212 ESSAYS. 
from two hundred to three hundred and twenty-five feet. And 
in reaching these wondrous trees you ride through miles of 
Sugar Pines, Yellow Pines, Spruces, and Firs, of such magnifi- 
cence in girth and height, that the Big Trees, when reached 
— astonishing as they are — seem not out of keeping with 
their surroundings. 
I cannot pretend to account for the extreme magnificence of 
this Sierra forest. Its rainfall is in winter, and of unknown 
but large amount. Doubtless most of it is in snow, of which 
fifty or sixty feet fall in some winters, and—different from 
the coast and from Oregon, where it falls as rain, and at a 
temperature which does not suspend vegetable action — here 
the winter must be complete cessation. But with such great 
snowfall the supply of moisture to the soil should be abun- 
dant and lasting. 
Then the Sierra — much loftier than the coast ranges, ris- 
ing from 7000 or 8000 to 11,000 and 14,000 feet — is refreshed 
in summer by the winds from the Pacific, from which it takes 
the last drops of available moisture ; and mountains of such 
altitude, to which moisture from whatever source or direction 
must necessarily be attracted, are always expected to support 
forests, —at least when not cut off from sea-winds by interposed 
chains of equal altitude. Trees such mountains will have. The 
only and the real wonder is, that the Sierra Nevada should rear 
such immense trees! 
Moreover, we shall see that this forest is rich and superb 
only in one line; that, beyond one favorite tribe, it is meagre 
enough. Such for situation, and extent, and surrounding con- 
ditions, are the two forests — the Atlantic and Pacifie — which 
are to be compared. 
In order to come to this comparison, I must refrain from all 
account of the intervening forest of the Rocky Mountains — 
only saying that it is comparatively poor in the size of its 
trees and the number of species; that few of its species are 
peculiar, and those mostly in the southern part, and of the 
Mexican plateau type; that they are common to the mountain 
chains which lie between, stretched north and south en echelon, 
all through that arid or desert region of Utah and Nevada, of 
