Chapter VI
THE Grizzly Giant is among the first born of the living things of the earth. It bears greater evidence of extreme age than any other living Sequoia of the Mariposa Grove and may be of a former generation. The companions of its youth are dead and buried in their graves of leaf mold and it seems to have been nearing its prime when the other lofty monarchs of today were unknown. Grand and unconquerable, mightiest of the mighty lords of the forest, it stands like an agonized Sampson of the woods, blind and lost, with a hundred great arms groping and reaching out. Like all Nature’s works of power, it seeks to express more than it can convey. Homeric in its gravity, marble in its impassiveness, and majestic in its tranquility, it is unapproachable among things that live. Aspiring toward the clouds and on speaking terms only with the heavens, its equanimity seems unruffled by storm or tempest; its sweet serenity unsullied by anger, hatred or other passions unworthy of an immortal nature. For a thousand years the earliest rays of dawn have gilded it. For ten centuries departing day has lingered and played on its summit. Surely the mellow notes of the hermit thrush issuing forth from such loftiness sound more angelic there than elsewhere.
Joseph Le Conte left posterity an indelible picture of this tree. “Of all the trees of the Grove, and, therefore, of all trees I have ever seen, the Grizzly Giant impressed me the most profoundly; not, indeed, by its tallness or its symmetry, but by the hugeness of its cylindrical trunk, and by a certain gnarled grandeur, a fibrous, sinewy strength which defies time itself. The others with their smooth, straight, tapering shafts towering to a height of over two hundred feet seemed to me the type of youthful vigor and beauty in the plentitude of power and success. But this, with its large, rough, battered trunk nearly thirty feet in diameter—with top broken off at a height of two hundred and four feet, with its great limbs six to eight feet in diameter, twisted and broken—seemed to me the type of a great life, declining but still strong and self-reliant. Perhaps my own top with its departing foliage made me sympathize with this grizzled giant; but I found the others, too, standing with hats in hand and gazing in silent, bare-headed reverence upon this grand old tree.”
The size of the Grizzly Giant is sufficient to stimulate the mind to silent musings. Often this leads to “cord wood contemplations,” for the mind, in attempting to realize the prodigious amount of timber such a stem might contain, is naturally apt to associate unknown quantities with known. Ordinarily, a statement on the size of this tree, if unsupported by other known comparison, is of little import. That it requires a short journey to walk around it; that twenty people can hardly encompass its girth touching hands; that fourteen horses, head to tail, can just encircle its base, serve to visualize the measurement. If it were pierced by a lofty arch, two street cars, side by side, could pass through it; or, if it were hollowed out into a round room with a row of seats cut out of the solid heart wood, a round table could be set in the center and fourteen guests could be seated about it with uncrowded ease. If it were cut into lumber, two hundred cords of firewood and over half a million board feet[5] could be obtained from its trunk, while its shattered crown would still lie untouched on the forest floor, a beautiful rosy red and emerald ruin awaiting the coming of some all-devouring forest fire.
The Grizzly Giant has long been the subject of much unpardonable exaggeration by popular rhapsodists. There is little doubt but that this tree, presumably the most ancient thing endowed with life on the planet, may fairly claim an almost fabulous antiquity. It has escaped the usual accidents to which the Sequoia is heir, and, as a result, has attained a longevity that far exceeds the ordinary life-span of the species. Since this is known, the age of the Grizzly Giant can be stated approximately. Its exact age, however, can never be ascertained until the annual rings of its trunk are counted, and this cannot be accomplished without felling the tree.
Nor is it possible to determine the age of a Sequoia merely from its diametric measurement. Up to the present century there prevailed a common belief that this could be done and that great size was indicative of great age. If a tree measured ten feet in diameter, the supposition was that another of the same species twice as large would, accordingly, be twice as old. However, Dudley, who spent many summers in the logged areas of the Converse Basin, found this to be untrue of the Sequoia. One tree thirty-nine feet in circumference proved to be 2,171 years old; while another twice its circumference, or nearly eighty feet, was 1,510 years old.
From a close study of various age classifications, it was believed that the annual growth could be calculated. But even this method has been found unreliable. After a careful study of various ages, Jepson determined upon an average basis of twenty years of growth to every inch. The unfortunate tree in the Calaveras Grove which was ruthlessly cut down that its stump might serve as a dance floor had a diameter of twenty-seven feet, exclusive of bark. Thus, its computed age would have been 6,480 years; whereas, its true age was but 1,300 years. Notwithstanding the impossibility of determining the age of a Sequoia from its diametric measurement, the ages of a representative number of felled Sequoias are definitely known. From these it has been possible to ascertain that the average age of the tree is between 900 and 2,100 years. The oldest Sequoia found by Dudley showed 2,425 annual rings, while the most ancient tree logged thus far in the Converse Basin had an age of 3,148 years. John Muir counted over 4,000 rings on a “majestic, old, fire-scarred monument” in the Kings River forest. These are the oldest trees of which science has definite record. Consequently, it would not be rash to estimate the age of the Grizzly Giant at 3,000 years. Figures, however, of 8,000 years and more are assuredly absurd and fabulous; and yet, they are given by several authors of credit, and by a distinguished authority on fishes in particular.
