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The western slopes of the Pacific ranges, from the Canadian border southward to the desert, carry the most luxuriant forest in the United States. The immense stands of yellow pine and Douglas fir of the far north merge into the sugar pines and giant sequoias of the south in practically an unbroken belt which, on Sierra's slopes, lies on the middle levels between the low productive plains of the west and the towering heights of the east. The Sequoia National Park and its little neighbor, the General Grant National Park, enclose areas of remarkable fertility in which trees, shrubs, and wild flowers reach their greatest development. The million sequoia trees which grow here are a very small part, numerically, of this amazing forest.
These slopes are rich with the soil of thousands of years of accumulations. They are warmed in summer by mild Pacific winds heated in their passage across the lowlands, and blanketed in winter by many feet of soft snow. They are damp with countless springs and streams sheltered under heavy canopies of foliage. In altitude they range from two thousand feet at the bottom of Kaweah's canyon, as it emerges from the park, to eight thousand feet in the east, with mountains rising three or four thousand feet higher. It is a tumbled land of ridges and canyons, but its slopes are easy and its outline gracious. Oases of luscious meadows dot the forests.
This is the Court of King Sequoia. Here assemble in everlasting attendance millions of his nobles, a statelier gathering than ever bowed the knee before human potentate. Erect, majestic, clothed in togas of perpetual green, their heads bared to the heavens, stand rank upon rank, mile upon mile, the noblest personalities of the earth.
Chief among the courtiers of the king is the sugar-pine, towering here his full two hundred feet, straight as a ruler, his stem at times eight feet in thickness, scarcely tapering to the heavy limbs of his high crown. Largest and most magnificent of the Pacific pines, reaching sometimes six hundred years of age, the greater trunks clear themselves of branches a hundred feet from the ground, and the bark develops long dark plates of armor. So marked is his distinguished personality that, once seen, he never can be mistaken for another.
Next in rank and scarcely less in majesty is the massive white fir, rising at times even to two hundred feet, his sometimes six-foot trunk conspicuously rough, dark brown in color, deeply furrowed with ashen gray. His pale yellow-green crown is mysteriously tinged with white. His limit of age is three hundred and fifty years.
Last of the ranking trio is the western yellow pine, a warrior clad in plates of russet armor. A hundred and sixty feet in natural height, here he sometimes towers even with his fellow knights. He guards the outer precincts of the court, his cap of yellow-green, his branching arms resting upon his sides.
These are the great nobles, but with them are millions of lesser courtiers, the incense cedar from whose buttressed, tapering trunks spring countless branches tipped with fan-like plumes; many lesser conifers; the splendid Pacific birches in picturesque pose; the oaks of many kinds far different from their eastern cousins. And among the feet of these courtiers of higher degree crowd millions upon millions of flowering shrubs, massing often in solid phalanxes, disputing passage with the deer.
All mingle together, great and small. The conifers, in the king's honor, flaunt from stem and greater branch long fluttering ribbons of pale green moss. Thousands of squirrels chatter in the branches. Millions of birds make music. It is a gala day.
Enter the King.