Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1881-10-15
Telling the Sequoia Gigantea.

Z rom the san FRANCISCO Chronicle
When the woodman pointed out the tree he
was about to fell our party looked about in
vain for some place where its 300 feet of trunk
could stretch out without submitting to the ne
cessity forced upon the man in the story.
whose feet were too long and the bed was too
short" 1t could not be done without first
clearing path for it, we all agreed but the
WOOdman smiled knowing, superior smile
We looked again, when he pointed down
slender path, fern-carpeted but clear of trees,
| that we had named 'Park avenue"
Z" But can you direct the fall Of that mighty
| redwood so that it will lie in that path and not
crush other trees in its fal?" we asked. won
deringly. ''The tree viii fall between these two
stakes, without disturbing either of them" the
wOOdman said, driving two stakes Is feet apart
and $50 feet from the butt of the tree The
woodman and his assistants framed scaffold-
ing around the buttress of the stately pillar of
Gods temple, upon which they stood, raised 10
! or Is feet above the ground, and together sent
their keen edged axes into the rough, spongy
bark. In the shade of that grove they looked
| like pfgmies, and their instruments of deyasta-
ton like chldren's toys, yet in g few hours they
would PROSTATE what nature had taken thou
sand years to raise. No ardent lover of art ever
| witnessed the destruction of his most admired
| sculptured marble, no heather ever saw his
idols shattered by invading Christian with more
poignant grief than ours when the woodlands
ak irst 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 I'M
! reasonable railroad contractor who had depre-
| Gated 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 subsidized suffi-
GENTLY in an hour to allow them to be taken to
point where the overthrow of the monarch
cOul be safely witnessed. We climed up a trail
n fraa Init I'm
| intervening branches too closely woven to al
| low OF more than doubtful view. Ignoring
the trail we descended, and in view of your
handicap OF skirts, ladies, you did make a most
mastery descent. How q lady, who in the CITY
requires to be helped in and out of a carriage,
can in the country scramble through matted
underbrush, swing down by the hanging boughs,
| roll over fallen trees slide gracefully down a
bark chute, tumble, jump, fall and finally land
at the bottom of hill. cool and collected,
though flushed, is problem she probably will
| never explain, if she can. When we took our
| station, only little way 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 Oppo-
site side: Although the lower portion of the
tree still stood firm and motionless, the grace
lui lofty top was already swaying, as though
conscious of and silently protesting against its
fast approaching prOstration. 1t was beauti-
| fui picture before us, stretched in frame Of
| circling forest. The fern brakes fourishing in
almost tropical Insurance; 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 flecked
| with the light quivering down through the in
terstices of the leafy dome far above u.s. the
light which "stOle its colors from the glow Of
Mars, the sky's deep AZURE and the oceans en-
| erald." But suddenly all eyes were directed to-
ward the doomed tree It's protest was no
10 niger silent rafting report, as if rife vol
ley had been fired, gave warning that the wood
mans work was nearly done. It sounded like
desperate anguish-cry, which changed again to
a 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 q
stream of its life-blood spurted out through the
cruel cut. The tree for a moment stood mo-
tiOnless to its hghtest, farthest branch, then
slowly bowed it's head, the whole trunk shud
dering; then with an awful crunching, crushing
noise that filled the wood with dismal echoes
walls of the dying mOnarch's mourning CON-
radeslit plunged forward. The very echoes
were drowned then. There was terrific crash
of wrested limbs as ragged rent was torn
through the woven branches Of the trees, q
whirling, shrieking rush of air, laundering,
deafening boon and shock that shook the ground
like an earthquake, and lifeless, bleeding and
SCARED the giant lay1Ow. 1t was some time be-
fore any of us moved, or scarcely breathed, and
when we did, one might have thought Us pagan
worshipers drawing nigh the sm0lderfng ruins
Of devastated temple. We found the end OF
the trunk 80 feet from the stump. This was ex-
planned by the woodman, who pointed out that
the bark underneath the tree had embedded its
rough surface in the ground and broken OF for
some distance.
The inside of the bark, when freshly cut, is as
slippery as school-boy's favorite ice-slide; and
the tree, with its terrific forward motion, had
slid along on its own bark. As we stood by the
stump, showers Of light green branches continued
to fall from the tree on either side Of the fallen
trunk until Its nakedness was covered with the
soft green shroud, tenderly laid on by plying
hands. We climbed up on the back Of the pros
trate sequoia and slowly paced its 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 its top had been whipped on and spHntered
into fragments by its terrific meeting with the
earth. When we reached the end Of its I'M
broken and symmetrical length we turned and
looked back, rejecting that on the morrow the
woodman would cut Che trunk into Il foot SEQ
lions; on the next day OK teams, with their
shouting drivers, would drive these sections
stripped Of their bark, 20 the nearest aw-mill;
On the morrow after that, grimy men would lay
iron tracks whare the giant hadfAHen. and then,
greasy, smoking and 1h1ieking, the 10 cono&iye
would come. 60noGnnffn9 thu mt