The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts¹ 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 aisles⁴, still seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed. Light and color fled upwards⁵. The dark interlaced treetops, that had all day made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their lost spires⁶ glittered, faded, and went utterly⁷ out. A weird⁸ twilight⁹ that did not come from the outer world, but seemed born of the wood itself, slowly filled and possessed¹⁰ the aisles. The straight, tall, colossal¹¹ 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 vaults¹² had neither coldness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant¹³ 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 solitude¹⁴ of a forgotten past.