My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

—2/8 MY LIFEburnt till sufficiently weakened to fall, and this particulartree had been so burnt about forty yearsbefore.While staying with my brother inStockton, Cal.,I went with him and his daughter to spend a fewdays in the Yosemite Valley. The journey theretwo hours by rail and two days by coach—was veryinteresting, but often terribly dusty. The first daywe were driving for nine hours in the foothills, amongold mining camps with their ruined sheds andreservoirs and great gravel-heaps, now being graduallyovergrown by young pines and shrubs. Here andthere we passed through bits of forest with tall pinesand shrubby undergrowth, but generally the countrywas bare of fine trees, scraggy, but burnt up, and theroads insufferably dusty. At 9 p.m. we reachedPriest's (two thousand five hundred feet elevation),where we had supper, bed, and breakfast.Next day was much more enjoyable. The roadwas wonderfully varied, always going up or down,diving into deep wooded valleys with clear and rapidstreams, then up the slope, winding round spurs,crossing ridges, and down again into valleys, butalways mounting higher and higher. And as we gotdeeper into the sierra, the vegetation continuallychanged, the pines became finer both in form, size,and beauty. At about three thousand feet we firstsaw the beautiful Douglas fir, and the cedar {Libocedrtisdecurrens), both common in our gardens ; then stillhigher there were silver firs and the fine Picea nobilis,as well as a few of the Big Trees {Sequoia gigantea),the road being cut right through the middle of one ofthese (at about five thousand eight hundred feet).From the summit we descended towards the valley,and then down a steep zigzag road, with the beautiful