of the same species were lacking entirely, so that we proceeded in the clear open aisles of a tremendous and spacious magnifi

cence.

This very lack of the smaller and usual growths, the generous plan of spacing, and the size of the trees themselves necessarily deprived us of a standard of comparison. At first the forest seemed immense. But after a little our eyes became accustomed to its proportions. We referred it back to the measures of long experience. The trees, the wood-aisles, the extent of vision shrank to the normal proportions of an Eastern pinery. And then we would lower our gaze. The pack-train would come into view. It had become lilliputian, the horses small as white mice, the men like tin soldiers, as though we had undergone an enchantment. But in a moment, with the rush of a mighty transformation, the great trees would tower huge again.

A GROVE OF SEQUOIAS1

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

ON the ridges and high plateaus north of the Kaweah River is the forest I describe; and of that forest the trees grow from fifteen to twenty-six feet in diameter. Do you know what that means? Get up from your chair and pace off the room you are in. If it is a very big room, its longest dimension would just about contain one of the bigger trunks. Try to imagine a tree like that.

It must be a columnar tree straight and true as the supports of a Greek façade. The least deviation from the perpendicular of such a mass would cause it to fall. The limbs are sturdy like the arms of Hercules, and grow out from the main trunk direct instead of dividing and leading that main trunk to themselves, as is the case with other trees. The column rises with a true taper to its full height; then is finished with the conical effect

1 From The Mountains. Doubleday, Page and Company. Reprinted by per

of the top of a monument. Strangely enough the frond is exceedingly fine, and the cones small.

When first you catch sight of a sequoia, it does not impress you particularly except as a very fine tree. Its proportions are so perfect that its effect is rather to belittle its neighbors than to show in its true magnitude. Then, gradually, as your experience takes cognizance of surroundings, the size of a sugarpine, of a boulder, of a stream flowing near, the giant swells and swells before your very vision until he seems at the last even greater than the mere statistics of his inches had led you to believe. And after that first surprise over finding the sequoia something not monstrous but beautiful in proportion has given place to the full realization of what you are beholding, you will always wonder why no one who has seen has ever given any one who has not seen an adequate idea of these magnificent old trees.

Perhaps the most insistent note, besides that of mere size and dignity, is of absolute stillness. These trees do not sway to the wind, their trunks are constructed to stand solid. Their branches do not bend and murmur, for they too are rigid in fibre. Their fine thread-like needles may catch the breeze's whisper, may draw together and apart for the exchange of confidences as do the leaves of other trees, but if so, you and I are too far below to distinguish it. All about, the other forest growths may be rustling and bowing and singing with the voices of the air; the Sequoia stands in the hush of an absolute calm. It is as though he dreamed, too wrapt in still great thoughts of his youth when the earth itself was young, to share the worldlier joys of his neighbor, to be aware of them, even to breathe deeply. You feel in the presence of these trees as you would feel in the presence of a kindly and benignant sage, too occupied with larger things to enter fully into your little affairs, but well disposed in the wisdom of clear spiritual insight.

This combination of dignity, immobility, and a certain serene detachment has on me very much the same effect as does a mountain against the sky. It is quite unlike the impression made by any other tree, however large, and is lovable.

THE SPIRIT OF THE GARDEN 1

L. H. BAILEY

I STEP from the house, and at once I am released. I am in a new realm. This realm has just been created, and created for me. I give myself over to the blue vault of the sky; or if it rain, to first-hand relationship with the elements, for can I not touch the drops that fall from some mysterious height? I am conscious of a quick smell of the soil, something like the smell of the sea. I hear the call of a bird or a faint rush of wind, or catch a shadow that passes and is gone. There is a sudden sensation of green things tumbled over the ground. I feel that they are living, growing, aspiring, sensitive.

Then the details begin to grow up out of the area, every detail perfect in its way, every one individual, yet all harmonious. The late rain compacted the earth; but here are little grooves and cuts made by tiny rills that ran down the furrows and around the stems of the plants, coalescing and growing as they ran, digging gorges between mountainous clods, spreading into islanded lakelets, depositing deltas, and then plunging headlong toward some far-off sea, a panorama that needs only to be magnified to make those systems of rivers and plains and mountains the names of which I sought so much in my old geography days.

