A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight
feet thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if
sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the
general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading
bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were growing beneath
some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every branch was
being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small
departures from the regular form that there is still an appearance of
freedom.
The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the
older trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The
bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady
portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and
burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the
flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk
the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you will say they are the most
beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive contrasts meet
you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and sky, light and
shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence, tangles of
supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes, roses
and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around the feet of the
giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the sunbeams fall.
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