2d. It was nearer the principal routes of travel, hence more easily
accessible.
3d. One can visit it on wheels.
4th. Last, and best for the tired tourist, an excellent hotel at the
very margin of the grove; Sperry & Perry, proprietors.
The grove extends northeast and southwest about five eighths of a
mile. Its width is only about one fifth as great. It stands in a
shallow valley between two gentle slopes. Its height above the sea is
four thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine feet. In late spring or
early winter a small brook winds and bubbles through the grove; but
under the glare of summer suns and the gaze of thronging visitors, it
modestly "dries up."
The grove contains about ninety trees which can be called really
"big," besides a considerable number of smaller ones deferentially
grouped around the outskirts. Several of the larger ones have fallen
since the grove was discovered, in the spring of 1852; one has had the
bark stripped off to the height of one hundred and sixteen feet, and
one has been cut down, or, rather, bored and sawed down. The bark thus
removed was exhibited in different cities in this country, and finally
deposited in the Sydenham Crystal Palace, England, only to be burned
in the fire which destroyed a part of that building some years since.
The two trees thus destroyed were among the finest, if not the very
finest in the grove. Among those now standing, the tallest is the
"Keystone State;" the largest and finest, the "Empire State."
The following table gives the height of all the trees measured by the
State Survey, and their girth six feet from the ground:
Names of Trees. Girth. Height.
Keystone State 45 325
General Jackson 40 319
Mother of the Forest (without bark) 61 315
Daniel Webster 47 307
Richard Cobden 41 284
Starr King 52 283
Pride of the Forest 48 282
Henry Clay 47 280
Bay State 46 275
Jas. King of William 51 274
Sentinel 49 272
Dr. Kane 50 271
Arbor Vitae Queen 30 269
Abraham Lincoln 44 268
Maid of Honor 27 266
Old Vermont 40 265
Uncle Sam 43 265
Mother (and Son) 51 261
Three Graces (highest) 30 262
Wm. Cullen Bryant 48 262
U. S. Grant 34 261
Gen. Scott 43 258
Geo. Washington 51 256
Henry Ward Beecher 34 252
California 33 250
Uncle Tom's Cabin 50 250
Beauty of the Forest 39 249
J. B. McPherson 31 246
Florence Nightingale 37 246
James Wadsworth 27 239
Elihu Burritt 31 231
The exact measurement of the diameter and the ascertaining of the age
of one of the largest trees in this grove, was accomplished by cutting
it down. This was done soon after the discovery of the grove. It
occupied five men during twenty-two days. They did it by boring into
the tree with pump augers. The tree stood so perfectly vertical that,
even after they had bored it completely off, it would not fall. It
took three days' labor driving huge wedges in upon one side until the
monumental monster leaned, toppled and fell.
They hewed and smoothed off the stump six feet above the ground, and
then made careful measurements as follows:
Across its longest diameter, north of centre, 10 feet 4 inches.
Across its longest diameter, south of centre, 13 " 9-1/2 "
-------------------
Total largest diameter, 24 feet 1-1/2 inc's.
The shorter diameter, from east to west, was twenty-three feet,
divided exactly even, eleven and one half feet from the centre each
way.
The thickness of the bark averaged eighteen inches. This would add
three feet to the diameter, making the total diameter as the tree
originally stood, a little over twenty-seven feet one way, and
twenty-six feet the other. That is _eighty-five feet in circumference,
six feet from the ground_.
The age was ascertained thus: After it had been felled, it was again
cut through about thirty feet from the first cut. At the upper end of
this section, which was, of course, nearly forty feet above the
ground, as the tree originally stood, they carefully counted the rings
of annual growth, at the same time exactly measuring the width of each
set of one hundred rings, counting from the outside inwards.
These were the figures:
First hundred rings 3.0 inches.
Second " " 3.7 "
Third " " 4.1 "
Fourth " " 3.9 "
Fifth " " 4.1 "
Sixth " " 4.1 "
Seventh " " 4.6 "
Eighth " " 5.6 "
Ninth " " 7.3 "
Tenth " " 7.9 "
Eleventh " " 10.1 "
Twelfth " " 13.0 "
Fifty-five years 9.4 "
------------------ ------------
1,255 years. 80.8 inches.
