The few shafts of
sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in
unfathomable depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the
enormous trunks of the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast
columns, and the dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the
echoless aisles, still seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day.
But even this soon passed. Light and color fled upwards. The dark,
interlaced tree-tops, that had all day made an impenetrable shade,
broke into fire here and there; their lost spires glittered, faded, and
went utterly out. A weird twilight that did not come from an outer
world, but seemed born of the wood itself, slowly filled and possessed
the aisles. The straight, tall, colossal trunks rose dimly like columns
of upward smoke. The few fallen trees stretched their huge length into
obscurity, and seemed to lie on shadowy trestles. The strange breath
that filled these mysterious vaults had neither coldness nor moisture;
a dry, fragrant dust arose from the noiseless foot that trod their
bark-strewn floor; the aisles might have been tombs, the fallen trees,
enormous mummies; the silence, the solitude of the forgotten past.
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