Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1884 — The Gigantic Sequoias. [ARTICLE]

The Gigantic Sequoias.

The largest tree is the fallen “Father of the Forest,” with a traceable height of 452 feet, and measuring 112 feet in diameter at its base, a stupendous ruin truly! The interior, a hollow cavity probably burned out centuries ago, is sufficiently spacious to afford ample room for a couple of mounted horsemen to ride abreast for 200 feet, then dismounting, if so disposed, our cavaliers could ascend a ladder and through a very respectable-sized knot-hole emerge into the outer world again, by no means a formidable undertaking, as we can cheerfully testify. The noble “Mother of the Forest,” 327 feet in height, denuded of her bark and, of course, dead, white and ghost-like, is still standing, though her top limbs are beginning to fall. The bark removed from the poor defrauded “Mother” was exhibited at the Sydenham Crytal Palace, where it was burned with the partial destruction by fire of that building some years ago. In 1853 one of the most imposing of that family group was cut down, occupying five men twenty-five days in perfoaning tfie herculean work, which was ‘ Accomplished by tising augers, the borings being made to the center of the tree. Upon the top of the stump, smoothed and polished, a pavilion has been erected and the sizable room inclosed upon festive occasions serves for a dancing hall, and is large enough to accommodate thirty-two “sets” upon the floor, it is said, at one time. The Grove, in Mariposa County; is a public domain, having been given by an act of Congress in 1864 to the State of California. It is two guiles square, and from its greater area, larger number of trees, and the wildness of the locality, was even more impressive to us than Calaveras Grove.

Many of the big trees have been scathed by fires, particularly in this forest, where, as Prof. Whitney say 6, they have evidently swept through again and again, greatly marring its beauty. But amid all these fierce conflicts, though scarred and battered, many of these brave old veterans have sturdily maintained their hold upon life, while others have bowed their lofty heads in the dust. There are not a few of these prostrate monarchs here in the Mariposa Grove, in the debris of whose moldering trunks, shrubs, loveliest wild flowers, and soft, velvety mosses spring np gracefully, beautifying all that remains of their former stately majesty and grandeur. Through one of the standing trees—the monster “Wawona”—the stage road has been made to pass, an aperture not quite equal to a similar one cut through the stump of the “Dead Giant,” in the Tuolumne Grove, through which wooden tunnel our loaded six-horse stage-coach was driven in easiest transit.