ng one to
find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through
openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown
needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a
ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves
and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding
superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.

One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback
through the successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes
of the icy peaks. The deep canons, however, that extend from the axis of
the range, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and
prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.

This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a
whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different species
are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one another, as
controlled by soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of each species
in taking and holding the ground; and so appreciable are these
relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a few
hundred feet, the elevation above sea-level by the trees alone; for,
notwithstanding some of the species range upward for several thousand
feet, and all pass one another more or less, yet even those possessing
the greatest vertical range are available in this connection, in as much
as they take on new forms corresponding with the variations in altitude.

Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the
west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of
the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that
not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear
noonday. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent
of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the
main pine belt, composed of the gigantic Sugar Pine, Yellow Pine,
Incense Cedar, and Sequoia. Next you come to the magnificent Silver Fir
belt, and lastly to the upper pine belt, which sweeps up the rocky
acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a
height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.

[Illustration: EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.]

This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent
on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmon