THE TESTIMONY CONFIRMED.
By H. C. Miller
In Spiritual Gifts, vol. iii, chap. vi, we have a short description of things before the flood. Among other things, is a description of the trees of that age, as follows: “The trees were vastly larger, and far surpassing in beauty and perfect proportions anything mortals can now look upon. The wood of these trees was of fine grain and hard substance—in this respect, more like stone. It required much more time and labor to prepare the timber for building than it requires in this degenerate age,” &c. Though this has all passed away, and now nothing but dwarfed specimens are generally to be seen, yet God has seen fit to preserve for the last days a few specimens of trees that immediately followed the antediluvian forest (or perhaps, as God by his power preserved a few of the trees of the period before the flood alive for future generations, they may be of that number), leaving them standing in a remote place on the verge of our vast continent, undiscovered by man until needed to confirm his word—lately discovered just as the testimony is being borne. In Albert D. Richardson’s late work, “Beyond the Mississippi,” we find the following description of the “Big Trees of Mariposa”: “The Big Trees are six miles from Clark’s and thirty from Yosemite valley. Six hundred of these mammoths are scattered among the pines of twelve hundred and eighty acres. Many of the pines are two hundred feet high. Elsewhere they would be kings of the forest; but among these hoary giants, they become puny, insignificant children. The Big Trees have been considered red wood—a species of cedar abounding upon this coast—but the botanists decide otherwise, and name them SEQUOIAS. They are the oldest and most stupendous vegetable products existing upon the globe. Already twenty groves have been discovered in California. The Mariposa is largest and finest, though the Calaveras, 50 miles to the northward, is better known. “Of the Mariposa sequoias, 200 are more than 12 ft. in diameter; 50, more than 16 ft.; and 6, more than 50 ft. The largest, called the Prostrate Monarch, now lying upon the ground leafless and branchless, is believed to have fallen fully one hundred and fifty years ago! Fire has consumed much of the trunk; but enough remains to show that with the bark on, it must have been 40 feet in thickness. Figures give little idea of such dimensions. Measure up forty feet on a house wall; then four hundred feet along the ground; and try to picture the diameter and height of the Prostrate Monarch as it stood a thousand years ago. “The tops of the largest trees are broken off, leaving their average height about 250 ft., though some range between 300 and 400 ft. We saw one with a branch—not a fork, but an honest, lateral branch—six feet in diameter, growing from the stem eighty feet above the ground. Into a cavity burned in the side of another standing tree, fifteen of us rode together. Without crowding, we all sat upon our horses in that black, novel chamber, though it occupies less than half the thickness of the immense trunk. “Through a stem lying upon the ground, fire has bored, like an auger. Our entire cavalcade, including all the tall men, all the fat men, all the ample skirts, rode through it from end to end, like a railway train through a tunnel. “One living trunk, which parts near the ground into two tall, symmetrical, perfect stems, is christened the Faithful Couple. Mr. Clark assured us, in a poetic gush quite unlooked for in a hermit and a backwoodsman, that they were “Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.” “The faithfulness of this forest Ingomar and Parthenia is like that of some human couples—neither can get away. “The largest standing tree is the Grizzly Giant. Its bark is nearly two feet thick. If it were cut off smoothly, fifty horses could easily stand, or sixteen couples dance upon the stump. If the trunk were hollowed to a shell, it would hold more freight than a man-of-war or a first-class ocean steamer, two hundred and fifty feet long! “One of the Calaveras sequoias was cut down by boring with augers, and sawing the spaces between. The work employed five men for twenty-five days. When fully cut off, the tree stubbornly continued to stand, only yielding at last to a mammoth wedge and a powerful battering-ram.” Think of building with such logs for timber. Well may we believe the Testimony, on page 61, vol. iii, that “it required much more time and labor, even of that powerful race, to prepare the timber for building, than it requires in this degenerate age, to prepare trees that are now growing upon the earth, even with the present, weaker strength men now possess.” The writer adds: “There seems to be no convincing or even plausible theory of their origin. I should rather say of their preservation; for they are children of a long-ago climatic era.” How full, yet how plain and simple is the reason given by the gift of prophecy! “God by his miraculous power preserved a few of the different kinds of trees and shrubs alive for future generations.”—Spir. Gifts, Vol. iii, p. 77. Through California and Oregon, stupendous redwoods are every where numerous; and on the summit of the Sierras, almost a mile above the sea level, grow sugar pines ten and twelve feet in diameter. Well says Holmes, “In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth—
So far as I know—but a tree and truth.” “But these monster sequoias are the world’s patriarchs. None estimate their ages at less than 1800 years. They were living when the father of poets, old, blind, and vagabond, sang his song; when the sage of Athens calmly drank the hemlock; when the Carpenter of Judea, from whom the whole world now computes its time, was a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, despised and rejected of men.”—Beyond the Mississippi, Chap. xxxvi, pp. 431–435.