 CHAPTER VIII. BIG TREE. SACOIA GIGANTIA. Between the heavy pine and the silver fur belts we find the big tree, the king of all the conifers in the world, the noblest of a noble race. It extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the 39th parallel, the southern a little below the 36th, and the elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5,000 to 8,000 feet. From the American River grove to the forest on King's River, the species occurs only in small isolated groups, so sparsely distributed along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from 40 to 60 miles wide. But from the King's River southward, the Sequoia is not restricted to mere groves, but extends across the broad rugged basins of the Kauia and Tule rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly 70 miles, the continuity of this part of the belt being broken only by deep canyons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves, occupies an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to the southward of the famous Mariposa Grove, along the beveled rim of the canyon of the south fork of King's River. There is a majestic forest of Sequoia about six miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost assemblage of big trees that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the precipitous divide between the King's River and the Kauia, you enter the grand forest that form the main continuous portion of the belt. Advancing southward, the giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, and waving onward in graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kauia section of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the Middle Fork, and extends from the granite headlands overlooking the hot plains to within a few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the middle and south forks of the Kauia at an elevation of 8,400 feet. But the finest block of big tree forest in the entire belt is on the north fork of the Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees or saplings. But here, for every old, storm-stricken giant, there are many in all the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges along water courses, and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of eternal life. But though the area occupied by this species increases so much from north to south, there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is perhaps about the average size of grown trees favorably situated. Specimens 25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly 300 feet high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300 feet in height, the tallest of which, by careful measurement, is 325 feet. The largest I have met yet in the course of my explorations is a majestic old scarred monument in the King's River Forest. It is 35 feet eight inches in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under the most favorable conditions these giants probably live 5,000 years or more, though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I never saw a big tree that had died a natural death, barring accidents they seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that afflict and kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man they live on indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was felt in the Calaveras Grove for the sake of having its stump for a dancing floor was about 1,300 years, and its diameter measured across the stump 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the King's River Forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years older, 2,200 years, though not a very old looking tree. It was felt to procure a section for exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to count its annual rings of growth. The colossal scarred monument in the King's River Forest mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate of its age, clearing away the charred surface with an axe, and carefully counting the annual rings with the aid of a pocket lens. The wood rings in the section I laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that I was not able to determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4,000 rings which showed that this tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra Winds when Christ walked the earth. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia, or opened such impressive and suggestive views into history. So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very muddiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and circumstances, there never is anything overgrown or monstrous looking about them. On coming inside of them for the first time you are likely to say, oh, see what beautiful noble looking trees are towering there among the firs and pines. Their grandeur being in the meantime in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of Niagara or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is hidden from the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a distance in one harmonious view. When however you approach them and walk around them you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a measuring rod. These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is required for beauty and safety, and the only reason that this bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small section of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the King's River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling in step to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty. About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly parallel like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. The young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about halfway down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By the time the sapling is five or six hundred years old, this spirey, feathery, juvenile habit merges into the firm rounded dome form of middle age, which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No other tree in the Sierra Forest has foliage so densely masked or presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate to a special type. A naughty, ungovernable looking branch five to eight feet thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk as if sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading bosses of law-abiding sprays just as if every tree were growing beneath some huge invisible bell glass. Against two sides every branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many small departures from their regular form that there is still an appearance of freedom. The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish green in color while the older trees ripen into a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libra Cedrus. The bark is rich cinnamon brown, purple-ish in young trees and in shady portions of the old while the ground is covered with brown leaves and burrs forming color masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk the Sequoia Woods at any time of year and you will say they are the most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive contrasts meet you everywhere. The colors of tree and flower, rock and sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence. Tangles of supple hazel bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite domes, roses and violets the smallest of their kind, blooming about the feet of the giants, and rugs of the lowly cameo baisha where the sunbeams fall. Again in winter the trees themselves break forth in bloom, myriads of small, four-sided stamina cones crowd the ends of the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the air and the ground was golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright grass-green, measuring about two inches in length by one-and-a-half in thickness, and are made up of about forty firm, rhomboidal scales densely packed with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A single cone therefore contains from two to three-hundred seeds, which are about a fourth of an inch long by three-sixteenths wide, including a thin, flat margin that makes them though glancing and wavering in their fall like a boy's kite. The fruitfulness of sequoia may be illustrated by two specimen branches one-and-a-half and two inches in diameter, on which I counted four-hundred and eighty cones. No other Sierra conifer produces nearly so many seeds. Sequoia cones are ripened annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of the northern groves would be enough to plant all the mountain ranges of the world. Nature takes care, however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live through the many vicitudes of storm, drought, fire, and snow-crushing that beset their youth. The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the sequoia cones. Out of every hundred, perhaps ninety fall to his share, and unless cut off by his iry sickle, they shake out their seeds and remain on the tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the most lightful diversions imaginable. The woods are calm, and the ripe colors are blazing in all their glory. The cone-laden trees stand motionless in the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the prince of Sierra Woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glense with his happy cackle. The hummingbird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on some leafless twig. Here also are the familiar robin of the orchards, and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for these majestic solitudes. And the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious, exuberant, vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming-wings together. As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these sequoias, such as being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then the branches beneath the wound, no matter how situated, seem to be excited like a colony of bees that have lost their queen and become anxious to repair the damage. Stumps that have grown outward for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a new