10 PACIFIC STATES FLOKAL CONGRESS. 



that we work unceasingly for the repurchase of every grove of the 

 big trees of the Sierras that has gone astray into private hands; that 

 we raise money for the broadest possible extension of our Santa Cruz 

 Mountains park; that we urge the people of Humboldt County to pre- 

 serve some great tract of the magnificent redwoods along the Eel Kiver, 



the tallest trees in the world, probably ; that we search out the finest 



body and the most splendid specimens of our sugar pines, and give the 

 timber owners no rest until these noble trees are again the posses- 

 sion of the people. Then shall their fame spread over the earth, and 

 ascend to the skies, so that the traveler shall come from every state and 

 nation to see the trees, as he now comes to bask in the February sun- 

 shine. 



He will say : "I have seen the famous chestnut tree in the woods of 

 Carpinetto, on the slopes of Mt. Etna, measuring 190 feet in circum- 

 ference; and I have made a special pilgrimage to the great Mexican 

 cypress, in the churchyard of Santa Maria del Tule, which has a girth 

 of 112 feet four feet above the ground, but these are single trees, and 

 both are deformed, dwarfed, and shattered with time and the infirmi- 

 ties of age. Nowhere else than on the Pacific Coast can I find whole 

 forests of trees, many of which were- born long before the Christian era, 

 rise in the air 300, 340, or even 400 feet, high as the spires of the 

 loftiest medieval cathedral, measure in girth between 90 and 100 feet, 

 and yet stand jubilant as youth upon the mountainside, or stately 

 and 'untouched by any shade of years' by the northern rivers." 



Our traveler then will join with our most distinguished living 

 authority on North American forests in saying: "The redwood is sec- 

 ond in trunk diameter only to the Sierra Sequoia. It is a much taller 

 tree, the tallest of all North American trees, and probably taller than 

 any of the Australian eucalypti, which have usually been considered 

 the tallest trees in the world." After traveling in the Sierras, he may 

 quote from the same authority, and say: "The sugar pine, the noblest 

 of its race, surpassing all other pine trees in girth and length, tosses 

 its mighty branches, bending under the weight of its long, graceful, 

 pointed cones, far above the sylvan roof; and with its companion, the 

 great Sequoia, glorifies those Sierra forests that surpass in majesty all 

 forests of coniferous trees." 



Those Sierra forests that surpass in majesty all forests of conifer- 

 Think you, you who know the woods, that any member of 

 the National Legislature, that any man, in visiting these forests could 

 say less? If it be so, then these giants which you have helped to pre- 

 serve shall have stood up like crowned monarchs, and have plead the 

 cause of their lesser trees of the California forests to such a purpose 

 before the civilized world that our cause will be won. 



Stanford University. 



