Creek at its topmost springs
has a voice like a bird. The wind-tones in the great trees overhead are
strangely impressive, all the more because not a leaf stirs below them.
But it grows late, and I must to bed. The camp is silent; everybody
asleep. It seems extravagant to spend hours so precious in sleep. "He
giveth his beloved sleep." Pity the poor beloved needs it, weak, weary,
forspent; oh, the pity of it, to sleep in the midst of eternal,
beautiful motion instead of gazing forever, like the stars.

_July 9._ Exhilarated with the mountain air, I feel like shouting this
morning with excess of wild animal joy. The Indian lay down away from
the fire last night, without blankets, having nothing on, by way of
clothing, but a pair of blue overalls and a calico shirt wet with sweat.
The night air is chilly at this elevation, and we gave him some
horse-blankets, but he didn't seem to care for them. A fine thing to be
independent of clothing where it is so hard to carry. When food is
scarce, he can live on whatever comes in his way--a few berries, roots,
bird eggs, grasshoppers, black ants, fat wasp or bumblebee larvae,
without feeling that he is doing anything worth mention, so I have been
told.

[Illustration: _A Silver Fir, or Red Fir (Abies magnifica)_]

Our course to-day was along the broad top of the main ridge to a hollow
beyond Crane Flat. It is scarce at all rocky, and is covered with the
noblest pines and spruces I have yet seen. Sugar pines from six to eight
feet in diameter are not uncommon, with a height of two hundred feet or
even more. The silver firs (_Abies concolor_ and _A. magnifica_) are
exceedingly beautiful, especially the _magnifica_, which becomes
more abundant the higher we go. It is of great size, one of the most
notable in every way of the giant conifers of the Sierra. I saw
specimens that measured seven feet in diameter and over two hundred feet
in height, while the average size for what might be called full-grown
mature trees can hardly be less than one hundred and eighty or two
hundred feet high and five or six feet in diameter; and with these noble
dimensions there is a symmetry and perfection of finish not to be seen
in any other tree, hereabout at least. The branches are whorled in fives
mostly, and stand out from the tall, straight, exquisitely tapered bole
in level collars, each branch regularly pinnated like the fronds of
ferns, and densely clad with leaves all around the branchlets, thu