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Show 146 WESTERN WILDS. old. Outlasting ninety average generations of men! And the fallen ones are probably 1,000 years older. And yet these are not the oldest trees in the world. In Africa there grows a species of mimosa, which, by the same indications, is proved to be 6,000 years old. A sapling when Adam was a strip-ling! There seems to be no satisfactory theory to account for their growth here. Climate and fertile soil may have done much ; but I incline to the belief that they are a sort of relic of the age when all vegetation was gigantic ; as one age of geology must have sub-sided with easy grades to the next, we may have here the last vege-table survivors of the age just before us, and after their fall, no more big trees. Eight miles south of here is another collection, known as the South Grove, and containing 1,380 trees in close order, averag-ing larger than these, but the largest a foot or two less than the largest here. But we have seen enough for the present to fill the mind with images for years, and weary us in conjecture. Time presses, and with to- morrow's earliest light we are off for Yosemite. From the Big Trees we take the new or mountain road to Yosemite ; instead of going back to the valley, we start directly southward across Table Mountain, the Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and smaller streams. This route takes in the mining and fruit region, and a specimen of all that has made California famous. The Sierras have a general course from north to south, and a height of from ten to fourteen thousand feet ; and from them successive rivers put out westward, each in its upper part traversing a mountain gorge or clear- cut canon, which widens west-ward to a broad valley bounded by slopes and foothills of genial clime and rare fertility. Our southward route, one- third the way up the slope of the Sierras, involves great variety ; we come back on the Big Tree road to Vallecito, and there take a light wagon to cross Table Mountain and the Stanislaus. Parenthetically, the names in this ac-count are either Spanish or Indian, and pronounced thus : $< an- is- lowh, Val- le- cee- to, Tu- o^- un- ny, Mo- M- un- ny, Gar- ro- ta, Man- zan- ee- ta, Cap- i- ton, M. er- ceed, Cal- a- ue- ras, and Yo- sera- i- ta. From the brow of Table Mountain we look down two thousand feet upon the Stanislaus, a narrow silvery band flowing down a rocky trough. The canon wall seems to stand at a threatening angle of sev-enty degrees; but down this slope the stage road goes by a zig- zag, first out upon a projecting shelf, where two feet farther would send us to destruction, and then into a groove in the rocky wall. Down this combination of dips, spurs, angles, and sinuosities, the driver takes us at full trot, with lines taut and foot on brake, ready to check at a mo- |