t was all most exciting,
and we enjoyed every moment of the ride through the most beautiful
forest in the world. The ordinary trees of this forest would be
gigantic in any other part of the globe (six to seven feet in
diameter), but when we "struck" the first big tree I almost fell off my
horse with wonder. This tree was four hundred feet high and about
thirty-three feet in diameter. I knew beforehand that they were
monstrously big and high, but I did not know that they had such a
beautiful color--a red cinnamon. The first branch was a hundred feet
from the ground and six feet in diameter. In the Mariposa Grove there
are three hundred of these giants. In one tree, which was partly
hollowed out by fire, we seven people sat on horseback. That gives you
an idea! We saw a carriage full of travelers drive through a hollow
fallen tree as if through a tunnel. One must see these to imagine what
they are like. The "Old Giant" was the most imposing and grandest of
them all--thirty-seven feet in diameter, and high! One got dizzy trying
to see the top, which is really not the top. The winds up there do not
allow themselves to be encroached upon, and the young shoots are nipped
off as soon as they appear.

We had to sleep at Mariposa Grove (Clark's Hotel) in the evening. We
talked of nothing else but the wonderful trees until some one asked me
if I was too tired to sing. I was willing enough. There was, in fact, a
piano in the parlor--an old, yellow-keyed out-of-tune Chickering which
had seen better days somewhere--and a spiral stool very rickety on its
legs. There were wax flowers under dusty globes. Though no one of our
party cared much for music, and the surroundings were anything but
inspiring, still I longed to sing.

I sang a lot of things, and my tired audience no doubt thought I had
done enough and ought to go to bed, which I did, after having received
their thanks and seeing the heads of the servant-girls and various
other heads and forms disappear from the veranda.

_May 25th._

We left Clark's early in the morning without having made a second trip
to the trees, as we wanted to, but the time was nearing when John
Cadwalader was to leave us for his trip around the world. We were
already too late as it was, and if anything should happen like another
Gulliver across our downward path he would lose the steamer which
starts from San Francisco in three days. I sat in the favorite seat
next to the driver and waved a long f