22 Travels in a Tree- top 



them even now. A year ago I camped on 

 the shore of Chesapeake Bay near an oak 

 that measured eighteen feet six inches in 

 circumference four feet from the ground, and 

 in St. Paul's church-yard, not a great way 

 off, are five big oaks, one of which is twenty 

 feet around shoulder high from the roots. 

 Such trees are very old. The church-yard 

 was enclosed two centuries ago, and these 

 were big trees then, and so older by far than 

 any monument of white men on the continent, 

 except possible traces of the Norsemen. If 

 a tree such as this in which I have been sit- 

 ting is full to overflowing with suggestiveness, 

 how much more so a noble patriarch like that 

 upon the bay shore ! It is usually not easy to 

 realize the dimensions of a huge tree by 

 merely looking at it, but this mammoth im- 

 pressed one at first sight. The branches were 

 themselves great trees, and together cast a cir- 

 cular patch of shade, at noon, three paces 

 more than one hundred feet across. As a 

 tree in which to ramble none could have 

 been better shaped. The lowest branches 

 were less than twenty feet from the ground, 

 and after reaching horizontally a long way, 

 curved upward and again outward, dividing 



