The Big Trees, as they are technically called, are of a light, bright cinnamon color, and have a diameter at the ground of from twenty-five to forty feet, a height of from three hundred to four hundred and fifty feet, and a bark that will average one foot and a half in thickness where it has not been molested. I have seen blocks of bark that would measure thirty-two inches in thickness, and I have no doubt but some trees have bark that would average nearly three feet. The texture is loose and spongy, and when cut transversely it is often worked into pincushions and such like toys. The wood is light as the cedar, but is susceptible of a very fine polish. I had a cane made from a piece that I bought of the guide, and I found it would polish equal to mahogany. The Mariposa grove is a State park, together with Yosemite Valley, given by the United States government.
This grove, “together with the Yosemite Valley with its branches and spurs, an estimated length of fifteen miles, and in average width one mile back from the edge of the precipice on each side of the valley, with the stipulation, nevertheless, that the State shall accept this grant on the express condition that the premises shall be held for public use and recreation, and shall be inalienable for all time.” So it is absolutely impossible to get a bit of bark or piece of wood except from the guide, who is allowed to gather them from the outskirts of the grove from a tree that has fallen or one that stands outside of the prescribed limits.
There has but one fallen, however, since their discovery, and that was felled by men’s hands. It was done by immense augers. It took five men twenty-two days to fell the tree, equal to the services of one man for one hundred and ten days. Think of that, nearly four months’ work, not counting any time lost by Sundays, or rainy days, or sickness, to fell one tree! That tree would have yielded more than a thousand cords of four-foot wood and a hundred cords of bark, more than eleven hundred cords altogether. On the stump of this tree there is a house—“whose foundation is sure”—thirty feet in diameter. This house contains room enough in square feet, if it were the right shape, for a parlor twelve by sixteen, a dining-room ten by twelve, a kitchen ten by twelve, two bedrooms ten feet square each, a pantry four by eight feet, two clothes-presses one and a half feet deep and four feet wide, and still have a little to spare.
The foliage of these trees resembles the cedar somewhat. They bear a cone not more than two inches in length, and a black pitch bitter as gall. The forests at present have a gloomy appearance, as some time in the past, no one knows when, the Indians, the better to facilitate their hunting, burned off the chaparral and rubbish, and, as a matter of course, disfigured the trees by burning off nearly all the bark.
The first sight of these monarchs is one of sore disappointment. For you have travelled many miles where the trees are all large, and here, surrounded as they are by immense pines, their magnitude is not appreciated. But their greatness grows very rapidly upon you, so that if there was at first disappointment, there is now a greater awe. Our first view of interest was the Fallen Monarch, a ponderous old trunk stretched out upon the ground for more than two hundred feet, upon which a stage and four horses could be driven with ease. We had to go a hundred feet towards the top to climb upon the trunk. The diameter of this tree, without bark, at the base is twenty-two feet; one hundred feet from the root it is twelve feet.
How long this monarch has been sleeping no one pretends to know. The guide says it is no more decayed now, to all appearances, than it was when first discovered. The tree of greatest interest is the Grizzly Giant, which has an altitude of more than three hundred feet. The first thing we did to try its magnitude was to surround it on horseback, passing around in single file, the head of one horse to the tail of another. It called into requisition twenty-five horses out of the twenty-eight in our party to complete the measurement. This is not considered strictly correct, mathematically speaking, but it indicates the size of the tree by horse measurement.
I had prepared myself with a good-sized string, and, with the help of a friend, made close calculation four feet from the ground, and found it to be ninety-three feet, giving a diameter of thirty-one feet. This tree has a limb one hundred feet from the ground that is six feet in diameter. These trees stand around us in quiet grandeur, but to write of one is to write of many, hence the reader must not be wearied with a notice of each. Pluto’s Chimney is a hollow tree, standing upright, into which several of us rode on horseback. Yonder is another that had fallen in some past age, and sixty feet or more of it had burned from the root upward, and then towards the top had burned in two, leaving a barrel-shaped or hollow part of the trunk some fifty feet in length. Through this we all rode without any inconvenience. I have understood that several have ridden abreast through it, which I do not think improbable.
This completed our tour among these forest giants. There are two groves—and, properly speaking, but two—of these Sequoia gigantea, the Mariposa and Calaveras groves. The first is about twenty miles south of Yosemite Valley, perhaps a little more, while the latter is some fifty miles northwest of the valley. Thus it will be seen that they are not, as many suppose, in the great Yosemite Valley.
The big trees of California, not of this species, however, are not confined to these two groves. Many of the noted redwood species (Sequoia sempervirens) used to grow back of Santa Cruz, many of which are standing yet that were very great in size. We once upon a time, with five others, rode into one of these during a storm. The butt was hollow, and large enough to hold at least twelve men on horseback, and was not less than two hundred and fifty feet in height.