A small hole in the middle of the tree prevented the exact determining
of the number of rings which had rotted away, or were missing from the
centre; but allowing for that, as well as for the time which the tree
must have taken to grow to the height at which they made the count, it
is probably speaking within bounds, to say that this tree was, in
round numbers, thirteen hundred years old!
As the table shows, this grove contains four trees over three hundred
feet high. The heights of these big trees, in both the great groves,
are usually overstated. The above measurements were carefully and
scientifically made--in several cases repeated and verified--and may
be relied on as correct.
The "Keystone State" enjoys the proud honor of lifting its head higher
than any other tree now known to be standing on the western continent.
Australia has trees a hundred and fifty feet higher. The stories
occasionally told of trees over four hundred feet high having once
stood in this grove, have no reasonable foundation and are not
entitled to belief. Neither is it true, as some have marvelously
asserted, that it takes two men and a boy, working half a day each, to
look to the top of the highest tree in this grove.
The Calaveras trees, as a rule, are taller and slimmer than those of
Mariposa. This has probably resulted from their growing in a spot more
sheltered from the high winds which sweep across the Sierra, to which
other groves have been more exposed.
The Mariposa Grove,
likewise named from the county in which it stands, is about sixteen
miles directly south of the lower hotel in Yosemite valley, and about
four miles southeast of Clark's Ranch. Like the Calaveras Grove, it
occupies a shallow valley or depression in the back of a ridge which
runs easterly between Big Creek and the South Merced. One branch of
the creek rises in the grove.
The grant made by Congress is two miles square and embraces two
distinct groves; that is, two collections of big trees, separated by a
considerable space having none. The upper grove contains three hundred
and sixty-five trees of the true _Sequoia Gigantea_ species, having a
diameter of one foot or over. Besides these, are a great number of
younger and smaller ones.
The lower grove is not as large, and its trees are more scattered. It
lies southwesterly from the upper. Some of its trees grow quite high
up the gulches on the south side of the ridge which separates the two
groves.
On Wednesday, July 7th, 1869, the largest trees of this grove were
carefully measured, under the guidance and with the assistance of Mr.
Clarke himself, one of the State Commissioners charged with the care
of these groves and of the Yosemite valley. To prevent misunderstanding
and insure uniformity, each tree was measured three feet from the
ground, except where the outside of the base was burned away, when the
tree was girted seven and a half feet above ground.
The following figures are taken from that day's phonographic journal,
written on the spot:
The "Grizzly Giant," seven and one half feet up, measures
seventy-eight and one half feet in circumference. Three feet above
ground this tree measured over a hundred feet round; but several feet
of this measurement came from projecting roots, where they swell out
from the trunk into the mammoth diagonal braces or shores, necessary
to support and stiffen such a gigantic structure in its hold upon the
earth.
One hundred feet up, an immense branch, over six feet through, grows
out horizontally some twenty feet, then turns like an elbow and goes
up forty feet. It naturally suggests some huge gladiator, uncovering
his biceps and drawing up his arm to "show his muscle." This is the
largest tree now standing in the grove, and is the one of which Starr
King wrote:
"I confess that my own feeling, as I first scanned it, and let the eye
roam up its tawny pillar, was of intense disappointment. But then, I
said to myself, this is, doubtless, one of the striplings of this Anak
brood--only a small affair of some forty feet in girth. I took out the
measuring line, fastened it on the trunk with a knife, and walked
around, unwinding as I went. The line was seventy-five feet long. I
came to the end before completing the circuit. Nine feet more were
needed. I had dismounted before a structure _eighty-four feet_ in
circumference, and nearly three hundred feet high, and I should not
have guessed that it would measure more than fifteen feet through."
Here, as in Yosemite and at Niagara, tourists are usually disappointed
in the first view. The lifelong familiarity with lesser magnitudes
makes it almost impossible for the mind to free itself from the
trammels of habit, and leap at a single bound, into any adequate
perception of the incredible magnitudes which confront him. One needs
spend at least a week among these Brobdignagian bulks, come twice a
day and stay twelve hours each time, before he grows to any worthy
appreciation of their unbelievable bigness.
