radual. Its companion, the yellow pine, is almost
as large. The long silvery foliage of the younger specimens forms
magnificent cylindrical brushes on the top shoots and the ends of the
upturned branches, and when the wind sways the needles all one way at a
certain angle every tree becomes a tower of white quivering sun-fire.
Well may this shining species be called the silver pine. The needles are
sometimes more than a foot long, almost as long as those of the
long-leaf pine of Florida. But though in size the yellow pine almost
equals the sugar pine, and in rugged enduring strength seems to surpass
it, it is far less marked in general habit and expression, with its
regular conventional spire and its comparatively small cones clustered
stiffly among the needles. Were there no sugar pine, then would this be
the king of the world's eighty or ninety species, the brightest of the
bright, waving, worshiping multitude. Were they mere mechanical
sculptures, what noble objects they would still be! How much more
throbbing, thrilling, overflowing, full of life in every fiber and cell,
grand glowing silver-rods--the very gods of the plant kingdom, living
their sublime century lives in sight of Heaven, watched and loved and
admired from generation to generation! And how many other radiant resiny
sun trees are here and higher up,--libocedrus, Douglas spruce, silver
fir, sequoia. How rich our inheritance in these blessed mountains, the
tree pastures into which our eyes are turned!

Now comes sundown. The west is all a glory of color transfiguring
everything. Far up the Pilot Peak Ridge the radiant host of trees stand
hushed and thoughtful, receiving the Sun's good-night, as solemn and
impressive a leave-taking as if sun and trees were to meet no more. The
daylight fades, the color spell is broken, and the forest breathes free
in the night breeze beneath the stars.

_June 16._ One of the Indians from Brown's Flat got right into the
middle of the camp this morning, unobserved. I was seated on a stone,
looking over my notes and sketches, and happening to look up, was
startled to see him standing grim and silent within a few steps of me,
as motionless and weather-stained as an old tree-stump that had stood
there for centuries. All Indians seem to have learned this wonderful way
of walking unseen,--making themselves invisible like certain spiders I
have been observing here, which, in case of alarm, caused, for example,
by a bird alighting