Old specimens, bearing cones
about as big as pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted
rocks at an elevation of 7000 or 8000 feet, whose highest branches
scarce reach above one's shoulders.
I have often feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were
towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow--one mass of
bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burrs are ripening in
the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as if
every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the crown
of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood breaking
upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water among
boulders at the foot of an enthusiastic cataract. But to me there is
something more impressive in the fall of light upon these noble, silver
pine pillars: it is beaten to the finest dust and shed off in myriads
of minute sparkles that seem to radiate from the very heart of the tree
as if like rain, falling upon fertile soil, it had been absorbed to
reappear in flowers of light.
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