the axe—the Wawona and the California. Both have huge openings hewn
through them. However, this cutting has not been the work of vandalism,
for fire had prepared the way by almost tunneling through them. It was
possible, therefore, to complete the opening with little injury to the
tree in each instance. Indeed, it is not impossible that both of these
Sequoias will go on living long after the generation that let daylight
through them has been all but forgotten. The passage-way through the
Wawona was cut during the late seventies when Henry Washburn built
the first road through the Grove. The opening in the California Tree
was made much later, so that tourists could experience the novelty of
driving through a living tree in the late spring when the snow was yet
deep in the upper part of the Grove where the Wawona stands.
In all the world there is probably not another tree more celebrated
than the Wawona. It is neither wonderful in the massiveness of its
great red stem, or glorious in the symmetry of its domed crown; nor has
it the venerable picturesqueness of the Grizzly Giant, or the port,
pomp, or perfection of the Mariposa Tree. Its fame rests simply upon
the ten-foot passage-way through its base. Pictures of it appeared in
geographies over half a century ago; stage coaches have passed through
it times innumerable to the amazement always of certain of their
passengers without discomfort, and now thousands of automobiles drive
through it annually.
Of the wonder trees of the Mariposa Grove perhaps none offer a greater
object lesson to man than the Faithful Couple. From earliest times
mankind have destroyed each other and the fallacy of war has yet to be
learned. The Faithful Couple represent two trees that warred with each
other all their lives, never realizing the value of peace until, in the
weakness of their old age, they united their almost spent strength to
fight the greater battle against death.
They are the sole survivors of a former commonwealth of seedlings.
In company with a community of tiny trees they began their lives
on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a giant of
a former generation or by a ground fire. Either of these agents
exposed the mineral soil so necessary to the life of the germinating
seed. Sunlight, too, must have been sifted down in proper amounts
since but little shade can be endured at any stage of the Sequoia’s
existence. Even then the hold this zealous crop of seedlings had on
life was precarious. From the instant they cast their tiny shadows on
the ground, excessive moisture, erosion, and wind threatened their
existence. Indeed, many must have perished in their earliest infancy
from these dangers.
As soon, however, as their branches and their roots began to interfere
with each other, a struggle of yet another sort ensued, and each
seedling began to battle fiercely with its neighbors for light and
nourishment. At the same time each exerted a beneficial influence
over the other by preventing the winds from drying out the soil or
the rains from carrying it away. Each was a member of a “protective
union,” mutually making for better conditions of growth which gave them
greater strength to carry on the fight for life. Strangely enough, each
continually comforted and assisted while at the same time attempting
to destroy each other, for they were the most deadly of enemies. Each
was shouting “excelsior” and endeavoring to rear its head above those
of its fellows in the race for the skies. “Aspire or die,” became the
watchword of the group. Gradually the most fit of the Sequoian youths
over-topped their slower rivals, eventually shutting off their share of
sunlight and ultimately snuffing out their lives. For generations this
struggle toward the sun went on, as terrible as it was silent, each
survivor eliminating its rivals. And all the while the sun, the one
object of this eternal striving, neither knew or apparently cared.
As the number of the defeated increased and the veterans became fewer
and fewer, the struggle became less intense. At last, but two of all
the host that started the fray of perpetuity versus extinction were
left. These remained to preach the aristocracy of the forest—that
it is of the best and for the best. The weak and unfit had been
vanquished. Only the straight-trunked and the strong lived to enjoy the
commonwealth of the sky. They were the chosen few. Now, unable to lift
their proud heads higher into the clouds, because Nature cannot pump
water to such dizzy heights, these two giants attempted to crowd one
another off the earth. Not satisfied that they had found a place in the
sun, they had to bear each other’s ill will. The struggle continued,
but each was as powerful as the other. At length, having wasted their
energy in useless conflict, they came to terms. Embracing, they finally
united in confiding communion the better to brave whatever blessing or
blast fate might bring them in their declining years. Have they learned
the worth of peace too late?
