Coniferous Forests of the Sierra Nevada. II.

THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 921 / opened a school. From there he removed to Grasmere, and finally to Nab Cottage, on the banks of Rydal Water, where he spent the rest of his days. He had no enemy but himself, nor was he so great an enemy to himself as another might have been in his place; for whatever his life was at times, his heart was always tender and loving, and his genius pure and beautiful. Tempted, suffering, repentant, he died in his fifty-fourth year, and was_..buried by the side of Wordsworth. Let 1iim He with us. said the old poet; he would ha\u27ve wished it. I— If the irregular life of Hartley (Coleridge left its impress on his writings, it did not impair the clearness of his mental vision, nor the exquisite finish of his workmanship.. If it saddened his sensitive nature, it did not make him morbid, or unjust to others. There is a grace, a sweetness, a sense of shy, secluded beauty in his sonnets, which separate him from the poets of his time as surely as the odes of Collins separate him from the versifiers of his time, and which have given him an enduring though not a lofty place among the sonneteers of England. The last half of the third century of the English sonnet need not detain us, for, amid the multitude of singers who have illustrated it, I find but one who seems to me to rank with the great masters of this species of composition.—Mrs. Browning. Nearly twenty years have passed since this lady closed her eyes to earthly things in the Italian home she loved so well. She has had successors of her own sex, but none who has proved worthy to fill the high place from which she was stricken. She possessed an intense, fiery nature, which allied her to the greatest of poets, and which justified the intellectual relationship that one of her admirers claimed for her, when\u27he christened her Shakspere\u27s Daughter. Her earliest sonnets (for it is her sonnets alone that concern us here), which were published in the second of her two volumes of collected poems, in 1844, are remarkable productions. They are all, if I remember rightly, of the legitimate Italian construction, which Mrs. Browning (then Miss Elizabeth Barrett) was too acr complished a scholar to despise, and on that account are entitled to high praise as art-work among the clumsy quatorzains of her contemporaries; but they are exceedingly provoking, they are so strained and harsh, and so negligent of the minor morals of verse. They were followed about two years later (in point of composition I mean) by a series of personal sonnets, which are the noblest ever written—I will not say by a woman, which might sound invidious—but by anybody. I refer to the series of forty-four, in which she confessed the impassioned secrets of her heart, when it was first touched to its finest issues, and which were finally given to the world as From the Portuguese. Never before was there such revealment of the depths of woman\u27s nature, such recognition of the divine necessity of love. The sonnets of Petrarch are artificial in comparison, and those of Shakspere, magnificent as they are, should be read before, and not after them, to be fully enjoyed. She has surpassed her English and Italian masters, in that she has written the one great personal poem of all time. All honor, then, to this glorious woman, who has so grandly completed the third century of the English sonnet. THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. II. GRAND SILVER-FIR. WHITE-FIR. (Picea grandis.) We come now to the most regularly planted of all the forest belts, composed almost exclusively of two magnificent firs, Picea grandis and Picea amabilis. It extends, with no marked interruption, for four hundred miles, at an elevation near the middle of the range of from five thousand five hundred to eight thousand five hundred Vol. XXII.—72. feet, gradually ascending toward the south and descending toward the north. The grandis forms the lower portion of the belt, the amabilis the upper, while the middle is made up of about equal numbers of both species. In its young days, Picea grandis is a strikingly symmetrical tree, holding itself strictly erect, with its branches regularly whorled in level collars around the whitish-gray axis, which terminates in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are put on in two horizontal 07111 c fin 922 THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. \u27 FOREST OF GRAND SILVER-FlRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT. rows, along branchlets that commonly are less than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, about from three to four inches long by one to two wide, and stand bolt upright on the upper branches. Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about two hundred feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though larger specimens are by no means rare. As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the main axis often becomes - double or otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species is patent to every eye. LOVELY SILVER-FIR. RED-FIR. (Picea amabilis.) _ l -. ; ; This is /he most, exactly beautiful tree in the Sierra woods, far surpassing its companion speeiesJin this respect, and easily distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that of the Grand, and by its larger cones, more regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward. In size, the two species are about equal, the amabilis perhaps a little the taller. Specimens from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high are not rare on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from seven thousand five hundred to eight thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Five years ago it was two hundred and forty feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five feet. Happy is the man with the freedom and the love to climb a silver-fir in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of Nature is then seen to be, as one makes \u27VIEW OF FOREST OF THE LOVELY SILVER AAhirt L FIR. THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 923 k inn, SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN AND TENAYA GLACIERS. his way up through the midst of the broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the trunk like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The stami- nate cones are seen growing straight downward from the under side of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine lines of rosy purple amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches are found the fertile cones, set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with delicious crystal balsam that seems , to have been poured upon each cone from above. * Both of the silver-firs live to a good old age—two hundred and fifty years or more when the conditions about them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen, heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life, exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature had culled them one I AtM I by one with nice discrimination from all the rest of the woods. It is from this tree, called red-fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes for a pillow, curving inward at the tips, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one\u27s body, the sounds of falling water heard near and far make a soothing hush, while the ferny arches overhead, two hundred feet high, afford noble openings through which to gaze and dream into the deep, starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison. The fir woods are delightful sauntering- grounds any time of year, but most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the warm, spicy light, and dripping with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with their ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies,; while deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and birds .and squirrels in the branches, make a pleasant stir, which 924 THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. enriches the deep, brooding calm of the glorious wilderness and gives a peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even in the forests of California, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we linger among these colossal firs with fresh love and extol their beauty again and again, as if no other in the world could henceforth claim our regard. the two-leaved pine, tamarack-pine. (Pinus contorta.) This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the range, above the fir-belt, up to a height of from eight thousand to nine thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea, and growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are scarce at all changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of two feet six inches. It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent its being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, upcurving branches. