302 TKAVEL, ADVEXTUKE, AIs T D SPORT. 



been lately planted by the hand of man, is known 

 to exist out of the Calaveras and Mariposa valleys. 

 They have never spread from their quiet nooks in 

 the Sierra Nevada, and have remained hidden in 

 its recesses for hundreds, perchance thousands, of 

 years, until discovered in the manner related. 



We turned out early next morning into the fresh 

 frosty air, and after breakfast wandered about the 

 grove for several hours, amid a scene of wonders, the 

 mere description of which we should have laughed 

 at as a traveller's tale. There are about one hundred 

 trees of this species, of every age and size, inter- 

 mingled with various kinds of pines, yews, and 

 deciduous shrubs, and all standing within an area of 

 about fifty acres. 



The younger ones are singularly graceful and hand- 

 some, but those of mature growth a few thousand 

 years old perhaps are a little withered at the top. 

 The enormous trunks are bare and branchless for 

 from 100 to 130 feet, and the boughs seem small in 

 proportion to the central stem. 



The effect of the mighty columns rising thickly 

 round, and towering on high, some burnt hollow, in 

 whose cavities a company of soldiers might almost 

 find shelter ; others uninjured, solid and massive, the 

 largest and the oldest of living organisms on earth, 

 monuments of ages past, when there were giants in 

 the land, is almost awesome. The great sugar-pines 

 of 300 feet high, and 10 or 12 feet diameter, kings 



