passageways cut through the bodies of the trunks; of troops
of cavalry ridden on the prostrate trees. No one but has heard of the
dancing-floor or the dinner-table cut from a single cross-section; and
probably few but have seen some of the fibrous bark of unbelievable
thickness. The Mariposa, Calaveras, and Santa Cruz groves have become
household names.

The public at large, I imagine, meaning by that you and me and our
neighbors, harbor an idea that the Big Tree occurs only as a remnant,
in scattered little groves carefully fenced and piously visited by the
tourist. What would we have said to the information that in the very
heart of the Sierras there grows a thriving forest of these great
trees; that it takes over a day to ride throughout that forest; and
that it comprises probably over five thousand specimens?

Yet such is the case. On the ridges and high plateaus north of the
Kaweah River is the forest I describe; and of that forest the trees
grow from fifteen to twenty-six feet in diameter. Do you know what
that means? Get up from your chair and pace off the room you are in.
If it is a very big room, its longest dimension would just about
contain one of the bigger trunks. Try to imagine a tree like that.

It must be a columnar tree straight and true as the supports of a Greek
facade. The least deviation from the perpendicular of such a mass
would cause it to fall. The limbs are sturdy like the arms of
Hercules, and grow out from the main trunk direct instead of dividing
and leading that main trunk to themselves, as is the case with other
trees. The column rises with a true taper to its full height; then is
finished with the conical effect of the top of a monument. Strangely
enough the frond is exceedingly fine, and the cones small.

When first you catch sight of a Sequoia, it does not impress you
particularly except as a very fine tree. Its proportions are so
perfect that its effect is rather to belittle its neighbors than to
show in its true magnitude. Then, gradually, as your experience takes
cognizance of surroundings,--the size of a sugar-pine, of a boulder, of
a stream flowing near,--the giant swells and swells before your very
vision until he seems at the last even greater than the mere statistics
of his inches had led you to believe. And after that first surprise
over finding the Sequoia something not monstrous but beautiful in
proportion has given place to the full realization of what you ar