4 
THE SECRET OF THE BIG TREES. 
well-grown specimen has a diameter of 20 or 30 feet, which is equal 
to the width of an ordinary house. Such a tree often towers 250 or 
300 feet, or six times as high as a large elm, and within 50 feet of the 
top the trunk is still 10 or 12 feet in thickness. Three thousand fence 
posts, sufficient to support a wire fence around 8,000 or 9,000 acres, 
have been made from one of these giants, and that was only the first 
step toward using its huge carcass. Six hundred and fifty thousand 
shingles, enough to cover the roofs of 70 or 80 houses, formed the 
second item of its product. Finally there still remained hundreds 
of cords of firewood which no one could use because of the prohibitive 
expense of hauling the wood out of the mountains. The upper third 
of the trunk and all the branches lie on the ground where they fell, 
not visibly rotting, for the wood is wonderfully enduring, but simply 
waiting till some foolish camper shall light a devastating fire. 
Huge as the sequoias are, their size is scarcely so wonderful as their 
age. A tree that has lived 500 years is still in its early youth; one 
that has rounded out 1,000 summers and winters is only in full 
maturity; and old age, the three score years and ten of the sequoias, 
does not come for 17 or 18 centuries. How old the oldest trees may 
be is not yet certain, but I have counted the rings of 79 that were 
over 2,000 years of age, of 3 that were over 3,000, and of 1 that was 
3,150. In the days of the Trojan War and of the exodus of the 
Hebrews from Egypt this oldest tree was a sturdy sapling, with stiff, 
prickly foliage like that of a cedar, but far more compressed. 
It was doubtless a graceful, sharply conical tree, 20 or 30 feet 
high, with dense, horizontal branches, the lower ones of which swept 
the ground. Like the young trees of to-day, the ancient sequoia and 
the clump of trees of similar age which grew close to it must have 
been a charming adornment of the landscape. By the time of Mara¬ 
thon the trees had lost the hard, sharp lines of youth, and were 
thoroughly mature. The lower branches had disappeared, up to a 
height of 100 feet or more; the giant trunks were disclosed as bare, 
reddish columns covered with soft bark 6 inches or a foot in thick¬ 
ness; the upper branches had acquired a slightly drooping aspect; and 
the spiny foliage, far removed from the ground, had assumed a grace¬ 
ful, rounded appearance. Then for centuries, through the days of 
Rome, the Dark Ages, and all the period of the growth of European 
civilization, the ancient giants preserved the same appearance, strong 
and solid, but with a strangely attractive, approachable quality. 
After one has lived for weeks at the foot of such trees, he comes to 
feel that they are friends in a sense more intimate than is the case 
with most trees. They seem to have the mellow, kindly quality of 
old age, and its rich knowledge of the past stored carefully away 
for any who know how to use it. Often in the search for scientific 
information in remote parts of the world one comes to some primitive 
