hed a model trail service. The Yosemite,
it need not be said, is a great attraction to tourists from all parts of
the world; it is the interest of the State, therefore, to increase their
number by improving the facilities for reaching it, and by resolutely
preserving all the surrounding region from ravage.

[Illustration: CYPRESS POINT.]

[Illustration: NEAR SEAL ROCK.]

This is as true of the Mariposa big tree region as of the valley.
Indeed, more care is needed for the trees than for the great chasm, for
man cannot permanently injure the distinctive features of the latter,
while the destruction of the sequoias will be an irreparable loss to the
State and to the world. The _Sequoia gigantea_ differs in leaf, and size
and shape of cone, from the great _Sequoia semper virens_ on the coast
near Santa Cruz; neither can be spared. The Mariposa trees, scattered
along on a mountain ridge 6500 feet above the sea, do not easily obtain
their victory, for they are a part of a magnificent forest of other
growths, among which the noble sugar-pine is conspicuous for its
enormous size and graceful vigor. The sequoias dominate among splendid
rivals only by a magnitude that has no comparison elsewhere in the
world. I think no one can anticipate the effect that one of these
monarchs will have upon him. He has read that a coach and six can drive
through one of the trees that is standing; that another is thirty-three
feet in diameter, and that its vast stem, 350 feet high, is crowned with
a mass of foliage that seems to brush against the sky. He might be
prepared for a tower 100 feet in circumference, and even 400 feet high,
standing upon a level plain; but this living growth is quite another
affair. Each tree is an individual, and has a personal character. No man
can stand in the presence of one of these giants without a new sense of
the age of the world and the insignificant span of one human life; but
he is also overpowered by a sense of some gigantic personality. It does
not relieve him to think of this as the Methuselah of trees, or to call
it by the name of some great poet or captain. The awe the tree inspires
is of itself. As one lies and looks up at the enormous bulk, it seems
not so much the bulk, so lightly is it carried, as the spirit of the
tree--the elastic vigor, the patience, the endurance of storm and
change, the confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride,
that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just be