his meals,
he was so utterly careless about his beds. He would lie down anywhere on
any ground, rough or smooth, without taking pains even to remove cobbles
or sharp-angled rocks protruding through the grass or gravel, saying
that his own bones were as hard as any stones and could do him no harm.

His kindness to all Yosemite visitors and mountaineers was marvelously
constant and uniform. He was not a good business man, and in building an
extensive hotel and barns at Wawona, before the travel to Yosemite had
been greatly developed, he borrowed money, mortgaged his property and
lost it all.

Though not the first to see the Mariposa Big Tree grove, he was the
first to explore it, after he had heard from a prospector, who had
passed through the grove and who gave him the indefinite information,
that there were some wonderful big trees up there on the top of the
Wawona hill and that he believed they must be of the same kind that had
become so famous and well-known in the Calaveras grove farther north.
On this information, Galen Clark told me, he went up and thoroughly
explored the grove, counting the trees and measuring the largest, and
becoming familiar with it. He stated also that he had explored the
forest to the southward and had discovered the much larger Fresno grove
of about two square miles, six or seven miles distant from the Mariposa
grove. Unfortunately most of the Fresno grove has been cut and flumed
down to the railroad near Madera.

Mr. Clark was truly and literally a gentle-man. I never heard him utter
a hasty, angry, fault-finding word. His voice was uniformly pitched at a
rather low tone, perfectly even, although lances of his eyes and slight
intonations of his voice often indicated that something funny or mildly
sarcastic was coming, but upon the whole he was serious and industrious,
and, however deep and fun-provoking a story might be, he never indulged
in boisterous laughter.

He was very fond of scenery and once told me after I became acquainted
with him that he liked "nothing in the world better than climbing to the
top of a high ridge or mountain and looking off." He preferred the
mountain ridges and domes in the Yosemite regions on account of the
wealth and beauty of the forests. Often times he would take his rifle, a
few pounds of bacon, a few pound of flour, and a single blanket and go
off hunting, for no other reason than to explore and get acquainted with
the most beautiful points of view wi