Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1891 — SEQUOIA FORESTS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SEQUOIA FORESTS.

The Mighty Monarch* that Beautify Regions in California. From King’s Biver, California, southward across the broad rugged basins of the Kaweah and Tule are the grandest sequoia forests in existence. The average stature attained by one of these trees under favorable conditions is 275 feet with a diameter of twenty feet. So exquisitely harmonious are these mighty monarchs, rejoicing in the unrivaled display of giant grandeur and giant loveliness, that there is never anything overgrown or huge-looking above them. About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the fluting bark furrows and loose tufts and rosettes of slender sprays that wave lightly on the breeze and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty alone. Within sequoia woods rare and impressive contrasts are met on every side—the colors of the tree and flower, rock and sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence. In winter the trees break forth in universal bloom, myriads of conelets crowd the ends of the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree and when ripe dusting all the air and the ground with golden pollen. The fruitfulness of the sequoia is so great

that on two branches, one and a half and two inches in diameter, respectively, 480 cones, cldstered ■ together like grapes, have been counted. f

A SEQUOIA, KAWEAH, CAL.