The zone adjoining the High Sierra upon its west is one of far wider range of pleasure. Subsiding rapidly in elevation, it becomes a knobbed and bouldered land which includes timber-line and the thin forests of wind-twisted pines which contend with the granite for foothold. It is crossed westward by many lesser ranges buttressing the High Sierra; from these cross ranges many loftier peaks arise, and between them roar the rivers whose thousands of contributing streams drain the snow-fields and the glaciers of the white heights. Finally, paralleling the western boundary, is the narrow zone in which this region meets and merges with the greater forests and the meadows beyond the boundary. Here, in the southwestern corner, is the marvellous warm forest in which trees of many kinds attain their maximum of size and proportion, and which encloses a million sequoia trees, including the greatest and oldest embodiments of the principle of life. This extraordinary forest was reserved in 1890 under the title of the Sequoia National Park. At the same time was created the General Grant National Park, a reservation of four square miles of similar forest, virtually a part of it, but separated because of an intervening area of privately owned lands. Thus does this region run the gamut of supremacy from the High Sierra upon its east, to the Giant Forest upon its west. Of no less distinction are its waters. Innumerable lakelets of the High Sierra, born of the snows, overflow in tiny streams which combine into roaring, frothing creeks. These in turn, augmented by the drainage of the lofty tumbled divides, combine into powerful little rivers. Four river systems originate in this region. Far in the north a lake, more than eleven thousand feet high, lying at the western foot of Mount Goddard, begins the South Fork of the San Joaquin River, which drains the park's northern area. Incidentally, it has cut a canyon of romantic beauty, up which the John Muir Trail finds its way into the park.