ing gathered up and used as fuel for the hotel and the
steamboats.

Here and there are charming little nurseries of tiny and growing
yellow pines and white fir. How sweet, fresh and beautiful they
look,--the Christmas trees of the fairies. And how glad they make the
heart of the real lover of his country, to whom "conservation" is not
a fad, but an imperative necessity for the future--an obligation felt
towards the generations yet to come.

Of entirely different associations, and arousing a less agreeable
chain of memories, are the ruined log-cabins of the wood-cutter's and
logger's days. Several of these are passed.

As we re-enter the trail, Watson's Peak, 8500 feet high, with its
basaltic crown, looms before us. At our feet is a big bed of wild
sunflowers, their flaring yellow and gold richly coloring the more
somber slopes. Here I once saw a band of upwards of 2000 sheep, herded
by a Basque, one of that strange European people who seem especially
adapted by centuries of such life to be natural shepherds. Few of them
speak much American, but they all know enough, when you ask them how
many sheep they have, to answer, "About sixteen hundred." The limit
allowed on any government reserve in any one band is, I think,
1750, and though a passing ranger may be sure there are more, he is
nonplussed when, on his making question, the owner or the shepherd
shrugs his shoulders and says, "If you don't believe me, they're
there. Go and count 'em!"

Before the officials treated some of the Basque shepherds with what
seemed to be too great severity there were numerous forest fires on
the reserve. These men were generally both self-willed and ignorant,
and we passed by at this spot a clump of finely growing firs, which
had been destroyed by a fire started by a shepherd the year before.

Watson assures me that he has personally known many cases where a tree
had been blown across a trail, and the shepherd would stop his sheep,
set fire to the "wind-fall" and then leave it to burn--sometimes
allowing it to smolder for months, to the infinite peril of the forest
should an arousing wind blow the fire into life and make it spread.

Fire notices, however, now are everywhere, and a few severe
punishments have largely put a stop to all carelessness on the part of
shepherds, let alone their culpable neglect. There are still campers
and automobilists and others, of the so-called superior and educated
race, who need as severe lessons as