With these he was well acquainted. But
it did give him a start to find one twined about a branch of a bush.
An hour's steady climbing brought him to the top of the watershed
between the North and the Middle Yuba. Here a scene of wild grandeur lay
before him. Bare crags on either hand guarded the pass over the divide.
Immediately in front lay a whole system of deep canons, clothed with
primeval forests, wild and forbidding. Beyond towered a chain of rough,
bare mountain peaks. Keeler paused to wonder anew at the vastness of the
Sierras.
Then he plunged down from the ridge and was soon traversing one of the
most lonesome and gloomy trails in all the mountains. The tree trunks
were covered with yellowish green moss. In one place stood a pine stump
fifty feet high with the upper hundred feet of the tree thrust into the
earth beside it. At another place a huge log blocked the trail. Then he
crossed a brook and was among chaparral and manzanita bushes. Then he
was among the pines again, listening to their voices, for a breeze was
blowing up the canon. Now he came to a spooky region which had been
swept by fire, with bare tree trunks, broken and going to decay,
standing like ghosts of the forest.
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