ne of those half
tame bears came out to beg. We stopped the machine and I fed him some
candy. Then we parked, and went up to the hotel for dinner. When we came
back, we found he had mighty near clawed the back seat to pieces,--and
why do you suppose?--To get at a side of bacon we had stowed away in
there."

"Did he find it?"

"We never did."

"That reminds me of something I heard," laughed Norris. "Some friends of
mine in Sequoia left their lunch boxes in the machine while they went to
climb Moro Rock. When they came back they found a cub calmly sitting up
there behind the wheel, eating one lunch after another."

Pedro was in for moving their headquarters to a great hollow Big Tree,
the cavity in which was as large as a good sized room, with a Gothic sort
of opening they could have made a door for. But the very next morning the
old prospector arrived with the train of pack-burros, and they were off.

"How do you explain the Sequoias, Mr. Norris? Will we find more of them?"
asked Pedro, with a last wistful backward glance.

"The Big Trees are by no means confined to Sequoia National Park and
other well known groves," said the Survey man. "The Sequoia gigantea is
to be found in scattered groves for a distance of 250 miles or more, up
and down the West slope of the Sierras, at altitudes just lower than that
of the belt of silver firs,--that is, anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 feet
above sea level. And in fact, south of Kings' River, the Sequoias stretch
in an almost unbroken forest for seventy miles. Nor are they all of the
proportions so often cited, where a man standing at their base looks like
a fly on the wall by comparison with these prehistoric giants. Nor did
they all get their start in life 4,000 years ago. There are young trees
in plenty, saplings and seedlings, who will doubtless reach the
patriarchal stage some 4,000 years hence. On what kind of earth will they
look then? On what stage in the evolution of civilization? Will another
ice age have re-carved these mountains? And how will man have learned to
protect himself from the added severity of those winters?"

"It certainly gives one something to think about," mused Pedro. "It is
only in these younger specimens that you can see what a graceful tree it
is!" He glanced from a feathery Big Tree youngster of perhaps 500
summers, with its slender branches drooping in blue-green plumes toward
the base, with purple-barked limbs out-thrust on the horizontal half w