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Updated: May 3, 2025
Very far back, in the time of which we have no written history, in the moist days of gigantic vegetation and animals, the Sequoias covered a large portion of the earth's surface; then came the great ice overflow, and when that melted away, almost the only things living of the days of giants were the Sequoias of middle and upper California, and those on some two thousand acres over the Oregon line.
Libocedrus, on the other hand, appears to have cast in its lot with the Sequoias. Two species, according to Heer, were with them in Spitzbergen. L. decurrens, the incense cedar, is one of the noblest associates of the present redwoods. But all the rest are in the southern hemisphere, two at the southern extremity of the Andes, two in the South-Sea Islands.
There was one place where trees grew like banyans, and it was utterly impossible to penetrate them. They swerved aside. There was another spot where giant trees like sequoias made a cathedral-like atmosphere, and it seemed an impiety to speak. But Holden reported tonelessly in the walkie-talkie, and assured Jones and Al and Jamison that all so far was well.
The summits of the sequoias were glowing in the first rays of the sun. Godfrey opened the door; he stepped outside; he scanned the group of trees. Complete solitude. The animals had returned to the prairie. There they were, tranquilly browsing, about a quarter of a mile away. Nothing about them denoted the least uneasiness. Godfrey made a sign to Tartlet to join him.
Their slopes are dark with forests of sugar pines and giant sequoias, the mightiest of trees, in whose silent aisles one may wander all day long and see no sign of man. Dropped here and there rest turquoise lakes which mark the craters of dead volcanoes, or which swell the polished basins where vanished glaciers did their last work.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have often thought that if one of these 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 giant pines, and firs, and Sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another on the mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the utmost expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and harmony. The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most distinguishing characteristics.
Some of the smaller fruitful trees were cut down in the groves not protected by government, especially those of Fresno and King's River. Most of the Sequoias, however, are of so gigantic a size that the seedsmen have to look for the greater portion of their supplies to the Douglas, who soon learns he is no match for these freebooters.
Small rafts could be formed, and they would quietly float down to the sequoias, where a bar, formed by the small bridge, would stop them. From thence to Will Tree was only about fifty-five paces. If any of them showed particular satisfaction at this mode of procedure, it was Tartlet. On the 18th the first rafts were formed, and they arrived at the barrier without accident.
Upon a bed of sandy floodsoil I counted ninety-four sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch of ground once occupied by four large sugar pines which lay crumbling beneath them an instance of conditions which have enabled sequoias to crowd out the pines. I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground prepared for their reception by fire.
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