Our National Parks - Chapter IX



CHAPTER IX
THE SEQUOIA AND GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS

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, 

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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 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 

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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 branchlets, 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 

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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 branchlets 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 or 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.

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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 of ten 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 

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inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted with new species of pine and fir 
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.

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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 

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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 Trees 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 

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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 

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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 branchlets 
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.

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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 years 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 youth as yet, that-- 

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"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.

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The following Sequoia notes and measurements are copied from my 
notebooks:--

Diameter
Feet      Inches      Height in Feet      Age Years

  0        1 3-4            10                 7
  0        5                24                20 
  0        5                25                41 
  0        6                25                66
  0        6                28 1-2            39
  0        8                25                29
  0       11                45                71
  1        0                60                71
  3        2               156               260
  6        0               192               240
  7        3               195               339
  7        3               255               506
  7        6               240               493
  7        7               207               424
  9        0               243               259
  9        3               222               280
 10        6                                1440
 12                                         1825(1)
 15                                         2150(2)
 24                                         1300
 25                                         2300
 35        8 inside bark               over 4000

(1.) 6 feet in diameter at height of 200 feet.
(2.) 7 feet in diameter at height of 200 feet. 

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 

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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 one 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 

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the trees and on sunny spots on the hills around the groves, wild rose and 
rubus, spiræa 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 thunder-clouds 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 learning to 
fly, and with myriads of insects glad as birds keep the air whirling, joy 
in every wingbeat, 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.

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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 at 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 

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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 branchlets 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, dividing 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 Tree like gigantic goldenrods and the sowing of 
their 

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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 

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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 most 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 

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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 

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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 runing 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, 

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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 mean-while 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 

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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 

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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 

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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. 

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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 

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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 it 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 

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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 how sweet it 
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 food 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 and 
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' 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 

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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 all 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 

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any astonishment it ws 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 then 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, 

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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.

[image caption: YOUNG BIG TREE FELLED FOR SHINGLES]

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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 centre 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 

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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 5000 to 8400 feet above the sea.

When I entered this sublime wilderness the 

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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 give-stricken among them. 
I wandered on, meeting nobler trees where all are noble, subdued in the 
general calm, as if in some vast hall pervaded by the deepest sanctities 
and solemnities that away 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 

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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 tea-and-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 

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along the streams, and ruffled 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, the 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 

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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 cañons 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 

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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 now 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 

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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 cañons 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 

[image caption: A ONE-LOG HOUSE]

Page 307

he were a good-natured boy in distress, and then the labor grew lighter. 
Bidding good-by 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 

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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 

Page 309

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 

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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 fibres 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 

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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 hillslopes, 
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 starting 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, 

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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 centre 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 

Page 313

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 for 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 centres, 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 them 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, 

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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-george of the East Fork cañon and climbing 
another into new forests and groves not a whit less noble. Brownie, and 
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 

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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 loosed, 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 
woke 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 mains 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 

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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 snow-storms 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 

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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, out 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 see 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 

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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 the 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 

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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 didn't 

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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 tire 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 cañons--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, 

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he made me lie down on the bed, then reached under it, brought forth a 
sack of apple 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 upon 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 

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is about 7000 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 

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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 up-turned 
roots would remain visible for thousands of years after the last remnants 
of the trees had vanished. Some of these records would doubtless be 
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, 

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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 

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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 preëmption 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 

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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 

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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 the 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 

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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 

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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, and the Kings and Kern rivers, and 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 

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trees of the fountains," nor, judging by the signs of the times, it is 
likely that the cry will cease until the salvation of all that is left of 
Sequoia gigantea is sure.