The Nome daily nugget., 1916-05-25

Thus is recorded, in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the building of the Tower of Babel. While this tower was doubtless still standing, and a hundred years or two before the birth of Abraham, tiny seed in the warm soil of mountain slope on quite the opposite side of the world thrust into the light of day a slender green spike which was destined, during an exist ence of more than four thousand years, to become itself a lofty tower; noble in form, with a physlognomy almost Godlike, as John Muir puts it, pulsating with life to its topmost leatiet more than three hundred feet above the ground, and giving forth a babel of bird song to the accompaniment which the sum mer winds played upon it's many millions of tiny leaves.
 On the stump of this prostrate sequoia tree, one of the noblest of the celebrated big trees of California, John Muir counted more than four thousand rings, ring for every year of its lite. It's trunk, exclusive of bark, was thirty five feet eight inches in diameter. As the bark of the very largest sequoias is two feet or more in thickness, this giant must have measured forty feet in diameter when 1t was still growing on one of the slopes Of the Kings river.
 In the, Sequoia National park, upon the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in cen tral California, and in the little General Grant National park six miles away and under the same management, grow I,166,ooo se- uuoia trees, of which I2,ooo are more than ten feet in diameter. Some of the others have these dir mensions:
 General Sherman tree: Diane ter, 36.5 feet; height, 27o.o feet.
 General Grant tree: Diameter, $ feet; height, 264 feet.
 Abraham Lincoln tree: Diam eter, 3I feet: height, 27o feet.
 California tree: Diameter, 30 feet; height, 26o feet
 George Washington tree: Dir amter, 20 feet; height 255 feet. William Mckinley tree; Diam eter, 2S feet; height, aoI feet.
 Dalton tree: Diameter. 2 feet, height 292 feet.
 There are sequoia trees ofs great size in several other parts of Cal ifornia also notably in the Yo- semite \ National park, where tb.ce distinct groves are found; ; but by far the greate,t number and the individual trees of great est size, are in the Sequoia Ma tional park and its little neigh bor. <A
 It is extremely difficult to realize what the dimensions of these trees really mean.
 To visualize as best you can the greatest of those now stand ing, the General Sherman tree, measure off and stake it's diame- ter, s36 feet :6 inches, upon the ground in front of church the height of whose steeple you eau readily ascertain. Then stand back distance equal to the height of the tree, 78o feet, and look hard at the stakes whose distance apart represents the thickness of the trunk.
 Now raise your eyes slowly, imagining this trunk rising ill front of the church, tapering very slightly as it rises. When you are looking upward at an angle of forty-ivc degrees from the spot where you are standing (and this will not be difficult to calculate) you will be looking at the point where the top of the General Sherman tree would be Nf it wre growing in front of your church instead of in the Sequoia National park. The known height of the steeple will help you verify this calculation.
 It will help your comprehen- sion of the great size of these trees 10 know that box big
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