Bancroft's Tourist's Guide Yosemite Part 6

Fourth " " 3.9 "

Fifth " " 4.1 "

Sixth " " 4.1 "

Seventh " " 4.6 "

Eighth " " 5.6 "

Ninth " " 7.3 "

Tenth " " 7.9 "

Eleventh " " 10.1 "

Twelfth " " 13.0 "

Fifty-five years 9.4 "

------------------ ------------ 1,255 years. 80.8 inches.

A small hole in the middle of the tree prevented the exact determining of the number of rings which had rotted away, or were missing from the centre; but allowing for that, as well as for the time which the tree must have taken to grow to the height at which they made the count, it is probably speaking within bounds, to say that this tree was, in round numbers, thirteen hundred years old!

As the table shows, this grove contains four trees over three hundred feet high. The heights of these big trees, in both the great groves, are usually overstated. The above measurements were carefully and scientifically made--in several cases repeated and verified--and may be relied on as correct.

The "Keystone State" enjoys the proud honor of lifting its head higher than any other tree now known to be standing on the western continent.

Australia has trees a hundred and fifty feet higher. The stories occasionally told of trees over four hundred feet high having once stood in this grove, have no reasonable foundation and are not ent.i.tled to belief. Neither is it true, as some have marvelously a.s.serted, that it takes two men and a boy, working half a day each, to look to the top of the highest tree in this grove.

The Calaveras trees, as a rule, are taller and slimmer than those of Mariposa. This has probably resulted from their growing in a spot more sheltered from the high winds which sweep across the Sierra, to which other groves have been more exposed.

The Mariposa Grove,

likewise named from the county in which it stands, is about sixteen miles directly south of the lower hotel in Yosemite valley, and about four miles southeast of Clark's Ranch. Like the Calaveras Grove, it occupies a shallow valley or depression in the back of a ridge which runs easterly between Big Creek and the South Merced. One branch of the creek rises in the grove.

The grant made by Congress is two miles square and embraces two distinct groves; that is, two collections of big trees, separated by a considerable s.p.a.ce having none. The upper grove contains three hundred and sixty-five trees of the true _Sequoia Gigantea_ species, having a diameter of one foot or over. Besides these, are a great number of younger and smaller ones.

The lower grove is not as large, and its trees are more scattered. It lies southwesterly from the upper. Some of its trees grow quite high up the gulches on the south side of the ridge which separates the two groves.

On Wednesday, July 7th, 1869, the largest trees of this grove were carefully measured, under the guidance and with the a.s.sistance of Mr.

Clarke himself, one of the State Commissioners charged with the care of these groves and of the Yosemite valley. To prevent misunderstanding and insure uniformity, each tree was measured three feet from the ground, except where the outside of the base was burned away, when the tree was girted seven and a half feet above ground.

The following figures are taken from that day's phonographic journal, written on the spot:

The "Grizzly Giant," seven and one half feet up, measures seventy-eight and one half feet in circ.u.mference. Three feet above ground this tree measured over a hundred feet round; but several feet of this measurement came from projecting roots, where they swell out from the trunk into the mammoth diagonal braces or sh.o.r.es, necessary to support and stiffen such a gigantic structure in its hold upon the earth.

One hundred feet up, an immense branch, over six feet through, grows out horizontally some twenty feet, then turns like an elbow and goes up forty feet. It naturally suggests some huge gladiator, uncovering his biceps and drawing up his arm to "show his muscle." This is the largest tree now standing in the grove, and is the one of which Starr King wrote:

"I confess that my own feeling, as I first scanned it, and let the eye roam up its tawny pillar, was of intense disappointment. But then, I said to myself, this is, doubtless, one of the striplings of this Anak brood--only a small affair of some forty feet in girth. I took out the measuring line, fastened it on the trunk with a knife, and walked around, unwinding as I went. The line was seventy-five feet long. I came to the end before completing the circuit. Nine feet more were needed. I had dismounted before a structure _eighty-four feet_ in circ.u.mference, and nearly three hundred feet high, and I should not have guessed that it would measure more than fifteen feet through."

