And it may be--for nations with all their pomp and pride are short-lived--that every flag that now flaunts the sky, that every nation now on earth, will pass out of existence long before these patriarchal trees lie down at last upon the mountains. Some of these trees have already out-lived more than fifty generations of mankind. Some of them are likely to look upon a score or more of passing generations of the human race. These trees might tell a thousand stirring stories to the one possessed by the Sphinx. The Sphinx is of lifeless stone. These trees are alive. They have lived through countless changing scenes. But which shall be accounted the more striking and wonderful, the passing pictures in the centuries they have looked upon, or the moving, changing scenes in the centuries that they are yet to see? These Big Trees have endured fire, flood, lightning, landslide, gale, drought, and earthquake, but have never hauled down their evergreen banners. They have triumphed over the changes of ten thousand seasons; watched and waved through centuries of sunlight and storm. Countless times the sun has projected a silhouetted shadow of their stupendous plumes against the mountain side. They have worn monumental robes of snow flowers; they have stood silent in the light of thousands of autumn moons; and they are still upon the heights to inspire us with their steadfastness and their splendor. The landmark and the heritage of the ages are these splendid trees, these immortal evergreens. Their historic lore and unequaled grandeur give them amplitude and poetry enough to kindle and enrich the imagination. Let them live on; they will bless those who make the sacred pilgrimage to see them, and they will be a "choir invisible" to all who simply know that upon the sublime Sierra they still wave grandly. IV MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK Mount Rainier is one of the noblest and most imposing mountains in the world. It stands isolated. Around it are countless peaks, but these are so small that they but emphasize the colossal bulk and towering height of majestic Rainier. It is 14,408 feet high. The altitudinal sweep of the Park is ten thousand feet. Only Mount Rainier territory is in the Park. The area is three hundred and twenty-four square miles--about eighteen miles square. Yet so vast is this mountain that an extensive part of it is outside the Park boundaries. Its outline is intensified by the extraordinary make-up of black and white which characterizes it. The upper half of it is strangely white with masses of snow and ice. The lower slopes are purplish black with dense coniferous forests. Between the snow and the forest is a magnificent belt of wild flowers. Mount Rainier is a sleeping volcano. Beneath its shell of stone is a heart of fire. Upon this shell are snow-fields and glaciers, rushing rivers, a stupendous forest, wild-flower gardens in which millions of "bannered blossoms open their bosoms to the sun."