A pile of stones that has looked upon great events possesses an indefinable something that stirs the mind profoundly, lifting it to a higher level of feeling. Byron touched the keynote of this sentiment when he spoke of the “mountains that looked upon Marathon.” Feeling the need of some witness of that event, his imagination vested those blind mountains with sight. Likewise, in beholding the gathered companies of crag and spire from the summit of Mt. Whitney, Clarence King was overwhelmed with a sense of the power and tragedy of geological struggle. Feeling that this splendid mass of granite was contemporaneous with great events, he endowed it with a quality of consciousness. Yet how infinitely more sublime is this feeling when the object is a living thing. What changes have occurred on the earth since the tiny seed of the Grizzly Giant sent down its first threadlike roots to the mineral soil! Thirty centuries are spanned by its life. Even at thought of this the mind teems with images and memories of events that have transpired during the life and growth of this single tree, it endows the blind yet living column with sight, places it upon some lofty height, and imagines that far below it sees “the far-winding path of human progress, from dim Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet broken and fitful light of the modern time.”
The great white race which dominates the world today had made its entrance on the stage of history when the Grizzly Giant began its existence. And within the lifetime of this tree, this race, known as Indo-European, has made vast and noble contributions to the culture of man. Indeed, most of the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and tradition in every decade since have been the triumphs of these gifts of the Indo-European peoples.
Drifting southward tribe by tribe from their grassland homes between the Danube and the Black Sea, these ancestors of the present people of Europe, came into conflict with the first civilizations four or five thousand years ago.
Among the first to be victorious were the Persians. These barbarians fell upon the effeminate city-dwellers of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, reduced the conquered to slaves and set themselves up as the aristocrats of the land. But civilization conquered them and they became refined, lost their original hardihood, and were, in their turn, conquered by other barbarians who, too, became civilized. These were the Greeks under Alexander the Great. They infused new blood into the stagnant pools of culture they found in the Orient, and the product was Hellenism. But Greece, too, fell into a decline and came under the dominion of Rome, whose stability, organization, and power advanced culture again. At length Rome grew weak like the others, and became unable to defend herself against other roving hordes of Indo-Europeans. Fortunately, however, she preserved this precious thing known as civilization long enough for the barbarians to respect it and enabled the Christian Church to shelter it during the Dark Ages. Such is the drama of the growth of civilization which occurred on the earth during the time when the Grizzly Giant was making its patient climb toward the sun.
The greatest empire of the Bronze Age, Egypt, had fallen; Babylon showed evidence of decay; Palestine was at the zenith of her career; and Homeric Greece was laying the foundation for classic Greece, when this oldest of trees was sprouting from its tiny seed, unpacking its tender leaves, and taking its first feeble hold on life. The Trojan War (1194–1184 B. C.) was a very recent event, for prosperous and wealthy Troy had been destroyed by a few Greeks who resented her commercial rivalry. Homer was not yet born, hence the epic of the burning of Troy and the rescue of a beautiful woman had yet to be written by this poet of supreme genius. The Hebrew nation had not reached its golden age under Solomon, but David had vanquished the Philistines, united his people, driven the Canaanites out of Jerusalem and made himself King of an extensive empire. This, then, was the status of the civilized world around 1100 B. C. The code of Hammurabi was already more than a thousand years old; the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was almost as old as the Christian religion is today; the Great Wall of China had nearly nine hundred years to wait before its first stone would be laid (214 B. C.); while Rome, the Eternal City, lacked over three hundred and fifty years of its traditional founding (753 B. C.)
While the Grizzly Giant was a sapling, a Sequoia of awkward and ungainly mien, bushy, bent, and crooked by the weight of winter snows, the Assyrians were gaining a great ascendency in the East. They had developed war to a high point of perfection by equipping an army for the first time with iron weapons and chariots drawn by horses. “Whenever they swept through a land they left a trail of ruin and desolation behind. Around smoking heaps which had once been towns, stretched lines of stakes on which were hung the bodies of rebellious rulers flayed alive; while all around rose mounds and piles of the slaughtered heaped to celebrate the great King’s triumph. Through the clouds of dust rising along the main roads of the Empire men of the subject kingdoms beheld great herds of cattle, horses, asses, flocks of sheep and goats, and long lines of camels laden with gold and silver, the wealth of the conquered, converging on the palace of Nineveh. Before them marched the chiefs of the plundered kingdoms carrying the severed heads of their former rulers about their necks.” And mothers prayed then as now that there would be no more War.
