durability. Natural decomposition is slow and its wood wastes away
insensibly like granite. So resistant is it to weather, to the rigorous
and incessant forces of obliteration, that it is hardly an exaggeration
to affirm “that a log cabin built of Giant Sequoia logs on granite will
last as long as its foundation.” The resinous matters that pervade
wood are considered a preservative against decay. Hardwood has always
been indicative of durability, whereas the wood of the Sequoia is soft
and brittle. But for all its softness and lack of resin, though hoary
and mossy with age, and deformed by centuries of violent storms, the
Sequoia is nearly always sound _from the sapwood to the center_, and
this is more than can be said of nearly all the “remarkable and curious
cases” of trees that have enjoyed a great longevity as cited by Asa
Gray.
Most impressive of the excellent qualities of the Sequoia, however, is
its amazing vitality. In the ability to recover from accident it is
probably excelled by no other tree. The shadows of twenty centuries
may sleep beneath its boughs, yet its growing power is as active as
ever, the tree ever rallying in apparent youthful vigor to replace
its broken, tempest-tossed crown. It defies even the wrath of heaven.
Though lightning may shatter a pine to splinters, it can but knock off
fifty feet, more or less, of a Sequoia’s crown. Never has it been
known to have destroyed a Sequoia outright. “Thousands of years the
Sequoia stands offering its head to every passing cloud as if praying
for heaven’s fire as a blessing,” observed John Muir. “Then when the
old head is off, every bud and branch becomes excited like a colony of
bees that have lost their queen, and tries hard to repair the damage.
Branches that for centuries have grown out horizontally at once begin
to turn upward and all the branchlets arrange themselves with reference
to a new top of the same ineffably fine contour as the old one. And
curious enough, all very old Sequoias have lost their crowns in this
manner. Of all living things, they seem to be the only ones able to
wait long enough to be struck by lightning.”
The power of a Sequoia to heal an immense fire scar is another
noteworthy manifestation of its vitality. Its resistance to fire is
almost incredible. Its massive, unresinous bark offers an almost
asbestos-like exterior to the eternal antagonist of the forest. Its
wood, too, is so non-resinous in character that it burns with marked
sluggishness, and it is only after repeated attacks by fire that the
wood will be consumed.
Even when fire has made serious inroads the Sequoia refuses to be
discouraged. It musters all its energy and attempts to heal the
burned area by extending the living tissue over the blackened wound
and reuniting the broken circle of its cambium layer. This healing
occurs in a rhythmical and pulsating manner accompanying the seasons,
beginning along the margins of the burned area. Each year the layer
of new wood-tissue encroaches slowly and patiently upon the injured
area, diminishing the charring until the two opposite folds touch one
another. In a few years the bark is pinched out and once more the
annual layers become continuous around the tree. The wound is healed,
and as the centuries pass it recedes deeper and deeper within the heart
of the tree, unchanged and never a source of decay.
The late Dr. Dudley examined the stump of a lumbered Sequoia in the
Converse Basin which registered the effects of great forest fires. He
found the tree to be 2,171 years old when cut down. At the age of 516
years the tree suffered its first burn, acquiring a scar three feet in
width. One hundred and five years were required to heal the injury.
A second burn occurred when the tree was 1,712 years old, making two
wounds, one twelve inches in width, the other two feet. One hundred and
thirty-nine years passed before these scars were covered. Then, when
the tree came to be 2,068 years old, a tremendous conflagration burned
a great scar eighteen feet wide and thirty feet high. This was still
unhealed when the tree was cut down. Professor Dudley estimated that at
the rate of the above healing it would require at least _four centuries
and a half_ to repair the result of the injury done by this last forest
fire.
No other tree could have lived under similar circumstances without
becoming diseased or decayed. This greatest among trees stands alone
in its superb resistance to insect and fungi attack, and this, coupled
with a marvelous recuperative power, enables it to withstand injuries
of such considerable magnitude, and to endure long enough to recover
from them. Its vitality, as deep as it is tenacious, and its very love
for living, vest it with this sublime power. Symbol of an unconquered
will, the Sequoia has caught more of the immortal than any other
living thing. The Gordian Knot of its existence would never be cut
were it possible to protect it for all time from fire and the axe.
