between four thousand and eight thousand feet on its western 

 slopes from the thirty-sixth to thirty-seventh parallels. Many of 

 the other trees up there are magnificent, but all of a sudden you 

 round a corner and there before you is a mammoth, its trunk 

 glowing a rich but somber burnt sienna in the shafted sunlight 

 and towering up and up through the lacy greenery above, its 

 base bulging out all around in great, voluptuous udders of bark 

 that then plunge abruptly into the rich, mouldy soil. These trees 

 are scarred by enormous wounds in their foot-thick, corky bark, 

 and these scars are usually black and charred within by fires. 

 But, like deathless sphinxes, they curl their "skin" around the 

 edges of these ghastly wounds and heal them. Their trunks are 

 deeply grooved and seem to be pulled upward like taffy. Right 

 alongside any one may stand an ancient relative or perhaps even 

 a child, and beyond that another and another, dwarfing the two- 

 hundred-foot firs and spruces that somehow manage to wedge 

 themselves in between. The sequoias are magnificent and utterly 

 imperial. 



If you can get away from your fellow creatures and just sit 

 among these giants in silence, time drops away; your petty wor- 

 ries vanish; and a sense of unutterable awe envelops you. Then 

 perhaps a delicate deer approaches, or a black-and-yellow fly 

 comes and hovers in front of you. Every now and then a cone 

 drops like a small bomb from the leafy heights above as a squir- 

 rel crops it off, and a bright blue jay screeches. But nothing else 

 moves, while the great trees stand silently as some of them have 

 done for thousands of years. This is indeed a belittling thought. 



The Giant Sequoia (Sequoia washingtoniana) is said to rank 

 among its numbers on the Sierra Nevada, where it alone grows 

 naturally today, the "largest trees" in the world. This is not so 

 on any count, though it does not in any way detract from their 

 grandeur or interest. Most of them are topped, and the largest — 

 named the General Sherman and the General Grant — are almost 

 bald. In fact, mature trees of this species — whatever the term 

 mature may actually mean in this context — are almost invariably 

 topped. It seems to be the nature of the "beast," for which their 

 great bulk may in some way be a compensation — or a result. If 

 one of the great ones were not so topped it should by mere ex- 

 trapolation be of incredible height and surpass the tallest speci- 

 men of its relative the Redwood (S.sempervirens) — of which, as 

 we have mentioned, the tallest measured was 364 feet, or over a 

 third the height of the Empire State Building. The tallest Giant 

 Sequoia is named the Hart and stands in King's Canyon National 

 Park. It measures only 277 feet. The General Sherman is claimed 

 to have the greatest bulk of all trees (almost 50,000 cubic feet, 

 exclusive of limbs and loss by burns), but this is also definitely 

 not so. 



The whole business of the "largest tree in the world" is a 

 frustrating one and has some rather silly aspects. The tallest are 

 often given as this redwood at 364 feet; next a mountain gum 

 tree (Eucalyptus regnans) in Australia at 326 feet; then a Douglas 

 fir in Washington at 324 feet. However, the Australian govern- 

 ment claimed another Eucalyptus regnans of 382 feet, and we 

 have seen a Canadian white spruce of 417 feet. In girth, the order 

 goes: a cypress in Mexico with a diameter of over 36 feet, a 

 jequitiba tree in Brazil of 33 feet, a baobab on Christmas Island 

 in the Indian Ocean at 30 feet, and a Kauri pine at 24 feet in 

 New Zealand. Several Canadian trees have bigger girths than 

 any Giant Sequoia, and are of greater volume. The matter is 

 purely academic, but it would still be interesting to know just 

 which are really the "largest" trees in the world in height, girth, 

 and volume. And while doing this it might be worth the investi- 

 gators' time to go to West Africa and take a look at some of the 

 Terminalia trees that have four buttress roots reaching, in some 



cases that I have myself measured, over fifty feet from the base 

 of their trunks — which, although usually hollow, measure more 

 than the biggest Sequoia at the base; and which certainly rise 

 over 250 feet into the air. Yet mere size has nothing to do with 

 the magnificence of these particular trees. 



Their age does, however, have real meaning. The amazing 

 thing is that these vastnesses start from a seed about the size of 

 a pinhead, and it is three-quarters of a century before a young 

 tree produces any seeds. At that time it is a modest little sapling 

 growing under its giant elders. But once it does get started, it goes 

 on producing cones and seeds until it dies — if it ever does, short 

 of an accident or an ice age. Counts of the rings of large trunks 

 of this species give ages of at least 3200 years. However, even a 

 direct count of the rings of cut or fallen trees is a tricky business. 

 It is quite likely, therefore, that some of the older Sequoias are 

 3500 years old. which puts their year of "birth" in the reign of 

 Tutankhamen of ancient Egypt, or before the Exodus led by 

 Moses. Not all trees have growth rings but a method of esti- 

 mating the age of those that have not — such as palms — has been 

 developed by counting the number of leaf bases on the trunk 

 and then dividing by the number of leaves produced on an 

 average each year. By this method certain trees called cycads, of 

 the genus Macrozamia, growing in Australia, have been estimated 

 to be over 12,000 years old. Also the miserable, gnarled, usually 

 almost leafless Bristlecone Fir (Abies venustaj of the White 

 Mountains of California have definitely been shown to be over 

 4000 years old by actual ring counts. This is an almost in- 

 conceivable length of time to contemplate for a single "life"; 

 and 12,000 years takes us back to the last ice advance and is 

 quite beyond our powers of comprehension. 



THE GREAT GUTTER 



The land of the giant sequoias is contained within that southern 

 half of the Sierra Nevada that lies in the Scrub Belt, whereas 

 that of the redwoods is in the Prairie Belt. This is of considerable 

 significance, for there are plenty of places at the right altitude 

 and with the same soils, amount of moisture, and temperatures 

 in both zones where a characteristic tree of the other could live. 

 Besides, they both grow in the same latitudes. The northern half 

 of these Sierras is clothed in the same vegetation, but the zones 

 gradually creep down the mountain sides as one goes north, 

 while the chaparral thins out and finally disappears below. Here 

 it is the mountains themselves rather than the trees that com- 

 mand our attention. 



The enormous size of the Yosemite 'Valley, despite its present- 

 day somewhat cluttered bottom (near its head it is one vast 

 summer camp), in some ways transcends that of the Grand 

 Canyon though it is of lesser physical proportions. It grows upon 

 you the more you look at it, especially from below, because the 

 moulded gray walls and the vivid greenery seem to lean over 

 upon you. It was carved by a glacier, and, without being 

 awesome or threatening, it somehow seems as if it were poised 

 to strike or, more aptly, to close with a snap like vast jaws. 



There is a place on the road into the valley from which a 

 magnificent view may be obtained. The Park Service has made 

 provision for the traveler to drink in the vista from behind a 



All down the Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico the in- 

 shore waters grow vast beds of ribbon-like brown seaweed 

 known as kelp. The fauna that dwells in this protective sea 

 forest is peculiar to it. 



