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Steep Trails-Part17_John Muir(1838-1914)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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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 mellowsunshine 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. These extensive



groves of aspen are a marked feature of the Nevada woods. Some of the

lower mountains are covered with them, giving rise to remarkably



beautiful masses of pale, translucent green in spring and summer,

yellow and orange in autumn, while in winter, after every leaf has



fallen, the white bark of the boles and branches seen in mass seems

like a cloud of mist that has settled close down on the mountain,



conforming to all its hollows and ridges like a mantle, yet roughened

on the surface with innumerable ascending spires.



Just above the aspens we entered a fine, close growth of foxtail pine,

the tallest and most evenly planted I had yet seen. It extended along



a waving ridge tending north and south and down both sides with but

little interruption for a distance of about five miles. The trees



were mostly straight in the bole, and their shade covered the ground

in the densest places, leaving only small openings to the sun. A few



of the tallest specimens measured over eighty feet, with a diameter of

eighteen inches; but many of the younger trees, growing in tufts, were



nearly fifty feet high, with a diameter of only five or six inches,

while their slender shafts were hidden from top to bottom by a close,



fringy growth of tasseled branchlets. A few white pines and balsam

firs occur here and there, mostly around the edges of sunny openings,



where they enrich the air with their rosiny fragrance, and bring out

the peculiar beauties of the predominating foxtails by contrast.



Birds find grateful homes here--grouse, chickadees, and linnets, of

which we saw large flocks that had a delightfully enlivening effect.



But the woodpeckers are remarkably rare. Thus far I have noticed only

one species, the golden-winged; and but few of the streams are large



enough or long enough to attract the blessed ousel, so common in the

Sierra.



On Wheeler's Peak, the dominating summit of the Snake Mountains, I

found all the conifers I had seen on the other ranges of the State,



excepting the foxtail pine, which I have not observed further east

than the White Pine range, but in its stead the beautiful Rocky



Mountain spruce. First, as in the other ranges, we find the juniper

and nut pine; then, higher, the white pine and balsam fir; then the



Douglas spruce and this new Rocky Mountain spruce, which is common

eastward from here, though this range is, as far as I have observed,



its western limit. It is one of the largest and most important of

Nevada conifers, attaining a height of from sixty to eighty feet and a



diameter of nearly two feet, while now and then an exceptional

specimen may be found in shady dells a hundred feet high or more.



The foliage is bright yellowish and bluish green, according to

exposure and age, growing all around the branchlets, though inclined



to turn upward from the undersides, like that of the plushy firs of

California, making remarkably handsome fernlike plumes. While yet



only mere saplings five or six inches thick at the ground, they

measure fifty or sixty feet in height and are beautifully clothed with



broad, level, fronded plumes down to the base, preserving a strict

arrowy outline, though a few of the larger branches shoot out in free



exuberance, relieving the spire from any unpicturesque stiffness of

aspect, while the conical summit is crowded with thousands of rich



brown cones to complete its beauty.

We made the ascent of the peak just after the first storm had whitened



its summit and brightened the atmosphere. The foot-slopes are like

those of the Troy range, only more evenly clad with grasses. After



tracing a long, rugged ridge of exceedingly hard quartzite, said to be

veined here and there with gold, we came to the North Dome, a noble






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