Fili and Kili were at the top of a tall larch like an enormous Christmas tree. Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, and Gloin were more comfortable in a huge pine with regular branches sticking out at intervals like the spokes of a wheel. Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Thorin were in another. Dwalin and Balin had swarmed up a tall slender fir with few branches and were trying to find a place to sit in the greenery of the topmost boughs. Gandalf, who was a good deal taller than the others, had found a tree into which they could not climb, a large pine standing at the very edge of the glade. He was quite hidden in
...more
From Carlo Collodi's "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1883):
"After running almost ten miles, Pinocchio couldn’t take anymore. So, feeling he was done for, he climbed the trunk of a very tall pine tree and seated himself at the very top of the branches. The murderers too tried to climb the tree, but after they got halfway up the trunk, they slipped and, as they fell back down onto the ground, skinned their hands and feet. But they didn’t let that defeat them. Instead, they gathered some dry wood to make a bundle at the foot of the tree and set it on fire. In no time at all, the pine tree started to burn and then to blaze, like a candle stirred by the wind."
(translation by John Hooper and Anna Kraczyna)