While the Grizzly Giant was yet a youth, the Persians gained the lordship of the East and lost it later to Alexander the Great. Greece, under Pericles, raised human culture to the highest pinnacle yet attained; Herodotus founded history; Buddha saw his vision of the serenity of the soul; Confucius left to posterity his code of personal conduct. During this fruitful period of man’s advancement, the Grizzly Giant had become conscious of its destiny and had begun to aspire heavenward and attain its place in the sun. Having a form of conical perfection, it was very aristocratic in its trimness. Densely clothed with-short whip-like branches from base to tip, it gradually arose in fringed growths which narrowed pyramid-like toward the sky with charming grace. Other trees show their trunks and knotted boughs, but this tree was compact like a Sequoian cone, and permitted no branch to be seen. Its foliage was of the most exquisite fineness, resembling a series of morning-glory blossoms strung on a string, and forming the softest of forest scenery. The tree had a suppleness which, compared with its present-day rigidity of old age, was as sensitive as the leaves of the quaking aspen.
When it reached the glory of prime and attained the lusty strength of maturity, it had lost its youthful characteristics and assumed the nobility of the Sequoia. Having shed the purplish, leaden-gray, flaky bark of early years, it had taken on the deep red, fibrous bark that distinguishes its royal nature. Having also discarded all of its lower branches, it disclosed a straight, regularly tapering trunk fluted with long parallel furrows. This great shaft, both inspiring in its height and uplifting in its stateliness, supported a magnificent dome-shaped crown. In this sumptuous top a multitude of tiny cones ripened annually and sent forth myriads of golden-winged seeds on the Autumn breezes. Soaring now above all the lesser trees of the forest, it lost its desire to go yet higher. Serene and grand, this king of trees presented that “perfect combination of beauty, strength, and grandeur which marks it the noblest of God’s trees.”
At this time Imperial Rome, sitting on her seven hills, was the center of the world’s culture, its progress and power. Rome had enjoyed two centuries of peace—the longest period of order and prosperity mankind has ever known—and had reached her greatest territorial extent under Hadrian (138 A. D.) Julius Caesar had destroyed the Republic; Augustus had founded the Empire; the Star of Bethlehem had proclaimed the Birth of the Saviour; Palestine had become a holy land; the world had received the Christian conception of the dignity of labor and the brotherhood of man, and Calvary had witnessed the spectacle of the Crucifixion. Already Nero had inaugurated Christian persecutions by illuminating his gilded palace with human torches, and the Cross had begun in earnest its conquest of the world.
When Alaric knocked at the Gates of Rome, the Grizzly Giant had arrived at full maturity. Its base had become greatly enlarged, the better to bear up its great weight; while its crown had grown more open, displaying enormously large, gnarled, and knotty branches, each bearing a dense mass of blue-green foliage that melted impalpably away into the sky like vagrant shreds of clouds.
And from the Fall of Rome to the present day, the Grizzly Giant has passed through maturity and on into life’s late afternoon shadows. It first saw the light of day when European civilization was in its dawn and has continued apace with its progress, the epitome of the advancement of the Indo-European peoples. Empires have risen, reached the zenith of their power, and passed on to decay and oblivion within its life time. Nations have succeeded Empires, and these, too, have been followed in their turn by other world powers, like meteors in the sky of history, and this aged monarch has reigned on. Like some ancient thing of the dead ages, it seems to have been forgotten by death so that it might live on until the sun is a burnt-out cinder in the sky.
Impassive, resolute, and self-possessed, it stands unmoved and unaffected by the world about it, unconcerned with its pompous shams, its trite pride, its hollow vanity. Grizzled and picturesque with age, it still clings to life with sublime tenacity. The lightnings of countless clouds have failed to take its life; the snows of a thousand winters have shattered and broken its royal crown; the storms of over ten centuries have stripped it nearly bare of its bark and have mercilessly washed the soil from its roots, while the insect foes and fungi pests of three thousand years have left it as unharmed as fitful winds leave the heavens. The oldest living thing, triumphant over tempest and flame, verdant and fruitful, giving shelter to all seekers thereof, and sending forth flocks of singing feathered creatures annually from its great crown like its own flocks of winged seeds from its cone, the Grizzly Giant stands—content.