SCENERY. 149 



often falls to a great depth so high up on the Sierra Nevada. 

 The trees, in some places, grow very near together ; in others, 

 they are comparatively far apart ; and occasionally two or 

 three will be seen which are united at the ground, although 

 they may have been twenty or thirty feet apart when they 

 sprouted. The Tuolumne Big Tree Grove, on the wagon road 

 from Big Oak Flat to Yosemite, has two dozen Sierra sequoias, 

 most of them ten feet or less in diameter, but one of them 

 about twenty-five. ' It is one of the smallest and least impos- 

 ing. 



A wagon road 'projected to run from Coulterville, passes 

 through the Merced Grove, a few miles west of Yosemite Val- 

 ley. 



The State Grove, in Mariposa County, is fifteen miles south 

 of Yosemite, and has been given by Congress to California 

 for a public pleasure resort. It has four hundred and twenty- 

 seven trees, including one hundred and thirty-four over fifteen 

 feet in diameter, eighteen over twenty-five feet, and three over 

 thirty-three feet. ' 



110. Mountain Peaks. Mount Diablo, or as the Spaniards 

 and many others call it, Monte Diablo, thirty miles eastward 

 from San Francisco, rising to a height of 3,856 feet, an iso- 

 lated cone in the midst of a fertile and populous country, offers 

 one of the most extensive and interesting views in the world. 

 It overlooks the San Francisco, 'San Pablo, and Suisun Bays; 

 the Santa Clara, San Ramon, San Joaquin, Sacramento, Suisun, 

 Napa, and Sonoma Valleys, and commands a view of the 

 Sierra Nevada for a length of two hundred and fifty miles from 

 Mt. Lassen to Mt. Whitney. The Sierra rises like an amphi- 

 theatre, and Diablo is the point from which it can be seen to 

 the best advantage. Though not so high as a score of other 

 peaks in the Coast Range, nor half so high as a hundred in the 

 Sierra, it is familiar to, and is seen every clear day by more 

 people than any other mountain in California. It commands a 

 view of an area of 40,000 square miles of land as much as the 



