fornia, we may look forward to a time when there will not be one
of them left standing in that land of their nativity. At least they
have not so much to fear from the axe, but perish by what may be called
a natural although a violent death; while it is man in his short-sighted
greed that robs the country of the nobler redwood. Yet a little while
and perhaps all the hills of seaboard California may be as bald as
Tamalpais.

I have an interest of my own in these forest fires, for I came so near
to lynching on one occasion, that a braver man might have retained a
thrill from the experience. I wished to be certain whether it was the
moss, that quaint funereal ornament of Californian forests, which blazed
up so rapidly when the flame first touched the tree. I suppose I must
have been under the influence of Satan, for instead of plucking off a
piece for my experiment, what should I do but walk up to a great pine
tree in a portion of the wood which had escaped so much as scorching,
strike a match, and apply the flame gingerly to one of the tassels. The
tree went off simply like a rocket; in three seconds it was a roaring
pillar of fire. Close by I could hear the shouts of those who were at
work combating the original conflagration. I could see the waggon that
had brought them tied to a live oak in a piece of open; I could even
catch the flash of an axe as it swung up through the underwood into the
sunlight. Had any one observed the result of my experiment my neck was
literally not worth a pinch of snuff; after a few minutes of passionate
expostulation I should have been run up to a convenient bough.

"To die for faction is a common evil;
But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil."

I have run repeatedly, but never as I ran that day. At night I went out
of town, and there was my own particular fire, quite distinct from the
other, and burning, as I thought, with even greater vigour.

But it is the Pacific that exercises the most direct and obvious power
upon the climate. At sunset, for months together, vast, wet, melancholy
fogs arise and come shoreward from the ocean. From the hill-top above
Monterey the scene is often noble, although it is always sad. The upper
air is still bright with sunlight; a glow still rests upon the Gabelano
Peak; but the fogs are in possession of the lower levels; they crawl in
scarves among the sandhills; they float, a little higher, in clouds of a
gigantic size and ofte