony.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]

The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most
distinguishing characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more
or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabli