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But some one inquires, "Did you see the big trees ? " 

 Oh, yes : there they stood in sublime majesty, towering 

 above all around them ; raising their lofty heads midway 

 between heaven and earth, their topmost branches fading 

 from our vision in the blue ethereal above. " But are these 

 trees so old and grand as have been represented ? " Yes : 

 time with unerrins: fiusrcr has inscribed in concentric cir- 

 cles on their venerable trunks a history far back of the 

 age when Jesus of Nazereth walked on earth. How 

 marvellous their story ! A thousand years before our 

 Saviour was born, these trees had their birth. Nearly 

 nineteen centuries have since p:issed away, and still, robed 

 in living green, they live on. The Egyptian pyramids are 

 wearing away, sand by sand ; monuments are crumbling 

 into dust ; the ancient cedars of Lebanon are fast passing 

 away ; but the gigantic Sequoia in unconscious sovereign- 

 ty, fit type of the magic growth of American civilization 

 and power, still lives on ; and wJio shall say that it may not 

 continue, for thousands of years, to wave its branches in 

 ever-living green, and, like the free institutions of our be- 

 loved land, wave on to the final day ! 



The trees we visited were in Calaveras County, 200 

 miles north of San Francisco, where we also found many 

 large trees of the Conifera species. Words would fail to 

 describe the sensations in riding through this giant forest, 

 on a road as smooth as a park drive, just as the sun went 

 down on our approach to the grove. As we entered the 

 grove the moon had risen so as to throw a silvery light 

 on the two "big trees," Sequoia, which form a grand gate- 

 way over 300 feet in height, and called the Sentinels. As 

 we passed between them we were filled wdth amazement, 

 and uncovered our heads in reverence to those glorious 

 monarchs of the forest. Our heart was too full for utter- 

 ance, but our inmost soul cried out, Speak to us, ye 

 children of olden time : oh, speak ! Tell us in what age 

 you were born ; tell us who inhabited this mighty forest 

 when you first came forth from earth. Tell us what tem- 

 pests, earthquakes, and revolutions you have witnessed in 