Here, as in Yosemite and at Niagara, tourists are usually disappointed in the first view. The lifelong familiarity with lesser magnitudes makes it almost impossible for the mind to free itself from the trammels of habit, and leap at a single bound, into any adequate perception of the incredible magnitudes which confront him. One needs spend at least a week among these Brobdignagian bulks, come twice a day and stay twelve hours each time, before he grows to any worthy appreciation of their unbelievable bigness.

Of the other trees, the largest ten, measured three feet above ground, gave the following circ.u.mferences:

La Fayette 83 feet.

The Governor 75 "

Chas. Crocker 75 "

The Chief Commissioner 74 "

Governor Stanford 74 "

Was.h.i.+ngton 72 "

Pluto's Chimney 71 "

The Big Diamond (Koh-i-noor) 65 "

The Governor's Wife 62 "

The Forest Queen 58 "

Others of equal size, possibly greater than some above, were not measured.

"The Governor" is a generic name, applied in honor of him who may happen to be the actual inc.u.mbent at any time. At present, of course, it means Gov. Haight. It is an actual botanical fact, that the tree has actually _gained_ in _height_ under the present gubernatorial administration. It certainly is not as _low_(e) by several inches as during the reign, or lack of rain, of the preceding inc.u.mbent.

The same general complimentary intention christened the "Governor's Wife," which has as graceful a form and as dignified a bearing among trees as such a lady should have among the women of the State. Then, too, the tree stands with a gentle inclination toward "The Governor,"

which may not be without its suggestions to those fond of tracing a.n.a.logies.

The "Chief Commissioner" is the largest of a clump of eight, which stand grouped, as if in consultation, at a respectful distance from the Governor.

"Pluto's Chimney" is a huge old stump, burned and blackened all over, inside and out. Hibernian visitors sometimes call it "The Devil's Dhudeen." It is between forty and fifty feet high. On one side of the base is a huge opening, much like a Puritan fireplace or a Scotch inglenook; while within, the whole tree is burned away so that one can look up and out clear to the very sky through its huge circular chimney. Outside, the bark and the roots have been burned wholly away.

Before the burning, this tree must have equaled the largest.

Nearly in front of the cabin in the upper grove, and not far from the delicious spring before alluded to, stands a solitary tree having its roots burned away on one side, leaning south, and presenting a general appearance of trying to "swing round the circle." In view of all these facts, some imaginative genius once christened it "Andy Johnson." The only inappropriate thing in the application of that name was the fact that the tree stood so near a spring of cold water. The "Big Diamond" or "Koh-i-noor" is the largest of a group of four very straight and symmetrical trees occupying the corners of a regular rhombus or lozenge, so exactly drawn as to readily suggest the name "Diamond Group," by which they have been called.

As already remarked, the Mariposa Grove really consists of two groves--the upper and the lower, which approach within a half mile of each other. The upper grove contains three hundred and sixty-five trees; one for every day in the year, with large ones for Sundays. By an unfortunate omission, however, it makes no provision for leap year.

This is the princ.i.p.al objection which unmarried spinster tourists have thus far been able to urge against it.

The lower grove has two hundred and forty-one trees, generally smaller than those of the upper grove. The total number in both groves, according to the latest official count, is six hundred and six.

Within ten years several trees have fallen, and others follow them from time to time, so that the most accurate count of them made in any one year might not tally with another equally careful count a year earlier or later.

Among the prostrate trees lies the "Fallen Giant," measuring eighty-five feet around, three feet from the present base. The bark, the sapwood, the roots, and probably the original base, are all burned away. When standing, this monster must have been by far the largest in both groves, and, indeed, larger than any now known in the world. It should have been called "Lucifer," a name hereby respectfully submitted for the consideration of future tourists.

