78 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



greatly, and the Yosemite cascade becomes a mere trickling 

 brooklet. 



There are a couple of houses for the accommodation of trav- 

 ellers, but the fashionable way with those who visit the valley 

 is to go in parties on horseback, provided with pack animals, 

 carrying tent, bedding, provisions, and cooking utensils along. 

 Ladies dress in the Bloomer style. Wagons do not come 

 within forty miles of the valley. There are some quail and 

 hare, but no larger game. The dell was inhabited by a war- 

 like tribe of red men eight years ago, but they undertook to 

 fight with the Avhites and have all been cut off, and scarcely a 

 sign of their existence remains, save here and there the dim 

 vestio-e of a trail. 



The valley was first entered by white men in 1848, if rumor 

 be true, and afterward in 1850 and 1852, but its wonders at- 

 tracted no notice from the press, and were unknown to the 

 public until 1854, and did not attract many visitors until 1856. 



§ 55. 3Iainmoth Tree G-roves. — The next great natural 

 wonder of California is the big-tree grove in Mariposa 

 county. It is a grove of four hundred and twenty-seven 

 mammoth trees, the largest of which are thirty feet in diame- 

 ter and three hundred feet in height. This is the largest spe- 

 cies of tree in the world, and this is the largest grove of them. 

 The grove is about twenty miles from the Yosemite valley, 

 and thirty miles southeast of the town of Mariposa, and about 

 four thousand five hundred feet high on the western slope of 

 the Sierra Nevada. When the traveller enters the grove he 

 sees on all sides of him numerous giants of the forest, varying 

 from twenty to thirty-four feet in diameter, and from two him- 

 dred and seventy-five to three hundred and twenty-five feet 

 in heio-ht. Sublime sight ! Each tree fills him with wonder 

 as he looks at it. A glance at one of these immense trunks 

 conveys a new idea of the magnificence of nature ; '' glorious 

 as the universe on creation's morn" is this grove. The Titans 

 and the gods fought with such tree-trunks as these for clubs, 

 when the attempt was made to carry heaven by storm, as re- 



