Greatest wonders of the world, as seen and described by famous writers

by Unknown

But the Big Trees are only found in certain favoured spots—sheltered places watered by snow-fed streams, at an average of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea. Eight distinct groves have been discovered, all growing in rich, deep, vegetable mould, on a foundation of powdered granite. Broad gaps lie between the principal groves, and it is observed that these invariably lie in the track of the great ice-rivers, where the accumulation of powdered rock and gravel formed the earliest commencement of the soil, which by slow degrees became rich, and deep, and fertile. There is even reason to believe that these groves are pre-Adamite. A very average tree (only twenty-three feet in diameter) having been felled, its annual rings were counted by three different persons, whose calculations varied from 2,125 to 2,137; and this tree was by no means very aged-looking—probably not half the age of some of its big relations, one of which (on King’s river) is forty-four feet in diameter.

Then, again, some of the largest of these trees are lying prostrate on the ground; and in the ditches formed by their crash, trees have grown up of such a size, and in such a position, as to prove that the fallen giants have lain there for centuries—a thousand years or more; and although partially embedded in the earth, and surrounded by damp forest, their almost imperishable timber is as sound as if newly felled. So it appears that a Sequoia may lie on damp earth for untold ages without showing any symptom of decay. Yet in the southern groves huge prostrate trees are found quite rotten, apparently proving that they must have lain there for an incalculable period.

Of the eight groves aforesaid, the most northerly is Calaveras, and the most southerly is on the south fork of the Tule river. The others are the Stanislaus, the Merced and Crane Flat, the Mariposa, the Fresno, the King’s and Kaweah rivers, and the north fork of the Tule river. It is worthy of note that the more northerly groves are found at the lowest level, Calaveras being only 4,759 feet above the sea, while the Tule and Kaweah belts range over the Sierras at about 7,000 feet.

The number of Sequoias in the northern groves is reckoned to be as follows: Calaveras, ninety trees upwards of fifteen feet in diameter; Stanislaus, or South Calaveras grove, distant six miles from North Calaveras, contains 1,380 trees over one foot in diameter (many of them being over thirty feet in diameter). Mariposa has its 600 Sequoias; and the beautiful Fresno grove, some miles from Mariposa, has 1,200. Merced has fifty, and Tuolumne thirty. The southern belts have not yet been fully explored, but are apparently the most extensive.

The Mariposa grove, where we have been to-day, is the only one which has been reserved by Government as a park for the nation. It lies five miles from here. I should rather say there are two groves. The lower grove lies in a sheltered valley between two mountain-spurs; the upper grove, as its name implies, occupies a higher level, 6,500 feet above the sea.

We breakfasted very early, and by 6 A. M. were in the saddle. Capital, sure-footed ponies were provided for all who chose to ride. Some of the gentlemen preferred walking. From this house we had to ascend about 2,500 feet.

As we gradually worked uphill through the coniferous belts, the trees seemed gradually to increase in size, so that the eye got accustomed by degrees; and when at length we actually reached the Big-Tree grove we scarcely realized that we were in the presence of the race of giants. Only when we occasionally halted at the base of a colossal pillar, somewhere about eighty feet in circumference, and about 250 in height, and compared it with its neighbours, and, above all, with ourselves—poor, insignificant pigmies—could we bring home to our minds a sense of its gigantic proportions.

With all the reverence due to antiquity, we gazed on these Methuselahs of the forest, to whom a few centuries more or less in the record of their long lives are a trifle scarcely worth mentioning. But our admiration was more freely bestowed on the rising generation, the beautiful young trees, only about five or six hundred years of age, and averaging thirty feet in circumference; while still younger trees, the mere children of about a hundred years old, still retain the graceful habits of early youth, and are very elegant in their growth—though, of course, none but mere babies bear the slightest resemblance to the tree as we know it on English lawns.

It really is heartbreaking to see the havoc that has been done by careless fires. Very few of the older trees have escaped scathless. Most of this damage has been done by Indians, who burn the scrub to scare the game, and the fire spreads to the trees, and there smoulders unheeded for weeks, till happily some chance extinguishes it. Many lords of the forest have thus been burnt out, and have at last fallen, and lie on the ground partly embedded, forming great tunnels, hollow from end to end, so that in several cases two horsemen can ride abreast inside the tree from (what was once) its base to its summit.

We halted at the base of the Grizzly Giant, which well deserves its name; for it measures ninety-three feet in circumference, and looks so battered and weather-worn that it probably is about the most venerable tree in the forest. It is one of the most picturesque Sequoias I have seen, just because it has broken through all the rules of symmetry, so rigidly observed by its well conditioned, well-grown brethren; and instead of being a vast cinnamon-coloured column, with small boughs near the summit, it has taken a line of its own, and thrown out several great branches, each about six feet in diameter—in other words, about as large as a fine old English beech-tree!