142 THE CLIMATIC FACTOR AS ILLUSTRATED IN ARID AMERICA. 



Every one has heard of the vast size and great age of the Big Trees of Cahfornia. The 

 trunk of a well-grown specimen has a diameter of 25 to 30 feet, which is equal to the width 

 of an ordinary house. Such a tree sometimes towers 300 feet, or 4 times as high as a large elm, 

 and within 25 feet of the top the trunk is still 10 or 12 feet in thickness. Three thousand 

 fence-posts, sufficient to support a wire fence around 8,000 to 9,000 acres, have been made 

 from one of these giants, and that was only the first step toward using its huge carcass. 

 The second item of its product consisted of 650,000 shingles, enough to cover the roofs of 

 70 to 80 houses. Finally, there still remained hundreds of cords of firewood wliich no one 

 could use because of the prohibitive expense of hauling the wood out of the mountains. 

 The upper third of the trunk and all the branches lie on the ground where they fell, not 

 visibly rotting, for the wood is wonderfully enduring, but simply waiting until some foolish 

 camper shall light a devastating fire. 



Huge as the sequoias are, their size is scarcely so wonderful as their age. A tree that 

 has lived 500 years is still in its early j^outh ; one that has rounded out 1 ,000 summers and 

 winters is only in full maturity; and old age, the threescore years and ten of the sequoias, 

 does not come for 17 or 18 centuries. How old the oldest trees may be is not yet certain, 

 but during our two seasons of field work in 1911 and 1912 we counted the rings of 79 that 

 were over 2,000 j^ears of age, of 3 that were over 3,000 years, and of 1 that was 3,210 years. 

 In the days of the Trojan War and of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, this oldest 

 tree was a sturdy saphng, with stiff, prickl^y foliage like that of a cedar, but far more com- 

 pressed. It was doubtless a graceful, sharply conical tree, 20 to 30 feet high, with dense, 

 horizontal branches, the lower ones of which swept the ground. Like the j'oung trees of 

 to-day, the ancient sequoia and the clump of trees of similar age which grew close to it 

 must have been a charming adornment of the landscape. By the time of Marathon the 

 trees had lost the hard, sharp lines of youth and were thoroughly mature. The lower 

 branches had disappeared, up to a height of 100 feet or more; the giant trunks were dis- 

 closed as bare, reddish columns covered with soft bark 6 to 12 inches in thickness; the 

 upper branches had acquired a slightly drooping aspect; and the spiny fohage, far removed 

 from the ground, had assumed a graceful, rounded appearance. Then for centuries, 

 through the days of Rome, the Dark Ages, and all the period of the growth of European 

 civilization, the ancient giants preserved the same appearance, strong and solid, but with 

 a strangely attractive, approachable quality. 



Before proceeding to more technical matters, a brief description of our method of 

 work may not be amiss. Toward the end of May, 1911, I left the railroad at Sanger, near 

 Fresno, in the great inner valley of California, and with two assistants drove up into the 

 mountains through the General Grant National Park to Indian Basin, about 3 miles west 

 of Hume, in a tract belonging to the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company. There we camped 

 for two weeks, and then went to a similar region some 60 miles farther south on the Tulare 

 River, east of Portersville, where we spent a slightly longer time. The next year, in early 

 June, with Professor H. S. Canby, of Yale University, and five student assistants from 

 California, I went again to the Hume region and spent a month camped at various points 

 at distances of from 2 to 10 miles from Hume. After my departure my assistants remained 

 another month in the Converse Basin. One of them, Mr. Hiram E. Miller, was with me 

 in both 1911 and 1912, and in the latter year took charge of the work during the last month. 

 His carefulness and efficiency make me feel as much confidence in the results obtained 

 after I left as in those obtained under my own personal supervision. 



The method employed by the lumbermen in cutting the trees furnishes a smooth sawed 

 surface over half the area of the stump. Before the lumbermen attack one of the giants, 

 they build a platform about it 6 feet or more above the ground and high enough to be 

 clear of the most flaring portion of the trunk. On this two men stand and chop out huge 

 chips sometimes 18 inches long. As the cutting proceeds, a great notch is formed, flat on 



