e traditions of a "Big Fire" about four
centuries ago. There is some evidence of a general fire over the
Rockies about the time that the Indian's tradition places it, but in
this forest there were no indications that there had ever been a fire.
Trees were in all stages of growth and decay. Humus was deep. Here I
found a stump of a Douglas spruce that was eleven feet high and about
nine feet in diameter. It was so decayed that I could not decipher the
rings of growth. This tree probably required at least a thousand years
to reach maturity, and many years must have elapsed for its wood to
come to the present state of decay. Over this stump was spread the
limbs of a live tree that was four hundred years of age.

Trees have tongues, and in this forest I interviewed many patriarchs,
had stories from saplings, examined the mouldy, musty records of many
a family tree, and dug up some buried history. The geologist wanted in
story form a synopsis of what the records said and what the trees told
me, so I gave him this account:--

"We climbed in here some time after the retreat of the last Ice King
and found aspen and lodge-pole pine in possession. These trees fought
us for several generations, but we finally drove them out. For ages
the Engelmann spruce family has had undisputed possession of this
slope. We stand amid three generations of mouldering ancestors, and
beneath these is the sacred mould of older generations still.

[Illustration: A GRASS-PLOT AMONG ENGELMANN SPRUCE]

"One spring, when most of the present grown-up trees were very young,
the robins, as they flew north, were heard talking of strange men who
were exploring the West Indies. A few years later came the big fire
over the Rockies, which for months choked the sky with smoke. Fire did
not get into our gulch, but from birds and bears which crowded into it
we learned that straggling trees and a few groves on the Rockies were
all that had escaped with their lives. Since we had been spared, we
all sent out our seed for tree-colonies as rapidly as we could, and in
so doing we received much help from the birds, the squirrels, and the
bears, so that it was not long before we again had our plumes waving
everywhere over the Rockies. About a hundred and sixty years ago, an
earthquake shook many of us down and wounded thousands of others with
the rock bombardment from the cliffs. The drought a century ago was
hard on us, and many perished for water. Not long after the dr