Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1901-03-15
Our Big Trees.

The following excerpts from speeches
and letters of men prominent in the
nation, will be read with interest. The
preservation of the Big Trees of Cali
fornia is a matter that concerns deeply
every inhabitant of the State, and all
true CalifOrnians earnestly desire their
presentations:
From Forests First, Man Second" Joaquin
Miller, Sunset, December, 1900
When the great American poet comes
he will lift his face to the trees that
are pleasant to the sight and sing as
never man sang since the seers of old,
who saw and knew the cedars of Le-
banon.
Consider if you can the sublime, the
simple, imperial dignity of single
great tree that is pleasant to the sight,
fronting the four winds of
heaven, sun or rain, flame or frost,
lifting his arms in attitude of prayer
through all the centuries, drawing his
shapely presence up and up and up,
his Thousand tons of weight. By what
hard and terrible toll we may not
know, but we must surely know that
there can be no hard toll, no weighty
work like the work of great tree to
climb up and up and up towards the
sun through all the battling elements
and to hold his place there, as if to
prop the very porch of heaven.
And when the great tree falls, OBJ
serve that it is not in battle, not in
storm, but in days of absolute calm and
stiffness, And how he
falls, an emperor to the last, silent as
Caesar.
From 1.-THE New West, or California in 1857
and 6S,' by Charles Loring Brace
The sequoia grows on mountain
slopes, where the slow wash of water,
through ages, brings down minute
particles of fertilizing rocks, and the
decayed vegetation of countless centur-
les, with the moisture of eternal
springs, water and feed its roots. 1t
enjoys sun of the tropics without a
cloud for six months, and has the
balmy air of the Pacific, with incessant
and gentle moisture, and warm COW
erng of snow for it's Winter. AS has
been we'll said, sgt has nothing to do
but grow" and so with all the favor
able conditions that nature can offer
air and sun and moisture-it pumps up
it's food from the everlasting bills, and
builds up its slow vegetable-like SUBJ
stance during century after century
into a gigantic, symmetrical and vener-
able pile, while nations begin and pass
away beneath its shadow.
Think of lying under a tree, beneath
which the contemporary of Atilla or
Constantine might have rested, and
which shall defy the storm, perhaps,
when the present political divisions of
the world are utterly passed away, and
the names of Washington and Lincoln
are among the heroes of p vague past.
from Between the Gates by Benz F.
Taylor. 1880.
The California Indians have saying
that other trees grow, but the Great
Spirit created the sequoias out of hand.
1t is the savage way of calling them
miracles. And they are, for how a
tree from twenty-five to thirty stories
high, and with room, if followed, to
shelter three hundred guests, and
leave stabling quarters on the ground
floor for a dozen horses, could have
jumped from the earth and inspired
from the air material enough to build
itself along without waiting is incom-
prehepsible. It gives YOU
a queer feeling to look at tree in full
plumage that might have been haunt-
ing its green needles when there was
not as much as neck of land in the
known world between Liverpool and
Honolulu. \ \ If ever tree
should have 2 tongue, it is the sequoia
gigantea, the king of red woods. Some
how it seems to you such vastness
should appeal to more senses than one.
A man whose axe used to
tick like 9 lively clock in ''the sounding
woods of Maine'' asks ''how much
cordwood will one of the big fellows
make? The answer, if snugly piled
along the roadside would extend
twenty eight hundred feet, and if
twenty five cords winter of such fuel
will keep his chimney roaring with sat-
isfaction, one tree would last him six
teen years.
One after another the Y9nder-stories
of childhood prove true. Lemuel Gull
iver's talent for vegetable lying in his
most Brobingnaggtan mood would not
have added more than two hundred
feet to the tallest Sequoia, which is
very short range for anybody with a
gift for drawing the long bow.
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