These are the redwood forests of California, the only trees of their
kind in the world and indigenous only to these two areas within the
State. The coast timber is known botanically as sequoia sempervirens,
that in the interior as sequoia gigantea. As the name indicates, the
latter is the larger species of the two, although the fibre of the
timber is coarser and the wood softer and consequently less valuable
commercially than the sequoia sempervirens--which in Santa Cruz, San
Mateo, Marin, and Sonoma counties has been almost wholly logged off,
because of its accessibility. In northern Mendocino, Humboldt, and
Del Norte counties, however, sixty years of logging seems scarcely to
have left a scar upon this vast body of timber. Notwithstanding sixty
years of attrition, there remain in this section of the redwood belt
thousands upon thousands of acres of virgin timber that had already
attained a vigorous growth when Christ was crucified. In their vast,
sombre recesses, with the sunlight filtering through their branches
two hundred and fifty feet above, one hears no sound save the
tremendous diapason of the silence of the ages; here, more forcibly
than elsewhere in the universe, is one reminded of the littleness of
man and the glory of his creator.

In sizes ranging from five to twenty feet in diameter, the brown
trunks rise perpendicularly to a height of from ninety to a hundred
and fifty feet before putting forth a single limb, which frequently
is more massive than the growth which men call a tree in the forests
of Michigan. Scattered between the giants, like subjects around their
king, one finds noble fir, spruce, or pines, with some Valparaiso
live oak, black oak, pepper-wood, madrone, yew, and cedar.

In May and June, when the twisted and cowering madrone trees are
putting forth their clusters of creamy buds, when the white blossoms