The living trees of this species exude a dark-colored substance, looking like gum, but readily dissolving in water. This has a very acrid, bitter taste, which probably aids in preserving the tree from injurious insects, and preventing the decay of the woody fibre.

The fruit or seed is hardly conical, but rather ellipsoidal or rudely oval in form, an inch and a half long by one inch through, and looking far too insignificant to contain the actual germ of the most gigantic structure known to botanical science.

Their age, indicated by the concentric rings of annual growth, carefully counted and registered by the gentlemen of the State Survey, varies from five to thirteen, possibly fifteen, centuries.

The word "_Sequoia_," is the Latin form of the Indian _Sequoyah_, the name of a Cherokee Indian of mixed blood, who is supposed to have been born about 1770, and who lived in Will's Valley, in the extreme northeastern corner of Alabama, among the Cherokees. His English name was George Guess. He became famous by his invention of an alphabet, and written letters for his tribe. This alphabet was constructed with wonderful ingenuity. It consisted of eighty-six characters, each representing a syllable, and it had already come into considerable use before the whites heard anything of it. After a while, the missionaries took up Sequoyah's idea, had types cast, supplied a printing press to the Cherokee nation, and in 1828 started a newspaper printed partly with these types. Driven, with the rest of his tribe, beyond the Mississippi, he died in New Mexico, in 1843. His alphabet is still in use, though destined to pa.s.s away with his doomed race, but not into complete oblivion, for his name, attached to one of the grandest productions of the vegetable kingdom will keep his memory forever green.

For the foregoing bit of aboriginal biography, we gratefully acknowledge our obligation to Prof. Brewer and the gentlemen of the State Survey, to whom he originally furnished it.

Had Sequoyah's name been Cadmus--had the Cherokees been Phenicians--and had this modern heathen of the eighteenth century invented his alphabet away back before the Christian era, his name would have stood in every school history among those of inventors, philosophers, discoverers and benefactors; as it is he's "only an Indian." No one can deny, however, that he was one of the best re(a)d men in the history of the world.

Both the Calaveras and the Mariposa groves contain hollow trunks of fallen trees, through which, or into which, two and even three hors.e.m.e.n can ride abreast for sixty or seventy feet. Each grove, also, has trees which have been burned out at the base, but have not fallen.

Still standing, they contain or enclose huge charcoal-lined rooms, into which one can ride. The writer has been one of four mounted men who rode their horses into such a cavity in the Mariposa grove, and reined their horses up side by side without crowding each other or pressing the outside one against the wall.

One who has seen only the ordinary big trees of "down east," or "out west," forests, finds it hard to believe that any such vegetable monsters can really exist. Even the multiplied and repeated a.s.surances of friends who have actually "_seen_ them, sir," and "measured them _myself_, I tell you," hardly arrest the outward expression of incredulity, and seldom win the inward faith of the skeptical hearer.

Fancy yourself sitting down to an after-dinner chat in the fifteen-foot sitting room, adjoining the dining room of equal size.

You fall to talking of the "Big Trees." You say, "Why, my dear sir, I have actually rode into, and sat upon my horse in, a tree whose hollow was so big that you could put both these rooms into it, side by side, and still have seven or eight feet of solid wood standing on each side of me. No, sir, not romancing at _all_. It's an actual, scientific, measured _fact_, sir." Your friend looks quizzically and incredulously into both your eyes, as he says, "Why, now see here, my dear fellow, do you suppose I'm going to believe that? Tell a _moderate_ whopper, and back it up with such repeated a.s.sertion and scientific authority, and you might possibly make me believe it, or at least, allow it until you were fairly out of hearing; but to sit here at a man's own fireside and tell him such a _monstrous_ story as that, and expect him to swallow it for truth--ah, no, my dear fellow, that's _too_ much, altogether too much."

So you have to give it over and drop the argument for the present, in the hope that some one of the numerous excursion parties, now so rapidly multiplying every year, will soon include him, carry him into the actual presence of these veritable monsters of the vegetable kingdom, confront him with their colossal columns, and compel his belief.