But, Whether Old Or Young,
Sheltered Or Exposed To The Wildest Gales, This Tree Is Ever Found To
Be Irrepressibly And Extravagantly Picturesque, Offering A Richer And
More Varied Series Of Forms To The Artist Than Any Other Species I
Have Yet Seen.
One of the most interesting mountain excursions I have made in the
State was up through a thick spicy forest of these trees to the top of
the highest summit of the Troy Range, about ninety miles to the south
of Hamilton.
The day was full of perfect Indian-summer sunshine, calm
and bracing. Jays and Clarke crows made a pleasant stir in the
foothill pines and junipers; grasshoppers danced in the hazy light,
and rattled on the wing in pure glee, reviving suddenly from the
torpor of a frosty October night to exuberant summer joy. The
squirrels were working industriously among the falling nuts; ripe
willows and aspens made gorgeous masses of color on the russet
hillsides and along the edges of the small streams that threaded the
higher ravines; and on the smooth sloping uplands, beneath the foxtail
pines and firs, the ground was covered with brown grasses, enriched
with sunflowers, columbines, and larkspurs and patches of linosyris,
mostly frost-nipped and gone to seed, yet making fine bits of yellow
and purple in the general brown.
At a height of about ninety-five hundred feet we passed through a
magnificent grove of aspens, about a hundred acres in extent, through
which the mellow sunshine sifted in ravishing splendor, showing every
leaf to be as beautiful in color as the wing of a butterfly, and
making them tell gloriously against the evergreens.
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