has been built a ball-room, in which a quadrille of eight or ten
couples can be danced with ease.

But the giant of giants, in a forest which is the property of the state,
about fifteen miles from Murphy, is "The Father of the Forest," an old
sequoia, 4000 years old, which rises 452 feet from the ground, higher
than the cross of St. Peter's, at Rome, higher than the great pyramid
of Ghizeh, higher than the iron bell-turret which now caps one of the
towers of Rouen Cathedral, and which ought to be looked upon as the
highest monument in the world.

It was a group of some twenty of these colossi that nature had planted
on this point of the island, at the epoch, probably, when Solomon was
building that temple at Jerusalem which has never risen from its ruins.
The largest was, perhaps, 300 feet high, the smallest nearly 200.

Some of them, hollowed out by age, had enormous arches through their
bases, beneath which a troop of horsemen could have ridden with ease.

Godfrey was struck with admiration in the presence of these natural
phenomena, as they are not generally found at altitudes of less than
from 5000 to 6000 feet above the level of the sea. He even thought that
the view alone was worth the journey. Nothing he had seen was comparable
to these columns of clear brown, which outlined themselves almost
without sensible diminution of their diameters to their lowest fork. The
cylindrical trunks rising from 80 to 100 feet above the earth, ramified
into such thick branches that they themselves looked like tree-stems of
huge dimensions bearing quite a forest in the air.

One of these specimens of _Sequoia gigantea_--one of the biggest in the
group--more particularly attracted Godfrey's attention.

Gazing at its base it displayed an opening of from four to five feet in
width, and ten feet high, which gave entrance to its interior. The
giant's heart had disappeared, the alburnum had been dissipated into
soft whitish dust; but if the tree did not depend so much on its
powerful roots as on its solid bark, it could still keep its position
for centuries.

"In default of a cavern or a grotto," said Godfrey, "here is a
ready-made dwelling. A wooden house, a tower, such as there is in no
inhabited land. Here we can be sheltered and shut in. Come along,
Tartlet! come!"

And the young man, catching hold of his companion, dragged him inside
the sequoia.

The base was covered with a bed of vegetable dust, and in diameter could
n