Had it remained untouched by flames of the past, the vastly shrunken
present-day habitat of this great tree might possibly contain the
ragged rear guards of the departed giants of the Miocene, and a single
Sequoia would be old enough to establish a paleontological era.
+Chapter VI+
THE ETERNAL TREE
The Grizzly Giant is among the first born of the living things of the
earth. It bears greater evidence of extreme age than any other living
Sequoia of the Mariposa Grove and may be of a former generation. The
companions of its youth are dead and buried in their graves of leaf
mold and it seems to have been nearing its prime when the other lofty
monarchs of today were unknown. Grand and unconquerable, mightiest of
the mighty lords of the forest, it stands like an agonized Sampson
of the woods, blind and lost, with a hundred great arms groping and
reaching out. Like all Nature’s works of power, it seeks to express
more than it can convey. Homeric in its gravity, marble in its
impassiveness, and majestic in its tranquility, it is unapproachable
among things that live. Aspiring toward the clouds and on speaking
terms only with the heavens, its equanimity seems unruffled by storm
or tempest; its sweet serenity unsullied by anger, hatred or other
passions unworthy of an immortal nature. For a thousand years the
earliest rays of dawn have gilded it. For ten centuries departing day
has lingered and played on its summit. Surely the mellow notes of the
hermit thrush issuing forth from such loftiness sound more angelic
there than elsewhere.
Joseph Le Conte left posterity an indelible picture of this tree. “Of
all the trees of the Grove, and, therefore, of all trees I have ever
seen, the Grizzly Giant impressed me the most profoundly; not, indeed,
by its tallness or its symmetry, but by the hugeness of its cylindrical
trunk, and by a certain gnarled grandeur, a fibrous, sinewy strength
which defies time itself. The others with their smooth, straight,
tapering shafts towering to a height of over two hundred feet seemed
to me the type of youthful vigor and beauty in the plentitude of power
and success. But _this_, with its large, rough, battered trunk nearly
thirty feet in diameter—with top broken off at a height of two hundred
and four feet, with its great limbs six to eight feet in diameter,
twisted and broken—seemed to me the type of a great life, declining but
still strong and self-reliant. Perhaps my own top with its departing
foliage made me sympathize with this grizzled giant; but I found
the others, too, standing with hats in hand and gazing in silent,
bare-headed reverence upon this grand old tree.”
The size of the Grizzly Giant is sufficient to stimulate the mind to
silent musings. Often this leads to “cord wood contemplations,” for
the mind, in attempting to realize the prodigious amount of timber
such a stem might contain, is naturally apt to associate unknown
quantities with known. Ordinarily, a statement on the size of this
tree, if unsupported by other known comparison, is of little import.
That it requires a short journey to walk around it; that twenty
people can hardly encompass its girth touching hands; that fourteen
horses, head to tail, can just encircle its base, serve to visualize
the measurement. If it were pierced by a lofty arch, two street cars,
side by side, could pass through it; or, if it were hollowed out into
a round room with a row of seats cut out of the solid heart wood, a
round table could be set in the center and fourteen guests could be
seated about it with uncrowded ease. If it were cut into lumber, two
hundred cords of firewood and over half a million board feet[5] could
be obtained from its trunk, while its shattered crown would still lie
untouched on the forest floor, a beautiful rosy red and emerald ruin
awaiting the coming of some all-devouring forest fire.
The Grizzly Giant has long been the subject of much unpardonable
exaggeration by popular rhapsodists. There is little doubt but that
this tree, presumably the most ancient thing endowed with life on the
planet, may fairly claim an almost fabulous antiquity. It has escaped
the usual accidents to which the Sequoia is heir, and, as a result, has
attained a longevity that far exceeds the ordinary life-span of the
species. Since this is known, the age of the Grizzly Giant can be
stated approximately. Its exact age, however, can never be ascertained
until the annual rings of its trunk are counted, and this cannot be
accomplished without felling the tree.
