Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence.

In calm, sun-days the Sugar Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without moving a leaf.
[Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.] On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or dead as it does over a glacier boulder.

Some are undoubtedly over 2000 years old.

All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all.

Gaps two or three hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old backwoods.