And when you stand back far enough
to see the massive columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit
dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of
combined grandeur and beauty. About a hundred feet or more of the trunk
is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the
bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly
parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some
extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and
cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for
the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches
down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at
the top, horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves
at the base. By the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old
this spiry, feathery, juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome
form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness
of old age. No other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely
massed or presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate
to a special type.
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