redwood species, as, indeed, are all the "Big Trees of California." Is it not strange that such brittle timber should stand erect amid the tempests and the earthquakes, through all the weary ages of historic time? When Abraham fed his flocks on the plains of Asia, the present giants of the redwood groves of California were already giants; and when the Saviour of mankind bowed his head in death upon the cross, and all nature shuddered while darkness fell upon the earth, and the veil of the temple was rent, they stood there almost as they stand to-day, green in their old age, and seamed and scarred by lightning and by fire, but hale and vigorous still.
In the cool hours of the evening, when the sun was sinking in the western ocean, and long shadows were creeping over the hill-sides, with a loved companion I rode up the winding valley of the San Lorenzo, some ten miles, to the California Powder-Works. These woods are always beautiful, and the ride, in summer as in winter, in the flush and bloom of spring-time, or in the golden glory of autumn, along the banks of the swift-running stream, under the low-bending evergreen trees, and among the flowering shrubs, always a delightful one. In the summer the giant mountain honeysuckle—a vine which grows into tree-like proportion, twelve, fifteen, or even twenty feet in height—is one mass of creamy-white and delicate pink-hued, trumpet-shaped blossoms, whose rich delicate odor fills all the air. The buckeye, blooming on every hill-side, gives off its dense sensuous odors in almost overpowering volume, and the wild rose, the snowdrop, and a thousand nameless
