must turn out and work like demons, for it is not only the pleasant

groves that are destroyed; the climate and the soil are equally at

stake, and these fires prevent the rains of the next winter and dry

up perennial fountains. California has been a land of promise in

its time, like Palestine; but if the woods continue so swiftly to

perish, it may become, like Palestine, a land of desolation.

To visit the woods while they are languidly burning is a strange

piece of experience. The fire passes through the underbrush at a

run. Every here and there a tree flares up instantaneously from

root to summit, scattering tufts of flame, and is quenched, it

seems, as quickly. But this last is only in semblance. For after

this first squib-like conflagration of the dry moss and twigs,

there remains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the very

entrails of the tree. The resin of the pitch-pine is principally

condensed at the base of the bole and in the spreading roots.

Thus, after the light, showy, skirmishing flames, which are only as

the match to the explosion, have already scampered down the wind

into the distance, the true harm is but beginning for this giant of

the woods. You may approach the tree from one side, and see it

scorched indeed from top to bottom, but apparently survivor of the

peril. Make the circuit, and there, on the other side of the

column, is a clear mass of living coal, spreading like an ulcer;

while underground, to their most extended fibre, the roots are

being eaten out by fire, and the smoke is rising through the

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