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The oak family can be traced back to the Miocene period, and consequently enjoys quite as high an antiquity as the sequoias. Professor Gray, in speaking of the Quercus robur and its probable origin, says that it is "traceable in Europe up to the commencement of the present epoch, looks eastward, and far into the past on far-distant shores."
By no other trees are they rendered so extensively and impressively visible, not even by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and sublime, but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds.
They also flourish under the shade of the huge fallen trunks in hollow places, where moisture is preserved throughout the summer. Most of the other conifers of these forests, especially the pines, have much larger seeds than the Sequoias, and the store of nourishment in these more bulky seeds enables the young plants to tide over the first summer's drought.
So the tree was called sequoia gigantea and quietly went on growing, unmindful of the four nations who had quarrelled over its christening. Why, indeed, should it bother its lofty head with the chatter of people whose countries were unknown when this mighty tree was full grown? For these sequoias are the oldest of living objects and have probably been growing for four thousand years.
An hour later, it was light enough to see beyond the sequoias. Godfrey then cautiously reopened the shutters. From that looking to the south he saw nothing extraordinary. The domestic animals wandered peacefully under the trees, and did not appear in the least alarmed. The survey completed, Godfrey carefully shut this window. Through the opening to the north there was a view up to the shore.
They shook the group of sequoias to their very roots. They strewed the ground with broken branches, and so furnished an ample reserve for the fire. Then it was that the inhabitants of Will Tree clothed themselves as warmly as they could.
But what Stonehenge is to England, the Giralda to Spain, and the Alps to Switzerland, that, I think, is the Mariposa Forest of giant Sequoias to California. "If I had been an atheist, I believe I should suddenly have been taught the lesson of God among the great redwoods. And nobody could be heavy-hearted here, or frivolous.
Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of sequoias are growing thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain pines to rifts in granite precipices, and since it has also been shown that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
With his glass at his eye he followed the proa; he saw it turn the point of the promontory, then run along the shore and then approach the mouth of the small stream, which, two miles up, flowed past Will Tree. If the savages intended to paddle up the river, they would soon reach the group of sequoias and nothing could hinder them. Godfrey and Tartlet ran rapidly back to their dwelling.
Our third question remains to be answered: Have these famous Sequoias played in former times and upon a larger stage a more imposing part, of which the present is but the epilogue? We cannot gaze high up the huge and venerable trunks, which one crosses the continent to behold, without wishing that these patriarchs of the grove were able, like the
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