Litchfield enquirer., 1856-08-21

We ooSSFfe0 were increasing In SiZe as we near ed the place, till finally, descending gently along along western slope among the files of little giants, We came to the gate of the real giants emerging into the cleared ground of the Big Tree Hotel between the two sentinels, which are 800 feet high, and stand only far enough apart for the narrow road to pass between- These were the first of the Washington cedars we had seen it really seemed that we had never seen tree before. Aud yet they were only me dium specimens.
 Close by the house lay the first cut of the Big Tree par emsnsnoe the remaining part, CT top, had been split up and removed. Near this first cut stood the stump, about six feet high, with an arbor mounted ou the top, which had been squared down for that purpose, the posts of the arbor standing out in the line of the largest circuit at the ground, and the space be- tween them and the circuit at the top filed in by short boards. The damater of the top is by measurement twenty-five feet one way, and twenty-three and one-half feet the other The diameter, at the ground, was thirty-one feet They are allincluded in space oftitty acres, and are only about ninety in number The ground occupied is rich wet bottom, and the foot of the moist northern slope adjacent, covered also with an undergrowth. And rhy are they here, just here, and noaehee else! This, confess, is to me the greatest, strangest wonder of all, that nowhere in the whole earth is there ano- ther known example of these Anakims of the forest ninety seeds alone have been started, ninety and no more. Is there, was there no other piece of ground hut just this in the whole world, that could ftly take the seeds of such growth Why have they never spread why has no one seed of the myriadS they sprinkle every year on the earth, ever started in any other locality?
 And what starting it is, when such seed of life begins to grow. Little did that tiny form of matter, about the size of a parsnip seed, and looking more like it than any other, imagine what it was going to do, what feeling to excite, when it started the first sproutings of the Big Tree ! We measured an enormous sugar pine recently felled. Sixty feet from the ground it was six feet in diameter, aud it was two hun dred and forty feet high. We measured one of the prostrate giants, and two hundred and for ty feet from the ground it was six feet in diame- ter The top was gone, but it could not have been less than three hundred and fifty feet high. And yet this tree was only eighteen feet where the Big Tree was twenty y-fve. If the Big Tree were hollowed, one might drive the largest load VI hos tuiouSh S SNCu Il UIuSH O COti- tact.
 Many of the trees and all the largest of them that remain are greatly injured by fire. Their time is therefore shortened, and long time will be required to bring the smaller ones to their maximum of growth A man instigated by the internal love of money, should have cut down the biggest of them, and skinned the next, one hundred and twenty feet upwards from the ground (viz the Mother) that he may show or sell the bark of her body, both sound as a rock at the heart, and good for a thousand years to come-O, it surpasscs all contempt And yet to see this Giant Mother still grow ing up as before, bearing her fresh foliage, ri- pcning her seeds, and refusing to die hiding still her juices and working her pumps in the deep masses of her barklcss body, which the sun of two whole years has not been able to season through, dead as it is and wcathercrack- ed without-it is sight so grand as almost to compensate for the loss we suffer by the base ness of the human scamp"