Truly, the ways of man are at times past understanding. Under roofs that his frail hands have raised he worships, yet he destroys with utter disregard a Sequoian grove—a temple not made with human hands. Such acts may be damaging. They may even be bad. But they are manifestations of human nature—of the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter. Happily, there are those among men who are of more than common clay. Such a man was Galen Clark. It was he who first made known to the world the Mariposa Grove and who faithfully guarded it for well nigh a quarter of a century. He, above all others, rendered it the most completely free from the axe and preserved it in the condition in which his eyes first beheld it. Lest man forget, he saved it as a place of play and prayer. Galen Clark came to California in the days of the gold boom. Strictly speaking, he was not of the Argonauts of ’49, since he was not seized by the spell of the gold fever until 1853. Shaking the dust of New York from his feet in October of that year, he joined the eager multitudes who flocked toward the new El Dorado. The year 1854 found him in the country of Mariposa taking part in the pick and shovel storm that was then raging on its mountains. Not unlike the majority, he failed to find “a chartless river running on fabled sands of gold.” The chase of the fabulous ended; he took up the less fascinating but more substantial occupation of a surveyor. Occasionally, however, the gold lure again possessed him and he spasmodically returned to mining with the flare-up of local bonanzas. It was while so engaged that he contracted, through exposure and hardships that had already filled the nooks of the gold region with the bones of strong men, a disease of the lungs. The physicians, unable to lessen the great number of hemorrhages, prophesied that he had not long to live. Now a member of the dreary brotherhood of failures, health and strength gone, and knowing that death would claim him soon, he did not become a dissolute miner. Instead of finding a refuge in strong drink, he sought solace through communion with the sweet wonders of the common earth and sky. In truth, he went home to Mother Nature, and became a wanderer finding peace on mountain tops and consolation in piney woods. Singularly enough, his lungs healed. The climate had accomplished the miracle. The bland and salubrious air rendered pungent by the balsamic odor of Sierran forests, together with an abundance of health-giving exercise, had cured the disease. More strange still, Galen Clark attained the venerable age of ninety-six. Though he continued to lead the life of a mountaineer, and constantly to expose his person to calm and storm alike, he never suffered a recurrence of the malady.