s magnitude was to surround it on horseback,
passing around in single file, the head of one horse to the tail of
another. It called into requisition twenty-five horses out of the
twenty-eight in our party to complete the measurement. This is not
considered strictly correct, mathematically speaking, but it indicates
the size of the tree by _horse measurement_.

I had prepared myself with a good-sized string, and, with the help of
a friend, made close calculation four feet from the ground, and found
it to be ninety-three feet, giving a diameter of thirty-one feet. This
tree has a limb one hundred feet from the ground that is six feet in
diameter. These trees stand around us in quiet grandeur, but to write
of one is to write of many, hence the reader must not be wearied with
a notice of each. Pluto's Chimney is a hollow tree, standing upright,
into which several of us rode on horseback. Yonder is another that had
fallen in some past age, and sixty feet or more of it had burned from
the root upward, and then towards the top had burned in two, leaving a
barrel-shaped or hollow part of the trunk some fifty feet in length.
Through this we all rode without any inconvenience. I have understood
that several have ridden abreast through it, which I do not think
improbable.

This completed our tour among these forest giants. There are two
groves--and, properly speaking, but two--of these _Sequoia gigantea_,
the Mariposa and Calaveras groves. The first is about twenty miles south
of Yosemite Valley, perhaps a little more, while the latter is some
fifty miles northwest of the valley. Thus it will be seen that they are
not, as many suppose, in the great Yosemite Valley.

The big trees of California, not of this species, however, are not
confined to these two groves. Many of the noted redwood species
(_Sequoia sempervirens_) used to grow back of Santa Cruz, many of which
are standing yet that were very great in size. We once upon a time, with
five others, rode into one of these during a storm. The butt was hollow,
and large enough to hold at least twelve men on horseback, and was not
less than two hundred and fifty feet in height.

THE CHINESE QUARTER IN SAN FRANCISCO.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

[We need not tell who Helen Hunt Jackson is. She is well known
to American readers both of verse and prose for her excellent
ability in both these fields of literature. Born in 1831, at
Amherst, Massachusetts, the dau