G92 THE REDWOODS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. [Mar. 



are fenced with it, and its durability is unquestionable, as pickets 

 and rails, twenty years old, stand sound attesting the fact. For 

 railroad " ties " or sleepers it is the best wood known, as it resists 

 the action of both air and water. Every train that crosses the 

 Sierras rolls over the product of the redwood forest, and it has 

 been laid on the Andean railroad, and in Colorado and elsewhere. 

 The sawn lumber is, besides, exported to Australia, South America, 

 and the islands of the Pacific. 



The wood is close-grained and can be split into boards of any 

 length and thickness, into shingles or shakes for roofing, or into 

 pickets, rails, and posts for fencing, or into ties for railroads. Its 

 colour when first split is light red, but it turns dark when exposed 

 to weather : it has the merit of retaining its place without warp or 

 shrinkage, if seasoned but for a few days, and of late the refuse of 

 the mills has been worked up into doors, cornice mouldings, and 

 furniture of various kinds. 



Very different estimates are made as to the length of time the 

 supply of redwood will last at present rate of consumption. Some 

 will take the length of the coast-line of the districts where it grows, 

 and also from twelve to fifteen miles inland, give 100,000 feet to 

 the acre, and say that it will last fifty, or it may be a hundred 

 years ; while some will fancy that the unbroken forests which, tier 

 upon tier, bound the limit of vision, are still of redwood, and will 

 speak of the supply as inexhaustible. A more moderate estimate 

 than any of these will, however, probably be the correct one. 

 Already in Sonoma County, timber, which a few years ago w^ould 

 have been rejected, is now worked up. 



In the Forestry Exhibition held at Edinburgh in the summer of 

 1884, there was exhibited a portion of a redwood tree, which 

 formed a little chamber, the floor of which was formed of a slab of 

 wood thirteen feet in diameter, and the walls by pieces of the 

 bark nearly two feet in thickness, and about twelve feet in height, 

 which were placed in the position they had occupied when the 

 tree was growing. This tree had been 295 feet high, and the 

 rings had shown that it was over 2000 years old, and from it had 

 been cut 6250 cubic feet of timber, or of clean lumber free from 

 knots 75,000 feet by board measure. 



Much more could be written of the other products and of the 

 scenery of this portion of California, of its flocks and herds, its 

 " gold bluffs " where the sea-sand yields gold, of its rivers, of snow- 

 crowned Shasta and of lesser mountains, but space is limited, 

 etc. etc. 



