442 The Mighty Cedars of California. \^Septemler, 



islands a very different thing than tlie dung of birds or decomposed 

 animals. 



Gibbs & Briglit, of Liverpool, have a lease of the guano islands from 

 the Peruvian Government for five years, which expires in 1857, but 

 hope to get their lease renewed. This house pays the Peruvian Gov- 

 ernment about %\ 50 a ton for the privilege of taking all the guano 

 from the islands, the government furnishing the men to dig the 

 guano. 



The ships that load at the island are mostly ships chartered to carry 

 a cargo, or sent there by the owners to take away a cargo, bought of 

 Gibbs & Bright, who have the entire monopoly of the trade. 



Eev. Dr. BusHNELL, of Hartford, writes from California, to the 

 New York Independent, a graphic account of the immense cedars of 

 California, the greatest trees in the world. One of them which had 

 been felled, he ascertained, by counting the grains of the stump, to be 

 twelve hundred and eighty years old. When Mahomet was at nurse, 

 this tree was sprouting. Says the Reverend gentleman : 



It is a forest, yet nothing that we mean by forest. There is no 

 undergrowth, scarcely any where a rock ; the surfaces are as beauti- 

 fully turned as if shaped by a landscape gardener, and dotted over by 

 myriads of flowers, more delicate, if not more various than any gar- 

 den ever grew. Moving along these surfaces, rounding over a hill, 

 or galloping through some silent valley, winding here among the 

 native oaks casting their round shadows, and there among tall pines and 

 cedars drawing their huge conical shapes on the ground, we seem, in 

 fact, to be riding through some vast park. Indeed, after we had seen 

 the trees and taken their impression, we could think of nothing but 

 to call it the park of the Lord Almighty. The other trees, we ob- 

 served, were increasing in size as we neared the place, till finally, 

 descending gently along a western slope among the files of little giants, 

 we came to the gate of the real giants, emerging into the clear ground 

 of the Bio- Tree Hotel, between the two sentinels, which are five 

 hundred feet high, and stand only far enough apart for the narrow 

 road to pass between. These were the first of the Washington cedars 

 we had seen; it really seemed that we had never seen a tree before. 

 And yet they were only medium specimens. 