Of the other trees, the largest ten, measured three feet above ground,
gave the following circumferences:
La Fayette 83 feet.
The Governor 75 "
Chas. Crocker 75 "
The Chief Commissioner 74 "
Governor Stanford 74 "
Washington 72 "
Pluto's Chimney 71 "
The Big Diamond (Koh-i-noor) 65 "
The Governor's Wife 62 "
The Forest Queen 58 "
Others of equal size, possibly greater than some above, were not
measured.
"The Governor" is a generic name, applied in honor of him who may
happen to be the actual incumbent at any time. At present, of course,
it means Gov. Haight. It is an actual botanical fact, that the tree
has actually _gained_ in _height_ under the present gubernatorial
administration. It certainly is not as _low_(e) by several inches as
during the reign, or lack of rain, of the preceding incumbent.
The same general complimentary intention christened the "Governor's
Wife," which has as graceful a form and as dignified a bearing among
trees as such a lady should have among the women of the State. Then,
too, the tree stands with a gentle inclination toward "The Governor,"
which may not be without its suggestions to those fond of tracing
analogies.
The "Chief Commissioner" is the largest of a clump of eight, which
stand grouped, as if in consultation, at a respectful distance from
the Governor.
"Pluto's Chimney" is a huge old stump, burned and blackened all over,
inside and out. Hibernian visitors sometimes call it "The Devil's
Dhudeen." It is between forty and fifty feet high. On one side of the
base is a huge opening, much like a Puritan fireplace or a Scotch
inglenook; while within, the whole tree is burned away so that one can
look up and out clear to the very sky through its huge circular
chimney. Outside, the bark and the roots have been burned wholly away.
Before the burning, this tree must have equaled the largest.
Nearly in front of the cabin in the upper grove, and not far from the
delicious spring before alluded to, stands a solitary tree having its
roots burned away on one side, leaning south, and presenting a
general appearance of trying to "swing round the circle." In view of
all these facts, some imaginative genius once christened it "Andy
Johnson." The only inappropriate thing in the application of that name
was the fact that the tree stood so near a spring of cold water. The
"Big Diamond" or "Koh-i-noor" is the largest of a group of four very
straight and symmetrical trees occupying the corners of a regular
rhombus or lozenge, so exactly drawn as to readily suggest the name
"Diamond Group," by which they have been called.
As already remarked, the Mariposa Grove really consists of two
groves--the upper and the lower, which approach within a half mile of
each other. The upper grove contains three hundred and sixty-five
trees; one for every day in the year, with large ones for Sundays. By
an unfortunate omission, however, it makes no provision for leap year.
This is the principal objection which unmarried spinster tourists have
thus far been able to urge against it.
The lower grove has two hundred and forty-one trees, generally smaller
than those of the upper grove. The total number in both groves,
according to the latest official count, is six hundred and six.
Within ten years several trees have fallen, and others follow them
from time to time, so that the most accurate count of them made in any
one year might not tally with another equally careful count a year
earlier or later.
Among the prostrate trees lies the "Fallen Giant," measuring
eighty-five feet around, three feet from the present base. The bark,
the sapwood, the roots, and probably the original base, are all burned
away. When standing, this monster must have been by far the largest in
both groves, and, indeed, larger than any now known in the world. It
should have been called "Lucifer," a name hereby respectfully
submitted for the consideration of future tourists.
The living trees of this species exude a dark-colored substance,
looking like gum, but readily dissolving in water. This has a very
acrid, bitter taste, which probably aids in preserving the tree from
injurious insects, and preventing the decay of the woody fibre.
The fruit or seed is hardly conical, but rather ellipsoidal or rudely
oval in form, an inch and a half long by one inch through, and looking
far too insignificant to contain the actual germ of the most gigantic
structure known to botanical science.
Their age, indicated by the concentric rings of annual growth,
carefully counted and registered by the gentlemen of the State Survey,
varies from five to thirteen, possibly fifteen, centuries.