head. Groups of two or three of these grand trees are often found standing close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown on the ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a former generation. These patches of fresh mellow soil beside the upturned roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet wide and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these seedling thickets, perhaps two or three may become trees forming those close groups called three graces, loving couples, etc. For even supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart when young, by the time they are full grown their trunks will touch and crowd against each other and even appear as one in some cases. It is generally believed that this grand sequoia was once far more widely distributed over the Sierra, but after long and careful study I have come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of the groves and in the gaps between fails to reveal a single trace of its previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding I feel confident that if every sequoia in the range were to die today numerous monuments of their existence would remain of so imperishable a nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand years hence. In the first place we might notice that no species of coniferous tree in the range keeps its individuals so well together as sequoia. A mile is perhaps the greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those stragglers that have come under my observation are young instead of old monumental trees relics of a more extended growth. Again, sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall. I have a specimen block cut from a fallen trunk which is hardly distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees. Although the old trunk fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest more than three hundred eighty years, probably thrice as long. The time measure in the case is simply this. When the ponderous trunk to which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground thus making a long straight ditch. And in the middle of this ditch a silver fur is growing that is now four feet in diameter and some three hundred eighty years old as determined by cutting it half through and counting the rings. This demonstrating that the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain on the ground more than three hundred eighty years. For it is evident that to find the whole time we must add to the three hundred eighty years, the time that the venous portion of the trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out of the way, plus the time that passed before the seed from which the monument first sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now because sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because sequoia ditches after being cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes evident that the trunk remnant in question may probably have lain a thousand years or more. And this instance is by no means a rare one. But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered with sequoia every tree may have fallen and every trunk may have been burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the ditches made by the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bulls made by their upturning roots would remain patterned for thousands of years after the last vests of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood action of overflowing streams and rain-washing. But no inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive action, for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost imperishable. Now these historical ditches and root-bulls occur in all the present sequoia groves and forests, but as far as I have observed not the faintest vestiges of one presents itself outside of them. We therefore conclude that the area covered by sequoia has not been diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not at all in post-glacial times. Is the species verging to extinction? What are its relations to climate, soil, and associated trees? All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light as we shall endeavor to show upon the peculiar distribution of the species, and sustain the conclusion already arrived at on the question of extension. In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are a few young trees, or saplings, growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race. And as much as those aged sequoias, so nearly childless, are the only ones commonly known, the species to most observers seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and furs that have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where climate is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous forest of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of all the forest is more enduringly established and concordance with climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere, on moraines, rocky ledges, along water courses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows, with a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged, seeming abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For every old storm-stricken tree there is one or more in all the glory of prime, and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant saplings. So that, if all the trees of any section of the main sequoia forest were ranged together according to age, a very promising curve would be presented, all the way up from last year seedlings to giants, and with the young and middle-aged portion of the curve many times longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted 536 saplings and seedlings, growing promisingly upon a piece of rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is about seven years old, and has been seeded almost simultaneously by pines, furs, liberocedrus, and sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive illustration of the struggle for life among the rival species, and it was interesting to note that the conditions thus far affecting them have enabled the young sequoias to gain a marked advantage. In every instance like the above, I have observed that the seedling sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its rivals, but requires more sunshine than they. The latter fact being clearly shown, wherever a sugar pine or fir is growing in close contact with a sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the sun, the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy. Toward the south, however, where the sequoia becomes more exuberant and numerous, their rival trees become less so, and where they mix with sequoias, they mostly grow up underneath them, like slender grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood soil, I counted 94 sequoias from one to 12 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 86 vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however, furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the forest without fire, bees by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for everyone that falls. Land slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin ground, and a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel, but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of aged trees. The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure of tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time and the means employed by nature in affecting them. It is constantly asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and that the increasing drought will of itself extinguish sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees, supposed capable of nourishing in a drier climate. But that sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as any of its present rivals has manifest in a thousand places. Why then, it will be asked, are sequoias always found in greatest abundance in well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant? Simply, because the growth of sequoias creates those streams, the thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the grove being there. On the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for effect than in the case of these related phenomena of sequoia woods and perennial streams, and I confess that at first I shared in the blunder. When attention is called to the method of sequoia stream making, it will be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground, forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains and melting snows, only allowing them to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every fallen leaf and rootlet, as well as long glassping root and prostrate trunk, may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm clouds and dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods. Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent than by any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and broad sheets that are quickly saturated, while thirsty winds are not allowed to go sponging and licking along the ground. So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt that bogs and meadow are created by the killing of the trees. A single trunk falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long, and from 10 to 30 feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the trees within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, making it clearing, while sediments gradually accumulate, changing the pond into a bog or meadow, for a growth of carieses and sphagnum. In most instances, a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside, which are gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs or meadows, which make striking features of sequoia woods. And since all the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain records of the generations that have passed since they began to form. Since then it is a fact that thousands of sequoias are growing thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain pines to rifts and granite precipices. And since it has also been shown that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser gross is an effect of their presence instead of a cause of their presence, then the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater moisture, are seen to be erroneous. The decrease in the rain and snowfall since the close of the glacial period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring flood marks of the present, showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial Sierra streams since they came into existence. But in the meantime, eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain fact remains that the present rain and snowfall is abundantly sufficient for the luxuriant gross of Sequoia forest. Indeed, all my observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought, the sugar pines and furs would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can endure more drought and make the most of whatever moisture falls. Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead of increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall is less, it should diminish. If then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture by what has it been governed. In the course of my studies, I observed that the northern groves, the only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those portions of the general forest soil belt that were first laid bare toward the close of the glacial period when the ice sheet began to break up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin of the San Joaquin and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia where every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occurred to me that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the basin of the vast ancient Mer de Glace of the San Joaquin and King's River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the snows that fell on more than 50 miles of the summit. I then perceived that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, 40 miles wide, extending between the Calaveras and the two illumined groves, occurs in the basin of the great ancient Mer de Glace of the Touloume and Stanislaus basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and the Mariposa groves occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced, the wider the ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the Sequoia belt. Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Cahuia and the Toul, I discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the region, the ground had been most perfectly protected from the main ice rivers that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long after the smaller local glaciers had been melted. Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south, we see that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the valleys of Kern and King's Rivers by the lofty protective spurs outspread embracingly above the warm, Sequoia-filled basins of the Cahuia and the Toul. Then, next northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less channel, or basin, of the ancient San Joaquin and King's River, Mer de Glace. Then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves. Then the Sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier. Next, the warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and the Touloume groves. Then the Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient Mer de Glace of the Touloume and Stanislaus. Then the warm, old ground of the Calaveras and Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not. What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to establish itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main glacial soil belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in this connection that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that the species was distributed from the south, while the sugar pine, its great rival in the northern groves, seems to have come around the head of the Sacramento Valley and down the Sierra from the north. Consequently, when the Sierra soil beds were first thrown open to preemption on the melting of the ice sheet, the Sequoia may have established itself along the available portions of the south half of the range prior to the arrival of the sugar pine, while the sugar pine took possession of the north half prior to the arrival of the Sequoia. But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question, there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the ancient glaciers of the Sierra, and when we bear in mind that all the present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself with all its landscapes is newborn, recently sculptured, and brought to the light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear and broad harmonies take their places. But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial epic, that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if indeed they have reached prime, that the post-glacial day of the species is probably not half done, yet from a wider outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered and its ancient richness in species and individuals, comparing our Sierra giant and Sequoia Semperverans of the coast range, the only other living species of Sequoia with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described by Hier and Lake Rue, some of which seem to have flourished over vast areas in the arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories during tertiary and cretaceous times, then indeed it becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and individuals, and that they probably are verging to extinction, but the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible existence of conditions calculated to multiply and re-extend both species and individuals. This however is a branch of the question into which I do not now propose to enter. In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered the action of purely natural causes only, but unfortunately man is in the woods and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway. If the importance of forests weren't all understood, even from an economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most watchful attention of government. Only of late years, by means of forest reservations, has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been laid, while in many of the finest groves, every species of destruction is still moving on with accelerated speed. In the course of my explorations, I found no fewer than five mills located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia Belt, all of which were cutting considerable quantities of big tree lumber. Most of the Fresno group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them, and a company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on King's River. In these milling operations, waste far exceeds use, for after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been filled, the woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse, with reference to further operations, and of course, most of the ceilings and saplings are destroyed. These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the comprehensive destruction caused by sheepmen. Incredible numbers of sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods are burned. Running fires are set everywhere with a view to clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movement of the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus swept and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and with the exception of the resinous Pinus contorta, Sequoia suffers most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to facilitate deer hunting. Mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow their campfires to run, but the fires of the sheepmen or mutteneers form more than 90% of all destructive fires that range the Sierra Forest. It appears therefore that notwithstanding our Forest King might live ungloriously in nature's keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the fire and steel of man, and unless protective measures be speedily invented and applied in a few decades at the farthest, all that will be left of Sequoia gigantia will be a few hacked and scarred monuments. Chapter 8 Part 3 of the Mountains of California. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 8 The Forests. Part 3. Two Leaved or Tamarack Pine. Pinus Contorta. Variety Mariana. This species forms the bulk of the alpine forest, extending along the range above the fur zone, up to a height of from 8,000 to 9,500 feet above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are scarcely changed as yet by postglacial weathering. Compared with the giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a height of 100 feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was 90 feet in height and a little over 6 in diameter, 4 feet from the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire belt is probably not far from 50 or 60 feet, with a diameter of 2 feet. It is a well proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with grayish brown bark and crooked much divided branches, which cover the greater portion of the trunk, not so densely however, as to prevent it's being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half way up the trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp conical top. The foliage is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy, on account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air with pollen. No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine forests sweep along the sides of the high rocky valleys for miles without interruption. Still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places, where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground in sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer's crop, and serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the arid plains every summer, as soon as the snow is melted. The two-leaved pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed. The flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the