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Updated: June 13, 2025
There was a wide stretch of river bottom, walled in on the west by a high and forest-crowned ridge; on the east was the river, with a hundred foot fringe of noble trees, not yet sacrificed to the axe of the woodsman.
The Sierra is about 500 miles long, 70 miles wide, and from 7000 to nearly 15,000 feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its wealth.
The first keen blasts up in the northland have given them a warning and they are going steadily, happily, but for the most part silently, on down the stream, giving rare beauty to these halcyon days of late summer; on past the farthest point of your vision, where the silver gray mist softens the outline of the forest-crowned headlands, and lavender shadows hang gently across the valleys; always on and on towards the land where all is light and life and where summer ever abides in beauty.
Still more rarely can they compare the past with the actual condition of the provinces in question, and trace the progress of their conversion from forest-crowned hills, luxuriant pasture grounds, and abundant cornfields and vineyards well watered by springs and fertilizing rivulets, to bald mountain ridges, rocky declivities, and steep earth-banks furrowed by deep ravines with beds now dry, now filled by torrents of fluid mud and gravel hurrying down to spread themselves over the plain, and dooming to everlasting barrenness the once productive fields.
They figure but little in the forest-crowned Alaska of the South, with its enchanted isles, emerald green, in the sunlit, silver waves; but they are an indispensable factor in the very struggle for mere existence up beyond the chain of rugged Aleutians whose towering volcanoes are ever enveloped in a sinister shroud of smoke.
"There sits upon her matron face A tender and a thoughtful grace, Though very still, for great distress Hath left this patient mournfulness." Beside an old rocky road leading from the town of Staunton out to the forest-crowned hills beyond, stood alone a little, gray stone cottage, in the midst of a garden inclosed by a low, moldering stone wall.
The faint lines that chequered the sky gradually assumed a greater distinctness of form and colour; at first the mountains seemed so many light, transparent vapours, floating upon the wind; but by degrees the airy vision developed into forest-crowned mountains, deep shadowy gorges, and domes clothed with mists.
About rose the forest-crowned slopes, for this is a region of hill and dell, with small green belts of meadow drawn between: along the river glided, with an arrow-like track, the light canoes, when, as they touch this sylvan harbour, the until now well-suppressed joy of victory bursts out in exulting shouts and yells wildly terrific; the solitude is awakened, the slumbering villages are roused, and the well-known cry of Indian triumph comes back from every teeming hill; whilst the roused deer springs trembling, from his covert, and the fierce panther crouching seeks his gloomiest lair.
On a pleasant summer afternoon, the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff.
The eastern sky was aglow; and, rising darkly against the ruddy light, not a mile away lay an island. "Is that the one?" he asked of his companion, after awakening him, and pointing to the forest-crowned land. "How should I know?" answered Bullen, sleepily. "They all look alike from this distance." "All right," replied Donald, cheerily. "I'll put you so close to it that you can't help knowing."
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