CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 



THE first Commencement in the history of Stan- 

 ford University took place June 15, 1892. On that 

 occasion we conferred the degree of Bachelor of 

 Arts on twenty-nine graduates, and that of Master 

 of Arts on nine more a relatively small group, 

 which, however, contained a high percentage of 

 scholarly and capable men and women. 



With the advent of vacation, Mrs. Jordan and I 

 ma d e a hasty trip to the Yosemite, entering the 

 valley from the southwest by way of Wawona, 

 where we passed the night and whence we visited 

 the Mariposa Big Trees, the most familiar though 

 not the largest of the several principal groups of the 

 majestic Sequoia washingtonia. 1 The others are 

 those of Calaveras, Tuolumne, and Tulare. One 

 equally fine grove, that of the Converse Basin in 

 Tulare County, fell before the lumbermen. 



These forests constitute the oldest living plant 

 representatives of an earlier geologic era. Originally 

 the genus had a wide distribution in the north 

 temperate zone, several fossil species having been 

 found in Tertiary deposits from Greece northward 

 through Europe and Asia, as well as in America, 

 where fossil remains exist in the Petrified Forest of 

 Arizona. But only in California has the Sequoia 

 maintained itself through the vicissitudes of later 

 periods. According to John Muir, special conditions 

 which prevailed at the beginning of the last glacial 



1 See footnote, Chapter xvi, page 393. 



