WASHINGTON TO SAN FRANCISCO 163 



and I passed numbers of fine trees of all the chief pines, firs, 

 and cypresses. At the grove there were numbers of very fine 

 trees, but none quite so large as the largest in the Calaveras 

 Grove. Many of them are named. " Agassiz " is thirty-three 

 feet wide at base, and has an enormous hole burnt in it eight- 

 een feet wide and the same depth, and extending upwards 

 ninety feet like a large cavern ; yet the tree is in vigorous 

 growth. The Sequoias are here thickly scattered among other 

 pines and firs, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups of five 

 or six together. There are many twin trees growing as a 

 single stem up to twenty or thirty feet, and then dividing. 

 But the chief feature of this grove is the abundance of trees 

 to be seen in every direction, of large or moderate size, and 

 with clean, straight stems showing the brilliant orange-brown 

 tint and silky or plush-like glossy surface, characteristic of 

 the bark of this noble tree when in full health and vigorous 

 growth. In no forest that I am acquainted with is there any 

 tree with so beautiful a bark or with one so thick and elastic. 

 In the chapter on " Flowers and Forests of the Far West " 

 (in my " Studies "), I have given a summary of the chief facts 

 known about these trees, with particulars of their dimensions 

 and probable age. I need not, therefore, repeat these par- 

 ticulars here. But of all the natural wonders I saw in Amer- 

 ica, nothing impressed me so much as these glorious trees. 

 Like Niagara, their majesty grows upon one by living among 

 them. The forests of which they form a part contain a num- 

 ber of the finest conifers in the world — trees that in Europe 

 or in any other northern forest would take the very first rank. 

 These grand pines are often from two hundred to two hundred 

 and fifty feet high, and seven or eight feet in diameter at five 

 feet above the ground, where they spread out to about ten feet. 

 Looked at alone, these are noble trees, and there is every 

 gradation of size up to these. But the Sequoias take a sud- 

 den leap, so that the average full-grown trees are twice this 

 diameter, and the largest three times the diameter of these 

 largest pines : so that when first found the accounts of the dis- 

 coveries were disbelieved. My brother told me an interesting 

 story of this discovery. The early miners used to keep a 