bending woods, like the grass fires of a prairie. During the calm dry season of Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground, feeding on the dry needles and burrs. Then, arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a powerful current, increasing in velocity, and drawing the flames swiftly upward. Then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire line at irregular intervals, for weeks at a time, tree after tree, flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed, and left standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a forest of bleach spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another, encumbering the ground, until they are consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop. The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out over the lava plains with the yellow pine, and climbing marine-less mountainsides with the dwarf pine, clinging to any chance support in rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks, always, however, showing the effects of such hardships in every feature. Down in sheltered lake hollows on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so far from the common form, as frequently to be caked for a distinct species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze, and whirling in eddying gusts more likely than any other tree in the woods. I have frequently found specimens fifty feet high, less than five inches in diameter, being thus slender and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs. It is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow, forming beautiful arches and endless variety, some of which last until the melting of the snow in spring. Mountain Pine, Pinus Monticola The mountain pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and disappear. At its best, it is usually about ninety feet high and five or six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger than this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring strength as that of an oak. About two-thirds of the trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark is deep reddish brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper limit, and furrowed rather deeply. The main furrow is running nearly parallel with each other and connected by conspicuous cross furrows, which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to this species. The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and somewhat curved, resembling those of the common white pine of the Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the bending of the branches. This species is nearly related to the sugar pine, and though not half so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its long arms and in general habit. The mountain pine is first met on the upper margin of the fur zone, growing singly in a subdued, inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the two leaved pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the grand old age of a thousand years. Juniper, or red cedar, Juniperus occidentalis. The Juniper is preeminently a rock tree, occupying the boldest domes and pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of from 7,000 to 9,500 feet. In such situations, the trunk is frequently over eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost always dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out horizontally that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely covered and embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient castle, scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the headwaters of the Carson have I found this species established on good Maureen soil. Here it flourishes with the silver and two-leaved pines, in great beauty and luxurians, attaining a height of from 40 to 60 feet, and manifesting but little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout the greater portion of its range. Two of the largest growing at the head of Hope Valley measured 29 feet 3 inches and 25 feet 6 inches in circumference, respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color and in thrifty trees beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by Indians for tent matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist's eye, but to me the juniper seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to one's heart. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold, and rigid, like a column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all possibility of waving or even shaking, but it is not this rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm Sundays the sugar pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without moving a leaf. On level rocks it dies standing and wastes insensibly out of existence, like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or dead, as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over 2,000 years old. All the trees of the Alpine wood suffer, more or less, from avalanches, the two-leaved pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree line to the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away, when the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one another heads downward and tucked snugly in along the sides of the clearing in two windrows like lateral moraines. The pines lie with branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers. After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty centuries, they seem in this their last calamity to become somewhat communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their fate, holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows, seemingly ill at ease and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers to rise again. Hemlock Spruce to Suga Patoniana The hemlock spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the California Canaveray. So slender is its axis at the top that it bends over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop also and divide into innumerable slender waving sprays, which are arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple and hang free in the form of little tassels two inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9,000 to 9,500 feet, on frosty northern slopes. But it is capable of growing considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens growing in sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind currents are from 80 to 100 feet high and from 2 to 4 feet in diameter. The very largest specimen I ever found was 19 feet 7 inches in circumference, 4 feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake Hollow at an elevation of 9,250 feet above the level of the sea. At the age of 20 or 30 years, it becomes fruitful and hangs its beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays where they swing free in the breeze and contrast beautifully with the cool green foliage. They are translucent when young and their beauty is delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow the brown winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop. The stamina cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in bright clusters, yellow and rose and crimson. Those of the hemlock spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue flowers each on a slender stem. Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed, this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit upon exposed ridgetops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets, huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness. While on well-ground, moraine soil, it develops a perfectly tropical luxurience, a foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest. Poised in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven, and joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching at its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to the mountain's gentlest breath, yet is it strong to meet the wildest onsets of the gale, strong not in resistance but compliance, bowing snow laden to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter. When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves, weighing down the branches against the trunk, then the axis bends yet lower and lower until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole tree is at length buried to sleep and rest in its beautiful grave as though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like the violets and daisies, which the heaviest snows crush not, they are safe. It is as though this were only nature's method of putting her darlings to sleep, instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms of winter. Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes soft in the sunshine and freezes at night, making the mass hard and compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May, you can ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight of a single leaf. At length the downpouring sunshine sets them free. First the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch after another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually unbends and rises, and settles back into its place in the warm air, as dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil. Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes of Lassen's Butte. There are also many charming companies on the headwaters of the Tuleloom, Merced, and San Joaquin, and in general, the species is so far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass you may. The mountain pine grows beside it, and more frequently the two-leaved species, but there are many beautiful groups numbering a thousand individuals or more without a single intruder. I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special admiration. Apathetic mountaineers even, seeking only game or gold, stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves, that's a mighty pretty tree, some of them adding, damned pretty. In autumn, when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias and the Douglas squirrel and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer love to lie down beneath its spreading branches. Bright streams from the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and brianthus spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its charms. Come to the mountains and see. Dwarf pine. Pinus albacolus. This species forms the extreme edge of the Timberline throughout nearly the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met growing in company with Pinus quantorda variation mariana on the upper margin of the belt, as an erect tree from 15 to 30 feet high and from 1 to 2 feet in thickness. Thence it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, cross straight branches, covered with slender upright shoots, each tipped with a short, close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some places almost white. The fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the upper branches, dark chocolate in color when young, and bear beautiful pearly seeds about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two species of tamias and the notable Clark crow. The stamina cones occur in clusters about an inch wide down among the leaves, and as they are colored bright rose purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery appearance little looked for in such a tree. Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly in compliance with the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring bravely to a more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the sunlands below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near, it still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three or four feet, with a main trunk and branches outspread and intertangled above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a ceiling, against which they had grown and been compelled to spread horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half the year, while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by violent winds, armed with cutting sand grains that beat down any chute that offers to rise much above the general level and carve the dead trunks and branches in beautiful patterns. During stormy nights, I have often camp snugly beneath the interlacing arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such as deer and wild sheep, who pull out oval hollows and lie beneath the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment. The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed. Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700 feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be no less than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same height, 426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter, and one of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside the bark, is 75 years old, and so filled with oily balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a whip cord. White pine, Pinus flexilis. This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the Waschatz Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as white pine. In the Sierra, it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from bloody canyon southward, nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite the village of lone pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of the general forest. From its peculiar position in loose, straggling parties, it seems to have been derived from the basin ranges to the eastward, where it is abundant. It is a larger tree than the dwarf pine. At an elevation of about 9,000 feet above the sea, it often attains a height of 40 or 50 feet, and a diameter of from 3 to 5 feet. The cones open freely when ripe, and are twice as large as those of the albacolus, and the foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in free, wild curves, like those of the mountain pine, to which it is closely allied. It is seldom found lower than 9,000 feet above sea level, but from this elevation, it pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the extreme limit of tree growth, where in its dwarfed, storm-crushed condition, it is more like the whitebark species. Throughout Utah and Nevada, it is one of the principal timber trees, great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous white pine mining district, white pine city, and the white pine mountains, have derived their names from it. Needle Pine, Pinus Aristata This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the range, about the headwaters of kings and current rivers, where it forms extensive forests, and in some places accompanies the dwarf pine to the extreme limit of tree growth. It is first met at an elevation of between 9,000 and 10,000 feet, and runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the dwarf pine. Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some way to maintain an erect position and usually stands single. Wherever the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy, with delicate tapered bowl, and ascending branches terminated with glossy, bottle-brushed tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the manner of the sugar pine. And in old age, these branches droop and cast about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the mountain pine, while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish blue color, clustered on the upper branches. When ripe, they are from 3 to 4 inches long, yellowish-brown, resembling in every way those of the mountain pine. Accepting the sugar pine, no tree on the mountains is so capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement, it constantly reminds one of the hemlock spruce. The largest specimen I measured was a little over 5 feet in diameter and 90 feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary size. This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the fox tail pine, from its long, dense leaf tassels. On the hot creek, white pine and golden gate ranges, it is quite abundant. About a foot or 18 inches of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff, outstanding needles, which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel's tail. The needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting through them makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number and elastic temper tail delightfully in the winds. This tree is here still more original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing not only its companion conifers in this respect, but also the most noted of the lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with radiant tassels down to the ground, forming slender, tapering towers of shining verdure. Others, with two or three specialized branches pushed out at right angles to the trunk, and densely clad with tassel sprays, take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods, you find trees that are made up of several bowls united near the ground, spreading at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them, making a harp held against the main wind lines, where they are most effective in playing the grand storm harmonies. And besides these, there are many variable arching forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable tassels drooping beneath the arches or radiant above them, and many lowly giants of no particular form that have braved the storms of a thousand years. But whether old or young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest scales, this tree is ever found irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, and offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I know of. Nutpine, Pinus monophylla The nutpine covers, or rather dots, the eastern flank of the Sierra, to which it is mostly restricted, in grayish bush-like patches, from the margin of the sage plains to an elevation of from 7,000 to 8,000 feet. A more contentedly fruitful and uninspiring conifer could not be conceived. All the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant from the typical spire form, but none go so far as this. Without any apparent exigency of climate or soil, it remains near the ground, throwing out crooked, divergent branches like an orchard apple tree, and seldom pushes a single shoot higher than 15 or 20 feet above the ground. The average thickness of the trunk is perhaps about 10 or 12 inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round alls, instead of being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only about 2 inches in length, and give no promise of edible nuts. But when we come to open them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as those of hazelnuts. This is undoubtedly the most important food tree on the Sierra, and furnishes the Mano, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the Indian's own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it down. In its development, nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as great a fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible, the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful seasons, a single Indian will gather 30 or 40 bushels of them, a fine, squirrelish employment. Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all the many mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this food-ful little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important. Nearly every mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8,000 to 9,000 feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though dark looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the damp, leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed comprehensively, the entire basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into level plains dotted with sage bushes and mountain chains covered with nut pines. No slope is too rough, none too dry, for these bountiful orchards of the red man. The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and with the juniper supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons, the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world. When the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready. The long-beating poles, bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are collected. The women out at service among the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts. The men leave their ranch work, old and young. All are mounted on ponies and start in great glee to the nutlands, forming curiously picturesque avocades, flaming scarfs, and calico skirts stream loosely over the knotty ponies. Two squaws, usually astride of each, with baby midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs, are balanced on the saddle-bow. While nut baskets and water jars project from each side, and the long-beating poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at some well-known central point where grass and water are found, the squaws with baskets, the men with poles, ascend the ridges to the laden trees, followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily. The burrs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here and there against rocks and sage bushes, chased and gathered by the women and children, with fine natural gladness. Smoke columns speedily mark the joyful scene of their labors, as the roasting fires are kindled, and at night, assembled in gay circles, gary-less as jays, they begin the first nut feast of the season. The nuts are about half an inch long, and a quarter of an inch in diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple, like bird's eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting, and are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wands, in times of plenty, the Indians bring large quantities to market. Then they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the state, and are even fed to horses occasionally instead of barley. Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of the general forest, we may briefly notice the following. Chamiosi Paris, La Sonniana, is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges, but small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward along the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta. Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet gained a place in the Sierra Woods. It has evidently been derived from the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the head of the Sacramento Valley. In Shady Dales and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra, we also find the U, Texas Brevifolia. The interesting nutmeg tree, Toria California, is sparsely distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of about 4,000 feet, mostly in gulches and canyons. It is a small, prickly-leaved, glossy evergreen, like a conifer, from 20 to 50 feet high and 1 to 2 feet in diameter. The fruit resembles a green gauge plum and contains one seed about the size of an acorn and like a nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood is fine-grained and have a beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented when dry, though the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor. Butchula Occidentalis, the only birch, is a small, slender tree restricted to the eastern flank of the range along stream sides below the pine belt, especially in Owens Valley. Alder, maple, and nuttles flowering dogwood make beautiful bowers over swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3,000 to 5,000 feet, mixed more or less with willows and cottonwood. And above these, in lake basins, the aspen forms fine ornamental groves and lets its light shine gloriously in autumn months. The Chestnut Oak, Quercus densiflora, seems to have come from the coast range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the Chamios of Paris, but as it extends southward along the lower edge of the main pine belt, it grows smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere chaparral bush. In the Coast Mountains, it is a fine, tall, rather slender tree, about from 60 to 70 feet high, growing with the Grand Sequoia Sempervirens, or Redwood. But unfortunately, it is too good to live, and is now being rapidly destroyed for tan bark. Beside the common Douglas Oak, and the Grand Quercus with lasini of the foothills, and several small ones that make dense growths of chaparral, there are two mountain oaks that grow with the pines up to an elevation of about 5,000 feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the beauty of the Yosemite Parks. These are the Mountain Live Oak and the Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of California. Kellogg's Oak, Quercus Kelloggiai, is a firm, bright, beautiful tree, reaching a height of 60 feet, 4 to 7 feet in diameter, with widespreading branches, and growing at an elevation of from 3,000 to 5,000 feet, in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens, and higher in a dwarf state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4,000 feet above the sea, it is so abundant and effective, it may fairly be called the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the spring, and yellow in ripe autumn, while its acorns are eagerly gathered by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak, Q. Chrysoleppus, is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake tallices in deep canyons and Yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually short, dividing near the ground into great wide-spreading limbs, and these again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like and drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the lowlands, Q. Lobata. The top of the tree, where there is plenty of space, is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves, making beautiful canopies. The complicated system of gray, interlacing, arching branches has seen from beneath being exceedingly rich and picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and completely as this, under changes of climate due to changes in elevation. At the foot of a canyon 4,000 feet above the sea, you may find magnificent specimens of this oak, 50 feet high, with craggy, bulging trunks, 5 to 7 feet in diameter, and at the head of the canyon, 2,500 feet higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same species. While all the way up the canyon, between these extremes of size and habit, a perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen was 50 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, and about 75 feet in spread. The trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like granite, and about as angular and irregular as the boulders on which it was growing, a type of steadfast, un-wedgable strength. End of Part 3 of Chapter 8 End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of the Mountains of California This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Mountains of California by John Muir Chapter 9 The Douglas Squirrel Ski-urus Douglasii The Douglas Squirrel is by far the most interesting and influential of all the California Skiuridae, surpassing every other species in force of character, numbers, and extent of range, and in the amount of influence he brings to bear upon the health and distribution of the vast forest he inhabits. Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada, among the giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the towering silver firs to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks. You everywhere find this little squirrel, the master existence. Though only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wildlife, and makes himself more important than even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice. Almost every bowl and branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the trees is stimulated by this means, it is not easy to learn, but his action in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws. Probably over 50% of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of the big trees, perhaps 90% pass through his hands. The greater portion is of course stored away for food to last during the winter and spring, but some of them are tucked separately into loosely covered holes, where some of the seeds germinate and become trees. But the Sierra is only one of the many provinces over which he holds sway, for his dominion extends over all the redwood belt of the coast mountains and far northward throughout the majestic forests of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. I make haste to mention these facts, to show upon how substantial a foundation the importance I ascribe to him rests. The Douglas is closely allied to the red squirrel or chicory of the eastern woods. Arras may be a lineal descendant of this species, distributed westward to the Pacific by way of the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, and then southward along our forested ranges. This view is suggested by the fact that our species becomes redder and more chicory like in general, the farther it is traced back along the course indicated above. But whatever their relationship and the evolutionary forces that have acted upon them, the Douglas is now the larger and more beautiful animal. From the nose to the root of the tail he measures about eight inches and his tail, which he so effectively uses in interpreting his feelings, is about six inches in length. He wears dark bluish gray over the back and halfway down the sides, bright buff on the belly with a stripe of dark gray nearly black, separating the upper and undercolors. This dividing stripe, however, is not very sharply defined. He has long black whiskers which gives him a rather fierce look when observed closely, strong claws, sharp as fish hooks, and the brightest of bright eyes full of telling speculation. A King's River Indian told me that they call him Pil Iruit, which rapidly pronounced with the first syllable heavily accented, is not unlike the lusty exclamation he utters on his way up a tree when excited. Most Mountaineers in California call him the Pine Squirrel, and when I asked an old trapper whether he knew our little forester, he replied with brightening countenance, oh yes, of course I know him, everybody knows him. When I'm a hunting in the woods, I often find out where the deer are by his barking atom. I call him lightning squirrels