Soft green things push up out of the earth, growing by some sweet alchemy that I cannot understand but that I can feel. Green leaves expand to the sun; buds burst into flowers; flowers change to fruits; the pods burst, and berries wither and fall; the seeds drop and are lost, — yet I know that nature the gardener will recover them in due season.

Strange plants that I did not want are growing here and there, and now I find that they are as good as the rest, for they spring from the same earth yet are unlike all others, they struggle for place and light, and they too will have their day and will

1 From The Outlook to Nature. The Macmillan Company, Revised Edition. Reprinted by permission.

All A bird darts

die away, and in some mysterious process will come again. Insects crawl here and there, coming from strange crevices and all of them intent. Earthworms leave their burrows. these, too, pass on and die and will come again. in and captures a flying insect; a dog trots across the farther end of the plot; a cat is hidden under the vines by the wall. A toad dozes under a bench: he will come out to-night.

It is all a drama, intense, complex, ever moving, always dying, always re-born. I see a thousand actors moving in and out, always going, always coming. I am part of the drama; I break the earth; I destroy this plant and that, as if I were the arbiter of life and death. I sow the seed. I see the tender things come up and I feel as if I had created something new and fine, that had not been seen on the earth before; and I have a new joy as deep and as intangible as the joy of religion.

I KNOW not how to give the reader a distinct image of the outlines of the country more readily, than by requesting him to place himself with me, in imagination, upon some given point; let it be the top of either of the mountains, Great Gavel, or Scawfell; or, rather, let us suppose our station to be a cloud hanging midway between those two mountains, at not more than half a mile's distance from the summit of each, and not many yards above their highest elevation; we shall then see stretched at our feet a number of valleys, not fewer than eight, diverging from the point on which we are supposed to stand, like spokes from the nave of a wheel. First we note lying to the south-east the vale of Langdale, which will conduct the eye to the long lake of Winandermere, stretched nearly to the sea; or rather to the sands of the vast bay of Morcamb, serving here for the rim of this imaginary wheel; let us trace it in a direc

1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes.

tion from the south-east towards the south, and we shall next fix our eyes upon the vale of Coniston, running up likewise from the sea, but not (as all the other valleys do) to the nave of the wheel, and therefore it may be not inaptly represented as a broken spoke sticking in the rim. Looking forth again, with an inclination towards the west, we see immediately at our feet the vale of Duddon, in which is no lake, but a copious stream, winding among fields, rocks, mountains, and terminating its course in the sands of Duddon. The fourth vale, next to be observed, viz. that of the Esk, is of the same general character as the last, yet beautifully discriminated from it by peculiar features. Its stream passes under the woody steep upon which stands Muncaster Castle, the ancient seat of the Penningtons, and after forming a short and narrow estuary enters the sea below the small town of Ravenglass. Next, almost due west, look down into and along the deep valley of Wastdale, with its little chapel and half-a-dozen neat dwellings scattered upon a plain of meadow and corn-ground intersected with stone walls apparently innumerable, like a large piece of lawless patchwork, or an array of mathematical figures, such as in the ancient schools of geometry might have been sportively and fantastically traced out upon sand. Beyond this little fertile plain lies, within a bed of steep mountains, the long, narrow, stern, and desolate lake of Wastdale; and, beyond this, a dusky tract of level ground conducts the eye to the Irish Sea. The stream that issues from Wastwater is named the Irt, and falls into the estuary of the river Esk. Next comes in view Ennerdale, with its lake of bold and somewhat savage shores. Its stream, the Ehen or Enna, flowing through a soft and fertile country, passes the town of Egremont, and the ruins of the castle, then, seeming, like the other rivers, to break through the barrier of sand thrown up by the winds on this tempestuous coast, enters the Irish Sea. The vale of Buttermere, with the lake and village of that name, and Crummock-water, beyond, next present themselves. We will follow the main stream, the Coker, through the fertile and beautiful vale of Lorton, till it is lost in the Derwent, below the noble ruins of Cockermouth Castle. Lastly, Borrowdale, of