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.  The wood-rings in the section I laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that I was not able to determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4000 rings, which showed that this tree was in its prime, swaying in the Sierra winds, when Christ walked the earth.  No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia, or opens such impressive and suggestive views into history.

So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking about them.  On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are likely to say, “Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are towering there among the firs and pines!”—­their grandeur being in the mean time in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be manifested sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes.  Their great size is hidden from the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a distance in one harmonious view.  When, however, you approach them and walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a measuring-rod.  These giants bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is required for beauty and safety; and the only reason that this bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small section of the shaft is seen at once in near views.  One that I measured in the King’s River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground, and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine.  And when you stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty.  About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only.  The young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about half-way down, and drooping in handsome