and south forks of the Kaweah
at an elevation of 8400 feet. But the finest block of Big Tree forest in
the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River. In the northern
groves there are comparatively few young trees or saplings. But here for
every old, storm-stricken giant there are many in all the glory of prime
vigor, and for each of these a crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and
saplings growing heartily on moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses,
and in the moist alluvium of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of
eternal life.

But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from north
to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A height
of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is perhaps
about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens
25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly 300 feet
high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300 feet in
height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is 325 feet. The
largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a majestic
old scarred monument in the King's River forest. It is 35 feet 8 inches
in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under the most
favorable conditions these giants probably live 5000 years or more,
though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I never
saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring accidents they
seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that afflict and
kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on indefinitely
until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by storms, or by the
giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age of one that was
felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having its stump for a
dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter, measured across
the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was cut down in the
King's River forest was about the same size, but nearly a thousand years
older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking tree. It was felled to
procure a section for exhibition, and thus an opportunity was given to
count its annual rings of growth. The colossal scarred monument in the
King's River forest mentioned above is burned half through, and I spent
a day in making an estimate of its age, clearing away the charred
surface with an ax and carefully counting the annual rings with the aid
of a pocket-lens