Eastward from San Joaquin Valley are the famous groves of Big Trees, the gigantic sequoias, which Emerson has appropriately called the "Plantations of God." There are two forests of giants in Calaveras and Mariposa Counties displaying these enormous trees, of which it is significantly said that some were growing when Christ was upon the earth. The Calaveras Grove, the northernmost, is at an elevation of forty-seven hundred feet above the sea, upon a tract about two-thirds of a mile long and two hundred feet wide, there being a hundred large trees and many smaller. The tallest tree standing is the "Keystone State," three hundred and twenty-five feet high and forty-five feet in circumference. The "Mother of the Forest," denuded of its bark, is three hundred and fifteen feet high and sixty-one feet girth, while the "Father of the Forest," the biggest of all, is prostrate, and measures one hundred and twelve feet in circumference. There are two trees three hundred feet high, and many exceeding two hundred and fifty feet, the bark sometimes being a foot and a half thick. This grove, however, being less convenient, is not so much visited as the Mariposa Grove to the southward. It is in Mariposa (the butterfly) County, at sixty-five hundred feet elevation, and near the Yosemite Valley. The tract of four square miles is a State Park, there being two distinct forests a half-mile apart. The lower grove has a hundred fine trees, the largest being the "Grizzly Giant," of ninety-four feet circumference and thirty-one feet diameter, the main limb, at two hundred feet elevation, being over six feet in diameter. The upper grove contains three hundred and sixty trees, and the road between the groves is tunnelled directly through one of them, which is twenty-seven feet in diameter. Through this living tree, named "Wawona," the stage-coach drives in a passage nearly ten feet wide. These trees are not so high as in Calaveras Grove, but they are usually of larger girth. The tallest is two hundred and seventy-two feet, ten exceed two hundred and fifty feet, and three are over ninety feet in circumference, while twenty are over sixty feet. Many of the finest have been marred by fires. There are eight groves of these Big Trees in California, these being the chief.