[Illustration: GRIZZLY GIANT, THE ETERNAL TREE
MARIPOSA GROVE Photo by H. S. Hoyt]
Nor is it possible to determine the age of a Sequoia merely from its
diametric measurement. Up to the present century there prevailed
a common belief that this could be done and that great size was
indicative of great age. If a tree measured ten feet in diameter, the
supposition was that another of the same species twice as large would,
accordingly, be twice as old. However, Dudley, who spent many summers
in the logged areas of the Converse Basin, found this to be untrue
of the Sequoia. One tree thirty-nine feet in circumference proved to
be 2,171 years old; while another twice its circumference, or nearly
eighty feet, was 1,510 years old.
From a close study of various age classifications, it was believed
that the annual growth could be calculated. But even this method has
been found unreliable. After a careful study of various ages, Jepson
determined upon an average basis of twenty years of growth to every
inch. The unfortunate tree in the Calaveras Grove which was ruthlessly
cut down that its stump might serve as a dance floor had a diameter
of twenty-seven feet, exclusive of bark. Thus, its computed age would
have been 6,480 years; whereas, its true age was but 1,300 years.
Notwithstanding the impossibility of determining the age of a Sequoia
from its diametric measurement, the ages of a representative number of
felled Sequoias are definitely known. From these it has been possible
to ascertain that the average age of the tree is between 900 and 2,100
years. The oldest Sequoia found by Dudley showed 2,425 annual rings,
while the most ancient tree logged thus far in the Converse Basin
had an age of 3,148 years. John Muir counted over 4,000 rings on a
“majestic, old, fire-scarred monument” in the Kings River forest.
These are the oldest trees of which science has definite record.
Consequently, it would not be rash to estimate the age of the Grizzly
Giant at 3,000 years. Figures, however, of 8,000 years and more are
assuredly absurd and fabulous; and yet, they are given by several
authors of credit, and by a distinguished authority on fishes in
particular.
A pile of stones that has looked upon great events possesses an
indefinable something that stirs the mind profoundly, lifting it
to a higher level of feeling. Byron touched the keynote of this
sentiment when he spoke of the “mountains that looked upon Marathon.”
Feeling the need of some witness of that event, his imagination
vested those blind mountains with sight. Likewise, in beholding the
gathered companies of crag and spire from the summit of Mt. Whitney,
Clarence King was overwhelmed with a sense of the power and tragedy
of geological struggle. Feeling that this splendid mass of granite
was contemporaneous with great events, he endowed it with a quality of
consciousness. Yet how infinitely more sublime is this feeling when the
object is a living thing. What changes have occurred on the earth since
the tiny seed of the Grizzly Giant sent down its first threadlike roots
to the mineral soil! Thirty centuries are spanned by its life. Even
at thought of this the mind teems with images and memories of events
that have transpired during the life and growth of this single tree,
it endows the blind yet living column with sight, places it upon some
lofty height, and imagines that far below it sees “the far-winding path
of human progress, from dim Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into
the fuller yet broken and fitful light of the modern time.”
The great white race which dominates the world today had made its
entrance on the stage of history when the Grizzly Giant began its
existence. And within the lifetime of this tree, this race, known as
Indo-European, has made vast and noble contributions to the culture of
man. Indeed, most of the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice
and tradition in every decade since have been the triumphs of these
gifts of the Indo-European peoples.
Drifting southward tribe by tribe from their grassland homes between
the Danube and the Black Sea, these ancestors of the present people of
Europe, came into conflict with the first civilizations four or five
thousand years ago.
Among the first to be victorious were the Persians. These barbarians
fell upon the effeminate city-dwellers of the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers, reduced the conquered to slaves and set themselves up as the
aristocrats of the land. But civilization conquered them and they
became refined, lost their original hardihood, and were, in their turn,
conquered by other barbarians who, too, became civilized. These were
the Greeks under Alexander the Great. They infused new blood into the
stagnant pools of culture they found in the Orient, and the product
was Hellenism. But Greece, too, fell into a decline and came under the
dominion of Rome, whose stability, organization, and power advanced
culture again. At length Rome grew weak like the others, and became
unable to defend herself against other roving hordes of Indo-Europeans.
Fortunately, however, she preserved this precious thing known as
civilization long enough for the barbarians to respect it and enabled
the Christian Church to shelter it during the Dark Ages. Such is the
drama of the growth of civilization which occurred on the earth during
the time when the Grizzly Giant was making its patient climb toward the
sun.
