Dr. Porter's Address. ^ 



of his tribe. He was not a savage chieftain, adorned 

 with war paint and feathers, and rejoicing in deeds 

 of blood, but one who strove to elevate his race by the 

 arts of peace, and, as its best representative, will keep 

 alive the memory of our aborigines long after they 

 have passed away, leaving behind them only a few 

 relics and geographical names, which, when interpre- 

 ted, show that they were all derived from the natural 

 peculiarities of the objects named, and not one of 

 them from persons or historical events. The Gov- 

 ernment has wisely extended its protecting aegis over 

 the Sequoia-groves of the Sierra Nevada and set 

 apart a reservation of 5000 acres, which the axe or 

 saw of no lumberman dares invade. And there the 

 younger trees may grow and flourish, without moles- 

 tation, until they reach the size and age of their 

 mighty ancestors which now tower up toward heaven 

 in the very places where their seeds germinated 12 

 or 15 centuries ago. 



Compared with monuments like these, what are the 

 statues of bronze and piles of chiseled stone, by which 

 men have hoped and still hope to secure an earthly 

 immortality? The temples, palaces and sculptured 

 gods and goddesses of ancient Athens have nearly 

 all crumbled into dust or been reduced to fragment- 

 ary ruins, amongst which the busy antiquarian 

 gropes to find traces of former beauty and grandeur, 

 whilst the patches of wild thyme, on the slopes of 

 Mount Hymettus near by, still bloom, unchanged and 

 fresh and odorous, yielding their stores of honey to 

 innumerable bees, just as they did more than 2000 



