Part 7 (1/2)

The Big Tree has been called the n.o.blest of a n.o.ble race. Its enormous size, its excellent proportions, its serenity, its steadfastness, its age, make it the most impressive living object. John Muir, in commenting on the imperishable nature of the sequoia, says he feels confident that if every one of these trees were to die to-day, numerous monuments of their existence would remain available for the student for more than ten thousand years.

But the Big Tree is not verging toward extinction. Its greatest danger is from general destruction by man. The Big-Tree area has not diminished, but probably has slightly increased in the last few thousand years. Seeds sprout readily and young trees grow vigorously.

John Muir thus comments concerning the tree and its distribution:--

The Big Tree (_Sequoia gigantea_) is Nature's forest masterpiece, and, so far as I know, the greatest of living things. It belongs to an ancient stock, as its remains in old rocks show, and has a strange air of other days about it, a thoroughbred look inherited from the long ago--the auld lang syne of trees. Once the genus was common, and with many species flourished in the now desolate arctic regions, in the interior of North America, and in Europe, but in long eventful wanderings from climate to climate only two species have survived the hards.h.i.+ps they had to encounter.

The Big Trees probably were discovered by General John Bidwell in 1841. John Muir studied them for years, and then gave to the world an accurate account of them.

The Big-Tree groves, he says, are growing in the soil-areas off which the ice first melted at the close of the ice age. The wide gaps between the various sequoia groves were areas occupied by the large and long-enduring glaciers. The topography of the mountains plainly shows that the areas where the groves are were places protected from the ice-flows of the heights. The gaps would naturally have received the main ice-flows from the heights.

In the south the Big-Tree forests are in the areas that were effectively b.u.t.tressed and s.h.i.+elded from ice-flows. Consequently these areas were early opened at the close of the ice age. The forty-mile-wide gap between the Stanislaus and the Tuolumne Groves was a channel filled with a glacier probably long after the groves to the north and the south started to grow.

Did the sequoia endure the long ice age in these few places where the groves are now growing? The pine, fir, spruce, and other forest species in the Sierra may have been planted with seeds from trees that survived in the south. But as the sequoia is found nowhere else, the question arises, did it survive somewhere near the localities in which it is now growing?

An acquaintance with the Big Trees, an understanding of them, gives us one of the most impressive and lasting ties to be had in nature. These trees ever impress one with a n.o.bility of character. Seen at midday, or at early morning when their lengthened shadow gives strange tones to the scene, or in the serene, strange moonlight, or when, wrapped in restless mist, they loom vast and mysterious, or in a storm, they are ever marvelously steadfast and calm. Long may they live!

At the Big Trees, the first act of Horace Greeley, the celebrated editor, was to take out a pencil and figure on the lumber contents of one. These veteran trees have a higher value.

Lincoln, in his lecture on Niagara Falls, said: ”The mere physical fact of Niagara Falls is a very small part of the world's wonder. _Its power to incite reflection and emotion_ is its greatest charm.”

Lincoln might have calculated the mule-power of the Falls if ruined--changed from the higher value of a scenic spectacle to common commercialism. Why tell how many hovels or how many feet of sewer might be constructed out of the Library of Congress; or the number of cobblestones that could be manufactured from the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument?

As well tell the number of forts that might have been built with the marbles and the energy that were put into statuary and the inspiring arts, as to consider or measure Big Trees in lumber terms.

The sequoia is one of the monumental wonders of this round world. It is the oldest settler--the pioneer of pioneers. Each venerable giant numbers his years by centuries. Each was already old when nations of the present were born. Gone and forgotten are the nations that were--gone the flags that waved in the wind when these trees began to cast their shadows.

And it may be--for nations with all their pomp and pride are short-lived--that every flag that now flaunts the sky, that every nation now on earth, will pa.s.s out of existence long before these patriarchal trees lie down at last upon the mountains. Some of these trees have already out-lived more than fifty generations of mankind.

Some of them are likely to look upon a score or more of pa.s.sing generations of the human race. These trees might tell a thousand stirring stories to the one possessed by the Sphinx. The Sphinx is of lifeless stone. These trees are alive. They have lived through countless changing scenes. But which shall be accounted the more striking and wonderful, the pa.s.sing pictures in the centuries they have looked upon, or the moving, changing scenes in the centuries that they are yet to see?

These Big Trees have endured fire, flood, lightning, landslide, gale, drought, and earthquake, but have never hauled down their evergreen banners. They have triumphed over the changes of ten thousand seasons; watched and waved through centuries of sunlight and storm.

Countless times the sun has projected a silhouetted shadow of their stupendous plumes against the mountain side. They have worn monumental robes of snow flowers; they have stood silent in the light of thousands of autumn moons; and they are still upon the heights to inspire us with their steadfastness and their splendor.

The landmark and the heritage of the ages are these splendid trees, these immortal evergreens. Their historic lore and unequaled grandeur give them amplitude and poetry enough to kindle and enrich the imagination. Let them live on; they will bless those who make the sacred pilgrimage to see them, and they will be a ”choir invisible” to all who simply know that upon the sublime Sierra they still wave grandly.

IV

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK

Mount Rainier is one of the n.o.blest and most imposing mountains in the world. It stands isolated. Around it are countless peaks, but these are so small that they but emphasize the colossal bulk and towering height of majestic Rainier. It is 14,408 feet high. The alt.i.tudinal sweep of the Park is ten thousand feet. Only Mount Rainier territory is in the Park. The area is three hundred and twenty-four square miles--about eighteen miles square. Yet so vast is this mountain that an extensive part of it is outside the Park boundaries. Its outline is intensified by the extraordinary make-up of black and white which characterizes it. The upper half of it is strangely white with ma.s.ses of snow and ice. The lower slopes are purplish black with dense coniferous forests. Between the snow and the forest is a magnificent belt of wild flowers.

Mount Rainier is a sleeping volcano. Beneath its sh.e.l.l of stone is a heart of fire. Upon this sh.e.l.l are snow-fields and glaciers, rus.h.i.+ng rivers, a stupendous forest, wild-flower gardens in which millions of ”bannered blossoms open their bosoms to the sun.”

Additional territory is needed to protect scenery not now in the Park, and especially for Park road development. At a number of points along the southern boundary the road winds outside the Park. A similar condition will exist on the eastern side when the eastern road-system is built. Much good would result from starting at the southeast corner of the Park and adding a six-mile strip twelve miles long on the south and another strip of equal size on the east.

Mount Rainier lies about sixty miles eastward from Seattle and Tacoma.

An excellent automobile road enters the southern boundary and extends into the Park, pa.s.sing the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. The road-plan of the Park embraces an encircling scenic highway around the mountain on the lower slopes. This road is to be united with entrance roads from the north, south, east, and west. A trail about fifty miles long circles this peak near timber-line. It penetrates fifty miles of unexcelled beauty and splendor. It touches a thousand different scenes and ever commands the world of light and shade that lies far below and far away.