300 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



the way across the broad rough basins of the 

 Kaweah and Tule rivers Sequoia ruled supreme, 

 forming an almost continuous belt for sixty or 

 seventy miles, waving up and down in huge 

 massy mountain billows in compliance with the 

 grand glacier-ploughed topography. 



Day after day, from grove to grove, canon to 

 canon, I made a long, wavering way, terribly 

 rough in some places for Brownie, but cheery 

 for me, for Big Trees were seldom out of sight. 

 We crossed the rugged, picturesque basins of 

 Redwood Creek, the North Fork of the Kaweah, 

 and Marble Fork gloriously forested, and full of 

 beautiful cascades and falls, sheer and slanting, 

 infinitely varied with broad curly foam fleeces 

 and strips of embroidery in which the sunbeams 

 revel. Thence we climbed into the noble forest 

 on the Marble and Middle Fork Divide. After 

 a general exploration of the Kaweah basin, this 

 part of the Sequoia belt seemed to me the finest, 

 and I then named it " the Giant Forest." It ex- 

 tends, a magnificent growth of giants grouped in 

 pure temple groves, ranged in colonnades along 

 the sides of meadows, or scattered among the 

 other trees, from the granite headlands overlook- 

 ing the hot foothills and plains of the San Joaquin 

 back to within a few miles of the old glacier 

 fountains at an elevation of 5000 to 8400 feet 

 above the sea. 



When I entered this sublime wilderness the 