Near the Cabin stand four wonderfully perfect Sequoias. So military in
precision are they, so formal and rigid in their poise, and so perfect
in alignment, that they seem to be standing ever at attention. Hence,
they have been designated as the Old Guard. Others, however, prefer
to call them by the more poetical name of “Sun Worshippers,” for, as
the sun traces its long descent of midsummer afternoon, it throws a
golden shower of sunshine upon them, and they in turn appear to revel
in all this glory. Their great limbs, the size of ordinary trees, seem
uplifted in prayerful attitude, while nearby companies of pine and
fir appear to gather about these four high priests of the sun like
worshippers in humble veneration. At sunset, during the silent battle
between light and darkness, this effect is singularly impressive. Their
fine round trunks seem to glow, not unlike red-hot steel drawn from
intolerable flame, and their cool green domes are splashed with floods
of vermillion, gold, and purple, as the fading light plays its changing
wizardry upon their delicate foliage. Only at such a time does the
Sequoia lose its crushing dignity and its overwhelming complacency to
become a thing of beauty. Then, as the shadows steal forth and enfold
the solemn forest, and the red trunks burn lower and lower until,
finally, like lamps they go out, a mighty calm settles upon their
silent crests where departing day lingers in a last caress.
No review of the Mariposa giants would be complete without due mention
of the Fallen Hero Tree, which was dedicated by the American Legion of
California in the summer of 1921, to the Unknown Dead of the World War.
Surely, no dedication could be more fitting, for nothing living is more
monumental than the Giant Sequoia. Besides is it not better to preserve
monuments than to build them? “Almost no structure,” declares Dudley,
“erected by human hands has come down to us intact through the lifetime
of a Sequoia; and few that we can admire which are hewn from inanimate
marble or granite can be compared to a living organism vast in life
and complete in the records of every year of its existence. An empire
or republic may be compared with the life of this great tree, but what
empire or republic has lived twenty-five centuries? None worthy of the
name. Then, in the building of the Sequoia, no blood has been shed
through all its twenty-five hundred years of life, no injustice or
oppression have secured the means necessary for its construction, no
hatred or strife has been engendered, no accident occasioning pain or
suffering—no extinction of human life has left a stain on the history
of its growth.”
Again, from the standpoint of art and permanence, no dedication could
be more appropriate. Few living things merit a higher place in art
than the great Sequoia. It appeals to the highest intellectual and
spiritual qualities of man. Of all trees it is the most dignified and
majestic. After a shower its crown is oftentimes vested with a nameless
light—a glory not of this earth—never seen on granite crag or marble
temple. Then again no living thing is more enduring than the Sequoia.
Tombstones that mark the graves of the known heroes will have become
cornerless and the names they bear will have been obliterated by the
elements; those who knew and loved the names will have run their brief
course and be laid at rest, as will their children and many generations
after them, before the Fallen Hero Tree ceases to transmit to the
coming ages the memory of the Unknown Dead who fought, suffered, and
died in the Great War.
Assuredly, the Mariposa Grove has other values than that of a mere
“show place.” Aside from the size and age of its far-famed trees, the
Grove has power to inspire and its lesson to teach. Its trees have
stood steadfast for centuries indifferent to time and tide, the better
to admonish mortal man lest he forget his littleness. To contemplate
them in cold calm without feelings of reverence is impossible. No
artist has yet been able to adequately depict their God-like composure
and their haunting grandeur. Indeed, they are as gloriously beyond the
brush as they are above words. That stirring apostrophe of Byron to the
ocean is the nearest approach in all literature to their greatness.
Most mysterious of all natural wonders, they have looked on events that
distinguish centuries. Over them has been drawn the mantle of the past
and within them are locked many of the secrets of history.