The greatest empire of the Bronze Age, Egypt, had fallen; Babylon
showed evidence of decay; Palestine was at the zenith of her career;
and Homeric Greece was laying the foundation for classic Greece, when
this oldest of trees was sprouting from its tiny seed, unpacking its
tender leaves, and taking its first feeble hold on life. The Trojan War
(1194–1184 B. C.) was a very recent event, for prosperous and wealthy
Troy had been destroyed by a few Greeks who resented her commercial
rivalry. Homer was not yet born, hence the epic of the burning of Troy
and the rescue of a beautiful woman had yet to be written by this poet
of supreme genius. The Hebrew nation had not reached its golden age
under Solomon, but David had vanquished the Philistines, united his
people, driven the Canaanites out of Jerusalem and made himself King
of an extensive empire. This, then, was the status of the civilized
world around 1100 B. C. The code of Hammurabi was already more than a
thousand years old; the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was almost as old as the
Christian religion is today; the Great Wall of China had nearly nine
hundred years to wait before its first stone would be laid (214 B. C.);
while Rome, the Eternal City, lacked over three hundred and fifty years
of its traditional founding (753 B. C.)
While the Grizzly Giant was a sapling, a Sequoia of awkward and
ungainly mien, bushy, bent, and crooked by the weight of winter snows,
the Assyrians were gaining a great ascendency in the East. They had
developed war to a high point of perfection by equipping an army
for the first time with iron weapons and chariots drawn by horses.
“Whenever they swept through a land they left a trail of ruin and
desolation behind. Around smoking heaps which had once been towns,
stretched lines of stakes on which were hung the bodies of rebellious
rulers flayed alive; while all around rose mounds and piles of the
slaughtered heaped to celebrate the great King’s triumph. Through the
clouds of dust rising along the main roads of the Empire men of the
subject kingdoms beheld great herds of cattle, horses, asses, flocks of
sheep and goats, and long lines of camels laden with gold and silver,
the wealth of the conquered, converging on the palace of Nineveh.
Before them marched the chiefs of the plundered kingdoms carrying the
severed heads of their former rulers about their necks.” And mothers
prayed then as now that there would be no more War.
While the Grizzly Giant was yet a youth, the Persians gained the
lordship of the East and lost it later to Alexander the Great. Greece,
under Pericles, raised human culture to the highest pinnacle yet
attained; Herodotus founded history; Buddha saw his vision of the
serenity of the soul; Confucius left to posterity his code of personal
conduct. During this fruitful period of man’s advancement, the Grizzly
Giant had become conscious of its destiny and had begun to aspire
heavenward and attain its place in the sun. Having a form of conical
perfection, it was very aristocratic in its trimness. Densely clothed
with-short whip-like branches from base to tip, it gradually arose
in fringed growths which narrowed pyramid-like toward the sky with
charming grace. Other trees show their trunks and knotted boughs, but
this tree was compact like a Sequoian cone, and permitted no branch to
be seen. Its foliage was of the most exquisite fineness, resembling a
series of morning-glory blossoms strung on a string, and forming the
softest of forest scenery. The tree had a suppleness which, compared
with its present-day rigidity of old age, was as sensitive as the
leaves of the quaking aspen.
When it reached the glory of prime and attained the lusty strength of
maturity, it had lost its youthful characteristics and assumed the
nobility of the Sequoia. Having shed the purplish, leaden-gray, flaky
bark of early years, it had taken on the deep red, fibrous bark that
distinguishes its royal nature. Having also discarded all of its lower
branches, it disclosed a straight, regularly tapering trunk fluted with
long parallel furrows. This great shaft, both inspiring in its height
and uplifting in its stateliness, supported a magnificent dome-shaped
crown. In this sumptuous top a multitude of tiny cones ripened
annually and sent forth myriads of golden-winged seeds on the Autumn
breezes. Soaring now above all the lesser trees of the forest, it lost
its desire to go yet higher. Serene and grand, this king of trees
presented that “perfect combination of beauty, strength, and grandeur
which marks it the noblest of God’s trees.”