The word "_Sequoia_," is the Latin form of the Indian _Sequoyah_, the
name of a Cherokee Indian of mixed blood, who is supposed to have been
born about 1770, and who lived in Will's Valley, in the extreme
northeastern corner of Alabama, among the Cherokees. His English name
was George Guess. He became famous by his invention of an alphabet,
and written letters for his tribe. This alphabet was constructed with
wonderful ingenuity. It consisted of eighty-six characters, each
representing a syllable, and it had already come into considerable use
before the whites heard anything of it. After a while, the
missionaries took up Sequoyah's idea, had types cast, supplied a
printing press to the Cherokee nation, and in 1828 started a newspaper
printed partly with these types. Driven, with the rest of his tribe,
beyond the Mississippi, he died in New Mexico, in 1843. His alphabet
is still in use, though destined to pass away with his doomed race,
but not into complete oblivion, for his name, attached to one of the
grandest productions of the vegetable kingdom will keep his memory
forever green.
For the foregoing bit of aboriginal biography, we gratefully
acknowledge our obligation to Prof. Brewer and the gentlemen of the
State Survey, to whom he originally furnished it.
Had Sequoyah's name been Cadmus--had the Cherokees been
Phenicians--and had this modern heathen of the eighteenth century
invented his alphabet away back before the Christian era, his name
would have stood in every school history among those of inventors,
philosophers, discoverers and benefactors; as it is he's "only an
Indian." No one can deny, however, that he was one of the best re(a)d
men in the history of the world.
Both the Calaveras and the Mariposa groves contain hollow trunks of
fallen trees, through which, or into which, two and even three
horsemen can ride abreast for sixty or seventy feet. Each grove, also,
has trees which have been burned out at the base, but have not fallen.
Still standing, they contain or enclose huge charcoal-lined rooms,
into which one can ride. The writer has been one of four mounted men
who rode their horses into such a cavity in the Mariposa grove, and
reined their horses up side by side without crowding each other or
pressing the outside one against the wall.
One who has seen only the ordinary big trees of "down east," or "out
west," forests, finds it hard to believe that any such vegetable
monsters can really exist. Even the multiplied and repeated assurances
of friends who have actually "_seen_ them, sir," and "measured them
_myself_, I tell you," hardly arrest the outward expression of
incredulity, and seldom win the inward faith of the skeptical hearer.
Fancy yourself sitting down to an after-dinner chat in the
fifteen-foot sitting room, adjoining the dining room of equal size.
You fall to talking of the "Big Trees." You say, "Why, my dear sir, I
have actually rode into, and sat upon my horse in, a tree whose hollow
was so big that you could put both these rooms into it, side by side,
and still have seven or eight feet of solid wood standing on each side
of me. No, sir, not romancing at _all_. It's an actual, scientific,
measured _fact_, sir." Your friend looks quizzically and incredulously
into both your eyes, as he says, "Why, now see here, my dear fellow,
do you suppose I'm going to believe that? Tell a _moderate_ whopper,
and back it up with such repeated assertion and scientific authority,
and you might possibly make me believe it, or at least, allow it until
you were fairly out of hearing; but to sit here at a man's own
fireside and tell him such a _monstrous_ story as that, and expect him
to swallow it for truth--ah, no, my dear fellow, that's _too_ much,
altogether too much."
So you have to give it over and drop the argument for the present, in
the hope that some one of the numerous excursion parties, now so
rapidly multiplying every year, will soon include him, carry him into
the actual presence of these veritable monsters of the vegetable
kingdom, confront him with their colossal columns, and compel his
belief.
And yet the general incredulity is hardly to be wondered at, after
all. In nearly every one of us, our faith in what _may_ be, largely
depends upon our personal knowledge of the _facts_ which _have_ been.
In matters pertaining to the outward, the material, the physical
world, our actual experience of the past governs our belief as to the
future. And even when the objects of our disbelief are set bodily
before our vision, and we have actually seen them and handled them, it
is often difficult to believe our own eyes. So far is "seeing from
believing" when the sight so far surpasses all former experience.
There is another grove of big trees in Fresno county, about fourteen
miles southeast of Clark's. It is not far from a conspicuous point
called Wammelo Rock. The State Survey did not include it, neither have
tourists usually visited it. According to the description of Mr.
Clark, who has partially explored it, it extends for more than two
miles and a half in length, by from one to two in width. He has
counted five hundred trees in it, and believes it to contain not far
from six hundred in all. The largest which he measured had a
circumference of eighty-one feet at three feet from the ground.
