ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
273 
“Wild calculations have been made of the ages of the larger of these trees; 
but one of the oldest in the Calaveras grove being cut down and the rings of 
the wood counted, its age proved to be one thousand three hundred years; and 
probably none now upon the ground date back farther than the Christian era. 
They began with our modern civilization ; they were just sprouting when the 
star of Bethlehem rose and stood for a sign of its origin ; they have been 
ripening in beauty and power through these nineteen centuries ; and they stand 
forth now a type of the majesty and grace of Him with whose life they are 
coeval. Certainly they are chief among the natural curiosities and marvels of 
Western America, of the known world; and though not to be compared, in the 
impressions they make and the emotions they arouse, to the great rock scenery 
of the Yosemite, which inevitably carries the spectator up to the Infinite 
Creator and Father of all, they do stand for all that has been claimed for them 
in wonderful greatness and majestic beauty.’’ 
So much larger are these immense trees than those we ordinarily see, that a 
comparison is about the only way in which we can correctly measure them. 
Shortly after they were discovered, the hollow trunk of one of them was for¬ 
warded to New York, where it was converted into a grocery store. 
In one of these groups of trees a stage road has been cut under the trunk 
through the roots, and immense coaches, drawn by six horses, pass directly 
under the old giant. 
One of the original hotels, known as the “Hotel de Redwood,” consisted at 
one time of five hollow trees. One served as an office and bar-room, another 
for the proprietor’s family, and dining-room, and the remainder were used as 
lodgings. 
A pioneer set up house-keeping in the hollow trunk of one of these trees. 
His family had room enough, and there was no trouble about lathing and 
plastering. A hollow tree thirty to forty feet in diameter would make several 
rooms of convenient size, and quite large enough for a numerous family. 
We have known men upon whose grounds were old, magnificent trees of 
centuries growth, lifted up into the air with vast breadth, and full of twilight 
at midday — who cut down all these mighty monarchs and cleared the ground 
bare ; and then when the desolation was completed and the fierce summer sun 
gazed full into their faces with its fire, they besought themselves of shade, and 
forthwith set out a generation of thin, shadowless sticks. Such folly is theirs 
who refuse the tyee of life — the shadow of the Almighty — and sit instead 
under feeble trees of their own planting, whose tops will never be broad enough 
to shield them, and whose boughs will never discourse to them the music of 
the air. 
Beecher. 
It never rains roses : when we want — 
To have more roses we must plant more trees. 
H George Eliot. 
