Morning journal and courier., 1881-09-28
Price Four Cents

! their keen-edged axes into the rough, sponpy bark. In the shade of that grand grove | they looked like pigmies, and their instru- I ments of devastation like children's toys. vet I in few hours they would prostrate what | nature had taken thousand years to raise ! No ardent lover of art ever witne ssed tl a destruction of his most admired sculptur d | marble, no heathen ever saw his idols shat. I tered by invading Christian with more poio- nant grief than ours when the woodman's axe \ first buried itself in the patriarch of all our ! noble Sequoia gigantea.
 The ladies insisted upon returning to camp ' and said some unkind things about the wood ! men, and were savagely severe upon the un- reasonable railroad contractor who had dep- recated their suggestion to run the track around the tree instead of over its roots. However as the tree was doomed whether they pouted in their tents or not their grief subslded sufficiently in an hour to al- low them to be taken to a point where the overthrow of the monarch could be safely witnessed We climbed up trail to a hill one side of the tree, but found the interyen ing branches too closely woven to allow of more than doubtful view. Ignoring the trail, we descended, and in view of your han dlcap of skirts, ladies, you did make most masterly descent. How lady, who in the
 city requires to be helped in and out of carriage, can in the country scramble through
 matted underbrush, swing down by the hang
 ing boughs, roll over fallen trees slide grace
 fully down bark chute, tumble, jump, fall
 and finally land at the bottom of hill, cool
 and collected, though flushed, is a problem
 she probably will never explain, if she can
 When we took our station, only little vay
 from the woodmen, we found that they had
 finished the work their axes had to do. by
 cutting nearly halfway through the tree on
 the side toward which it was to fall, and were
 then driving long double handled saw into
 the tree on the opposite side. Although the
 lower portion of the tree still stood firm and
 motionless, the graceful, lofty top was aI-
 ready swaying, as though conscious of and
 silently protesting against it's fast approach
 ing prostration. It was beautiful picture
 before us, stretched in frame of circlinp
 forest. The fern brakes fourishing in al-
 most tropical luxuriance; trees fallen ages
 ago, some blackened by fire, the decay of
 others hidden; the vivid green of the baby sequoias.
 A half score of our party, scattered about in their picturesque camp costumes and all
 fecked with the light quivering down through the interstices of the leafy dome far above
 us; the light which ''stole it's colors from the
 glow of Mars, the sky's deep azure, and the oeean's emerald" But suddenly all eyes
 were directed toward the doomed tree It's protest was no longer silent, a rattling re- port, as if rife volley had been fred gave
 warning that the woodman's work was nearly done. It sounded like desperate anguish cry, which changed again to helpless groan.
 We held our breaths. The towering head no longer swayed in slow, solemn protest, but moved convulsively. Then another cry The
 woodman jumped from the scaffold. Thin steel had entered the giants heart, for stream of it's life blood spurted out through the cruel cut. The tree for moment stood motionless to it's ightest, farthest branch, then slowly bowed it's head, the whole trunk shuddering; then with an awful crunching crushing noise that filled the wood with dis
 nal echoes-wails of the dying monarch's mourning comrades-it plunged forward
 The very echoes were drowned then. There
 was terrific crash of wrested limbs as a ragged rent was torn through the woven
 branches of the trees, a whirling, shrieking rush of air, a laundering, deafenlng boom and shock that shook the ground like an earthquake, and lifeless, bleeding and scared the giant lay low. It was some time before any of us moved, or scarcely breathed, and when we did, one might have thought us pagan worshipers drawing nigh the smolder- ing ruins of devastated temple. We found the end of the trunk thirty feet from the stump. This was explained by the wood man, who pointed out that the bark under ueath the tree had inbedded it's rough sur ace in the ground and broken off for some distance.
 he inside of the bark, when freshly cut, is as slippery as a schoolboy's favorite ice Sl1ue; anu the tree, WlGQ US C6fflIc IOfWafu motion had slid along on it's own bark As stood by the stump, showers of light green branches continued to fall from the tree on either side of the fallen trunk until it's naked ness was covered with the soft green shroud, tenderly laid on by pitying hands. We climbed up on the back of the prostrate se- 4uoia and slowly paced it's entire length. Our progress was not impeded by limbs, of which this mighty redwood was free three- fourths of its length, and those that had grown near it's top had been whipped of and splintered into fragments by it's terrific In eet- ing with the earth. When reached the end of it's unbroken and symmetrical length we turned and looked back, refeeting that on the morrow the woodman would cut the trunk into 14-foot sections; on the next day OK teams, with their shouting drivers, would irive these sections, stripped of their bark, to the nearest saw-mill; on the morrow after that, grimy men would lay iron tracks where he giant had fallen, and then, greasy, smok- ing and shrieking the locomotive would come, desecrating the spot.