t own it but the fellow who does is lumber and it will be all right he s a white man come and rest how tired you must be the big trees don t go much farther south i know the country up there have hunted all over it come and rest and let your little rat of a mule rest how in heavens did you get him across the � roll him or carry him he s poor but he get fat and i give you a horse and go with you up the mountains and while you re looking at the trees i go hunting it will be a short job for the end of the big trees is not far of course i stopped no true invitation is ever declined he had been hungry and tired himself many a time in the rocky mountains as well as in the now he owned a band of cattle and lived alone his cabin was about eight by ten feet the door at one end a fireplace at the other and a bed on one side fastened to the logs leading me in without a word of mean apology the he made me lie down on the then reached under it brought forth a sack of apples and advised me to keep at them until he got supper ready finer hospitality i never found in all this good world so often called selfish next day with hearty easy alacrity the procured horses prepared and packed provisions and got everything ready for an early start the following morning well mounted we pushed rapidly up the south fork of the river and soon after noon were among the giants once more on the divide between the and deer creek a central camp was made and the spent his time in deer hunting while with provisions for two or three days i the woods and in accordance with what i had been told soon reached the southern extremity of the belt on the south fork of deer creek to make sure i searched the woods a considerable distance south of the last deer creek grove passed over into the basin of the and several high points commanding extensive views over the sugar pine woods without seeing a single crown in all the wide expanse to the southward on the way back to camp however i was greatly interested in a grove i on the east side of the river divide opposite the north fork of deer creek the height of the pass where the species crossed over our national about f and i heard of still grove whose waters drain into the upper opposite the middle fork of the it appears therefore that though the belt is two hundred and sixty miles long most of the trees are on a section to the south of kings river only about seventy miles in length but though the area occupied by the species so much to the southward there is but little difference in the size of the trees a of twenty feet and height of two hundred and seventy five is perhaps about the average for anything like mature and situated trees specimens twenty five feet in are not rare and a good many approach a height of three hundred feet occasionally one meets a specimen thirty feet in and rarely one that is larger the majestic stump on kings river is the largest i saw and measured on the entire trip careful search around the boundaries of the forests and groves and in the of the belt failed to discover any trace of the former existence of the species beyond its present limits on the contrary it seems to be slightly extending its boundaries for the met a mile or two from the main bodies are young instead of old mental trees ancient ruins and the and root the big trunks make in were found in all the groves but none outside the of them we may therefore conclude that the area covered by the species has not been diminished the last eight or ten thousand years and probably not at all in post times for admitting that upon those supposed to have been once covered by every tree may have fallen and that fire and the weather had left not a of them many of the made by the fall of the ponderous trunks weighing five hundred to nearly a thousand tons and the made by their roots would remain visible for thousands of years after the last of the trees had vanished some of these records would doubtless be ed in a comparatively short time by the of but no part of them would remain engraved on flat ridge tops wholly free from such action in the northern groves the only ones that at first came under the observation of students there are but few and young trees to take the places of the old ones therefore the species was regarded as doomed to speedy as being only an remnant in the so called struggle for life and into its last in moist where conditions are favorable but the majestic continuous forests of the south end of the belt create a very different impression here our national as we have seen no tree in the forest is more established nevertheless it is vaguely said that the climate is drying out and that this constantly increasing will of itself surely king though sections of wood rings show that there has been no change of climate during the last forty centuries that can grow and is growing on as dry ground as any of its neighbors or rivals we have seen proved over and over again why then it will be asked are the big tree groves always found on well watered spots simply because big trees give rise to streams it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause 