THE Big Tree (Sequoia
gigantea) is Nature's forest masterpiece, and, so far as I know, the
greatest of living things. It belongs to an ancient stock, as its remains in
old rocks show, and has a strange air of other days about it, a thoroughbred
look inherited from the long ago - the auld lang syne of trees. Once the
genus was common, and with many species flourished in the now desolate
Arctic regions, in the interior of North America, and in Europe, but in
long, eventful wanderings from climate to climate only two species have
survived the hardships they had to encounter, the gigantea and sempervirens,
the former now restricted to the western slopes of the Sierra, the other to
the Coast Mountains, and both to California, excepting a few groves of
Redwood which extend into Oregon. The Pacific Coast in general is the
paradise of conifers. Here nearly all of them are giants, and display a
beauty and magnificence unknown elsewhere. The climate is mild, the ground
never freezes, and moisture and sunshine abound all the year. Nevertheless
it is not easy to account for the colossal size of the Sequoias. The largest
are about three hundred feet high and thirty feet in diameter. Who of all
the dwellers of the plains and prairies and fertile home forests of round-
headed oak and maple, hickory and elm, ever dreamed that earth could bear
such growths, - trees that the familiar pines and firs seem to know nothing
about, lonely, silent, serene, with a physiognomy almost godlike; and so
old, thousands of them still living had already counted their years by tens
of centuries when Columbus set sail from Spain, and were in the vigor of
youth or middle age when the star led the Chaldean sages to the infant
Saviour's cradle! As far as man is concerned they are the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, emblems of permanence.
No description can give any
adequate idea of their singular majesty, much less of their beauty.
Excepting the sugar-pine, most of their neighbors with pointed tops seem to
be forever shouting Excelsior, while the Big Tree, though soaring above them
all, seems satisfied, its rounded head, poised lightly as a cloud, giving no
impression of trying to go higher. Only in youth does it show like other
conifers a heavenward yearning, keenly aspiring with a long quick-growing
top. Indeed the whole tree for the first century or two, or until a hundred
to a hundred and fifty feet high, is arrowhead in form, and, compared with
the solemn rigidity of age, is as sensitive to the wind as a squirrel tail.
The lower branches are gradually dropped as it grows older, and the upper
ones thinned out until comparatively few are left. These, however, are
developed to great size, divide again and again, and terminate in bossy
rounded masses of leafy branchiets, while the head becomes dome-shaped. Then
poised in fullness of strength and beauty, stern and solemn in mien, it
glows with eager, enthusiastic life, quivering to the tip of every leaf and
branch and far-reaching root, calm as a granite dome, the first to feel the
touch of the rosy beams of the morning, the last to bid the sun good-night.
Perfect specimens, unhurt by
running fires or lightning, are singularly regular and symmetrical in
general form, though not at all conventional, showing infinite variety in
sure unity and harmony of plan. The immensely strong, stately shafts, with
rich purplish brown bark, are free of limbs for a hundred and fifty feet or
so, though dense tufts of sprays occur here and there, producing an
ornamental effect, while long parallel furrows give a fluted columnar
appearance. It shoots forth its limbs with equal boldness in every
direction, showing no weather side. On the old trees the main branches are
crooked and rugged, and strike rigidly outward mostly at right angles from
the trunk, but there is always a certain measured restraint in their reach
which keeps them within bounds. No other Sierra tree has foliage so densely
massed or outline so finely, firmly drawn and so obediently subordinate to
an ideal type. A particularly knotty, angular, ungovernable- looking branch,
five to eight feet in diameter and perhaps a thousand years old, may
occasionally be seen pushing out from the trunk as if determined to break
across the bounds of the regular curve, but like all the others, as soon as
the general outline is approached the huge limb dissolves into massy bosses
of branchiets and sprays, as if the tree were growing beneath an invisible
bell glass against the sides of which the branches were moulded, while many
small, varied departures from the ideal form give the impression of freedom
to grow as they like.
Except in picturesque old
age, after being struck by lightning and broken by a thousand snowstorms,
this regularity of form is one of the Big Tree's most distinguishing
characteristics. Another is the simple sculptural beauty of the trunk and
its great thickness as compared with its height and the width of the
branches, many of them being from eight to ten feet in diameter at a height
of two hundred feet from the ground, and seeming more like finely modeled
and sculptured architectural columns than the stems of trees, while the
great strong limbs are like rafters supporting the magnificent dome head.
The root system corresponds
in magnitude with the other dimensions of the tree, forming a flat
far-reaching spongy network two hundred feet or more in width without any
taproot, and the instep is so grand and fine, so suggestive of endless
strength, it is long ere the eye is released to look above it. The natural
swell of the roots, though at first sight excessive, gives rise to
buttresses no greater than are required for beauty as well as strength, as
at once appears when you stand back far enough to see the whole tree in its
true proportions. The fineness of the taper of the trunk is shown by its
thickness at great heights - a diameter often feet at a height of two
hundred being, as we have seen, not uncommon. Indeed the boles of but few
trees hold their thickness as well as Sequoia. Resolute, consummate,
determined in form, always beheld with wondering admiration, the Big Tree
always seems unfamiliar, standing alone, unrelated, with peculiar
physiognomy, awfully solemn and earnest. Nevertheless, there is nothing
alien in its looks. The madrona, clad in thin, smooth, red and yellow bark
and big glossy leaves, seems, in the dark coniferous forests of Washington
and Vancouver Island, like some lost wanderer from the magnolia groves of
the South, while the sequoia, with all its strangeness, seems more at home
than any of its neighbors, holding the best right to the ground as the
oldest, strongest inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted with new species
of pine and fir and spruce as with friendly people, shaking their
outstretched branches like shaking hands, and fondling their beautiful
little ones; while the venerable aboriginal sequoia, ancient of other days,
keeps you at a distance, taking no notice of you, speaking only to the
winds, thinking only of the sky, looking as strange in aspect and behavior
among the neighboring trees as would the mastodon or hairy elephant among
the homely bears and deer. Only the Sierra juniper is at all like it,
standing rigid and unconquerable on glacial pavements for thousands of
years, grim, rusty, silent, uncommunicative, with an air of antiquity about
as pronounced as that so characteristic of sequoia.
The bark of full grown trees
is from one to two feet thick, rich cinnamon brown, purplish on young trees
and shady parts of the old, forming magnificent masses of color with the
underbrush and beds of flowers. Toward the end of winter the trees
themselves bloom while the snow is still eight or ten feet deep. The
pistillate flowers are about three eighths of an inch long, pale green, and
grow in countless thousands on the ends of the sprays. The staminate are
still more abundant, pale yellow, a fourth of an inch long; and when the
golden pollen is ripe they color the whole tree and dust the air and the
ground far and near.
The cones are bright
grass-green in color, about two and a half inches long, one and a half wide,
and are made up of thirty or forty strong, closely packed, rhomboidal scales
with four to eight seeds at the base of each. The seeds are extremely small
and light, being only from an eighth to a fourth of an inch long and wide,
including a filmy surrounding wing, which causes them to glint and waver in
falling and enables the wind to carry them considerable distances from the
tree.
The faint lisp of snowflakes
as they alight is one of the smallest sounds mortal can hear. The sound of
falling sequoia seeds, even when they happen to strike on flat leaves or
flakes of bark, is about as faint. Very different is the bumping and
thudding of the falling cones. Most of them are cut off by the Douglas
squirrel and stored for the sake of the seeds, small as they are. In the
calm Indian summer these busy harvesters with ivory sickles go to work early
in the morning, as soon as breakfast is over, and nearly all day the ripe
cones fall in a steady pattering, bumping shower. Unless harvested in this
way they discharge their seeds and remain on the trees for many years. In
fruitful seasons the trees are fairly laden. On two small specimen branches
one and a half and two inches in diameter I counted four hundred and eighty
cones. No other California conifer produces nearly so many seeds, excepting
perhaps its relative, the redwood of the Coast Mountains. Millions are
ripened annually by a single tree, and the product of one of the main groves
in a fruitful year would suffice to plant all the mountain ranges of the
world.
The dense tufted sprays make
snug nesting places for birds, and in some of the loftiest, leafiest towers
of verdure thousands of generations have been reared, the great solemn trees
shedding off flocks of merry singers every year from nests, like the flocks
of winged seeds from the cones.
The Big Tree keeps its youth
far longer than any of its neighbors. Most silver firs are old in their
second or third century, pines in their fourth or fifth, while the Big Tree
growing beside them is still in the bloom of its youth, juvenile in every
feature at the age of old pines, and cannot be said to attain anything like
prime size and beauty before its fifteen hundredth year, or under favorable
circumstances become old before its three thousandth. Many, no doubt, are
much older than this. On one of the Kings River giants, thirty-five feet and
eight inches in diameter exclusive of bark, I counted upwards of four
thousand annual wood-rings, in which there was no trace of decay after all
these centuries of mountain weather. There is no absolute limit to the
existence of any tree. Their death is due to accidents, not, as of animals,
to the wearing out of organs. Only the leaves die of old age, their fall is
foretold in their structure; but the leaves are renewed every year and so
also are the other essential organs - wood, roots, bark, buds. Most of the
Sierra trees die of disease. Thus the magnificent silver firs are devoured
by fungi, and comparatively few of them live to see their three hundredth
birth year. But nothing hurts the Big Tree. I never saw one that was sick or
showed the slightest sign of decay. It lives on through indefinite thousands
of years until burned, blown down, undermined, or shattered by some
tremendous lightning stroke. No ordinary bolt ever seriously hurts sequoia.
In all my walks I have seen only one that was thus killed outright.
Lightning, though rare in the California lowlands, is common on the Sierra.
Almost every day in June and July small thunderstorms refresh the main
forest belt. Clouds like snowy mountains of marvelous beauty grow rapidly in
the calm sky about midday and cast cooling shadows and showers that seldom
last more than an hour. Nevertheless these brief, kind storms wound or kill
a good many trees. I have seen silver firs two hundred feet high split into
long peeled rails and slivers down to the roots, leaving not even a stump,
the rails radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a hole in the ground
where the tree stood. But the sequoia, instead of being split and slivered,
usually has forty or fifty feet of its brash knotty top smashed off in short
chunks about the size of cord-wood, the beautiful rosy red ruins covering
the ground in a circle a hundred feet wide or more. I never saw any that had
been cut down to the ground or even to below the branches except one in the
Stanislaus Grove, about twelve feet in diameter, the greater part of which
was smashed to fragments, leaving only a leafless stump about seventy-five
feet high. It is a curious fact that all the very old sequoias have lost
their heads by lightning. "All things come to him who waits." But of all
living things sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to
make sure of being struck by lightning. Thousands of years it stands ready
and waiting, offering its head to every passing cloud as if inviting its
fate, praying for heaven's fire as a blessing; and when at last the old head
is off, another of the same shape immediately begins to grow on. Every bud
and branch seems excited, like bees that have lost their queen, and tries
hard to repair the damage. Branches that for many centuries have been
growing out horizontally at once turn upward and all their branchiets
arrange themselves with reference to a new top of the same peculiar curve as
the old one. Even the small subordinate branches halfway down the trunk do
their best to push up to the top and help in this curious head- making.
The great age of these noble
trees is even more wonderful than their huge size, standing bravely up,
millennium in, millennium out, to all that fortune may bring them,
triumphant over tempest and fire and time, fruitful and beautiful, giving
food and shelter to multitudes of small fleeting creatures dependent on
their bounty. Other trees may claim to be about as large or as old:
Australian gums, Senegal baobabs, Mexican taxodiums, English yews, and
venerable Lebanon cedars, trees of renown, some of which are from ten to
thirty feet in diameter. We read of oaks that are supposed to have existed
ever since the creation, but strange to say I can find no definite accounts
of the age of any of these trees, but only estimates based on tradition and
assumed average rates of growth. No other known tree approaches the sequoia
in grandeur, height and thickness being considered, and none as far as I
know has looked down on so many centuries or opens such impressive and
suggestive views into history. The majestic monument of the Kings River
Forest is, as we have seen, fully four thousand gears old, and measuring the
rings of annual growth we find it was no less than twenty- seven feet in
diameter at the beginning of the Christian era, while many observations lead
me to expect the discovery of others ten or twenty centuries older. As to
those of moderate age, there are thousands, mere youths as yet, that -
"Saw the light that shone
On Mahomet's uplifted crescent,
On many a royal gilded throne
And deed forgotten in the present,
...saw the age of sacred trees
And Druid groves and mystic larches,
And saw from forest domes like these
The builder bring his Gothic arches."
Great trees and groves used
to be venerated as sacred monuments and halls of council and worship. But
soon after the discovery of the Calaveras Grove one of the grandest trees
was cut down for the sake of a stump! The laborious vandals had seen "the
biggest tree in the world," then, forsooth, they must try to see the biggest
stump and dance on it.
The growth in height for the
first two centuries is usually at the rate of eight to ten inches a year. Of
course all very large trees are old, but those equal in size may vary
greatly in age on account of variations in soil, closeness or openness of
growth, etc. Thus a tree about ten feet in diameter that grew on the side of
a meadow was, according to my own count of the wood- rings, only two hundred
and fifty-nine years old at the time it was felled, while another in the
same grove, of almost exactly the same size but less favorably situated, was
fourteen hundred and forty years old. The Calaveras tree cut for a dance
floor was twenty-four feet in diameter and only thirteen hundred years old,
another about the same size was a thousand years older.
The following sequoia notes
and measurements are copied from my notebooks: -
Little, however, is to be
learned in confused, hurried tourist trips, spending only a poor noisy hour
in a branded grove with a guide. You should go looking and listening alone
on long walks through the wild forests and groves in all the seasons of the
year. In the spring the winds are balmy and sweet, blowing up and down over
great beds of chaparral and through the woods now rich in softening balsam
and rosin and the scent of steaming earth. The sky is mostly sunshine,
oftentimes tempered by magnificent clouds, the breath of the sea built up
into new mountain ranges, warm during the day, cool at night, good
flower-opening weather. The young cones of the Big Trees are showing in
clusters, their flower time already past, and here and there you may see the
sprouting of their tiny seeds of the previous autumn, taking their first
feeble hold of the ground and unpacking their tender whorls of cotyledon
leaves. Then you will naturally be led on to consider their wonderful growth
up and up through the mountain weather, now buried in snow bent and
crinkled, now straightening in summer sunshine like uncoiling ferns,
shooting eagerly aloft in youth's joyful prime, and towering serene and
satisfied through countless years of calm and storm, the greatest of plants
and all but immortal.
Under the huge trees up come
the small plant people, putting forth fresh leaves and blossoming in such
profusion that the hills and valleys would still seem gloriously rich and
glad were all the grand trees away. By the side of melting snowbanks rise
the crimson sarcodes, round- topped and massive as the sequoias themselves,
and beds of blue violets and larger yellow ones with leaves curiously lobed;
azalea and saxifrage, daisies and lilies on the mossy banks of the streams;
and a little way back of them, beneath the trees and on sunny spots on the
hills around the groves, wild rose and rubus, spirea and ribes, mitella,
tiarella, campanula, monardella, forget-me-not, etc., many of them as worthy
of lore immortality as the famous Scotch daisy, wanting only a Burns to sing
them home to all hearts.
In the midst of this glad
plant work the birds are busy nesting, some singing at their work, some
silent, others, especially the big pileated woodpeckers, about as noisy as
backwoodsmen building their cabins. Then every bower in the groves is a
bridal bower, the winds murmur softly overhead, the streams sing with the
birds, while from far-off waterfalls and thunderclouds come deep rolling
organ notes.
In summer the days go by in
almost constant brightness, cloudless sunshine pouring over the forest roof,
while in the shady depths there is the subdued light of perpetual morning.
The new leaves and cones are growing fast and make a grand show, seeds are
ripening, young birds are learning to fly, and myriads of insects glad as
birds keep the air whirling, joy in every wing-beat, their humming and
singing blending with the gentle ah-ing of the winds; while at evening every
thicket and grove is enchanted by the tranquil chirping of the blessed hylas,
the sweetest and most peaceful of sounds, telling the very heart-joy of
earth as it rolls through the heavens.
In the autumn the sighing of
the winds is softer than ever, the gentle ah-ah-ing filling the sky with a
fine universal mist of music, the birds have little to say, and there is no
appreciable stir or rustling among the trees save that caused by the
harvesting squirrels. Most of the seeds are ripe and away, those of the
trees mottling the sunny air, glinting, glancing through the midst of the
merry insect people, rocks and trees, everything alike drenched in gold
light, heaven's colors coming down to the meadows and groves, making every
leaf a romance, air, earth, and water in peace beyond thought, the great
brooding days opening and closing in divine psalms of color.
Winter comes suddenly,
arrayed in storms, though to mountaineers silky streamers on the peaks and
the tones of the wind give sufficient warning. You hear strange whisperings
among the tree-tops, as if the giants were taking counsel together. One
after another, nodding and swaying, calling and replying, spreads the news,
until all with one accord break forth into glorious song, welcoming the
first grand snowstorm of the year, and looming up in the dim clouds and
snowdrifts like lighthouse towers in flying scud and spray. Studying the
behavior of the giants from some friendly shelter, you will see that even in
the glow of their wildest enthusiasm, when the storm roars loudest, they
never lose their god-like composure, never toss their arms or bow or wave
like the pines, but only slowly, solemnly nod and sway, standing erect,
making no sign of strife, none of rest, neither in alliance nor at war with
the winds, too calmly, unconsciously noble and strong to strive with or bid
defiance to anything. Owing to the density of the leafy branchiets and great
breadth of head the Big Tree carries a much heavier load of snow than any of
its neighbors, and after a storm, when the sky clears, the laden trees are a
glorious spectacle, worth any amount of cold camping to see. Every bossy
limb and crown is solid white, and the immense height of the giants becomes
visible as the eye travels the white steps of the colossal tower, each
relieved by a mass of blue shadow.
In midwinter the forest
depths are as fresh and pure as the crevasses and caves of glaciers. Grouse,
nuthatches, a few woodpeckers, and other hardy birds dwell in the groves all
winter, and the squirrels may be seen every clear day frisking about, lively
as ever, tunneling to their stores, never coming up empty-mouthed, diving in
the loose snow about as quickly as ducks in water, while storms and sunshine
sing to each other.
One of the noblest and most
beautiful of the late winter sights is the blossoming of the Big Trees like
gigantic goldenrods and the sowing of their pollen over all the forest and
the snow- covered ground - a most glorious view of Nature's immortal
virility and flower-love.
One of my own best excursions
among the sequoias was made in the autumn of 1875, when I explored the then
unknown or little known sequoia region south of the Mariposa Grove for
comprehensive views of the belt, and to learn what I could of the peculiar
distribution of the species and its history in general. In particular I was
anxious to try to find out whether it had ever been more widely distributed
since the glacial period; what conditions favorable or otherwise were
affecting it; what were its relations to climate, topography, soil, and the
other trees growing with it, etc.; and whether, as was generally supposed,
the species was nearing extinction. I was already acquainted in a general
way with the northern groves, but excepting some passing glimpses gained on
excursions into the high Sierra about the head-waters of Kings and Kern
rivers I had seen nothing of the south end of the belt.
Nearly all my mountaineering
has been done on foot, carrying as little as possible, depending on
camp-fires for warmth, that so I might be light and free to go wherever my
studies might lead. On this sequoia trip, which promised to be long, I was
persuaded to take a small wild mule with me to carry provisions and a pair
of blankets. The friendly owner of the animal, having noticed that I
sometimes looked tired when I came down from the peaks to replenish my bread
sack, assured me that his "little Brownie mule" was just what I wanted,
tough as a knot, perfectly untirable, low and narrow, just right for
squeezing through brush, able to climb like a chipmunk, jump from boulder to
boulder like a wild sheep, and go anywhere a man could go. But tough as he
was and accomplished as a climber, many a time in the course of our journey
when he was jaded and hungry, wedged fast in rocks or struggling in
chaparral like a fly in a spiderweb, his troubles were sad to see, and I
wished he would leave me and find his way home alone.
We set out from Yosemite
about the end of August, and our first camp was made in the well-known
Mariposa Grove. Here and in the adjacent pine woods I spent nearly a week,
carefully examining the boundaries of the grove for traces of its greater
extension without finding any. Then I struck out into the majestic trackless
forest to the southeastward, hoping to find new groves or traces of old ones
in the dense silver fir and pine woods about the head of Big Creek, where
soil and climate seemed thost favorable to their growth, but not a single
tree or old monument of any sort came to light until I climbed the high rock
called Wamellow by the Indians. Here I obtained telling views of the fertile
forest-filled basin of the upper Fresno. Innumerable spires of the noble
yellow pine were displayed rising above one another on the braided slopes,
and yet nobler sugar pines with superb arms outstretched in the rich autumn
light, while away toward the southwest, on the verge of the glowing horizon,
I discovered the majestic dome-like crowns of Big Trees towering high over
all, singly and in close grove congregations. There is something wonderfully
attractive in this king tree, even when beheld from afar, that draws us to
it with indescribable enthusiasm; its superior height and massive smoothly
rounded outlines proclaiming its character in any company; and when one of
the oldest attains full stature on some commanding ridge it seems the very
god of the woods. I ran back to camp, packed Brownie, steered over the
divide and down into the heart of the Fresno Grove. Then choosing a camp on
the side of a brook where the grass was good, I made a cup of tea, and set
off free among the brown giants, glorying in the abundance of new work about
me. One of the first special things that caught my attention was an
extensive landslip. The ground on the side of a stream had given way to a
depth of about fifty feet and with all its trees had been launched into the
bottom of the stream ravine. Most of the trees - pines, firs, incense cedar,
and sequoia - were still standing erect and uninjured, as if unconscious
that anything out of the common had happened. Tracing the ravine alongside
the avalanche, I saw many trees whose roots had been laid bare, and in one
instance discovered a sequoia about fifteen feet in diameter growing above
an old prostrate trunk that seemed to belong to a former generation. This
slip had occurred seven or eight years ago, and I was glad to find that not
only were most of the Big Trees uninjured, but that many companies of
hopeful seedlings and saplings were growing confidently on the fresh soil
along the broken front of the avalanche. These young trees were already
eight or ten feet high, and were shooting up vigorously, as if sure of
eternal life, though young pines, firs, and libocedrus were running a race
with them for the sunshine with an even start. Farther down the ravine I
counted five hundred and thirty-six promising young sequoias on a bed of
rough bouldery soil not exceeding two acres in extent.
The Fresno Big Trees covered
an area of about four square miles, and while wandering about surveying the
boundaries of the grove, anxious to see every tree, I came suddenly on a
handsome log cabin, richly embowered and so fresh and unweathered it was
still redolent of gum and balsam like a newly felled tree. Strolling
forward, wondering who could have built it, I found an old, weary-eyed,
speculative, gray haired man on a bark stool by the door, reading a book.
The discovery of his hermitage by a stranger seemed to surprise him, but
when I explained that I was only a tree-lover sauntering along the mountains
to study sequoia, he bade me welcome, made me bring my mule down to a little
slanting meadow before his door and camp with him, promising to show me his
pet trees and many curious things bearing on my studies.
After supper, as the evening
shadows were falling, the good hermit sketched his life in the mines, which
in the main was like that of most other pioneer gold-hunters - a succession
of intense experiences full of big ups and downs like the mountain
topography. Since "49" he had wandered over most of the Sierra, sinking
innumerable prospect holes like a sailor making soundings, digging new
channels for streams, sifting gold-sprinkled boulder and gravel beds with
unquenchable energy, life's noon the meanwhile passing unnoticed into late
afternoon shadows. Then, health and gold gone, the game played and lost,
like a wounded deer creeping into this forest solitude, he awaits the
sundown call. How sad the undertones of many a life here, now the noise of
the first big gold battles has died away! How many interesting wrecks lie
drifted and stranded in hidden nooks of the gold region! Perhaps no other
range contains the remains of so many rare and interesting men. The name of
my hermit friend is John A. Nelder, a fine kind man, who in going into the
woods has at last gone home; for he loves nature truly, and realizes that
these last shadowy days with scarce a glint of gold in them are the best of
all. Birds, squirrels, plants get loving, natural recognition, and
delightful it was to see how sensitively he responds to the silent
influences of the woods. His eyes brightened as he gazed on the trees that
stand guard around his little home; squirrels and mountain quail came to his
call to be fed, and he tenderly stroked the little snowbent sapling
sequoias, hoping they yet might grow straight to the sky and rule the grove.
One of the greatest of his trees stands a little way back of his cabin, and
he proudly led me to it, bidding me admire its colossal proportions and
measure it to see if in all the forest there could be another so grand. It
proved to be only twenty-six feet in diameter, and he seemed distressed to
learn that the Mariposa Grizzly Giant was larger. I tried to comfort him by
observing that his was the taller, finer formed, and perhaps the more
favorably situated. Then he led me to some noble ruins, remnants of gigantic
trunks of trees that he supposed must have been larger than any now
standing, and though they had lain on the damp ground exposed to fire and
the weather for centuries, the wood was perfectly sound. Sequoia timber is
not only beautiful in color, rose red when fresh, and as easily worked as
pine, but it is almost absolutely unperishable. Build a house of Big Tree
logs on granite and that house will last about as long as its foundation.
