Man counts his life by years; the oak by centuries. At one hundred
years of age, the tree is but a sapling; at five hundred, it is mature
and strong; at six hundred, the gigantic king of the greenwood begins
to feel the touch of Time; but the decline is as slow as the growth
was, and the sturdy old tree rears its proud head and reckons centuries
of old age just as it reckoned centuries of youth.
It has been said that the patriarch of the forest laughs at history. Is
it not true? Perhaps when the balmy zephyrs stir the trees, the leaves
whisper strange stories to one another. The oaks, and the pines, and
their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so
many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence,
that we may well wonder what the “story of the trees” would be to us,
if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.
“The king of white oak trees,” says a letter-writer in the year 1883,
“has been chopped down and taken to the saw-mill. It was five hundred
and twenty-five years old, and made six twelve-foot logs, the first one
being six feet in diameter and weighing seven tons.” What a giant that
oak-tree must have been, and what changes in this land of ours it must
have witnessed! It looked upon the forest when the red man ruled there
alone; it was more than a century old when Columbus landed in the New
World; and to that good age it added nearly four centuries before the
ax of the woodman laid it low.
Yet, venerable as this “king of white oak trees” was, it was but
an infant, compared with other monarchs of the Western solitudes.
One California pine, cut down about 1855, was, according to very
good authority, eleven hundred and twenty years old; and many of its
neighbors in its native grove are no less ancient than it was. Who
shall presume, then, to fix the age of the hoary trees that still rear
their stalwart frames in the unexplored depths of American wildernesses.
[Illustration]
In England there are still in existence many trees that serve to link
the far-off past with the living present. Some of them were witnesses
of the fierce struggles between Norman and Saxon when William the
Conqueror planted his standard--“the three bannered lions of Normandy
old”--upon English soil. Then there is the King’s Oak, at Windsor,
which, tradition informs us, was a great favorite with William, when
that bold Norman first enclosed the forest for a royal hunting-ground.
The Conqueror loved to sit in the shade of the lofty, spreading
tree, and muse--upon what? Who knows what fancies filled his brain,
what feelings stirred his proud spirit, what memories, what regrets,
thrilled his heart, as he sat there in the solitude? Over eight hundred
years have rolled away since the Norman usurper fought the sturdy
Saxon, and, for conqueror as for conquered, life, and its ambitions,
and its pangs, ended long ago; but the mighty oak, whose greenness and
beauty were a delight to the Conqueror, still stands in Windsor Forest.
Eight centuries ago its royal master saw it a “goodly tree.” How old is
it now?
Older even than this, are the oaks near Croydon, nine miles south of
London. If the botanist may judge by the usual evidences of age, these
trees saw the glitter of the Roman spears as the legions of the Empire
wound their way through the forest-paths or in the green open spaces in
the woodland. Now, the Roman legions left Britain fourteen centuries
ago, having been summoned home to Rome because the Empire was in
danger,--in fact, was hastening to its fall. How wonderful, if fourteen
centuries have spared these oaks at Croydon!
There is a famous yew that must not go without notice in our record of
ancient trees. This venerable tree stands in its native field, ever
green and enduring, as if the years had forgotten it. Yet it was two
centuries old when, in the adjacent meadow, King John signed Magna
Charta. If we bear in mind that in 1215, the stout English barons
compelled their wicked king to sign the Great Charter, protecting the
rights of his subjects, we may conclude that this patriarch-yew is at
least eight hundred and fifty years old.
The Parliament Oak--so called because it is said that Edward I., who
ruled England from 1272 to 1307, once held a Parliament under its
branches--is believed to be fifteen hundred years old. If Fine-Ear, of
the fairy-tale, could come and translate for us the whispers of these
ancient English trees, and tell us ever so little of what the stately
monarchs of the wood have seen, what new histories might be written,
what old chronicles reversed!
On the mountains of Lebanon, a few of the cedars, famous in sacred
and in profane history, yet remain. One of these relics of the past
has been estimated to be three thousand five hundred years old. The
patriarchs of the English forests cannot, then, so far as age is
considered, claim equal rank with the “cedars of Lebanon.” But the
baobab, or “monkey-bread,” of Senegal, must take the first rank among
long-lived trees. Even the “goodly trees” of Lebanon must, if ordinary
proofs can be trusted, yield the palm to their African rival.
An eminent French botanist of the eighteenth century, whose discoveries
in natural history are of great interest to the world of science, lived
some years in Senegal, and had ample opportunity to observe and study
the wonderful baobab. He saw several trees of this species growing,
and from the most careful calculations, he formed his opinion as to the
age of some of these African wonders. One baobab, which even in its
decay measured one hundred and nine feet in circumference, he believed
to be more than five thousand years old. Truly, the patriarchs of the
forest laugh at history.