"WAWONA" BIG TREE, MARIPOSA GROVE, CALIFORNIA - Who has not heard of the "Big Trees" of California? They are another proof of the fact that the western portion of America is a region marvellously endowed by Nature. There are in the area here which has been set aside by Congress "for public use, resort and recreation," more than 6oo trees, which have in respect to size no rivals in the world. A stage-coach, with driver, passengers and horses can be driven through the upright hollow trunk of one of these forest giants, which nevertheless is still sufficiently alive to bear leaves on its branches 300 feet above the ground! Even more enormous than those still flourishing here are some prostrate monsters, one of which must have had a circumference of 120 feet and a height of 400! The largest tree now standing here has a circumference of about 100 feet and its first branch (six feet in diameter) is 200 feet from the ground! It is an extraordinary fact that the cones of these trees are no larger than walnuts, and their seeds are only about a quarter of an inch in length. One feels himself a pigmy as he stands beside these forest Titans, not only in comparison with their prodigious size, but as he measures his brief life with the long line of thirteen centuries, of whose slow march their annual rings and weird colossal limbs give proof. |
