THE TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 217 



immense number of bear tracks .everywhere in the dust of the 

 trails would go to show that these animals have profited by the 

 protection the National Park gives them. We were kept awake 

 one night by the barking of the dogs that had driven a large 

 one into a tree 50 yards from our tent. 



We "out-fitted" with horses at Camp Sierra, and set forth 

 with my cousin and two guides northwards, to spend a few days 

 in the King's River Canon. Shortly after leaving the Sequoias, 

 we found ourselves in pure forests of Abies magftifica, tall and 

 short-branched, with bark of a rich red and much furrowed — a 

 most picturesque tree, far surpassing Abies concolor in interest, 

 and never mixing with it. These Californian Abies, like the 

 Grandis, Nobilis, Amabilis, and Lasiocarpa of the north, are 

 almost worthless for timber, and are neglected by the lumber- 

 men. Our trail led past Alta Peaks and Twin Lakes — where 

 Finus Balfouria7ia and its almost exact counterpart Finns 

 aristata grow, " foxtail pine " as they are both called by the 

 mountaineers of the country — through many Alpine meadows, 

 where the lupines, geraniums, columbines, Mimulus, Ery- 

 throniums, and lilies were, some of them still blooming, the 

 seed-vessels of others showing how gay August had been in 

 these high places. Our highest point was a pass 9500 feet, 

 after v^^hich we rapidly dropped down to our camping-place in a 

 grove of pines. ' They were Finus contorta var. Murrayana, 

 and are, I believe, the largest in existence. I saw several 100 

 feet high, with trunks 5 feet in diameter. They are slow-growing 

 smooth-barked trees, with spiral trunks, the .wood extremely 

 hard, but no good to the lumbermen because of the twisted 

 grain. We had no tents with us, and found seven or eight 

 degrees of frost rather trying after the great heat of the low 

 ground we had left three days earlier. 



Next evening, after a long trail, we unsaddled our horses on 

 the fiat floor of the King's River Canon, at a point where the 

 opposite walls of the valley had narrowed to a mile apart. 

 These walls were absolutely sheer and 4000 feet high. These 

 deep canons, which are the most distinctive feature of the 

 Sierra Nevada Range, run up from the main valley of 

 California for 50 to 70 miles through the foothills almost to the 

 main ridge of the chain, and rivers run through each, the waters 

 of which form the Great San Joaquin. The greatest of these 

 canons is the Yosemite, 50 miles to the north. Others are the 



VOL. XXII. PART II. p 