Indeed, fire seems to be the only agent that has any appreciable effect on
it. From one of these ancient trunk remnants I cut a specimen of the wood,
which neither in color, strength, nor soundness could be distinguished from
specimens cut from living trees, although it had certainly lain on the damp
forest floor for more than three hundred and eighty years, probably more
than thrice as long. The time in this instance was determined as follows:
When the tree from which the specimen was derived fell it sunk itself into
the ground, making a ditch about two hundred feet long and five or six feet
deep; and in the middle of this ditch, where a part of the fallen trunk had
been burned, a silver fir four feet in diameter and three hundred and eighty
years old was growing, showing that the sequoia trunk had lain on the ground
three hundred and eighty years plus the unknown time that it lay before the
part whose place had been taken by the fir was burned out of the way, and
that which had elapsed ere the seed from which the monumental fir sprang
fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now because sequoia trunks are
never wholly consumed in one forest fire and these fires recur only at
considerable intervals, and because sequoia ditches, after being cleared,
are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident that the trunk
remnant in question may have been on the ground a thousand years or more.
Similar vestiges are common, and together with the root-bowls and long
straight ditches of the fallen monarchs, throw a sure light back on the
post-glacial history of the species, bearing on its distribution. One of the
most interesting features of this grove is the apparent ease and strength
and comfortable independence in which the trees occupy their place in the
general forest. Seedlings, saplings, young and middle-aged trees are grouped
promisingly around the old patriarchs, betraying no sign of approach to
extinction. On the contrary, all seem to be saying, "Everything is to our
mind and we mean to live forever." But, sad to tell, a lumber company was
building a large mill and flume near by, assuring widespread destruction.
In the cones and sometimes in
the lower portion of the trunk and roots there is a dark gritty substance
which dissolves readily in water and yields a magnificent purple color. It
is a strong astringent, and is said to be used by the Indians as a big
medicine. Mr. Nelder showed me specimens of ink he had made from it, which I
tried and found good, flowing freely and holding its color well. Indeed,
everything about the tree seems constant. With these interesting trees,
forming the largest of the northern groves, I stopped only a week, for I had
far to go before the fall of the snow. The hermit seemed to cling to me and
tried to make me promise to winter with him after the season's work was
done. Brownie had to be got home, however, and other work awaited me,
therefore I could only promise to stop a day or two on my way back to
Yosemite and give him the forest news.
The next two weeks were spent
in the wide basin of the San Joaquin, climbing innumerable ridges and
surveying the far-extending sea of pines and firs. But not a single sequoia
crown appeared among them all, nor any trace of a fallen trunk, until I had
crossed the south divide of the basin, opposite Dinky Creek, one of the
northmost tributaries of Kings River. On this stream there is a small grove,
said to have been discovered a few years before my visit by two hunters in
pursuit of a wounded bear. Just as I was fording one of the branches of
Dinky Creek I met a shepherd, and when I asked him whether he knew anything
about the Big Trees of the neighborhood he replied, "I know all about them,
for I visited them only a few days ago and pastured my sheep in the grove."
He was fresh from the East, and as this was his first summer in the Sierra I
was curious to learn what impression the sequoias had made on him. When I
asked whether it was true that the Big Trees were really so big as people
say, he warmly replied, "Oh, yes sir, you bet. They're whales. I never used
to believe half I heard about the awful size of California trees, but
they're monsters and no mistake. One of them over here, they tell me, is the
biggest tree in the whole world, and I guess lit is, for it's forty foot
through and as many good long paces around." He was very earnest, and in
fullness of faith offered to guide me to the grove that I might not miss
seeing this biggest tree. A fair measurement four feet from the ground,
above the main swell of the roots, showed a diameter of only thirty-two
feet, much to the young man's disgust. "Only thirty-two feet," he lamented,
"only thirty-two, and I always thought it was forty!" Then with a sigh of
relief, "No matter, that's a big tree, anyway; no fool of a tree, sir, that
you can cut a plank out of thirty feet broad, straight-edged, no bark, all
good wood, sound and solid. It would make the brag white pine planks from
old Maine look like laths." A good many other fine specimens are distributed
along three small branches of the creek, and I noticed several thrifty
moderate-sized sequoias growing on a granite ledge, apparently as
independent of deep soil as the pines and firs, clinging to seams and
fissures and sending their roots far abroad in search of moisture.
The creek is very clear and
beautiful, gliding through tangles of shrubs and flower beds, gay bee and
butterfly pastures, the grove's own stream, pure sequoia water, flowing all
the year, every drop filtered through moss and leaves and the myriad spongy
rootlets of the giant trees. One of the most interesting features of the
grove is a small waterfall with a flowery, ferny, clear brimming pool at the
foot of it. How cheerily it sings the songs of the wilderness, and bow sweet
its tones! You seem to taste as well as hear them, while only the subdued
roar of the river in the deep cañon reaches up into the grove, sounding like
the sea and the winds. So charming a fall and pool in the heart of so
glorious a forest good pagans would have consecrated to some lovely nymph.
Hence down into the main
Kings River cañon, a mile deep, I led and dragged and shoved my patient,
much-enduring mule through miles and miles of gardens and brush, fording
innumerable streams, crossing savage rock slopes and taluses, scrambling,
sliding through gulches and gorges, then up into the grand sequoia forests
of the south side, cheered by the royal crowns displayed on the narrow
horizon. In a day and a half we reached the sequoia woods in the
neighborhood of the old Thomas's Mill Flat. Thence striking off
northeastward I found a magnificent forest nearly six miles long by two in
width, composed mostly of Big Trees, with outlying groves as far east as
Boulder Creek. Here five or six days were spent, and it was delightful to
learn from countless trees, old and young, how comfortably they were settled
down in concordance with climate and soil and their noble neighbors.
Imbedded in these majestic
woods there are numerous meadows, around the sides of which the Big Trees
press close together in beautiful lines, showing their grandeur openly from
the ground to their domed heads in the sky. The young trees are still more
numerous and exuberant than in the Fresno and Dinky groves, standing apart
in beautiful family groups, or crowding around the old giants. For every
venerable lightning-stricken tree, there is one or more in the glory of
prime, and for each of these, many young trees and crowds of saplings. The
young trees express the grandeur of their race in a way indefinable by any
words at my command. When they are five or six feet in diameter and a
hundred and fifty feet high, they seem like mere baby saplings as many
inches in diameter, their juvenile habit and gestures completely veiling
their real size, even to those who, from long experience, are able to make
fair approximation in their measurements of common trees. One morning I
noticed three airy, spiry, quick-growing babies on the side of a meadow, the
largest of which I took to be about eight inches in diameter. On measuring
it, I found to my astonishment it was five feet six inches in diameter, and
about a hundred and forty feet high.
On a bed of sandy ground
fifteen yards square, which had been occupied by four sugar pines, I counted
ninety-four promising seedlings, an instance of sequoia gaining ground from
its neighbors. Here also I noted eighty- six young sequoias from one to
fifty feet high on less than half an acre of ground that had been cleared
and prepared for their reception by fire. This was a small bay burned into
dense chaparral, showing that fire, the great destroyer of tree life, is
sometimes followed by conditions favorable for new growths. Sufficient fresh
soil, however, is furnished for the constant renewal of the forest by the
fall of old trees without the help of any other agent, - burrowing animals,
fire, flood, landslip, etc., - for the ground is thus turned and stirred as
well as cleared, and in every roomy, shady hollow beside the walls of
upturned roots many hopeful seedlings spring up.
The largest, and as far as I
know the oldest, of all the Kings River trees that I saw is the majestic
stump, already referred to, about a hundred and forty feet high, which above
the swell of the roots is thirty-five feet and eight inches inside the bark,
and over four thousand years old. It was burned nearly half through at the
base, and I spent a day in chopping off the charred surface, cutting into
the heart, and counting the wood-rings with the aid of a lens. I made out a
little over four thousand without difficulty or doubt, but I was unable to
get a complete count, owing to confusion in the rings where wounds had been
healed over. Judging by what is left of it, this was a fine, tall,
symmetrical tree nearly forty feet in diameter before it lost its bark. In
the last sixteen hundred and seventy-two years the increase in diameter was
ten feet. A short distance south of this forest lies a beautiful grove, now
mostly included in the General Grant National Park. I found many
shake-makers at work in it, access to these magnificent woods having been
made easy by the old mill wagon road. The Park is only two miles square, and
the largest of its many fine trees is the General Grant, so named before the
date of my first visit, twenty-eight years ago, and said to be the largest
tree in the world, though above the craggy bulging base the diameter is less
than thirty feet. The Sanger Lumber Company owns nearly all the Kings River
groves outside the Park, and for many years the mills have been spreading
desolation without any advantage.
One of the shake-makers
directed me to an "old snag biggeren Grant." It proved to be a huge black
charred stump thirty-two feet in diameter, the next in size to the grand
monument mentioned above.
I found a scattered growth of
Big Trees extending across the main divide to within a short distance of
Hyde's Mill, on a tributary of Dry Creek. The mountain ridge on the south
side of the stream was covered from base to summit with a most superb growth
of Big Trees. What a picture it made! In all my wide forest wanderings I had
seen none so sublime. Every tree of all the mighty host seemed perfect in
beauty and strength, and their majestic domed heads, rising above one
another on the mountain slope, were most imposingly displayed, like a range
of bossy upswelling cumulus clouds on a calm sky.
