equoia gigantea_ is not
found merely here, or at Calaveras and its neighborhood. There appears
to be a belt of them running along the slope of the Sierras, about four
thousand and five thousand feet above the sea-level, and as far south as
Visalia. They are so plentiful near that place as to be sawed for
lumber, though what so light a wood could be used for I can hardly
think. In the neighborhood of the latter place the Indians report a
tree, far in the forest, surpassing in grandeur anything ever seen; but
thus far no white man has ever cast eyes on it. It is a mistake, too, to
suppose the race wearing out. I saw, both here and in Calaveras, young
giant _Sequoiae_, beginning patiently their thousand years of growth with
all the vigor of their grand ancestors; some of but four hundred years,
mere youths, were growing splendidly. There are fewer young trees here
than in Calaveras, because fire or some other cause has swept among the
underbrush of all trees, and must have destroyed many of these burly
saplings.

The Sequoia grows on mountain-slopes, where the slow wash of water,
through ages, brings down minute particles of fertilizing rocks, and
the decayed vegetation of countless centuries, with the moisture of
eternal springs, water and feed its roots. It enjoys a sun of the
tropics without a cloud for six months, and has the balmy air of the
Pacific, with incessant and gentle moisture, and a warm covering of snow
for its winter. Beneath its roots, the ground never freezes. As has been
well said, "It has nothing to do but grow;" and so with all the
favorable conditions that nature can offer--air and sun and moisture--it
pumps up its food from the everlasting hills, and builds up its slow,
vegetable-like substance during century after century into a gigantic,
symmetrical, and venerable pile, while nations begin and pass away
beneath its shadow.

Think of lying under a tree beneath which the contemporary of Attila or
Constantine might have rested, and which shall defy the storm, perhaps,
when the present political divisions of the world are utterly passed
away, and the names of Washington and Lincoln are among the heroes of a
vague past.

But how to give an impression of its size! If my readers will imagine a
Sequoia placed beside Trinity Church, he must conceive it filling up one
of our largest dwelling-houses, say a diameter of thirty feet, with a
circumference of ninety feet; the bark of this gigantic trunk will be