674 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1877, 
over the pass into Cottonwood Caiion; down that, 
and back here, in time to go on that afternoon to 
Ogden and thence west to Riana, thence Virginia City, 
Carson, etc., and the Groves, Yosemite, etc. We 
shall see, and I will let you know. 
Mrs. Gray is out with the party, to see things, and 
Brigham Young. J will not. She would be sending 
love to Mrs. Engelmann and you, if here. She is 
very well, and enjoying this travel hugely. I am 
strong, and ever yours, 
Asa GRay. 
Yosrmire, Cau., August 21, 1877. 
. So long without touching a pen I can hardly 
hie letters. “Did I write to you from Utah? We 
left direct route at Reno, went to Carson City, with 
détour to Virginia City, — queer place; first got hold 
of Pinus monophylla, but there no fruit. 
Hired conveyance to take us from Carson right 
across the Sierra Nevada via Silver Mountain to Cala- 
veras Big Trees,—a good way for studying the tree 
vegetation, and other, only all other is mainly de- 
stroyed by drought and sheep, and the ground is pow- 
dered dust. As we struck Pinus ponderosa we were 
struck with more tapering shape of tree and longer 
leaves than that of Colorado, so different, and soon, as 
we rose, by the immense size of cone, ovate, six inches 
long, very heavy. The big-cone ponderosa has less 
bright green and rather longer leaves, and cones look- 
ing quite different from the ordinary Californian pon- 
derosa, which grows intermixed, except at the higher 
levels, and has long but narrow cones. Losing the 
big one as we descended to Calaveras, we come on it 
again in the Sierra here, when we get up to seven 
