XXXI] WASHINGTON TO SAN FRANCISCO 165 



into the trunk at six feet from the ground with long pump- 

 augers from each side, so as to meet in the centre. The first 

 fourteen feet was then cut into sections, and one supplied to 

 each of the older States. The rest remains as it fell, and can 

 be walked on to a distance of about two hundred and ten feet 

 from the stump, and here it is still six feet in diameter. To 

 examine this wonderful wreck of the grandest tree then living 

 on our globe is most impressive. The rings on the stump of 

 this tree have been very carefully counted by Professor Brad- 

 ley, of the University of California, and were found to be 1240, 

 which no doubt gives the age of the tree very accurately, as 

 the winters are here severe, and the season of growth very 

 well marked. 



On reaching Stockton, on Saturday evening, I found a 

 letter from Senator Leland Stanford, one of the Californian 

 millionaires whom I had met at Washington, inviting me to 

 visit him at his country house at Menlo Park on the following 

 Monday. Senator Stanford's father was a large farmer near 

 Albany, New York State, who was also the first railroad 

 contractor in America. Up to twenty years of age he had 

 lived and worked for his father. He then became a lawyer, 

 and when his studies were completed, went to Wisconsin to 

 practise. A few years later he removed to California, where 

 he had several brothers who were merchants, and after keep- 

 ing a store of his own, and thus acquiring business knowledge, 

 he joined them. In 1861 he became Governor of California 

 and President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, of 

 which he was one of the founders, and by means of which, 

 with the large State and Union subsidies to help its con- 

 struction and the enormous grants of land which became of 

 value through the making of the railroad, he acquired his 

 great fortune of five or six millions sterling. 



When I met him and Mrs. Stanford in Washington, 

 through the introduction of Mrs. Beecher Hooker, it was as 

 a spiritualist, and to talk about spiritualism. Their only son, 

 a youth of sixteen, had died three years before at Florence, 

 and they both assured me that they had since had long- 

 continued intercourse through several different mediums, and 