Following along the slope of the Sierras, to the southeast about fifty
miles, between King's and Kaweah rivers, we find the largest grove of
these trees yet discovered in the State.
The State Survey partially explored this locality, and have given us
the following particulars: The trees form a belt rather than a grove.
This belt is found about thirty miles north-northeast of Visalia, near
the tributaries of the King's and Kaweah rivers, and along the divide
between. They are scattered up and down the slopes and along the
valleys, but reach their greatest size in the shallow basins where the
soil is more moist.
Along the trail from Visalia to Big Meadows the belt is four or five
miles wide and extends through a vertical range of twenty-five hundred
feet; that is, the trees along the lower edge of the belt stand nearly
half a mile in perpendicular height below those along its upper
boundary. The length of this belt is as much as eight or ten miles and
may be more.
These trees are not collected in groves, but straggle along through
the forests in company with the other species usually found at this
height in the Sierras. They are most abundant between six and seven
thousand feet above the sea. Their number is very great; probably
thousands might be counted. In size, however, they are not remarkable;
that is, in comparison with those of Calaveras and Mariposa. But few
exceed twenty feet in diameter--the average is from ten to twelve
feet, while the great majority are smaller.
One tree which had been felled, had a diameter of eight feet, not
including the bark, and was three hundred and seventy-seven years old.
The largest one seen was near Thomas' Mill. This had a circumference
of one hundred and six feet near the ground, though quite a portion of
the base had been burned away.
Another tree, which had fallen and been burned hollow, was so large
that three horsemen could ride abreast into the cavity for thirty
feet, its inside height and width being nearly twelve feet. Seventy
feet in, the diameter of the cavity was still as much as eight feet.
The base of this tree could not be easily measured; but the trunk was
burned off at one hundred and twenty feet from the base, and at that
point had a diameter, not including the bark, of thirteen feet and two
inches. At one hundred and sixty-nine feet from its base, this tree
was still nine feet through. The Indians speak of a still larger tree
to the north of King's river. It was not in the power of the State
Survey to look it up and measure it at that time.
All through these forests young Big Trees of all sizes, from the
seedling upwards, were very numerous. At Thomas' Mill they cut them up
into lumber, as if they were the most common tree in the forest.
Fallen trunks of old trees are also numerous. Many of these must have
lain for ages, as they had almost wholly rotted away, though the wood
is very durable.
Judging from the number of these trees found between King's and Kaweah
rivers, it would seem that the Big Trees best like that locality and
its vicinity, so that it is not improbable that a further exploration
would show a continuous belt of some fifty or sixty miles in extent.
From the researches thus far made, it appears that the Big Tree is not
as strange and exceptional as most suppose. It occurs in such
abundance, of all ages and sizes, that there is no reason to conclude
that it is dying out, or that it belongs exclusively to some past
geological or botanical epoch. The age of the big trees is not as
great as that assigned by some of the highest authorities to some of
the English yews. And in height they hardly begin to equal that of the
Australian _Eucalyptus amygdalina_, many of which, on the authority of
Dr. Muller, the eminent Government botanist, have exceeded four
hundred feet. One, indeed, reached the enormous height of _four
hundred and eighty feet_, thus overtopping the tallest _Sequoia_ by
one hundred and fifty-five feet. And in diameter, also, there are
trees which exceed the Big Tree, as, for example, the _Baobab_; but
these are always comparatively low, rarely reaching the height of more
than sixty or seventy feet, while their excessive diameter comes from
a peculiarly swollen and distorted base. On the whole, we may safely
claim that no known tree in the world equals the California Big Trees
in the combined elements of size and height, and in consequent
grandeur, unless, indeed, it may be the _Eucalyptus_. The largest
Australian tree yet reported, is said to be eighty-one feet in
circumference, four feet from the ground. This is a highly
respectable vegetable, but not quite equal to the certified
measurements of some of the largest of the California Big Trees.
So the American tourist through the wonders of California, may yet
claim that his country still possesses the loftiest waterfalls, the
most overpowering cliffs, and the grandest trees yet known upon the
face of the globe.
BOWER CAVE.