tating his
companion, and did not show himself particularly discontented at the
work. Godfrey thought, and with reason, that from these fruits there
could be made a fermented liquor which would be preferable to the water.

The march was resumed. Soon the end of the sand dunes died away in a
prairie traversed by a small stream. This was the one Godfrey had seen
from the top of the cone. The large trees appeared further on, and after
a journey of about nine miles the two explorers, tired enough by their
four hours' walk, reached them a few minutes after noon.

The site was well worth the trouble of looking at, of visiting, and,
doubtless, occupying.

On the edge of a vast prairie, dotted with manzanilla bushes and other
shrubs, there rose a score of gigantic trees which could have even borne
comparison with the same species in the forests of California. They were
arranged in a semi-circle. The carpet of verdure, which stretched at
their feet, after bordering the stream for some hundreds of feet, gave
place to a long beach, covered with rocks, and shingle, and sea-weed,
which ran out into the water in a narrowing point to the north.

These "big trees," as they are commonly called in Western America,
belong to the genus _Sequoia_, and are conifers of the fir family. If
you ask the English for their distinguishing name, you will be told
"Wellingtonias," if you ask the Americans they will reply
"Washingtonias." But whether they recall the memory of the phlegmatic
victor of Waterloo, or of the illustrious founder of the American
Republic, they are the hugest products known of the Californian and
Nevadan floras. In certain districts in these states there are entire
forests of these trees, such as the groups at Mariposa and Calaveras,
some of the trees of which measure from sixty to eighty feet in
circumference, and some 300 feet in height. One of them, at the entrance
of the Yosemite Valley, is quite 100 feet round. When living--for it is
now prostrate--its first branches could have overtopped Strasburg
Cathedral, or, in other words, were above eighty feet from the ground.

Besides this tree there are "The Mother of the Forest," "The Beauty of
the Forest," "The Hut of the Pioneer," "The Two Sentinels," "General
Grant," "Miss Emma," "Miss Mary," "Brigham Young and his Wife," "The
Three Graces," "The Bear," &c., &c.; all of them veritable vegetable
phenomena. One of the trees has been sawn across at its base, and on it
there