To stand in the presence of such ancient things is to be able to sense
something of the riddle propounded by the inscrutable Sphinx. And
yet more wonderful is such an impression by moonlight. On every hand
tower the stern columns of the Sequoias, their shaggy crowns gemmed
with stars. About them are grouped other tree hosts, rising in files
and striving in vain to emulate the ample girth and majestic height
of the giants. These lesser trees are pines with a perfection almost
faultless, cedars as beautiful as those of Lebanon; and firs with a
grace not unlike that of hills sculptured by rain drops. Among these
are yet others—trees crooked and short and stumped; trees tall and slim
and slender. Through the rents in the roof of this aged forest the
moon looks in, sending long arrows of light to investigate some pitchy
obscurity, splashing the forest floor here and there with blotches
of silvery light and banding the open spaces with monstrous slanting
shadows of Sequoian columns. Formless masses of impenetrable darkness
loom everywhere. All the rest is a region of half-light in which
everything is seen and nothing recognized. All is wrapped in a cloak of
unreality, lending a weird, almost theatrical effect. Shadows move with
a ghostly sound throughout the cavernous chambers. The perpetual peace
of night is upon the forest.
Then it is that the Sequoia is almost holy in its tremendous power
to inspire reverence. Only in the solitudes of the sea where there
is no trace of land or sail to break the fearful circle set upon the
surface of the great deep is such an impression of the mystic charm of
space received. Here the immensity of sea and sky is comparable to the
over-shadowing majesty of the Sequoia. The soul is overwhelmed with
solemnity. The immeasurable calm and solitude of it all overflows like
a tide. One seems on the threshold of oblivion. Life’s endless toil and
endeavor are at an end, for one has caught a glimpse of the immortal.
+Chapter V+
OLDEST OF LIVING THINGS
When that intrepid botanist-explorer, David Douglas, who in his lonely
wanderings along the Pacific endured numberless hardships that he might
make the flowers and trees of the coast known to science, first saw
the Redwoods while traveling through the Santa Cruz forest in 1830,
they invoked in him feelings of the most profound awe. He hesitated to
describe them lest he fall into discredit among his friends in England.
“New and strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions,” he
wrote in his Journal, “and are therefore frequently over-rated. This
tree gives the mountains a most peculiar, I was going to say, awful
appearance—something which plainly tells me that we are not in Europe.”
Little did this awestruck wanderer know that yet larger trees stood in
these princely forests of the Western world. In fact, almost a quarter
century elapsed before the presence of the Giant Sequoia was made
known. John Bidwell has sometimes been accredited their discovery in
1841. But the more acceptable and authoritative record of discovery
is that of A. T. Dowd who, while hunting, came quite by accident upon
the Calaveras Grove eleven years later. Even then Dowd’s story was
accepted with much doubt and it was necessary to resort to a ruse in
order to induce even a few skeptical workmen to confirm the discovery.
Still the truth of David Douglas’ moralizing on the over-rating of
strong impressions asserted itself, and traveler after traveler had his
reputation for truthfulness sorely tried until almost a “convention
of naturalists” had seen the mammoth tree and given their unanimous
testimony as to its size. Then the great Sequoia became an almost
meteoric celebrity, for few plants have attracted as much attention in
so short a period of time. Since then the Sequoia has been lauded in
every land as the largest and most nobly proportioned of trees. It has
found its way sometimes in a most engaging manner into literature. For
instance, in Victor Hugo’s _Toilers of the Sea_, an old seaman who had
gathered from his voyages many wonderful stories, tells a child of a
hollow tree in California “so vast that a man on horseback could ride
one hundred paces inside.”
Yet the prodigious size of the Sierra Sequoia is hardly as wonderful as
its remarkable age. That it should become known as the oldest living
thing that human eyes can look upon is truly marvelous.
The elements to which the Sequoia is indebted for its great age are as
enigmatic as they are controversial. Foremost of these is the tree’s
intense desire to live. It seems never weary with the weight of years,
and is blessed with a tenacity, a faith in life granted to no other
living thing. From the finely interlaced network of its shallow root
system to the utmost tip of every tiny needle, it displays a fervent
love of life.[4] Indeed, there is a joy in noting the eager attitude
of the foliage as it stretches out toward the light to gather the
sunshine. Every unnecessary and useless branch is promptly discarded
and the entire energy of the tree is devoted toward putting forth new
foliage the better to capture the sunbeams.
