so dense as to prevent the traveler from sauntering where he will.
The yellow or silver-pine (P. ponderosa)) ranks second among the Sierra pines as a lumber tree, and almost rivals the sugar-pine in size and nobleness of port. Seen in winter laden with snow, or in summer when its brown staminate clusters hang thick among the shimmering needles, and its large purple cones are ripening in the mellow light it forms a magnificent spectacle. But it is during cloudless wind-storms that these colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and when the sun shines on them at the required angle they glow as if every needle were burnished silver. The fall of sunlight on the royal crown of a palm as it breaks upon the glossy leaves in long lance-like rays, is a truly glorious spectacle, like a mountain stream breaking upon boulders. But still more impressively beautiful is the fall of the light on these lofty silver-pines; it seems beaten to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute, glinting sparkles that hide all the green foliage and make one glowing mass of white radiance.
The famous big tree, sequoia gigantea, extends from the well-known Calaveras Grove to the head of Deer Creek, near the big bend of Kern River, a distance of nearly two hundred miles, at an elevation of about five to eight thousand feet above the sea. From the Calaveras to the south fork of Kings River it occurs only in small, isolated groves among the pines and firs, and is so sparsely and irregularly distributed that this portion of the belt is not easily traced. Two gaps nearly forty miles wide occur in it between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, and between those of the Fresno and Kings rivers. From Kings River the belt extends across the broad, rugged basins of the Kaweah and Tule rivers to its southern limit on the head of Deer Creek, interrupted only by deep, rocky canyons, the width of this portion of the belt being from three to nearly eight miles, and the length seventy miles.
In the northern groves few young trees or saplings are found promising to take the places of the failing old ones, giving rise to the notion that the species is doomed to speedy extinction, as being only an expiring remnant of an ancient flora once far more widely distributed. But careful study has shown that the Big Tree has never formed a greater part of these post-glacial forests than it does at the present time, however widely it may have been distributed in the pre-glacial forests.
To the southward of Kings River no tree in the woods appears to be more firmly established in accordance with climate and soil. For many miles they occupy the surface almost exclusively, growing vigorously over all kinds of ground--on rocky ledges, along water-courses, and on moraines and avalanche detritus, coarse or fine, while a multitude of thrifty seedlings and saplings, and middle-aged trees are growing up about the old giants, ready to take their places and maintain the race in all its grandeur. But, unfortunately, fire and the axe are already busy on many of the more accessible portions of the belt, spreading sure destruction, and unless protective measures be speedily adopted and applied, in a few decades all that may be left of this noblest of trees will be a few hacked and scarred monuments.
There is something wonderfully telling and impressive about sequoia, even when beheld at a distance of several miles. Its dense foliage and smoothly rounded outlines enable us to recognize it in any company, and when one of the oldest patriarchs attains full stature on some commanding ridge it seems the very god of the woods. Full-grown specimens are about fifteen and twenty feet in diameter, measured above the swelling base, and about two hundred and fifty feet high. Trees twenty-five feet in diameter are not rare, and one is now and then found thirty feet in diameter, but very rarely any larger. The grandest specimen that I have measured is a stump about ninety feet high, which is thirty-five feet, eight inches in diameter, measured inside the bark, above the bulging base. The wood is dull purplish red in color, easily worked, and very enduring; lasting, even when exposed to the weather, for hundreds of years. Fortunate old trees that have passed their three thousandth birthday, without injury from lightning, present a mound-like summit of warm, yellow-green foliage, and their colossal shafts are of a beautiful brown color, exquisitely tapered, and branchless to a height of a hundred and fifty feet. Younger trees have darker, bluish foliage, and shoot up with tops comparatively sharp.
The Calaveras Grove is the northmost, and was discovered first of all. It may be visited by tourists to the valley by way of Milton, Murphy's Camp, and Big Oak Flat, though it is not on any of the roads leading directly to Yosemite. The flowery leafiness of this grove is one of its most charming characteristics. Lilies, violets, and trientales cover the ground along the bottom of the glen, and carpets of the blooming chamoebatia are outspread where the light falls free, forming a beautiful ground of color for the brown sequoia trunks; while rubus, dogwood, hazel, maple, and several species of ceanothus make a shaggy underbrush in the cooler shadows.
Most of the larger trees have been slightly disfigured by names carved and painted on marble tablets and countersunk into the bark, and two have been killed; one of them by removing the bark in sections to be set up in the London exposition, the other felled because somebody wanted to dance upon the stump, and the noble monarch now lies a mass of ruins. With these exceptions, the grove has been well preserved, that is, let alone, the underbrush and smaller plants in particular retaining their primitive wildness unimpaired.
travelers to the valley, by way of Big Oak Flat, pass through the small Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees on the dividing ridge between the waters of the Tuolomne and Merced rivers. Those who take the Raymond route may visit the Mariposa and Fresno groves, by stopping over a day at Clark's Station. While those who choose the Coulterville route will pass through the Big Tree Grove of the Merced. These groves on the different routes are not equally interesting to most people, but all contain giants that are worthy representatives of their race. The traveler, however, who would see sequoia gigantea in all its glory, must visit the forests of the Kaweah and Tule rivers.
From the Big Tree groves the roads conduct for a few hours through forests of sugar-pine and silver-fir which become yet more beautiful and interesting as you advance. Then, looking and admiring as best you can while being rapidly whirled onward through dust in a coach drawn by six horses, Yosemite Valley comes suddenly into view, and in an hour you are down the nerve-trying grade--out of the shadows from the noblest forest trees in the world, into the midst of the grandest rocks and waterfalls. Riding up the valley through stately groves, and around the margin of emerald meadows, the lofty walls on either hand looming into the sky with their marvelous wealth of architectural forms, bathed in the purple light of evening, and beating time to the tones of the falls, the whole seems a work of enchantment.
The first object to catch the eye on entering the valley is the Bridal Veil Fall, 900 feet in height--a soft, delicate-looking thing of beauty, as seen at a distance of a mile or two, pouring its snowy folds and irised spray with the utmost gentleness, while the wind sways it from side to side like a downy cloud. But on a near approach it manifests the speed and wild ungovernable energy of an avalanche.
On the other side of the valley, almost immediately opposite the Bridal Veil, there is another fine fall, considerably wider at times when the snow is melting, and more than a thousand feet in height from the brow of the cliff where it first leaps free into the air to the head of a rocky talus, where it strikes and is broken up into ragged cascades. It is called the Ribbon Fall or Virgin's Tears. During the spring floods it is a magnificent object, but the suffocating blasts of spray that fill the recess in the wall which it occupies prevent a near approach. In autumn however, when its feeble current falls in a shower it may then pass for tears with the sentimental onlooker fresh from a visit to the Bridal Veil. Just beyond these two falls are the grand outstanding masses of the Cathedral and El Capitan rocks, 2,700 and 3,300 feet in height, the latter making a most imposing display of sheer, enduring, unflinching granite, by many regarded as the most sublime feature of the valley. Then the Three Brothers present themselves--a vast mountain building of three gables, the highest 4,000 feet above the valley floor. On the south side, opposite the Brothers, the Sentinel Rock, 3,000 feet high, stands forward in bold relief like some special monument, gracefully adorned with a beautiful cascade on either side and fringed at its base with spruce and pine.
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