Yosemite, Cal., August 21, 1877.
... So long without touching a pen I can hardly form letters. Did I write to you from Utah? We left direct route at Reno, went to Carson City, with détour to Virginia City,—queer place; first got hold of Pinus monophylla, but there no fruit.
Hired conveyance to take us from Carson right across the Sierra Nevada via Silver Mountain to Calaveras Big Trees,—a good way for studying the tree vegetation, and other, only all other is mainly destroyed by drought and sheep, and the ground is powdered dust. As we struck Pinus ponderosa we were struck with more tapering shape of tree and longer leaves than that of Colorado, so different, and soon, as we rose, by the immense size of cone, ovate, six inches long, very heavy. The big-cone ponderosa has less bright green and rather longer leaves, and cones looking quite different from the ordinary Californian ponderosa, which grows intermixed, except at the higher levels, and has long but narrow cones. Losing the big one as we descended to Calaveras, we come on it again in the Sierra here, when we get up to seven thousand to eight thousand feet. Here it passes for P. Jaffreyi or Jeffreyi. Is it so? Is it distinct? On bare side of Silver Mountain we found P. monophylla with cones, both maturing and this year’s....
Chico, September 5, 1877.
... Thanks for your letter to San Francisco. We are keeping lively; are on the way to Shasta.
What if we were to return via St. Louis: will you insure us against malaria and fever? Want to talk Coniferæ with you....
Cambridge, September 24, 1877.
We are just back via Niagara; Hooker and I via New York, and the former having the Sunday with Eaton at New Haven. All well and happy to get home after a prosperous and, as you may imagine, laborious journey of ten and a half weeks. The trip to Shasta involved long stagecoach journeys, but they were most interesting. Returning to Sacramento we went on to Truckee, where Lemmon[103] joined us by appointment. We gave one day to Mount Stanford and one to Tahoe, then took the overland train as it came on at midnight, and thence had no stationary bed till we reached Niagara. And we live to tell the story!
I want to tell you what we are led to think about Firs and Spruces. I will give in this my own opinions, which lie yet open, but are likely to settle down, except you convince me to the contrary on some points. Hooker comes to the same conclusions or nearly, but I will keep to my own only in this letter, and ask what you think of them, off-hand. Your reply will come to hand before Sir Joseph sails....
Some day you must have a picture of our camp on La Veta Pass. I wish there could have been one of the Shasta camp of the Bidwells.