“In the South Park and Calaveras groves there are some remarkable trees. One tree in the South Park grove will hold forty persons in the hollow of its trunk; another has sheltered sixteen horses. The four highest trees in the Calaveras grove, are the Keystone State, 325 feet high, Gen. Jackson, 319 feet, Mother of the Forest, 315 feet, and the Daniel Webster of 307 feet high. The Husband and Wife are a pair of trees gracefully leaning against each other, 250 feet high, and each sixty feet in circumference. The Hermit is a solitary specimen of great proportions; the Old Maid, a disconsolate looking spinster, fifty-nine feet around, and the Old Bachelor, a rough, unkempt old fellow nearly 300 feet in height. The Father of the Forest is prostrate, hollow, limbless and without bark; yet across the roots the distance is twenty-eight feet.... Into the tree a tourist can ride ninety feet on horseback. One of the largest trees of the Calaveras grove was bored down with pump augurs, and the stump smoothed off and converted into a floor of a dancing hall. Thirty-two persons, or four quadrille sets, have ample room to dance at one time, and yet leave room for musicians and spectators.”
THE TUNNELLED TREE.
I can give my readers no better idea of the solemn immensity of the trees, than by again quoting Mr. Whitehall. He says in conclusion: “Although it was then June, yet the eternal snows of the mountains were everywhere around us, and, as the huge banks and drifts stretched away off in the distance, the melting power of heat and the elements was on every side defied. Not a weed or blade of grass relieved the monotony of the view; not the chirping of an insect or the twittering of a bird was heard. The solemn stillness of the night added a weird grandeur to the scene. Now and then a breath of wind stirred the topmost branches of the pines and cedars, and as they swayed to and fro in the air the music was like that of Ossian, ‘pleasant but mournful to the soul.’ There were sequoias on every side almost twice as high as the falls of Niagara; there were pines rivaling the dome of the capitol at Washington in grandeur; there were cedars to whose tops the monument of Bunker Hill would not have reached. There were trees which were in the full vigor of manhood before America itself was discovered; there were others which were yet old before Charlemagne was born; there were others still growing when the Savior himself was on the earth. There were trees which had witnessed the winds and storms of twenty centuries; there were others which would endure long after countless generations of the future would be numbered with the past. There were trees crooked and short and massive; there were others straight and tall and slender. There were pines whose limbs were as evenly proportioned as those of the Apollo Belvedere; there were cedars whose beauty was not surpassed in their counterparts in Lebanon; there were firs whose graceful foliage was like the fabled locks of the gods of ancient story. It was a picture in nature which captivated the sense at once by its grandeur and extent; and, as we drove back to Clark’s through six miles of this forest luxuriance, with the darkness falling about us like a black curtain from the heavens, and the mighty canyons of the Sierra sinking away from our pathway like the openings to another world, then it was not power, but majesty, not beauty but sublimity, not the natural but the supernatural, which seemed above us and before us.”
CHAPTER XXII.
Statistics—Roads and Accommodations—Chapel and Sunday School—Big Farms and Great Resources—A Variety of Products—Long Hoped for Results
Records of the number of visitors to the Yosemite down to and inclusive of 1875, show that in 1852 Rose and Shurban were murdered by the savages, while their companion, Tudor, though wounded, escaped. The next year, 1853, eight men from the North Fork of the Merced, visited the valley, returning unharmed. Owing to murders of Starkey, Sevil and Smith, in the winter of 1853-’4, as it was believed, by the Yosemites, no visitors entered the valley during the summer of 1854. In 1855 Messrs. Hutchings, Ayers, Stair and Milliard, visited it without being disturbed by the sight of any of the original proprietors, either Indians or grizzlies. Mr. Hutchings, on his return to San Francisco, began to draw the attention of the public to the Yosemite, through his magazine and otherwise. Notwithstanding the ample means afforded by his magazine, and his facilities as a writer, Mr. Hutchings found it difficult to bring the valley into prominent and profitable notice, and few Californians could be induced to make it a visit. A peculiarity of those days was a doubt of the marvelous, and a fear of being “sold.” Any statements of travelers or of the press, that appeared exaggerated, were received by the public with extreme caution. Not more than twenty-five or thirty entered during that year, though Mr. Hutchings’ efforts were seconded by reports of other visitors.
The following season, 1856, it was visited by ladies from Mariposa and San Francisco, who safely enjoyed the pleasures and inconveniences of the trip; aroused and excited to the venture, no doubt, by their traditional curiosity. The fact being published that ladies could safely enter the valley, lessened the dread of Indians and grizzlies, and after a few brave reports had been published, this fear seemed to die away completely.
From this time on to 1864, a few entered every season; but during these times California had a wonder and interest in its population and their enterprises, greater than in any of its remarkable scenery. Everything was at high pressure, and the affairs of business and the war for the Union were all that could excite the common interest. In 1864, there were only 147 visitors, including men, women and children. The action of Congress this year, in setting the Yosemite and big trees apart from the public domain as national parks, attracted attention to them. The publicity given to the valley by this act, was world-wide, and since 1864 the number visiting it has steadily increased.