In this glorious forest the
mill was busy, forming a sore, sad center of destruction, though small as
yet, so immensely heavy was the growth. Only the smaller and most accessible
of the trees were being cut. The logs, from three to ten or twelve feet in
diameter, were dragged or rolled with long strings of oxen into a chute and
sent flying down the steep mountain side to the mill flat, where the largest
of them were blasted into manageable dimensions for the saws. And as the
timber is very brash, by this blasting and careless felling on uneven
ground, half or three fourths of the timber was wasted.
I spent several days
exploring the ridge and counting the annual wood-rings on a large number of
stumps in the clearings, then replenished my bread sack and pushed on
southward. All the way across the broad rough basins of the Kaweah and Tule
rivers sequoia ruled supreme, forming an almost continuous belt for sixty or
seventy miles, waving up and down in huge massy mountain billows in
compliance with the grand glacier-ploughed topography.
Day after day, from grove to
grove, cañon to cañon, I made a long, wavering way, terribly rough in some
places for Brownie, but cheery for me, for Big Trees were seldom out of
sight. We crossed the rugged, picturesque basins of Redwood Creek, the North
Fork of the Kaweah, and Marble Fork gloriously forested, and full of
beautiful cascades and falls, sheer and slanting, infinitely varied with
broad curly foam fleeces and strips of embroidery in which the sunbeams
revel. Thence we climbed into the noble forest on the Marble and Middle Fork
Divide. After a general exploration of the Kaweah basin, this part of the
sequoia belt seemed to me the finest, and I then named it "the Giant
Forest." It extends, a magnificent growth of giants grouped in pure temple
groves, ranged in colonnades along the sides of meadows, or scattered among
the other trees, from the granite headlands overlooking the hot foothills
and plains of the San Joaquin back to within a few miles of the old glacier
fountains at an elevation of five thousand to eighty-four hundred feet above
the sea.
When I entered this sublime
wilderness the day was nearly done, the trees with rosy, glowing
countenances seemed to be hushed and thoughtful, as if waiting in conscious
religious dependence on the sun, and one naturally walked softly and
awe-stricken among them. I wandered on, meeting nobler trees where all are
noble, subdued in the general calm, as if in some vast hail pervaded by the
deepest sanctities and solemnities that sway human souls. At sundown the
trees seemed to cease their worship and breathe free. I heard the birds
going home. I too sought a home for the night on the edge of a level meadow
where there is a long, open view between the evenly ranked trees standing
guard along its sides. Then after a good place was found for poor Brownie,
who had had a hard, weary day sliding and scrambling across the Marble Cañon,
I made my bed and supper and lay on my back looking up to the stars through
pillared arches finer far than the pious heart of man, telling its love,
ever reared. Then I took a walk up the meadow to see the trees in the pale
light. They seemed still more marvelously massive and tall than by day,
heaving their colossal heads into the depths of the sky, among the stars,
some of which appeared to be sparkling on their branches like flowers. I
built a big fire that vividly illumined the huge brown boles of the nearest
trees and the little plants and cones and fallen leaves at their feet,
keeping up the show until I fell asleep to dream of boundless forests and
trail-building for Brownie.
Joyous birds welcomed the
dawn; and the squirrels, now their food cones were ripe and had to be
quickly gathered and stored for winter, began their work before sunrise. My
teaand-bread-crumb breakfast was soon done, and leaving jaded Brownie to
feed and rest I sauntered forth to my studies. In every direction sequoia
ruled the woods. Most of the other big conifers were present here and there,
but not as rivals or companions. They only served to thicken and enrich the
general wilderness. Trees of every age cover craggy ridges as well as the
deep moraine-soiled slopes, and plant their magnificent shafts along every
brookside and meadow. Bogs and meadows are rare or entirely wanting in the
isolated groves north of Kings River; here there is a beautiful series of
them lying on the broad top of the main dividing ridge, imbedded in the very
heart of the mammoth woods as if for ornament, their smooth, plushy bosoms
kept bright and fertile by streams and sunshine.
Resting awhile on one of the
most beautiful of them when the sun was high, it seemed impossible that any
other forest picture in the world could rival it. There lay the grassy,
flowery lawn, three fourths of a mile long, smoothly outspread, basking in
mellow autumn light, colored brown and yellow and purple, streaked with
lines of green along the streams, and nil- fled here and there with patches
of ledum and scarlet vaccinium. Around the margin there is first a fringe of
azalea and willow bushes, colored orange yellow, enlivened with vivid dashes
of red cornel, as if painted. Then up spring the mighty walls of verdure
three hundred feet high, tjie brown fluted pillars so thick and tall and
strong they seem fit to uphold the sky; the dense foliage, swelling forward
in rounded bosses on the upper half, variously shaded and tinted, that of
the young trees dark green, of the old yellowish. An aged lightning-smitten
patriarch standing a little forward beyond the general line with knotty arms
outspread was covered with gray and yellow lichens and surrounded by a group
of saplings whose slender spires seemed to lack not a single leaf or spray
in their wondrous perfection. Such was the Kaweah meadow picture that golden
afternoon, and as I gazed every color seemed to deepen and glow as if the
progress of the fresh sun-work were visible from hour to hour, while every
tree seemed religious and conscious of the presence of God. A free man
revels in a scene like this and time goes by unmeasured. I stood fixed in
silent wonder or sauntered about shifting my points of view, studying the
physiognomy of separate trees, and going out to the different color patches
to see how they were put on and what they were made of, giving free
expression to my joy, exulting in Nature's wild immortal vigor and beauty,
never dreaming any other human being was near. Suddenly the spell was broken
by dull bumping, thudding sounds, and a man and horse came in sight at the
farther end of the meadow, where they seemed sadly out of place. A good big
bear or mastodon or megatherium would have been more in keeping with the old
mammoth forest. Nevertheless, it is always pleasant to meet one of our own
species after solitary rambles, and I stepped out where I could be seen and
shouted, when the rider reined in his galloping mustang and waited my
approach. He seemed too much surprised to speak until, laughing in his
puzzled face, I said I was glad to meet a fellow mountaineer in so lonely a
place. Then he abruptly asked, "What are you doing? How did you get here?" I
explained that I came across the canons from Yosemite and was only looking
at the trees. "Oh then, I know," he said, greatly to my surprise, "you must
be John Muir." He was herding a band of horses that had been driven up a
rough trail from the lowlands to feed on these forest meadows. A few
handfuls of crumb detritus was all that was left in my bread sack, so I told
him that I was nearly out of provision and asked whether he could spare me a
little flour. "Oh, yes, of course you can have anything I've got," he said.
"Just take my track and it will lead you to my camp in a big hollow log on
the side of a meadow two or three miles from here. I must ride after some
strayed horses, but I'll be back before night; in the mean time make
yourself at home." He galloped away to the northward, I returned to my own
camp, saddled Brownie, and by the middle of the afternoon discovered his
noble den in a fallen sequoia hollowed by fire - a spacious loghouse of one
log, carbon- lined, centuries old yet sweet and fresh, weather proof,
earthquake proof, likely to outlast the most durable stone castle, and
commanding views of garden and grove grander far than the richest king ever
enjoyed. Brownie found plenty of grass and I found bread, which I ate with
views from the big round, ever-open door. Soon the good Samaritan
mountaineer came in, and I enjoyed a famous rest listening to his
observations on trees, animals, adventures, etc., while he was busily
preparing supper. In answer to inquiries concerning the distribution of the
Big Trees he gave a good deal of particular information of the forest we
were in, and he had heard that the species extended a long way south, he
knew not how far. I wandered about for several days within a radius of six
or seven miles of the camp, surveying boundaries, measuring trees, and
climbing the highest points for general views. From the south side of the
divide I saw telling ranks of sequoia- crowned headlands stretching far into
the hazy distance, and plunging vaguely down into profound cañon depths
foreshadowing weeks of good work. I had now been out on the trip more than a
month, and I began to fear my studies would be interrupted by snow, for
winter was drawing nigh. "Where there isn't a way make a way," is easily
said when no way at the time is needed, but to the Sierra explorer with a
mule traveling across the cañon lines of drainage the brave old phrase
becomes heavy with meaning. There are ways across the Sierra graded by
glaciers, well marked, and followed by men and beasts and birds, and one of
them even by locomotives; but none natural or artificial along the range,
and the explorer who would thus travel at right angles to the glacial ways
must traverse canons and ridges extending side by side in endless
succession, roughened by side gorges and gulches and stubborn chaparral, and
defended by innumerable sheer-fronted precipices. My own ways are easily
made in any direction, but Brownie, though one of the toughest and most
skillful of his race, was oftentimes discouraged for want of hands, and
caused endless work. Wild at first, he was tame enough now; and when turned
loose he not only refused to run away, but as his troubles increased came to
depend on me in such a pitiful, touching way, I became attached to him and
helped him as if he were a good-natured boy in distress, and then the labor
grew lighter. Bidding good-bye to the kind sequoia cave-dweller, we vanished
again in the wilderness, drifting slowly southward, sequoias on every
ridge-top beckoning and pointing the way.