because they're so mighty quick and pure. All the true squirrels are more or less bird-like in speech and movements, but the Douglas is preeminently so, possessing as he does every attribute peculiarly squirrelish, enthusiastically concentrated. He is the Squirrel of Squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray cousin is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind, yet when leaping from limb to limb or out of one tree top to another, he sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning the upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength, seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He threads the tassled branches of the pines, starring their needles like a rustling breeze. Now shooting across openings in arrowy lines, now launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the naughty trunks, getting into what seemed to be the most impossible situations without sense of danger. Now on his haunches, now on his head, yet ever graceful and punctuating his most irrepressible outburst of energy with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is, without exception, the wildest animal I ever saw, a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the wood's best juices. One can hardly think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on climate and food. But after all, it requires no long acquaintance to learn he is human, for he works for a living. His busiest time is in the Indian summer. Then he gathers burrs and hazelnuts like a plodding farmer, working continuously every day for hours, saying not a word, cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his speed, as if employed by the job and examining every branch in regular order, as if careful that, not one should escape him. Then, descending, he stores them away beneath logs and stumps, in anticipation of the pinching hunger days of winter. He seems himself a kind of coniferous fruit, both fruit and flour. The resiny essences of the pines pervade every poor of his body and eating his flesh is like chewing gum, whenever tires of this bright chip of nature, this brave little voice crying in the wilderness, of observing his many works and ways and listening to his curious language. His musical, piney gossip is a savory to the ear as balsam to the palate. And though he has not exactly the gift of song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a linnet, almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain, barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow, while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay. In descending the trunk of a tree with the intention of a lighting on the ground, he preserves a cautious silence, mindful perhaps, of foxes and wild cats. But while rocking safely at home in the pine tops, there is no end to his capers and noise, and woe to the gray squirrel or chipmunk that ventures to set foot on his favorite tree. No matter how slyly they trace the furrows of the bark, they are speedily discovered and kick downstairs with comic vehemence, while a torrent of angry notes comes rushing from his whiskered lips that sounds remarkably like swearing. He will even attempt at times to drive away dogs and men, especially if he has had no previous knowledge of them. Seeing a man for the first time, he approaches nearer and nearer, until within a few feet. Then, with an angry outburst, he makes a sudden rush all teeth and eyes, as if about to eat you up. But finding that the big forked animal doesn't scare, he prudently beats a retreat and sets himself up to reconorder on some overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement you make with ludicrous solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down the trunk again, churning and chirping, and jerking nervously up and down in curious loops, eyeing you all the time, as if showing off and demanding your admiration. Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in a comfortable posture on some horizontal branch commanding a good view and beats time with his tail to a steady chimp, chimp, or when somewhat less excited, pyaa, but the first syllable keenly accented and the second drawn out like the scream of a hawk. Repeating this slowly, and more emphatically at first, then gradually faster, until a rate of about 150 words a minute is reached, usually sitting all the time on his haunches with paws resting on his breast, which pulses visibly with each word. It is remarkable, too, that though articulating distinctly, he keeps his mouth shut most of the time and speaks through his nose. I have occasionally observed him even eating sequoia seeds and nibbling a troublesome flea without ceasing or in any way confusing his pyaa, pyaa, for a single moment. While ascending trees, all his claws come into play, but in descending, the weight of his body is sustained chiefly by those of the hind feet. Still, in neither case, do his movements suggest effort, though if you are near enough, you may see the bulging strength of his short, bare-like arms and note his sinewy fists clenched in the bark. Whether going up or down, he carries his tail extended at full length in line with his body, unless it be required for gestures. But while running along horizontal limbs or fallen trunks, it is frequently folded forward over the back with the airy tip dentally up curled. In cool weather, it keeps him warm. Then, after he has finished his meal, you may see him crouch close on some level limb with his tail-robe neatly spread and reaching forward to his ears, the electric outstanding hairs quivering in the breeze, like pine needles. But in wet or very cold weather, he stays in his nest and while curled up there, his comforter is long enough to come forward around his nose. It is seldom so cold, however, as to prevent his going out to his stores when hungry. Once as I lay stormbound on the upper edge of the Timberloin and Mount Shasta, the thermometer nearly at zero and the sky thick with driving snow, a Douglas came bravely out several times from one of the lower hollows of a dwarf pine near my camp, faced the wind without seeming to feel it much, frisked lightly about over the mealy snow and dug his way down to some hidden seeds with wonderful precision, as if to his eyes the thick snow-covering were glass. No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not even the deer amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs or the mountain sheep or omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass seeds, berries, hazelnuts, chinkwa pins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous trees without exception. Pine, fir, spruce, libocedrus, juniper, and sequoia, he is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so small as to be beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those of the hemlock and the Douglas spruce and the two-leaved pine, he cuts off and eats on a branch of the tree without allowing them to fall, beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose the seeds, not gnawing by guests like a bear, but turning them round and round in regular order in compliance with their spiral arrangement. When thus employed, his location in the tree is portrayed by a dribble of scales, shells, and seed wings, and every few minutes by the fall of the striped axis of the cone. Then, of course, he is ready for another, and if you are watching, you may catch a glimpse of him as he glides silently out to the end of a branch and see him examining the cone clusters until he finds one to his mind. Then, leaning over, pull back the springy needles out of his way, grasp the cone with his paws to prevent its falling, snip it off in an incredibly short time, seize it with the jaws grotesquely stretched, and return to his chosen seat near the trunk. But the immense size of the cones of the sugar pine, from 15 to 20 inches in length, and those of the Jeffrey variety of the yellow pine, compel him to adopt a quite different method. He cuts them off without attempting to hold them, then goes down and drags them from where they have chance to fall up to the bare swelling ground around the instep of the tree, where he demolishes them in the same methodical way, beginning at the bottom and following the scale spirals to the top. From a single sugar pine cone, he gets from two to four hundred seeds, about half the size of a hazelnut, so that in a few minutes he can procure enough to last a week. He seems, however, to prefer those of the two silver first, above all others. Perhaps because they are most easily obtained, as the scales drop off when ripe without needing to be cut. Both species are filled with an exceedingly pungent aromatic oil, which spices all his flesh, and is of itself sufficient to account for his lightning energy. You may easily know this little workman by his chips. On sunny hillsides, around the principal trees, they lie in big piles, bushels and basketfuls of them, all fresh and clean, making the most beautiful kitchen middens imaginable. The brown and yellow scales and nut shells are as abundant and as delicately penciled and tinted as the shells along the seashore, while the beautiful red and purple seed wings mingled with them would lead one to fancy that innumerable butterflies had there met their fate. He feasts on all the species long before they are ripe, but is wise enough to wait until they are matured before he gathers them into his barns. This is in October and November, which with him are the two busiest months of the year. All kinds of burrs, big and little, are now cut off and showered down alike, and the ground is speedily covered with them. A constant thudding and bumping is kept up. Some of the larger cones chancing to fall on old logs make the forestry echo with the sound. Other nut eaters, less industrious, know well what is going on and hasten to carry away the cones as they fall. But however busy the harvester may be, he is not slow to describe the pilferers below, and instantly leaves his work to drive them away. The little stripe Tamius is a thorn in his flesh, stealing persistently. Punish him as he may. The