firs live between two and three centuries when the
conditions about them are at all favorable. Some
venerable patriarch may be seen heavily storm-marked,
towering in severe majesty above the rising generation,
with a protecting grove of hopeful saplings pressing
close around his feet, each dressed with such loving
care that not a leaf seems wanting. Other groups
are made up of trees near the prime of life, nicely
arranged as if Nature had culled them with discrimination
from all the rest of the woods. It is from this
tree, called Red Fir by the lumbermen, that mountaineers
cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate
as to be within its limit. Two or three rows of
the sumptuous plushy-fronded branches, overlapping
along the middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes
mixed to one’s taste with ferns and flowers for
a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable.
The essence of the pressed leaves seems to fill every
pore of one’s body. Falling water makes
a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand
spires afford noble openings through which to gaze
dreamily into the starry sky. The fir woods are
fine sauntering-grounds at almost any time of the year,
but finest in autumn when the noble trees are hushed
in the hazy light and drip with balsam; and the flying,
whirling seeds, escaping from the ripe cones, mottle
the air like flocks of butterflies. Even in the
richest part of these unrivaled forests where so many
noble trees challenge admiration we linger fondly
among the colossal firs and extol their beauty again
and again, as if no other tree in the world could henceforth
claim our love. It is in these woods the great
granite domes arise that are so striking and characteristic
a feature of the Sierra. Here, too, we find the
best of the garden-meadows full of lilies. A dry
spot a little way back from the margin of a silver
fir lily-garden makes a glorious camp-ground, especially
where the slope is toward the east with a view of
the distant peaks along the summit of the Range.
The tall lilies are brought forward most impressively
like visitors by the light of your camp-fire and the
nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower
above you like larger lilies and the sky seen through
the garden-opening seems one vast meadow of white
lily stars.
The Two-Leaved Pine (Pinus contorta, var. Murrayana),
above the Silver Fir zone, forms the bulk of the alpine
forests up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet above
the sea, growing in beautiful order on moraines scarcely
changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared
with the giants of the lower regions this is a small
tree, seldom exceeding a height of eight or ninety
feet. The largest I ever measured was ninety
feet high and a little over six feet in diameter.
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. It is a well-proportioned,
