Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1889-08-24
UP ABOVE THE CLOUDS.
HU MAXWELL's SERIES OF LET
TIERS PROM
THE SUMMIT OF THE S1ERRAs.

TOLL HOUSE, CAL, August t.
Late in the afternoon we came to the
grove of Sequois. The grove is
about quarter Of a mile long and a
few hundred feet wide, and is one Of
three that are known in the world
The two others are in California also
one north and the other south of this
one. These are the famous "big
treesn of California. eThes grove
north of this is the one most frequent
ly visited by travellers, being on the
road to Yo Semitic Valley. This
grove is not often seen.
believe that person who visits
these trees will be disappointed in
their appearance. He naturally
pictures to himself how the trees will
look, and when he stands beside
them they fall short of his expecta.
ton. They do not seem to be very
large, at first, but when one has
stood beside them awhile. and walk.
ed round them, they appear to grow
in size, and at length he realizes
that he is in the presence of one OF
the giants of the forest.
Large as these trees are, the size
is often greatly overestimated.
saw and measured what is said to be
the largest tree in the world. I had
been told that it was between forty
and fifty feet in diameter; but such
is not the case. That size is due to
false measurement, such as no lum-
herman would allow, if he where
buying the trees Tor. what they con
tain. Those who try to make them
as large as possible-without down.
right lying-measure them at the
ground, where the roots spread out
far from the trunklike cypress.
Measured in this manner some of
them may be over forty feet through,
but to measure them above the roofs,
where the trunk has assumed its
proper shape, they are not so large
as forty feet, or thirty feet either.
| measured the tree which they said
was the largest in the world, and l
found it twenty-eight feet in diane.
ter, and no more. If had measur-
ed the roots and all, like some people
insist on doing, it might have been
forty feet. 1t was four hundred feet
, tall. There were twenty or thirty
trees in the grove nearly as large.
There are no small trees of this kind.
The smallest saw was twelve feet
in diameter. They grow in a basin
Of the mountain, enclosed by a rim
of hills, and are about seven thous-
and feet above the sea.
RELICS OF A PAST AGE.
They belong to a former geological
age. All their kindred of the vege-
table kingdom have passed away
from earth, except a few specimens
in Australia and the South Sea
Islands. They are the only living
forms that have come down to Us
from an age that is gone from earth.
Biologists tell us that the best
period of the worlds history is past,
and that its vegetation, its climate
and its animals are on the decline
going down to a slow but sure death,
/ like that which has seized upon our
moon. Worlds, like people, and
trees and all things earthly, have
their periods of youth, maturity and
decay. Our world has passed its
youth, has lived through it's maturity
and decay is now upon it, and it will
as surely become old, liieless and ster-
lie as the moon has become so.
There was time when our world
had vegetation more wonderful and
beautiful than anything we dream of
now. Deep beneath the earth,
buried thousands Of feet from the
light and sunshine, we find remnants
of what once grew upon our hillsides,
and clothed our mountains, and
decked our valleys from ocean to
ocean and pole to pole. When l
was at the Ignite fields on Vancouv-
er's Island few years ago, saw in
the mines far beneath the ground,
ferns fifty feet long embedded in the
rock-petrified, turned into stone, /
saw the trunks of the most wonder
ful trees, also changed to stone. And
there was bark with texture fine as
lace, and leaves of the rarest form
and design, and vines like nothing
on earth now. Allthese were buried
in the rock, and there they had lain,
undisturbed and unchanged for thou
sands of years.
They represented former epoch
of this earth's history. They had
come down to us from a time when
through all the area of our globe