In the forest between the
Middle and East forks of the Kaweah, I met a great fire, and as fire is the
master scourge and controller of the distribution of trees, I stopped to
watch it and learn what I could of its works and ways with the giants. It
came racing up the steep chaparral-covered slopes of the East Fork cañon
with passionate enthusiasm in a broad cataract of flames, now bending down
low to feed on the green bushes, devouring acres of them at a breath, now
towering high in the air as if looking abroad to choose a way, then stooping
to feed again, the lurid flapping surges and the smoke and terrible rushing
and roaring hiding all that is gentle and orderly in the work. But as soon
as the deep forest was reached the ungovernable flood became calm like a
torrent entering a lake, creeping and spreading beneath the trees where the
ground was level or sloped gently, slowly nibbling the cake of compressed
needles and scales with flames an inch high, rising here and there to a foot
or two on dry twigs and clumps of small bushes and brome grass. Only at
considerable intervals were fierce bonfires lighted, where heavy branches
broken off by snow had accumulated, or around some venerable giant whose
head had been stricken off by lightning.
I tethered Brownie on the
edge of a little meadow beside a stream a good safe way off, and then
cautiously chose a camp for myself in a big stout hollow trunk not likely to
be crushed by the fall of burning trees, and made a bed of ferns and boughs
in it. The night, however, and the strange wild fireworks were too beautiful
and exciting to allow much sleep. There was no danger of being chased and
hemmed in, for in the main forest belt of the Sierra, even when swift winds
are blowing, fires seldom or never sweep over the trees in broad
all-embracing sheets as they do in the dense Rocky Mountain woods and in
those of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. Here they creep
from tree to tree with tranquil deliberation, allowing close observation,
though caution is required in venturing around the burning giants to avoid
falling limbs and knots and fragments from dead shattered tops. Though the
day was best for study, I sauntered about night after night, learning what I
could and admiring the wonderful show vividly displayed in the lonely
darkness, the ground-fire advancing in long crooked lines gently grazing and
smoking on the close-pressed leaves, springing up in thousands of little
jets of pure flame on dry tassels and twigs, and tall spires and flat sheets
with jagged flapping edges dancing here and there on grass tufts and bushes,
big bonfires blazing in perfect storms of energy where heavy branches mixed
with small ones lay smashed together in hundred cord piles, big red arches
between spreading root-swells and trees growing close together, huge
fire-mantled trunks on the hill slopes glowing like bars of hot iron,
violet-colored fire running up the tall trees, tracing the furrows of the
bark in quick quivering rills, and lighting magnificent torches on dry
shattered tops, and ever and anon, with a tremendous roar and burst of
light, young trees clad in low-descending feathery branches vanishing in one
flame two or three hundred feet high.
One of the most impressive
and beautiful sights was made by the great fallen trunks lying on the
hillsides all red and glowing like colossal iron bars fresh from a furnace,
two hundred feet long some of them, and ten to twenty feet thick. After
repeated burnings have consumed the bark and sapwood, the sound charred
surface, being full of cracks and sprinkled with leaves, is quickly
overspread with a pure, rich, furred, ruby glow almost flameless and
smokeless, producing a marvelous effect in the night. Another grand and
interesting sight are the fires on the tops of the largest living trees
flaming above the green branches at a height of perhaps two hundred feet,
entirely cut off from the ground-fires, and looking like signal beacons on
watch towers. From one standpoint I sometimes saw a dozen or more, those in
the distance looking like great stars above the forest roof. At first I
could not imagine how these sequoia lamps were lighted, but the very first
night, strolling about waiting and watching, I saw the thing done again and
again. The thick, fibrous bark of old trees is divided by deep, nearly
continuous furrows, the sides of which are bearded with the bristling ends
of fibers broken by the growth swelling of the trunk, and when the fire
comes creeping around the feet of the trees, it runs up these bristly
furrows in lovely pale blue quivering, bickering rills of flame with a low,
earnest whispering sound to the lightning-shattered top of the trunk, which,
in the dry Indian summer, with perhaps leaves and twigs and squirrel-gnawed
cone-scales and seed-wings lodged in it, is readily ignited. These
lamp-lighting rills, the most beautiful fire streams I ever saw, last only a
minute or two, but the big lamps burn with varying brightness for days and
weeks, throwing off sparks like the spray of a fountain, while ever and anon
a shower of red coals comes sifting down through the branches, followed at
times with startling effect by a big burned-off chunk weighing perhaps half
a ton.
The immense bonfires where
fifty or a hundred cords of peeled, split, smashed wood has been piled
around some old giant by a single stroke of lightning is another grand sight
in the night. The light is so great I found I could read common print three
hundred yards from them, and the illumination of the circle of onlooking
trees is indescribably impressive. Other big fires, roaring and booming like
waterfalls, were blazing on the upper sides of trees on hill- slopes,
against which limbs broken off by heavy snow had rolled, while branches high
overhead, tossed and shaken by the ascending air current, seemed to be
writhing in pain. Perhaps the most startling phenomenon of all was the quick
death of childlike sequoias only a century or two of age. In the midst of
the other comparatively slow and steady fire work one of these tall,
beautiful saplings, leafy and branchy, would be seen blazing up suddenly,
all in one heaving, booming, passionate flame reaching from the ground to
the top of the tree and fifty to a hundred feet or more above it, with a
smoke column bending forward and streaming away on the upper, free-flowing
wind. To burn these green trees a strong fire of dry wood beneath them is
required, to send up a current of air hot enough to distill inflammable
gases from the leaves and sprays; then instead of the lower limbs gradually
catching fire and igniting the next and next in succession, the whole tree
seems to explode almost simultaneously, and with awful roaring and throbbing
a round, tapering flame shoots up two or three hundred feet, and in a second
or two is quenched, leaving the green spire a black, dead mast, bristled and
roughened with down-curling boughs. Nearly all the trees that have been
burned down are lying with their heads uphill, because they are burned far
more deeply on the upper side, on account of broken limbs rolling down
against them to make hot fires, while only leaves and twigs accumulate on
the lower side and are quickly consumed without injury to the tree. But
green, resinless sequoia wood burns very slowly, and many successive fires
are required to burn down a large tree. Fires can run only at intervals of
several years, and when the ordinary amount of firewood that has rolled
against the gigantic trunk is consumed, only a shallow scar is made, which
is slowly deepened by recurring fires until far beyond the center of
gravity, and when at last the tree falls, it of course falls uphill. The
healing folds of wood layers on some of the deeply burned trees show that
centuries have elapsed since the last wounds were made.
When a great sequoia falls,
its head is smashed into fragments about as small as those made by
lightning, which are mostly devoured by the first running, - hunting fire
that finds them, while the trunk is slowly wasted away by centuries of fire
and weather. One of the most interesting fire actions on the trunk is the
boring of those great tunnel-like hollows through which horsemen may gallop.
All of these famous hollows are burned out of the solid wood, for no sequoia
is ever hollowed by decay. When the tree falls the brash trunk is often
broken straight across into sections as if sawed; into these joints the fire
creeps, and, on account of the great size of the broken ends, burns for
weeks or even months without being much influenced by the weather. After the
great glowing ends fronting each other have burned so far apart that their
rims cease to burn, the fire continues to work on in the centers, and the
ends become deeply concave. Then heat being radiated from side to side, the
burning goes on in each section of the trunk independent of the other, until
the diameter of the bore is so great that the heat radiated across from side
to side is not sufficient to keep them burning. It appears, therefore, that
only very large trees can receive the fire-auger and have any shell rim
left.
Fire attacks the large trees
only at the ground, consuming the fallen leaves and humus at their feet,
doing but little harm unless considerable quantities of fallen limbs happen
to be piled about them, their thick mail of spongy, unpitchy, almost
unburnable bark affording strong protection. Therefore the oldest and most
perfect unscarred trees are found on ground that is nearly level, while
those growing on hillsides, against which falling branches roll, are always
deeply scarred on the upper side, and as we have seen are sometimes burned
down. The saddest thing of all was to see the hopeful seedlings, many of
them crinkled and bent with the pressure of winter snow, yet bravely
aspiring at the top, helplessly perishing, and young trees, perfect spires
of verdure and naturally immortal, suddenly changed to dead masts. Yet the
sun looked cheerily down the openings in the forest roof, turning the black
smoke to a beautiful brown, as if all was for the best.
