SEQUOIA 



5310 



SERAPIS 



able is the wood that it resists decay for cen- 

 turies, even when buried in leaf mold. Often 

 an old tree is covered with rough, grooved bark 

 two feet thick, but twelve inches may be con- 

 sidered an average figure. The bark is cinna- 

 mon-red on old trees, and reddish-purple on 

 young specimens, and the featherlike leaves re- 

 semble those of the pine. The fruit is a small, 

 oval cone containing seeds so small one can 

 hardly believe that from them could grow such 

 mighty trees. It is a picturesque Indian belief 

 that the big trees alone among the children of 

 the forest were specially created by the Great 

 Spirit. All other trees, they say, grew like 

 .other plants. The genus was named in honor 

 of Sequoyah, a half-caste Cherokee Indian who 

 invented an alphabet for his tribe. In the 

 words of John Muir "The big tree is Nature's 

 masterpiece. It has a strange air of other days 

 about it, a thoroughbred look inherited from 

 the long-ago. As far as man is concerned, it is 

 the same yesterday, to-day and forever em- 

 blem of permanence." 



Redwood. Like the giant sequoias, the red- 

 woods have tall, straight trunks bare of branches 

 for a considerable distance from the base. 

 They are also numbered among the forest 

 giants, for the large trees are fifteen feet in 



BUILT FROM ONE TREE 

 A church at Santa Rosa, California, built en- 

 tirely from the wood of one great redwood tree. 



diameter and 300 feet high, with occasional 

 specimens 400 feet tall. These trees are found 

 on the Pacific side of the Coast Range, in Cali- 

 fornia and Southern Oregon, and are the most 

 valuable timber tree^ west of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. The light, durable wood takes a beauti- 

 ful satiny finish, and is used extensively for 

 woodwork in houses. It is also valued for 

 building lumber, paving blocks, railroad ties 

 and poles. Fancy furniture and bric-a-brac are 

 made from curly-grained redwood. The red- 

 woods are being felled at a faster rate than the 



big trees because they grow lower on the slopes 

 and are more accessible, and because many of 

 the giant sequoia groves are in reservations or 

 on private estates and are protected. The 

 woodmen, too, feel that there is less danger 

 from forest depletion, because the redwoods 

 send up suckers from the stumps, and the big 

 trees do not. These evergreen sequoias, though 

 they are not on an average so large as their 

 big brothers of the Sierras, are the more beauti- 

 ful. B.M.W. 



SERAGLIO, serai' yo, from the Persian serai, 

 meaning old palace, is the name given to the 

 ancient residence of the Turkish sultan at Con- 

 stantinople. It is beautifully situated on a 

 point of land projecting into the sea. Its walls, 

 which embrace a circuit of about nine miles, en- 

 close a variety of mosques, the museum of 

 Constantinople, the harem and large buildings 

 capable of accommodating 20,000 people. As 

 the palace has not been occupied by the sultan 

 since 1839, it is falling into ruin. The word 

 seraglio is now restricted to mean a harem or 

 suite of women's apartments. 



SERAJEVO, scr'ayavo, the capital of Bos- 

 nia, also called Bosna-Serai. See BOSNIA, sub- 

 head The Capital City. 



SERAPEUM, a name applied to any temple 

 to the ancient deity Serapis (see below). 

 Though the Serapeum at Alexandria was one 

 of the most magnificent buildings in the world 

 in its day, the structure usually referred to 

 when the name is used without modification is 

 the Serapeum of Memphis, in Egypt. This 

 was of peculiar sanctity because in it was 

 placed the sarcophagus of the sacred bull Apis 

 (see APIS). In the vaults below the temple are 

 still to be seen the rock-hewn tombs in which 

 the Apis bulls were buried; and so carefully 

 were the bodies embalmed, and so tightly were 

 the mummies sealed up in their niches in the 

 galleries, that many of them were found in an 

 excellent state of preservation when the tombs 

 were opened about the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century by archaeologists from England 

 and from the German universities. 



SERAPIS, sera' pis, a name compounded of 

 Osiris and Apis, and used in . Egyptian my- 

 thology to denote a deity who was never recog- 

 nized by the true Egyptians but was much wor- 

 shiped in the Greek and Roman towns in Egypt. 

 The great statue of Serapis, doubtless origi- 

 nally a statue of Jupiter, was kept at Memphis 

 in a beautiful temple called the Serapeum, 

 which was visited by pilgrims from all parts of 

 Egypt because of its special holiness. 



