THE PINES 227 



into the National Park. The road is no wider than the 

 broad stumps of sugar pines, scattered here and there. 

 The standing trees amaze one with their height and 

 girth. 



It is impossible to shake off the impression that some 

 magic has put magnifiers in our eyes; for trees, beetling 

 clills, and rushing cataracts are bigger than their counter- 

 parts in other regions of the world far-famed for their 

 scenery. The sugar pine trunks seem like great builded 

 columns, too large for any real tree to grow, and the 

 "big trees" in the Mariposa Grove intensify this im- 

 pression of unreality. In a day or two the traveler be- 

 comes accustomed to his surroundings. He goes out of 

 the Park and down into the world of men and affairs, 

 his soul enlarged, his life enriched by an experience he 

 can never quite forget. He is a bigger, better man for his 

 brief association with Nature in her noblest manifestations. 



The wood of the sugar pine is soft, golden, satiny, fra- 

 grant, inviting the woodworker through every one of his 

 senses. A single tree often yields five thousand dollars' 

 worth of marketable lumber, the finest, straight-grained 

 soft pine in the world. 



The shame of the century is the wanton destruction of 

 sugar pine trees by vagrant shingle-makers and thieving 

 mill-owners, who despoiled the grandest trunlcs of their 

 choicest wood, wastcfully leaving the bulk to cumber the 

 ground and invite forest fires. Late and slowly, but surely 

 also is the popular mind awakening to the fact that forests 

 belong to the nation and should be conserved and main- 

 tained for the whole people — not wasted for the temporary 

 enrichment of private owners, as forest wealth has been 

 squandered in past years. 



