Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1856-07-30

THE MIGHTY CEDARs OF CALIFORNIA. Rev.
DR.. Bushnell, of Hartford, writes from California
to the New York Independent graphic account
of the immense cedars of California, the greatest
trees in the world One of them. which had
been feled, he ascertained by counting the grains
of the stump, to be twelve hundred and eighty
years old When Mahomet was at nurse this
tree was sprouting. Says the reverend gentle
man:
ut is forest yet nothing that we mean by
forest. There is no under growth, scarcely
anywhere a rock; the surfaces are as beauti-
fully turned as if shaded by landscape gar
dener, and dotted all over bymyrlads Of iow
ers, more delicate if not more various, than
any garden ever grew. Moving along these
surfaces, rounding over hill, or gallon ng
through some silent valley, winding here
among the native oaks casting their round
shadows, and here among tall piner and CO.
dars drawing their huge con cal shapes on the
ground, we seem, IN fact, to be riding through
some vast park. Indeed, after we had seen
the trees and taken their impression. we could
think of nothing but TO call it the park Of the
Lord Almighty. The other trees we observed
wets& increasing in size as we neared the place,
till finally descending gently along a western
slope among the hles OF little giants, we came
to the gate of the real giants, emerging into
the cleared ground of the Big Tree Hotel be-
tween the two sentinels, which are 800 feet
narrow road to pass between. These were
the first of the Washington Ced.rs we had
seen; it really seemed that we had never seen
tree before, And yet they were only me-
dunn specimens.
Close by the house lay the first cut Of the
Big Tree par en'tnence the remaining part,
or top. had been split up and removed. Near
this first cut stood the stump, about six feet
high, with an arbor mounted on the top.
which had been squared down for this pur-
pose. the posts of The srbor standing out in
the line Of the largest circuit 8, the ground,
and the space between then aud the circuit
of the top hlled il by aoor Of short boards,
The diameter Of the tap Is BY Measurement,
twenty five fee: ore way. and sEsusv-three
and one half feet the otEs-. TIE diameter.
at the gsound, was thiriy-ous Fest Thevgre
al included II space Of Efsy zcrss. and sro
only about ninety in number. The ground
occupied is 8 rich wet bottom, aud the foot of
the moist northern slope adjacent, covered
also with an underground. And why are
they here, just here, aud no where else This
l confess, Is to me the greatest, straugest won
der OF all, that now here III the whole earth is
there another known example Of these Ana.
kims of the forest. Ninety seeds alone have
been started, ininety and no iAoIe. If there
was there no other piece of ground but just
this, in the whole world, that could fifty take
the seeds Of such growth Why have they
never spread, why has no one seed of tbs
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 parsnip
in = ~.
imagine what 1t was going TO do, shat feel
ings to excite, when it started the first sprout
iugs of the Big Irees We measured an enor.
nous sugar pine recently felled. Sixty feet
from the ground 1t was six feet in diameter,
and il was two hundred and forty feet high
We measured one Of the PROSTATE giants and
TWO hundred and forty feet from the ground it
was six feet in diameter i he 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 III diameter where the
Big Tree was twenty FIVE. If the Big Tree
were followed, one might drive the largest
load OF hay through it without even a brush of
contact
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 berequired TO bring the smaller oues
to their maximum Of growth. That man insti-
gated by the internal love of money, should
have cut down the biggest of them, and skin.
ned the next, one hundred and twenty feet
upwards from the ground (viz., the Mother)
that he might show or sell the bark of her
body, both sound as a rock at the heart and
good tor thousand years to eome-O it sur
passes all contempt And yet to see this I'll
ant Mother still growing up as before, bearing
its flesh foliage, ripening her seeds, and re.
iusing TO die; hiding still her juices and work.
ing her pumps in the deep masses of her bark.
less body, which the sun Of Two whole years
has not been able to season through, dead as
il is and weather cracked without-it 10 SIGHT
so grand as almost to compensate for the loss
We suffer by the baseness OF the human
scamp"