ing across the Range from the Tuolumne River Soda Springs to Mono
Lake one makes the acquaintance of the curious little Nut Pine (Pinus
monophylla). It dots the eastern flank of the Sierra to which it is
mostly restricted in grayish bush-like patches, from the margin of the
sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet. A more contented,
fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived. All the species
we have been sketching make departures more or less distant from the
typical spire form, but none goes so far as this. Without any apparent
cause it keeps near the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches
like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than
fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.

The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over all
the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the bluish-gray
foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in length, and seem
to have but little space for seeds; but when we come to open them, we
find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of sweet,
nutritious nuts, nearly as large as hazel-nuts. This is undoubtedly the
most important food-tree on the Sierra, and furnishes the Mona, Carson,
and Walker River Indians with more and better nuts than all the other
species taken together. It is the Indian's own tree, and many a white
man have they killed for cutting it down. Being so low, the cones are
readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by roasting them
until the scales open. In bountiful seasons a single Indian may gather
thirty or forty bushels.

Chapter 7

The Big Trees

Between the heavy pine and silver fir zones towers the Big Tree (Sequoia
gigantea), the king of all the conifers in the world, "the noblest of
the noble race." The groves nearest Yosemite Valley are about twenty
miles to the westward and southward and are called the Tuolumne, Merced
and Mariposa groves. It extends, a widely interrupted belt, from a very
small grove on the middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer
Creek, a distance of about 260 miles, its northern limit being near the
thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth. The
elevation of the be