And there was something
satisfactory in the sight of that great mountain that enclosed us
to the north: whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its
topmost pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; or
whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp growing,
trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue.
The tangled, woody, and almost trackless foot-hills that enclose
the valley, shutting it off from Sonoma on the west, and from Yolo
on the east--rough as they were in outline, dug out by winter
streams, crowned by cliffy bluffs and nodding pine trees--wore
dwarfed into satellites by the bulk and bearing of Mount Saint
Helena. She over-towered them by two-thirds of her own stature.
She excelled them by the boldness of her profile. Her great bald
summit, clear of trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar,
rejected kinship with the dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser
hill-tops.
CHAPTER II--THE PETRIFIED FOREST
We drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in the afternoon.
The sun warmed me to the heart. A broad, cool wind streamed
pauselessly down the valley, laden with perfume. Up at the top
stood Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-
fringed spurs, and radiating warmth. Once we saw it framed in a
grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line and
colour a finished composition.
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