At this time Imperial Rome, sitting on her seven hills, was the center
of the world’s culture, its progress and power. Rome had enjoyed two
centuries of peace—the longest period of order and prosperity mankind
has ever known—and had reached her greatest territorial extent under
Hadrian (138 A. D.) Julius Caesar had destroyed the Republic; Augustus
had founded the Empire; the Star of Bethlehem had proclaimed the
Birth of the Saviour; Palestine had become a holy land; the world had
received the Christian conception of the dignity of labor and the
brotherhood of man, and Calvary had witnessed the spectacle of the
Crucifixion. Already Nero had inaugurated Christian persecutions by
illuminating his gilded palace with human torches, and the Cross had
begun in earnest its conquest of the world.
When Alaric knocked at the Gates of Rome, the Grizzly Giant had arrived
at full maturity. Its base had become greatly enlarged, the better
to bear up its great weight; while its crown had grown more open,
displaying enormously large, gnarled, and knotty branches, each bearing
a dense mass of blue-green foliage that melted impalpably away into the
sky like vagrant shreds of clouds.
And from the Fall of Rome to the present day, the Grizzly Giant has
passed through maturity and on into life’s late afternoon shadows.
It first saw the light of day when European civilization was in its
dawn and has continued apace with its progress, the epitome of the
advancement of the Indo-European peoples. Empires have risen, reached
the zenith of their power, and passed on to decay and oblivion within
its life time. Nations have succeeded Empires, and these, too, have
been followed in their turn by other world powers, like meteors in the
sky of history, and this aged monarch has reigned on. Like some ancient
thing of the dead ages, it seems to have been forgotten by death so
that it might live on until the sun is a burnt-out cinder in the sky.
Impassive, resolute, and self-possessed, it stands unmoved and
unaffected by the world about it, unconcerned with its pompous shams,
its trite pride, its hollow vanity. Grizzled and picturesque with
age, it still clings to life with sublime tenacity. The lightnings of
countless clouds have failed to take its life; the snows of a thousand
winters have shattered and broken its royal crown; the storms of
over ten centuries have stripped it nearly bare of its bark and have
mercilessly washed the soil from its roots, while the insect foes and
fungi pests of three thousand years have left it as unharmed as fitful
winds leave the heavens. The oldest living thing, triumphant over
tempest and flame, verdant and fruitful, giving shelter to all seekers
thereof, and sending forth flocks of singing feathered creatures
annually from its great crown like its own flocks of winged seeds from
its cone, the Grizzly Giant stands—content.
+Chapter VII+
A BLOSSOM OF DECADENCE
Is the great Sequoia a tree that dreads tomorrow? This mournful
question was raised over a half century ago by prominent naturalists
of the period. Imbued with the idea that all living things have their
day in this world of evolving forms of life, they were unable to see a
future for a tree whose race has played so large a role in the past.
Acquainted with the northern groves where the Sequoias are nearly
all aged, they could see in them only pitiful, fast-dwindling stands
desperately huddled in patches where environment insured conditions
ideal for tree life. This they accepted as evidence that the Sequoia
stood at the brink of extinction; that it had outlived its day of
vigor and progress, and was but a race in its dotage. The surviving
remnants were hardly more than a faint echo of past glory, displaying
“the munificence of departing greatness” but expressing, as a race, a
blossoming of decadence.
Among the first to sound this note of alarm was Asa Gray. Addressing
a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
in 1872, he stated: “The _Sequoia gigantea_ of the Sierra exists in
numbers so limited that the separate groves may be reckoned upon the
fingers, and the trees of most of them have been counted, except near
the southern limit, where they are said to be more copious. A species
limited in individuals holds its existence by a precarious tenure, and
this has a foothold only in a few sheltered spots of a happy mean in
temperature and locally favored with moisture in summer. Even then,
for some reason or other, the pines, the firs, and even the incense
cedars possess a great advantage and wholly overpower the Sequoia in
numbers. Seedlings of the big trees occur not rarely, but in a meagre
proportion to those of associated trees; and small, indeed, is the
chance that these seedlings will attain to ‘the days of the years of
their forefathers.’ The force of numbers eventually wins. Whatever the
individual longevity, certain if not speedy is the decline of a race in
which a high death rate afflicts the young.