142 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



layman is sufficiently impressed by reflecting that 

 this vegetable growth has existed as a single life 

 ever since the dawning of history. 



Every one agrees that the hoary monarch first 

 burst through its seed walls somewhere between 

 five and six thousand years ago, which would make 

 it contemporaneous with the first records of civi- 

 lised man. When the Egyptian Cheops was piling 

 the great pyramid up toward heaven this anti- 

 quarian had developed into a vigorous sapling. 

 When the Israelites fled the bondage of the Nile 

 for the valleys of Canaan, it had doubtless attained 

 its full height and put several centuries behind it. 

 All through the rise and fall of the great Greek 

 and Roman epochs, all through the obscure years 

 of the Middle Ages, all through the vicissitudes of 

 so-called modern history, the cypress has lived out 

 its placid existence, faithfully adding a new ring 

 of wood to its increasing girth each year, until to- 

 day one has to run the surveyor's tape out for one 

 hundred and twenty-six feet to encircle its trunk at 

 a point four feet above the ground. Recent visi- 

 tors state that the wooden tablet which Humboldt 

 nailed to the trunk when he discovered the tree in 

 1803 is still intact, though half covered with bark 

 and with its inscription well-nigh obliterated. 



Another tree of extreme age, which has the added 