Beneath the smoke-clouds of
the suffering forest we again pushed southward, descending a side-gorge of
the East Fork cañon and climbing another into new forests and groves not a
whit less noble. Brownie, the meanwhile, had been resting, while I was weary
and sleepy with almost ceaseless wanderings, giving only an hour or two each
night or day to sleep in my log home. Way-making here seemed to become more
and more difficult, "impossible," in common phrase, for four-legged
travelers. Two or three miles was all the day's work as far as distance was
concerned. Nevertheless, just before sundown we found a charming camp ground
with plenty of grass, and a forest to study that had felt no fire for many a
year. The camp hollow was evidently a favorite home of bears. On many of the
trees, at a height of six or eight feet, their autographs were inscribed in
strong, free, flowing strokes on the soft bark where they had stood up like
cats to stretch their limbs. Using both hands, every claw a pen, the
handsome curved lines of their writing take the form of remarkably regular
interlacing pointed arches, producing a truly ornamental effect. I looked
and listened, half expecting to see some of the writers alarmed and
withdrawing from the unwonted disturbance. Brownie also looked and listened,
for mules fear bears instinctively and have a very keen nose for them. When
I turned him loose, instead of going to the best grass, he kept cautiously
near the camp-fire for protection, but was careful not to step on me. The
great starry night passed away in deep peace and the rosy morning sunbeams
were searching the grove ere I awoke from a long, blessed sleep.
The breadth of the sequoia
belt here is about the same as on the north side of the river, extending,
rather thin and scattered in some places, among the noble pines from near
the main forest belt of the range well back towards the frosty peaks, where
most of the trees are growing on moraines but little changed as yet.
Two days' scramble above Bear
Hollow I enjoyed an interesting interview with deer. Soon after sunrise a
little company of four came to my camp in a wild garden imbedded in
chaparral, and after much cautious observation quietly began to eat
breakfast with me. Keeping perfectly still I soon had their confidence, and
they came so near I found no difficulty, while admiring their graceful
manners and gestures, in determining what plants they were eating, thus
gaining a far finer knowledge and sympathy than comes by killing and
hunting.
Indian summer gold with
scarce a whisper of winter in it was painting the glad wilderness in richer
and yet richer colors as we scrambled across the South cañon into the basin
of the Tule. here the Big Tree forests are still more extensive, and
furnished abundance of work in tracing boundaries and gloriously crowned
ridges up and down, back and forth, exploring, studying, admiring, while the
great measureless days passed on and away uncounted. But in the calm of the
camp-fire the end of the season seemed near. Brownie too often brought
snowstorms to mind. He became doubly jaded, though I never rode him, and
always left him in camp to feed and rest while I explored. The invincible
bread business also troubled me again; the last mealy crumbs were consumed,
and grass was becoming scarce even in the roughest rock-piles, naturally
inaccessible to sheep. One afternoon, as I gazed over the rolling bossy
sequoia billows stretching interminably southward, seeking a way and
counting how far I might go without food, a rifle shot rang out sharp and
clear. Marking the direction I pushed gladly on, hoping to find some hunter
who could spare a little food. Within a few hundred rods I struck the track
of a shod horse, which led to the camp of two Indian shepherds. One of them
was cooking supper when I arrived. Glancing curiously at me he saw that I
was hungry, and gave me some mutton and bread, and said encouragingly as he
pointed to the west, "Putty soon Indian come, heap speak English." Toward
sundown two thousand sheep beneath a cloud of dust came streaming through
the grand sequoias to a meadow below the camp, and presently the
English-speaking shepherd came in, to whom I explained my wants and what I
was doing. Like most white men, he could not conceive how anything other
than gold could be the object of such rambles as mine, and asked repeatedly
whether I had discovered any mines. I tried to make him talk about trees and
the wild animals, but unfortunately he proved to be a tame Indian from the
Tule Reservation, had been to school, claimed to be civilized, and spoke
contemptuously of "wild Indians," and so of course his inherited instincts
were blurred or lost. The Big Trees, he said, grew far south, for he had
seen them in crossing the mountains from Porterville to Lone Pine. In the
morning he kindly gave me a few pounds of flour, and assured me that I would
get plenty more at a sawmill on the South Fork if I reached it before it was
shut down for the season.
Of all the Tule basin forest
the section on the North Fork seemed the finest, surpassing, I think, even
the Giant Forest of the Kaweah. Southward from here, though the width and
general continuity of the belt is well sustained, I thought I could detect a
slight falling off in the height of the trees and in closeness of growth.
All the basin was swept by swarms of hoofed locusts, the southern part over
and over again, until not a leaf within reach was left on the wettest bogs,
the outer edges of the thorniest chaparral beds, or even on the young
conifers, which, unless under the stress of dire famine, sheep never touch.
Of course Brownie suffered, though I made diligent search for grassy
sheep-proof spots. Turning him loose one evening on the side of a carex bog,
he dolefully prospected the desolate neighborhood without finding anything
that even a starving mule could eat. Then, utterly discouraged, he stole up
behind me while I was bent over on my knees making a fire for tea, and in a
pitiful mixture of bray and neigh, begged for help. It was a mighty touching
prayer, and I answered it as well as I could with half of what was left of a
cake made from the last of the flour given me by the Indians, hastily
passing it over my shoulder, and saying, "Yes, poor fellow, I know, but soon
you'll have plenty. To-morrow down we go to alfalfa and barley," speaking to
him as if he were human, as through stress of trouble plainly he was. After
eating his portion of bread he seemed content, for he said no more, but
patiently turned away to gnaw leafless ceanothus stubs. Such clinging,
confiding dependence after all our scrambles and adventures together was
very touching, and I felt conscience-stricken for having led him so far in
so rough and desolate a country. "Man," says Lord Bacon, "is the god of the
dog." So, also, he is of the mule and many other dependent fellow mortals.
Next morning I turned
westward, determined to force a way straight to pasture, letting sequoia
wait. Fortunately ere we had struggled down through half a mile of chaparral
we heard a mill whistle, for which we gladly made a bee line. At the sawmill
we both got a good meal, then taking the dusty lumber road pursued our way
to the lowlands. The nearest good pasture I counted might be thirty or forty
miles away. But scarcely had we gone ten when I noticed a little log cabin a
hundred yards or so back from the road, and a tall man straight as a pine
standing in front of it observing us as we came plodding down through the
dust. Seeing no sign of grass or hay, I was going past without stopping,
when he shouted, "Travelin'?" Then drawing nearer, "Where have you come
from? I did n't notice you go up." I replied I had come through the woods
from the north, looking at the trees. "Oh, then, you must be John Muir.
Halt, you're tired; come and rest and I'll cook for you." Then I explained
that I was tracing the sequoia belt, that on account of sheep my mule was
starving, and therefore must push on to the lowlands. "No, no," he said,
"that corral over there is full of hay and grain. Turn your mule into it. I
don't own it, but the fellow who does is hauling lumber, and it will be all
right. He's a white man. Come and rest. How tired you must be! The Big Trees
don't go much farther south, nohow. I know the country up there, have hunted
all over it. Come and rest, and let your little doggone rat of a mule rest.
How in heavens did you get him across the caflons - roll him? or carry him?
He's poor, but he'll get fat, and I'll give you a horse and go with you up
the mountains, and while you're looking at the trees I'll go hunting. It
will be a short job, for the end of the Big Trees is not far." Of course I
stopped. No true invitation is ever declined. He had been hungry and tired
himself many a time in the Rocky Mountains as well as in the Sierra. Now he
owned a band of cattle and lived alone. His cabin was about eight by ten
feet, the door at one end, a fireplace at the other, and a bed on one side
fastened to the logs. Leading me in without a word of mean apology, he made
me lie down on the bed, then reached under it, brought forth a sack of
apples and advised me to keep "chawing" at them until he got supper ready.
Finer, braver hospitality I never found in all this good world so often
called selfish.
Next day with hearty, easy
alacrity the mountaineer procured horses, prepared and packed provisions,
and got everything ready for an early start the following morning. Well
mounted, we pushed rapidly up the South Fork of the river and soon after
noon were among the giants once more. On the divide between the Tule and
Deer Creek a central camp was made, and the mountaineer spent his time in
deer-hunting, while with provisions for two or three days I explored the
woods, and in accordance with what I had been told soon reached the southern
extremity of the belt on the South Fork of Deer Creek. To make sure, I
searched the woods a considerable distance south of the last Deer Creek
grove, passed over into the basin of the Kern, and climbed several high
points commanding extensive views over the sugar-pine woods, without seeing
a single sequoia crown in all the wide expanse to the southward. On the way
back to camp, however, I was greatly interested in a grove I discovered on
the east side of the Kern River divide, opposite the North Fork of Deer
Creek. The height of the pass where the species crossed over is about seven
thousand feet, and I heard of still another grove whose waters drain into
the upper Kern opposite the Middle Fork of the Tule.