large gray squirrel gives trouble also, although the Douglas has been accused of stealing from him. Generally, however, just the opposite is the case. The excellence of the Sierra Evergreens is well known to nurserymen throughout the world. Consequently, there is considerable demand for the seeds. The greater portion of the supply has hitherto been procured by chopping down the trees in the more accessible sections of the forest alongside of bridal paths that cross the range. Sequoia seeds at first brought from twenty to thirty dollars per pound and therefore were eagerly sought after. Some of the smaller fruitful trees were cut down in the groves not protected by government, especially those of Fresno and Kings 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 free-booters. He is wise enough, however, to cease working the instant he perceives them and never fails to embrace every opportunity to recover his burrs whenever they happen to be stored in any place accessible to him. And the busy seedsmen often finds on returning to camp that the little Douglas has exhaustively spoiled the spoiler. I know one seed gatherer who, whenever he robs the squirrels, scatters wheat or barley beneath the trees as conscience money. The want of appreciable life remarked by so many travelers in the Sierra Forest is never felt at this time of year. Banish all the humming insects and the birds and the quadrupeds leaving only Sir Douglas and the most solitary of our so-called solitudes would still throb with ardent life. But if you should go impatiently even into the most populous of the groves on purpose to meet him, and walk about looking up among the branches, you would see very little of him. But lie down at the foot of one of the trees and straightway he will come, for in the midst of the ordinary forest sounds, the falling of burrs, piping of quails, the screaming of the Clark Crow, and the rustling of deer and bears among the chaparral, he is quick to detect your strange footsteps and will hasten to make a good close inspection of you as soon as you are still. First you may hear him sounding a few notes of curious inquiry. But more likely, the first intimation of his approach will be the prickly sounds of his feet as he descends the tree overhead, just before he makes his savage onrush to frighten you and proclaim your presence to every squirrel and bird in the neighborhood. If you remain perfectly motionless, he will come nearer and nearer and probably set your flesh a tingle by frisking across your body. Once while I was seated at the foot of a hemlock spruce in one of the most inaccessible of the San Joaquin Yosemites engaged in sketching, a reckless fellow came up behind me, passed under my bended arm and jumped on my paper. And one warm afternoon while an old friend of mine was reading out in the shade of his cabin, one of his Douglas neighbors jumped from the gable upon his head and then with admirable assurance ran down over his shoulder and onto the book he held in his hand. Our Douglas enjoys a large social circle for besides his numerous relatives, Skiuris Fosser, Tamius Cradovitatus, T. Townsendii, Spermophilus Vechii, S. Douglasii. He maintains intimate relations with the nut-eating birds, particularly the Clark Crow, Pisa Corvus Columbianus, and the numerous woodpeckers and jays. The two spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the lowlands and lower foothills, but more and more sparingly distributed up through the Douglas domains. Seldom venturing higher than six or seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. The gray Skiuris ranges but little higher than this. The little stripe, Tamius alone, is associated with him everywhere. In the lower and middle zones where they all meet, they are tolerably harmonious. A happy family, though very amusing skirmishes, may occasionally be witnessed. Wherever the ancient glaciers have spread far as soil, there you find our wee hero, most abundant where depths of soil and genial climate have given rise to a corresponding luxuriance in the trees, but following every kind of growth up the curving moraines to the highest glacial fountains. Though I cannot, of course, expect all my readers to sympathize fully in my admiration of this little animal, few, I hope, will think this sketch of his life too long. I cannot begin to tell here how much he has cheered my lonely wanderings during all the years I have been pursuing my studies in these glorious wilds, or how much unmistakable humanity I have found in him. Take this, for example. One calm, creamy Indian summer morning when the nuts were ripe, I was camped in the upper pine woods of the south fork of the San Joaquin, where the squirrel seemed to be about as plentiful as the ripe burrs. They were taking an early breakfast before going to their regular harvest work. While I was busy with my own breakfast, I heard the thudding fall of two or three heavy cones from a yellow pine near me. I stole, noiselessly, forward within about twenty feet of the base of it to observe. In a few moments down came the Douglas. The breakfast burrs he had cut off had rolled on the gently sloping ground into a clump of cyanosis bushes, but he seemed to know exactly where they were for he found them at once, apparently without searching for them. They were more than twice as heavy as himself, but, after turning them into the right position, for getting a good hold with his long, sickle teeth, he managed to drag them up to the foot of the tree from which he had cut them, moving backward. Then, seating himself comfortably, he held them on end, bottom up, and demolished them at his ease. A good deal of nibbling had to be done before he got anything to eat, because the lower scales are barren. But when he had patiently worked his way up to the fertile ones, he found two sweet nuts at the base of each, shaped like trimmed hams, and spotted purple like birds' eggs. And notwithstanding, these cones were dripping with soft balsam and covered with prickles, and so strongly put together that a boy would be puzzled to cut them open with a jackknife. He accomplished his meal with easy dignity and cleanliness, making less effort apparently than a man would in eating soft cookery from a plate. Breakfast done, I whistled a tune for him before he went to work, curious to see how he would be affected by it. He had not seen me all this while, but the instant I began to whistle, he darted up the tree nearest to him, and came out on a small dead limb opposite me, and composed himself to listen. I sang and whistled more than a dozen airs, and as the music changed, his eyes sparkled, and he turned his head quickly from side to side, but made no other response. Other squirrels, hearing the strange sounds, came around on all sides, also chipmunks and birds. One of the birds, a handsome speckle-breasted thrush, seemed even more interested than the squirrels. After listening for a while on one of the lower dead sprays of a pine, he came swooping forward within a few feet of my face, and remained fluttering in the air for half a minute or so, sustaining himself with whirring wingbeats, like a hummingbird in front of a flower, while I could look into his eyes and see his innocent wonder. By this time, my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I sang or whistled, Bonnie Boone, Lasso Galerie, or The Water to Charlie, Bonnie Woods of Craigie Lee, etc., all of which seemed to be listened to with bright interest, my first Douglas sitting patiently through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me, until I ventured to give the old hundredth, when he screamed his Indian name, Pilly Louis. Turn tall, darted with ludicrous haste up the tree out of sight. His voice and actions in the case, leaving a somewhat profane impression, as if he had said, I'll be hanged if you get me to hear anything so solemn and unpiny. This acted as a signal for the general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the birds seemed willing to wait for their developments, music being naturally more in their line. But there can be in that grand old church tune that is so offensive to birds and squirrels, I can't imagine. A year or two after this high Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the coast range, where the common ground squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on account of being hunted so much. But after I had been silent and motionless for half an hour or so, they began to venture out of their holes and to feed on the seeds of the grasses and thistles around me, as if I were no more to be feared than a tree stump. Then it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to find out whether they also disliked old hundredth. Therefore I began to whistle as nearly as I could remember the same familiar airs that had pleased the mountaineers of the Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect and listened patiently, until I came to old hundredth, when with ludicrous haste every one of them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their feet twinkling in the air for a moment as they vanished. No one who makes the acquaintance of our forester will fail to admire him, but he is far too self-reliant and warlike ever to be taken for a darling. How long the life of a Douglas squirrel may be, I don't know. The young seem to sprout from knot holes, perfect from the first, and as enduring as their own trees. It is difficult, indeed, to realize that so condensed a piece of sunfire should ever become dim or die at all. He is seldom killed by hunters, for he is too small to encourage much of their attention, and when pursued in settled regions becomes excessively shy and keeps close in the furrows of the highest trunks, many of which are of the same color as himself. Indian boys, however, lie in wait with unbounded patients to shoot them with arrows. In the lower and middle zones, a few fall a prey to rattlesnakes. Occasionally he is pursued by hawks and wildcats, etc., but upon the whole he dwells safely in the deep bosom of the woods, the most highly favorite of all his happy tribe. May his tribe increase.