Occasionally the road winds through the
refreshing shadow of a grove of live-oaks, standing far from any water
on a sandy knoll. But the most magnificent trees of the oak family that
I ever beheld were growing on the banks of the Tuolomne River, where we
forded it at Roberts's Ferry. They were not merely in dimension superior
to the finest white-oaks of the East, but surpassed in beauty every
tradition of their genus. Their vast gnarled branches followed as
exquisite curves as belong to any elm on a New-England meadow, and wept
at the extremities like those of that else matchless tree,--possessing,
moreover, a sumptuous affluence of leafage, an arboreal _embonpoint_,
unknown to their graceful sister of our lowlands. Be sure that we
lingered long among their shadows with book and pencil, and look for a
desirable acquaintance with new Dryads when they grow into the life of
color from our artists' hands.
At Princeton, a thriving suburb of Mariposa, we completed our cavalcade
of pack-animals, transferred our wagon-load to their backs, (the average
mule-pack weighs from two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds,)
roped it there in the most approved _muletero_-fashion, and started into
the wilderness.
Let us call the roll. Beside Bierstadt and the two other gentlemen who
with myself had formed the original overland-party, we numbered two
young artists of great merit now sojourning for a short time in
California, Williams, an old Roman, and Perry, an ancient Duesseldorf
friend,--also a highly scientific metallurgist and physicist generally,
Dr.
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