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, excepting while they are very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy, on account of their greater abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air With pollen. No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles without a single interruption ; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places, where the trees grow tallest and closest together. Tall, nutritious grasses are specially abundant, growing over all the ground, in sunshine and shade, like a farmer\u27s crop, and serving as pasture for a multitude of sheep that are driven from the arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted. The two-leaved pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as if it had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green, fresh trees catch fire very readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed, the flames leaping from tree to tree, and forming one continuous belt, that goes surging and racing onward above the bending woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry season of Indian- summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground, feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a powerful current, continually increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly upward ; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, .wife**? V1EW IN A FOREST OF THE TWO-LEAVED PINE. THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 925 beautifully spired on ^ the edges, and tinted a ||j rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical ra- I I pidity, to be succeeded along the fire-line at irregular intervals by others—tree after tree flashing and darkening for weeks at a time, and leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed and left standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the distance, like a misty cloud. Later, the branches drop off, leaving a forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another, until they are consumed by the next fire, ,a»d leave^.the ground ready for a fresh crop. 3 ,. 1 The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out over the lava plains - with the yellow-pine, and climbing moraineless mountain-sides with the dwarf- pine, clinging to any chance support in rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks—always, however, showing the effects of such hardships in every feature. Down in sheltered lake-hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct species. Here it grows in dense sods like grasses, from forty to eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze, and whirling in eddying gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have frequently found specimens fifty feet, high less than five inches in diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs, at least near the top, they are oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow, forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until the melting of the snow in spring. JUNIPER. RED-CEDAR. mountain-pine. (Pinus monticola.) The mountain-pine is king of the alpine woods; brave, hardy, and long-lived; towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger than this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring strength as that of an oak. About two- thirds of the trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark is deep reddish brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows, which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to this species. The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and somewhat curved, resembling those of the common white-pine of the Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the bending of the branches. This species is quite nearly related to the 926 THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. at an elevation of about ten thousand feet attains its noblest development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the grand old age of a thousand years. juniper, red-cedar. sugar -pine, and, though not half so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its long arms, and in general habit. The mountain-pine is first met on the upper margin of the fir-belt, growing singly in a subdued, inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the two-leaved pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its character, and STORM-BEATEN WILLIAMSON SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH. (Juniferus occidentalis.) I The juniper is preeminently a rock-tree, occupying the baldest domes and pavements where there is scarce a handful of soil, at a height of from seven thousand to nine thousand five hundred feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently over eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost always dead in old trees, and great, stubborn limbs push out horizontally that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely covered and imbedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient castle scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head-waters of the Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here it flourishes with the silver and two- leaved pines, in great beauty and luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, AN OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW-PINES. THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 927 and manifesting but little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout the greater portion of its range. Two of the largest, growing at the head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and twenty-five feet six inches in circumference, respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is bright cinnamon colored, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons, that are sometimes used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist\u27s eye, but to me it seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to one\u27s heart to excite love. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold, and rigid like a column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm sun-days the sugar-pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle, without moving a leaf. On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it, alive or dead, as it does over a glacier bowlder. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from avalanches, the two-leaved pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree- line to the bottoms of valleys and lake-basins, are of common occurrence in all the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old backwoods. Scarce a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away, while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon each other heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers. After braving the storms of perhaps a dozen centuries in silence, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their fate, holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows, seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, again. like stubborn wrestlers, to rise WILLIAMSON SPRUCE. (Abies Williamsonii.) The Williamson spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the California coni- fera2. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, and are arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from nine thousand to nine thousand five hundred feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of enduring the stormy exposure of alps considerably higher, say ten thousand five hundred feet—never attaining in such locations a greater height than fifty or sixty feet. The tallest specimens, growing in sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter. The very largest specimen I ever found is nineteen feet seven inches in circumference, four feet from the ground, growing on the ERECT DWARF-PINES. 928 THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. Ifcti A DWARF-PINE. edge of Lake Hollow, at an elevation of nine thousand two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea. At the age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its lovely purple cones, about two inches