104

THE GIANT TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

THE GIANT TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

AMONG the more remarkable natural curiosities of California, not the least is that solitary group of gigantic pines known as the "Big Trees of Calaveras County."

There are

The group are solitary specimens of their race. no other of their kind or size on the known globe. It is a singular fact that the group, consisting of ninety-two trees, is contained in a valley only one hundred and sixty acres in extent. Beyond the limits of this little amphitheatre the pines and cedars of the country shrink into the Lilliputian dimensions of the common New England pine-say a hundred and fifty feet or thereabout. They are situated in Calaveras county, about two hundred and forty miles from San Francisco, but may be reached in a couple of days by railroad and stage coach.

A few hunters, in 1850, were pushing their way into the then unexplored forest, when one of them, who was in advance, broke into this space, and the giants were then first seen by white men. Their colossal proportions, and the impressive silence of the surrounding woods, created a feeling of awe among the hunters; and after walking around the great trunks, and gazing reverently up at their grand proportions, they returned to the nearest settlements and gave an account of what they had seen. Their statements, however, were considered fabulous until confirmed by actual measurement. The trees have been appropriately named Washingtonia Gigantea, though some of the savans of San Francisco have endeavored to have the Washingtonia changed to Wellingtonia, because some patriotic botanist, availing himself of this discovery by American frontier men, hastened to appropriate the name for our own hero. The basin or valley in which they stand is very damp, and retains here and there pools of water. Some of the largest trees extend their roots directly into the stagnant water, or into the brooks. Arriving at "Murphy's Diggings" by one of the daily lines of stages, either from Sacramento or Stockton, or by the Sonora coach, you are within fifteen miles of the celebrated grove; and from here it is a pretty ride to the "Mammoth Tree Hotel." This has been erected within a year or two to accommodate the many visitors; for the big trees have now become objects of general interest.

Adjoining the hotel, with which it is connected by a floor, stands the stump of the "Big Tree," which was cut down three years since. It measures ninety-six feet in circumference. Its surface is smooth, and offers ample space for thirty-two persons to dance, shewing seventy-five feet of circumference of solid timber. Theatrical performances were once given upon it by the Chapman family and Robinson family, in May, 1855. This monster was cut down by boring with long and powerful augers, and sawing the spaces between-an achievement of vandalism as ingenious as the Chinese refinement in cruelty, in pulling out the nails of criminals with pincers. It required the labor of five men twenty-five days to effect its fall, the tree standing so nearly perpendicular that the aid of wedges and a battering ram was necessary to complete the destruction. But even then the immense mass resisted all efforts to overthrow it, until in the dead of a tempestuous night it began to groan and sway in the storm like an expiring giant, and it succumbed at last to the element, which alone could complete from above what the human ants had commenced below. Its fall was like the shock of an earthquake, and was heard fifteen miles away at "Murphy's Diggings." There fell in this great trunk some thousands of cords of wood, and it buried itself twelve feet deep in the mire that bordered the little creek hard by. Not far from where it struck stand two colossal members of this family, called "The Guardsnien," the mud splashing nearly a hundred feet high upon their trunks. As it lay on the ground it measured three hundred and two feet clear of the stump and broken top. Large trees had been snapped asunder like pipestems, and the woods around were splintered and crushed to the earth. On its levelled surface are now situated the barroom and two bowling alleys of the hotel, the latter running parallel a distance of eighty-one feet.

One of the most interesting of the group is that called the "Mother of the Forest." It is now the loftiest of the grove, rising to the height of three hundred and twenty-seven feet, straight and beautifully proportioned, and at this moment the largest living tree in the world. It is ninety feet in circumference. Into this trunk could be cut an apartment as large as a common sized parlor, and as high as an architect chose to make it, without endangering the tree, or injuring its outward appearance.

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THE GIANT TREES OF CALIFORNIA.

A scaffolding was built around this tree for the purpose of stripping off its bark for exhibition abroad. This was accomplished in 1854, for a distance of something over one hundred feet from the ground, and was effected with as much neatness and industry as a troop of jackals would display in cleaning the bones of a dead lion. Such was its vitality, that, although completely girdled and deprived of its means of sustenance, it annually put forth green leaves until the past year, when its blanched and withered limbs shewed that nature was exhausted.

