We stayed at San Jose over Sunday, and attended church morning and evening, furnishing from our number the preacher for both services. The church had a good choir of men and boys, surpliced, which was, very sensibly, placed near the organ in one of the transepts. A much better arrangement this is than putting all in the compass of a small chancel. To have choristers close up to the altar is not a commendable use, though very general. The structural choir of a cathedral gives ample room for singers and worshippers, with dignified and clear space about the chancel proper. The ordinary parish church, in its whole extent, should be treated as if it were just such a structural choir, with the singers well among the people in raised seats, for the prominence of their office and the better effect of the music. We had time on Monday to take another stroll among the roses and palm trees of San Jose, and then the car "Lucania" in the forenoon took all our party, except one, to Santa Cruz, for an excursion to the Big Trees, about ten miles from there. All this I missed. From the leaves of the diary of one of the party I quote the impression of the trip: "When we reached Santa Cruz we found a four-horse stage and a carriage awaiting us, into which we got, and were driven back into the woods about ten miles, along a road that wound round with a deep canyon on one side, at the bottom of which ran a river. We finally forded this river, and went into deeper woods, where we found the 'big trees.' They were a grand sight, these solemn old trees, said to be four thousand years old, some of them towering up three hundred feet or so, and sixty and ninety feet in circumference. We all got into one, and our party of thirteen had plenty of room left for several more people. This tree was called after General Fremont, who lived in it while surveying in this region. Before that, it was occupied by a trapper, whose children were born in it. There are sixty acres of these trees which have been preserved from the ruthless greed that is rapidly destroying those priceless giants of the ages."