avored of all his happy tribe.
May his tribe increase!

[Illustration: TRYING THE BOW.]

CHAPTER X

A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS

The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are
measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength
and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest influences,
that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims the upper
forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and
there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener
trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree, fingering
every leaf and branch and furrowed bole; not one is forgotten; the
Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses
of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells;
they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in
lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as
required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing
through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean;
the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable
beauty and harmony as the sure result.

[Illustration: A WIND-STORM IN THE CALIFORNIA FORESTS. (AFTER A SKETCH
BY THE AUTHOR.)]

After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses
before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a
crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the
lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently
stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they
should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm is
over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and
unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms have
fallen upon them since they were first planted,--hail, to break the
tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and
avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,--while the manifest result of all
this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold; then faith
in Nature's forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the
violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm-implement
whatsoever.

There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so
long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the
Dwarf Pine of the