light, porous, and reddish in color, with many scars upon it of fire
(its great enemy); then, perhaps, at the height of the Trinity belfry
(say one hundred feet), two opposing huge branches will protrude, it may
be, themselves, of the size of large trees (say eight feet in diameter);
these will be twisted and much broken; above them will come forth other
heavy branches, which show the marks and blows of the storms of a
thousand years or more, for the giant, so far above his fellows, meets a
continual battering from the gales of the mountains.

There is no symmetry in his top, or delicacy and grace in his outline;
he has battled and struggled with the storm for too many centuries to
preserve an artistic appearance. He looks the giant of the forest,
broad-rooted and strong-limbed, rough and weather-beaten, but defying
snow and frost and hurricane for thousands of years, and still
sheltering bird and beast and cattle beneath his grand shadow....

We visited one big tree in Calaveras which had been blown over two years
before. The enormous weight which each tree carries makes it more
difficult to bear the gales, as it overtops the forest. Perhaps any
ordinary wood, such as oak or maple, would increase the specific
gravity, so that at three hundred feet high the leverage on the roots
would be too great to bear any strain of a gale; but this wood is almost
like cork,--lighter than any wood on the Eastern coast. The fall of this
mighty tower, they say, was heard for miles around, and made the earth
tremble. Where it fell it has buried its top deep in the ground, so that
there is quite a ravine made by the blow in the earth. You strike the
trunk where it is still a large tree, and then walk upon it some two
hundred feet towards the roots. When you reach the roots you are upon a
height equal to the roof of a moderate-sized house, and a fall from the
trunk would be dangerous. You descend by a ladder.

If I recollect rightly, there were three hundred and sixty-five trees in
this Mariposa Grove. I measured one trunk, broken off at the top, where
it was a foot in diameter, which was about two hundred and ninety feet
in length, and estimating thirty feet as the length of the part broken
off, it must have been some three hundred and twenty feet high. We
lunched near a "camp" of the Geological Survey, in the heart of the
grove, lying on our backs beneath the gigantic canopies, and feeling
like pigmies at the feet of these giants. Th