You may be sure that this episode gave us plenty to laugh about to last all that beautiful day in the valley of Yosemite.

We stopped there altogether three days, and were lost in admiration and wonder at the beauty of everything.  The greatest wonder the gentlemen met was the item on the bill for blacking boots, which was fifteen dollars.  They paid without a murmur, because they wanted to tell their friends about it when they got home.

We took our leave of beautiful Yosemite Valley, throwing a disdainful look at the boots, and we saw the last of the Yosemites peeping at us from behind the shrubbery.  We mounted the stage-coach which was to take us to Mariposa Grove.  We drove up the mountain all right, but when the summit was reached the coachman began to whip up his six horses and started galloping them down and turning those corners in such a reckless manner that our hair stood on end; and in answer to our gentle words reminding him that there were human beings in the coach he said, coolly: 

“Oh, I guess it’ll be all right, but this is my first experience.”  On a sharp turn of the road we suddenly saw a great white pine about six feet in diameter lying right across our path.  It had evidently fallen in the night.  Fortunately, the driver saw it and managed to pull up his six horses in time to avoid a catastrophe.

How in the world should we ever get over this obstacle?  All our projects would be disarranged if there came a single unexpected delay.  A conseil de guerre was held, every one talking at once, and it was decided that the driver should unhitch the horses, and that each lady should hold two of them, while the men were to look about to find timber enough to improvise an inclined plane on both sides of this enormous tree-trunk, so that the coach could be hauled up on one side and dragged down on the other.  The gentlemen managed to get the carriage over, then they led the horses over, and lastly we ladies were piloted across.

After a delay of an hour we were able to drive to Mariposa Hotel, where we found eight saddle-horses waiting for us.  It was all most exciting, and we enjoyed every moment of the ride through the most beautiful forest in the world.  The ordinary trees of this forest would be gigantic in any other part of the globe (six to seven feet in diameter), but when we “struck” the first big tree I almost fell off my horse with wonder.  This tree was four hundred feet high and about thirty-three feet in diameter.  I knew beforehand that they were monstrously big and high, but I did not know that they had such a beautiful color—­a red cinnamon.  The first branch was a hundred feet from the ground and six feet in diameter.  In the Mariposa Grove there are three hundred of these giants.  In one tree, which was partly hollowed out by fire, we seven people sat on horseback.  That gives you an idea!  We saw a carriage full of travelers drive through a hollow fallen tree as if through a tunnel.  One must see these to imagine what they are like.  The “Old Giant” was the most imposing and grandest of them all—­thirty-seven feet in diameter, and high!  One got dizzy trying to see the top, which is really not the top.  The winds up there do not allow themselves to be encroached upon, and the young shoots are nipped off as soon as they appear.