it certainly had an impressiveness quite compatible with
the age and dignity which go with a thousand years of life.

When, one day, the sawmill-man at Mancos wrote, "Come, we are about to
log your old pine," I started at once, regretting that a thing which
seemed to me so human, as well as so noble, must be killed.

[Illustration: A VETERAN WESTERN YELLOW PINE]

I went out with the axemen who were to cut the old pine down. A grand
and impressive tree he was. Never have I seen so much individuality,
so much character, in a tree. Although lightning had given him a bald
crown, he was still a healthy giant, and was waving evergreen banners
more than one hundred and fifteen feet above the earth. His massive
trunk, eight feet in diameter on a level with my breast, was covered
with a thick, rough, golden-brown bark which was broken into irregular
plates. Several of his arms were bent and broken. Altogether, he
presented a timeworn but heroic appearance.

It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of
living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and
severe. From the moment a baby tree is born--from the instant it casts
its tiny shadow upon the ground--until death, it is in danger from
insects and animals. It cannot move to avoid danger. It cannot run
away to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must
endure flood and drought, fire and storm, insects and earthquakes,
or die.

Trees, like people, struggle for existence, and an aged tree, like an
aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting
biography. I have read the autobiographies of many century-old trees,
and have found their life-stories strange and impressive. The yearly
growth, or annual ring of wood with which trees envelop themselves, is
embossed with so many of their experiences that this annual ring of
growth literally forms an autobiographic diary of the tree's life.

I wanted to read Old Pine's autobiography. A veteran pine that had
stood on the southern Rockies and struggled and triumphed through the
changing seasons of hundreds of years must contain a rare life-story.
From his stand between the Mesa and the pine-plumed mountain, he had
seen the panorama of the seasons and many a strange pageant; he
had beheld what scenes of animal and human strife, what storms and
convulsions of nature! Many a wondrous secret he had locked within his
tree soul. Yet, although he had not recorde