Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 3, 2025
Godfrey thought then, if not of fortifying Will Tree according to the famous plans of Tartlet, at least of connecting the four or five large sequoias which surrounded it. If he could devise a high and strong palisade from one tree to another, they would be in comparative security at any rate from a surprise.
The principle is older than the Christian Era, older than the sequoias of California, older than the Pyramids, older than Chinese civilization. It is the most precious abstract truth that man has yet discovered. It contains the germ of all that has been said and written about human brotherhood and all that has been done toward making it an accomplished fact.
In such a journey the traveler will see the famous redwood forests of this State, whose trees are unequaled in size except by the gigantic sequoias; he will see those dairy-farms of Marin County whose butter supplies not only the Western coast, but is sent East, and competes in the markets of New York and Boston with the product of Eastern dairies, while, sealed hermetically in glass jars, it is transported to the most distant military posts, and used on long sea-voyages, keeping sweet in any climate for at least a year; he will see, in Mendocino County, one of the most remarkable coasts in the world, eaten by the ocean into the most singular and fantastic shapes; and on this coast saw-mills and logging camps, where the immense redwood forests are reduced to useful lumber with a prodigious waste of wood.
"Crusoe before Friday, Crusoe after Friday; what a difference!" thought he. However, on this morning, that of June 29th, Godfrey was not sorry to be alone, so as to put into execution his project of exploring the group of sequoias. Perhaps he would be fortunate enough to discover some fruit, some edible root, which he could bring back to the extreme satisfaction of the professor.
He did not want to know the language to understand what Godfrey meant. The door was opened, and the frightened flock rushed into the enclosure. But at that instant there appeared through the opening a gleaming of eyes in the depths of the darkness which the shadow of the sequoias rendered still more profound. There was no time to close the enclosure!
The presence of the two great families of trees the sequoias and the oaks as far back as the Miocene period, if not extending through the Eocene into the Cretacious, is conclusive of the point we would make, that no great evolutional changes have taken place in the last two or three million years, and none are likely to take place in the next million years, except that the Sequoia gigantea may drop out, from the vandalism of man or the next glacial drift.
Sequoias of many varieties ranged far into northern Canada. In northern Greenland there were luxuriant forests of magnolias, figs, and cycads; and a similar flora has been disinterred from the Cretaceous rocks of Alaska and Spitzbergen. Evidently the lands within the Arctic Circle enjoyed a warm and genial climate, as they had done during the Paleozoic.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have often thought that if one of those trees could be set by itself in some city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized; while in its home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary, satiated traveler sees none of them truly. It is so with these majestic rock structures.
The chances are that the circling buzzard and hungry coyotes will be the only mourners present at his funeral. Now and then we passed a twisted, warped old juniper that was doubtless digging for a foothold while Christ walked on earth. The Chief said these old junipers vie with the Sequoias in age. Nothing else broke the monotony of the heat and sand, until we came to the first water hole.
"Yes, but the chimney?" answered Tartlet. "Before we talk about the chimney," replied Godfrey, "let us wait till we have got the fire!" This was only logical. Godfrey went to reconnoitre the neighbourhood. As we have said, the prairie extended to this enormous mass of sequoias which formed its edge.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking