Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1888-04-16
BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA.
One of the Many Attractions that Crafty
the Visitors to the Pacific slope.

One of the Many Attractions that Crafty
the Visitors to the Pacific Slope.
Mr. Elliott F. Shepard writes from
Mariposa Grove, Cal, to the New
York Tribune as follows:
When Hon. Henry Hitchcock, of the
St. Louis bar, was in England, friend
showed HIM a fine specimen of the
WelHngtOnia Britannica 81 gantia, and
he assured his friend that the Sequoia
Americana gigantia grew to $50 feet
in height. His friend asserted that
the Wellingtonia would live to be
1000 years old. He declared that the
Seouoia was already $500 years old.
HIS friend said the Wellingtonia was
the largest tree on earth, and would
become twenty feet in diameter. He
stated that California had Seouoias
one hundred feet in circumference.
And thus the conversation ran on,
eacn side representing the national
opinion of the proper name of the
tree without once admitting that there
was any controversy. American
botanists had classified the tree as the
Westinghouse gigantic. Finally a
German publication of about fifty
years ago was found in which the tree
was fully descr bed and pictured, and
tia. The work was by the botanist
who accompanied the second exped-
ton of exploration sent to this coast
by our government, who was Ger
man, and who was taken by the
Indian Chief Sequoia into these won
derful groves by a lonely trail of
several hundred miles, and he named
them in honor of the chief This pub
licat.on was in twenty volumes, pre-
Guiding its general circulation; and as
the German had sent large quantities
of seed to England, from which the
so-called WeilngtOnia was produced,
it was about time that England S claim
to have given the tree to America was
advanced by everyone who hoped to
see the queens jubilee. However, it
is now understood, and ST Joseph
Hooker, the leading botanical au-
thorlty of Great Britain, comedies the
palm, or the pine, to America.
California has been granted here by
the United States four sections of
land, or two miles square, ana on one
of the half-sections there are 1874 of
these sequoias from six feet to thirty
five feet IN diameter; and on the other
seven INTERSECTIONS there are as many
as can 90 through the eye of Cleo
patra's Needle in Central park. Prof.
Whitney states there is no tree higher
here than 270 feet; whereas Clarence
King, by most careful triangulations,
demonstrated that more than one in
plain sight, right under the professors
nose, is 337 feet high-eighty-five feet
higher than Trinity church steeple!
The ''grIzzly giants" first branch is
ninety feet above ground and six feet
Ill "a
promise of the race that is TO be-each
one holds up her head three hundred
feet. Washington, Yale" Col
umbia, ''Harvard," The Three SEN
tinels," The Faithful Couple" The
Telescope" stand for higher educa-
ton, the national defense, the anti
Mormon family institution, aud the
33-inch reflector of the Lick obserya-
tory. 1t is very appropriate to give
proper names for tins proper kind of
trees. Each one is ''None-such.
TIE elevation here is higher than
Mount Washington. 1t is $500 feet.
What a difference between the Atlantic
and Pacific coasts in vegetation!
Mount Washington is as barren as the
roof of the Metropolitan opera house.
There is but little underbrush here,
and the grasses are annually sought
by flocks of sheep, but the shearing
graziers, as they drive away, fire that
little, SO as to improve the pasturage
for another year, careless of the inn
mense destruction caused by their
fires. Tne big trees have been the
means of stopping these fires, although
at the expense of terrible screenings
tnemselveS-the price often paid by
rescuing tiremen. Too immense to be
destroyed by a single contiagration,
some of the big trees have felt many
which have left the surrounding coun-
try as black as coal mine. But the
vandais have shortened the lives of the
trees thus injured. To be sure they
will live for three or four thousand
years yet. Still, allowing only a
hundred years abbreviation on ac-
count of these fires, the time will come
when they will be no more, and we
should not shed bitter tears for pos
terity.
The outside of the sequoia is red
brown; its cone green and small; its
leaf pass between Monterey cypress
and a cedar of Lebanon. A fallen
monarch of the forest" was pro-
nounced three hundred feet long, with
its disappeared tops, by Miss Kate
Field, who left her footprints on the
sands of time" when she paced it.
Prof. Whitney did not observe this
one, as he was gazing up at some Of
the growing giants and fell over back
ward over it-up one side and down
the other.