GIANT TREES IN CALIFORNIA.

Western Star, Issue 987, 3 October 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

GIANT TREES IN CALIFORNIA.

• “ Of the California trees, one of’the largest, that I think is known as * The Father of the Forest,’, measures 485 feet, and is 110 feet in circumference at the base. The one called “ The Mother of the Forest ” measures 320 feet in height, with a circumference at the base of 90 feet. When they felled the famous ‘ Traveler,’ in 1853—and by the way, every man that had a hand in it ought to have been sent to Dry Tortugas—it took five or six men nearly a month to bring it to the ground, and they had all kinds of tools to work with—pump-augers, wedges and everything you could think of. “ For a good many.years the trees were subjected to all kinds of indignities, and I have a list of over thirty names of so-called civilized human beings that I copied from the bark where they had been carved. Nearly everybody feels called upon to do, this; but the rest, who have no knife or are too lazy, have contented themselves with building fires around the roots. Why,” continued the excited botanist, “ upon my w ord I would as soon think of carving my name on my great grandfather’s back, or of burning my grandmother at the stake, as harming these trees.; ‘ ' v r; ; ;'/, r ’, “ Most all the California trees grow in a limited area, embracing about two hundred and forty .miles, and in all about two hundred big trees have been discovered, though in other parts of the Sierra Nevada there may be many more that will be discovered when the country is opened up.” “ Can the age, of these large trees be determined ?” asked the writer. “ Not to a certainty,” was.the reply. “In those extremely old fellows' the lines are not easily determined, but, if you want a guess, I should say that when King David was the seeds Of these giants were sprouting. In one that I have examined, 2,000 annual rings could easily be counted, but around thO so-called heart of the tree they multiplied So rapidly that it was impossible to 'count them; but it was very evident that some of the trees are much older than the earth in which they grew, that is, presupposing that we go by Biblical time. In short, the trees may be all the way from two to ten thousand years old. That this is not a wild statement you can see by taking the case of the great tree known as the ‘ Dragon’s Blood,’ of the Canary Islands. Someone had the curiosity to hunt up the history of it, andfeund that descriptions of it, written seiyeral hundred years ago, agreed exactly with those of to-day; so that, say in' three hundred years, ; the tree has not changed at all in general appearance. The legends of the natives say that the tree was worshipped by the original inhabitants. In the Fifteenth century the Roman Catholic priests stationed there used its hollow or partly hollow trunk as a room in which to say mass, and the ruins of the altar can be seen to-day. It was discovered or revealed to. science, so to speak, in the days When the father of Columbus was a child, or abont 1402, and since then bas not changed in the slightest. When Humboldt visited it in 1792, he still found it forty-five feet in circumference, and so it stands to-day hale and hearty, just as it was 483 years ago when first seen by a . European, and how long before that it had been growing no one knows. “ Europe is not behind in the matter of large trees, although they are not, perhaps so well known. Near Mount Etna there is a chestnut tree that is known as the tree of a thousand horses, from the fact that it has given shelter ‘to so many of these animals at once, the occasion being during the visit of ‘Jeanne of Arragon from Spain to Naples. It seems that .she stopped at Sicily, and, with a train of courtiers representing all the nobility, of Catania, visited. Etna, and while there was caught in a passing shower, during which the branches of the great tree protected the entire party. This tree has a circumference of 190 feet, % shephprd, has built a house in’ the. hollow of the trunk, and as the wood that drops serves him as fuel in the winter and he eats the fruit in the summer, he may be said to * gain‘ a living from his silent friend.’’— Pittcinnati Commercial G-azeitCi