size of Haydon's,
your picture is quite as likely to resemble Homunculus against an
average timber-tree as a large man against _Sequoia gigantea_. What our
artists did do was to get a capital transcript of the Big Trees'
color,--a beautifully bright cinnamon-brown, which gives peculiar gayety
to the forest, "making sunshine in the shady place"; also, their typical
figure, which is a very lofty, straight, and branchless trunk, crowned
almost at the summit by a mass of colossal gnarled boughs, slender plumy
fronds, delicate thin leaves, and smooth cones scarce larger than a
plover's egg. Perhaps the best idea of their figure may be obtained by
fancying an Italian stone-pine grown out of recollection.

Between all the ridges we had hitherto crossed, silvery streams leaped
down intensely cold through the granite chasms,--all of them fed from
the snow-peaks, and charmingly picturesque,--most of them good
trout-brooks, had we possessed time to try a throw; and now, on leaving
Clark's, we crossed the largest of these, a fork of the Merced which
flows through his valley. For twelve miles farther a series of
tremendous climbs tasked us and our beasts to the utmost, but brought us
quite _apropos_ at dinner-time to a lovely green meadow walled in on one
side by near snow-peaks. A small brook running through it speedily
furnished us with frogs enough for an _entree_. Between two and three in
the afternoon we set out upon the last stage of our pilgrimage. We were
now nearly on a plane with the top of the mighty precipices which wall
the Yo-Semite Valley, and for two hours longer found the trail easy,
save where it crossed the bogs of summit-level springs.

Immediately after leaving the meadow where we dined we plunged again
into the thick forest, where every now and then some splendid grouse or
the beautiful plume-crowned California quail went whirring away from
before our horses. Here and there a broad grizzly "sign" intersected our
trail. The tall purple deer-weed, a magnificent scarlet flower of name
unknown to me, and another blossom like the laburnum, endlessly varied
in its shades of roseate, blue, or the compromised tints, made the
hill-sides gorgeous beyond human gardening. All these were scentless;
but one other flower, much rarer, made fragrance enough for all. This
was the "Lady Washington," and much resembled a snowy day-lily with an
odor of tuberoses. Our dense leafy surrounding hid from us the fact of
our approach to