But the dimensions of the whole group pale before those of the prostrate giant known as "the Father of the Forest." This monster has long since bowed his head in the dust; but how stupendous in his ruin! The tree measures one hundred and twelve feet in circumference at the base, and forty-two feet in circumference at a distance of three hundred feet from the roots, at which point it was broken short off in its fall. The upper portion, beyond this break, is greatly decayed; but judging from the average size of the others, this tree must have towered to the prodigious height of at least four hundred and fifty feet! A chamber, or burned cavity, extends through the trunk two hundred feet, broad and high enough for a person to ride through on horseback; and a pond deep enough to float a common river steamboat stands in this great excavation during the rainy season. Walking on the trunk, and looking from its uprooted base, the mind can scarce conceive its astounding dimensions. Language fails to give an adequate idea of it. It was, when standing, a pillar of timber that overtopped all other trees on the globe. "To read simply of a tree four hundred and fifty feet high," observes a contemporary, 66 we are struck with large figures; but we can hardly appreciate the height without some comparison. Such a one as this would stretch across a field twenty-seven rods wide. If standing in the Niagara chasm at Suspension Bridge, it would tower two hundred feet above the top of the bridge, and would be ninety feet above the top of the cross of St. Paul's, and two hundred and thirty-eight feet above the Monument. If cut up for fuel, it would make at least three thousand cords, or as much as would be yielded by sixty acres of good wood-land. If sawed into two-inch boards, it would yield about two million feet, and furnish enough three inch plank for thirty miles of plank road,

This will do for the product of one little seed, less in size a grain of wheat."

These trees are not the California red-wood, as has affirmed of them. They are a species of cedar peculiar te western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The growth, bark leaf are different from those of any other tree. Botanists them, and probably correctly, among the Taxodiums. Vi will doubtless continue to re-christen them after this or national celebrity; but all who write or speak of should avoid being thus led, and perpetuate the approp name given them shortly after their discovery-Washing Gigantea. -Cassell's Family Pap

TRAJAN.

(Emperor A. D. 97-117.)

THE princely prodigality of Trajan's taste was defrayed by plunder or tribute of conquered enemies, and seems to laid at least no extraordinary burdens on his subjects. His for building had the further merit of being directed for most part to works of public interest and utility. He for the gods, the senate, and the people, not for himself restored the temples, enlarged the halls and places of p resort; but he was content himself with the palaces of his decessors. Not in Rome only, but in innumerable p throughout Italy and the provinces, the hand of Trajan conspicuous in the structures he executed, some of which attest the splendor of the epoch, and the large-minded pa ism of their author. An arch at Ancona still remind that here he constructed a haven for his navy on the upper and the port of Civita Vecchia is still sheltered by the mo cast into the waters to defend the roadstead of Centumo The bridge over the Tagus at Alcantara affirms, by an ins tion still legible upon it, that it was built by Julius Lacer of Trajan's favourite architects, though the cost was defra according to the same interesting record, by the local cont tions of some rich and spirited communities. A writer

that of so many others of the imperial series, may be partly attributed to the constant recurrence of his name conspicuously inscribed on the most solid and best known monuments of the empire. The greatest of his successors, the illustrious Constantine, full of admiration for his genius, and touched perhaps with some envy of his glory, compared him pleasantly to a wallflower, which clings for support to the stones on which it flourishes so luxuriantly.

The care of this wise and liberal ruler extended from the harbors, aqueducts and bridges, to the general repair of the highways of the empire. Nor was it only as the restorer of military discipline or the reviver of the old tradition of conquest, that he took in charge the communications which were originally designed chiefly for military purposes. He was the great improver, though not the inventor, of the system of posts upon the chief roads, which formed a striking feature of Roman civilization as an instrument for combining the remotest provinces under a centralized administration. The extent to which the domestic concerns of every distant municipium were subjected to the prince's supervision is curiously portrayed in the letters of Pliny, who appears as governor of Bithynia, to have felt, it incumbent upon him to consult his master on the answer he should return to every petition of the provincials, whether they wanted to construct an aqueduct, to erect a gymnasium, or to cover a common sewer. It is possible indeed that the courtly prefect may. in this instance, have been over obsequious, and Trajan himself seems almost to resent the importunity with which be begs to have an architect sent him from Rome. Are there no such artists in your province or elsewhere ? asks the emperor. It is from Greece that the architects come to Rome, and Greece is nearer to you than Italy. These works, whether of convenience or splendor, were, it seems, generally constructed by the governing bodies in the provinces themselves and by local taxation, though assisted not uncommonly by imperial munificence. Wealthy citizens might continue, as of old, thus to gratify their own vanity, taste, or generosity, of which Pliny is himself an example, but the days of the splendid magnates, who pretended to rival the prince in their lavish expenditure, had passed away, and it was upon the master of the empire and proprietor of the fiscus, that the burden continued more and more to fall, -MERIVALE.