WASHINGTON TO SAN FRANCISCO 159 



feet in diameter, or quite as large as the very largest of the 

 more celebrated Big Trees, the Sequoia gigantea. The doc- 

 tor has searched all over these hills, and this was the largest 

 stump he had found, though there were numbers between 

 twenty and thirty feet. The tree derives its botanical name, 

 sempervirens, from the peculiar habit of producing young 

 trees from the burnt or decayed roots of the old trees. These 

 enormous trees being too large to cut down were burnt till 

 sufficiently weakened to fall, and this particular tree had been 

 so burnt about forty years before. We lunched inside this 

 ancient mammoth tree, and saw several others on the way 

 back. Among the few plants I saw in flower were the D {pla- 

 nts ghitinosns, a favourite in our greenhouses. 



The next day we went to Stockton, where my brother 

 lived, and found his wife, whom I had last seen as a little 

 girl, two of his sons and his only daughter, as well as two of 

 his grandchildren. I gave one lecture in Stockton — a com- 

 bination of Darwinism and Oceanic Islands — but only had a 

 small audience. I made the acquaintance here of Mr. Free- 

 man, a friend of my brother, who had called on me at Go- 

 dalming with his wife two or three years before, on their 

 way round the world on a pleasure tour. He told me then 

 that he had had good luck in his business, had made a few 

 thousand dollars, his only daughter was just married, so he 

 thought that he and his wife might as well see the world. 

 On asking him how he had made the money, he said, ' By 

 handling mules/' and this enigmatic profession was explained 

 as buying them in some of the Western States, where they 

 are largely bred, and selling them in Nevada, where there 

 was a great demand for them at the mines, etc. Now he 

 had taken to store-keeping, while his wife kept poultry, and 

 as soon as they had made some more money they meant to 

 go another tour. They had been through Central Europe 

 and Italy, the Holy Land, India, China, Japan, and the Sand- 

 wich Islands, and had brought home many ornaments and 

 fabrics from the East; but what Mrs. Freeman most valued 

 were some bottles of water which she had filled with her own 

 hands from the River Jordan. This water she had given to 



