One of these trees, of nearly 200 feet, was ly in g
prostrate, and others had been hollowed out by the
Indians to give them shelter. The largest, the people
called “ Grizzly Giant,” after its namesake the grizzly
bear, which frequents these wild regions, and which is
a dangerous customer to meet. The age of the
Wellingtonia, like th a t of its brother in size, the Locust
tree of Trinidad, which is known to have obtained the
respectable circumference of eighty-four feet at the
base, and 192 feet in height, is counted by hundreds,
and according to some venturous writers, by thousands
of years, reports varying between two and four thousand.
I was under the impression that these Mariposa
Wellingtonice were the tallest specimens known, but on
reading Froude’s “Oceana,” I find that similar giant trees
exist at Fernshaw, some seventy miles from Melbourne,
in a mountain glen near the rise of the Yarra river,
growing to a height of 350 to 400 feet, one even
measuring 460 feet, and forty-five feet in circumference.
During my walk back, I fell in with quantities of the
pretty snow plant (Scircodes sanguinea), resembling a
double hyacinth of vivid scarlet, without leaves and
short stalk, peeping out of the emerald green undergrowth.
From Mariposa to the Yosemite Yalley the road ran
through very beautiful country, and the greater portion
being up-hill, at times very steep, I made the trip
partly on horseback and partly' on foot; and after four
or five hours’ hard travelling, we had evidently attained
a very considerable height, for here we met with some
large patches of snow, which made it difficult to follow
the Indian trail, in fact, more than once we had to
retrace our steps. By the time we had reached the
top of the mountain ridge, at an altitude of 7,500 feet,
I felt very much exhausted, and was glad to find
shelter in a wretched wooden cabin, inhabited by a
professional hunter of the name of Perigault, who was
very profuse in relating some wonderful exploits of his
in the Sierra Nevada. The only provision procurable
consisted of some strips of dried bison, which an old
hag fried, and served along with a black bottle containing
some awful concoction, of spirits. I was too
tired and hungry to inquire into the origin of either
meat or drink. Still, I felt I had never tasted anything
so vile. There is another mode of preserving the
flesh of bison the Indians are very fond of, namely,
having dried it in the sun till it becomes black and hard,
it is pounded with the fat of the animal, and converted
into Pemmican, a nourishing food, which will keep for
years. After half an hour’s rest I continued my ride,
leaving the Glacier point a thousand feet above, and
rapidly descended into the valley. The scenery