It appears, therefore, that
though the sequoia belt is two hundred and sixty miles long, most of the
trees are on a section to the south of Kings River only about seventy miles
in length. But though the area occupied by the species increases so much to
the southward, there is but little difference in the size of the trees. A
diameter of twenty feet and height of two hundred and seventy-five is
perhaps about the average for anything like mature and favorably situated
trees. Specimens twenty-five feet in diameter are not rare, and a good many
approach a height of three hundred feet. Occasionally one meets a specimen
thirty feet in diameter, and rarely one that is larger. The majestic stump
on Kings River is the largest I saw and measured on the entire trip. Careful
search around the boundaries of the forests and groves and in the gaps of
the belt failed to discover any trace of the former existence of the species
beyond its present limits. On the contrary, it seems to be slightly
extending its boundaries; for the outstanding stragglers, occasionally met a
mile or two from the main bodies, are young instead of old monumental trees.
Ancient ruins and the ditches and root-bowls the big trunks make in falling
were found in all the groves, but none outside of them. We may therefore
conclude that the area covered by the species has not been diminished during
the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not at all in post-
glacial times. For admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been
once covered by sequoia every tree may have fallen, and that fire and the
weather had left not a vestige of them, many of the ditches made by the fall
of the ponderous trunks, weighing five hundred to nearly a thousand tons,
and the bowls made by their upturned roots would remain visible for
thousands of years after the last remnants of the trees had vanished. Some
of these records would doubtless he effaced in a comparatively short time by
the inwashing of sediments, but no inconsiderable part of them would remain
enduringly engraved on flat ridge tops, almost wholly free from such action.
In the northern groves, the
only ones that at first came under the observation of students, there are
but few seedlings and young trees to take the places of the old ones.
Therefore the species was regarded as doomed to speedy extinction, as being
only an expiring remnant vanquished in the so-called struggle for life, and
shoved into its last strongholds in moist glens where conditions are
exceptionally favorable. But the majestic continuous forests of the south
end of the belt create a very different impression. Here, as we have seen,
no tree in the forest is more enduringly established. Nevertheless it is
oftentimes vaguely said that the Sierra climate is drying out, and that this
oncoming, constantly increasing drought will of itself surely extinguish
King Sequoia, though sections of wood-rings show that there has been no
appreciable change of climate during the last forty centuries. Furthermore,
that sequoia can grow and is growing on as dry ground as any of its
neighbors or rivals, we have seen proved over and over again. "Why, then,"
it will be asked, "are the Big Tree groves always found on well-watered
spots?" Simply because Big Trees give rise to streams. It is a mistake to
suppose that the water is the cause of the groves being there. On the
contrary, the groves are the cause of the water being there. The roots of
this immense tree fill the ground, forming a sponge which hoards the bounty
of the clouds and sends it forth in clear perennial streams instead of
allowing it to rush headlong in short-lived destructive floods. Evaporation
is also checked, and the air kept still in the shady sequoia depths, while
thirsty robber winds are shut out.
Since, then, it appears that
sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as its neighbors and that the
greater moisture found with it is an effect rather than a cause of its
presence, the notions as to the former greater extension of the species and
its near approach to extinction, based on its supposed dependence on greater
moisture, are seen to be erroneous. Indeed, all my observations go to show
that in case of prolonged drought the sugar pines and firs would die before
sequoia. Again, if the restricted and irregular distribution of the species
be interpreted as the result of the desiccation of the range, then, instead
of increasing in individuals toward the south, where the rainfall is less,
it should diminish.
If, then, its peculiar
distribution has not been governed by superior conditions of soil and
moisture, by what has it been governed? Several years before I made this
trip, I noticed that the northern groves were located on those parts of the
Sierra soil-belt that were first laid bare and opened to preemption when the
ice- sheet began to break up into individual glaciers. And when I was
examining the basin of the San Joaquin and trying to account for the absence
of sequoia, when every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it
occurred to me that this remarkable gap in the belt is located in the
channel of the great ancient glacier of the San Joaquin and Kings River
basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the snows that
fell on more than fifty miles of the Summit peaks of the range. Constantly
brooding on the question, I next perceived that the great gap in the belt to
the northward, forty miles wide, between the Stanislaus and Tuolumne groves,
occurs in the channel of the great Stanislaus and Tuolumne glacier, and that
the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves occurs in the channel
of the smaller Merced glacier. The wider the ancient glacier, the wider the
gap in the sequoia belt, while the groves and forests attain their greatest
development in the Kaweah and Tule River basins, just where, owing to
topographical conditions, the region was first cleared and warmed, while
protected from the main ice-rivers, that flowed past to right and left down
the Kings and Kern valleys. In general, where the ground on the belt was
first cleared of ice, there the sequoia now is, and where at the same
elevation and time the ancient glaciers lingered, there the sequoia is not.
What the other conditions may have been which enabled the sequoia to
establish itself upon these oldest and warmest parts of the main soil-belt I
cannot say. I might venture to state, however, that since the sequoia
forests present a more and more ancient and long established aspect to the
southward, the species was probably distributed from the south toward the
close of the glacial period, before the arrival of other trees. About this
branch of the question, however, there is at present much fog, but the
general relationship we have pointed out between the distribution of the Big
Tree and the ancient glacial system is clear. And when we bear in mind that
all the existing forests of the Sierra are growing on comparatively fresh
moraine soil, and that the range itself has been recently sculptured and
brought to light from beneath the ice-mantle of the glacial winter, then
many lawless mysteries vanish, and harmonies take their places.
But notwithstanding all the
observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of this colossal tree
point to the conclusion that it never was more widely distributed on the
Sierra since the close of the glacial epoch; that its present forests are
scarcely past prime, if, indeed, they have reached prime; that the post-
glacial day of the species is probably not half done; yet, when from a wider
outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient
richness in species and individuals, comparing our Sierra giant and Sequoia
sempervirens of the coast, the only other living species, with the many
fossil species already discovered, and described by Heer and Lesquereux,
some of which flourished over large areas around the Arctic Circle, and in
Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and cretaceous times, -
then, indeed, it becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to
narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus
both as to species and individuals, and that they probably are verging to
extinction. But the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have
a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible
existence of conditions calculated to multiply and reëxtend both species and
individuals. No unfavorable change of climate, so far as I can see, no
disease, but only fire and the axe and the ravages of flocks and herds
threaten the existence of these noblest of God's trees. In Nature's keeping
they are safe, but through man's agency destruction is making rapid
progress, while in the work of protection only a beginning has been made.
The Mariposa Grove belongs to and is guarded by the State; the General Grant
and Sequoia National Parks, established ten years ago, are efficiently
guarded by a troop of cavalry under the direction of the Secretary of the
Interior; so also are the small Tuolumne and Merced groves, which are
included in the Yosemite National Park, while a few scattered patches and
fringes, scarce at all protected, though belonging to the National
Government, are in the Sierra Forest Reservation.
Perhaps more than half of all
the Big Trees have been sold, and are now in the hands of speculators and
mill men. Even the beautiful little Calaveras Grove of ninety trees, so
historically interesting from its being the first discovered, is now owned,
together with the much larger South or Stanislaus Grove, by a lumber
company.
Far the largest and most
important section of protected Big Trees is in the grand Sequoia National
Park, now easily accessible by stage from Visalia. It contains seven
townships and extends across the whole breadth of the magnificent Kaweah
basin. But large as it is, it should be made much larger. Its natural
eastern boundary is the high Sierra, and the northern and southern
boundaries, the Kings and Kern rivers, thus including the sublime scenery on
the headwaters of these rivers and perhaps nine tenths of all the Big Trees
in existence. Private claims cut and blotch both of the sequoia parks as
well as all the best of the forests, every one of which the Government
should gradually extinguish by purchase, as it readily may, for none of
these holdings are of much value to their owners. Thus as far as possible
the grand blunder of selling would be corrected. The value of these forests
in storing and dispensing the bounty of the mountain clouds is infinitely
greater than lumber or sheep. To the dwellers of the plain, dependent on
irrigation, the Big Tree, leaving all its higher uses out of the count, is a
tree of life, a never-failing spring, sending living water to the lowlands
all through the hot, rainless summer. For every grove cut down a stream is
dried up. Therefore, all California is crying, "Save the trees of the
fountains," nor, judging by the signs of the times, is it likely that the
cry will cease until the salvation of all that is left of Sequoia gigantea
is sure. |