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

28oMY LIFEsleep on the way. I stayed three days, examiningand measuring the trees, collecting flowers, and walkingone day to the much larger south grove six milesoff, where there are said to be over a thousand fullgrowntrees. The walk was very interesting, over hilland valley, through forest all the way, except onesmall clearing. At a small rocky stream I found thelarge Saxifraga pdtata growing in crevices of rocksjust under water, and I passed numbers of fineexamples of all the chief pines, firs, and cypresses.At the grove there were numbers of very fine trees,but none quite so large as the largest in the CalaverasGrove, Many of them have names. "Agassiz" isthirty-three feet wide at base, and has an enormoushole burnt in it eighteen feet wide and the samedepth, and extending upwards ninety feet like a largecavern; yet the tree is in vigorous growth. TheSequoias are here thickly scattered among other pinesand firs, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups offive or six together. There are many twin treesgrowing as a single stem up to twenty or thirty feet,and then dividing. But the chief feature of thisgrove is the abundance of trees to be seen in everydirection, of large or moderate size, and with clean,straight stems showing the brilliant orange-brown tintand silky or plush-like glossy surface, characteristicof the bark of this noble tree when in full health andvigorous growth. In no forest that I am acquaintedwith is there any tree with so beautiful a bark or withone so thick and elastic.In the chapter on " Flowers and Forests of theFar West " (in my " Studies "), I have given asummary of the chief facts known about these trees,with particulars of their dimensions and probable age.I need not, therefore, repeat these particulars here.