Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — The Monster Tree of California. [ARTICLE]

The Monster Tree of California.

As regard® the wonderful size of the Sequoia, that ts a matter which does not at* first fully come to one. 'lhe fact is that all the trees are so large that one fails to realize the magnitude of the giants. All have increased in proportion. It requires a mental calculation to convince one’s self that the transformation is something quite out of the common. It is only when you come to -walk in and out of the hollow trees and to circle round them and take a constitutional by walking alongside of a fallen giant, or perhaps (if it has done duty as a chimney before it came to grief), by riding up inside the hol--3w for a considerable distance, that yow' begin to understand their size. You do so best when, standing on the ground beside a prostrate tree lying buried in a ditch of its own making, you look up at a red wall rising perhaps fifteen or twenty ■ feet above your head, bulging outward considerable, and extending in a atrainght line for 300 feet along the ground, and tell yourself that it is only a tree! The owners of the beautiful groves near the hotel have erected tall ladders to enable people to climb on to some of these heights and walk along the fallen trees as if on garden terraces. It sounds cockney, but it is decidedly Sleasant to gain a view of the forest ’om an elevation of thirty feet, and it is not every one who can scale the red rampart without the aid of the ladder. If you choose to clamber along the upturned roots you may find an airy seat'some forty feet above the ground. This sounds high, but on further consideration you begin to marvel how such extraordinary small joots can ever have formed a fit pedestal for so ponderous a weight. They have literally no depth and a comparatively small spread, so that they have merely a superficial hold on the earth’s surface. Yet this slight support has enabled these huge bodies to resist the wild storms of many centuries. All the big trees of the district are concentrated in two groves, namely, the little forest gem of Calaveras, and a much larger belt known as the South Park Grove, on the Stanislaus River, about six miles further. In the Calaveras Grove all the Sequoias lie Jwithin an area of fifty acres, over which space altogether about 100 lie scattered singly or ingroups. Of these twenty attain a circumference of about eighty feet near the base, and one, which is distinguished as the Father of the Forest, is found to measure 110 feet round, it now lies prostrate, and has apparently done so for many a century, for the well-nigh imperishable wood is in part decayed, and long use as a chimney had burned out Its inside and destroyed its summit ere it felt The portion that still remains is like a long mountain, and two large archways have been out into the side of the said" mountain in order that those whose taste lies in that line may ride into the hollow trunk and come out by the further opening. It is estimated that the tree, when perfect, must have been about 450 feet in height. Of the trees now standing, four exceed 300 feet in height, and one measures 325. About twenty-five are said to exceed "250 feet. One can, perhaps, better realize what these sizes mean by finding the amount of house-room to be obtained within a hollow tree. Several, such as “Miner’s Camp” and “Pioneer Camp,” have been used as temporary homes. In the latter, fifty persons can find sitting room; others are used for stabling horsea— G. F. Gordon Cumming, in the Gentleman's Magazine.