]
The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are
also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled
mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it
forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and
down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each other in
bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered sunbeams
pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles, and flowery,
park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia is
spread like a carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson
Sarcodes, the wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in
the shadiest nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome
darkness. On the north sides of ridges the boles are more slender, and
the ground is mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and
flowering dogwood, but never so densely as to prevent the traveler from
sauntering where he will; while the crowning branches are never
impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and never so interblended as to
lose their individuality.
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