Above, the mighty Sacramento River has its source in a little spring,
almost touching the stars--so emblematical of our human life, which
begins in the infinite on high; is enveloped in a dust of earth;
expands in its evolution into the angel back into the eternity from
whence it came; for science reveals that the springs come from the
clouds as dew and rain, run their courses, and by evaporation are
taken back into their first home in the vapors of the heavens.
There are enormous log-shoots seeming like Jacob's ladder to reach
from earth to heaven, and in which, the giants of the vast mountain
forests are carried by water with almost lightning speed to the mills
on the river; there the splendid snow-covered dome of Shasta gleams
above the clouds like the great white throne described by St. John in
Revelation.
Now come glimpses of little green valleys; here and there, a few small
houses and flocks of sheep show that these cases are peopled "far from
the maddening crowd's ignoble strife."
These vast solitudes of forests are very impressive and solemn as
the day of judgment; giant fir-trees, pines and spruces, beautifully
clothed in perpetual green even to the lower dead limbs which nature
has covered with a verdure of moss--like our dead hopes, blasted
by the fires of adversity but made radiant by the fore-gleams of
immortality. There the bright mistletoe is suspended from dead
tree-tops, like beauteous crowns adorning the heads of those who have
died rather than surrender to the low and base; there deep canyons,
brilliant with the diamonds made by the sun from the scintillating
drops from dashing torrents--so from the unseen heights come the dews
of heaven to refresh those who walk by faith and not by sight "looking
not at the things seen which are temporal, but at the things not seen
which are eternal.
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