The altitude in which the Sequoia grows produces the loveliest verdure
of the Sierras. All seems submersed in an ocean of sunlight. It is a
region lifted above the thirsty foothills and yet far enough below the
vacant solitudes of perpetual ice and naked rock to be free from the
searing heat and dust of the former and the tragedy and wreck of the
latter. John Muir so delighted in the “glorious floods of light” that
pervaded this region that he referred to the Sierra, not as the snowy
range, but the “Range of Light.”
This abundance of sunshine, then, helps to explain the splendid
conifers that the middle heights of the Sierra produce. The amount of
solar heat sensibly affects the growth of trees. It is in the presence
of sunlight that the green coloring matter in leaves is able to digest
plant food. Yet this is not the all-important factor. Moisture plays
a most potent role, also. The distribution of the lingering patches
of the Sequoia reveals the powerful influence of moisture over the Big
Tree. In the northern limits of its range, the Sequoia exists at a
lower altitude (4,500 feet) where moisture is plentiful, while in the
southern portion of the belt it climbs nearer the summit peaks (7,000
feet) where the drying heat of the San Joaquin plains is modified by
elevation. The inexorable force exerted by moisture over the Sequoia is
even better demonstrated by individual trees. All the better specimens
are found growing in well watered places. Springs often bubble forth
from the wide-spread masses of sponge-like Sequoian roots, indicative
of the constant underground irrigation system that supplies the tree
with mineral nutriment. The stunted are nearly always found growing in
the dryer spots, looking very rusty but resolute; the thrifty tower
about boggy meadows or along the drainage of water courses whose waters
roar in their channels in flood time and trickle from pool to pool with
faint murmur in Autumn after the azalea has bloomed and the mountain
lilac has lost its badge of Spring.
Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive a tree that has established
a more adequate and harmonious relationship in concordance with both
climate and soil. Under the most constant stimulus of the elements
so vital to the growth of trees in general, the Sequoia is sustained
by soil, deep and rich, by sunshine, and by moisture, as well as by
the other elements which it, in common with other associated trees,
derives from the air. Nevertheless, the sugar pine often enjoys such
idyllic conditions, as do the silver fir and the incense cedar. Yet the
Big Tree exceeds them all in size. Since it so outranks its fellows
in girth and longevity, the Sequoia must, therefore, possess certain
superior innate qualities that are found wanting in other trees.
Theoretically, there is no limit to the girth of trees. There _is_
a limit, however, to the height of a column which Nature, working
silently through centuries, builds. One theory holds that this limit
is governed by the distribution of sap. When the tree attains a
height beyond which its circulating fluids cannot rise, upward growth
practically ceases and all appreciable growth is in girth. Since there
are no limits to dilation, the tree is capable of indefinite expansion.
Normally, however, counteracting causes which at first retard, then
arrest, are continually at work, finally checking the progress
of growth. The tree most completely free from such counteracting
influences logically attains the greatest size and age.
This, then, is the keynote of the Sequoia’s great age. There is a limit
to its height, but none, apparently, to its rotundity. So long as
the growth of the Big Tree is unimpaired, it continues with patient,
steady, indefatigable energy to add ring after ring to its stem year
after year, century after century. In time the old channels become
clogged with insoluble matter taken up by the roots and the annual
layers become successively consolidated until the united cells attain
such strength that the vast wooden pillar defies the onslaught of the
elements. It stands a monument of power, emblematic of the limitless
desire to live.
“Trees,” states Asa Gray in his famous essay on the _Longevity of
Trees_, “far outlast all living things. They never die of old age,
but only from injury or disease, or, in a word, from accidents. If
not destroyed by accident, that is, by extrinsic causes—they do not
eventually perish, like ourselves, from old age. It is commonly
thought that they are fully exposed to the inevitable fate of all
living things, but this springs from a false analogy which we have
unconsciously established between plants and animals. This popular
analogy might, perhaps, hold good if the tree were actually formed like
the animal, all parts of which are created at once in their rudimentary
state, and soon attain their fullest development so that the functions
are carried on throughout life in the same set of organs. If this were
the case of the tree it would likewise die sooner or later of old age.
