IN CALIFORNIA 161 



The first white man to see the Big Trees and ap- 

 preciate their grandeur, was probably General John 

 Bidwell, a famous character in the American history 

 of California, whose Eancho Chico, near Sacra- 

 mento, is among the best known in the State. Bid- 

 will, then a young man, crossed the Sierra Nevada 

 with a party of emigrants in 1841, bound for Sut- 

 ter's Fort on the Sacramento Eiver. It was a cruel 

 passage through snow and brush and rocky wilder- 

 ness, but with it all Bidwell managed to notice some 

 trees of dimensions nothing less than colossal. As 

 he and his half starved companions were at the time 

 particularly interested in dodging Indians and find- 

 ing the shortest cut to civilization, he could not stop 

 to make observations of a scientific nature, but the 

 memory of those arboreal giants remained with him. 

 Two or three years later, when Colonel Fremont 

 stopped at Sutter's on his way south, Bidwell told 

 him of these remarkable trees ; but Fremont, doubt- 

 less hardened by other "tall stories," gave this no 

 heed; so it was reserved to others to spread the 

 news. In 1852, if we are to accept the statement of 

 another California pioneer, James M. Hutchings 

 whose book "In the Heart of the Sierras" abounds 

 in reminiscences of the Central California moun- 

 tains in the days of the early American occupation 

 a hunter by the name of A. T. Dowd accidentally 



