The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1857-04-08
The Mighty Cedars of California,

The Mighty Cedars of California.
Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford. lately
wrote from California to the New York
Independent graphic account Of the
immense Cedars Of California, the great.
est trees in the world One of them,
which had been felled, he ascertained.
BY counting the grains Of the stump, to
be twelve hundred and eighty years old.
When Mabomet was at nurse this tree
was sproutiDg He says:
1t is crest, yet nothing that we
mean by forest. There is no under.
growth, scarcely anywhere a rock the
surfaces are as beautifully turned as if
shaped by landscape gardener, aud dot.
ted all over by myriads of flowers more
delicate, if not moro vigorous than any
garden ever grew. Moving along these
surfaces, rounding over a hill, or galiop.
ing through some silent VALLEY, winding
here among the Daiivo oaks casting their
round shadows, here among tall pires
and cedars drawing their huge conical
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 wore increasing in size as we
peared the place, ill finally, descending
gently along western slope among the
files of little giants, emerging into the
cleared ground of the Big Tree Hotel
between the two sentinels, which are 500
feot high, and stand only far enough
apart for the narrow road to pass be.
tween. These we're the first of the
Washington cedars we had seen it real.
ly seemed that we had never seen tree
before. Aud yet they were only medium
specimens
Close by the houses lay the first cut
of the Big Tree, par excellence: the re.
naming part, or TOP, had been split up
and removed Near this cut stood the
stump, about six feet high. with an ar
Dor mounted on the top, which had been
squared down for this purpose, the posts
OF the arbor standing out iu the lino of
the largest circuit at the ground, and
the space between them and tho circuit
of the top flied in by a floor of short
boards. The diameter of the top ia by
measurement twenty five feet one way,
and twenty.three and one half feet tho
other. Tho diameter, at the ground was
thirty.onc feet. They are all included
in space Of fifty acres, and arc only
about ninety in dumber. The ground
occupied is a rich wet bottom, and the
foot of the moist northern slnpo ada.
cent covered also with an underground
Aud why are they hero, just here and
nowhere else9 This, | confess. is to mo
the greatest, strangest wonder of all,
that nowhere in tho whole earth is there
another known example of thcSe Ana.
kims Of the forest; ninety seeds have
been started-ninety aud no more. Is
there, was thoro no other piece of ground
but just this, in the whole world, that
could fitly take tho seeds Of such a
growth Why have they never spread,
aud why has NO one seed of the myrads
they sprinkle every year On the earth,
ever started in any other locality2
And what starting it is, when such
seed of life begins to grow. Little
did shat tiny form of matter about the
size of q parsnip seed. and looking more
like it than any other, imagine what it
was going TO do what feelings to excite,
wheu it started the frs, sprou,ings of the
Big Tree We measured an enormous
sugar pine recently felled. Sixty feet
from the ground, it was six feet in diam
eter, and it was two hundred and forty
feet high We measured one of the
PROSTATE giants, and two hundred aud
forty feet from the ground it was six
feet in diameter Tho top was gone,
but it could not have been less than
three hundred and..if,y feet high. And
yet this tree was only eighteen feet in
diameter where the Big Tree was TWEEN.
ty.fve II the Big Tree was followed,
one might drive the largest loan of bay
through it without even a brush OF con
tact.
Many of the trees and all the largest
Of them that remain are greatly injured
by fire. Their time is therefore short
ened, and long time will be required
to bring the smaller ones to their max.
imum Of growth. That man iustiga.
ted by the internal love Of morey should
have cut down the biggest of them. aud
skinned the next, one hundred and TWEEN.
ty feet upwards from tho ground, (vis,
the Mother,) that he might show or sell
the bark of her body, both sound as
rock at the heart, and good for a thous.
and years to oome-O it surpasses all
contempt Aud yet to see this Giant
Mother still growing up as before, bear
ing her fresh foliage, ripenins her seeds,
aud refusing to die; hiding still her
juices and working her pumps in the
deep masses of her barkless body, which
the sun of two whole years has not been
able to season through, dead as il is aud
weather cracked without--it is a sight
so grand as almost to compensate for the
loss we suffer BY the baseness Of tho hu-
| man scamnn f..