Every winter the High Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in glorious abundance, and even the foot-hills are at times whitened.

The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to within 9500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet.

After this discovery, I made excursions over all the High Sierra, pushing my explorations summer after summer, and discovered that what at first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow-fields, wore in great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the summit-peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors.

Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake.

Close up under the shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the eastern slope of the range, lies one of the iciest of these glacier lakes at an elevation of about 12,000 feet.

After the lakes on the High Sierra come the glacier meadows.

Glacier meadows abound throughout all the alpine and subalpine regions of the Sierra in still greater numbers than the lakes.

THE FORESTS The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most beautiful in the world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most interesting and accessible of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they are not well known.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]

The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most distinguishing characteristics.

Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear noonday.

All the forests of the Sierra are growing upon moraines.

Many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered nooks and crevices, but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky desert.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.

It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines of climate.

Retinospora obtusa, Siebold, the glory of Eastern forests, is called "Fu-si-no-ki" (tree of the sun) by the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.

The old is the most original and independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is the most regular,a strict follower of coniferous fashions,slim, erect, with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering in outline and terminating in a spiry point.

YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE (Pinus ponderosa) The Silver, or Yellow, Pine, as it is commonly called, ranks second among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the Sugar Pine in stature and nobleness of port.

Because of its superior powers of enduring variations of climate and soil, it has a more extensive range than any other conifer growing on the Sierra.

In the autumn of 1893 a police force of forty men, under the command of Captain E.A.W. Lendy, Inspector-General of Police, in Sierra Leone, was sent to open a road to Koinadugu, which, owing to the war with the Sofas, had been closed.

SEE Martinez Sierra, Gregorio.

SIERRA, GREGORIO MARTINEZ.

SEE Martinez Sierra, Gregorio.

SEE BRUECKNER, LEO J. FARQUHAR, FRANCIS P. Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.

MCGLASHAN, C. F. History of the Donner party; a tragedy of the Sierra.