“But the tree is an aggregate of many individuals united in a common
trunk and why should not the aggregate, the tree, last indefinitely? To
establish the proper analogy, we must not compare the tree with man,
but with the coral formations in which numerous individuals, engrafted
and blended on a common base, conspire to build up immense coral groves
which have endured for ages; the inner and older parts consisting of
the untenanted cells of individuals that have long since perished,
while fresh structures are continually produced on the surface. The
individuals, indeed, perish; but the aggregate may endure as long as
time itself. So with the tree.
“Only the leaf may be said to die of old age. It lives but a single
season and is the proper emblem of mortality. But the leaves are
necessarily renewed every year, so are the other essential organs of
the plant. It annually renews not only its buds and leaves, but its
wood and its roots; everything, indeed, that is concerned with its life
and growth.
“Though the wood in the center and large branches—the produce of buds
and leaves that had long ago disappeared—may die and decay; yet, while
new individuals are formed on the surface with each successive crop of
fresh buds, and placed in as favorable communication with the soil and
the air as their predecessors, the aggregate, the tree, would appear to
have no necessary, no inherent limit to its existence.”
Of the many chapters of evidence gathered by this American botanist on
the remarkable age of certain trees, none made mention of trees older
than the Sequoia. The ancient oak which cost the poets much mental toil
in their panegyrics to its strength and endurance falls far short of
the Sequoia in age; nor do the lordly Cedars of Lebanon, “from which
the sacred writers derived so many noble images,” nor the venerable
yews, “whose branches were used by our pagan ancestors to deck the
graves of the dead as the emblem of immortality,” exceed it in years.
The Mexican cypress may have witnessed the rise and fall of the Aztec
Empire, but they are not coeval with the Christian era that has seen
the decay and death of a score of empires. Sengal Baobabs and Teneriffe
Dragon Trees may be reputed to be the “most ancient living monuments in
the world,” but they do not antedate Solomon’s time.
Since no tree, apparently, surpasses the Sequoia in longevity it
must enjoy an immunity from the causes that take off other trees.
Ordinarily, weakness in trees results from a diminution of resistance
and rejuvenating power, or a loss of vitality. The protecting bark is
often lacerated and stripped away through accident, creating wounds
through which insects gain easy entrance to carry on their insidious
work. Fire often exposes the tender tissues in which the spores of
fungi find lodgment and breed disease. Instances of the death of trees
through these causes are legion throughout the forests of the Sierra.
The magnificent silver firs seldom live to see their three hundredth
birth year, and though externally of sound and fair appearance, when
cut they are not infrequently found to be a mass of watery, decayed
wood inside. Through a loss of vitality the noble sugar pines likewise
are often devoured by larvae soon after reaching maturity.
[Illustration: FALLEN MONARCH
This tree shows no evidence of decay after decades of mountain
weather
MARIPOSA GROVE Photo by H. S. Hoyt]
Yet strangely enough, the Sequoia appears untouched by the forces of
decay. This tale of a struggle into being, of a life lived, of decay
and death, is written on all of Nature’s works. The way of life and
its destined end is toward oblivion. But causes that conspire to bring
about the end of trees in general appear unable to quench the vitality
within a Sequoia. It rarely ever shows the slightest evidence of
weakness, and appears never to be defiled by the ravages of disease.
Injuries only of the greatest magnitude are a source of irrecoverable
loss. Indeed, Sequoias that have great holes burned in them are
magnificent in their refusal to accept defeat. They summon their
splendid resources, clutch the soil with a broader and deeper hold in
their determination to enjoy life to the very last. So long as there is
a sound root left, it is the way of a Sequoia to cling to life. No one
who has an appreciation of the wonders of Nature can behold this grim,
steadfast, dogged resolution that prevails against all odds without
feeling the beauty of such an unconquerable spirit.